#handy teleport option is handy!
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Hi, we're back with the Chill Valicer Save! And it's Winter Wednesday, which means one thing -- Winterfest! And the gang had a -- well, it didn't start OFF too bad, let's just say that. :p How about we just get straight into it --
-->Smiler, after FINALLY changing out of their party outfit (look, they rarely change clothes unless I prompt them to because they don't have to worry about temperature), took a moment to hop on their video production station and hype up their next video, then headed outside and hatched the latest chick to join the coop (always cute), before going to empty the garbage of recyclables and recycle all the trash that was in everybody's inventory. They ALSO attempted to clear the flies that were hanging around the garbage can, but...well. The flies DID clear off, but not before making it known they did NOT appreciate Smiler's attempts to shoo them away. *wince* Poor Smiler -- they can charm any HUMAN with their amazing charisma, no problem, but animals tend to be a bit more hit and miss...at least they didn't get straight-up murdered by the swarm!
-->Anyway, after that, they got put on wind turbine repair duty, because, as usual, the majority of the turbines had broken down. *shakehead* We're really lucky that we generally have a surplus of electricity in this house! (Plus those extra turbines atop the roof now.) Victor woke up while Smiler was doing that, and I decided I might as well have him practice his Practical Magic, in hopes of learning a new spell. And learn a new spell he did -- Transportalate! AKA the magical teleport! :D So now he has a PROPER teleport option, much like Smiler! :D Delighted, I let him play a little bit with Kelly, then sent him down to the greenhouse with his new spell to start the usual chores there -- replanting all the oversized crops, checking to see if anything needed tending, and doing some fertilizing with all the pet poops in his inventory. Might as well put them to good use, right?
-->Alice also woke up around this time -- but as her werewolf fury was looking a little, uh, high, I decided that she needed to get her zen on and thus sent her to spend the morning trying to meditate the mad away. As you can see, she's gotten quite good, to the point where she can float in the air at will! Shadow was quite puzzled by this. XD
-->As Alice worked on trying not to ruin a holiday with rampaging, Smiler and Victor continued with the chores -- Smiler did more recycling, paid the bills, cleaned the chicken coop, and chatted with the chickens to make sure they were all in good moods, while Victor refilled Moory's feed, attempted to joke with her (no dice, as per usual -- this cow doesn't have much of a sense of humor), and milked her before going to get the eggs as well. You know, the usual stuff that happens when you live on a working farm! It may be a holiday, but all this stuff still gotta get done!
#sims 4#the lazy save#victor van dort#alice liddell#smiler always#yeah I was genuinely nervous for a moment when Smiler got swarmed so badly by those flies#but fortunately it was the 'first time's free' swarm#and they did clear off so I didn't have to worry about Smiler trying to do it again while the dangerous moodlet was active#after that having to repair a bunch of wind turbines YET AGAIN must have seemed like no big deal XD#Seriously these things break down so often#I need to upgrade them more#though if I remember some of James Turner's LP 'unbreakable' doesn't actually mean much for them...#on the other hand I was really hoping that Victor would pick up Transportalate from his practice#and practically squeed when he did#handy teleport option is handy!#yes he has his broom too but that only works outdoors so#that just leaves Alice without a proper teleport#but if she keeps meditating...#I think you have to max Wellness to get there#but that's totally within her reach -- especially as it keeps the Fury down!#queued
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DM Tip: Lining up the Pieces
A few years ago I saw a video that changed the way I design combat encounters, using chess pieces and 4th edition monster roles as a handy way of conceptualizing the enemy roster and making better combat.
I’ve wanted to refer back to it for ages now, but I can’t seem to find it. As such, I’m going to reproduce it’s wisdom here for everyone’s benefit and hope I can find the source one day. ( I feel like it was a Matt Coville video, but my searches have turned up nothing. Seriously, if you can find it I will be extra grateful).
TLDR: You can break down enemy combatants into six (ish) roles represented by different kinds of chess pieces, and you can mix and match them when designing encounter to create fun tactical scenarios. You can also use this as an alternative to CR picking a “budget” of these enemy roles based on how many players are in the fight. Check out the types below the cut:
Infantry (pawn): Generally weaker and mechanically simpler than any other type of combatant, the infantry uses teamwork or sheer numbers to overwhelm the party. This can be anything from rank and file soldiers to a necromancer’s skeletal minions to a pack of wolves, anything that takes up space on the battlefield and prevents the party from targeting who they want or generally getting their way in a fight. 5e combat is a numbers game, and the infantry is there to swing the numbers in the enemy’s favour (until the party cut through them to even the odds). Infantry likes battlemaps with chokepoints they can hold and crossroads they can use to outflank opponents. When budgeting they’ll have a balance of 2 infantry per 1 player they’re matched against , but the weaker they are, the thinner you can spread them.
Brute (rook): High defence, high offence, the brute is an outright threat that the party should not want to take in a head to head fight. Giants, beasts, constructs, and heavy armoured warriors are your traditional brutes, but you could also go with a buffed to hell battlemage getting all up in the party’s face. Conversely, every brute has some kind of weakness that the party can exploit. They might be slow, or be unable to maneuver as easily, or like a werewolf, fiend, or troll, have particular weapons or damage types that overcome their natural resilience. Their job is to force confrontation, blunder into the middle of combat and force the party to act defensively rather than proactively. They soak up the party’s frontline’s attention while forcing the mid/backlines to scatter under the threat of too much raw damage. The brute Likes open spaces where they can have a direct path to the party and dead ends they can corner their targets against. Budget: Around 1 per 3 players
Skirmisher (knight): A very broad type of opponent, the skirmisher’s job is to bully the party’s weapsots whenever they’re exposed. They can do this by being ranged fighters ( traditional archers, magic users) or by being highly mobile (stealthy, mounted, flying, teleporting). They’re the bane of the party’s backline, generally targeting whoever has the lowest armour/or least health, then using their evasiveness to deny any kind of retaliation when the group rallies to protect their squishy friends. Skirmishers have great offence but are generally pretty weak, made helpless when you can deny them their movement/terrain advantages. Skirmishers like unfair fights, terrain that gives them a movement advantage, cover, or allows them the highground over their foes. Budgeting: 1 per 1-2 players.
Controller (bishop): The controller’s job is to fuck with the party, Either by locking down some of their stronger options (counterspelling, mind control, status effects, grapples), by manipulating the battlefield in some way that disrupts planning (aoe spells to prevent grouping together, summoning to reinforce numbers, barriers and banishment to single targets out), Or by advancing the baddies’ goal while the party is otherwise occupied (the cult priest finishing the disastrous ritual, the master thief making off with the mcguffin) forcing them to split their attention. The controller likes to distinctly be away from combat, and will usually be on the otherside of some kind of hazardous/hard to bypass barrier, sometimes of their own making. Budgeting: 1 per 2-3 players:
Support (king): Usually a healer, bodyguard, or some kind of buff-bot, the support wants to piggyback on other sorts of units or make them better at doing their jobs. Generally this means they’ll ignore whatever the party is doing to focus on staying with effective range of those who most benefit from their abilities. Supports will stay back in safety while throwing out buffs, bodyguards will put themselves between the party and their designated defendee. They tend to prefer whatever type of terrain most benefits their partners. 1- 2-3 players
Elite (queen): Something to be reckoned with, an Elite mixies the strength and abilities of two other kinds of combatants and uses both to devastating effect. Combine a brute and a support for an unstoppable frontline commander, or infantry and a skirmisher for an elite striketeam that attacks in perfect coordination before fading back into the shadows. Mix and match for whatever combination you think would be most interesting for a situation, then supplement it with a different unit or two for contrast. Elites make up your traditional “big bad and minions” bossfight, without escalating to the full party challenge of “solo” monsters. Budgeting: 1 per 3-4 players.
Picking the right Pieces:
Generally what you're going to want to do when planning a combat is to first think of what the baddies are trying to acomplish with the fight then pick 2-3 different types of baddie that you think would work well in concert to achieve that goal. "Kill the party" is an all too common goal, but you could easily imagine others that provide for dynamic stakes:
A group of forest bandits intend to rob a caravan, so they unleash a captive warbeast as a distraction while their archers rain chaos from above (Infantry, brute, skirmisher)
A villain abducts an important npc into a carriage while their dutiful muscle run interference (controller, brutes)
A necromancer hurls curses from behind a barricade of gravestones while their undead minions pour from surrounding tombs ( Controller/infantry)
While the party is ambushed by an archer in a tower, a cloaked figure waits in the underbrush, waiting for them to thin out and begin picking them off one by one (paired skirmishers of different types)
After the fighter is tricked into single combat against the mounted arena champion, the rest of the party will have to search the crowd for the caster secretly channeling healing magic to their opponent. ( combined brute/skirmisher elite, support)
Once you've got your pieces picked out, you can start designing the battle arena taking the desires of each combatant into account while also throwing in any environmental flourishes you'd like to enjoy.
As an added benefit for DMs like me who don't have the inclination or budget to collect huge batches of minis, it's SUPER easy to pick up a second hand chess set or two and use them as stand ins. Your players will have an instinctive understanding of what each piece does which will help them understand the roles outlined above.
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Let's Talk About Posing
A Sims 4 posing tutorial
Providing a written tutorial with images to help you learn basic posing in The Sims 4 and also various mods and tricks you can use to help your posing experience. I know there are more tricks on this out in the wild, so I don't dare call it a complete tutorial. It will, however, get you started.
Updated: November 2023
Mods I'm going to talk about:
Andrew's Pose Player and Scumbumbos Teleport Any Sim
MC Command Center
TwistedMexi's T.O.O.L.
Lot 51's Fashion Authority
Wicked Whims or Wonderful Whims
This is a long tutorial, but it should help you with using all of the above mentioned mods to have a better posing experience in The Sims 4.
Read More--
Where to start:
Download the above mentioned mods. Place them in your mods folder. Need a tutorial? Here you go.
Download some poses! There are several resources out there. On Tumblr, I use @ts4-poses often.
Open your game
Congratulations! You're on the way to posing sims. The basics are very easy using Andrew's Pose Player. You can pose your sim at anytime by clicking on the sim pie menu and finding the options of “Pose by Pack” or “Pose by Name.” Personally, I don't have the brain space to remember pose names, so I always pose by pack. This will bring up an options list of poses. If you have a lot of poses, this will be a long list. If you don't have a lot of poses, obviously it will be a shorter list. Click the pose set you want and then click the pose or poses you want to have your sim complete. Yes, you can queue multiple!
*For this tutorial, I am using poses created by @honeyssims4.
Now, how do you stop posing? If its the sim you are controlling, just cancel the task in their queue. You can also pose sims that you can't control and are not in your household – which is pretty neat! To have them stop using the current pose in their action queue, click on the sim and from their menu, select “Stop Posing.” If you have more than one pose queued, both of these options will cause the sims to take up the next pose. If there are no other poses selected, they will stop posing all together. Sims have NO AUTONOMY while posed. They will be stuck there until you stop them.
Posing is great, but how about posing sims in a specific spot, or seated on furniture, or WITH other sims? Now you want to use the Teleport Any Sim statue. You will find this handy tool in build/buy mode located under decorations. My trick here is that if you type “teleport” into the search bar and click, it will bring up the teleporter as your first option. Save yourself some time searching the catalog, I say. Once the Teleport Any Sim statue is placed, you can click on it to have a menu with two options: Teleport Sim or Summon Sim. Teleport Sim brings up a menu of sims ON THE LOT. Summon Sim brings up a menu of sim IN THE SAVE FILE. The list size is a big difference.
Many poses will have some instructions when you download them on how to place the Teleport Any Sim statue. If you are posing two or more sims using a pose designed for multiple sims, you want to place multiple statues on top of each other in the same location. If you are posing a sim on furniture – like a couch, place the statue in the center of the furniture (unless otherwise instructed.) When the pose creators created the pose, they designed it with other sims and/or furniture in mind and planned on you having that statue in that location for the expected results.
I recommend having your game paused when teleporting or summoning sims to your statues, as live mode sims not paused will walk away in moments. Once the sim has taken the place of the statue, click on the sim and bring up the posing menu just as you did before to select the pose you want. If multiple sims are involved, you need to go to each sim and select the pose from the menu for each of them. No, the pose menu using the statue does not remember what pose group you were using. Yes, you need to scroll for it every time. Once the sim or sims are posed, then you can take your game off of pause and let your sims enter the selected poses.
Things to know while using the poses with Andrew's Pose Player; if you enter Create-a-Sim (CAS) while posed, your sims snap out of their pose. If you enter Build Buy mode, your sim will snap out of their pose. If you placed your statue in the wrong location and you need to place it somewhere else to pose, you'll have to enter build buy mode to do it and your sim will, again, snap out of their pose. Finally, some poses require accessories be used – usually located under rings, bracelets, or hats that you can add to your sim in CAS. You need to remember to add these things BEFORE you pose your sim.
This is where we start talking about other mods, to help you with the above concerns. Andrew's Pose Player and Teleport Any Sim Statue are amazing devices, but we can improve on the posing game with a little help.
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If you posed a sim and they were in the wrong outfit, how can you fix that without leaving the pose?
A very simple solution is to use MC Command Center. Click on MC Command center from your sim menu, scroll down to “Dresser.” From there click on “Change Outfit.” You can select any of the outfits your sim all ready has made and they will instantly change into that outfit without leaving the pose. If they are summoned in their swimwear and you wanted everyday, this is the easy way to fix the problem.
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If you've posed a sim in the wrong spot or you want to combine poses with multiple sims and move them to the right spot, how do you do that?
This trick specifically works if you have teleported or summoned a sim using the Teleport Any Sim Statue. The statue is important as for the briefest of moments it makes your game register a sim as an object. Why is that important? Because I'm about to tell you that TwistedMexi's T.O.O.L. Mod can be used to move sims that have been summoned/teleported/posed using the Teleport Any Sim statue. *Sometimes you can use TOOL on a posed sim who hasn’t used the statue, sometimes you can’t. The statue is your safe bet.
I know T.O.O.L. can be a very intimidating mod, but I promise its easier than it looks with practice. TwistedMexi has made a few very good tutorials on the full use, Fantasims has made a great tutorial too. I'm going to try and give you a quick one just for moving your posed sims.
In this case, I have a sim posed, but I didn't line her up with the chair she's supposed to be sitting on. Lets fix that. Have the T.O.O.L. Mod installed, of course. Have testing cheats on. Now, press the shift button and then click on your sims menu. Click through the options until you find “T.O.O.L.” Click on that. The TOOL menu will give you five options. All of them can be super useful for moving posed sims, but I'm going for simple here. Click on “Toggle Active Object.” Did your sim turn green? Good, that's what we want, that shows that TOOL has her marked as the thing we want to move.
To move the sim once they are the active object, hold down the Alt key and click on the floor in whichever direction you need to move your sim. In this case, she needed to go to her left, so I clicked on the floor and gently pulled her into the desired position. Once she is in position, click the sim again to make her no longer green and no longer the active object.
Things to know about using TOOL. Once your sim (the object) is active, you can click the floor anywhere and instantly move them. Holding down the Alt key drags them with precision. If you accidentally clicked the floor somewhere without holding Alt, your sim jumped further than you intended. Or maybe that's exactly what you wanted to do. If you click another object while your sim is green and active, TOOL will think you wanted that object to be active instead and turn it green. Be careful not to click other objects while dragging your sim around, just the floor or the ground. You can make multiple objects active by holding down the Alt key and clicking on them (or other sims) and you can then drag those objects or sims together as a unit. This is how you can take them off the lot to pose next to a waterfall in Sulani if you wanted to. You can use TOOL to rotate sims and move them up or down if you want. I really recommend watching tutorials on TOOL, its a game changing mod.
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I've posed a sim and I forgot to add the pose accessory! Can you add the accessory after being posed?
With the help of Lot 51's Fashion Authority mod, you can. Sort of. This mod is so much bigger than an accessory adder, but we'll stick to that part in this tutorial.
@surely-sims has made an excellent video tutorial on this very trick. I learned this from her and I'm only able to share this knowledge because she did first.
The first thing I need to tell you is that, unfortunately, you still need to plan ahead. You can use the Fashion Authority mod to make an “outfit” that is just the pose accessory you need that does NOT override any other part of what your sim is currently wearing. You still need to make this outfit before posing the sim as you do still need to go into CAS – which yes, still pops your sim out of the pose. However, you can create and save MANY outfits, one for each accessory if you need, that you can then apply to any sims you have posed in the future – even if they are not in your household.
The accessory will not be a permanent part of the sims' outfit either. Once you change out of that outfit and back into it, you will not have the accessory attached. This part is brilliant!
Before you plan to use accessories on your sims with Fashion Authority, you need to go to Fashion Authority → Settings → Enable Outfit Merge Mode (For Advanced Users). This will allow you to use your accessory without having your sims' outfit change while being used. Please note, you need to enable this with each game play session.
You will need to create an accessory thread BEFORE you pose your sim. Click on the sim menu and click on the Fashion Authority tab. Then click “Create a Thread.” The next menus will ask you if it is masc or fem, age group. For pose accessories, I make them Generic Uniforms. You then get a whole menu dedicated to this new thread. I start by naming it so I know what it is when I have to scroll for it later. This one will be for a shark accessory. I then change the Outfit Merging Rules – anything highlighted in green will be forced to change when you select this outfit using Fashion Authority. In this case, my shark accessory is a bracelet, so I'm only highlighting bracelets green. I want the rest of the outfit to stay the same, we're just forcing the shark in there. Now you modify in CAS. Add the accessory and only the accessory to the mannequin that shows up in the CAS prompt. Click the check mark. You've made your accessory thread/outfit.
Now you can pose your sim. Or you can add the thread first – its up to you. Once posed, click your sim menu, click Fashion Authority. From the Fashion Authority menu, click “Manage All Threads.” Choose the thread you just made with your accessory. There you are, one posed sim with a shark in hand!
I have several threads pre-made with pose accessories and labeled so I know what they are. I can pose on the fly with whichever sims I want this way and not worry about how I'm going to get that accessory on them. The easy way to remove the pose accessory is to go through MC Command Center → Dresser → Change Outfit and select the outfit you want, even if its the on your sim is currently wearing. Click this, and the accessory will be gone – no CAS time required. Changing outfit via an in game dresser will do the same thing.
Things to know: Fashion Authority allows you to create threads for toddlers, children, and Teen-Elders.
Fashion Authority Threads are created by SAVE GAME. You can, however, now import them into your other saves so you don't need to make your accessory threads over and over again in each save. Import threads to new saves by Going through Options → Import Threads
If you enter your save game without the pose accessories installed in your mods folder, all of your Threads will be blank if you save that game – even if you load your accessories back in later. Be careful!
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Are there other options to pose sims, or is it just Andrew's pose player?
Well, there is another option, though it comes form an unexpected source. It comes in WW. Either one. Both Wicked Whims (The R rated mod) and it's counterpart, Wonderful Whims, have a built in posing functionality that is both easy and intuitive. You will still need to have Pose Player installed – children, toddlers, infants, and pets cannot be posed using the WW posing ability. You need both.
In either of the WW mods, you are absolutely able to go through and disable every function in them if all you want is the pose player. Please keep that in mind if you don't want the additional modded game play those mods are both designed for!
There is a video tutorial up now on using Wicked Whims Pose player made by GiaXoXo2405 that is very helpful. KatVerse has a great video tutorial for posing in Wonderful Whims.
How to use WW as a posing tool. Click on your sim pie menu, click on Wonderful or Wicked. The Wonderful and Wicked menus have a tab called “pose.” Click it and select the pose you want from the poses you have installed. This posing method makes your sim vanish for a moment, don't worry, she's still there! Once the sim phases back into existence, she's posed.
Now, you wanted her moved somewhere else? Maybe a little left or right? You can fix that right in Wicked Whims. Click on your sim, click Wicked, and then in the Wicked menu, click “Actions.” In Actions, click “Enable Positioning.” This will bring up a very intuitive positioning system that lets you move your sim, rotate your sim, even elevate your sim if you need to. Its super cool. When you sim is positioned as you'd like, Click the purple dot menu and then click “Disable Positioning.”
An extra bonus form posing sims in WW is that if you go into Build Buy mode, they will remain posed as you left them when you go back into live mode. CAS mode will still make them leave their pose though.
Wicked Whims Specific Notes:
If you would like to use Wicked Whims and still have access to Fashion Authority or MCCC while posed, you need to click the following: Wicked → Settings → Sex Settings → Other Settings → Vanilla Interactions Switch.
Wicked Whims also has a built in functionality that can act like the MCCC Dresser trick I mentioned above. This is called “Instant Undress.” To enable this outside of sexual acts, you need to click the following: Wicked → Settings → Sex Settings → Cheats → Global Instant Undressing Switch. After activating this, you can click Actions under the Wicked Menu, Instant Undress, and have the option to remove accessories, change outfits and so on.
If you have access to and are using the PATREON release of Wicked Whims, there is a camera mode you can use to take candid images of sims with full control of the camera location and no camera needed. This comes with the SimHub functionality that appears to be only for Patrons at this time. You can have a sim take posed photos of themselves by clicking “Naked Photo (Posed)” – these will be the in game poses that you can sort through. If you would like to take photos of your sim in custom poses, you need to click “Naked Photo.”
To unlock the ability to take photos of sims who are dressed (not just nudes), you need to click the following: Wicked → Nudity Settings → SimHub Settings → Non-Naked Pictures Switch AND Unlock Camera Movement (Experimental) .
Many thanks to @surely-sims for telling me about these neat Wicked Whims features!
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Any Other Useful Tips?
Organizing Poses. Poses always seem to show up in the most random order in the posing list. Did you know you can organize them? Using Sims 4 Studio, you can open each pose package and change the name of the pose – that name section inside the package? The poses in your game show up alphabetically based on that. This only works for in-game poses, not CAS poses! This player has made an awesome tutorial on how to organize your poses.
Clickable Worlds. If you enjoy using the T.O.O.L. Mod to move sims into wild photo opportunity places, awingedllama has created a mod that allows you to click anywhere in the environment around you. You could combine this with T.O.O.L. mod tricks to move your sims to all kinds of places for photo shoots. Clickable Worlds
Special Effects. This one is a silly note, but maybe not well known. If you own Get Famous, there is a fun special effects machine that allows you to have everything from confetti, fall leaves, money, all the way to meatballs falling from the ceiling. Its a fun addition you can use for your own sims photo shoots. To do this, you need the ceiling part called “Plumbob Pictures Home Special Effects Machine.” The controller is called, “Effectively Effective Stage Effects Control Desk.”
The ISO Love Photos Camera. You DO NOT NEED a sim to be a photographer to use this camera. Meaning, the sim you have posed? They can take the picture of themselves. I set this camera up on a tripod and use it all the time. It does not need to be on a tripod, but keep in mind it will take photos at whatever height its is sitting. If its on the floor, you get floor shots. If its on the coffee table, you get coffee table height pictures.
The Photographic Memory Photo Spawner Mod. You can make those nice in game photos you just took into pictures you can hang with tape or tacks, calendars, paintings, even cross stitch images! This mod is super fun for game play images and having you sim family spread all over the walls of your house.
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That covers everything I know at the moment. I would love to read if you guys have additional tips and tricks. Please feel free to reblog this if you think others could benefit from this tutorial. I hope YOU benefit from this tutorial!
#ts4#sims 4#sims 4 posing#ts4 posing#posing tutorial#Wicked Whims#Fashion Auhtority#T.O.O.L.#MC Command Center#Andrew's Pose Player#Ravasheen#posing resources#Azuhra's Big List
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FFXIV Tips for Collecting All The Yokai Watch Weapons
First, the big five:
SORT YOUR INVENTORY BEFORE YOU START FATE GRINDING! You're gonna get a lot of useless enemy drops, so sort your items so you can easily find and sell them.
Spend your seals! Little by little, you're going to amass a lot of seals. Spend them on something! Buy a ton of Ventures. Or Material Containers: Even if you get a minion you already have, you can give them to friends.
Party up! Get friends; Invite complete strangers who are doing the FATES at the same time as you; Set up a Party Finder; If someone invites you to a party, ACCEPT! Just note: Even with a party, you need to get a sliver of enmity to get credit for the FATE.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO GET GOLD MEDAL ON THE FATE TO GET A LEGENDARY MEDAL! I've gotten so many on bronze and silver ratings.
TAKE YOUR TIME! It sounds like the event is lasting until the preparation of 7.0. You don't have to get all 17 weapons in one day. Maybe do 1-2 a day. For the sake of your sanity.
MORE STUFF BELOW
-Best classes: Blue Mage (you probably see why already), Tanks (enmity grants FATE credit), healers (same as Tank, but you can also heal party members)
-Recommended Blue Mage Abilities: Any ARR Primal Spells (instant damage, securing FATE credit), any AoE spells (cooldown or otherwise, just to get some AoE damage), Goblin Punch (instant attack, giving you sneaky FATE credit), Missile (see next tip)
-Missile is a Blue Mage spell that can reduce the HP of certain enemies by 50%, including SOME (some might be immune) FATE bosses. This is extremely handy and speeds up FATEs, but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WAIT A SECOND! Let people do SOME DAMAGE before you rip them a new one!
-Bring healing. You never know. Healing abilities/spells, healing items, support chocobo, healing party member.
-Take note: If you have a map preference, you can just stay there and cycle between the different minions who grant you Legendary Medals there. (ie: I stayed at Western La Noscea and grinded Komasan, Komajiro, and Hovernyan back to back)
-BEST GRIND LOCATIONS:
Western La Noscea: Great teleport options, FATEs spawn RAPIDLY
Central Shroud: Crystal is in the center of the map, allows for easy teleport and travel
South Shroud: Frequent FATEs, two great teleport options
North Shroud: Same as Central Shroud
East Shroud and Middle La Noscea: Not great, but they'll be the easiest to travel for Shogunyan and USApyon
Azim Steppe: Great teleport options for Enma and Demona grinding
Dravanian Forelands: Best for Lord Anata and Zazel, cause every other HW map location is massive and a nightmare.
HAPPY GRINDING!
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Making Sims 2 University Fun: my personal guide
I've noticed that while it's probably one of the most utilized of the expansions, TS2's university is generally seen as a slog. Which makes sense. It has a completely different gameplay loop than the rest of the game. But it's very handy to send your sims to college, especially if you use any of the various mods that limit careers based on education. So here's my big guide to making university an actual fun experience to play through (to me, at least).
The university expansion is, uh, very tailored to the 2000s college party time animal-house tropes. the pack becomes more fun when you treat it that way and let your sims be stupid young adults who streak and fool around on campus and throw parties. which, by default, is tricky because of the gameplay that requires so much skill building and assignments. which the rest of this guide will also deal with.
Note: I make some pretty big changes to normal university gameplay, to the point that it does require a bit of modding and at least one instance of fooling with simpe. there's probably also easier ways to do it, and of course everything is optional. maybe you do like keeping sims in dorms for the entire time and just three-speeding trough it all.
*mods: there are a few absolute must-have mods to me.:
TwoJeff's College Adjuster. It's basically an all-in-one controller to adjust semester timing, change semesters, plus a bunch of other features. The semester timing is the most important to me.
Active Classes is still in testing, but it almost completely changes how I play college sims. Once again, I'll detail gameplay later, but actually sending your sims to class makes for a much more fun campus experience.
No College Time Progression On Community Lots: this goes hand-in-hand with the previous mod.
Community Time: IIRC you have to do a little editing in SimPE to make it work right with University - this post explains what to edit. I don't know if I'm allowed to share the exact edit I made as a download. This might seem redundant after the last mod, but there's a reason for the madness: while one group of sims are in their active classes, the other students can do things on the home lot.
Instant Pledge for Greek Houses: This one is important for greek house gameplay, which is later.
SimBlender: There's like, 500 different edits of the SimBlender, and I think all of them have the main function needed for my college gameplay, which is teleportation. You can use a comparable teleporter if you fancy.
Simlogical's University Break is another important one for me, but it's not really necessary if you don't want it. I usually give the sims one break day per season - more on that later.
Autonomous Casual Romance is not required, but it sure adds a lot of fun to your college experience. You can also do any number of professor-limiting, custom degrees, etc mods and fixes you want.
*mods i do not use: there are mods to change the number of/length of semesters, but I seem to run into issues with them so I use the college adjuster to do the same things. I also don't really use any major overhauls, or mods that make term papers faster. I did have the tuition mod for a bit but grew tired of using it.
*general timing changes: I do seven-day seasons with longer lifespans for all sims and play rotations each day. These are the things I do specifically for university:
Four semesters: I only do semesters 2, 4, 6, and 8. Every time a new semester starts, I just use the College Adjuster to set the correct semester for each sim. I use the default length of 72 hours.
Synchronized finals: I use the College adjuster to reset the timer so the finals are all around 6-8am, and synchronized for each sim on a lot. This makes it easier to keep track of timing and skills. Also, all sims in university run on the same 3-day semester. Finals are the same day for the entire college each round. Once again, that just makes it easier for me to keep track of college-wide events for gameplay reasons.
Because this means there's 3 days per school year, and two school years per season week, it syncs better if they get a day off every Sunday using the University break mod.
Teens are sent to college on the same schedule. I send teens to school when they have 14 days or so left, with maybe an extra day or two if the college is currently in the middle of the semester.
*Gameplay: living situations: Here's where the meat begins. Now all your sims are on the same college schedule, they're all being sent to school, and now they need to actually move into college. I follow a real rule a number of colleges use: Every student spends a year in the dorms. Just their freshman year, then they have to move somewhere else. I find that this gives them a chance to meet dormies, adapt to being on college, and sorta figure out what kind of young adults they are. Plus, this gives them time for joining greek houses, which will be talked about later.
I do this because I like seeing sims as their own little characters with arcs and whatever and it forces me to think about what exactly they would be doing in college. Some sims get so frustrated with the constant mess of a dorm, some sims thrive by making friends with every dormie. Sometimes they start new drama with the others they came from high school with. Nothing quite like losing your high school sweetheart to some stinky dormie, after all.
After freshmen year, the students are kicked out of the dorms. They can get an apartment, they can rent a house, they can move into a greek house if they join one. Either way, they need to live somewhere. You can let them stay in the dorms, but I prefer somewhat smaller college households and divide them accordingly. Which gets into that whole greek house situation:
*Gameplay: greek houses. I gamify the Greek houses. I play SSU in my megahood, which comes with a fraternity and sorority, and you can do whatever setup you like there if you dislike gendered houses. Or abandon them all together and ignore this section. There are a few important elements:
Freshmen cannot live in Greek houses. They can, however, pledge while living in the dorms and move in right after their finals end. This includes dormies. There are benefits to the dorm, such as free housing, more social opportunities, usually more money per household since I cheat to make the greek houses actually nice to live in with things like pools and comfortable furniture, etc.
The Greeks have to be recruiting consistently. To keep the house going, they need to constantly be bringing in new members, either playable OR dormies.
Any recruited dormies are required to move in. You can townify them after graduation if you don't really get attached to them, but every member of the house is moved in. I use the instant pledge mod to get rid of that annoying requirement where they have to hang out on the lot so long before moving in. That, and they also move in after finals. You can teleport or invite them on and just ask them to move in. Whatever you want. Then, you must set them to be sophomores. Beyond that you can do whatever. They're playable now. Have fun.
You gotta let the Greeks party. Throw toga parties all the time and use a teleporter to maximize guests. Generally, ALL members of ALL greek houses are teleported to a party by default. Add more dormies, any friends, anybody in the dorms - the kids need to recruit and the easiest way is by forcing everyone on one lot. If you have autonomy mods or realistic alcohol, sit back and watch the madness unfold.
I don't really play wants-based, so playables that join greek houses is more based on vibes or friendship with existing greek members than wants.
*Gameplay: what do you mean we have to study??? Yeah. I made it this far before even bringing up the whole point of college. This is also where it gets a little more complicated and changed up, so bear with me.
I don't do wants-based, again, so I generally just try to make sure sims are at least passing by default. Whether they go beyond a C is up to whatever. I usually try to get knowledge sims to their 4.0s or sims that just seem like they'd take it seriously to max GPA.
ACTIVE CLASSES ARE SUCH A LIFESAVER. You can use the pre-made lecture hall or make your own. Put some skill-building objects in there, and if you like flavor theme the lecture halls around majors. I have a business/gen ed building, a science lot, and an arts lot, each with two classrooms (plus the library contains a classroom). I do believe I made an edit to the mod to make the class performance go higher with active classes, as well, so attending class every day is the bare minimum to get a passing grade.
The active class lots also contain career reward skill-building objects. These are nice because your sims can request to be taught by other sims on the lot. If you have a mod that allows non-students to visit uni lots, this helps even more with faster skill-building.
Every day, I send groups of sims with similar majors to their class. If there's a mixed-major group, each sim group gets one day in active class per semester. (So if there's an economics major, a bio major, and an art major, each one attends class on a separate rotation and the others do the normal autonomous go-to-class where they leave the lot and disappear). They attend one or both of the lectures and otherwise exist on the college lot to skill-build, socialize, eat, etc.
Outside of class, sims will usually research if they're not doing great. I honestly barely bother with assignments or term papers unless the sim actually wants to do them or are aiming for a high GPA. Maybe they go hang out at the lounge or downtown to fool around. Maybe they just fester at home. Whatever they want.
*other gameplay/storytelling things: I usually will take advantage of the aspiration change after their sophomore year if I realize that their aspiration just doesn't really jive with how they act. It's realistic to me. They had many years since being like, 13 when they first had their aspiration selected. I'd like to implement more in the way of holidays/events, personally, but that's not really relevant either. I usually give them an outfit change as well, and I like to go hard with the idea that they're going through a bunch of weird fashion phases. You know you want to give them a mohawk, just for a few days, don't you? Dye their hair red? Shave it all off? Have fun with it.
All of these things combine for me, at least, to make the college years a lot more engaging/interesting and less of a slow "move to a dorm -> study -> read books -> meet needs -> graduate" loop. There's a lot more storyline development that comes from sims being able to enjoy their time as young adults, too, such as the regular polycule jealousy explosions and party fights. It serves to break up anything they had going on as teens and give them a little direction to enter adulthood with. This concludes my little mini-guide, feel free to steal all my gameplay style or just take inspiration if you please. Or ignore it all and shake your head and call me an idiot. do whatever you want forever.
#sims 2 university#plumbog gameplay rules#<- ??? i guess#i'm sure i missed a lot of important things. whatever#honestly this would work better as like a youtube video. maybe someday
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Oh, ok! Tagging you here, @difty-dift
KNACK is an optional couch-co-op game, and Robo Knack is whom the second player inhabits.
To play as Robo Knack, two controllers have to be logged in. The first plays as Knack, and the second summons Robo from the ether with a press of a button.
Rather than have a health bar like Knack does, Robo Knack's health is a meter that displays at the top right of the screen.
It reminds me of the combo meter and operates on a similar concept: Every attack Robo lands adds one bar to the meter. Attacking an enemy spawns metal relics that Robo absorbs much like Knack does. But when Knack collects relics, Robo just gradually gets bigger.
Here is Robo with a full meter. They are the same size as Little Knack, but clearly, not the same shape!
Conversely, they can be shaped like Little Knack, but way bigger! Still no fingers tho...
Robo Knack can't wander too far away from Knack, or else gets teleported right next to him. Also can't wander off-screen for long; a timer appears that teleports Robo when empty, or when Knack reaches a certain event point (e.g. entering a new room). Sometimes Robo would teleport into a hole and die, so stay close.
Robo Knack is also constantly looking at Knack, which is why I can't get a head-on picture.
I wonder what it implies about Robo to have a gadget-style health bar, a charmed effect toward the creature they're made after, and a metaphysical leash. Are they conscious at all?
Robo Knack is also always smaller and faster than Knack. I can't describe the sound of their footsteps beyond a kind of jingly 'tink'. The rest of their body jingles all the time, too! Like when they throw a punch.
Knack and Robo can punch each other! It doesn't hurt either party, but drastically slows them down when they're knocked over, leaving them vulnerable to enemies. I'm using this to collect Knack's oomph sounds when he's on the smaller end. Robo Knack never vocalizes, even when Knack - and therefore Robo - is large.
Robo Knack can use sunstone energy, but only a quarter of a charge to do a smaller shockwave attack.
Finally, if Knack has some health missing, and Robo has some to spare, Player 2 can press the triangle button to transfer some relics to Knack. This can be really handy because Player 2 can die and then come back after a cooldown, but if Knack dies, they both have to start again from the last checkpoint.
That's about all I can think of to share. I hope you enjoyed!
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Case: The Chapel of Anticipation 1
Wouldn't you know it, I didn't even have to leave this room to find my first case. A fair maiden, body cold but blood still fresh. Something told me she was waiting for me, or maybe someone like me. The attack was clinical and precise. She likely never saw it coming, but her assailant wasn't too keen to seal the deal as she had time to scratch out a message with her finger before she died.
No...not her finger. Some kind of magical writing-finger that can send messages to other worlds. Something to write down in the "things that are possible" column. I'm sure that finger will come in handy later. Laugh with me.
Her last words don't say who killed her. Instead, they read like an apology for dying. Here, in this place my internal narration calls the "Chapel of Anticipation."
Conclusion: She was waiting for me...or, at least, a Tarnished like me. Perhaps an infinite number in infinite worlds. The idea could drive someone mad, but I'm made of sterner stuff. I accept the implication, and focus on this world, the one I live in.
The chapel itself has seen better days. The only light in here comes from a hole in the ceiling to the south, and even though it's night, it seems pretty damn bright. Still, I'd probably have to wait for dawn to see any more.
The way the doors creak, they haven't been moved in a long, long time. Whoever assaulted the maiden did not enter or leave this way, so the only options are either that hole in the ceiling or teleportation.
Apologies. I wrote a long diatribe about the stunning vista I saw when I opened the door, but I had to tear out the pages. As staggering as the sight was, it was unimportant to my investigation. Even now I'm tempted to wax poetic about the castle and the tree, or the ruin of this chapel, but I need to remain focused.
The one thing that still bothered me was the hole in the ceiling of the chapel. It was on the south-south-east side of the building, yet by the bent trees, I could tell that the prevailing winds were from the west. Would not the other side of the building suffer more? I'm not an architect, perhaps one could assist me.
Primary questions:
What caused the hole in the ceiling?
Who murdered the maiden?
Who sent the spider?
Forgive me for the last question seeming a non-sequitur. I'm writing this some time later. Shortly after I finished this entry, I was attacked by a monster with a human face but resembling a spider, called a "grafted scion." I barely even got to look at it before I felt its blades cut through my body. It's a tempting conclusion to jump to, that the spider killed the maiden, yet having felt its blade, I know that to be impossible.
I will have to continue this investigation at a later date, as I fear I will not be able to return for a while.
#elden ring#elden ring lore#in character blog#in character post#in character#finger maiden#grafted scion
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Chapter 16: WE STEAL SOME SLIGHTLY USED WINGS
"Like chicken wings?" Magnus asked in concern when he read the new title. He couldn't be that judgy though, he'd gotten hungry enough to eat plenty of...used food.
"What an odd souvenir for this quest," Jason murmured. He couldn't imagine how the object to get a kid killed would come in handy.
"I always hated the use of the phrase new and improved. If it's new then it can't be improved on already. If it's improved then it can't be that new! This, might actually qualify as both though..." Nico finished with a mutter to himself.
Somewhere in the back of all of their minds, they had to know what this was really referring to. It was to much of a coincidence Percy had dreamed of the very wings Daedalus had invented that had failed his boy.
"This way!" Rachel yelled.
"Why should we follow you?" Annabeth demanded. "You led us straight into that death trap!"
"As opposed to the other two death trap options you had?" Will said blankly.
"Percy almost died again not twenty-four hours after he came back to life," Thalia sighed defensively. "Cut her some slack."
"It was the way you needed to go," Rachel said. "And so is this. Come on!"
Annabeth didn't look happy about it, but she ran along with the rest of us.
Rachel seemed to know exactly where she was going. She whipped around corners and didn't even hesitate at crossroads. Once she said, "Duck!" and we all crouched as a huge axe swung over our heads. Then we kept going as if nothing had happened.
"Therapy, every one of us," Magnus sighed, as even he hadn't blinked this time. Talk about being desensitized to horrors.
I lost track of how many turns we made. We didn't stop to rest until we came to a room the size of a gymnasium with old marble columns holding up the roof. I stood at the doorway, listening for sounds of pursuit, but I heard nothing. Apparently we'd lost Luke and his minions in the maze.
"Look at this place actually coming in handy," Percy grumbled.
Then I realized something else: Mrs. O'Leary was gone. I didn't know when she'd disappeared. I didn't know of she'd gotten lost or been overrun by monsters or what. My heart turned to lead. She'd saved our lives, and I hadn't even waited to make sure she was following us.
"She can shadow travel," Nico said quickly, watching Percy's face crumble like that had to be worse than giving him the slightest bit of hope she was okay. "It's how she got there so fast. I'm sure she just teleported away to wherever she wanted to when she was done using those monsters as chew toys."
"Yeah?" Percy asked with that bit of hope. He didn't care the headache he got for hearing this, he smiled all the same for the certainty it gave him he would see her again.
Ethan collapsed on the floor. "You people are crazy."
"As opposed to the none crazy plan that would have gotten him out alive," Alex sniffed.
He pulled off his helmet. His face gleamed with sweat.
"Ugh, I forgot he was running with you in armor," Magnus grimaced. "That's some extra level training."
"Have to do it at Camp too," Percy shrugged, it hadn't crossed his mind to be impressed since he'd deduced Ethan had training.
Annabeth gasped. "I remember you! You were one of the undetermined kids in the Hermes cabin, years ago."
Will frowned that he still didn't remember an Ethan Nakamora, but he wasn't perfect. Maybe the guy had come and gone before he'd gotten there, maybe he'd been to young to yet realize the disappearances and patterns to it.
He still felt guilty no matter what he told himself.
He glared at her. "Yeah, and you're Annabeth. I remember."
"What—what happened to your eye?"
Ethan looked away, and I got the feeling that was one subject he would not discuss.
"You guys are strangers on a first-name basis," Jason lightly defended. "None of us are gung-ho to share that kind of thing."
"Yeah," Percy still agreed with a troubled frown. It wasn't the eye, but there was something about him Percy instinctively mistrusted now like he hadn't back then. He hadn't been at Camp so he obviously couldn't be the traitor, but still, the idea bothered him a lot where he'd been and what he'd been up to since Annabeth had last seen him.
"You must be the half-blood from my dream," I said. "The one Luke's people cornered. It wasn't Nico after all."
"Congratulations on not getting caught Nico," Magnus said heartily.
"It's a life goal I'm currently not living up to," he smirked.
"Who's Nico?"
"Never mind," Annabeth said quickly. "Why were you trying to join up with the wrong side?"
Ethan sneered. "There's no right side.
"The side that doesn't casually kill kids sure doesn't seem like a wrong side," Will said hotly for his Camp. Nobody was going to sit around arguing the point, but Will also knew there had been a lot of unrest about the gods too, even from Percy and him.
They were the better side because of the half-bloods running it, not what the gods represented they could be.
The gods never cared about us. Why shouldn't I—"
"Sign up with an army that makes you fight to the death for entertainment?" Annabeth said. "Gee, I wonder."
"That Athena smarts really does come in handy," Alex chuckled.
Ethan struggled to his feet. "I'm not going to argue with you. Thanks for the help, but I'm out of here."
"We're going after Daedalus," I said. "Come with us. Once we get through, you'd be welcome back at camp."
Thalia really did admire that about Percy so much. He didn't think twice about the fact he'd found Ethan trying to join Luke, or refusing to talk about his life before he wound up lost in the labyrinth. That instinct to help, to welcome him back at Camp was the only thought that crossed his mind.
Will had to stop himself from giving Nico a superior look for much the same thoughts as he watched out of the corner of his eye his friend studying Percy with very obvious shock.
"You really are crazy if you think Daedalus will help you."
"He has to," Annabeth said. "We'll make him listen."
"Has Annabeth ever tied somebody up before and tried to get information out of them?" Percy asked Thalia in mild concern she seemed so convinced this was going to be true.
"Not that I'm aware of," Thalia scratched her nose without concern. "Don't underestimate her adaptability though."
"Right," Percy sighed...an uneasy feeling in him as he wondered how far they were going to go to save their camp.
Ethan snorted. "Yeah, well. Good luck with that."
I grabbed his arm. "You're just going to head off alone into the maze? That's suicide."
He looked at me with barely controlled anger. His eye patch was frayed around the edges and the black cloth was faded, like he'd been wearing it a long, long time. "You shouldn't have spared me, Jackson. Mercy has no place in this war."
Then he ran off into the darkness, back the way we'd come.
A part of Percy felt sorry for that guy. He knew that kind of anger, that blind acceptance that there was nothing you could do to fix a situation because it was out of your hands. Ethan deserved better, but he had to accept there was another way.
The larger part of him had wanted to throw a rock at the ingrate and instead had made himself turn away.
Annabeth, Rachel, and I were so exhausted we made camp right there in the huge room. I found some scrap wood and we started a fire. Shadows danced off the columns rising around us like trees.
"Something was wrong with Luke," Annabeth muttered, poking at the fire with her knife. "Did you notice the way he was acting?"
"Like the usual trigger happy, talks to himself, needs crabs in his shorts nutjob?" Alex scoffed.
Thalia bit her lip, her stomach in knots. She knew that's how the others all saw him...but she could never make herself see him that way first.
"He looked pretty pleased to me," I said. "Like he'd spent a nice day torturing heroes."
"It's what all the best clubs and camps are up to," Nico sneered. "You have to pay top dollar for those shows!"
"I hope he got a lovely spray-on tan as a bonus," Thalia tried to say with her usual sarcasm, but it just didn't sound right to her own ears.
"That's not true! There was something wrong with him. He looked...nervous. He told his monsters to spare me. He wanted to tell me something."
"Sparing one out of three does not make you one-third less of a monster," Magnus said with a pit in his own stomach. He didn't think he'd ever hate anybody for sparing his cousin, but man did Luke find a way to make even that feel horrible.
"Probably, 'Hi, Annabeth! Sit here with me and watch while I tear your friends apart. It'll be fun!'"
"I hope Annabeth would have turned him down if he didn't offer popcorn," Alex sniffed.
Thalia was debating with herself if she should release one of those fart arrows to shut them up, and only stopped herself because she knew it wouldn't do any good.
"You're impossible," Annabeth grumbled. She sheathed her dagger and looked at Rachel. "So which way now, Sacagawea?"
"Is that racist now?" Jason asked blankly.
"Everything's racist now," Alex rolled his eyes. "Considering we're trying to keep track of ancient Greek mythology and none of us have finished high school, I don't think we're qualified to decide that." His dark brown skin spoke of experience for itself, so nobody pestered that further.
Instead Magnus all to happily lobbed at Percy, "what is with you always trying to interrogate her while she's holding that knife? Are you actively trying to get stabbed?"
Thalia didn't hear Percy's sarcastic answer. She'd noticed that too, and it brought back the feelings of pride and joy all to easily to the surface of the first time Luke had given her that knife, how Percy seemed to instinctively and yet accidentally keep bringing that up.
Rachel didn't respond right away. She'd become quieter since the arena.
Now, whenever Annabeth made a sarcastic comment, Rachel hardly bothered to answer. She'd burned the tip of a stick in the fire and was using it to draw ash figures on the floor, images of the monsters we'd seen. With a few strokes, she caught the likeness of a dracaena perfectly.
"Girl's going to make a killing on the market," Alex said with pride for those skills.
"If she even sells them," Percy grinned, "she strikes me as the type of giving it all away."
"We'll follow the path," she said. "The brightness on the floor."
"The brightness that led us straight into a trap?" Annabeth asked.
"How many times is she going to harp on that?" Nico asked, exhaustion already in his voice. "It's not her fault what the maze does."
"Lay off her, Annabeth," I said. "She's doing the best she can."
Annabeth stood. "The fire's getting low. I'll go look for some more scraps while you guys talk strategy." And she marched off into the shadows.
Percy was rubbing his temples. How could one girl be the cause of like, seventy percent of his headaches?!
Rachel drew another figure with her stick—an ashy Antaeus dangling from his chains.
"Annabeth's usually not like this," I told her. "I don't know what her problem is."
Rachel raised her eyebrows. "Are you sure you don't know?"
"What do you mean?"
"Boys," she muttered. "Totally blind."
"Hey, don't you get on my case, too! Look, I'm sorry I got you involved in this."
"Dudett, I want to introduce you to a new world called jealousy," Alex told him with a mild touch of sympathy.
"What's Annabeth got to be jealous of?" Percy frowned. "Does she want to be mortal that bad?"
Alex faced palmed and Thalia patted Percy's shoulder with a stage whisper to the others, "he's hopeless."
"What?" Percy protested.
Magnus had the book. He was very tempted to just stop and enlighten Percy what those two girls were actually jealous of.
But frankly, that just wasn't a conversation he wanted to hear, let alone be a part of.
"No, you were right," she said. "I can see the path. I can't explain it, but it's really clear." She pointed toward the other end of the room, into the darkness. "The workshop is that way. The heart of the maze. We're very close now. I don't know why the path led through that arena. I—I'm sorry about that. I thought you were going to die."
Percy instantly wanted to comfort her. To make her laugh. The freckles on her face had all been scrunched up, there was a troubled look in her green eyes that he recognized. She still had huge streaks of gold in her red hair. Her blue hairbrush had been sticking out of her pocket with a few of Tammi's wild, tangled black hairs caught in it he'd swear were trying to whisper into the fire.
Why was every moment he'd shared with Rachel two parts awkward and one part terrifying?
She sounded like she was close to crying.
"Hey, I'm usually about to die," I promised. "Don't feel bad."
Thalia smacked him, again, with another eye roll to boot. "Maybe if you'd stop almost dying we wouldn't feel bad!"
"I can't control that," Percy pouted, really wishing she'd been along on this quest right now. He bet she would have gotten through to Annabeth there was nothing to be jealous about.
She studied my face. "So you do this every summer? Fight monsters? Save the world? Don't you ever get to do just, you know, normal stuff?"
There was a long-standing pause as somebody tried to pull up something 'normal' Percy had done without something causing trouble...and all seven of them were coming up blank.
Percy instantly brushed it off as a non-issue though. If he'd ever had a normal life, he'd probably be dead by now. His boring lazy days at the skate park and walking around New York were usually what led to him being off his game by the time he came back to camp the next summer. He'd get Annabeth or some other camp killed if he let himself have a day off like that.
I'd never really thought about it like that. The last time I'd had something like a normal life had been...well, never.
"Ah the one thing every half-blood has in common," Will nodded.
Nico frowned. His memories had shown a normal life...but he couldn't remember any details to know for sure if there had been monster attacks in their youth or any strange happenings before he'd gone into that hotel. It was odd, actually kind of hoping there had been some abnormality to his life so he wouldn't be left out of that stupid general statement.
"Half-bloods get used to it, I guess. Or maybe not used to it, but..." I shifted uncomfortably.
Something about the careless, almost numb way Percy described his horror of a life really struck Jason. The near deaths, the battles, the concept of his camp, none of it had felt out of place to him. It bothered him a lot that it didn't bother him more.
"What about you? What do you do normally?"
Rachel shrugged. "I paint. I read a lot."
Okay, I thought. So far we are scoring a zero on the similarities chart.
"Oh come on Perce," Alex pleaded for some kind of right-brain activity. "Your mom had to encourage some of that!"
"I bet I could do a really awesome blood splatter and frame it," Percy offered.
"I accept that," Alex looked more than pleased while Magnus swallowed the question of whose blood it would be.
"What about your family?"
I could sense her mental shields going up, like this was not a safe subject.
Percy wasn't that surprised, after the way she'd responded to Annabeth asking earlier, and Ethan had just run off into the maze rather than considering discussing such a thing. Sensitive topic, Percy was well aware. He just wanted to be a friendly ear. Just because it didn't get better didn't mean you had to live with it in silence.
"Oh...they're just, you know, family."
"You said they wouldn't notice if you were gone."
She set down her drawing stick. "Wow, I'm really tired. I may sleep for a while, okay?"
"Oh, sure. Sorry if..."
But Rachel was already curling up, using her backpack as a pillow. She closed her eyes and lay very still, but I got the feeling she wasn't really asleep.
"Are you sure Percy," Thalia gave him a disparaging look of pity. "Are you completely confident about that? I'm worried your lack of being able to take a hint caught onto the fact she instantly fell asleep!"
"Nico told me to never let anyone say that about me," Percy actually looked a little wounded, and Thalia sighed, instantly feeling bad. This idiot had no idea what he was doing, but at least he was a well-meaning idiot.
A few minutes later, Annabeth came back. She tossed some more sticks on the fire.
Percy huffed and decided he was grateful she didn't try to throw him in the fire.
She looked at Rachel, then at me.
"I'll take first watch," she said. "You should sleep, too."
"You don't have to act like that."
"Like what?"
"Like...never mind." I lay down, feeling miserable. I was so tired I fell asleep as soon as my eyes closed.
"See, Rachel might not have been faking it," Percy waved at the book.
Thalia looked like she was watching a limping puppy try to beg for treats when the bag was all out.
In my dreams I heard laughter.
The way Magnus's face brightened for a moment was sad. He really seemed to think for a split second Percy was going to have a nice dream, maybe something silly about his favorite character rescuing him and telling a good joke.
Cold, harsh laughter, like knives being sharpened.
"Nobody would laugh during that noise, why would you even know that?" Magnus huffed, looking particularly put out when he did know better.
"Maybe it was just a chef who enjoys his job to much," Alex offered. "Laughing it up with his buddies about what sea creature they're going to eat."
"Right," Magnus chuckled just for Alex even trying.
I was standing at the edge of a pit in the depths of Tartarus.
"I thought he was in a coffin now?" Jason frowned. "I liked the idea of that better, easier to throw into an active volcano."
"Without a body, he still exists wherever he wants," Thalia oh so cheerfully explained. Just like Gods, their consciousness able to be in multiple places at once.
Below me the darkness seethed like inky soup.
"So close to your own destruction, little hero," the voice of Kronos chided. "And still you are blind."
The voice was different than it had been before. It seemed almost physical now, as if it were speaking from a real body instead of...whatever he'd been in his chopped-up condition.
"And here most people always try to say what makes a person is their heart," Nico shook his head. "Percy has identified it as the larynx."
"I'm just mixing it up, I refuse to use a boring metaphor," Percy shrugged.
"I have much to thank you for," Kronos said. "You have assured my rise."
Percy looked about as impressed as if some school bully had taunted him. "Does that also mean I assure his downfall? Is that how that works?"
"You really want to Yin and Yang Kronos Percy?" Will sighed. "Are you getting this tattooed somewhere?"
"I might," he smirked, while Magnus read on swiftly before that escalated into actual dare territory.
The shadows in the cavern became deeper and heavier. I tried to back away from the edge of the pit, but it was like swimming through oil.
"So you can't swim through anything," Jason nodded seriously like he was taking notes.
"I knew that," Percy frowned, "I wasn't going to the desert and trying to swim through sand! Just because you put swimming in it doesn't make me immune."
'I don't think he's using that word right,' Magnus frowned as he signed to Alex.
'Let it go,' he sighed back.
Time slowed down. My breathing almost stopped.
"A favor," Kronos said. "The Titan lord always pays his debts. Perhaps a glimpse of the friends you abandoned..."
"I don't want to know, I do not want to know," Magnus wished he could cover his ears and just pretend he couldn't hear what this slimy pit considered a reward, but he had the dang book in his hand and the voice in his head really never did shut up.
The darkness rippled around me, and I was in a different cave.
"Hurry!" Tyson said. He came barreling into the room. Grover stumbled along behind him.
Percy never knew relief could hurt this much. The slam of emotions hearing them being alive and yet running for their life would have given him gray hair if he didn't have that already.
There was a rumbling in the corridor they'd come from, and the head of an enormous snake burst into the cave.
Will's arm dropped off the back of the couch, his whole body tried to shrivel up into the corner arm as his feet leaped off the floor to knock into Nico's legs. He was far to lanky to be scrunching up that much, but it wasn't stopping him from trying. The yelp was more shock than distress, but his mind still couldn't help but instantly imagine a mammoth-sized snake trying to force its way through the door.
"Sorry Will, would have warned you if I could," Thalia offered. "Nobody's ever mentioned this part to me."
"Oh, him you'd share every detail with," Percy pitched his voice into the highest mocking. "Me, I can blow up a volcano with no warning."
"Exactly," Thalia rolled her eyes, "the worst he'll do is make a bad pun, not cause another eruption in the room!" Meanwhile Nico was patting Will's shoe that was dug into his hip.
"Well at least I know one part that's not going to make it into the next play," Magnus said with apology clear in his tone he didn't know how to gloss over that.
"Stop encouraging him!" Percy groaned.
I mean, this thing was so big its body barely fit through the tunnel. Its scales were coppery. Its head was diamond-shaped like a rattler, and its yellow eyes glowed with hatred. When it opened its mouth, its fangs were as tall as Tyson.
Will felt like red flashes of light should be shooting across his eyes, a warning sign unneeded as he shivered harder than ever.
"It's okay Will," Nico said in a quiet voice that none-the-less sounded strong and confident. "His defense sucks. You could knock him out with one basic Apollo Follower card."
Will couldn't believe he found himself laughing right now, but he was as his eyes darted from Nico holding firmly to his shoe to help keep it supported in place and the door that obviously did not have a snake coming through it.
It lashed at Grover, but Grover scampered out of the way.
"Having the bottom half a goat does seem to come in handy more than the top half," Jason nodded.
The snake got a mouthful of dirt. Tyson picked up a boulder and threw it at the monster, smacking it between the eyes, but the snake just recoiled and hissed.
"It's going to eat you!" Grover yelled at Tyson.
"How do you know?"
"It just told me! Run!"
"Why don't these animals ever say anything secretly helpful to Grover," Alex pouted, "like oh no, I hope you don't accidentally hit me in my weak spot located right behind my left nostril!"
"You would think they'd slip up a little more hissing taunts, since most demigods they try to eat don't get to hear them," Magnus agreed. "They might want to stop and chat more."
"Not this time," Will pleaded, he had unclenched himself enough he just looked like a very big dog in a very small space wanting the thunder to end.
Tyson darted to one side, but the snake used its head like a club and knocked him off his feet.
"No!" Grover yelled. But before Tyson could regain his balance, the snake wrapped around him and started to squeeze.
"Ooh, this is my worst nightmare," Will whimpered, his arms crossing and uncrossing to try and not feel as restricted as possible and literally fighting himself over it.
"It's my worst nightmare, get your own," Percy wasn't looking much better, the intensity on his face warring between battle and concern. The worst part was, he wasn't going to wake up this time. He was trapped not knowing if they were okay.
Tyson strained, pushing with all his immense strength, but the snake squeezed tighter. Grover frantically hit the snake with his reed pipes, but he might as well have been banging on a stone wall.
The whole room shook as the snake flexed its muscles, shuddering to overcome Tyson's strength.
Grover began to play with pipes, and stalactites rained down from the ceiling. The whole cave seemed about to collapse...
I woke with Annabeth shaking my shoulder.
His shoulder jerked and rotated like a muscle he had no control over. Annabeth wasn't here to wake him up from this one, and he missed her like a physical ache on that side of him.
Will felt bad for sighing in relief while Percy was twitching like he was having a fit, but he couldn't help it. In his heart, that snake was crushed in the collapse while Tyson and Grover made it out without a scratch.
Nico's hand flew away the moment Will's foot unwedged itself to slowly lower back to the ground, but the two couldn't help but grin at each other for a moment as Will whispered, "turns out you did get on my lap."
"Sitting on your shoe is nowhere close," Nico tried his hardest not to blush as he managed a halfhearted scowl.
"I'll try harder next time," Will promised, relaxing back to normal and trying to stretch out again like nothing had happened. His feet still stayed suspiciously hovering over the ground for a few paragraphs though.
"Percy, wake up!"
"Tyson—Tyson's in trouble!" I said. "We have to help him!"
"First things first," she said. "Earthquake!"
"Those gosh dang priorities," Jason groaned.
Percy's heart was pounding so hard in his chest his hand crumpled up his orange shirt over it on reflex. Was he causing this because of his nightmares? Was he that unstable?
"Easy Perce," Thalia placed her hand on his still trembling shoulder. She was familiar, and a friend, and he was all the more mad at himself he couldn't just relax and believe her like he wanted to. The constant stress of being away from the rest of his friends and family for so long was really getting to him.
Sure enough, the room was rumbling. "Rachel!" I yelled.
Her eyes opened instantly. She grabbed her pack, and the three of us ran.
"I knew she was faking that sleeping!" Percy said with that same old smile. It was troubled, and not as genuine as it could have been, but it was still Percy's.
We were almost to the far tunnel when a column next to us groaned and buckled. We kept going as a hundred tons of marble crashed down behind us.
We made it to the corridor and turned just in time to see the other columns toppling. A cloud of white dust billowed over us, and we kept running.
"You know what?" Annabeth said. "I like this way after all."
"All it took was a little encouragement," Will said brightly.
"What would be a lot of encouragement in this case?" Nico muttered.
It wasn't long before we saw light up ahead—like regular electric lighting.
"There," Rachel said.
We followed her into a stainless steel hallway, like I imagined they'd have on a space station or something. Fluorescent lights glowed from the ceiling. The floor was a metal grate.
I was so used to being in the darkness that I had to squint. Annabeth and Rachel both looked pale in the harsh illumination.
"This way," Rachel said, beginning to run. "We're close!"
"This is so wrong!" Annabeth said. "The workshop should be in the oldest section of the maze. This can't—"
She faltered, because we'd arrived at a set of metal double doors.
Inscribed in the steel, at eye level, was a large blue Greek .
"We're here," Rachel announced. "Daedalus's workshop."
"Actually, that, kind of makes sense," Jason admitted with a curious smile and his head tipped to the side. "Daedalus is an inventor, he'd be upgrading his place as time went on, not leaving it in rocks and mud."
"She's still missing the obvious of trying to be logical about this place from the beginning," Nico rolled his eyes. He wasn't as nervous as he was last time about knowing he was going to show up in this room. He'd finally gotten rid of Minos like everybody else figured out from the start and hadn't tried to murder anyone, so at least he didn't have to worry about being the source of trouble for once.
Annabeth pressed the symbol on the doors and they hissed open.
"So much for ancient architecture," I said.
Annabeth scowled.
Alex sniffed and dramatically dabbed at his eye. "This is better than any romantic subplot I've read in my life. You two are meant to be!"
Percy was surprised he hadn't finished with a dramatic wail as Percy flipped him off.
Together we walked inside.
The first thing that struck me was the daylight—blazing sun coming through giant windows.
Which made plenty of sense. Daedalus had lived to much of his life trapped beneath the sun with no means of escape. Here, in his own corner of hell, he'd make sure to have the widest view, and an easy way out.
Not the kind of thing you expect in the heart of a dungeon. The workshop was like an artist's studio, with thirty-foot ceilings and industrial lighting, polished stone floors, and workbenches along with windows. A spiral staircase led up to a second-story loft. Half a dozen easels displayed hand-drawn diagrams for buildings and machines that looked like Leonardo da Vinci sketches. Several laptop computers were scattered around on the tables. Glass jars of green oil—Greek fire—lined one shelf. There were inventions, too—weird metal machines I couldn't make sense of. One was a bronze chair with a bunch of electrical wires attached to it, like some kind of torture device. In another corner stood a giant metal egg about the size of a man. There was a grandfather clock that appeared to be made entirely of glass, so you could see all the gears turning. And hanging on the wall were several sets of bronze and silver wings.
Thalia didn't know how to describe the word she felt for that. She'd lived in a tent mounted with trophies, but these were something more. Like a memory of his mistakes.
A memorial, she finally realized.
"Di immortals," Annabeth muttered. She ran to the nearest easel and looked at the sketch. "He's a genius. Look at the curves on this building!"
"Thing's that never cross a man's mind," Thalia snorted in delight, clearing away her melancholy mood a bit.
"I resent that," Alex sniffed.
"I bet Daedalus never looked at his curves from behind in a mirror," Thalia insisted relentlessly.
"And we are ending this conversation!" Percy pleaded, which Magnus needed no further encouragement on.
"And an artist," Rachel said in amazement. "These wings are amazing!"
The wings looked more advanced than the ones I'd seen in my dreams. The feathers were more tightly interwoven. Instead of wax seals, selfadhesive strips ran down the sides.
Will appreciated nobody had the heart to make a quip about that. That Daedalus had spent lifetimes agonizing over the perfect design of what could have saved his son's life long after it didn't matter to the one it was meant for, just in case it might be used to save someone else someday.
I kept my hand on Riptide. Apparently Daedalus was not at home, but the workshop looked like it had been recently used. The laptops were running their screen savers. A half-eaten blueberry muffin and a coffee cup sat on a workbench.
"You really would make a great detective someday if you'd ever stop getting in trouble with the law," Jason grinned.
"So, never," Percy agreed.
I walked to the window. The view outside was amazing. I recognized the Rocky Mountains in the distance.
"How do you recognize a mountain?" Will looked at him strangely.
"Cross the continental U. S. enough times buddy, you start picking up that stuff," Percy sighed.
We were high up in the foothills, at least five hundred feet, and down below a valley spread out, filled with a tumbled collection of red mesas and boulders and spires of stone. It looked like some huge kid had been building a toy city with skyscraper-size blocks, and then decided to knock it over.
"Annabeth," Magnus stage whispered.
"No, no, say it loud and proud as she would," Percy chuckled.
"Annabeth!" Alex happily shouted right in Magnus's ear.
"Where are we?" I wondered.
"Colorado Springs," A voice said behind us. "The Garden of the Gods."
Standing on the spiral staircase above us, with his weapon drawn, was our missing sword master Quintus.
"Dam," Alex scowled. Percy got the feeling he wasn't referring to wanting a snack bar. "Luke is right behind you isn't he?"
Thalia knew it all got sorted out soon, and even if it didn't hurt Percy she'd still rather wait. Alex had really wanted to like Quintus, and she didn't have the heart to correct earlier than necessary he'd never even been Quintus, the cool guy with a dog.
"You," Annabeth said. "What have you done with Daedalus?"
Quintus smiled faintly. "Trust me, my dear. You don't want to meet him."
Nico fought hard not to snort with laughter. Did this guy think he was the Hulk or something?
"Look, Mr. Traitor," she growled,
"Annabeth, with the sick burns," Will snickered. "Next she'll call him a stinky head."
"She saves her important insults for me," Percy reminded.
"I didn't fight a dragon woman and a three-bodied man and a psychotic Sphinx to see you.
"Who would be worthy after that kind of trip?" Magnus said fairly. "I feel like even the person she's been fighting to see isn't worth all that."
"The ending never lives up to the journey," Alex nodded sagely.
Now where is DAEDALUS?"
Quintus came down the stairs, holding his sword at his side. He was dressed in jeans and boots and his counselor's T-shirt from Camp HalfBlood, which seemed like an insult now that we knew he was a spy.
"You'd think he'd know he lost his element of surprise," Percy scowled, twitching fingers trying their best not to draw his sword. "No need to keep up appearances!"
"He was probably doing it just to piss you off," Jason frowned, it had clearly been working.
I didn't know if I could beat him in a sword fight. He was pretty good. But I figured I would have to try.
"How to sum up Percy in three sentences," Thalia said warmly, giving him a light punch on the arm.
Percy blushed in surprise, momentarily breaking his anger and rubbing at his arm as he shrugged and muttered it's what anybody would do.
"You think I'm an agent of Kronos," he said. "That I work for Luke."
"Well, duh," said Annabeth.
"Has anybody told Mr. D. that the kids do still say that?" Jason asked randomly.
"Updating him on everything we said during our quest is my top priority," Percy promised with all the mocking in the world.
"You're an intelligent girl," he said. "But you're wrong. I work only for myself."
"Luke mentioned you," I said. "Geryon knew about you, too. You've been to his ranch."
"Of course," he said. "I've been almost everywhere. Even here."
"Yeah, yeah, we get it, he could write the next Odyssey," Thalia rolled her eyes, not particularly impressed with him.
He walked past me like I was no threat at all and stood by the window.
Percy's scowl kicked up another notch, so much so the others started checking the floor already.
"The view changes from day to day," he mused. "It's always some place high up. Yesterday it was from a skyscraper overlooking Manhattan. The day before that, there was a beautiful view of Lake Michigan. But it keeps coming back to the Garden of the Gods. I think the Labyrinth likes it here. A fitting name, I suppose."
Magnus was starting to wonder if he'd been slowly inhaling the ocean water without noticing. He felt so sick and his stomach gave a tsunami of a roll at everybody reminding him this place was alive!
"You've been here before," I said.
"Oh, yes."
"That's an illusion out there?" I asked. "A projection or something?"
"No," Rachel murmured. "It's real. We're really in Colorado."
"Has she been to Colorado and knows this exact view?" Alex frowned.
"I'm still waiting for the nightmare fuel of the maze just whispering in her ear," Magnus groaned.
Quintus regarded her. "You have clear vision, don't you? You remind me of another mortal girl I once knew. Another princess who came to grief."
"Enough games," I said. "What have you done with Daedalus?"
Quintus stared at me. "My boy, you need lessons from your friend on seeing clearly. I am Daedalus."
"Ooooohhhh," Jason said with a blank face. "Yeah, I didn't see that coming." The tiniest twitch of his face almost flickered into a hysterical laugh but he tried to keep it straight.
"I'd be worried if you did," Magnus looked in physical pain. "What? How? What? Why? What? When? What-"
"I really didn't think he managed that project," Alex's double-toned eyes danced with fascination. "Magic and machines really can do anything."
"But he's not an inventor," Percy frowned. "He's just good with a sword."
"Is that all you're good at Percy?" Thalia shook her head. "Just a sword?"
Percy wasn't going to argue the point, but he still looked pretty unconvinced.
Alex still had to smack Magnus to get him to concentrate on the book again rather than the suddenly very real possibility of an AI take over that was being hinted at.
There were a lot of answers I might've given, from "I knew that" to "LIAR!" to "Yeah right, and I'm Zeus."
"You definitely should have gone with the first one Percy," Jason chuckled. "Nobody would have believed you, but you still should have tried to sell it to Annabeth and Rachel."
The only thing I could think to say was, "But you're not an inventor! You're a swordsman!"
"I am both," Quintus said. "And an architect. And a scholar. I also play basketball pretty well for a guy who didn't start until he was two thousand years old. A real artist must be good at many things."
"Fair," Alex drew out the word with all his breath as he forced himself to agree with the cool artist/ swordsman/ dog owner/ traitor.
"That's true," Rachel said. "Like I can paint with my feet as well as my hands."
"I will never forgive Oceanus for making this girl vanish before I could see that," Alex sighed.
"You see?" Quintus said. "A girl of many talents."
"Flattery gets you everywhere," Nico chuckled with his own amusement. He'd always wondered why Percy had tried to stay behind and help Daeadlus after he'd betrayed the Camp. Percy's loyalty to him should have been broken, and yet Percy had resisted leaving until the last moment, possibly because of just this one moment where the old swords master still took time to talk to them like this.
"But you don't even look like Daedalus," I protested. "I saw him in a dream, and..." Suddenly a horrible thought dawned on me.
"Yes," Quintus said. "You've finally guessed the truth."
"You're an automaton. You made yourself a new body."
"Can Rachel see that?" Magnus asked. "Does he even have a skeletal system in there?"
"She didn't say anything to me," Percy sounded a touch awed himself by the idea. "I bet she could have made a wicked cool painting about it though."
"Percy," Annabeth said uneasily, "that's not possible. That—that can't be an automaton."
"The amount of things she keeps saying isn't possible like her mom isn't an immortal goddess who sprang out of her dad's head," Nico said in exasperation.
"We all take things at our own pace," Will shrugged, deciding against bringing up the fact some people were more comfortable with certain topics than others so as not to put Nico on the spot.
Quintus chuckled. "Do you know what Quintus means, my dear?"
"The fifth, in Latin. But—"
"This is my fifth body." The swordsman held out his forearm. He pressed his elbow and part of his wrist popped open—a rectangular hatch in his skin.
"That's terrifying!" Alex said in the most jazzed voice.
Jason started poking at his elbow in worry he could be an android and not even know it.
Underneath, bronze gears whirred. Wires glowed.
"That's amazing!" Rachel said.
"That's weird," I said.
"Does anything impress you Percy?" Thalia scoffed. She really wished she'd seen that in person.
"Recognizing Tony Hawk," Percy sniffed and took an imaginary sip of wine. Thalia smacked 'it' out of his hands and Magnus quickly kept reading before that turned into a whole slap fight.
"You found a way to transfer your animus into a machine?" Annabeth said. "That's...not natural."
"See, she gets it!" Percy wished for the gazillionth time she was here so she could high five him and call him a seaweed brain for understanding her point or something.
"Oh, I assure you, my dear, it's still me. I'm still very much Daedalus. Our mother, Athena, makes sure I never forget that." He tugged back the collar of his shirt. At the base of his neck was the mark I'd seen before—the dark shape of a bird grafted to his skin.
"A murderer's brand," Annabeth said.
"What's the marketing like for that brand?" Alex smirked. "Murder two kids get this free? Did Athena make that up on the spot especially for him?"
"Really not funny Alex," Will said in complete disapproval.
"Sorry, kind of," Alex shrugged. He was struggling not to think of Quintus as a two-faced traitor right now.
"For your nephew, Perdix," I guessed. "The boy you pushed off the tower."
Quintus's face darkened. "I did not push him. I simply—"
"Made him lose his balance," I said. "Let him die."
"Don't you give him any slack Percy," Thalia nodded approvingly.
"Could cut him a little slack," but Will's was mostly a mutter out of the corner of his lip to nobody. He was sure Daedalus regretted many, many things he did and didn't do over the course of that many lifetimes.
Quintus gazed out the windows at the purple mountains.
"Who said they were purple? What?" Magnus knew he was not caught on the right detail there, but that was a weird description. His brain was probably still broken on anything else really.
"It's not literal Magnus, just light refraction and junk," Percy shrugged, "trust me, they looked it though."
"I regret what I did, Percy. I was angry and bitter. But I cannot take it back, and Athena never lets me forget. As Perdix died, she turned him into a small bird—a partridge.
"Why do the gods keep turning kids into things instead of, you know, saving them," Percy asked the girl who had once been turned into a tree.
"Not stepping on Hades's toes?" She shrugged, "makes for a better life story? They want credit for inventing the most shit? Why would I know that Percy?"
"At least I got the all mighty and wise Thalia to admit she didn't know something," Percy shrugged that was answer enough.
She branded the bird's shape on my neck as a reminder. No matter what body I take, the brand appears on my skin."
I looked into his eyes, and I realized he was the same man I'd seen in my dreams. His face might be totally different, but the same soul was in there— the same intelligence and all the sadness.
Percy vividly recalled the first time he'd met him was defending his dog, the innocent good girl, and wearily shaking his hand. The first time he'd dreamed about him had been right after his first tumble into this maze.
Which was the true man to be believed? The imprisoned old guy who had grown bitter enough to murder after losing everything, or the guy who had let Annabeth get away with a whole conversation over breakfast? How long did you have to be alive before one turned into the other, if that was even possible?
And how the heck did he go to the bathroom in between each new body?
"You really are Daedalus," I decided. "But why did you come to the camp? Why spy on us?"
"To see if your camp was worth saving. Luke had given me one story. I preferred to come to my own conclusions."
"I really hate that I find that a noble and valid answer," Jason frowned.
"Yeah, yeah, open-minded, blah, blah, he should have asked us first and believed us!" Percy still scowled this guy had come in disguise and unsure if their camp was worth saving the moment he'd arrived.
"So you have talked to Luke."
"Oh, yes. Several times. He is quite persuasive."
"I haven't heard a hint of that," Magnus huffed, "he's mostly just been a pest."
Percy's heart sunk though as he couldn't fully agree. The way he was going about it was wrong...but that arena to Poseidon his dad had never put a stop to...Calypso...there were to many things in the gods name that would never sit right with him...
"But now you've seen the camp!" Annabeth persisted. "So you know we need your help. You can't let Luke through the maze!"
Daedalus set his sword on the workbench. "The maze is no longer mine to control, Annabeth. I created it, yes. In fact, it is tied to my life force. But I have allowed it to live and grow on its own. That is the price I paid for privacy."
"I want to go home now," Magnus decided he'd officially hit his limit of overwhelmed. He didn't care 'home' was a sleeping bag in the park and no secure source of food.
There was a sentient maze tied to some guy's life force who may or may not doom the home of his cousin. This was his limit.
"That took much longer than me," Percy gave him a sympathetic nod. "Good to know your limits," he then happily mocked Jason, who gave him a casual grin.
"If we knew how to kick you guys out without it being a major concern we would," Thalia sighed. Agitating a Titan into doing it didn't seem like a bet even they were willing to play though.
"Privacy from what?"
"The gods," he said. "And death. I have been alive for two millennia, my dear, hiding from death."
"Man, I can't even blame him after everything he's been through," Alex couldn't help but sympathize. The number one reason he wasn't stressing about getting up top was the privacy away from Loki.
"But how can you hide from Hades?" I asked. "I mean...Hades has the Furies."
"And that's just one of many," Nico said with an ominous smirk. The kind that made his face flicker in shadows and send a thrill of fear up all of their spines. Nico wouldn't be killing Daedalus for his soul or anything like that, but he still wasn't fond of the guy who had cheated death and gave his dad a bad name.
"They do not know everything," he said. "Or see everything. You have encountered them, Percy. You know this is true. A clever man can hide quite a long time, and I have buried myself very deep. Only my greatest enemy has kept after me, and even him I have thwarted."
"I think thwarted is to strong a word," Jason sniffed. "He's been relentlessly after you and still scheming away."
"I can see why Daedalus likes tag so much, he really doesn't want to be It," Percy frowned.
"You mean Minos," I said.
Daedalus nodded. "He hunts for me relentlessly. Now that he is a judge of the dead, he would like nothing better than for me to come before him so he can punish me for my crimes. After the daughters of Cocalus killed him, Minos's ghost began torturing me in my dreams. He promised that he would hunt me down. I did the only thing I could. I retreated from the world completely. I descended into my Labyrinth. I decided this would be my ultimate accomplishment: I would cheat death."
"And you did," Annabeth marveled, "for two thousand years." She sounded kind of impressed, despite the horrible things Daedalus had done.
Percy debated for a moment before deciding he wouldn't take his fist bump back, but he would have been sure she'd see his 'you need better roll models' look this time she'd missed while ogling him.
Just then a loud bark echoed from the corridor. I heard the ba-BUMP, baBUMP, ba-BUMP of huge paws, and Mrs. O'Leary bounded into the workshop. She licked my face once, then almost knocked Daedalus over with an enthusiastic leap.
"That's got to be one of the best feelings in the world," Alex's smile looked different when he talked about Mrs. O'Leary, a kinder expression than his usual slightly mocking grin. "When your pet shows up from out of nowhere and you didn't call them. They just wanted to be where you are."
Magnus couldn't help but smile right along with him, a feeling he suddenly knew he'd never take for granted again.
"There is my old friend!" Daedalus said, scratching Mrs. O'Leary behind the ears. "My only companion all these long lonely years."
"You let her save me," I said. "That whistle actually worked."
Daedalus nodded. "Of course it did, Percy. You have a good heart. And I knew Mrs. O'Leary liked you. I wanted to help you. Perhaps I—I felt guilty, as well."
"Guilty about what?"
"That your quest would be in vain."
"He decided you guys were a lost cause that fast huh?" Magnus looked a little offended on the Camp's part...and also like he kind of understood where Daedalus was coming from.
"What?" Annabeth said. "But you can still help us. You have to! Give us Ariadne's string so Luke can't get it."
"And hopefully burn it," Will shivered.
Jason's eyes brightened with understanding though, and dread. Where had Kampê been in that arena? Off to fetch her honorable position?
"Yes...the string. I told Luke that the eyes of a clear-sighted mortal are the best guide, but he did not trust me. He was so focused on the idea of a magic item.
"Does it have other properties, or was he just refusing to believe a mortal could be of help?" Magnus frowned.
"Wasn't there for that conversation," Percy huffed.
And the string works. It's not as accurate as your mortal friend here, perhaps. But good enough. Good enough."
"Where is it?" Annabeth said.
"With Luke," Daedalus said sadly. "I'm sorry, my dear. But you are several hours too late."
Sizzling anger washed over Percy as he realized why Luke had looked so happy in that arena. They'd been to late.
He wondered if Daedalus had stalled for time. If he'd looked at the door to his workshop hoping they'd show up and have an excuse not to be a traitor.
He also wondered where Luke had kept that string. Had it been his shoelace the whole time?
With a chill I realized why Luke had been in such a good mood in the arena. He'd already gotten the string from Daedalus. His only obstacle had been the arena master, and I'd taken care of that for him by killing Antaeus.
"Well the obvious solution here is, stop being so good at killing monsters Percy," Thalia smacked his shoulder.
"I'll get right on that," Percy sighed.
"Kronos promised me freedom," Quintus said. "Once Hades is overthrown, he will set me over the Underworld. I will reclaim my son Icarus. I will make things right with poor young Perdix. I will see Minos's soul cast into Tartarus, where it cannot bother me again. And I will no longer have to run from death."
Damn if that wasn't a persuasive argument though, Will sighed. How was it Luke had probably only read Daedalus' stories while dreaming of nothing but Kronos's schemes and still managed to say the exact right thing to get him what he wanted?
To much practice is what it was.
"That's your brilliant idea?" Annabeth yelled. "You're going to let Luke destroy your camp, kill hundreds of demigods, and then attack Olympus? You're going to bring down the entire world so you can get what you want?"
"Hades would be pisssssed," Jason said with confidence. "We already know he doesn't want that at all, and then someone usurping his throne! Oh, this guy's in for a bad day when he hits the Underworld."
Nico wasn't sure if Jason meant Luke or Daedalus, but either way he was going to be surprised at the outcome.
"Your cause is doomed, my dear. I saw that as soon as I began to work at your camp.
The fact that he never referred to it as our Camp, as his Camp bothered Percy. Like he'd never given the place a chance, or refused to let himself be attached to anything. He remembered first waking up there, how insane it had all felt, how alien everything seemed...and yet he'd already considered the place home before he even realized it. A feeling that all Half-bloods should share no matter how old they get.
There is no way you can hold back the might of Kronos."
"That's not true!" she cried.
"I am doing what I must, my dear. The offer was too sweet to refuse. I'm sorry."
"So what I'm hearing is we need to violently cut out his sweet tooth," Alex sneered.
"If you think that'll help," Magnus sighed in a long-time resigned voice for somebody who had only known him a few days.
Annabeth pushed over an easel. Architectural drawing scattered across the floor.
Nico felt that in his core. He wondered if Tyson had wanted to shove something over too after he'd rescued Briares.
"I used to respect you. You were my hero! You—you built amazing things. You solved problems. Now...I don't know what you are. Children of Athena are supposed to be wise, not just clever. Maybe you are just a machine. You should have died two thousand years ago."
Instead of getting mad, Daedalus hung his head. "You should go warn your camp. Now that Luke has the string—"
Suddenly Mrs. O'Leary pricked up her ears.
"Someone's coming!" Rachel warned.
"Rachel's hearing is as good as a hell hounds confirmed," Alex said with one of those diabolical smiles that meant nobody knew what he was going to do with that information.
"Or worse, the maze warned her," Magnus shivered like he half expected her to become possessed by the place staring at its secrets to long.
The doors of the workshop burst open, and Nico was pushed inside, his hands in chains.
Magnus's voice stuttered in surprise while Nico fought hard not to scowl at all of them. He didn't owe anyone an explanation for being weak and getting caught! That Minos had led him right into a trap and he'd been to stupid to realize it...
To Nico's shock however, no one did any such thing. Will in fact leaned forward in his seat. Not much, but enough his arm was dangling close to the collar of Nico's jacket and sending chills up his neck.
Then Kelli and two Laistrygonians marched in behind him, followed by the ghost of Minos. He looked almost solid now—a pale bearded king with cold eyes and tendrils of Mist coiling off his robes.
"All the easier to stab," was all Thalia seemed to hear.
"Is this like one of those if you wish hard enough your dream comes true?" Percy mock whispered out of the side of his mouth.
He fixed his gaze on Daedalus. "There you are, my old friend."
Daedalus's jaw clenched. He looked at Kelli. "What is the meaning of this?"
"It's called a double cross," Alex said with almost pity. "It's what happens when you make deals with monsters and traitors."
"Luke sends his compliments," Kelli said. "He thought you might like to see your old employer Minos."
"And here Daedalus was just complimenting Luke on his good persuasion skills," Jason said snidely. "See, this doesn't sound very persuasive. You'd think a smart guy like Luke would know the greatest inventor would be more helpful to have on your side than a grumpy old ghost."
Nico cleared his throat but uneasily offered, "I assume Minos tried to drive Luke insane when he first ventured into the maze and Luke struck this deal with him all the way back then. He would have already been under Kronos's favor and had the weight to hold up a deal like this."
Jason still felt like the obvious answer should be to double cross the ghost then, not Daedalus, but he noticed Thalia swallowed bile at this so casually being talked about, so was grateful Magnus didn't stick around for any details.
"This was not part of our agreement," Daedalus said.
"No indeed," Kelli said. "But we already have what we want from you, and we have other agreements to honor. Minos required something else from us, in order to turn over this fine young demigod." She ran a finger under Nico's chin.
Percy gave an exaggerated shudder as he tried to give Nico a sympathetic smile about how intoxicating and awful that must have been, before he did a double take and asked, "hey, were you-"
Then he shut his mouth just as fast with a guilty look at him and Thalia. Right, wait for him to volunteer if he'd been attracted to the pretty demon.
Nico was touched beyond words at the level of self-restraint Percy had just shown in regards to him. Not enough to answer a truth that really should have been an early indication he had not looked back on fondly about himself.
He had not found the empousa appealing in the slightest. He had not fallen for her charms, and wanted to be as far away from her as possible. All he'd felt were Percy's green eyes asking if he was okay. Nico had wanted to be beside him, wanted to prove himself worthy. Her horse and roses smell had been pungent and entirely unappealing to him like a girl with way to much perfume on he'd wanted to cough and retreat from.
"He'll be quite useful. And all Minos asked in return was your head, old man."
Daedalus paled. "Treachery."
"Get used to it," Kelli said.
"That doesn't sound like a very school spirit kind of attitude," Will said in as snooty a voice as possible. "I thought we were all in this together at Goode!"
"To many cartwheels must have dislodged her brain out of her ear," Alex scoffed.
"Nico," I said. "Are you okay?"
He nodded morosely. "I—I'm sorry, Percy. Minos told me you were in danger. He convinced me to go back into the maze."
"I am really, really glad you guys are okay," Will's voice shook with nerves like he wasn't saying this with full knowledge they were all right in front of him and this had happened years ago.
Nico still wasn't quite used to hearing that, but he found himself smiling at Will this time, at least acknowledging he'd heard it with still no idea what to say. Will's smile felt like an answer anyways, just like usual now.
"You were trying to help us?"
"I was tricked," he said. "He tricked all of us."
I glared at Kelli. "Where's Luke? Why isn't he here?"
"Vengeance will be swift," Alex savored.
"Good to hear you defending the kid's honor back then," Jason agreed with a forlorn smile.
Nico was a miserable huddle of black jacket, and it wasn't a stretch to figure out what was causing this jumble of painful emotions. His only friend for months had just betrayed him, he'd given up the idea of getting his sister back, and the outcome of everything he was going through was Percy realizing he was to weak to take care of himself.
The she-demon smiled like we were sharing a private joke. "Luke is...busy. He is preparing for the assault.
Thalia's eyes felt strained all at once. Like she wanted to sleep, but she knew the moment she got up from her comfortable spot the feeling would vanish. A breath shook past her lips, and the moment was gone.
She knew it was coming back soon.
But don't worry. We have more friends on the way. And in the meantime, I think I'll have a wonderful snack!" Her hands changed into claws. Her hair burst into flame and her legs turned to their true form—one donkey leg, one bronze.
"Percy," Rachel whispered, "the wings. Do you think—"
"Get them," I said. "I'll try to buy you some time."
And with that, all Hades broke loose.
"You were right Jason," Nico managed a chuckle. "Hades would have been pissed at his kingdom being broken loose. Percy is way to liberal with his choice of words."
"I think of Hades as a naturally pissed and yet helpful guy who would be happy to see his kingdom break lose to get one guy back," Percy insisted.
"Then you need to study more," Nico rolled his eyes.
"Hard pass when I'll live it eventually," Percy scoffed.
Annabeth and I charged at Kelli.
The giants came right at Daedalus, but Mrs. O'Leary leaped to his defense.
Nico got pushed to the ground and struggled with his chains while the spirit of Minos wailed, "Kill the inventor! Kill him!"
Nico sighed, if that wasn't the story of his life right there. Pushed aside and associated with nothing but death, nobody's concern.
Rachel grabbed the wings off the wall. Nobody paid her any attention.
Nico gave himself a good mental shake though as he heard that. Rachel was off doing her own thing that certainly saved all their lives. The lowly mortal none of the monsters had thought to pursue key to their escape. He had made himself be seen.
Kelli slashed at Annabeth. I tried to get to her, but the demon was quick and deadly. She turned over tables, smashed inventions, and wouldn't let us get close. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mrs. O'Leary chomp her fangs into a giant's arm. He wailed in pain and flung her around, trying to shake her.
Daedalus grabbed for his sword, but the second giant smashed the workbench with his fist, and the sword went flying. A clay jar of Greek fire broke on the floor and began to burn, green flames spreading quickly.
The chaos, crashing and smashing of a fight, speckled blood, and heavy thick smoke lingering in the nose just didn't have the same echo in here like it did in Percy's mind. Magnus's voice was shaky, he was waiting for somebody to get really hurt, like Annabeth. The silence of the room was a defining kind of noise all its own as everyone except Percy held their breath to see how to get out of this.
Even Nico. He couldn't seem to get the idea out of his head this next display of his powers was going to send someone into a screaming fit about having him around.
"To me!" Minos cried. "Spirits of the dead!" He raised his ghostly hands and the air began to hum.
"No!" Nico cried. He was on his feet now. He'd somehow managed to remove his shackles.
Nico watched his hands carefully, suspiciously, to make sure they didn't start phasing in and out of existence without his permission. His first instance of shadow traveling, of being able to turn to pure liquid darkness. His anger at Minos had been absolute. A true testament to what would ultimately happen to an entity he did have a grudge against.
Something he was afraid of letting happen to anybody if he wasn't careful with himself.
"You do not control me, young fool," Minos sneered. "All this time, I have been controlling you! A soul for a soul, yes. But it is not your sister who will return from the dead. It is I, as soon as I slay the inventor!"
Spirits began to appear around Minos—shimmering forms that slowly multiplied, solidifying into Cretan soldiers.
"I am the son of Hades," Nico insisted. "Be gone!"
Minos laughed. "You have no power over me. I am the lord of spirits! The ghost king!"
"No." Nico drew his sword. "I am."
"Oh, snap," Alex said with pure delight. "Ghost fight?"
"Ghost fight," Nico agreed with a weary, yet proud smile. A victory he wouldn't exactly say he was proud of...and yet it was the first time he'd truly claimed his identity and knew he had to stop hiding who he used to be and accept who he was.
He stabbed his black blade into the floor, and it cleaved through the stone like butter.
"Damn Nico, you ever stuck that thing in a microwave to see what would happen?" Percy asked in a tone of one who might have some experience with that.
"Not many microwaves down in the Labyrinth to test that Percy," Nico frowned and clutched his sword tight in case he was getting ideas.
"Never!" Minos's form rippled. "I will not—"
The ground rumbled. The windows cracked and shattered to pieces, letting in a blast of fresh air. A fissure opened in the stone floor of the workshop, and Minos and all his spirits were sucked into the void with a horrible wail.
Nico's breath looked a little ragged coming out of his chest. His dark eyes glittered as he watched the book and those in the room carefully, darting to Will too, but last.
Will really wanted to kiss him right now but thought that might be inappropriate and seriously debated if he cared for several moments before Thalia said casually, "thanks for that by the way. I know this ingrate never said that."
"If I thanked every person who saved my life, my mom's wrist would cramp from all the letters," Percy sighed.
"You'd make your mom write the letters?" Jason looked at him with the kind of moral disdain he'd seen all his life in teachers.
"You're right," Percy conceded, "I'd type them and not bother to see what got spell-checked correctly."
The bad news: the fight was still going on all around us, and I let myself get distracted.
Nico actually blushed. Percy looked awkwardly away from that flush of coloring and decided he didn't want to ask.
Alex made a whooping noise of laughter to add to it all anyways, "how have you never died in a fight? Every life or death instance you've been in you notice the randomest things."
"Very talented friends and some mild talent with a sword," Percy shrugged.
Kelli pounced on me so fast I had no time to defend myself.
My sword skittered away and I hit my head hard on a worktable as I fell. My eyesight went fuzzy. I couldn't raise my arms.
Which made Alex's joke not so funny when it almost came true a second later, but Percy only seemed mildly concerned as he scratched at his neck and glanced hopefully at Nico again like he expected that sword to pierce right through her next.
Nico didn't particularly want to admit he'd fallen to his knee, his head dizzy from such a blast of his powers and hadn't even noticed he was about to die.
Kelli laughed. "You will taste wonderful!"
"I still think he'd be to salty," Magnus wrinkled his nose in disgust. "I can't imagine the seasoning you'd have to add to balance straight."
"A recipe book I pray never hits the shelves," Percy agreed.
She bared her fangs. Then suddenly her body went rigid. Her red eyes widened. She gasped, "No...school...spirit..."
And Annabeth took her knife out of the empousa's back.
"Atta girl," Jason looked so pleased and disappointed all at once he couldn't be patting her on the back. "That was perfect synchrony, using you as bait, that spectacular timing."
"Hands off Jason," Percy laughed along, remembering spitting out monster dust that had a bit of a kick to it and seeing an angel in resplendent golden hair above him with the most intense gray eyes as the point of her knife followed every mote to the floor to make sure the deed was done.
With an awful screech, Kelli dissolved into yellow vapor.
Annabeth helped me up.
Will shook his head at what an odd sentence that was to include. It was just implied that's what had happened next, like glossing over every time they stopped to swat a bug away or sneeze and brush dust off their face. A silly detail that everybody knew had happened and there really was no reason to point it out.
I still felt dizzy, but we had no time to lose. Mrs. O'Leary and Daedalus were still locked in combat with the giants, and I could hear shouting in the tunnel. More monsters were coming toward the workshop.
"We have to help Daedalus!" I said.
Thalia pressed her lips tight together upon hearing that. It was one of those moments she would have been at odds with Percy, trying to push him out the window with or without the wings for suggesting they save the traitor to their camp. It was very black and white to her.
And yet.
She often wondered if Luke had tried reaching to Percy for help, what Percy would have done. Luke had tried appealing to her and Annabeth, but there was to much history, to much resentment to get anywhere.
They'd only been friends for less than a week...but Percy might have helped Luke better than she ever could.
"No time," Rachel said. "Too many coming!"
She'd already fitted herself with wings and was working on Nico, who looked pale and sweaty from his struggle with Minos. The wings grafted instantly to his back and arms.
Nico had never been aware of the prejudice Zeus might have to children of Poseidon being in the air enough to be worried if that applied to him too. He swallowed gratefully nobody had stopped to point that out right then.
"Now you!" she told me.
In seconds, Nico, Annabeth, Rachel, and I had fitted ourselves with coppery wings.
The resemblance to Nico and Icarus had been uncanny at the moment, and Percy shivered now as he felt them graft into place minus the hot glue gun. The sound of swords clanging, the feeling of doom still licking up every inch of his skin as he surveyed that room one last time. The architecture designs curling up into black nothingness, Rachel's face a ghastly pale.
That room had been full of death, and as eager as Percy was to escape, everything about it made him want to stay and save what was going to be lost.
Already I could feel myself being lifted by the wind coming through the window. Greek fire was burning the tables and furniture, spreading up the circular stairs.
"Daedalus!" I yelled. "Come on!"
He was cut in a hundred places—but he was bleeding golden oil instead of blood. He'd found his sword and was using part of a smashed table as a shield against the giants. "I won't leave Mrs. O'Leary!" he said. "Go!"
"Oh gods," Alex touched his chest in shock at how much that meant to hear. He'd really wanted to like Quintus just for his dog, and he'd proven to be a very mixed man of honor and tragedy.
"The only depressing cliche I think my life has ever dodged," Percy smiled, his eyes still troubled even as he made a joke. "I don't think the dog dies." He winced, but it was a hopeful stabbing pain to his brain that he was right.
There was no time to argue. Even if we stayed, I wasn't sure we could help.
"None of us know how to fly!" Nico protested.
"Great time to find out," I said. And together, the four of us jumped out the window into open sky.
"Yeah, I don't recommend that Percy," Magnus looked up. The amount of times someone in this room had told him that could have filled a whole page.
"I do! Learning to fly on the way down builds character!" Alex said confidently as he snatched the book away.
"This guy would climb a mountain during an earthquake," Percy frowned in concern his mortality never seemed to be a major concern around here.
Oh, right, he was alive. There was no tension of that anywhere except his own head.
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Holy War: Chapter 9
Mother Superion shifts her hands against the steering wheel as she drives, her fingers starting to tingle so she cranes her neck, hopeful to stretch her shoulders and wake the nerves. As she does, her eyes fall on Camila momentarily.
Camila was still out in the passenger’s seat breathing softly. Her curly hair plastered to her forehead, smeared with blood and dust. She looked peaceful despite the clear evidence of a harsh night covering her skin and clothing. It reminded her of the time she’d spend with the young sister after the Vatican when she’d find Camila asleep at a research desk after a long day of training. She’d given up on rousing Camila to send her to bed after so many times, and just kept a blanket handy to drape over the girl’s shoulders. She wished she’d had that blanket with her now, a more concrete comfort she could offer her as she slept.
With renewed concern, stealing her highway-numbed mind from the task of driving, Mother Superion glances back in the rearview to check on Beatrice via her other warriors in the back monitoring her, conducting treatment as best they could. She needed a hospital. Quickly, but none of these here would be good, none able to provide the level of care Jillian could at Arq-Tech. Beatrice needed that level of care and they were still hours away, their only option was to let Lilith rest enough to get Beatrice and Camila back at the very least.
Mother Superion couldn’t see her girls behind her where they were still leaning against the back of her chair. It was the quiet, the lack of Ava’s rambling and terrible jokes and Lilith’s lack of annoyed rebuttal that clued her into their current state of consciousness. The two had become close in a way that surprised pretty much everyone after their tumultuous past. And here they were cuddled up, holding each other unconscious in the back of this van.
A bump in the road jostled the group in the back, the two sister warriors scrambling to hold Beatrice’s board to make sure she didn’t slide anywhere. Kiva whimpered, readjusting his head where it lay on Beatrice’s leg. Lilith startled awake with a spar inhale through her nose, stiffening below the weight of someone resting on her chest. Lilith felt herself relax as she gathered her bearings, looking down to check on Ava, who was undisturbed in her arms. She always did sleep like she was dead.
“How long have I been out?” Her voice raspy as shifts against the back of the driver’s seat sitting up a little further to get more comfortable.
“Thirty minutes or so. How are you feeling?” They needed to get Beatrice to Arq-Tech but Suzanne didn’t want to push her too quickly. The updates she’d been getting from Camila throughout the night and the very short debrief she’d received when she’d finally gotten to them worrying her quite a bit for Lilith and Ava, special abilities or no.
“Is Beatrice stable enough to transport?” She looks to the nameless sister warriors checking over Beatrice, they both nod, trying to offer small smiles despite their otherwise severe expressions. “Mother, is Jillian ready for her?”
“She is.” She nods, knowing Lilith couldn’t see her anyway. She’d spoken to Jillian at length. Passing the phone back to her Warriors in the back for a more technical update. When she got the phone back she was ensured that they would be standing by to administer the care Beatrice needed. Reassured her friend that they were going to do everything they could for the young woman they both cared deeply about.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” Lilith shifts sitting up as she cradles the sleeping woman to her chest, careful not to disturb her. She would give her sister as much peace as she could for the time being. “Beatrice needs - why didn’t you wake me?”
“You needed rest. Lilith you were in no condition to teleport yourself let alone you and your sister.” Mother Superion twists in the driver's seat to look in the back of the van as best she could. She’d known Lilith the longest out of all the remaining members of the OCS. They had been close once. As much as she had allowed herself to get to anyone after the Halo had rejected her.
When she first became the Mother Superion she didn’t allow herself to see the women in the order as her daughters. They were hardly her sister’s anymore either. She felt outside of that. She felt like she had to or the shame would kill her. She’d been hard and harsh pushing Lilith to her limits, all of them really, but it had been to protect them. To make them ready. At least that’s what she told herself as she watched as she became colder and colder toward the women she’d once called sisters. She hated it. Hated herself for it. But it felt like all she could do was just watch it happen. Like she was out of control.
Before that, there had been Shannon - who was so young when she’d first joined the order, so much like Beatrice. They had been close and Suzanne had taken her under her wing. Scooped her into her team after she’d finished training. Then she watched as everything changed after that mission. How Shannon grew into the Warrior Nun and was excellent at it, truly excellent. Those in between them weren’t slouches by any means but when Shannon had been accepted by the halo, it stirred pride in her she didn’t know she was capable of still feeling.
Even as she watched Shannon train to accept the halo in case she ever received it, from the second her name had made the list. She watched her build her own team. Her own little family. She’d watched as she got close to the pariah of the convent, the one who didn’t wind up taking vows. She knew there was something there. Had warned Shannon about it in a way that went across… the drop she saw across her face… it left her mouth bitter with regret.
She watched as Shannon took Lilith and her legacy into her team without prompting from anyone above her. Lilith was young too. Young and eager to climb the ladder. Desperate. She was desperate, not eager. Maybe both. But Shannon had taken her in all the same. Giving Lilith a place in a team with her and Mary, helped her be more than just a girl trying to live up to an impossible family legacy. And in that Suzanne had let Lilith grow on her, the scared lonely girl behind the capable woman warrior. That was the same girl she had in the back of this van.
“I’m ready now.” She shifted again, laying Ava down as she made herself ready to move and grab the board. “You should have woken me sooner. I’ll go now. Take her first. Then Camila.”
Ava stirs after the van hits another pothole jerking upright, only prevented from kicking Beatrice’s side by Lilith’s hand quickly reaching out to catch their momentum. “Lilith? Wha- What’s going on?”
“Trying to get your girlfriend back to Arq-Tech.” She mutters as Ava slides back against Mother Superion’s seat shaking the last bits of confusion from her head. Literally. If Lilith wasn’t so preoccupied with the fact that Beatrice has yet to get to medical attention she’d make a joke about it.
She rubbed rough at her eyes trying to blink the sleep from them with a yawn. “Are you good to do that?”
“Ava, I will not fail her. Not again.” The two hold eye contact for several seconds in a wordless conversation. Ava’s eyes darting over Liliths features, watching as the part-demon clenched her jaw, an expression she’d seen several times since her return. Lilith was determined to make up for what she’d done, what she’d allowed herself to become. “I wouldn’t put her in danger.”
“I know. Go. Ki, sits .” The Dutchie pulls his chin from Beatrice’s leg and his paws back from the board sitting slowly. The second he was free from the board Lilith turned her head to look over her shoulder and give Ava a curt nod before she was gone.
Kiva whined looking around the back of the van for his mom, getting to his feet he stumbles as the car turns. Ava catches his body against her soothing a hand through his fur, “Shhh, Ki. Lilith has her.” Ava’s foot nervously tapping against the wall of the van as she pulls him further into her. “Buddy, we gotta get you cleaned up. You’re filthy.” Nevertheless, she tucks her nose into his fur, fisting her hand on his good shoulder.
Ava can’t help but chuckle when he lets out a small offended arou , followed by a huff as he puts his paw on Ava’s shoulder. “Yeah, yeah fine. I guess I am too.”
The air hums with static as pulling her attention, “Talking to dogs now?”
“Dogs and demons apparently.” Yeah, moments ago when Mother Superion had been reminiscing about the bickering… She took it back. How two of her most skilled warriors continued to reduce themselves to squabbling children at any given opportunity baffled her. “Bea?”
“They’re taking her straight to surgery.” Ava tucks her face back into Kiva’s fur letting out a shaky breath, her tears getting caught in that dusty fur. “Mother, I’m ok to take Camila back as well. Would you pull over?”
The van finds the shoulder of the road swiftly but smoothly as Mother Superion pulls to the side. Lilith. She heads to the back opening the rear doors allowing Lilith to jump down from it. Stretching as she walks to the passenger side. She pulls the door open roughly in a hurry but in stark contrast to her actions seconds ago leans over Camila, gently shaking her shoulder with one hand while the other unclips the seatbelt with care. “Camila, Camila, wake up.”
“Huh?” the smaller sister rolls her head against the headrest to look over at Lilith still confused. As she tries to sit up, Lilith finds herself stopping her from doing so as soon as she sees the wince twitch across Camila’s face. “Lil?”
“Hey.” Lilith brushes those curls back from her forehead doing her best to give Camila a welcoming smile. “Hey, I’m going to take you back to Arq-Tech now. Is it ok if I pick you up?”
Her head lolls more into Lilith’s hand as she nods into the part-demon’s palm. “Yeah.”
“Alright.” Lilith sides her arms between the seat and Camila lifting gently. The young nun wraps her arm around the back of Lilith’s neck, as she lets her head drop loosely into Lilith’s shoulder. She lets out a quiet whimper as Lilith shifts her to get a better grip stepping away from the van. “I’m sorry. I know it hurts. Ready, Camila?”
When she feels the nod against her shoulder Lilith takes a deep breath before she disappears leaving Kiva with Ava in the back of the van with mother Superion looking at them from the rear doors. “Ava-” She was cut off by Lilith appearing next to her. Jumping a little at the rapid materialization of her warrior at her side. She didn’t know if she would ever get used to that.
“Ava-” Lilith repeated, needling one leg in the back of the van holding her arms open for Kiva. “Let me take him back.” Both women watch as the Warrior Nun hugs him just a little tighter. Lilith crawled into the van reaching out to wrap gentle fingers around Ava’s forearm. Kiva lifts his head off Ava’s shoulder turning his attention to Lilith pausing to lick at the back of her hand. “Hey sweet boy. Come with me.”
That got Ava lifting her face from Kiva’s shoulder, her arms relaxing around him. “Sweet boy?”
“Shut up.” Ava grinned at that, especially at the blush tinting the skin still visible at the tips of Lilith’s ears. It took every ounce of self restraint Lilith had not to comment on the tears Ava was wiping from her cheeks and how she was wiping with her sleeve at the snot she was trying to sniffle back into her nose. “I’ve got him.” She circles her hands back to herself motioning again for him to come with her. For Ava to let him.
“OK.” Kiva licks Ava’s face as she lets go of him. “Ki, go with Lilith.” He licks at her face again but makes no move toward his friend. “Go. I’m ok.” He huffed again, spraying her with some of the wetness from his nose.
“Gross, Ki. Come on.” Ava wipes at her face again pushing with her other hand to get him to step toward Lilith. “Go. Please.” Much to Ava’s relief he does follow her instructions and lets Lilth pick him up. Ava slides to the back of the van watching Kiva and Lilith disappear as her feet hit the ground.
“You are a bad liar.” Mother Superion sits next to her in the back of the van. She reaches out to drop a hand to Ava’s thigh giving it a squeeze. “Not even Brother Kiva believed you.” She offered a warm smile as she ducked her head into Ava’s line of sight.
Keep Reading
#The return to arq-tech#everyone is exausted#lilith is doing her best#ava is hardly holding it together#kiva is the best boy#mother superion being mom
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(Please read before sending any asks)
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> Oh finally I've reached you, listen I don't have much time so I'll keep this brief but I need to explain things to you.
> Firstly I should let you know that this story is plot based, every choice you make matters and will impact the story, depending on your choices you can make a major change or a minor change. Remember silence sometimes may be the best option possible.
> Major changes will have this icon:
> Minor changes will have this icon:
> Once you get an ending, should you want to change the outcome, I've set up these things called Loading Points which you can go back to when your connection is terminated [reset]. They should have this icon:
> However, these are far and few between so try not to get your connection terminated, oh that reminds me of something I forgot to mention but should the captain die, your connection will be immediately terminated.
> You can use your anon magic in this world with some exceptions and you can bring in Osserva anons [alien birds as your ocs] however I won't allow them to be overpowered or have special powers [some powers may be allowed]. You are not the god of this world so don't act like it.
> Now let me explain how this universe works, both Ghost Ship and May the best yandere win [MTBYW for short] are set in the same universe with only a few years having passed between the two stories and this story, in particular, is a set a few months after Ghost Ship's story ended.
> This brings me to my next explanation but should you want to try to save a character from death, you can teleport them to the captain however keep in mind it's not a good idea to spam this teleport button as you can only use this twice per character and it lasts for only 10 asks before the character is teleport back to where they were.
> You can also teleport characters from MTBYW which may help give insight to certain characters but using this at the wrong time may lead to some disastrous results.
> [I don't mind people shipping my character as long as it's not Merlo/Squinty as that is a canonical child and it's just kind of weird]
> [Don't repost my work]
> And- Oh it appears that my boss is calling me, I'll just sign off now, we might see each other again, maybe not, it all depends on your choices after all but just remember the name ARG-02, it might come in handy later but all I can say for now is good-luck and remember don't kill the captain.
<User has disconnected>
I have this story written 15 story posts ahead of time and it’s mainly plot based however you can ask the characters stuff and they will respond however there would be at least one or two ask breaks per route but currently there are currently 4 routes but that can be subject to change later. My scheduling for posts should be every 2nd Wednesdays/Thursdays so I can have time to post MTBYW’s story, draw stuff unrelated to this ask-blog and answering asks related to me and don't progress the story throughout the weeks.
Another thing I should mention is that besides asks related to me, I’ll be mostly using my character ARG-02 as the narrator which is represented with a ‘>’ before each paragraph/sentence but if for me just talking out of character in one of those sentences I’ll be representing it with my dialogue being inside one of these ‘[]’ for better readability.
Just adding another thing here but basically theres a friendship system where you can befriend any of the characters or make them your enemy which influence a lot of the routes and how they go however be careful in making sure its not to high or low. The max is 20 however if you have a certain character at level 20 it can result in a bad ending in a route. The min is -19 as besides one character who will give you a bad ending if you are at -20, any character at level -20 will instantly kill the captain or smash ARG-03's monitor which causes an instant game over except in one instance where it is another way to start a slightly hard to get route.
How the routes, polls and asks work on this blog:
Routes:
So far there are 4 main routes which split off into multiple different ending however these are technically a predetermined path however dialogue, how you access the route, dynamics and character interactions change depending on the asks so no ending will ever be the exact same. Also, after some time, you will be locked into one of the routes depending on your choices but it’s not always the exact same way to a route, there’s alternate ways which may affect certain endings.
Polls:
For a majority of the polls use in this blog, most of them are for major changes or minor changes which affect the story. If the poll ties, I will basically vote on which I would pick and that will be the one which is selected. For the major changes polls, I will put a disclaimer before the poll.
Asks:
Asks are separated into two different sections which I call ask break asks and story asks.
Story asks as expected are the asks which effect/progress the story and are the ones which are posted during my usual scheduling regardless of when they were asked however I’m slightly stricter on what is asked (i.e., you can’t turn the characters into food when they are monologuing). You can also still use M!A, teleporting and summoning for story asks as well, in fact M!A & teleporting is required for one of the routes.
Ask break asks on the other hand are the asks which don’t effect/progress the story but allow you to ask whatever questions you want to the characters, use M!A, summoning your ocs as observas and teleporting any of my other character (if it’s the one which is required to start one of the routes then it will be sidelined until the ask break has ended). Ask break asks to happen during well you guessed it, an ask break (all posts in that ask break are tagged as such). Ask Breaks last for around 15-20 asks (excluding M!A) or until the next story post.
I highly recommend reading Ghost Ship before continuing
I also recommend reading MTBYW for some context on some of the characters
For the people who don’t want to read an almost 25,000-word story here’s a summary of Ghost Ship:
"Ghost Ship" is a captivating science-fiction novel that takes readers on an epic adventure through space. The story follows Captain William Miller and his AI companion ARG-05 as they navigate dangerous situations, confront powerful enemies, and encounter strange creatures and alien cultures.
The story begins with the Captain's spaceship crashing on an alien planet and being taken into custody by the locals. Along the way, he meets several characters, including Bengino and Serafina, who help him escape. The Captain and ARG-05 arrive in Crowehurst, where they meet Avvoltoio and his children, Pavona and Merlo.
However, tensions arise when Merlo and Avvoltoio get into a fight, and Squinty, who is revealed to be Merlo's alter ego later on, threatens Avvoltoio during a family dinner. Later that night, Merlo goes missing, and the Captain has a dream about feeling guilty over the death of Sophia, the previous Captain of the ship. The Captain wakes up to find himself kidnapped by Squinty, who almost kills him. However, the Captain reveals that he knows Squinty's true identity, and Squinty lets him go.
The Captain discovers that Merlo has been taken by Oca and Tacchina, who is revealed later to be a robot controlled by ARG-04. The Captain, Bengino, Serafina, and the rest of the crew must band together to rescue Merlo and defeat ARG-04 and Sophia. Throughout the story, the Captain deals with the challenges of space travel and the danger of being stranded on alien planet.
In the end, the Captain and his crew succeed in defeating their enemies and return to Earth, with Kioko joining them. The story concludes with a hopeful outlook on their future adventures in space.
Records:
> Error code 404: data could not be found [need backup of ARG-05's files which can be found in the following routes: Vantablack route, Strychnine Route, Chronophobia route]
Loading Point Select:
> Loading Point 1: The Beginning
> Loading Point 2: Returning to Earth?
Current Route: Error code 404: data could not be found [need backup of ARG-05's files which can be found in the following routes: Vantablack route, Strychinine Route, Chronophobia route OR a friendship level of 15 or above with ARG-02 in any route]
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I have a mighty need to know what mods you installed on stardew :o
I'm gonna list only the actual mods I wanted to get, leaving out the ones needed to make said mods work in game.
Also, quick and due premise: I play 100% solo, just so the "judges & juries" may kinda rest their "OMG THATS CHEATING" tiddies with some of those mods.
That being said, currently I have the following mods installed. All can be found on "Nexus mods". This is gonna be quite a list, so I'm adding a break to trim the post down.
Also: no links. Wouldn't want Tumblr to think this post as some form of spam. 😅
(But I'm writing the mods' names as they are on that site, so if anyone is interested, they should also be very easy to dig out via the search bar.)
"No Cooties" + "Free Love" + "Platonic Partners and Friendships", all installed from what's an "aroace bundle" I stumbled upon while looking exactly for the thing. The forced relationships as they are set in the game have been quite a turn-off for me.
"(DGA) Sewing furniture set", its a DGA (Dynamic Game Assets) type of mod that allows players to have their own sewing machine at the farm. This same mod also comes with the dye pots to recolour your stuff. So yeah, no more need to plan a visit at Emily's! :D
(Just a fair warning: the dye pots are huge.)
"(DGA) Piano", another DGA mod. The creator remodelled a large couch into a piano, trying to make it similar to the one into Elliot's cabin. This mod is of the DGA kind because you can actually play it.
"Blahaj", it's exactly what you can expect it to be: the "Blahaj" shark from Ikea. 💖
"DGA Hanging pride banners", another DGA mod from the "aroace bundle" and with tons of LGBT+ pride flags to put on display on your own indoors.
"Starry night interface", a content pack (I refuse to use the abbreviation, just in case Tumblr-bot might detect and see it as that other abbreviation :°D) that changes the UI into the lilac-purple-pastel blue colours, plus some more aestethical changes in the way icons and portrait borders look.
"Flower dancing", a mod that makes your farmer finally wear "That Godforsaken Attire™". I think it also makes your farmer actually follow the dance moves a bit better.
Bonus point! You can tweak this mod's options to decide if your farmer is gonna wear the dress or the suit, regardless of their gender. 👀
"Seasonal cute characters", a mod that replaces every single NPC's portrait and in game sprite with a version of theirs whose clothes change with each season (and also event).
"Seasonal outfit revision - Elliott", it's installed-but-not-really. This mod's been created by a different author from the former, so that players could replace Elliott's portraits in "Seasonal cute characters" with these revised versions. The reason is that the original mod uses one of the early portrait versions for Elliott, while the "revision" replaces those portraits with the current Elliott.
Alas, it's lacking the "beach Elliott", so the only way to not have his babyface'd version while he's on Ginger Island would be to remove that specific asset.
"AT Telephone recolor", an AT (Alternative Texture) mod so I could finally stop to have only one, fugly red phone in mah haus (and on Ginger Island). :°)
"Map teleport", a very handy mod that (I presume) functions based on the in game totems, but with some extra perks. For starter: totems can teleport you only to a fixated location marked by a statue (or an obelisk). The map teleport will YEET you on any location pointed out by the map; all one has to do is open the map and click away.
On a side note: Idk if this is intentional or not, just know that you can also teleport your horsie. This has been happening to me every single time I would use this exploit while my farmer is still on the saddle. Which is twice as handy, especially to roam around Ginger Island. *cough!*
"Skull Cavern Elevator", a mod that works exactly like the elevator in the mines. No more, no less. Now I see how some players would share screen of their farmers at something like "skull cavern level 654786".
"Chests anywhere", yet another very useful mod that allows players to access and interact with any crafted chests, fish tank, and even shipping bins and fridges as if they were additional inventories, no matter where they are. I decided to install this mod because I was sick and tired of having all of my 36 backpack slots full while roaming either some volcano or the skull caverns. 😤
Bonus point for the mod offering an in menu-inventory option to rename all of the "chests" mentioned above.
"Vibrant pastoral", merely a reshade mod. Installed mostly because I'm trying not to go blind when it's winter time in Pelican Town (the overall white colour seems toned down). :°D
"Deepwoods mod", it's a mod that adds a fan-made explorable area accessible from the "Secret Woods". It's a nice, not-so-little place to explore, with different levels and enemies (mostly a green recolour of the ones found in the mines) and looks exactly what an unexplored woods would look like. You just gotta play to see it. 💖
On a side note: the author said that it's also complatible with other mods, like "SVE" (aka: Stardew Valley Expanded).
"Yet another jump mod", a mod that allows your farmer (and their horse) to actually jump. Quite handy to save some time by simply jumping over obstacles instead of going around them. 😈
"Item recovery", a mod that merely allows players to recover all the items they may have lost upon "dyingn't" in the mines/quarry/cavern/volcano, instead of just one. I have yet to "dien't" since installing this mod, so Idk if it actually works.
"Craftable auto-petter", because my dumdum bum never purchased a single one from Joja until I had the chance, and I read that the chance to find an auto-petter in alternative ways is quite slim. 😔
"Combat controls", simply a mod that make your farmer actually aim where they should: where your cursor is actually pointing at. I was sick & tired of getting my HELTH dangerously low only because the loser on screen was facing the wrong direction. 🙃💢
"Carry chests", simply a mod that lets you pick up and move around chests without needing to empty them completely first.
"Auto-grab truffles", a mod that implement an additional option for the "auto-grabber" already available in game, so that it can pick also truffles up. It's installed but I have yet to try it out in game, so Idk if it works as intended.
"Dynamic night time", a mod with a more "natural" shift between the light in different times of the day. It works like a charm even with the reshade.
#stardew valley#sdv#sharky's replies#anonymous#sharky's stunning skills at gaming#(wow. very skillz. much pro. 😂)
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29/03/23
When the portal first opened yesterday there was a massive mudslide that wiped out a nearby town and rescue options are underway as we speak.
Instead of closing the portal and teleporting in, we went directly through the portal and got to the Plane of Ooze in under an hour. We found ourselves on a small island of relatively solid ground, surrounded by marsh. We could see no sign of the mage that opened the portal, and had been hoping to track or apprehend them.
As we got through and the portal closed behind us, we heard a rumbling and felt the ground beneath us begin to shake. Later analysis by our mages showed that the portal had destabilized the region, but in the moment our main goal was not getting crushed. It took a lot of handy spellwork, but we managed to get to one of the giant, leafless trees in the swamp before the island sunk into oblivion.
One good bit of luck, we’ve found a strong energy signature nearby similar to the previous summoning stones. It may be a trap, but we’ve spent the last two days making slow, steady progress through the swamp towards it.
Cassidy
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WIP! 7 out of 10 episodes for Series 11 now have outlines for my Rewrite of the Thirteenth Doctor's run.
Some episodes like Demons of the Punjab are *relatively* unchanged whereas other episodes have been scrapped entirely.
Bye bye Witchfinders and Arachnids in the UK, you will not be missed! Instead completely original 'episode' will take their place.
I feel like adding an additional two episodes as well to bring the count up to 12 episodes. 10 just doesn't seem like a lot.
Oh and the episodes are getting rearranged, too on top of the other changes.
WIP:
Episode 1: Woman who fell to Earth (relatively unchanged, though I'm definitely making it so Grace lives and now with 90% more gender and pronoun Questioning) ends the same with the Fam all getting captured in the teleport field the Doctor cooked up out of spare appliances.
Episode 2: Rosa-- very different episode to both the original episode 2 and the original Rosa. Ryan-centric but also develops Yaz, Graham, and Thirteenth when they arrive in the past, separated from each other. The Fam are taken in under the wings of various, seperate activists or residents in the city, while the Doctor does battle with Time Traveling Racist who is out to murder Rosa Parks. The Fam are reunited in the end, each having learned valuable lessons about themselves and established their different characters, and the Doctor uses the repaired Time Travel Device (here on out TTD) reclaimed from the Time Traveling Racist to give them their newest and currently only option of traveling through space and time.
11x03 Kerblam! -- Still not quite decided on the placement of this. Might move it up to episode 6 after theyve all had individual-centric episodes to establish their (new) characterizations and the paths they're on. The Fam Jump into a new location, only for the Doctor to instantly receive a Kerblam package with a highly realistic body double inside that she ordered a couple of regenerations ago but forgot to stop in the appropriate time period to receive it.
The Fam are then promptly captured as "workers on unscheduled breaks" and frog marched "back to work" in the warehouse where they are forced first hand to experience the conditions of the 'workers' inside with no safety net, and are constantly being docked points and getting horrifically short breaks revoked for the simplest of things-- including speaking any kind of slang or using 'improper' Grammer or figures of speech, as the owner of the company has strict laws in place that *all* employees of the company must speak Stuffy Prim and Proper English Vernacular at all times which is why the Fam outside the Doctor can understand anyone at all with no TARDIS around to translate; the residents have all been forced to speak English!
(is this a commentary about capitalism and imperialism going hand in hand as well as being a handy writing tool to get around the lack of universal translator? You bet it is!)
Won't spoil the plot changes past this here as at some point I'll be posting these to a03 as scripts so. Yeah it'll be fun and actually make fucking sense thematically. At the end everyone gets kitted out in proper space-time hitchhiking gear mixed and matched from mountain of returned merchandise and pick 1 fun/recreational device each.
Episode 4-- the Tauranga Conundrum -- now a Graham-cebtric episode focusing on his worries about his own health and also about unlearning a lot of his ableist worldviews and attitude (as established in original series 1. Because you know. Continuity), and starts him on his journey of properly not looking down on Ryan and to stop dismissing Ryan's struggles with his disability as Ryan simply 'not tying hard enough'. The 'cancer fears talk' is completely rewritten; now, Graham is instead having a heart to heart with either Ryan (as a sign of their closer relationship) or Yaz (because she's relatively impartial) and the Doctor comes in when Yaz/Ryan fumble their words to lead the conversation along when accidental miscommunication happens, and the conversation doesn't end until the Doctor had either scanned Graham with the sonic to assuage his fears in a new Jump location or brings him back to the hospital ship to be scanned if they haven't jumped yet, so he knows he's supported and not alone. None of this "The Doctor awkwardly shuffles away leaving a friend hurt, scared, and humiliated" like canon gave us 🙄
Episode 5 -- the Demons of the Punjab -- relatively unchanged other than obvious change in arrival and departure circumstances. Assassin aliens don't exist anymore. Yaz is learning about her family's history by fate instead of sneaking behind her grandmother's back.
Yaz talks with her younger grandmother and has lots of time for introspection about who she is and what her place in the world is as a cop, and confronting herself with the fact that if she were ordered to enforce something like this in 2018, she's not sure if she would have said 'no' before meeting the Doctor, and not being sure if she would have had the conviction and ideals to stand up to the authority commanding her, or if she would have gone along with the orders for the sake of 'doing her duty' as a police officer and maintaining the law, no matter how unjust. She's haunted by the fact she doesn't know the answer.
Episode 6 -- bye bye arachnids of the UK! this will now be an original episode, plot to be decided.
Episode 7-- bye bye Witchfinders! Same as above, will be an original episode.
Episode 9 ;- it takes you away. -- oh boy. Oh boy oh boy oh boy. Complete rewrite of the... Theme, but keeping the same settings and characters minus Mirror World and Frog God Solitract.
This is now a horror episode with some very nice catharsis at the end, and Hanne becomes a temporary new companion, since Erik had them living in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Going to be absolutely delightful to write the ending. When they leave, Teetee Dee is able to pick up the TARDIS's temporal signature with the new modifications the Doctor added from the 2030s tech now available in this episode.
Episode 10-- The Ghost Monument -- This is it! It's been so long since the Doctor and the TARDIS were seperated, it's been such a long, arduous, character-developing journey, but finally, the Fam (plus Hanne) has found where the TARDIS is location: to get there though, they have to enter and win a contest. After an entire season to develop their skills and teamwork bond, the Fam is ready for the challenge, and through blood sweat and tears they all work together to win the obstacle course race, utilizing all of the skills they've learned along the way, until finally.... They've done it. They've won, they've found the TARDIS. They can go home.
And of course, that's the first thing they do, after bringing Hanne to relatives in her native year of 2030. They go home, to 2018, and they reunite with their families, they reunite with friends, they refamiliarize themselves with their homes, their rooms, and the now- beloved town of Sheffield they called Home.
Yaz resigns as a police officer effective immediately.
Ryan uploads a new vlog talking about his new perspective of the world and the journey he's been on without going into too many details (....yet!) Much to the confusion of his few viewers when his last upload was yesterday but he's acting like it's been months.
Graham, while hanging out with his friends, starts confronting them when they make what he formerly thought were 'harmless jokes' and gets at least a few of them to ponder their words a bit deeper in the future.
Then they each, individually, over the course of a few days, take stock of themselves and realize they don't want to stay in one place, they don't want their time with the Doctor and the others to end, not yet.
So they each individually pack their bags, say some odd farewells, and one by one they all show up to the TARDIS with backpacks or suitcases or duffle bags.
The Doctor welcomes them with open arms and they all step into the TARDIS for their first, proper adventure together. And this time it's all their own choice.
#bold text#doctor who#Walks rewrites 13who#Thirteenth Doctor Rewrite#AU#Walks talks#dw#thirteenth doctor
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My standing assumption is that all the vaults can be reached from the Underworld, and Salem's is almost certainly that Shade and Beacon are out of the surviving heroes' reach. I also believe that, hm, okay… Narrative parallels, right? The first time the main gang split up, it was involuntary, with no communication between parties and they were separated for months. The second time, they stumbled through missteps, but mostly regrouped.
It's time for them to all step up as adults, to make plans unconstrained by the presence or actions of older authority figures. The best option I can see involves splitting up to take advantage of the back doors they might gain, and all three remaining vaults have advantages.
First, they ought to get at least one relic to hinder Salem's own final play, but everyone in the mortal realm will be rushing for Shade. Ruby and co. are smart enough to know that, and they can't open that door without its Maiden, regardless. That puts the Sword of Destruction at a lower priority, than the Crown of Choice.
Lack of knowledge has crippled the heroes more often than any lack of power, and it was gaining a huge chunk of information that fueled their strongest advancement. No victory in power, might, destruction etc. Beacon might be overrun, but its vault is still hidden and locked — assuming there even is a vault. (Maybe it's possible to retrieve the Crown and return to the Underworld; or it's a one way trip but they learn how to confront the wyvern; or it's a one way trip but they have a teleporting semblance handy).
Then there's Haven, which has an open vault door, an entire peace corps, and air fleet, already on high alert. Which would be a handy thing to have if dealing with an entire city-worth of refugees. Either someone would need to go over there and tell them, before playing catch-up across two continents — assuming one way portals to vaults — or the entire group could exit. Because victory is in communication, alliance and cooperation.
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Minecraft Commands List: all the Best Cheats
Minecraft commands list: the most effective cheats
Customize the sandbox according to your preferences with this list of most useful Minecraft commands to be aware of.
- The Best Commands - Commands List - How to Make Use of
There's no excuse to not use Minecraft commands and cheats to customize your experience just how you like it. You should have a sandbox to play in. If you want an enchanted sword on your wall, or you need creepers to stop straying through the woods and exploding into the treehouse you're building, or someone on your server was a bit far from their spawn and requires an easy way to return home-Minecraft commands can help.
Like everything else in Minecraft it's now much easier to use commands in the most recent versions. Instead of searching for item ID tables or lists of enchanting items the game will helpfully give you a list of options as you type.
We've collected some of the commands that you're likely to use the most up at the top in the most effective Minecraft commands section. Think about teleporting yourself to another location, adding experience points, or giving yourself an item you just cannot find out in the wild. There are more commands than we have listed here including a bunch of specific game rules setting adjustments. This list contains all the commands that you are most likely to use.
Best Minecraft commands
Add levels and add experience
/experience add @ s 10 levels
This will give you 10 levels, a handy shortcut to amazing items. You can also use /experience add @s 10 points to give only a certain number of xp instead of full levels. Try other targets with @ to provide levels or experience to another player.
Teleport command
/teleport
Or
/tp
You can execute this command as /tp x y z with a set of coordinates that will get you to wherever you want or use shorthand targets to teleport mobs or other players to you.
Give item command
/give @s minecraft:diamond 10
This will give you 10 gems. However the "give" command can be used with various items and amounts. Be aware of the autofill options. You can give yourself any item, from a diamond sword to an enderpearl or a saddle.
Change difficulty
Peaceful and difficult
Changes the difficulty settings of your world. You can also change it to easy, hard, or normal. You can choose peaceful mode if you prefer mobs not to attack you.
Change the game mode
Gamemode creative
Separate from difficulty, this alters your game's play mode. You can also set it as the following: adventure, spectator, survival. If you're interested in learning how to fly in Minecraft double jump when you are in creative mode.
Keep inventory when you die
KeepInventory true
KeepInventory set to "true" will ensure that your inventory does not fall to the ground when you die. Instead, you will come back with your entire inventory. Using /gamerule keepInventory false will reset to the default setting.
No fall damage
/gamerule false fallDamage
Like it is, you can turn off fall damage to ensure that you don't lose heart when falling from heights. To restore normalcy you can make this rule "true".
Stop mobs from causing grief
/gamerule mobGriefing false
Turning off mob griefing means that enemies such as creepers and ghasts will not be able to destroy blocks. It will also stop endermen from snatching blocks and dragging them off. If you're experiencing Ghasts that explode in your Nether builds here's how to make them cut it out. They'll still be able to to shoot you with their arrows but they won't blow up the entire netherrack.
Time to make a change
/time set day
This will change the current time to morning. You can also set the timer's timer to "night" by using numbers between 0-24000. In the previous example, 0 represents sunrise, and 13000 sunset.
Minecraft command targets
These codes are shorthand codes that will make it easier to type in different names for players. These are worth memorizing so you don't have to type in names like "Sniper_Kitty_Bruv_91" every time some jobber joins your game.
@p - The player that is closest to you
- @r - an unidentified player
- @a - all players
- @e - all entities in the world.
@s - you
List of Minecraft commands
How to use Minecraft commands
How do I turn off cheats in Minecraft
These commands can be used whenever you play Minecraft. Some require you to enable cheats. This can be done when you create your first world. You can either select "Allow cheats: On" in the world creation menu, or select Creative Mode, which allows cheats to be activated automatically.
How to make use of Minecraft commands
Fallout 4 cheats Nuclear codes Minecraft commands Unblocked RDR2 cheats Most wanted GTA 5 cheats: Call it in Sims 4 cheats: Life hacks Ark cheats: Expedited evolution
To open the Minecraft command-line, press "T", where you can use any of these cheats. You can also use the / key to open the command box, adding the / at the end of each one already provided for you.
Minecraft is now attempting to autocomplete many of these commands for you. So pay attention to the choices! You can either type one of the suggestions, or use your Arrow keys to select one from the list above your chat box. Then, use the "tab" key to insert it.
Some commands like /locate will help by suggesting options to help you put together a long command like "/locate biome minecraftsunflower_plains" that you likely won't have memorized. This makes commands such as "/gamemode" and "/difficulty" easier to fire off quickly.
Xszxedu
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Here's another post explaining the process of my last VFX. This teleport effect is abstract enough to be used in various cases, like the blue effect one looks like a waterdrop effect, kind of. So you can be quite creative with it.
I won't detail the whole process of the VFX, because I simply followed a Youtube tutorial by Grabriel Aguiar Prod. :"Unity 5 - Game Effects VFX - Teleport & Spawn"
You can check that if you're interested, and check his other videos on VFX. He uses the Particule System to do this, while I opted for the VFX graph. I chose this option because I like to set properties with the VFX graph and edit their values via script. Which is what I'm going to detail today.
I made this effect for the teleporter to exit a dungeon in my game. The effect will display differently depending on the situation:
- Nothing on the teleporter (Inactive)
- Player on the teleporter (Active)
- Player using the teleporter (Using)
These 3 states led me to define a state machine to play different animations.
The script switch states when Player enters/exits the trigger and when players press the button to use the teleporter.
An ExitState class only contains data that will be changed in the VFX and the Light2D object attached to the teleporter. I guess I could have used a struct here since I only have data but anyway 🤔
The only issue is that if I update directly the VFX with my states data, the animation won't be smooth. So I made some scripting to change some values gradually.
This was also the opportunity to use local functions. It's pretty handy here since I want some organization within my function, without polluting the whole class with functions that only serves the UpdateState.
I still put 2 functions outside of it to manage which values will change without/with transitions. If I want to change that in the future, I don't want to open the massive UpdateState function haha
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