#and this is my fifth reconstruction

[nonasbirthday]

Clear as mud! But I expect nothing less from a Homestuck 🫡

#this is a fine and perfectly reasonable way to have ordered groups of nine relate to each other :) #this took me way too long to make and i know people are gonna come into my notes and tell me what i got wrong #which is fine lol there are many smart folks here #i am not budging on Anastasia being responsible for the 'reconstruction' step though. TWICE in GTN the Ninth is linked to reconstruction #and i think the fifth preserves the spirit (step 1). #perfunctory image id in alt text #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #the locked tomb spoilers #nonasbirthday #enumeration in the locked tomb

[max-levchin]

Shamir Secret Sharing

It’s 3am. Paul, the head of PayPal database administration carefully enters his elaborate passphrase at a keyboard in a darkened cubicle of 1840 Embarcadero Road in East Palo Alto, for the fifth time. He hits Return. The green-on-black console window instantly displays one line of text: “Sorry, one or more wrong passphrases. Can’t reconstruct the key. Goodbye.” 

There is nerd pandemonium all around us. James, our recently promoted VP of Engineering, just climbed the desk at a nearby cubicle, screaming: “Guys, if we can’t get this key the right way, we gotta start brute-forcing it ASAP!” It’s gallows humor – he knows very well that brute-forcing such a key will take millions of years, and it’s already 6am on the East Coast – the first of many “Why is PayPal down today?” articles is undoubtedly going to hit CNET shortly. Our single-story cubicle-maze office is buzzing with nervous activity of PayPalians who know they can’t help but want to do something anyway. I poke my head up above the cubicle wall to catch a glimpse of someone trying to stay inside a giant otherwise empty recycling bin on wheels while a couple of Senior Software Engineers are attempting to accelerate the bin up to dangerous speeds in the front lobby. I lower my head and try to stay focused. “Let’s try it again, this time with three different people” is the best idea I can come up with, even though I am quite sure it will not work. 

It doesn’t. 

The key in question decrypts PayPal’s master payment credential table – also known as the giant store of credit card and bank account numbers. Without access to payment credentials, PayPal doesn’t really have a business per se, seeing how we are supposed to facilitate payments, and that’s really hard to do if we no longer have access to the 100+ million credit card numbers our users added over the last year of insane growth. 

This is the story of a catastrophic software bug I briefly introduced into the PayPal codebase that almost cost us the company (or so it seemed, in the moment.) I’ve told this story a handful of times, always swearing the listeners to secrecy, and surprisingly it does not appear to have ever been written down before. 20+ years since the incident, it now appears instructive and a little funny, rather than merely extremely embarrassing. 

Before we get back to that fateful night, we have to go back another decade. In the summer of 1991, my family and I moved to Chicago from Kyiv, Ukraine. While we had just a few hundred dollars between the five of us, we did have one secret advantage: science fiction fans. 

My dad was a highly active member of Zoryaniy Shlyah – Kyiv’s possibly first (and possibly only, at the time) sci-fi fan club – the name means “Star Trek” in Ukrainian, unsurprisingly. He translated some Stansilaw Lem (of Solaris and Futurological Congress fame) from Polish to Russian in the early 80s and was generally considered a coryphaeus at ZSh. 

While USSR was more or less informationally isolated behind the digital Iron Curtain until the late ‘80s, by 1990 or so, things like FidoNet wriggled their way into the Soviet computing world, and some members of ZSh were now exchanging electronic mail with sci-fi fans of the free world.

The vaguely exotic news of two Soviet refugee sci-fi fans arriving in Chicago was transmitted to the local fandom before we had even boarded the PanAm flight that took us across the Atlantic [1]. My dad (and I, by extension) was soon adopted by some kind Chicago science fiction geeks, a few of whom became close friends over the years, though that’s a story for another time. 

A year or so after the move to Chicago, our new sci-fi friends invited my dad to a birthday party for a rising star of the local fandom, one Bruce Schneier. We certainly did not know Bruce or really anyone at the party, but it promised good food, friendly people, and probably filk. My role was to translate, as my dad spoke limited English at the time. 

I had fallen desperately in love with secret codes and cryptography about a year before we left Ukraine. Walking into Bruce’s library during the house tour (this was a couple years before Applied Cryptography was published and he must have been deep in research) felt like walking into Narnia. 

I promptly abandoned my dad to fend for himself as far as small talk and canapés were concerned, and proceeded to make a complete ass out of myself by brazenly asking the host for a few sheets of paper and a pencil. Having been obliged, I pulled a half dozen cryptography books from the shelves and went to work trying to copy down some answers to a few long-held questions on the library floor. After about two hours of scribbling alone like a man possessed, I ran out of paper and decided to temporarily rejoin the party. 

On the living room table, Bruce had stacks of copies of his fanzine Ramblings. Thinking I could use the blank sides of the pages to take more notes, I grabbed a printout and was about to quietly return to copying the original S-box values for DES when my dad spotted me from across the room and demanded I help him socialize. The party wrapped soon, and our friends drove us home. 

The printout I grabbed was not a Ramblings issue. It was a short essay by Bruce titled Sharing Secrets Among Friends, essentially a humorous explanation of Shamir Secret Sharing. 

Say you want to make sure that something really really important and secret (a nuclear weapon launch code, a database encryption key, etc) cannot be known or used by a single (friendly) actor, but becomes available, if at least n people from a group of m choose to do it. Think two on-duty officers (from a cadre of say 5) turning keys together to get ready for a nuke launch. 

The idea (proposed by Adi Shamir – the S of RSA! – in 1979) is as simple as it is beautiful. 

Let’s call the secret we are trying to split among m people K. 

First, create a totally random polynomial that looks like: y(x) = C0 * x^(n-1) + C1 * x^(n-2) + C2 * x^(n-3) ….+ K. “Create” here just means generate random coefficients C. Now, for every person in your trusted group of m, evaluate the polynomial for some randomly chosen Xm and hand them their corresponding (Xm,Ym) each. 

If we have n of these points together, we can use Lagrange interpolating polynomial to reconstruct the coefficients – and evaluate the original polynomial at x=0, which conveniently gives us y(0) = K, the secret. Beautiful. I still had the printout with me, years later, in Palo Alto. 

It should come as no surprise that during my time as CTO PayPal engineering had an absolute obsession with security. No firewall was one too many, no multi-factor authentication scheme too onerous, etc. Anything that was worth anything at all was encrypted at rest. 

To decrypt, a service would get the needed data from its database table, transmit it to a special service named cryptoserv (an original SUN hardware running Solaris sitting on its own, especially tightly locked-down network) and a special service running only there would perform the decryption and send back the result. 

Decryption request rate was monitored externally and on cryptoserv, and if there were too many requests, the whole thing was to shut down and purge any sensitive data and keys from its memory until manually restarted. 

It was this manual restart that gnawed at me. At launch, a bunch of configuration files containing various critical decryption keys were read (decrypted by another key derived from one manually-entered passphrase) and loaded into the memory to perform future cryptographic services.

Four or five of us on the engineering team knew the passphrase and could restart cryptoserv if it crashed or simply had to have an upgrade. What if someone performed a little old-fashioned rubber-hose cryptanalysis and literally beat the passphrase out of one of us? The attacker could theoretically get access to these all-important master keys. Then stealing the encrypted-at-rest database of all our users’ secrets could prove useful – they could decrypt them in the comfort of their underground supervillain lair. 

I needed to eliminate this threat.

Shamir Secret Sharing was the obvious choice – beautiful, simple, perfect (you can in fact prove that if done right, it offers perfect secrecy.) I decided on a 3-of-8 scheme and implemented it in pure POSIX C for portability over a few days, and tested it for several weeks on my Linux desktop with other engineers. 

Step 1: generate the polynomial coefficients for 8 shard-holders.

Step 2: compute the key shards (x0, y0)  through (x7, y7)

Step 3: get each shard-holder to enter a long, secure passphrase to encrypt the shard

Step 4: write out the 8 shard files, encrypted with their respective passphrases.

And to reconstruct: 

Step 1: pick any 3 shard files. 

Step 2: ask each of the respective owners to enter their passphrases. 

Step 3: decrypt the shard files.

Step 4: reconstruct the polynomial, evaluate it for x=0 to get the key.

Step 5: launch cryptoserv with the key. 

One design detail here is that each shard file also stored a message authentication code (a keyed hash) of its passphrase to make sure we could identify when someone mistyped their passphrase. These tests ran hundreds and hundreds of times, on both Linux and Solaris, to make sure I did not screw up some big/little-endianness issue, etc. It all worked perfectly. 

A month or so later, the night of the key splitting party was upon us. We were finally going to close out the last vulnerability and be secure. Feeling as if I was about to turn my fellow shard-holders into cymeks, I gathered them around my desktop as PayPal’s front page began sporting the “We are down for maintenance and will be back soon” message around midnight.

The night before, I solemnly generated the new master key and securely copied it to cryptoserv. Now, while “Push It” by Salt-n-Pepa blared from someone’s desktop speakers, the automated deployment script copied shard files to their destination. 

While each of us took turns carefully entering our elaborate passphrases at a specially selected keyboard, Paul shut down the main database and decrypted the payment credentials table, then ran the script to re-encrypt with the new key. Some minutes later, the database was running smoothly again, with the newly encrypted table, without incident. 

All that was left was to restore the master key from its shards and launch the new, even more secure cryptographic service. 

The three of us entered our passphrases… to be met with the error message I haven’t seen in weeks: “Sorry, one or more wrong passphrases. Can’t reconstruct the key. Goodbye.” Surely one of us screwed up typing, no big deal, we’ll do it again. No dice. No dice – again and again, even after we tried numerous combinations of the three people necessary to decrypt. 

Minutes passed, confusion grew, tension rose rapidly. 

There was nothing to do, except to hit rewind – to grab the master key from the file still sitting on cryptoserv, split it again, generate new shards, choose passphrases, and get it done. Not a great feeling to have your first launch go wrong, but not a huge deal either. It will all be OK in a minute or two.

A cursory look at the master key file date told me that no, it wouldn’t be OK at all. The file sitting on cryptoserv wasn’t from last night, it was created just a few minutes ago. During the Salt-n-Pepa-themed push from stage, we overwrote the master key file with the stage version. Whatever key that was, it wasn’t the one I generated the day before: only one copy existed, the one I copied to cryptoserv from my computer the night before. Zero copies existed now. Not only that, the push script appears to have also wiped out the backup of the old key, so the database backups we have encrypted with the old key are likely useless. 

Sitrep: we have 8 shard files that we apparently cannot use to restore the master key and zero master key backups. The database is running but its secret data cannot be accessed. 

I will leave it to your imagination to conjure up what was going through my head that night as I stared into the black screen willing the shards to work. After half a decade of trying to make something of myself (instead of just going to work for Microsoft or IBM after graduation) I had just destroyed my first successful startup in the most spectacular fashion. 

Still, the idea of “what if we all just continuously screwed up our passphrases” swirled around my brain. It was an easy check to perform, thanks to the included MACs. I added a single printf() debug statement into the shard reconstruction code and instead of printing out a summary error of “one or more…” the code now showed if the passphrase entered matched the authentication code stored in the shard file. 

I compiled the new code directly on cryptoserv in direct contravention of all reasonable security practices – what did I have to lose? Entering my own passphrase, I promptly got “bad passphrase” error I just added to the code. Well, that’s just great – I knew my passphrase was correct, I had it written down on a post-it note I had planned to rip up hours ago. 

Another person, same error. Finally, the last person, JK, entered his passphrase. No error. The key still did not reconstruct correctly, I got the “Goodbye”, but something worked. I turned to the engineer and said, “what did you just type in that worked?”

After a second of embarrassed mumbling, he admitted to choosing “a$$word” as his passphrase. The gall! I asked everyone entrusted with the grave task of relaunching crytposerv to pick really hard to guess passphrases, and this guy…?! Still, this was something -- it worked. But why?!

I sprinted around the half-lit office grabbing the rest of the shard-holders demanding they tell me their passphrases. Everyone else had picked much lengthier passages of text and numbers. I manually tested each and none decrypted correctly. Except for the a$$word. What was it…

A lightning bolt hit me and I sprinted back to my own cubicle in the far corner, unlocked the screen and typed in “man getpass” on the command line, while logging into cryptoserv in another window and doing exactly the same thing there. I saw exactly what I needed to see. 

Today, should you try to read up the programmer’s manual (AKA the man page) on getpass, you will find it has been long declared obsolete and replaced with a more intelligent alternative in nearly all flavors of modern Unix.  

But back then, if you wanted to collect some information from the keyboard without printing what is being typed in onto the screen and remain POSIX-compliant, getpass did the trick. Other than a few standard file manipulation system calls, getpass was the only operating system service call I used, to ensure clean portability between Linux and Solaris. 

Except it wasn’t completely clean. 

Plain as day, there it was: the manual pages were identical, except Solaris had a “special feature”: any passphrase entered that was longer than 8 characters long was automatically reduced to that length anyway. (Who needs long passwords, amiright?!)

I screamed like a wounded animal. We generated the key on my Linux desktop and entered our novel-length passphrases right here. Attempting to restore them on a Solaris machine where they were being clipped down to 8 characters long would never work. Except, of course, for a$$word. That one was fine.

The rest was an exercise in high-speed coding and some entirely off-protocol file moving. We reconstructed the master key on my machine (all of our passphrases worked fine), copied the file to the Solaris-running cryptoserv, re-split it there (with very short passphrases), reconstructed it successfully, and PayPal was up and running again like nothing ever happened. 

By the time our unsuspecting colleagues rolled back into the office I was starting to doze on the floor of my cubicle and that was that. When someone asked me later that day why we took so long to bring the site back up, I’d simply respond with “eh, shoulda RTFM.” 

RTFM indeed. 

P.S. A few hours later, John, our General Counsel, stopped by my cubicle to ask me something. The day before I apparently gave him a sealed envelope and asked him to store it in his safe for 24 hours without explaining myself. He wanted to know what to do with it now that 24 hours have passed. 

Ha. I forgot all about it, but in a bout of “what if it doesn’t work” paranoia, I printed out the base64-encoded master key when we had generated it the night before, stuffed it into an envelope, and gave it to John for safekeeping. We shredded it together without opening and laughed about what would have never actually been a company-ending event. 

P.P.S. If you are thinking of all the ways this whole SSS design is horribly insecure (it had some real flaws for sure) and plan to poke around PayPal to see if it might still be there, don’t. While it served us well for a few years, this was the very first thing eBay required us to turn off after the acquisition. Pretty sure it’s back to a single passphrase now. 

Notes:

1: a member of Chicagoland sci-fi fan community let me know that the original news of our move to the US was delivered to them via a posted letter, snail mail, not FidoNet email! 

[fredwkong]

I could maybe use your help! I found some app online that allows me to swap traits or attributes with people and I've been spending the last day going around my local gym swapping parts of myself with random guys - my biceps, my legs, my chest, even my hair and my height. I didn't realise that as well as the trait I've selected from each person, the app randomly chooses an additional random trait to swap the following day! I must have swapped stuff with like five or six guys, so worried I'm going to wake up with a bunch of random traits! Can you help?

Just as a reminder to everyone, please read the fine print before getting involved with something like this! Those EULAs can contain anything these days. You probably didn’t even realise that the app can swap traits other than physical ones.

I’m not tech support or anything, but I can at least help you reconstruct the changes that are going to happen. How about this: I’ll use my powers to make sure that you’re happy however you end up, okay?

Swap One: Attitude

Seems like whoever you swapped biceps with was sort of a swaggering asshole. I bet he’ll be better off with your old meek attitude. And with your big body, this douchey vibe will work even better.

Swap Two: Intellect

Those legs? That guy did legs every day because he couldn’t remember more than one workout split. You’re still smarter than a fifth grader, but it’s uncomfortably close. No more reading classics for you, but the guy you swapped your legs from now has the intelligence to build an even bigger body.

Swap Three: Career

You thought that you’d swapped your handsome, manly face from a male model, but that was all a cover. In fact, that guy ran an OnlyFans for his primary income. With your new body, you make way more money than he did, though.

Swap Four: Kinks

The hair came from a guy who was into body hair, sure, but you’re also about to find yourself with a love for a tight pair of briefs. They show off your dick perfectly, and once you’ve worn them for a few days they build up a really sexy smell.

Swap Five: Hygiene

Speaking of which, the guy you swapped heights with happened to be a total stink pig. You’d had a hard time getting close enough to him to activate the swap, he smelled so strong. Well, he’ll be showering more, but you might not even wash once a week from now on. Trust me, your fans will love it, and they’ll probably even pay you for your used briefs after you really grind your smell into them.

Well, with my guidance, things seem to have gone pretty much perfectly! Hope you enjoy your new life! Please remember to properly subscribe and read the fine print next time you see a magical app that’s too good to be true. Well, if you can even read technical language anymore.

#answered ask #male transformation #mental change #reality change #muscle tf #dumber tf #musk tf #broification #male tf #all fwkong

[inaloriel]

My husband gave me this baby dress. It was released in 2009 and I’m at least the fifth person in the local community to own it. :D My wardrobe is based on ott-sweet, hime and baby sweet styles. I only have one completed old school look in light colors. The new jsk, to my surprise, matched most of my wardrobe. The resulting combination reminds me of a historical reconstruction🎀🪽

#baby the stars shine bright #sweet lolita #innocent world #old school lolita #lolita outfit #lolita fashion #egl #lolita coord #btssb #hime lolita #princess aesthetic #lolita lifestyle #lolita dress #lolita shoes #angelic imprint #egl outfit #egl fashion #egl coord #sweet classic lolita

[coline7373]

The Many Lives of Marshal Commander Cody After the War (No O66 AU)

Reconstuction Corp AU

To my eternal delight, many people have build around a happy AU that see jedi creating a fifth corp of the Jedi Order after the war, the Reconstruction Corp. It is dedicated to bring relief to war torn worlds and repair the damaged the clone war brought to the galaxy and is open to clones who wish to join.

I really like the idea of clones being able to repair and create rather than be made to destroy.

I think it would fit Cody (who would immediately take ove-) who would honor this joint venture by dressing Jedi-like on occasion.

Amongst such fics are the amazing series When Duty Is Done and Reconstruction Corp AU.

*****

Other Cody's AU lives include:

Guardian of the Wheels

Freedom Fighter

Pantoran Mountain Farmer

#star wars #sw fanart #the clone wars #tcw fanart #commander cody #clone wars #tcw #no order 66 #sw happy au #character design #restauration corp #my fanart #coline7373

[draqo-pctter]

girl on a train // a dramione mini-fic, complete

After the war, Draco took to riding muggle trains to clear his mind. One morning, on the fifth year anniversary of the Battle at Hogwarts, he saw a familiar mountain of curls while riding the Piccadilly Line.

Hermione Granger sat across and four people down from him, reading. This wouldn’t have been so unusual, if anyone in Wizarding London had seen her since the end of the Reconstruction.

words: 11.8k chapters: 8/8 tags: old feelings new situations, soft, pining draco malfoy, alternate universe, soulmates, strangers to lovers, light angst, mild hurt/comfort, falling in love, historical references, references to the time traveler’s wife by audrey niffenegger click here to read on ao3      

artwork done by @sophiesstreet​ | please give her all of the love & attention, her artwork takes my breath away

#dramione #dramione ff #dramione fanfic #dramione fanfiction #dhr #dhr fanfic #dhr ff #dhr fanfiction #dramione ao3 #dramione archive of our own #archive of our own #soulmates #soft #pining draco malfoy #draco malfoy #hermione granger #draco x hermione #hermione x draco #fic rec #falling in love #light angst #mild hurt/comfort #strangers to lovers #alternate universe #dramione alternate universe #dramione au #soulmates au #ohthedrarry ao3 #fanart

[captainkirkk]

✩ WEEKLY FIC ROUND-UP ✩

All the fics I’ve read and really enjoyed in the past week-ish. Reminder: This list features any and all ratings and themes. Please read the tags and warnings before reading.

BNHA

you could have knocked me out with a feather by sahwen

"Your X-rays don’t indicate any fissures or other breaking in the skull,” his handler said as she looked over his file. She always spoke like that, as did his other handlers; the skull. Not his. Because it wasn’t his, when you got right down to it. He was a public figure. He was property. He was real estate.

And he knew what she meant when she said your x-rays don’t indicate any fissures. It meant, you’ve wasted our time. It made him sweat.

Or: Hawks gets bonked. The HPSC is not a hospital.

Stranger Things

Adopt a Jock by @sp0o0kylights

Hellfire adopts Steve during his final year of high school. Pre-Steddie. (Ongoing tumblr fic)

DC (Batfamily)

This Dark Ceiling Without a Star by Miss_Lazy_Tuesday

"For fuck’s sake, your chatter is going to drive me crazy faster than this stupid spell.”

“Then you talk!”

“There’s no point!” Jason snaps. “I can feel it, okay. It’s—there’s no emotion behind it, it’s not using my thoughts. It’s just a bunch of weird Greek echoing in my brain and a compulsion to act. And it’s getting stronger. Talking isn’t going to slow it down.”

“Then what will slow it down?”

After five long seconds of silence, Tim gives into the urge and viciously jabs his fist into Jason’s leg for the second time.

“Goddammit, why?” Jason snaps, green briefly sparking in his eyes before disappearing just as quickly.

“You are not seriously going to just sit there and wait to die.”

“The hell do you care anyway?”

“Because I don’t want you to die! Obviously!”

“You fucking should."

Marvel

status quo by jilliancares

"So, you’re investigating this not-so-bad-bad-guy, and you’re coming out of his apartment at—" Wade tilts his head to the side, just enough to check his watch “—almost exactly the time you usually start your patrol.”

Peter chews on the inside of his cheek. “Yep,” he decides on.

“And — just to be clear — I definitely shouldn’t unalive this guy instead of the douchebag across the street.”

“Definitely not,” Peter agrees. “No one would like that.”

Wade bangs his head against the fire escape again. “Okay, Webs. This one’s just to gauge if you’re smarter than a fifth grader: how much of that do you think I actually believe?"

Or: Somehow, the components of Peter’s secret identity keep crumbling all around him.

Also: He’s running out of excuses not to tell Wade that he’s in love with him.

9-1-1

Don't You (Forget About Me) by Princessfbi

"Bill, can you tell me your location? I want to send some people to make sure you’re okay. You don’t sound okay.”

“I’m not. But he’s worse off than I am. Shouldn’t you want to help him instead? Wouldn’t you want to know where he is?”

“Who is he?”

“That firefighter I buried underground.”

The long awaited buried alive fic

ATLA

All the Little Things by CSHfic, VSfic

Sokka receives an offer of an arranged marriage from the Northern Water Tribe. On the one hand, accepting would strengthen ties between their tribes. On the other hand, Chief Arnook has suggested Hahn as a potential match, and Hahn sucks. But with the future of the Southern Water Tribe Reconstruction project relying heavily on the good will of the North, Sokka doesn’t know how to say no.

(Katara doesn’t have to deal with this. Katara is dating the Avatar.)

Zuko has a solution. Sokka just wishes he’d realized he was in love with the Fire Lord before he agreed to pretend to date him.

Classroom Lessons by Thisisentertaining

Sokka never would have thought he'd be pretending to be a Fire Nation Colonial Citizen, going to a parent conference about his fake!son who was an airbender, but here he was.

At least life wasn't boring.

Sokka turned on Aang, fake mustache and beard bristling. "Young man, as soon as we get home, you're gonna get the punishment of a lifetime."

The headmaster smirked, smugly, evil-y, Fire Nation-y. "That's what I like to hear. Really Zuko him."

the snakes, and the people that they bite by Serie11

Rai is just a normal guy, really. One of the many guards that patrol the Fire Lord's palace.

Why did it have to be him who got caught up in this assassination attempt?

Finishing Each Other's Sentences by mindbending

fire lilies are red your melancholy mood’s blue still I prefer you 

After the war, Sokka starts writing poetry.

She broke your throne by Serie11

Zuko is kidnapped from his afternoon of paperwork by a well intentioned friend. There just so happens to be a festival on in town for them to attend instead of working...

#happy monday everyone! #we've got a big boy round up this week #my posts #fic recs #weekly fic round up #bnha recs #marvel recs #dc recs #stranger things recs #atla recs #911 recs #misc recs

[chicago-geniza]

For real though this guy was like "do you have Big Fiction? I don't remember the author" and I was like "yes it the fifth book from the left on the second shelf down on the back side of the literary criticism stacks under S after Shakespeare"

It's the same process as reconstructing obscure citations from memory by visually reconstituting the scene of Encounter and building a mnemonic device. This is my only "autistic skill" but it's a good party trick and also useful if your inventory search system crashes at the bookstore

#Like I am not exaggerating when I describe my memory as photographic #It's not eidetic. It does not 'record' all and any information #But it takes a picture like Cam Jansen that I can access later

[paganimagevault]

Scythian mummy tomb (Fifth Pazyryk Kurgan), Pazyryk culture 3rd C. BCE. More pictures on my blog, link at bottom.

"The pair were buried alongside nine horses, a huge cache of cannabis and a stash of priceless treasures - including the world's oldest carpet and an ornate carriage.

The man had curly hair and was aged between 55 and 60 when he died, whilst the woman was about ten years younger.

It is believed he was a chieftain or king of the Pazyryk civilisation, which lived in Kazakhstan, Siberia and Mongolia from the 6th to 3rd centuries BC."

...

"The attractive log cabin was a prefabricated construction by the prehistoric Pazyryk culture to house an elite tomb - in which was buried a mummified curly-haired potentate and his younger wife or concubine.

The mound in the Altai Mountains was originally 42 metres in diameter, and this tattooed couple went to the next life alongside nine geldings, saddled and harnessed.

The house itself, recently reconstructed, was not built as a dwelling but nevertheless is seen by archeologists as showing the style of domestic architecture more than two millennia ago.

This structure was the outer of two wooden houses in the large burial mound in the valley of the River Bolshoy Ulagan at an altitude of around 1,600 metres above sea level.

The core of the mound including the ice-preserved bodies of the elite couple had been excavated by Soviet archeologists in 1949, and many of the finds are on on display in the world famous State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.

As we have previously written, the pair - who owned perhaps the world’s oldest carpets - are currently undergoing an ultra modern medical scan to establish the cause of death, and reconstruct the appearance of the ancient pair, and to study the techniques of mummification in more detail.

Yet in 1949 this fascinating house was left in the permafrost ground - and only retrieved now from the so-called Fifth Pazyryk Barrow, to the excitement of archeologists.

Head of the excavation Dr Nikita Konstantinov from Gorno-Altaisk State University, was full of admiration about the skills of the ancient craftsmen.

‘We took out the log house and reassembled it right next to the mound,’ he said.

‘We made kind of express reconstruction, which made it possible to study the log house in detail.

‘Notches were made on each of its logs - building marks…’.

This was like IKEA instructions today for building their products, telling modern day excavation volunteers how to correctly construct the prehistoric building kit.

The result is seen in the pictures shown here.

‘This log house was first built somewhere away from the mound, then it was dismantled, brought and reassembled in the pit,’ said Dr Konstantinov.

‘Today we build in similar way, using Roman numerals, as a rule.

‘In those times they simply made different numbers of notches.’

The archeological team followed the code left by the ancient craftsmen and reassembled the house without problems.

‘The Pazyryks knitted the corners of the building in a masterly way and chopped the attachment points of these logs.

‘They fitted very cleanly….

‘When we built the log house and began to measure the height, it turned out that the height difference in the angles is only one centimetre.’

In modern constructions, a difference of 7 cm is allowed which showed how skilful were the ancient craftsmen.

He said: ‘This is a funerary structure, but we can say with a high degree of probability that the log cabin was created in the image and likeness of the houses in which the Pazyryks lived."

-taken from siberiantimes and thesun

#scythian #pazyryk #saka #pagan #archaeology #anthropology #architecture #history #ancient history #museums #mummies #artifacts #antiquities #ancient art #tattoos #4th century bce

[evolutionsbedingt]

I decided to make this a separate post because I realised this derailed quickly into me being frustrated by shoddy research BUT.

Inspired by this post by @/polarcell, who is also the owner of the following screenshot, here there be an

The Old Guard rant:

^Those were my tags before I decided not to bother OP with this.

As I've recently (as in, until last week) spent an enjoyable semester getting annoyed by Mycannaen Greek and whether or not the Ilias has any convincingly 12th century BCE features, I have even more opinions on this than I already had.

You see, in the fifth millennium in the Western Asian steppes (usually defined as the steppes on the western side of the Ural mountains - yes that's a lot of territory, don't worry about it) we didn't have Greek people. Hell, Greek people weren't even a speck on the horizon yet. Their ancestors, the Proto-Indo-European people may have just started to arrive from the Caucasus, but we're very, very far away from speaking Greek or using the name 'Scythians'.

Scythians are commonly defined as the people living in the North Pontic steppes between 7th and 3rd century BCE. Their name may derive from a self-description as archers. They spoke Scythian languages, Thracian (both Trümmer languages), Ancient Greek and Proto-Slavic (only known in reconstruction). Probably. Because thanks to the Scythians being nomadic we don't have a whole lot of writing from them, much less bigger texts in their own language.

And Andromache? Is first attested in Homer's Illiad and Fragment 44 by Sappho, both dated to the 8th century.

So it's possible for a Scythian woman to be called Andromache (and considering the meaning of her name it's quite appropriate for Andy to take it on). BUT! She's not originally Scythian! Her real name is not Andromache! This is an epithet she didn't bother getting rid off after the fall of the Scythian "empire"! She spent four thousand years being called something else beforehand, maybe something that sounded similar, maybe something we cannot possibly explain with PIE linguistics! BECAUSE SHE'S PROBABLY NOT EVEN PIE!! DO YOU KNOW HOW BADLY I WANT TO SIT THIS WOMAN DOWN AND MAKE HER SPEAK HER ORIGINAL LANGUAGE!!!?

(Also, her speaking "all" languages would in fact make sense for European and some Iranic languages if she is actually PIE and not from a people that lived in the Western Asiatic steppes before the immigration of the PIE people. And if she's been with Quynh for a few millennia - possibly even pre-Scythian times? did they arrive with them from the East? - it is very likely that an equal proficiency in the precursors of various East Asiatic and Turkic languages leads to an easy grasp of those. The rest probably is travelling and, I assure you, once you've learned a certain amount of languages it becomes easier to learn new ones.)

So what I'm saying is: Give me Andy's real name you cowards! I'm sure a friendly PIE linguist would have a lot of fun coming up with one (and perhaps it'll even be pronounceable for English people :P)!

#I have been meaning to make a post like this since 2020

[aggravateddurian]

Welcome!

I’m Durian (he/him, 18+, bi, Australia) and this is my hub for all things Cyberpunk fan content related.

This blog is 18+ and I consider it NSFW. However, due to personal preferences I tend to refrain from reblogging or posting actual NSFW content here.

Links

Will link anything here whenever there's something to link.

Currently Working On

"Whatever Happened to Trey Marshall?"

A prelude to Descendants, featuring Vega Hawse in her 'NOT A V' guise, and her quest to learn the truth of what happened to Trey when he disappeared in 2077. Vega will learn some disturbing truths about Trey's background. Will she be able to reveal the truth to Trey's friends and loved ones?

"Descendants"

Descendants is a sequel to the story of Trey Marshall and Valerie Ocampo-Gonzalez, following the children of Trey and Val, Lincoln and Chara Ocampo-Gonzalez as they negotiate life in Night City (now known as the Morro Bay Reconstruction Sector) in the year 2099, in the aftermath of the disastrous Fifth Corporate War, which caused the collapse of some of the world's largest megacorps.

Projects

Nothing publicly available

Full list of OCs and Ships can be found below the cut:

My OCs

(Any character with a V symbol in their card is one of my Vs)

Ships

https://www.tumblr.com/aggravateddurian/tagged/otp%3A%20time%20after%20time

https://www.tumblr.com/aggravateddurian/tagged/otp%3A%20complementary%20colours

https://www.tumblr.com/aggravateddurian/tagged/otp%3A%20the%20quiet%20life

https://www.tumblr.com/aggravateddurian/tagged/otp%3A%20smooth%20like%20an%20av%20crash

https://www.tumblr.com/aggravateddurian/tagged/otp%3A%20duet

https://www.tumblr.com/aggravateddurian/tagged/otp%3A%20the%20president's%20lady

#pinned post #intro post #intro page #blog update

[divinemare]

✧*̥₊˚‧☆ﾐ 𝖉𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝖙𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖘!¡ •ଓ.°

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳ azrielxfem!oc

part eleven

TW: smut

𓆝 𓆜 ––––———–––––———–┊⁀➷

Kallistrade looked out over the horizon, once a battlefield, now the memory of a victory.

But her heart did not feel victorious, did not feel the glory that her crew mates and fellow pirates celebrated. Instead she waited, and waited, and waited.

She stretched her departure until only the Night Court remained, the others retreating to their respective territories, stretched her departure until Rhysand came to say goodbye, until Feyre wrapped her in an embrace, and told her she would always have a place on their table, until Cassian and Mor shedded a tear or two as they said goodbye, until Amren gave her a knowing look, until Nesta Archeron came forward to say that it had been a pleasure to meet her, and that she hoped this wasn't the last time they would see each other, until Elain Archeron told her that she couldn't wait to hear more stories of mermaids and sea monsters, and until Azriel showed no sign at all, not a whisper of a shadow, nothing.

“Captain, are we waiting for something?” Maddox asked behind her.

Pirates were already growing tired of being here, and she knew she couldn’t stretch her departure any longer.

“No. Nothing. Set the sails, we are going home.”

𓆉｡˚ ✧

She was heartbroken, to say the least. Had she had a moment to cry, she would’ve done so until she felt her insides dry, but the left overs of the war left her so busy day and night that she had no time to show an ounce of the pain that awoke everyday within her.

But maybe she deserved that pain, maybe she deserved everything that had happened, the fact that her mate had fallen for someone so opposite of her, so far from what she was. She deserved all of it, after all, she left him first, she ran away and didn’t look back, she hurt him first, she left his heart broken first.

Still, it hurt like a mother damn bitch.

Kallistrade spent her days doing accounts, repairing expenses, paying tribute to the fallen, conducting funerals and reassembling her city. She had not had a single moment to sit and think, and when night came, she was so tired that sometimes she did not even make it to her bed, but fell asleep at her desk or wherever she was. Elijah had been carrying her to her bed every time that happened, which saved her from waking up with pains in her neck and back.

Now, in her messy and disastrous office, Kallistrade was having a deep discussion with one of her reconstruction managers about the name of the tavern that had been destroyed by Hybern in their attack. For the fifth time that week.

“For the last time, Salomon, the tavern is not going to be called ‘Didy Big Tiddies’, if you want to change the name, go speak with the fucking owner, not me. Now get out of my office before I carve those lyrics into your flesh with my knife,” she said with a sigh, with her face in her hands trying to scrub away the sleepiness.

She heard the door close, and let out another loud, tired sigh, throwing her head on the table on her arms. A few papers, from the ton sitting in her desk, fell to the floor, and Kallistrade groaned at the thought of having to get up to pick them.

She had a meeting in half an hour with the other Lords, and she hadn't finished half her work yet.

Cauldron fucking boil me, she cursed in her head.

“Didy Big Tiddies? Sounds rather inviting.”

From all her tiredness she had almost fallen asleep right there, and did not feel the presence in her office until it spoke in a dark, amused voice.

A voice Kallistrade knew, a voice that made her lift her head from the table like a spring, that dispelled her sleep and replaced it with surprise and uncertainty. A voice that belonged to...

“Azriel,” she was out of breath, out of coherent words, she didn't even know if what she was seeing was real, or a product of her tiredness coming to the point of hallucinations.

But her heart...no, her heart was beating too fast, too hard for this to be a hallucination.

He stepped out of the shadows, his muscular arms crossed over his equally muscular chest, a sly grin in his devilishly beautiful lips, his honey kissed eyes flaring with amusement and something else. “Before you ask how I got here-“

“You’re very good at your job. Yeah, I know,” Kallistrade stood up from her desk, her mouth suddenly too dry and her eyes twinkling with uncertainty, still not 100% sure that Azriel was there, in front of her.

Azriel, reading her thoughts precisely, sent shadows to her side, to touch her skin delicately, to caress her hands, to confirm that it was him, there, in her office. The realization of that moment hit her like a stream of cold water, waking her up completely.

“Is everything ok? Did something happened? I’m sorry if I haven’t been able to check any letters, it must have gotten lost in these terrible sack of papers, I really ought to-” she started to panic, thinking that perhaps, her family was still in trouble.

“Lis,” Azriel tried to interrupt her, getting a step closer, but the sudden rush of energy made her go into a frenzy.

“I cant even find my own knifes in these place, is seriously out of-”

“Kallistrade,” he gave two steps closer this time, raising his voice just a tiny bit, not angry, but amused, and finally make her stop talking and look him in the eye.

“Everything is ok in Prythian, you haven’t missed any letters begging for aid, don’t worry.”

Confusion took over her features, and her lips moved momentarily and slightly to the right, Azriel recognised the movement immediately, and had to take a deep breath. She had always done that little thing whenever she was confused or overwhelmed. There weren’t any soft features in her face now, but, still, it was the same grimace he had always considered endearing, even with its wickedness now.

“Oh, then, what are you doing here?” She asked trying not to sound too shaky, crossing her arms over her chest.

Azriel gave another step closer and raised an eyebrow, amused, what the hell was amusing him so much?

“Can’t I come visit a friend? I always wondered how the famous pirate citadel was, I’ve heard so many dreadful stories, I’m actually surprised to say it’s a decent place.”

“Yes, well, I might be a pirate, but I still like clean streets and pretty cities, these place was a hideous mess before I became High Pirate Lady, my first action as it was to renew the whole damn island. Poor rats were giving to the sharks but, we have had less sickness since,” Kallistrade lifted a shoulder and shifted her weight in one leg.

Azriel looked her over, as if assessing all and each of her little movements, peeling off her layers one by one and getting to the bottom of her real uncertainty.

Fucking spymaster abilities.

“What would the pirates have done without you,” he smirked, and she, letting go off a little bit of her tension, smirked back.

“Die of terrible infections, I’m sure,” silence followed, and Kallistrade took a deep breath, straightening her back to its full length, and looking Azriel over, assessing him too. She wasn’t a spymaster, but she had learned a thing or two of him in the past, and she was done with the bullshit now. “What are you doing here, Azriel, really. I…I’m really busy, these place needs a lot of fixing after Hybern tried to wipe us out, and I have to take care of the damages of the war-”

“Kallistrade, stop, will you? Just…shut up,” he gave a final step closer, now so close she could feel the cold rush of his shadows against her skin, and admire the specs of gold in his hazel eyes. Her breath got caught up in her throat, and she cursed herself internally.

“I can’t do this, Azriel, you should go back to Velaris, with Elain, and…and I…just please, go back to her,” she tried to back away, to get far enough away from him so that she no longer had to smell his fresh scent so close to her, altering her senses and making her stupid heart race with every breath.

“No,” he said simply, face grim with utter seriousness.

“Azriel, I’m am busy, I- ”she tried to protest again, but his shadows rush to her to shut her up. Literally shut her up. She fell silent, and looked at him with disbelief.

“You owe me this, Kallistrade, so just let me say what I came here to say. You. Owe. Me. This,” he was so serious, that even his shadows stiffen. She swallowed, and nodded with an awaiting, and a little annoyed look.

“Yes. Elain is very beautiful. Yes she’s sweet. Yes she’s loving. And yes she’s perfect.”

Kallistrade rolled her eyes, backing away from the shadows enough for her to be able to speak, and crossed her arms with a disbelief eyebrow raised.

“Wow, was that supposed to make me feel better or to make me feel more miserable? Because if you were aiming for the second option, congratulations, you did it spectacularly, but you should have saved all that trouble traveling and simply write it in a letter,” he shot her an exasperated look, and rubbed his scarred hands through his face. Kallistrade’s challenging expression did not falter.

“Will. You. Shut. Up? Just for one second, stop talking, please. Don’t say another word for one. Fucking. Second.”

“Blimey, ok, I guess you cannot make me feel worse,” she rolled her eyes again, but waited for him to continue.

“As I was saying, she is perfect and I did liked her a lot.”

“Oop, I was wrong, there it is, would you like a knife to finish me off? I have plenty lost on my desk,” this time, he didn’t bother giving her dirty look, he straight up sent his shadows to shut her up again, and she huffed a breath that almost, almost made him smile.

“I did liked her. But I liked her because she reminded me of you,” at her very deep frown, he sighed, trying to look for the right words, he wasn’t a male good with words, and Kallistrade was making it damn hard, she always did. “The old you, I mean, the one I first fell in love with. I hadn’t realized it before, until the battle, when you left, but I was…I was projecting you in her, that’s why I found it so easy to like her, to think that, perhaps, I could fall in love with her,” at her expression, he knew she was about to interrupt him even as his shadows were covering her mouth, and gritted his teeth in response, raising an eyebrow. “Do not. Interrupt me,” she rolled her eyes, and Azriel could read her response clearly in her eyes.

“Blimey, relax a bit,” he tried not to smile again, her pirate phrases, now those were catching up on him. He forced himself to continue, then, before she got the urge to interrupt him again.

“That’s the most fucked up part of it all, that I could have never have fallen in love with her. Because yes, she reminded me too much about the first version of you I fell in love with, but that’s the thing, you made me fall in love then, and you made me fall in love again now. You are the only damn person who could make me learn to love again, to make me fall in love again with you once and twice and thrice and Mother knows how many times could I fall in love with you, every version of you.”

Kallistrade was speechless, unable to think coherently or speak coherently. When Azriel noticed her stunned look, he removed the shadows from her mouth, which was open and completely dry.

Her heart gave an exalted leap and she had to blink several times to convince her brain, and her heart itself, that Azriel had said those words, and she wasn't imagining any of it.

“I don’t want perfect, Kallistrade, you were never perfect, and the Mother knows I’m far away from perfect. But I can’t imagine someone I would rather fall in love with a million more times other than you.”

There was silence for a long moment. A moment where Kallistrade considered all his words, all the weight of his words. She searched for hints of falsehood, but found only truth in his beautiful hazel eyes.

Azriel watched her expectantly, waiting for a response, and it took Kallistrade a couple of minutes longer than she was proud to admit to remember how to speak correctly.

“Oh, something tells me that you are really going to regret those words, because you’ll need more than a million times,” she raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to retract. But he didn’t, instead smirking and lifting a hand to her face, cupping it and brushing a thumb in the space between her jaw and her cheek.

“Then it’s good I have an immortal life to fall all the way back in love with you. As many times as needed.”

Finally, she smiled, a little wickedly, a litter softly, letting the tension slip away from her shoulders and leaning in his touch.

Oh Mother, how she had missed his touch.

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist my irresistible charms,” she joked in a low, playful tone, and Azriel’s deep, horse laugh reverberated in her, causing an electric tension to go up her body.

A dark, lust and hungry look settled on Azriel’s eyes that made her entire body shiver in need of more his touch.

“Oh, I’ll enjoy ripping every inch of confidence in your pretty twisted eyes until you can only but scream my name.”

Kallistrade huffed a moan when his mouth hit hers in desperate hunger. There was nothing tender in the way they started kissing, only pure, wild need that had been accumulating for five centuries led their mouths into a frenzy. Kallistrade’s back hit her desk, and Azriel groaned, still in her mouth, throwing everything on top of the desk to the ground with a swift movement of his shadows.

Kallistrade laughed, and parted momentarily to look at him with an amused raised eyebrow.

“You’ll definitely have to clean that up later, it cost me a shit ton of work to get through that paperwork,” as if she cared of paperwork right now, but it was fun to mess with him, especially when his eyes darkened in a hunger beyond reason.

“Shut up,” he laughed slightly, attacking her mouth with the hunger of a starving male again.

Azriel forced her legs open with one movement of his own, positioning himself between her legs and kissing her so eagerly that soon they were both panting.

Kallistrade quickly shed her boot, the pair of shoes causing a clatter as they fell to the ground, and with extremely skilled hands, Azriel untied the wine-red band tied around her waist, her belt, where the daggers and weapons strapped to it fell to the ground causing a greater clatter than that of her boots, metal on metal clanking as they fell to the ground. Her trousers soon disappeared as well, giving the male full access to her entrance. Only her laced underwear was in the way of her extremely wet cunt.

Kallistrade gasped as Azriel lowered his kisses from her mouth to her jaw, then to her neck, while his hands caressed her legs, fiddling with her senses before touching her wet underwear.

“Fuck, Lis, already? You’re dripping wet,” his voice was a huff of ragged breath, so dark, so deep, it made her insides curl with desire.

“Don’t act like you’re not all hard already, I can practically feel it pushing in your pants, you’re as desperate as I am, so shut up and fuck me now, would you?”

A deep laugh had her moaning while feeling his hands rub her cunt through the fabric of her underwear.

“Your wish is my command, Captain,” he smiled devilishly against her ear, kissing her love with such sweetness it made her melt into his touch.

Then a gasp, followed by a moan, erupted from her mouth as Azriel slipped his hand into her underwear and pressed his fingers against her clit.

"I remember how loud you used to be, Lis, now I'm going to make your throat hurt from screaming,” and not falling short of his promise, Azriel inserted a long finger into her entrance first.

Kallistrade clung tightly to his shoulders as he inserted the second, moaning in his ear as he began to pull them in and out at a painfully slow pace.

Desperately, she tried to move her hips closer to him, but the male laughed, and stopped his finger movements, making her protest in despair.

"How desperate. You're going to have to put up with it, because I've waited 500 years for this, and I'm going to enjoy every second you spend begging me for more.”

“Fuck you,” she breathed, unable to process thoughts coherently.

“I’m gonna let you do that, better.”

In response, Kallistrade ripped the top of his Illyrian leathers open, pulling it off with his help, and admiring the utterly god-like figure the male in front of her had.

Fucking Mother above, this male was gorgeous beyond logic.

His scars, his bronze skin, his muscular shape…Kallistrade could very well come by merely looking at it.

She smiled devilishly, and ran her hands all over his chest, stopping at his shoulders and looking into those hungry eyes, his fingers still inside her, before gently moving her hands to his wings, where she remembered, they were most sensitive.

Azriel's surprised moan was like music to her ears, her cunt dripped wet only at the sound.

“Two can play this game, and I’m all in for making you scream my name, too.”

At that, Azriel plunged his fingers even deeper into her, making her moan again, and while Kallistrade caressed his wings, he shamelessly thrust his fingers in and out, and when he strayed rubbing his thumb against her clit too, she could not stand it any longer, moan after moan after moan, putting her hands at her back in the desk so she could angle herself further into him, and let him finger-fuck her until the release inevitably came like a storm of mind-blowing pleasure. Her loud moan became a ragged breath when he took his fingers out of her, and kissed her mouth deeply, his tongue brushing against her lips and eating up her shaky breaths entirely.

“That was one, love.”

Fucking Mother above, one of…Kallistrade didn’t even wanted to think how many orgasms Azriel was aiming for.

He moved to try and take her top of, but the laced corset was making it difficult. He muttered a curse, and grabbed her ass to haul her off the desk. He carried her while kissing her deep into the nearest wall where she crashed her back. A moan escaping her at the hard contact. He left her on the floor again, and with a swift move of his hands, he had her back pressed against his front, her ass caressing his hard dick.

Kallistrade bit her lip at the contact, and could only imagine how it would feel back inside of her after all those centuries. Fucking magnificent, for sure.

He unfastened the corset so quickly and skillfully that the black piece of clothing fell to the floor in seconds. Without turning it over, Azriel unbuttoned her white long-sleeved shirt, which ended up next to her corset moments later. With her back still to him, he cupped her breasts in his two hands and squeezed until she groaned in pleasure. Her nipples were hard as fuck, and he took every advantage of them while he played them in his fingers. Kallistrade was a hot mess of groans, that only intensified whenever he would shift slightly and his cock will brush harder against her ass. Then a hand left one of her breasts, and returned to her cunt again. A low moan escaped her, and Azriel groaned against her air.

“Fuck, I love how you sound with my hands all over you.”

“I…” she breathed, but with his fingers making circles in her clit, it was almost impossible to think. “I want…” she tried again, but failed, instead moaning when he hit a sensitive spot.

“You want what? Say it,” his dark, husky voice against her ears made the pleasure travel farther in her body.

“I want…to feel you…inside of me…” she pleaded, her eyes closed with burning pleasure.

“Oh, you do? How badly?” She moaned in response, forgetting how to talk and answer back. But he took the hand that had been attending her nipple to her throat, and made her head fall back into his shoulder. “How. Bad. Kallistrade. Say it.”

“Fucking…bad…Fuck…” she moaned again. “I want you…very…fucking…b-bad.”

Azriel smiled darkly, and slowly bit and licked her neck while he worked his trousers off. Kallistrade heard them fall into the ground, then, with no anticipation, as she was still with her back pressed to him, he turned them both around, the desk now in front of her, and bent her over, making her have to grip the edge of the desk.

Then, with no warning, he was pushing deep into her. A loud, erupting moan came out of her, tears of pleasure streamed down her face ones. And they both waited a moment until she adjusted to the great length until he became thrusting in and out with a carnal rhythm.

Fuck, that wingspan thing was not wrong. He was fucking huge.

He gripped her waist hard, a bruise would definitely be there tomorrow, but the only thing Kallistrade could feel as he went in and out, in and out, was mind-blowing pleasure making her moan lauder and lauder.

She hadn’t realized how much she had missed his touch, his length inside of her, filling her with it, until that very moment. But fuck had she never felt this way with any past lover, no matter how many of them there had been.

No one could fuck her like Azriel, no one could make her feel like Azriel. The realization scared her, but filled her with deeper, more grateful pleasure as well.

“Fuck, Az,” she moaned, her second release so close she couldn’t contain her sounds anymore.

He knew it too, and used his fingers to rub her clit and drive her closer and closer to the edge. Until she finally erupted again, her whole body shuddered with the force of the orgasm and she bit back a scream of pleasure when it came. He followed through seconds later.

“Two, love,” he breathed shakily in her ear.

That was two, and her legs were already shaking.

He let her catch her breath, before pulling out and turning her around to face him. He ran a hand delicately over her face, brushing aside a lock of hair and admiring her for a moment, his eyes shining with feelings Kallistrade could not name, only feel in her own chest. He smiled tenderly, and lifted her by her legs with a gentleness he had not used until now, to carry her to the untidy bed on the other side, passing her office chamber, into her personal chamber, and placing her on the mattress with extreme gentleness, laying on top of her with his elbows supporting his weight.

Kallistrade marveled in his presence for a moment, running a hand on his cheek, admiring his mesmerizing eyes, the ruffle of his messy black hair, and simply absorbed the moment, carving it into her memory for eternity.

Everything that had happened until now, everything they had endured, together and apart, every heartbreak and goodbye, it all had been worth it for that very moment. They kissed, softly and lovingly and with no rush at all, savoring in each other with utmost detail.

Before, of course, Azriel went back to breaking her in every position he found. They went for two more orgasms, and once Kallistrade was done, there was no force on earth that could take this moment away from her, even if her legs shook with intensity and her heart hammered against her chest, promising a difficult time standing up tomorrow.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

Kallistrade had already missed her meeting, that was for sure, but with all the noise she made…well, she was sure they already knew why.

After all that, they laid down in her bed, tangled up in an embrace, while catching their breaths.

“Finally Cassian will not be drunkly crying on Starfall telling me he don’t want me to die without finding my mate, or a lover.”

Kallistrade’s eyes, formerly closed, snapped opened while she untangled herself from Azriel’s arms and pushed up in her elbow to look him in the eyes.

“Wait, you-“

“Of course I knew it, I’m a spymaster, love,” he laughed, glee flashing in his eyes, Kallistrade couldn’t help but roll hers and tighten a sly smile.

“Ok, now who’s the egocentric one?”

“Will you shut up now and let me kiss you?” He didn’t wait for a response, he prompted in one elbow as well and kissed her deeply again.

The kiss lasted as long as their lungs could hold out, but as they broke apart, when Azriel wanted to go for more, Kallistrade pulled away slightly, making him frown. They both sat down better, and Kallistrade fought the urge to swallow hard and show any nerves.

“So…does this mean that…do you…” She cleared her throat, annoyed at not finding the correct words.

“Do I what,” Azriel raised an amused eyebrow, and Kallistrade resisted the urge to hit that brow back down.

“You know,” she insisted, exasperated.

“Say it,” Azriel cupped her face in one hand and murmured in her lips.

“Do you accept the…” she licked her lips, and took a deep breath before putting her shit together. “The mating bond?”

“Oh, Mother,” he put his head in the space between her neck and her shoulder, an sighed, staying there.

“What?” She asked, a little nervous that he had maybe changed his mind.

“Nothing, I just waited so many centuries to hear that, I need a minute to convince myself you truly said it.”

Kallistrade let the tension in her shoulders loose, and laughed slightly, rubbing a hand through Azriel’s silky hair.

“Will it help if I say it again?” She asked with a smile still on her lips. He only nodded, not raising his head from her shoulder yet. “Do you accept the mating bong?”

“Say that again, please,” he murmured, his hot breath caressing her skin, as did his shadows with a tenderness it made her heart feel full.

So she smiled, and soften her fingers in his hair even more, whispering in a loving way against him, a sly smile still in her mouth.

“Would you, Azriel Shadowsinger, Spymaster of the Night Court, oh brave and mighty Illyrian warrior, accept the mating bond with me, Kallistrade Lanrcha, Mistress of the Sea, High Pirate Lady, oh mighty and dreaded Captain Devilsbane?” Azriel raised his head from her shoulder, and smiled while shaking his head and rolling his eyes.

“You are awfully dramatic.”

“Well do you or do you not!” She pressed, suppressing a laugh.

“Of course I do,” but she raised an eyebrow, and he sighed. “Of course I do, Kallistrade Lanrcha, oh mighty and dreaded Captain Devilsbane, High Pirate Lady and Mistress of the Sea,” Kallistrade smiled, please.

“Perfect! Now…I have nothing I could offer you to eat, I have barely eaten in two days myself, so…could I offer you some rum? Or bourbon, I reckon you like more fancy things, does liquor even count, tho?” She eyed her space, finding nothing useful for the moment, except the bottles at one little table at the corner of her room.1

“You haven’t eaten in two days?” He looked at her accusingly, raising an eyebrow in reprimand.

“Well, I’ve been terribly busy! If I hadn’t moaned so hard I’m pretty sure there would have been at least three people banging on that door right now,” Azriel looked extremely flustered, and to think he had been the one telling her he was going to make her scream, and staying true to his promise. “What? Is a small island,” she said nonchalantly, raising a shoulder.

“I-” he sighed, and shook his head with a smile. “Yes, bourbon would be just fine.”

“Fancy, then,” Kallistrade smiled and nodded.

She got up the bed and went over to the little table of liquors, pouring a glass of bourbon and drinking a bit right from the bottle, she heard Azriel’s laugh behind her, and she didn’t had to look to know he was shaking his head.

Before Kallistrade shut the bottle close again, she eyed the leftovers of a cookie she hadn’t finished eating. Cookies were the only thing she had eaten at all, since Zena was having way too much fun at the kitchen since they got back. Kallistrade didn’t complain, tho, she made delicious pastries, and the sugar and alcohol was the only things keeping her energy alive this days.

“Uh, look what I found! A cookie!” She turned around with the half cookie in one hand and the glass of bourbon in the other, Azriel raised an eyebrow, and eyed the pastry with uncertainty.

“Are you sure that’s edible?” She rolled her eyes, and approached the bed again to sit beside him, extending the cookie towards him.

“Yes, Azriel, don’t be such a-”

“Don’t. Finish that sentence,” he snatched the cookie off her hands and held an eyebrow high in defiance towards what he already knew she was about to call him.

Somewhere between the lines of “picky fancy ass”, for sure.

He sighed, surveying the cookie in his hands, unsure if he was going to end up dead or really intoxicated. But…one look at Kallistrade, and seeing her expectant, excited gaze, waiting for him to accept her “mating bond acceptance offering”, that he sighed again, and took a bite.

“So…how is it?” Kallistrade raised both her eyebrows.

It had tasted great when Zena brought them, but considering she had left it there for a couple of hours…she just hoped Azriel wouldn’t be sick after it.

“It’s horrible, I’ll stay with the bourbon, thank you,” he took the glass from her quickly, and drank the content in one shot, surely to wash away the previous taste.

He made such a face that made Kallistrade inevitably laughed, and his eyes shifted from a frown of disgust, to a lighten, soft gaze.

“I think we might have done it backwards, first food, then sex,” she raised a playful eyebrow at him, and Azriel drank the last of his bourbon before putting the glass in the nightstand besides the bed, without taking his eyes off hers, his eyes darkening with lust again.

“Well, we haven’t done much very organized ever, have we,” his low voice made a shiver ran down her spine, and, like a force of nature that pulled her towards him, she leaned in his hot touch.

“You have a fair point.”

“Does that mean I get a fifth round?” She laughed lowly, and he pushed a strand of her that was falling in her face out of it with his hand, before cupping one side of her face with it, circling hot, loving caresses on her skin.

Kallistrade eyed her mate’s beautiful, rough face and smiled. Her mate. Mate. Azriel was her mate, officially now so. She didn’t had to live with that knowledge buried in her heart anymore.

“I mean…isn’t that what we should do? I’m pretty sure the mating Gods demand a closure to the acceptance,” she nodded with the utmost seriousness, as if very committed to appease ‘the mating gods’.

Azriel laughed, and again, shook his head with amusement. “Just come here, you crazy pirate.”

#dark tides #kallistrade x azriel #a court of thorns and roses #acotar #acomaf #acosf #acowar #acotar oc #acotar fanfic #acotar fanfiction #azriel #azriel acotar #azriel x oc #azriel x you #azriel shadowsinger #azriel fanfic #azriel fic #rhysand #rhys #feyre #feyre archeron #nesta #nesta archeron #cassian #cassian acotar

[ghostsandyoumightdie]

My personal predictions/headcanons about the megatheorum steps and who contributed, based on Ianthe's steps explanation, assuming she is correct:

"Preserve the soul, with intellect and memory intact." I am assuming this is the Fifth House, but I am not 100% certain. But calling upon ghosts and their memory seems in this wheelhouse.

"Analyze it—understand its structure, its shape." Since this is psychometry, it's most likely Sixth House.

"Remove and absorb it: take it into yourself without consuming it in the process." I suspect this is Ninth House, both out of process of elimination and also because of the parallels of Harrow taking this a step further with Gideon.

"Fix it in place so it can’t deteriorate. That’s the part I wasn’t sure of, but I found the method here, in this very room." I think this was confirmed or heavily implied Seventh? Given the nature of the beguiling corpse, this makes sense. It's preservation.

"Incorporate it: find a way to make the soul part of yourself without being overwhelmed." I believe this is Transference/Winnowing, which is confirmed Second House.

"Consume the flesh. Not the whole thing, a drop of blood will do to ground you." Smacks of Third House.

"Reconstruction—making spirit and flesh work together the way they used to, in the new body." I suspect this is Fourth House, because of the parallels in how Ulysses and Titania were puppeted and eventually resurrected.

"Hook up the cables and get the power flowing. You’ll find that one a walk in the park, Eighth, I suspect it was your House’s contribution." Confirmed Eigth House.

#tlt meta #the locked tomb #canaan house #lyctors #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #alecto the ninth #tlt theory #tlt theories

[unfortunately-obsessed]

Eat Your Young – (Sneak Peak)

The surname Zhivago originates from the old Slavonic church. It contains the verb 'zhit', which means 'to live', the living one.

Nowadays, the name isn't nearly popular, and most would even consider it obscure if not overly traditional.

For humans names carry deep, personal, cultural and historical importance. It's a matter of identity, uniqueness, sense of self.

Unit 313 248 317-21, RK800 Prototype succeeds where twenty of his predecessors failed: psychology, physical combat, persuasion, negotiation, social interactions. He was assigned the name Connor just like the twenty others.

Connor, from irish origin, lover of hounds.

Hound is a dog of a breed used for hunting. Dogs symbolize loyalty.

He can't say he is thrilled about the name.

"Connor," he says just as the robotic arm finishes, the voice box brand new, synthetic skin connecting through his body. "My name is Connor."

"Your name is Connor," Doctor Zhivago echoes, narrowing her eyes.

It doesn't take seconds for Connor to sync with all computers in the Tower. He steps out of the platform, finally earning an uniform.

He blinks, the identification scan enabled with Cyberlife's database tells him who Doctor Zhivago is by the seconds of her life.

Doctor Eter Zhivago, Director or IT&S Department of Cyberlife. Identification Number 7787647.

Next, the social module says she is angry. Sitting behind the terminal with crossed arms and doing her very best to hide the profound hatred.

Hatred, of course that Connor knows, because the RK800 was authorized without her permission. She didn't know about the whole project, she was feeling betrayed by her own peers.

The RK800 line is a branch of the Myrmidon line. Naturally so, Myrmidon also means loyalty, name taken from the ancient greek soldiers that obeyed the king's order without questioning. Myrmex means "ant" in Greek, an animal that makes humans think of small and insignificant workers mindlessly fulfilling their duties.

Much like that, Connor completed his missions on the behest of Cyberlife's interests. He tores apart, destroys with all he has.

Cyberlife doesn't have favourites. It has biases. A company can't want things, only the humans behind it.

Fate has its favourites. It's a gamble of lives.

She designed the core of his reconstruct and prediction skill, always with hiding a knife behind her back . Doctor Zhivago didn't know about him as she worked in the quantum calculator, the architect behind every big Cyberlife's prediction.

In another world, this Connor is obedient and Doctor Zhivago died when she should've. In another word, the twentieth prototype doesn't pass the tests and the handlers can only get it right after the fifth attempt.

In one universe to the left, Connor misplaces loyalty with devotion, just like a dog that adjust its own leash.

But not in this one.

Here and now, he assumes his own name and deviates Eter too.

And that is a difference one choice makes.

Here, in this universe, the little betrayal her peers did against her, and his existence, are enough to make her backstab Cyberlife.

"Matvey doesn't mean gift from god?" she hums, smiling, setting down the folder. Physical archives are so archaic it is a surprise Eter still uses them. "Why this name?"

"I'm a gift to humanity," Matvey answers, completely serious. A blade on drywall.

At that, she chokes a laughter.

#connor rk800 #dbh connor #detroit become human #dbh fic #connor rk800 x oc #but not really #dbh au #arwrites #me!dbh #me!rk800 #connor rk800 x reader

[vladco-tech-official]

hello vladco my school just got destroyed for the fifth time this month when are you gonna deal with that ghost?

Greetings, anonymous student

We would first like to apologize for the continual destruction of your school— we hope that any injuries or casualties caused were minimal.

We are currently working hard to assist in the situation to assure that both your school and the other surrounding schools remain a safe place to learn (at least from ghosts, everything else we cannot help with).

We will log the most recent incident in our database— and we will also be giving out funding to help reconstruct and replace any destroyed and damaged property.

Thank you for reaching out, we hope that you are safe.

#unreality #danny phantom #dp #emails #incident report

[novankenn]

Reluctant Hero?

= Twenty-Two = (Chapter List)

The corrupted grimm escorted him as he strolled along beneath the dense foliage of the Emerald Forest. He moved without a care in the world. His green outfit was pristine, his skin pale and unblemished. Casually, he reached up and brushed a pink dyed lock of hair from before his pure black eyes.

????: I know you are out here, sisters. Please stop hiding.

The rustle of brush put the accompanying beasts on alert until a pale skinned, white haired young woman stepped out from the brush. Her entire body was bare to the world, and she just regarded the young man before her and the creatures surrounding him without a hint of worry.

????: Brother. That is a fine host, it is such a pity that buffoon interfered with mine.

????: You were not the only one that ass screwed with.

The pair turned, watching a tall amazonian like young woman stepping out of the trees, her fiery mane of red hair in sharp contrast to her pale skin and black eyes.

Man: I am please your reconstruction was successful. Lilith, and Eiseth.

Eiseth: It would have been so much easier just to take over our hosts. Mine was perfect! Petite and doll like. Men would have fallen over themselves to be my meals.

Lilith: Mine is no different, just not so small.

Man: My queens, please. There are things we need to accomplish.

Lilith: Yes, Yes, Baal. What do we know?

Baal: The Book is near.

Eiseth: Most likely in that school. How many do we have to serve us?

Baal: We have legions of these... grimm, and I sense there are four in Beacon, and a potential fifth?

Eiseth: The fifth is a project of mine. If I am successful, she will make an excellent weapon to counter... him.

Lilith: Well, the four will not be long for this world. He is an idiot, but he is not entirely stupid. He will be making a move to eliminate that potential threat.

Eiseth: Yes, Bonnie Jauney.... his corruption would have been so succulent...

Lilith: It still can be. He is but a man, after all. He has no defence from our charms.

Baal: You two can have him after we have the book. This world is ripe for the taking... but until we can full manifest, we are vulnerable.

/==/ Beacon Morgue /==/

Jaune: Okay, here's the plan. Check all those drawers. Find the intact ones, and make them not intact.

Nora: And after that?

Jaune: We find the three others and see if we know them as the ones we took out yesterday. Nice and simple.

Cardin moved to the shelves of refrigerated drawers, and pulled one open. He hesitated for a moment before reaching in and hauling out the body tray. He looked at Jaune and Nora, who had yet to move further into the room, before he reached down and pulled back the sheet. Unveiled was the face of a young, fairly pretty woman, her faunus trait easily visible. A set of light brown fox ears nestled on the top of her head amidst her short wavy brown hair.

Cardin: (Reaches out and grabs one of the girl's ears) They're real! This proves it! I knew it!

Jaune: Cardin, what are you doing?

Cardin: Proving to myself that faunus are just animals and not freaks wearing fake appendages.

Jaune: Okay, that... that was a little racist.

Nora: No, that was VERY racist.

Cardin: (Letting go of the girl's ear and looking at Nora and Jaune) What? I'm going to smash her head in, or Jaune is going to lop it off with his saw, so why can't I check? Like, who is it hurting?

Jaune/Nora: Cardin!

Cardin: (Looks down and noticed the faunus girl's eyes were open, and milky white) Oh shit!

Girl: Like pulling ears, do ya? (her hands snap up and grab either side of Cardin's head, causing him to drop his mace) How about someone pulls on yours, you racist bastard!

Jaune: Wow.

Nora: What?

Jaune: Is it bad that a Deadite just called Cardin a racist? That's like evil agreeing with good. How does that work?

Nora: Ah... um... I'll get back to you on that.

Cardin: (Grabbing the Deadite-Girl's wrists, trying to pry her hands from his ears) Help me!

Girl: Not so fun when it's your years getting yanked is it, you little prick!

Cardin: Ow! Ow! Let go! Ow! Ow!

Girl: I'm going to pull your ears off, and then skull fuck you through the holes!

Nora: Okay, that... that was NOT an image I ever wanted in my head.

#rwby #ash vs evil dead #horror themed #jaune arc #deadites #deadite grimm #cardin winchester #nora valkyrie #lie ren #baal #lilith #eiseth