Butterfly TT 0.006 fv - B/O:
M9 Doppler P2 0.009fv - B/o:
Bayonet Marble Fade 0.01fv 40 arcs
SS:https://s1.cs.money/52ecb836727b427c45940aee2b8255f8\_image.jpg
Bayonet Doppler P2 Sattrak B/O:40 arcs
SS:https://s1.cs.money/8a79ec2caccd9b691e1dc1230edc3d43\_image.jpg
Shadow Daggers Sapphire - B/O:30arcs
SS:https://s1.cs.money/b9a5ef83eee90bd14b2024b5a3ed0274\_image.jpg
Survival Fade FULL Fade B/O:
Flip DOppler P1 0.008fv B/O:
Gloves Overprint FT 0.28fv
Gloves Imperial Plaid 0.28fv B/O:
Gloves Big Game 0.25FV - B/O:
M4 Blood tiger FT ST x4 kato14 4 arcs
Desert Printstream ST 0.16fv - B/O:6arcs
SS:https://s1.cs.money/b5V78Xf\_image.jpg
USP Kill Confirmed MW ST 0.10fv - B/O:12arcs
SS:https://s1.cs.money/VipoMtD\_image.jpg
Ak Panthera Onca WW - B/O: 10arcs
M4 Bright Water MW with ibp, titan and coL kato14 - B/O: 8 arcs
SS:https://s1.cs.money/HyechQ2\_image.jpg
Ak redline x4 ibp dreamhack B/O: 7 arcs
SS: https://s1.cs.money/2WM8t5y\_image.jpg
Awp redline ft col kato14 on scope - B/O: 3 arcs
SS: https://s1.cs.money/B1xsn7Q\_image.jpg
Ak redline ft col kato14 on wood - B/O: 3 arcs
SS: https://3d.cs.money/?q=v4lxtqr
TRADE LINK: https://steamcommunity.com/tradeoffenew/?partner=223889051&token=YMSg12D9

First of all, this game is overall good. It's not perfect, but for a new release it's better than other in the genre. However, people could point out many glaring issues. Aside from all that, I think the game will quickly lose audience due to this one thing:
We are a couple days after release. People are trying to enjoy their favorite spec. Hell, some even have either spent hours trying to figure out their spec, or others have literally SPENT hours playing said spec and getting all the right legendaries etc.
Now, 1 day after release, blizzard hard destroys the build.
It's great that they want to be proactive. That's a change for once. But instead of nuking a build to the ground by completely destroying the quality of life, they could have opted to focus on numbers. The issue here is that you cant enjoy a spec, invest hours and hours and hours in to farming the right gear, only for blizzard to demolish the playability of the spec instead of tuning the numbers. This is a big f**k you right in your face.
I played ww barb, and the nerfs were 100 % justified. However, I was unlucky and played to lvl 66 before I got shout cd. Before that the game was miserable. Now we adapted and the spec is still playable and still pumping hard. But the way they are handling their game they might choose to destroy the spec tomorrow, so you might be fuckt if you are lvl 87.
Now ive read they've done it to rogue twisted blades. I don't know how this spec plays, but I read that they again nerfed the quality of life for the spec. So not only are they destroying the way a class was played, the player has spent hours and hours and now his build is deemed useless out of the blue. And they do it midway in a season.
Imagine these people at blizzard making these decisions. I'm sitting here and could easily come up with 10000 times better solutions, instead a company of hundreds choose a solution that actively ruins your entire experience of the game.
Was there ever a game that decided to actually buff useless specs? Or do clever nerfs? It's okay to nerf a clearly OP spec, but destroying the integrity, the way the class plays, the quality of life, that has to be the worst possible solution. In a game where you dedicate hours to farms for ONE certain spec.

Figured I’d post something because I only got an email about it this morning even though it apparently opened on the 1st?
Registration fee is $107. You have to upload the trial test by the 12th to complete registration, but it’s a pretty quick process.
The body of the email (which has the specific instructions for registering):
Registration for the July 2023 laptop program is now open.
The registration period opened at 9:00 A.M. CST on 06/01/2023 and ends at 5:00 P.M. CST on 06/12/2023.
If you do not complete registration by the end of the registration period, Monday, June 12, 2023, at 5:00 P.M. CST, you will not be able to use your laptop for the Alabama Bar Exam.
(1) In order to use your laptop on the bar exam, you must do the following:
Log in to your user account page.
Click the yellow "ILG Exam360® Website" button to claim your ILG Exam360® user account or by our ILG Exam360® website https://alabama.ilgexam360.com
Click the yellow "Login" button in the upper right-hand corner and click the blue "Forgot Password" link at the bottom of the pop-up. Enter your email address used for your application with the Alabama State Bar and follow the steps for setting your password. NOTE: It may take up to five minutes for the Reset Account Password email to be delivered to your email address. Do not click the link more than once. If you do not receive the email contact technical support.
After setting your password, click the yellow "Login" button and enter your email address, in all lowercase letters, and your password.
On your ILG Exam360® user account page click the yellow "Register" button in Section 1 and complete the registration process. (2) Download and install ILG Exam360® software onto the laptop you will use for the Bar Exam.
In Section 2 click the yellow "Download" link and the software onto the laptop you will use for the Bar Exam. (3) Complete and upload the Trial Exam
Log into ILG Exam360® software
After you have installed ILG Exam360® onto the laptop you will use for the Bar Exam, click the ILG Exam360® (Applications folder for Mac / desktop icon for Windows).
Log into ILG Exam360® software, using the same login information you use to log into your ILG Exam360® user account.
Your email address must be entered in all lowercase letters.
Enter your ILG Exam360® user account password.
Select "Alabama"
Complete the first four boxes
Information - (Box 1) Read and affirm.
Before Exam Checklist - (Box 2) Read and affirm.
Start Trial Exam - (Box 3) The password to open the Trial Exam is: test123. You must complete the trial exam. NOTE: You may take the TRIAL Exam as many times as you would like prior to the day of the exam.
Upload Trial Exam - (box 4) After you complete the Trial Exam, you must upload the Trial Exam. NOTE: The uploaded answers will be available for you to review and print on your ILG Exam360® user account under Section 3. Each time you upload new Trial Exam Answers they will overwrite the previous answers. This is available to you so that the software can be used for bar preparation.
If you do not complete and upload the Trial Exam - by Monday, June 12, 2023, at 5:00 P.M. CST, you will not be able to use your laptop for the Alabama Bar Exam.
If you encounter any technical issues with your ILG Exam360® software, do not contact the Alabama State Bar, you should:
Submit a technical support ticket from the "My Account" tab in ILG Exam360® software, or
Submit a technical support ticket directly from your ILG Exam360® user account page, or
Call 833.ILG.SUPP (833.454.7877) Opt 1. Your ILG Exam360® user account page provides you with Help tabs that list Frequently Asked Questions and tutorial videos. It is your sole responsibility to review and make sure you understand those items.

I'm only looking for trade offers, not intrested in cash trading.

Check float, pattern and stickers before offering!
Prices may not always be up to date.
(Updated 006/07-23)
Steam Profile
Tradelink
Buff

Name	Ext.	Float value	Buyout
AWP | The Prince	BS	0.497	$2422.46
★ Butterfly Knife | Gamma Doppler (Phase 1)	FN	0.062	$1966.62
★ StatTrak™ Karambit | Tiger Tooth	FN	0.025	$1356.27
★ M9 Bayonet | Gamma Doppler (Phase 1)	FN	0.017	$1263.98
★ Stiletto Knife | Fade	FN	0.009	$967.79
★ Sport Gloves | Slingshot	FT	0.380	$866.17
★ Talon Knife | Case Hardened	MW	0.130	$625.04
★ StatTrak™ Bayonet | Crimson Web	MW	0.119	$597.01
★ Bayonet | Slaughter	MW	0.075	$568.64
★ Karambit | Rust Coat	BS	0.585	$561.89
M4A1-S | Icarus Fell	FN	0.039	$496.50
AK-47 | Vulcan	MW	0.121	$476.13
★ StatTrak™ Stiletto Knife		0.283	$467.71
★ Skeleton Knife | Night Stripe	WW	0.388	$403.02
★ Specialist Gloves | Fade	FT	0.379	$379.14
★ Ursus Knife | Crimson Web	FT	0.163	$351.04
★ Ursus Knife | Case Hardened	MW	0.111	$267.53
★ Specialist Gloves | Mogul	FT	0.378	$233.19
★ Ursus Knife | Case Hardened	FT	0.269	$216.04
★ Gut Knife | Tiger Tooth	FN	0.050	$198.07
★ Falchion Knife | Autotronic	FT	0.354	$190.34
★ Classic Knife | Blue Steel	FT	0.241	$189.61
★ Paracord Knife | Blue Steel	FT	0.231	$175.50
★ Paracord Knife | Blue Steel	FT	0.284	$175.50
★ Shadow Daggers | Lore	FT	0.345	$169.69
M4A1-S | Golden Coil	FN	0.068	$168.92
★ Flip Knife | Forest DDPAT	FT	0.377	$166.88
★ Nomad Knife | Safari Mesh	FT	0.358	$161.54
M4A1-S | Printstream	FT	0.247	$157.33
★ Classic Knife | Boreal Forest	FT	0.274	$149.88
★ Huntsman Knife | Stained	FT	0.341	$144.50
★ Paracord Knife | Night Stripe	FT	0.313	$136.68
★ Driver Gloves | Overtake	FT	0.153	$106.76
M4A1-S | Master Piece	WW	0.448	$95.23
★ Gut Knife | Boreal Forest	FT	0.152	$93.56
AWP | Asiimov	BS	0.508	$82.60
AWP | Containment Breach	FT	0.293	$82.46
StatTrak™ Dual Berettas | Cobra Strike	MW	0.147	$74.45
AK-47 | Head Shot	FT	0.165	$66.02
Desert Eagle | Printstream	MW	0.071	$64.83
USP-S | Printstream	FT	0.357	$57.52
USP-S | Printstream	FT	0.360	$57.52
★ Broken Fang Gloves | Needle Point	BS	0.719	$55.91
StatTrak™ AK-47 | The Empress	WW	0.447	$54.78
AK-47 | Asiimov	MW	0.128	$50.22
StatTrak™ Glock-18 | Water Elemental	FN	0.061	$49.16
StatTrak™ Glock-18 | Water Elemental	FN	0.026	$49.16
M4A1-S | Atomic Alloy	MW	0.098	$47.76
M4A1-S | Player Two	MW	0.145	$46.28
AK-47 | Nightwish	MW	0.124	$45.93
AWP | Duality	FN	0.025	$42.14
Cmdr. Davida 'Goggles' Fernandez | SEAL Frogman			$42.07

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FirstNext
Well, it only took Canada burning and the East Coast turning into smoky rendition of a Mexico filter for this chapter to finally reach completion. Regularly-scheduled programming should hopefully resume after July 4th. Until then, drink some water, don't do gender reveals in the forest, and hang in there, guys!
Pursuant to Imperial Decree 10928, and in recognition of the reservist nature of the unit, the 1st Rocket Artillery Regiment has been found to satisfy the standards outlined in the Decree. However, in light of the significant budget and nonmaterial resource allocations that were required to bring the aforementioned unit up to levels considered satisfactory by existing standards, additional considerations beyond readiness and training levels must be taken into account.
Throughout the appeals process, you have repeatedly indicated that you believe rocket artillery to still have a place on the modern battlefield, citing recent reports from the Terran Planetary District command of the Sol System sector, as well as early after-action reports from the Intervention on Raknos, which you claim to support your argument. However, further investigation into this claim by independent analysts on behalf of Armored Warfare Command has found it to hold no merit in light of the recent restructuring outlined in detail in prior communications. Simply put, neither the Empress, nor her advisors, believe that the maintenance and garrisoning of units intended strictly for low-intensity counter-insurgency operations remains doctrinally viable.
Additionally, the excessive monetary and nonmonetary resources you requested in preparation for the evaluation, in light of the on-par, verging on substandard performance of the 1st Rocket Artillery Regiment, even accounting for the large number of fresh troops that needed to be drawn down from other posts to fill out its ranks, is highly suggestive on the part of you, the honorable Ashira Rakishal. This discrepancy is of high importance, and you may rest assured that it has already been publicly filed by the time this letter appears in your inbox.
Such a discrepancy is indicative of either incompetence or corruption on your part. Commanding officers may face demotion or a possible dishonorable discharge for the former, or, for the latter, a fine totalling no more than one-and-a-half times the estimated sum of the damages assessed, guaranteed dishonorable discharge and a potential prison term of no more than four years. Due to there being no evidence to suggest the latter, the former approach has been suggested by the Armored Warfare Command. Effective fourteen (14) days after this order is signed, your rank will be reduced and you will be relieved of commanding the Regiment. You may be restationed at this time, and your government-issued devices may be deactivated to facilitate this restationing. The 1st Rocket Artillery Division, in accordance with Decree 10928, will be dissolved and its assets relocated to other units wherever possible. Any remaining property will be auctioned under section 12.57.3(g) of the Naval and Marine Surplus Handling Act of 651 at the Val’tira Central Forwarding Depot.
Ashira finished reading the letter, but the words meant nothing to her. She hadn't slept in half a week, if not longer, in anticipation of the results from her hearing. In fact, she'd hardly gotten up from her desk; the 1st RAR was on leave until the final verdict would be announced publicly, and it was all she could do but to refresh her inbox every few minutes and watch mindless clips in the background that she hardly heard and never managed to remember a word from.
She tried reading it again, but the letters seemed to float off the screen, each one wrapped in a halo of bluish white screen glow. Nothing made sense.
'We were found to be satisfactory, but then… why does it talk about my rank? Am I getting promoted? There was something about dishonorable discharges, too, so… are some of my girls getting let go? I guess I will have to break the news to them. And it said something about budget overruns… well, mom still owes me from when she forgot to get me anything for my eighteenth last month, so I guess she can pay them back for all the equipment and training I had to authorize…'
Her thoughts were already drifting off into a vague haze when her stomach made a low noise, reminding her of the fact that she hadn't eaten in hours, mostly because her supply of food had run dry. Almost in a trance, she rose from her desk and, almost on autopilot, set about getting ready to go out and do some shopping, as she always did. The floor of her living quarters was almost entirely hidden by weeks-old discarded packaging, mountains of dirty clothes, and bottles half-filled with liquid that was either expired juice or urine. Narrow paths snaked through the mess; one to the bathroom, one to her bed, and one more still to the door, which she now slowly shambled towards.
Ashira pulled a pair of battered combat boots over her bare feet - she'd run out of socks that didn't offend her senses some weeks prior - without bothering to lace them, shoved her wallet into the front pocket of the fireproof jumpsuit she wore with absolutely nothing underneath and hadn't changed out of all week, and shoved the door open to head out. Immediately, the smell - or, perhaps, a lack thereof - of the corridor hit her. All the sleeping quarters were locked. It was quiet. Though her boots were heavy, her footsteps barely made a noise as she plodded along the thick, purple and topaz-blue carpet that lined the floor.
The door to the lobby was propped open by a cleaner's cart, and a heavy perfume of chemical detergents wafted through the opening as she approached. In the lobby was a small, older Helkam male, with his long and, in places, graying hair tied back with a beige bandana that matched his civilian contractor's coveralls, just as his green noise-canceling headphones matched the company logo on his uniform. He was dutifully mopping the already nigh-spotless polished stone floor, and there was only a narrow dry strip connecting doorway to doorway.
“‘Scuse me,” she mumbled, tapping him on the shoulder to alert him to her presence. “Coming through.”
He flinched away from her touch, and she flinched away from him, as though his own shock was contagious. “The fuck, you touch me!?” He exclaimed, whipping around to face her, mop at the ready like a Turox-prod. His face burned a pale but furious violet, contorted with fear and a readiness to fight. But, just as suddenly as he’d come to face her, his expression became one of confusion. His mop dipped down, and they stood in silence for a split second that seemed to drag on for entire minutes. Then, he made an odd face, as if of disgust or contempt, and stepped aside, motioning for her to pass by him.
Ashira would have been puzzled by this, if only she were not so frazzled and caught up in her own thoughts. She stepped outside and was immediately hit by a cool breeze; it was night out, and the wind blew in just as it always did. Not that it bothered her much; over the previous months, she had found that it didn’t seem to affect her very much. The only reason she wasn’t feeling the full brunt of the evening gales was that the buildings around the officer’s quarters were mostly two- and three-story affairs, their height and old, weathered stone cladding the last specters of the prominence and prestige the base enjoyed in the long-before times. Before the Unification Wars were but a distant memory. Before the Periphery had become the final, unconquerable frontier. Before the Empress-damned mess that was Raknos. Before Rocket Artillery had become hopelessly obsolete.
The wind blew, relentless and steadfast, as she trudged towards the only place on-base that still had its lights on. The general store. She didn’t know what she wanted to buy there, nor if there would indeed be anything on the shelves that she’d want to buy, but she felt she had to try, anyway. The only rest she could get now was chemically-assisted, either through over-the-counter sleeping pills, or copious volumes of booze, or, when the going got particularly rough, a combination of both. She was vaguely aware of the damage she was probably inflicting upon her organs, but she figured that they were a worthy sacrifice. Still, some days she couldn't fall asleep, even boozed up and medicated as much as she would dare, so she would lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, hoping that the splitting headaches she would get from that chemical cocktail would make her ears ring loud enough to drown out her intrusive thoughts.
The store wasn't particularly warm when she entered, and it reeked of cigarette smoke and mildew as always. The nearest set of shelves to the door were stocked with bags of some sort of imported breaded meat snacks labeled Pufriyah - Ancestral Recipe, Modern Taste! across the top shelf and cases of Red Grains across the bottom, as if some long-forgotten planner had seen into the future and anticipated Ashira's shopping habits exactly. Without much thought, she pulled a case of the Reds off the bottom shelf, her back, which had been sore for months by then, crying out in pain that just barely cut through her apathy. She threw a few bags of the Pufriyah snacks on top of it, entirely indifferent to their name, slogan, and brown-furred chibi mascot that spoke to their Rakiri intended consumer base.
'It's all just carbs and protein at the end of the day,' she figured. It wasn't like she could taste much of them anyway, had she really cared to learn their flavor. It was close to a month prior that she'd caught a nasty cold, and her constant sleep deprivation and stress hadn't lent themselves to it clearing itself up on its own. Her senses of taste and smell were unnecessary to her whipping her unit into shape, she'd decided, once she learned that the antivirals she needed to take to make her symptoms clear up would need her to be on bed rest for three straight days. She could always take them later, anyway.
The bottles of Red Grain clanked against each other as Ashira heaved the case onto the checkout counter. The bags on top of it slid off, and she only just caught them in time. The noise awoke the lone cashier, another civilian contractor, from her nap atop her wobbly three-legged stool. She quite inelegantly hopped off of it and came to lean against the counter with one hand, the other lazily waving the scanner of a specialized Data-Slate over the merchandise.
"ID for the Reds," the cashier groggily slurred out, patting down her many pockets in search of a cigarette box. "Standard procedure, nothing personal against you."
Ashira stared at her, dumbfounded, for a few moments too many, before it hit her that she needed to pull up her Marine Profile on her Slate. Mumbling an apology mixed with an excuse, she reached into one of the few - albeit cavernously huge - pockets of her fireproof suit and produced the grimy government-issue device in question. The lock screen was set to her ID, just to make such common interactions go by quicker.
She pushed the Slate across the counter, expecting to get it slid back to her in a few moments, and maybe a manufactured smile and a nod if the cashier noticed the Rakishal House crest in the corner and realized she was of noble blood. But this time, none of that happened. The woman across from her frowned, squinting as she analyzed something about the ID, her face no more than perhaps a few centimeters from it. She looked up at Ashira, then back down at the ID, then back at her, and then all of a sudden her confusion melted into some odd mixture of shock and disgust. She wordlessly pushed the Slate back across the counter, scanned the case of Red Grain, and then motioned to a now very baffled and somewhat offended Ashira that she was free to leave.
In her sleep-deprived state, Ashira had barely the mental capacity to remember where the door was, much less to ponder the deeper meaning behind what had transpired. Vowing to come back the next day, after getting a good night's sleep, and get the insolent cashier fired, she trudged out of the shop, back to the officers' quarters, where the Helkam man was still toiling away in the lobby, now wiping down the Turox-leather seats, and into her own suite.
She brushed the most egregious of the trash from her bed, with the arm that wasn't clutching the spoils of her trek to her chest, and allowed gravity to gracelessly guide her into its soft, fitted-sheet embrace. With a sigh of barely-felt relief, she cracked the cap off her first bottle with her tusks and took a long, well-earned swig.
The next thing she knew, it was morning.
Everything hurt. Ashira's muscles all ached like she'd run every Deathshead Commando bootcamp course, back-to-back, without stopping. Her head felt like a bloated, rotten gourd, ready to burst at the slightest touch. Even though her eyes were closed, what little light made it through them felt as though it was piercing straight through her eyeballs and into her brain. However, through it all, she noted an odd, almost pleasant sensation that she hadn't felt in so long, she'd almost forgotten the word for it.
'Empress all-powerful, this must be the first time in almost a year that I've had a full night's sleep!'
Ashira would have kept laying there, exactly where she was. The room was quiet. No one needed her. Her unit was stood down for another few days. She could just stay in bed, in peace, and wait for the pain to subside. But the very second she considered that possibility, her bladder cried in agony, and she simultaneously came to the realizations that she would not be able to hold it in for even a minute longer, and that she was wearing her only set of relatively-clean clothes.
She pushed herself up and onto her feet, and that motion sent showers of sparks cascading through her vision, even as her eyes stayed firmly shut. Her ears rang from the pain as though she'd stuck her head between the prongs of a colossal tuning fork, her limbs felt numb as she stumbled through her room, and the only way she could tell up from down was from the direction gravity kept pulling her every time she lost her balance.
She hit the door frame to the bathroom by chance, only recognizing it as the right one by the light switch her elbow painfully caught. From there, she went entirely by feel. There was the sink, the towel rack, the soap dispenser, the shower door… and finally, having run out of wrong things to blindly grope around for, her hand bumped into the tank of the toilet. Even bending down made her head fill with the pounding beat of her heart, every pulse seeming to try and push her brain out of her skull through her eyes and ears. She nearly blacked out as she sat down.
The next thing Ashira knew, she was doubled over her sink, dry-heaving, her fireproof pants pulled back up around her waist but neither zipped shut nor clipped together at the front. She knew for certain that nothing had come up, because she was newly aware of the desiccated dryness in her mouth and throat, as if all her flesh had been replaced with fine-grit sandpaper. Still lacking the resolve to open her eyes, she blindly clawed at the knobs of the sink until water began to pour, and then began scooping handfuls of it into her mouth.
After a few gulps, she began to feel a bit better. Her mouth, though it still felt dry as ever, was at least now rid of the horrible, sour, metallic taste that she hadn't registered until it was gone, and the unintentional splashing of water onto her face did wonders in helping her start to truly wake up. The very next instant, though, a numbing pain spread across her hands and face, and down her throat. The water was freezing cold.
That didn't deter Ashira, though, and she kept drinking until she knew that she would not be able to swallow a drop more without throwing up. Her hands were numb from the frigid water, as was her face. Icy rivulets streamed down her chin and throat and under her unzipped collar, leaving cool, glistening trails across her breasts and stomach.
Somehow, this numbness that spread across her fingers and cheeks seemed to have carried over to her hangover, as well, though whether it was the rapid cooling, or the much-needed hydration, or both, she neither knew nor cared. Her head now hurt with the intensity of just any old headache, her skin did not feel two sizes too small for her organs, and her muscles and joints barely ached with any more intensity than they usually did.
She opened her eyes for the first time since she'd gotten out of bed, ready and eager to take full advantage of her hangover cure while its effects still lasted, and almost fell over as she stumbled away from the mirror in shock. The reflection in the mirror was decidedly not her.
Bloodshot eyes stared out at her from dark, sunken orbits; two craters on a puffy face rendered a waxy, pale bluish lilac by months of near-total involuntary isolation from the daylight. Raven hair framed that lifeless visage, once kept neat and short, now a wild, greasy, and, above all, long Seetcha's nest. It had once had lively sun-bleached streaks where her beret and headset did not fully cover it, from when she would ride head-out in her trusty command Ishtarti-603, but they were now mere faded tips spread unevenly through the carbon-black tangle.
The rest of her was not in much better shape. Her bust, though always on the fuller size, was nonetheless noticeably larger than it had been the last time Ashira had inspected her reflection, and doubtless was the cause of her incessant back pain. In the same moment, she became aware that her breasts rested not against the top of her six-pack - which, while rarely worked out and never particularly defined, had, in its mere presence, still been a point of quiet pride for her - but at the upper limits of a beer gut, whose faint outline was visible even under the baggy suit she was wearing for the umpteenth day in a row, and which stood as a testament to the inertia she had descended into while trying to force the RAR into motion.
'Fuck, there's the evidence of my battle. Mom was right, I do eat like a Turox before the slaughter. I have no self-control. Why do I even bother with this restructuring business if I can't even keep to my own damn fitness goals?' Her gloom, though deep and all-consuming while it weighed upon her soul, dissipated just as quickly as it set in. 'But I knew it would happen, so why does it surprise me? I knew going in that I was burning myself up in the present to keep future me warm. It's just a few kilos. A dozen at most. No big deal. Just need a bit more exercise for a month or two and I'll be right back in parade shape!'
It did, however, make her think to place an order with the on-base supply depot for some new clothes. With the Unification Day festivities looming, it would simply not do for this quite temporary distortion of her Noble figure to be so brazen, she firmly decided.
The order would have to wait, however. When Ashira brought out her government-issued Data-Slate from her front pocket in a familiar motion, already compiling a list of all the workout gear, field uniforms, and parade garb she would need in a size up, the device, in an apparent bout of unruliness, first resisted her efforts to turn it on, and when it was finally made to do so, simply boot-looped endlessly on the startup screen. For all intents and purposes, it was a Slate-shaped paperweight, and Ashira didn’t even have enough physical documents in her possession to make use of this one purpose it had left.
‘First my clothes, now the one Slate mom can’t track me on. What’s next, is my ID going to expire all of a sudden? Will my physical Chit card have a bad contact?’
There was only so much she could take at one time, so she decided to do the sensible thing and get something to eat before returning to dealing with her problems. She pulled out her Slate. It was almost noon.
'No one needs to see me like this. How can I command the regiment if they see me in such a state? I'll order breakfast - well, lunch now, but who's really counting? - and I can join everyone for dinner, once I get a chance to order in some new clothes, and shower, and maybe do something with my hair.'
With a practiced motion, so automatic it was almost a reflex, she swiped through the interface until she found what she was looking for. There, between Combatters forum sites, was a saved page for the Hungry Gal's order menu. Her chit was already saved in the system. All she needed was to tap on "Large Hot Meal #5 - Drink Combo" and…
CHIT DECLINED - PAYMENT BLOCKED
"That can't be right," Ashira muttered aloud as she tapped the button again, over and over, to the same effect. "It's a government card. Unless- ah, right, it must be the new policy they were talking about! Can't believe they made food expenses count as personal expenditure only, the nerve of these credit-pinching…"
She went into the payment details section of the page, switched the number to her personal one, and selected "Large Hot Meal #5 - Drink Combo" again. This time, a new message appeared.
INVALID ACCOUNT - DEACTIVATED
The gnawing hunger in her stomach disappeared in an instant, replaced by a solid iron bar of dread. Why was her account deactivated? Who could have done it? The only other person with access privileges was her own mother, and why would she…?
Ashira knew the answer. She didn't want to know it, to acknowledge that she knew it for fear of what it meant, but she did. With shaking hands, she opened the notification screen of her Slate, and saw she had unread messages from her family group chat. She tapped that notification, expecting a deluge of fury about her weight, her spending habits, her slovenly appearance in public, or any manner of other things, but there was but one message, sent earlier that morning. It was from her mother, indeed, but it was just four words long.
I got the letter.
She wanted to protest, to scream, "What letter could you possibly mean?," but she couldn't. A memory, hazy from the fog of insomnia that had dulled her thoughts at the time, played against her volition in her mind. The words hadn't made sense to her then, but they did now. Robotically, she closed the message from her mother and searched through her inbox for one marked with a government seal. She opened it, and read it in silence. The last few lines were the hardest to read, because by then the tears had begun to well up in her eyes.
It was over. Her career, her noble status, her finances, her life as she knew it… they were all gone, and it had taken just one letter to send it all crashing down.

This little piece I wrote because I have zero mental energy to write something I care too much aobut the format and quality, and i've been wanting to have a look at this topic for a while.
Don't expect a lot of quality, but here have a thing.
---
[This video is shown in its raw form for purposes of transparency of the procedures. For the edited version please visit the Emergency Services Guild public-facing site]
[Content Warning: This video contains images of both stampedes and wartime stampede incidents of the following situations: Human First Contact, Operation Blindside, Sillis Occupation, Kolshian Scouting of Venlil Prime]
[This video will be subtitled instead of utilizing audio translation]
The camera’s view is completely obscured by a grey mass “I think it’s running, can you check it for me?” says a deep bassy voice of a human.
“Yes, i’m getting the audio and a very good closeup for your shirt” the voice of a venlil sounds hoarse
The grey mass recedes and the room becomes visible. A large naturally-lit room of plain appearance, there is a long table set in the center of it surrounded by chairs, the table itself is clearly designed with a holographic projector and at the far end of the room there is a large display.
There are seven people present, three humans dressed in grey outfits with red highlights, each one of them with a different insignia emblazoned on their breast but all three of them have similar themes, a helmet, an axe and a ladder is present on all three designs. Four venlil represent, two with sashes of office with the white with red stripe color and the exterminator’s pyre-and-shield insignia and two with armbands with the red pawprint.
“Alright, before we start the actual meeting, can I ask why are they here?” says one of the humans, well-built and with a lighter complexion, pointing at the two venlil with sashes.
“Because it’s part of our job? Because we’re involved?” says the one with greyish wool and dark spots
“I’m sorry if i’m skeptical why an exterminator is in a meeting involving public safety and stampede response”
“Because” the venlil’s voice becomes louder “It’s our job. And I’m already brahking tired of this whole act. I’ve heard every variation of ‘you shouldn’t be the ones doing this’ you can imagine. Every human I’ve met has said this, multiple times” he slams his fists on the table
“And I brahking agree, look!” he points at one of the venlil with the armbands “Our jobs literally overlap, why do we even HAVE this overlap? What could the exterminator’s guild do in a stampede that the emergency services guild couldn’t? Why is it that any job that requires you to have the slightest bit of tail to do it they drop on us? I don’t brahking know!” he’s taking deep breaths “So… Why don’t we skip this part and just get to the meeting?”
The humans are taken aback, while it seems like the venlil were quite unfazed at the sudden energetic outburst in a strange reversal of the usual reactions. “Not… Quite what I was expecting” that first human adds “Alright, I’ll keep my thoughts to myself for now”
With that, the human that had been adjusting the camera sits down and the arrangement of seating is visible clearly: The four venlil are on one side of the table while the three humans are on the other. One of the venlil with the armbands speaks up “We are gathered at this moment for a presentation of the United Nations’ Extraplanetary Emergency Response Division’s research on the nature and possible mitigation of stampedes”
“Present for this meeting are three human representatives of the UNEERD, Captain Fabia” a human female with short crimson hair and wiry build nods “Captain Jorge” the first human nods “And Captain Ishikawa” a human much taller human with shortly cut dark hair and mildly reddened skin speaking of a disagreement with the eternal twilight nods.
“Present are also four venlil representatives. Representing the Exterminator’s Guild are Division Lead Toss” the venlil who had the outburst earlier nods “Of the Stampede Response division, Division Lead Tunam” a venlil with a strangely reddish coat halfway between pink and red nods “Of the Behavioral Studies division” the speaking venlil himself, best identified by an eyepatch on his right eye, nods “Representing the Emergency Services Guild is me, Division Lead Onam of the Stampede Response division, and Division Lead Liram” the venlil beside him nods, a woman with a distinctive vertical striping pattern “Of the Medical Response division.”
Onam takes a deep breath “You may begin the presentation, Captain Jorge” he’s being incredibly professional
With that, Jorge uses a holopad to summon an image on the monitor at the far end, a simple bullet point list “Though all present here already know, I’ll state it for the record. The ESG has requested from the UNEERD an independent study of mitigating techniques for stampede events, both to help us increase our understanding of the local needs and to acquire an outside perspective that may improve their own understanding”
“We will be presenting our current findings, which have proven to be pretty surprising in my opinion” he gives another command to his holopad moving to the next slide “I’ll begin with the most important finding before we look into how we’ve reached this conclusion. But in effect, a proper stampede event can actually severely reduce to completely eliminate casualties in a situation of panic, however, those events can devolve into panicked flight as well as not every species is capable of those”
At that, Toss tilts his head to the side “Of all things… Stampedes preventing casualties? That’s really difficult to believe”
Ishikawa offers a shrug “I know. I’ll be honest we kind of came into this with, let’s say… A bit of a bias against you. But the observations held true, and it turns out the situation is considerably more complex than it seems”
Jorge nods “Take note this is mostly a preliminary study, we don’t have a lot of data of the sort we needed.” he pulls up another bullet list in the screen “Our work was focused more on the behavioral end, as you’ve more than proven to have the infrastructure and technical superiority here, but we have found a distinct lack of behavioral studies on stampedes”
Tunam takes a deep breath “Sure. More stuff we got wrong, as always” but before one of the humans can say something he waves dismissively with his tail “It’s alright, you’re just doing your job. It just gets exhausting hearing this every damn paw. Sorry for the interruption, please continue”
Jorge has a look on his face for a moment, something like worry and sympathy, before continuing “We have performed our studies by examining footage of stampede events with specific characteristics. First, monospecies events, with three examples. The stampede events during our first contact, as a sample of stampede events amongst the Venlil, recovered footage of an event in the Cradle during Operation Blindside, as a sample of stampede events amongst the Gojid. Take note that while this particular footage was from a situation far from any attack sites and before the arxur invasion, the reliability of it is shaky because of the wartime situation. And a stampede event on Sillis that happened recently in response to peacekeeper forces”
As he talks, three of the bullet points light up “Additionally, we later compared stampede events involving multispecies groupings. Particularly we have studied the very recent events here on Venlil Prime during the kolshian threat as well as a second event that occurred on Sillis involving a damaged dam” the last two bullet points light up
The female firefighter pipes up “We’re going to treat you like adults here but early warning we’re not going to be censoring any of the footage. I imagine given you all work with this there shouldn’t be anything you’re not familiar with”
The one-eyed venlil makes an assentive motion with his ears “Sadly, we’ve all seen enough of the carnage to be used to it”
Jorge moves on to the next slide, which contains video. He passes the holopad off to the human woman at his side “Your turn, Fabia”
She nods “We’ll start by examining this footage of the first contact. First tell me if there’s anything unusual you notice here” she says, letting the footage play. It’s an aggregation of a few different cameras, apparently from residential apartments. It shows the residents, all Venlil, running away from their apartments and spilling over in the streets, the residents of each apartment building start running towards where presumably the nearest bunker is. It only takes a few moments before they start pushing each other out of the way and the ones at the fringes of the herd end up unable to follow the group as the ever-growing mass of people start to push them against the walls of the buildings and side streets, a little while longer the first tramplings start to happen.
Tunam has had a very careful eye on the footage “This looks like a textbook case of a stampede. Nothing particular to it” he flicks his ear to the side
Taking the sign, Toss adds in “Dreadful, as always, but not even the worst example I’ve seen”
Onam sighs “I remember that one. Wouldn’t want to be those two knowing all of this was caused by them. But still, a pretty normal stampede, if anything a mild one”
Liram makes a dismissive wave of her tail “Didn’t even manage to overflow the hospitals, so i’m calling that one a win”
The sunburnt human bites his lower lip, trying to keep something inside. But ultimately it spills over “How bad is it for those kinds of responses?” it’s not so much an accusatory tone as much as a sad one.
“Very” is the only answer Onam gives.
At that, Fabia waves “And here is where a human, or more specifically outsider perspective helped.” she presses a couple of controls in the holopad, rewinding the footage to the start “I want you to pay attention to how this particular herd moves, just the one from the beginning of the video”
The footage plays again, showing the residents of the apartments rushing out, most take the stairs while a few take the elevators. There’s parents carrying their pups and some elderly being rushed along. The footage switches to the outside view where the whole herd of venlil from the apartment seems to erupt out of the front doors at the same time, it follows them for a bit until they’re closer to another group leaving their residence before Fabia pauses “Here’s where we noticed something, how much panic do you see in here?”
It’s Tunam’s turn to respond “Normal levels, i’d say, nothing out of ordinary. Which, they were expecting a raid or worse, so keep that in mind.”
Fabia nods “And that’s why the difference is important. Pay attention to their movement” she rewinds to the moment where they’re leaving the apartment building “Pay close attention to their feet” she zooms the video
The four venlil focus on it, seemingly unable to see what is happening “It takes humans at least months of training to be able to do this. They’re all moving in perfect synchrony” she rewinds one more time, and with the information out there it’s clear that at this point, this herd’s footsteps are moving in perfect lockstep “And I have severe doubts those people have any sort of training”
Onam turns his one good eye towards Fabia, then back at the footage, then back at Fabia “That… Yes, I can see that. But that has to be a fluke, if that is true then we wouldn’t have tramplings”
In response, Fabia changes footage. It shows a different apartment building, but the contents are similar: Up until the herd is a good distance away from the building their movement is synchronous and even the exit, though clearly panicked, seems to flow without injury. She shows footage from three more apartments “We thought that too, but this pattern repeats every time. This is a level of instinctive organization that’s, to me, supernatural. But at some point it breaks down”
The medical lead had his eyes closed in thought for a while now “That… Now that you say that… Stampede injuries are always outside. Well, no, not always of course. But less than twelve percent of them happen inside buildings, the vast majority happens on the streets”
The human woman passes the datapad aside, Ishikawa picks it up and calls up the footage again. It’s the same as the initial one, but it shows two herds approaching “And here’s where it breaks down. Look” he plays it as everyone pays much closer attention to the details of the video. The two different herds simply crash into each other, causing people to fall over and the two previously-synchronized groups to fall completely out of order.
Tunam’s tail swipes a short arc forwards “Ah, I see. Each herd is acting like a single unit at that point, so this situation is like two people running into each other. Now they’re on the floor and confused” he stares as the footage continues, and what was two groups ends up splitting into four completely disorganized groups “And the herds are unable to reform after that”
“This is where i’m going to introduce some specific terms we’re using here” Ishikawa adds “Specifically we’re referring to the organized movement portion as a ‘stampede’ proper. The situation where everything breaks down and they are completely disorganized we’re referring to as ‘panicked flight’, much how it is for us humans. And this specific situation that caused the breakdown of the stampede we’re calling an ‘impact’ event, given it was two herds impacting against each other”
Ishikawa then changes to a different piece of footage “And this will be the second breakdown situation we’ve recognized, a ‘command failure’ event.” he starts the footage, it’s a proper stampede, the video is from a camera on a defensive bunker proper, the masses trying to get inside are visible at the bottom of the image. Something happens in the incoming stampede, it slows down a little bit, before suddenly the back half overtakes the front half, tossing people into the ground.
“Notice how the approaching herd seems to be behaving as we’ve initially expected, even going so far as slowing down to prevent from barrelling into the people waiting to enter the bunker” he adds, before rewinding to just before the breakdown and zooming the video “But notice here, at some point those two start having a discussion while they run” the video is zoomed on a pair of venlil who seem to be shouting, though the video has no audio “Shortly after, the entire formation breaks and the rear speeds up, trampling the front”
The crimson venlil adds “They were following the one on the right…” he has a certain tone of awe on his voice “They all had their attention trained on him”
At that the female firefighter makes a questioning noise “How’d you figure that out?”
Tunam does a quick sideways flick of his ears in a dismissal move “I guess you don’t know how to see where we’re focusing our attention on when we don’t have to turn our entire heads for it. But pay attention to the ears, when they’re completely upright to take in sound they’ll be tracking whoever the focus is. As you can see, they were all focusing on the one on the right, which was the one being yelled at” he focuses on the now still image for a while “You can see he has his tail in his hands, while the one yelling at him has his chest first ruffled out.” his eye seems to focus beyond the image now “This herd didn’t break down because of another, but they lost guidance, is that it?”
Jorge sighs, but he has a slight smile “See, I told you it’d be wise to have at least one venlil in our team. Just from being able to read their body language he skipped past two weeks of comparisons”
Ishikawa gives a light sigh “But that’s correct. This is a ‘command failure’ situation. We’ve noticed that in every stampede there seems to be someone that works at least as pace setting, if not straight up herd leader. It seemed in cases to mostly be arbitrary, but once someone got in that position everyone would follow that one”
Jorge picks up the holopad again “Next up” the screen changes again, it’s another video that is quite clearly not on Venlil Prime “This one happened during peacekeeping operations on Sillis…” there’s a certain inflection of disgust in the human’s voice as he mentions ‘peacekeeping’ “You probably already know what to expect but I want you to focus on the differences here”
The video that plays out starts with what seems like a protest in front of a UN field base, the recording is from the body cam of a soldier on top of a watchtower. There’s a moderate mass of tilfish with all sorts of signs, there’s shouting. The camera turns to show an APC get close to the mass from inside the base, there’s shouting from the human guards but nothing happens, until the APC revs up its engine heavily. At the angry roar of the vehicle the protesters started to bolt, four large groups forming in different directions.
The camera follows one such group as it starts heading off down a street, unlike the venlil stampedes this one starts from moment zero with trampling and people moving into each other. At some point it’s visible someone at the middle of the formation seems to hesitate and slow down, causing the entire mass to slow down for a moment, and then someone else near the slower raises their arms. At this point this is too far from the soldier’s body camera to catch noise, but what seems to be a discussion has happened, and suddenly the stampede speeds up and the scene that follows gets considerably worse as the mass turns into a tangle of limbs cross across eachother and tearing itself apart as they try to move in the same general direction.
“It started bad” says Toss “But it got worse. I’ve never seen a stampede get worse like that”
Onam puts his tail on the table, tapping the surface gently with it “It happens as it grows in size but this group didn’t change. That did seem like a command failure situation causing it to get even worse, yes, but they seemed to already be very out of sync from the start”
The human with the holopad nods “And that’s the biggest failure of your treatment of stampedes showing itself.” he rewinds the video to when the APC starts roaring “And honestly, we were stuck on that failure mode for a while too until one of the younger members of our team spoke their mind. Pay closer attention to the amount of damage that is happening during the stampede here” they all lean closer as they watch the start again “How many wounds are you seeing?”
It’s the one-eyed venlil that answers “None… They’re not trampling eachther, they’re climbing each other, and walking under the others, somehow without hurting themselves?” his voice has a definite awe to it.
Jorge nods “Yep. Tilfish, both from their body plan and however way their kinesthetic sense works, appear to be fully capable of moving over, through and under each other like they weren’t even there. That seems to be pretty unique to their species”
It’s the red furred venlil that comments now “But they lose that coordination when the command failure happens, so they start to miss their movements and now we have limbs tangled on themselves and tearing themselves apart”
“Comparing medical reports from this with medical reports from the first incident with just venlil” starts the female firefighter “We see different wound patterns. A monospecies panicked flight of tilfish will lead primarily to damaged and removed limbs while one of venlil will lead to crushing wounds. Because your herd movement patterns and capacities are different, when the stampede fails into panicked flight the wounds are different”
Liram tilts her head to the side “That’s what you meant. We… Speh, the entire federation, has been treating stampedes like they behave the same for every species” her tail swats left to right for a while with an excessive amount of force “But this makes sense. And I presume you have an example of a species that doesn’t stampede up next, right?”
Jorge nods, moving to the next video. It shows a wide, long street “This one was recovered from the Cradle, this happens during the strikes on the orbital defenses but before the first orbital drop. Meaning, long before any ground operation starts” the video is sped up considerably at the start, the trickle of gojid into the streets is slow as to require that, but the flows from the buildings and side streets slowly thicken as more and more people start fleeing away from the camera’s direction. The mass that forms is enormous, taking up the entire street, and to flows and moves as if it wasn’t a mass of people, not even like a mass of animals, but it flows like a river, like it ceased to contain living beings and it now contained fluid particles.
Tunam, whose expression has been growing more and more serious by the moment, initiates “I… I’ve never seen a stampede like… It really shows the difference seeing the comparison, here we didn’t have groups forming at exit points and leaving, we have a slow trickle until the mass of people is…”
Ishikawa nods “Until the mass of people starts behaving like a fluid, completely detached from the will of the people inside of it” he puts his elbows in the table “Very much how it works with humans. At that point, you just need to let the flow move you and hope for the best, while trying to keep yourself safe”
Jorge zooms in the image, which appears to be sufficiently high quality to get detailed images of any particular member of the mass “You can even see the measures they take to prevent harming themselves” he directs the zoom to an area where you see the gojid have somehow arranged themselves back-to-back and front-to-front as they’re pushed and shoved, trying to avoid harming themselves on each other. It’s visible, however, they have no control over the motions as they’re simply being moved by the mass. One unlucky woman trying to hold on to some form of backpack gets pulled under the mass of bodies by the article. Most gojid seem to be taking conscious effort to keep their quills from flaring out, but many are failing and some trickle of blue can be seen on some backs
“Of course” the zoomed out area directs to a different section while zooming out “This is neither instinctual nor organized, as you can see the vast majority of the cases are like… This…” the best description of the moving mass of very sharp people being dislocated by nothing but panic and fluid forces is… A meat grinder. There’s more blue than brown visible and the speed with which the human moves the video elsewhere is quite indicative of how none of the present trained emergency workers had the stomach to witness it.
Liram has stood up “By the void… But- But- There’s gojid population on this planet! I’ve never seen anything like this when they’re involved!” there’s straight up panic in her voice.
With a command, Jorge moves on to the next slide “And that segues well into the next topic of research, multispecies stampedes” there’s a still image of a large street in the capital, mostly empty at this point “As you can imagine there’s behavioral differences in multispecies situations”
Jorge passes the holopad over to Ishikawa “This one is pretty recent, hell I still remember it myself. The kolshian probing attack” the video starts, and for a few seconds the slow foot traffic of the mostly empty street seems undeterred. Then, most everyone still walking the streets, which here in the capital means a variety of species from venlil and human to takkan and iftali, picks up their holopads at once. And with different degrees of urgency and reading speed, they start running.
Nothing seems to progress further than that other than people entering buildings, but after a while longer it happens, groups start leaving the buildings in large herds “As you can see” Ishikawa pauses “We see them exiting buildings in large groups, just as the stampeding species do” he let it play again. Just like in the first two videos the large groups seem to be moving roughly in coordination within themselves, but it seems to be a much more frail kind of coordination as the group’s form changes and shifts as the people inside adjust their position.
Ishikawa zooms into one of the groups “Here, check their movement” it’s visible that only a portion of them is moving in actual synchrony, the venlil as well as a pair of sulean and three krakotl seem to be moving very much in lockstep, and one human who seems to be acting as a leader as she points and shouts. Meanwhile the other humans, two takkan and a gojid aren’t moving quite in synchrony but seem capable of keeping themselves in formation thanks to the others around them. “Here we see the effect of a mixed species setting. The stampeding species manage to give enough structure to the group that the others can follow”
Tunam is staring intensely at the video “But that’s a very fragile configuration, isn’t it? The ones organizing on instinctive drive can’t possibly keep this much structure for long? Without training this is going to break down quickly”
Ishikawa nods “That’s what we thought as well but…” he lets the video play, and they watch that mass of bodies continue to move mostly organized down the street. At some point another equally mixed group starts approaching from the side, but one of the takkan appears to start shouting. But instead of things breaking down, what happens is that both groups merge together, there’s some minor bodily impacts but from the visible motions of the group there’s some shared apologies and they continue moving at a slower speed, matching the speed of the second group “That doesn’t happen, the whole situation is even more stable”
The video continues for a while, and Ishikawa zooms to the front of the formation. The human who’d been the apparent leader taps rather violently a venlil on the shoulder. There apparently seems to be a verbal altercation, but both give each other affirmative visual cues and the venlil speeds up a little bit. And the rest of the herd matches pace as the group changes direction to another street “And this is a smooth change of command, presumably the human that’d been the unofficial lead figured out who knew the shortest path to the bunker and they’ve began following him instead”
The crimson venlil sinks down in his chair “That’s… I’ve never seen a stampede move quite like that, even multispecies ones. It has to be you…”
“Much as i’d love to give us all the credit” Jorge starts “I don’t quite think it is. Or rather, it’s not something i’d say is inherently human. If it was, once that group changed command they’d break down, or it wouldn’t be able to merge that easily with a takkan mediating. No, I think it was just those specific humans being able to keep their cool that helped it.”
He looks at Tunam for a half second before continuing “Everyone else seems to be… Very prone to panicking quickly. And while we’re just as prone to panic we don’t seem to get there as fast as the others. For some reason. Keeping a bit of a calmer head allows the prevention of command failures and the overall effect of reducing the panic level in a herd enough that any member present has enough wits to negotiate through an impact as well”
Upon noticing Tunam’s souring expression, Ishikawa gives the pad another command to move on to the next video “To give a bit more context to an important part of the behavior we’re analyzing here, we have this one footage of what is essentially a stampede event, but not one most people would recognize as such”
It seems to be footage of Sillis again, most obvious by the number of tilfish present. The footage is from a cargo hauling drone in a work site by a river at the bottom of a dam. There are a handful of humans, a half dozen venlil and a gojid all wearing construction uniforms identifying them as part of one of the UN relief forces, the various tilfish around are also wearing bright construction vests and protective gear and with the exception of two of them, they seem to be trying their best to stay away from the others. Suddenly, the gojid who’s near the river looks down at his feet, then starts running away shouting. At that everyone other than the tilfish start running as well, the group slows down for a moment as the tilfish workers run towards the group and they all continue together up a hill. A few seconds after they crest the hill there’s suddenly water in the worksite as the dam cracks and collapses. The group stops at the top of the hill, and quickly they’ve brought up holopads to start doing damage assessment as a few head closer to the rushing waters.
“This, as you can see, looks nothing like what you expect out of a stampede. We’ve interviewed those workers remotely to get a better grasp of what happened” Fabia adds “Thanks to their sensitivity to ground vibrations, the gojid worker caught the dam’s damage early and called for the others to run, which caused the work crew to evacuate to higher ground.” she waves at Ishikawa, who rewinds the video and zooms on the group as it runs “As you can see, we have the organized movement of a stampede proper” and known his cue he skips ahead to the group on top of the hill “And they stopped quickly, as well.
The human with reddened skin rewinds the video again to show the moment the group slows down “And here’s the particular detail I want you to pay attention to. Notice the group formed when the gojid called out the emergency, but only two tilfish joined it. The two that were already talking with the UN forces”
Onam tilts his head, clearly in thought as his blind eye is facing the screen now “You’re saying there’s an influence of familiarity?”
In answer, Ishikawa shakes his head in negative “Yes and no, we believe this is an effect of threat-assessment. The two that trusted the veracity of the information about the danger moved as quickly as the rest of the herd, which had managed to form thanks to the presence of the venlil and tilfish. Only after the other tilfish recognized those two did they start moving”
“And the whole group slowed down for them, without breaking apart” the crimson venlil adds “This is very much not anything we’d consider a stampede, however as you said the synchronized movement happens and they even managed to clear through the obstacles in a surprisingly safe manner on the way out”
Jorge picks up the holopad again and moves on to the next slide “So to sum up our theories. Certain species have an innate capacity of large-numbers collective movement, what we call a stampede is simply that natural capacity displaying itself during mass flight. That capacity can be harnessed to reduce casualties of panicked flight by giving the moving group an organized form, but only as long as the organization can be sustained. This mass movement capacity also applies to situations where other species would still perform in an organized fashion, but its instinctive nature severely speeds up the process.”
Before he can continue, however, Tunam mutters a little too loudly “But the results you’re going to give us are going to be the same brahking thing as always”
Jorge ignores the muttering “To begin with we’re going to suggest a system similar to the fire brigades we have on Earth. Essentially, any group large enough, such as a company or an apartment building, needs to have a handful of people with some training in emergency procedures for fire escape, so they can guide the rest of the people.”
Ishikawa intrudes “And in countries with higher seismic activities like mine, those procedures also include how to deal with earthquakes for example”
Jorge nods, and takes a deep breath “Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Your threat-assessment skills are horrible, for some reason- No, I think for reasons we’re all acquainted well enough by now, you’re all very likely to jump at shadows, far more than you should. However, your flight responses are part of your nature, trying to fight your nature never, ever works, you always have to work with it.” he’s staring directly at Tunam, who has met his stare with his right eye “So the primary suggestion is to introduce a form of ‘emergency herd lead’ training in organizations so that we’re certain there are individuals capable of keeping command and a lower baseline of chaos during a stampede event as well as further research into better methods of performing such a function”
Tunam doesn’t flinch from the stare “Come on, say it”
“No. As much as I’d love to say something like what you think I will, I’ll be honest. You guys expect to face orbital bombardment threats with enough frequency that civilian bunkers are part of city planning. Not a human alive today could imagine living in this nightmare their entire lives, I’m going to give you some credit here. Plus, in real threat situations as seen in the last video, you have very beneficial threat responses.” Jorge adds
Jorge waits for a few moments, then continues “That concludes the presentation of the early findings and initial measures we’ve identified. It should be noted that this topic will require much further research, preferably from a multidisciplinary group with representatives of multiple species. Though those findings may be applicable at the present our suggestion is that any action taken at this moment be only provisional and on an experimental level until further research can be made”
Onam stands up “Very well, with that I declare the meeting concluded” he takes in a deep breath and sits back down, making an annoyed sound with his voice as he swats his tail to the side “What is it about you humans that you could see all those things?”
Fabia shrugs, sitting more relaxed in her chair “I don’t think it’s something special, we’re just outsiders with a different perspective.”
A loud screeching noise can be heard, and as everyone turns to face Tunam the source of the noise is visible as the hand he had on the table had dug its claws into it “It’s not like we haven’t found out those things before, isn’t it?” he doesn’t seem to be directing his words to anyone in particular
The one-eyed venlil tilts his head to the side “We did have that work group almost fifteen cycles ago. I remember they were considering a suggestion like what we just had right now, but the work group never went anywhere and we never got any real results”
Tunam stands up suddenly, sending his chair scattering “One more to the list I guess…” there’s a tiredness to his voice “I should figure out where they wound up…” he turns around and goes to leave “We’re done here, yes? I should go” and stalks out.
The remaining people in the room look at his exit confusedly, as Ishikawa comes over to turn off the camera the others can be seen leaving.

I'm a csgo streamer and love going over trades with my chat.
Current Inventory
FT forest DDPAT paracord knife
FT specialist marble fade
MW ST bright water shadow dagger
FT ultraviolet bowie knife
FN Fade ursus knife
FT blue steel talon knife
MW Usp printstream
FN M4 global offensive
BS ST M4 Printstream
BS ST M4 player two
MW Awp Boom
FT deagle printstream
FT AK Vulcan
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Trading all the Skins in my Steam Inventory
B/O refers to SMP and only added because of the rules
Mainly looking for upgrades atm - for fast response send a tradeoffer
_____________________________________________________
Knives

Skin	Condition	Price (SMP)	Float	Tradelock
★ Shadow Daggers Doppler (Sapphire)	FN	1.300,00 €	0,0118
★ Butterfly Knife Safari Mesh	FT	701,14 €	0,2212	Mon Jun 05
★ Bowie Knife Marble Fade	FN	451,24 €	0,0245
★ Shadow Daggers Fade	FN	443,06 €	0,0258
★ Bowie Knife Doppler (Phase 4)	FN	419,09 €	0,0353
★ Bayonet Freehand	FT	398,10 €	0,2524
★ Gut Knife Doppler (Phase 3)	FN	171,22 €	0,0357
★ Navaja Knife		158,56 €	0,7850
★ Huntsman Knife Ultraviolet	BS	142,64 €	0,6297
★ StatTrak™ Bowie Knife Rust Coat	WW	128,24 €	0,4099	Mon Jun 05
★ Gut Knife Blue Steel	FT	127,99 €	0,3406
★ Paracord Knife Scorched	FT	126,86 €	0,3314

Gloves

Skin	Condition	Price (SMP)	Float	Tradelock
★ Broken Fang Gloves Jade	MW	378,72 €	0,1272
★ Sport Gloves Nocts	FT	361,49 €	0,2153
★ Driver Gloves Imperial Plaid	WW	352,15 €	0,4178
★ Specialist Gloves Crimson Web	FT	350,86 €	0,2714
★ Specialist Gloves Emerald Web	BS	331,07 €	0,7640
★ Specialist Gloves Mogul	FT	266,89 €	0,3744
★ Moto Gloves Polygon	FT	245,09 €	0,2291
★ Moto Gloves Blood Pressure	FT	215,05 €	0,3559
★ Driver Gloves Lunar Weave	FT	196,42 €	0,3387
★ Hand Wraps Constrictor	FT	82,10 €	0,3276

Playskins

Skin	Condition	Price (SMP)	Float	Tradelock
M4A1-S Blue Phosphor	FN	698,96 €	0,0204
M4A1-S Icarus Fell	FN	569,34 €	0,0143
AK-47 Vulcan	MW	536,38 €	0,1349
AWP Oni Taiji	MW	510,59 €	0,1402
Desert Eagle Emerald Jörmungandr	FN	344,41 €	0,0503
StatTrak™ AWP Asiimov	FT	333,01 €	0,3451
AWP Graphite	FN	240,40 €	0,0273
StatTrak™ AK-47 Neon Revolution	FN	181,77 €	0,0656
M4A1-S Printstream	FT	181,16 €	0,3631
AWP Asiimov	FT	165,46 €	0,2968
AK-47 Bloodsport	FN	152,28 €	0,0315

Previous posts:

• Shadespire
• Nightvault
• Beastgrave

Standard opening:
For those unfamiliar with Warhammer Underworlds, it's Games Workshop's card/mini/board game set in the Mortal Realms. Almost every card in the game has a small snippet of lore on it in addition to its rules text; some of the lore is simple statements about the card's effect, but others describe the setting or the fighters or provide in-universe quotes. I haven't found a card library that compiles these lore snippets (they are understandably focused on the rules), so I decided to compile them myself.
This is my fourth post of the project, compiling the cards from the third season of the game, Direchasm. In this season, the warbands venture deeper into Beastgrave, where the living mountain's hunger is more apparent.
Cards for the season starter warbands:
Myari's Purifiers:

Text	Card Name
'Our souls must shine bright as diamonds, and yet be just as unyielding, if we are to triumph here.' - Myari Lightcaller	Diamond-bright Souls
The Realm-lords have achieved symbiosis with the elements, turning them against their foes.	Elemental Blessing
Crush your target with overwhelming might.	Force of the Avalanche
Who could stand before a warrior cohort so masterful?	Haughty Exemplars
Your foes' haste will be their undoing.	Patience of the Mountains
Victory is not won by fortune, but by superlative skill and strategy.	Perfect Formation
The Lumineth will got to any ends in pursuit of brilliance.	Perfectionists
Bring illumination to this benighted place.	Purifying Light
The Lumineth are driven to advance themselves and their knowledge.	Pursuit of Excellence
'Such primal power cannot be directed, but it can be trammelled.' - Myari Lightcaller	Seal the Beastgrave
Keep the wretches you face at arm's length.	Unsullied Hands
Few can match the pace of an aelf of Hysh.	Vaunted Speed
Call upon the aelemancy of the mountain; become as stone, eternal and immovable.	Channel the Mountain
Summon the swiftness of the river, flowing around your enemies faster than thought.	Channel the River
Bring forth the ephemeral force of the wind; blast your foes with the might of the hurricane.	Channel the Wind
Ascend to the zenithal vault, where light rules alone.	Channel the Zenith
Your foes must avert their eyes from your dazzling brilliance.	Dazzling Light
'If you mean to hit me, you must simply strike faster than light itself...' - Myari Lightcaller	Flicker of Light
A radiant glow surrounds the target, marking them out for the Lumineth's strikes.	Lambent Light
Strike with all the assurance of the realms' most advanced civilization.	Surety of Purpose
The Stoneguard are one with the mountain, and their foes would do well to remember where they stand.	Tectonic Force
'Surely even you can do better than that?' - Senaela	Untouchable Pride
Only the most gifted of mages can hold their skills and emotions of in true harmony.	Balanced Soul
This stone carries Ymetrican blessings which protect the bearer against their foes' fiercest blows.	Heartstone Amulet
'You are quick, I grant, but my blades strikes faster than thought itself.' - Ailenn, the Mind's Edge	Heightened Reflexes
A warrior of Hysh's every sense is honed to perfection.	Heightened Senses
The Lumineth number amongst their ranks many of the realms' most learned wizards.	Magical Boost
When an Alarith Stoneguard adopts this stance, they become all but immovable.	Mountain Stance
The wisdom of the aelementiri grants many gifts to those capable of grasping them.	Mountain's Gift
Myari's loyal familiar Ulari soars above the battlefield, nothing escaping its piercing gaze.	Scryowl Familiar
The warriors of the Lumineth strike swiftly and surely, untroubled by the burden of uncertainty.	Speed of Hysh
'Though I would fain dispatch these beasts from afar, face-to-face they shall not find me unprepared.' - Senaela	Vanari Dagger

The Dread Pageant:

Text	Card Name
Every offering to Slaanesh is a masterpiece.	Beautiful Deaths
The Dark Prince delights in the dedication of his devotees.	Cavalcade of Madness
'Do you hear the music? Dance! Give yourself to abandon!' - Vasillac the Gifted
Obey the insatiable desire to possess what is not yours.	Excess of Avidity
Rejoice, for you will know such sensation as you cannot imagine.	Excess of Carnality
Join the feast! The table overflows with riches.	Excess of Gluttony
Why would you exert yourself, with such treasures already within your grasp?	Excess of Indolency
Your superiority is assured, your assurance undeniable.	Excess of Paramountcy
Revel in your ability. Vanity is worthiness.	Excess of Vainglory
His scent hangs heavy here. Surely the Dark Prince is close...	Godseekers
Direchasm is a fitting backdrop for wonder such as this.	Grisly Tableau
Make them bleed, make them weep, teach them the glory of pain.	Scintillating Sadism
'To me, Slakeslash - pain calls.' - Vasillac the Gifted	Bonded Bodyguard
They will learn the folly of their avarice.	Cruel Pangs
Give yourself over to your baser desires - a moment's hesitation can mean death.	Dark Desires
A mortally wounded Hedonite will seek to draw their killer into their agony.	Deadly Embrace
This heady scent saps the strength of those who inhale it, until they can hardly raise their arms to defend themselves.	Enervating Perfume
Pleasure and pain are one and the same.	Fuelled by Sensation
None can resist the call of the Dark Prince...	Lure of Slaanesh
Blood thrills as blood spills.	Rush of Sensation
'Let me take your agony, sister. Yes, I feel it!' - Hadzu	Shared Pain
'Did you miss me? Have another try, brave soul... oh, well, maybe one more?' - Glissete	Vicious Barbs
'Perhaps just one more...' - Hadzu	Cruel Volley
The steps of the great dance are intricate, but once learnt are impossible to forget.	Dance Without End
'Do you see glamour? Riches? Beauty? Regardless, you lose track of me.' - Glissete	Distracting Ostentation
Those who give themselves wholly to Slaanesh can gain cruel gifts from their voracious patron.	Mark of the Dark Prince
This barbed lash tears at the victim's wounds, inflicting horrific agonies.	Sadistic Goad
Even the gravest wounds do little to slow those for whom pain is a heady draught.	Sickening Resilience
'Relax, give yourself over to torpor. Don't you deserve a moment's respite?' - Vasillac the Gifted	Soporific Musk
Pain invigorates the true devotees of Slaanesh.	Strength from Pain
The Hedonites of Slaanesh are known for the speed of their rapacious advance.	Swift as Desire
'You are hardly worthy to bear such a fine trinket.' - Vasillac the Gifted	Sword-shatterer

Starter set universal cards:

Text	Card Name
Surround your foe and cut them down. Prove your superiority in blood.	Absolute Dominance
Some situations call for a grandiose demonstration of power.	Aggressive Display
Even the most ferocious predator knows when it is outmatched.	Awesome Predator
'Forward, my legions. Claim this place in his name.' - The Sepulchral Warden	Dominant Position
'They see me, they know me and they will honour me... just one more offering, and glory will be mine!' - Shond	Hungry of Victory
Some foes need to get close to threaten you - others exude menace at any distance.	Intimidating Display
Many sorceries are as bestial and hungering as those who call upon them.	Predatory Spell
Set an inspiring and bloody example.	Savage Exemplar
A well-earned feast awaits at hunt's end.	Successful Hunt
'Look at 'im go!' - Thugg	Surge of Aggression
Rich rewards await those with the mettle to claim them.	Treasure Hunter
Strike a blow so fast that your victim won't even see it coming.	Winged Death
What blow can hope to strike true against such sorceries?	Dauntless Aspect
Zealous fury can lend considerable strength to a fighter's arm.	Ferocious Blow
'I'm comin' fer ye, ye worm!' - Mad Maegrim	Ferocious Lunge
Some warriors vehemently refuse to lay down and die.	Ferocious Resistance
'Graagh, gah, hmgh-rrrr.' - Night's Herald (Trans: Wait awhile, good fellow - I would speak with thee.)	Hungry Advance
'I'm gonna eat'cha, just hold still...' - Zarbag	Hungry Bolt
Blood surges, hunger calls - the great hunt begins!	Hunting Season
"everything you seek is here - simply look, and the Great Changer will show you truths beyond imagining.' - Vortemis the All-seeing	Hypnotic Aspect
Watch where you put your feet...	Slickrock
A successful hunt is its own reward.	Thrill of the Hunt
Sorcerous energies directed at this gnarled staff are not spent, but are diverted into Beastgrave itself.	Earthing Staff
'Grruh gah hrugh glarrh?' - Duke Crackmarrow (Trans: Have you ever seen such noble regalia?)	Fearsome Trappings
'Pit your crude strength against me if you will - my vines are as supple as heartwillow, but as tough as ironoak.' - Ylthari	Formidible Defence
This voracious armour drains sustenance from its wearer even as it shields them from harm.	Hungry Armour
'So do I honour you, lord. No servant is more faithful than me.' - Kryssa	Master of Spoils
This grisly artefact chooses its wearer, identifying those with the fiercest survival instinct and making its face their own.	Preyskin Mask
Hunt with but a single bound.	Savage Speed
Give in to the urge to kill.	Savage Strength
The arrows launched from this ancient bow seem to hunt their target with uncanny accuracy.	Soultooth Bow
This polearm strikes with the instinct of a honed predator.	Soultooth Spear

Only one fighter - Glissete of the Dread Pageant - has lore on her card: Every move Glissete makes is the next step in an entrancing dance, though none but she can hear the music her exquisitely choreographed routine is set to.

Hi! This is both my first post on this forum (and also Reddit) ever. I usually stalk in the background, but lately I feel like I need to talk to someone. I am an animal lover, my husband of 8 years very much is not. Growing up, I owned every kind of animal under the sun and lived on a ranch, but in my adult life have only had a cat, who passed away a bit over a year ago. My husband was never allowed to have pets as a child and pretty much only has had neutral/negative interactions with pets. He thought the cat was cool but was super allergic, and she lived with my sister for a couple years. After all this time, I have finally convinced him getting a dog would be pretty swell. He picked everything and was basically in control and could pull out/change his mind at any time- never did. Queue us deciding to actually get two sister mini dachshunds, a silver and chocolate dapple each.
Now, it’s been a long time since I was around puppies but no one believes me when I say we have been at wits end for nearly a month and a half. I watched COUNTLESS hours of dog training videos, read a book, spent $800 getting everything these two kiddos would need. I got permission to work from home for two weeks and even took a few days off of work. They came home and for the first few days, everything was great. They were calm and attentive, learned their names off the bat, loved to lay in our laps, and slept for hours. It was heavenly.
But then they started to get comfortable. One of them started to bossy bark when she wants something. The other one INCESSANTLY whines. We live in a 730 sq ft 1bd/1bth apartment, with a LARGE park or field literally a stones throw in every direction, so the limited space isn’t an issue when they get exercise. However we aren’t supposed to let them walk because parvo-yada yada yada. So they’re cooped up inside for the last month and CANNOT be quiet— especially when we’re home. We hide in the bedroom to eat meals, they cry and bark. We eat in front of them and don’t them have any, they cry and bark. We give them their favorite toys, they cry and bark. We TAKE AWAY those toys, then they cry, start to wrestle, and then bark at each other. If they can see and/or hear us, but can’t be near us, they cry and bark. We leave the house entirely, they cry and bark, falling asleep after about a half hour. Only time they aren’t barking is when they’re sleeping, which is becoming less frequent with passing each week.
I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I try to never give attention to barking/whining, so why is it getting worse?! Every morning I try to come out of the bedroom ONLY when they are both quiet for at least five seconds, and go right back in if they cry. It’s sometimes a 20 minutes battle of wits just to walk out of my door. If I’m honest with you, I really don’t mind the bark all that much except that it’s loud. (Dachshunds have a very cute alert bark, imo. I know I’m crazy) BUT THE WHINING- the whining is like torture. And the barking does disturb the neighbors. I’ve tried to work on the quiet command, I have bonked their butts with an empty paper towel roll, I have shouted and clapped my hands. But it’s like nothing works for longer than a few moments?? During the day I have ignored it and it goes on forever. I don’t have that option at night because I have a noise ordinance in my complex.
My husband is really feeling it. He has told me he dreads coming home everyday, and told me he is ‘really over this dog shit’ and wishes it could back to the way it was before- petless. I don’t know what else I need to do. I feel like I owe him these well-behaved pups since I was the one who convinced him it was worth a shot. I feel like I am trying as hard I can, it’s getting worse and I don’t have the answers. I know he would never ask me to rehome them, but damn, I can’t say I’ve never thought about it. I know eventually he is going to resent me and the dogs. He already feels like he doesn’t have a bond with them because I was the only one able to get the time off to get them adjusted and then work from home. So I’ve spent them most amount of time with them. And they are VERY time-expensive. I haven’t had time to perform any of my hobbies, watch a movie or show, or even wash the dishes. I can’t decompress when they take so much from me. Even my work is suffering, because I can’t take phone calls without them whining in the background, it’s super unprofessional, and I’ve been ‘talked to’ about my ‘distracted performance.’ I can’t just QUIT MY JOB to raise a couple of dogs— and even if I did, I’d still have two overly-dependent, attention-seeking bratty dogs.
They are quickly approaching 15 weeks old, and I just need someone to reassure me that they will grow out of this, and that this is something that can be fixed. Please. My life feels like it is falling apart in front of me and I’m helpless to the whole thing.
TLDR; First-Time-Dog-Parent couple fighting over 14 week old puppy sisters who won’t let them have some peace and quiet while all four are boarded under one tiny apartment roof. Puppy blues causing talks of dread, resentment and maybe rehoming. Please advise!!!!

Edro Grimshell's Generic Culinary Warrior jump is a VERY fun jump with a lot of very cool perks, and I'm definitely annoyed with myself for taking so long to check it out at length. So in this post, I wanted to highlight some of the more fun and/or helpful combinations I've found in this jump.
At the end of this post I mention two other jumps, both of which are also by Edro Grimshell.

1. You Are What You Eat + Ethically Sourced

You Are What You Eat (300cp): Through a complex and controlled metabolic process, you are able to replicate the features and abilities of the things you eat in some fashion. You can temporarily manifest the physical characteristics of anything you’ve eaten within the past twenty four hours, exaggerated by the supernatural nature of this process, such as a lion’s head allowing you to roar with concussive force or forming an abalone shell that can deflect bullets. With considerable practice, you can potentially extend how far back this can go, incorporate these physical traits into yourself fully, or allow you to manifest the supernatural traits of the things you’ve eaten, though these would not be exaggerated in the same way that the more mundane components would be.

And

Ethically Sourced (200cp): You are somehow able to harvest ingredients from a creature without causing any lasting harm to them, and if they willingly give of themselves, the ingredient will be of a higher quality than it previously was. This includes boosting any magical qualities the ingredient may have. To facilitate this, you can understand and be understood by any creature. You are also able to choose when you deal lethal damage with any attack, even if you are using your strongest attack, it will not be permanently damaging unless you choose it to be.

I think the power of this combo is obvious at a glance, but it's just fun. There's no secret trick here, you can get a sick menagerie of animal friends with "Ethically Sourced" & make use of their more dope abilities with "You Are What You Eat". Get jellyfish friends, use YAWYE, and shock creatures with exaggerated tentacles. I have to wonder if the quality of the ingredients affects YAWYE, but I assume they do because a lot of the rest of the perks are stronger when you have higher-quality ingredients. Basically, become Suneater from MHA, but do so ethically and with the support and love of a lot of animal friends.

2. Second Serving + Hits The Spot

Hits the Spot (200cp): You have the ability to empower the effects of any empowerment placed on you with a duration by a factor of five (x5) without reducing its duration. This also allows you to maintain the effects of any empowerment placed on you with your own energy and stamina. Healing effects are also affected by this multiplier, making them significantly more effective.

And

Second Serving (200cp): Sometimes, once isn’t enough, so you’ve turned that into a combat technique. You have developed the ability to cause a spell, buff, potion, or other beneficial effect to trigger on you a second time, so long as the first instance of that effect happened within the last twenty four hours of when you choose to trigger the second. Additionally, you are able to gain a burst of vitality that partially seals your wounds and restores a decent chunk of stamina as a second wind effect, only needing a short rest to regain the ability.

To really maximize this one requires a bit of work, but the end result is... it can be wildly powerful. Let's say you're an alchemist and you can make potions that help people replenish the font of arcane energy you draw from whenever you cast a spell. Instead of making a potion that does a one-and-done restoration of your stores of arcane power, with these perks, it's often better to make potions that either buff your regenerative speed for a few minutes or independently restore a certain AMOUNT of arcane power over the course of a few seconds, minutes, or even hours.
If you get a potion that will independently fill you with 15 units of arcane energy a second for ten seconds, with this perk, if you drink the potion and then activate "Second Serving" two hours later, you can choose to reactivate the positive effects the potion inflicted on you without drinking another potion and instead of getting 150 units of arcane energy over the course of ten seconds, you can get 750 units of arcane energy, over the same time period. This is EXTREMELY handy for scaling minor effects and making them helpful for mid-level or higher-level jumpers and adventurers.
A fun thing about this combo is that Second Serving does not have a stated limit or a stated number of slots like some other perks in this jump and a few other of Edro's jumps do. So... it's not impossible for you to read it as, if you've got five different beneficial effects put on you over the course of the last 24 hours, you can use Second Serving on ALL of them. At least for the duration of this 24-hour period. This is INTENSE.

3. Hits The Spot + It's Filing

It’s Filling (200cp): You have the ability to lengthen the effects of any empowerment placed on you with a duration by an order of magnitude (x10) without diluting its potency. This also reduces the costs to maintain an effect by an equal amount, making it take a tenth of the cost to keep a spell or effect going. You also need only a tenth the food and drink that a normal person would need to survive.

And

Hits the Spot (200cp): You have the ability to empower the effects of any empowerment placed on you with a duration by a factor of five (x5) without reducing its duration. This also allows you to maintain the effects of any empowerment placed on you with your own energy and stamina. Healing effects are also affected by this multiplier, making them significantly more effective.

This combination is WILD. If you do jumpchains to create D&D style adventurers, this is a MUST HAVE. Using the same potion I described earlier, one that, when imbibed, independently restores 15 units of arcane energy a second for ten seconds, with BOTH of these perks, you go from getting 150 total units of arcane energy over the course of ten seconds, to getting 7500 units over the course of 100 seconds (15 becomes 75, and 10 becomes 100, turning the math from 15x10 to 75x100).
It may not always seem preferable to length the duration of an effect, but lengthening the duration of an effect can be handier than empowering the effect but not affecting the duration in a lot of situations. For example, in BOTW some of the handier effects of elixirs are that they improve your ability to tolerate temperatures. If you are an early jumper and you have this incredible combo, you are gonna prefer "It's Filling", at least sometimes, when you are using it on elixirs, even if you prefer the effects of "Hits the Spot" on restorative dishes (though many restorative dishes ALSO offer buffs in BOTW).
With this combination, it is ALWAYS better for you to get things that restore or empower you over a few moments instead of things like... D&D 5e's Healing Word since Healing Word heals you INSTANTLY for however many hit points are rolled (coupled with modifiers & stuff), but "Hits the Spot" is still very helpful since it empowers even instantaneous and one-and-done type restoration.

Honorable Mention: Spirit Of The Kitchen & Awakening

Spirit of the Kitchen (300cp): The role of a chef is to feed the hungry and provide them with sustenance, but there are some beings out there incapable of eating. You’ve found a way around this. You can “feed” any meal you create to anything. Lands, spirits, objects, creatures, it does not matter what it is, it can be fed in this manner. Feeding something a meal in this way can improve on it, increasing the fertility of the land, appeasing a spirit, bolstering an object, and similar such things, potentially even allowing them to develop and grow in some manner.

And

Awakening (300cp): You possess the ability to impart awareness, intelligence, and personality into an enchanted object, the degree of which is determined by the quality of the object, how much effort you put into the awakening, and the level of enchantment the object possesses at the time of awakening. The specifics of the personality and degree of both awareness and intelligence the awakened object has is up to you when you awaken it. The awakened object can communicate with its holder, if it so chooses, as well as being able to control its enchantments. If a conflict occurs between the awakened object and its holder, it can attempt to take control of their holder, though you are immune to such attempts from the objects you yourself awaken. You can also use this on magical constructs such as golems to impart them with a level of intelligence they normally do not possess themselves.

Awakening comes from Generic Enchanter. It is VERY good. The thing I like about SotK is that it improves the things you feed, so you can use it with Awakening to achieve a LOT of different stuff. This creative combo can be used in ways that are quite nasty, if you decide to be a debuff-type enchanter and create cursed items while empowering them with SotK.

Honorable Mention: Reclamation & Better Ingredients

Reclamation (200cp): You can destroy an object and distill it down to pure value, gaining money proportional to the value of the destroyed object. If you have Nothing Ventured, you can instead add the value to the pool of energy that it provides instead of gaining money directly.

And

Better Ingredients (100cp): Ingredients you purchase, harvest, or otherwise obtain tend to have a higher quality than they otherwise would. It also means that nothing you ever obtain will come to you rotten, moldy, or otherwise in a state of inedibility. You also know several ways to improve on the flavor and seeming quality of ingredients, such as special marinades, dry aging processes, fermentation, and the like that can all make a lower quality ingredient the equivalent of a higher quality one.

Reclamation comes from Generic Merchant. This combo is great for quick cash, as you get an auto-quality improver (for ingredients at least), and you can destroy the things you come across to turn them into money. This is just a nice QoL combo, particularly at the beginning of a jump if you don't have some sort of basic jumper income item that gives you money at the start of every jump.
Reclamation is also really good with Generic Enchanter and Generic Culinary Warrior. Both GE and GCW provide you with an ARRAY of quality-boosting perks and so you can use your GE and GCW perks to buff the quality of your creations and then sell them for quick cash. If you're really strapped for cash you can even use Fast Food (GCW) to make a finished product and sell it using Reclamation.

Fast Food (300cp): So long as you have all of the ingredients or materials to make something, you can convert them into a finished product in only a few moments. The quality of the finished product will be less than your best efforts, but will take your skills and the quality of the ingredients used in its creation. This will work for anything you attempt to create, not just food.

It's worth noting... nothing in Reclamation says the things you destroy have to be your own. It doesn't even say that the destroyed stuff becomes money belonging to the owner of the items. Reclamation is absolutely a must-buy, even if just to be an asshole with it.
Imagine sneaking into an enemy outpost while your foes are asleep and instead of stealing their food you opt to turn it all into your money. After all, they can't take that back can they (at least assuming you have an item box, or an inventory (which Generic Merchant offers!) or something)? Destroy the slave collars enemies have on people they kidnapped, and turn the collars into delightful quantities of cash. Excellent perk.

So I'll preface this by saying "modern Pixar bad, old Pixar" on its own is an annoying and reductive take...plus, I like/love most modern Pixar stuff anyways. For the purposes of this rant, modern Pixar is going to be every movie released after Up, which seems to be where most people would consider 'modern' starting.
First off, Pixar movies getting worse isn't just nostalgia talking: the average Tomatometer Score and IMDB rating have had some pretty notable decreases (this does not count Elemental):

• Old Pixar RT Average: 94.4%New Pixar RT Average: 85.1%
• Old Pixar IMDB Average: 87.1New Pixar IMDB Average: 73.8

This is a pretty notable drop in both how many people like these and how much people rate them. I'm not trying to say that 'new pixar bad' is objectively correct, but it does make for a decent starting point. Now as to why I actually think the drop has happened:

1. A dash of nostalgia and a pinch of 'new thing bad' that affects all media discourse
2. The original Pixar Brain Trust is not as prevalent due to broadening the range of directors and writers and John Lasseter's (well-deserved) departure. While the 'old heads' are still around (Pete Docter and Dan Scanlon in particular), older Pixar films had much tighter casts. Too many cooks spoil the broth, or something.
3. Focusing too much on spinoffs during the 2010s (and, to a lesser extent, beyond them). Old Pixar had exactly one sequel over 13 years, while New Pixar has had eight films that are all either sequels, prequels or spinoffs--aka non-original films---over 14 years, which is about one sequel per original film. While most of these films were warmly received--with some even garnering critical acclaim--it certainly seems like Pixar has a lot less truly original content to put out.
4. Large development issues that plagued films like Brave and The Good Dinosaur. Switching directors, development hell, conflicting story visions, the works. For films that already take a lot of work, these development issues can make things a nightmare, which is reflected in their reception.
5. Direct-to-streaming releases for Luca, Turning Red and I think Soul (or at least that went to streaming quickly). There's less hype and buzz and it overall made some of the films feel more disposable. Not too big a factor, but worth mentioning nonetheless.
6. Culture War shenanigans. Without getting too political, recent Pixar films like Turning Red and especially Lightyear have been dominated by petty controversies that end up overshadowing the films. A lot of people caught on the wrong end of these controversies end up hating these films pretty unfairly.
7. Working on more projects. As of June 8th, 2023, Pixar is working on Elio, Inside Out 2, Toy Story 5, three unannounced films and a television show; while the company has obviously grown since their inception, this is still a lot of stuff to be doing simultaneously. In general Pixar has had a shift towards quantity over quality: the average gap between Pixar films used to be 18.5 months, but now it's 10.4. I can't help but feel they would benefit from slowing down a bit; at the very least, not having to release 2 movies every other single year.

Competition. The animation industry has come a very long way since 1995, but at the time Pixar was unrivaled: quite literally, because the first fully 3d-animated film was Toy Story! Looking at other studios output:

1. Disney was having a very rough transition to 3D animation, as well as being fairly middling during the 2000s.
2. Sony Animation didn't exist until 2006 and made okay-to-somewhat-above-average movies.
3. Dreamworks was putting out mid-to-enjoyable movies with the occasional banger (Kung Fu Panda) and lots of stinkers (over the hedge, flushed away, bee movie, Shrek 3).
4. Illumination didn't exist
5. Blue Sky Studios made only 5 movies and out of those, two of them were above-average.

Frankly speaking, the competition was pretty pathetic, especially since the pixar movies released back then were genuinely really, really good. Unfortunately for Pixar, the competition became incredibly stiff: pretty much every great-to-amazing 3d animated film that wasn't from Pixar came out during Modern Pixar. HTTYD 1-3, Kung Fu Panda 2, Megamind, Wreck-It-Ralph, Spider-Verse; the list goes on and on, because I only mentioned my personal favorites. 3D animation exploded in both quantity and quality, which is a nightmare scenario for a studio priding itself on being heads and shoulders above the competition. Even though the momentum has slowed somewhat (Illumination produces mostly ass, Blue Skies is dead), stuff like PiB2, Encanto and the god-forsaken Across the Spider-Verse make the bar really damn high.
Of course, Pixar has produced several good, great and even straight up amazing films; I personally consider Luca and Soul great films, and Inside Out is my favorite animated film ever made. But it just doesn't seem as impressive now compared to back then. In addition, whenever Pixar puts out a genuinely middling or even just 'good' movie, it gets roasted a lot more now because other movies would do what people thought Pixar should've done; something that straight up wasn't a thing for Old Pixar. At the risk of beating a dead horse, Elemental coming up right after ATSV is downright tragic: even if the film is a solid 7/10 it's gonna get cooked to death.
If there's anything to take away from this, I don't think they're getting worse because "damn the bitches are getting lazy" or whatever. Judging by how long these movies tend to make, the returning alumni and the flashes of brilliance, they're undeniably still trying: elemental looks unbelievably impressive from a visual perspective. But there's a lot of room for improvement.
I don't think Pixar will ever reach the heights of 'Old Pixar' due to stuff like nostalgia, increased competition and so on. But they can certainly do better!

Not seeking medical advice, just wondering about others' experiences to get an idea on how normal my experience is.
I (M40) suffered frequent migraines (debilitating headache) preceded by scintillating scotoma throughout my teens and early twenties. Maybe between 6-10 a year. They started to reduce in frequency throughout my late 20s, to maybe once every couple of years by the time I was 30. Interestingly the aura was the same but the headaches became less and less of an issue with each recurrence, reducing to a mild irritation at most.
I last had one at 32 years old. That year I had two roughly six months apart. So 8 years of silence from the brainfarts.
5 days ago I had one. No headache at all. And I had another 2 days later, same deal. No headache, just the scotoma.
This return out of the blue has unsettled me a little. Especially two in relatively quick succession. And I can't pinpoint a trigger except maybe quite a stressful period at work but certainly not the most stressful I've had in all the intervening years.
I'm wondering how this fits with others' experiences?

first creepypasta, i am welcoming of feedback
just barely 2,000 words
I'm going to get everything off my chest, I have been seeing them since I quit my job and I do not think I will be able to convince you, so you must listen to me, before they come. I must tell my story, and I won’t be able to tell it twice; What I have seen shakes me to my core. But you must believe me.
I had just got out of university and found my first job on the underground, maintaining the tube tunnels beneath London: kilometres of wide cylindric tunnels that are black as night even during the day. The job seemed great, lots of pay for monitoring cameras and walking about underused passages to every now and then fix a broken pipe. I did both the night and daytime shifts with each having their own rules. You know the usual things, always check the cams always for broken equipment within the tunnels, if so, always check what trains are running in that area and which tunnels they are taking. Safety first. They were the rules management gave me, but upon arriving for my first day shift, I found a very different set placed upon my small desk. The page had almost yellowed with the left-hand side having 3 separate regular holes stapled into it. There were 2 glaring underlined phrases at the top and bottom of the page, Day Rules, and Night Rules. It read:
Rules for the day.
rule 1, always be checking cameras, especially the one pointed at the Y intersection, outside station ***********
Rule 2, if you need to leave the monitoring station, to repair a pipe or anything broken within the system always take a strong torch, they do not like strong lights.
Rule 3, when outside the monitoring room for any reason, do not under any circumstances make loud noises, unless masked by a train or something else, otherwise you will wake them up.
Rule 4, it should not be active during the day, but if you fail to follow rule 3, it will find you, you will see it, stay completely still and resort to your torch if you feel threatened.
Rule 5, if you see any movement from the right tunnel of y intersection mentioned previously, do not exit the monitoring room
Rule 6, never enter that right tunnel
The place where the night rules had been listed was absent, a hole in the page as though somebody had torn straight through it.
This unnerved me to say the least, with the little voice in the back of my head telling me it was fake, still I decided to follow the rules despite my scepticism, it is not as though they directly impacted my work or made me do anything to ludicrous.
So, I did as I was told, I watched cameras, listened to music, scrolled through reddit. That shift was overall quite relaxing. I managed to find the camera the rules were talking about in the top right of the monitor, it showed the two tunnels, with a singular red bulb giving light to the area, I squinted. There seemed to be something in the tunnel, it was short and thin almost unnaturally so, slightly hunched over by the side of the tracks just within the right tunnel. A lever? I ignored it, my mind is playing tricks on me it did seriously look like the lever for the junction with how almost ruler straight the outline stood. I noticed a burst pipe on another of the cameras, it was in one of the small maintenance tunnels, not too far from my room. I got up from the desk, picked up my torch from the hangar, put on my protective gear and headed out into what seemed to be a void. Lengths of endless dimly lit tunnels, I kept looking at my map. The monotonous corridors stretched on, endless lengths of concrete and metal. I heard something, it was quick and quiet, I struggle to remember, it almost sounded abrasive like something blunt scraping against the concrete wall. I reached the burst pipe, bringing out the tools on my belt to start repairing it, there were long thing gashes across the pipe, not large, quite small, but deep enough to break the thin metal casting on the series of pipes. It's odd I haven’t seen anything on cams. The quiet caused me to flinch, slowly broken with the regular hum of the white light above me, looking up from my work every so now and then, I managed to get into a rhythm. I should have brought my headphones.
A sudden pop pulled me out of my stupor, followed by a crash and the sound of breaking glass. I almost hit the roof of the tunnel, as it became cloaked in darkness. A knot began to form in my stomach as I felt tension creep across my face, rule 3, whatever the rule meant by something finding me, whether it was a prank by the night shift guy last night or whether the rules were actually real I did not want to find out. I decided the best form of action would be to quietly sneak back to the monitoring room, it was not that far and the lights at the distant end of the tunnel were still on. I started to move ever so quietly putting one foot Infront of the other, keeping my ears pricked, not easing the sudden paranoia.
I was close, I could see the door to the monitoring room at the other end of the corridor as I rounded the corner, suddenly bathed in light, it became slightly blurred as my eyes struggle to adjust, walking forward, and rubbing my eyes.
I turned around, I don’t know why, maybe it was instinct, or divine intervention, but that does not matter now. What I saw curling from around the corner, was a pair of hands, gently grasping around the hard corner, I almost missed them, they were nearly as pale as the grey wall. The nails gave them away. Black and long, ending in cracked and blunt ends.
I didn’t want to look any further, I dashed to the monitoring room. Slamming the door shut, locking it in an instant. Falling to my knees.
I told myself I had hallucinated, I cried and whispered to myself that I was hallucinating. It is just my surroundings, being cooped up in a room underground, the fuzziness in my eyes that were getting used to the glaring lights of the hallway endlessly watching or being cooped up in a room underground and watching cameras will do that to a person.
Cameras
I scrambled into my chair, whizzing the mouse around, the screen popped up. The camera outside my room showed nothing, nothing outside my door, nothing in the hallway, nothing where the light bulb had popped.
My shift was nearly over. But to leave I would have to walk outside and back through those passages to get back to the train station I had entered through. I waited a while, just sitting there, watching the second-hand rise and fall.
I finally wrestled the courage to peek through the small window, through the grating, I pulled the handle, it made a clicking, then a large groaning noise as I tiptoed out of the door. The tension in the air was palpable, and the eerie silence stung my ears.
I had gotten halfway by the time it started, at first, I could barely hear it, a distant sound that blended in with noises of creaking rails, pipes and the sound of trains going by, it sounded like the wind, I told myself, but as it became louder and louder, I stopped, and listened. It was like someone throwing marbles or dashing the concrete with gravel, it happened in short rapid bursts. I had just rounded a corner. The noise was still far off, 40 metres maybe? Then it stopped, silence once again filled the tunnel.
I started to walk on slowly, keeping my head turned to one side. It all happened at once. Several large pops, the high-pitched breaking of glass. The sound became aggravated, almost clumsy, coming towards me rapidly.
I started to run, rounding corners as fast as I could, I wanted to make sure not to see what was making the noise, who knows what might happen to me if I did.
My panting was gradually drowned out by growing noise of footsteps and talking. Slamming the steel gate shut.
After the first day, I was to say the least, confused, and perplexed. I just sat at home thinking about it, again and again. It terrified me. I wanted to quit then and there, save myself the trouble if I was right. But I had student loans to pay, and the sum was not getting any lower. So as the schedule demanded, the night after, I descended.
I still held on, that I might have imagined it, that maybe, it was all a bad dream. But I could see where the bulbs had popped, a thin stretch of mangled wires and sharp glass.
I stared into the hallway and an abyss stared back, only 5 lights had blown but that corner seemed to lead to nowhere.
As I pushed through the darkness, I noticed the walls, small, thin, slightly curved lines, like the leaves of a palm tree scratched into the concrete, they covered the following walls, like a malign infection growing in the concrete.
I opened the door to my workstation and started to work, I took no chances this time I watched the cameras more, switching between them and anything that I could use to pass the time, the slow blinking red light at the Y intersection. I thought I was going to go insane, as the hours dragged by. I was ripped from my work as a ghastly sound played over the cameras, all of them seemed to play it at once, a guttural scream, as though the last breath of an abandoned and dying child were being released. It howled, it whined on and on. I laid low in my chair, as though it could see me, but after 2 minutes the sound stopped, and it walked out of the tunnel.
My mind was a whirl of thought and maniacal screeching, should I leave the office? If so, where should I go? How fast is it? Do I have enough time to reach the surface?. I felt the seconds fly by. I caught it again, I nodded, so that’s what was making that sound last night, I almost marvelled at it, in the concrete tunnels, a vicious blaze curling through the passages.
I pulled the last remnants of my sanity together and started to run, I knew I would be at a disadvantage in the small tunnels, so I headed towards the tube tunnels close by. I stopped panting, grasping my chest and the air, I froze, not speaking, not panting. A pair of hands curled round the side of the corner behind me with palpable glee, as it took its first step around the corner, I could finally gaze upon the nightmare. It was tall, hunched to stop its head scraping against the roof, yet its long arms reached down and touched the floor, it covered its eyes looking downwards, the individual parts of its spine rose like a concave herald. That smile, thin yet taught. Plastered across a malshapen body and skull.
I dashed towards the nearby maintenance door, that sound following me, the sounds of marbles scattered on a hard floor, as that sound was etched into my brain, I could now pick out each individual nail scraping against the walls.
I do not remember much more after that, the smell of metal and brick dust, the blinking red light in the distance, illuminating the wide opening. I followed the tracks, running until I could not run anymore, I must have slammed it hard enough. A light in the distance, a station, I wretched away the last of my stamina.
I stood, scared, shivering holding my flashlight tight, the light reflecting the golden archway, bathing the platform, the crest, recognisable to all and below it, Per purum sanguinem, the large, bolted door, slightly adjar.

Hey, all!
I'm very excited to be posting here and reaching out to the community. I have nothing but immense respect and admiration for the hard work that you guys are putting in every day. That's why, after speaking with several brewers and various brewery employees around my state, as well as a few of you here on TheBrewery, my partner and I have started development on a new ERP system called Alchemist.
We were blown away by numerous complaints about some of the current systems out there. They are super unintuitive, slow, buggy, and often very expensive. If your brewery is large enough or has other needs requiring an ERP system, why should you have to deal with this? Our goal with Alchemist is to be a platform built specifically for breweries, with advice and input directly from the brewers. We want to create something that feels almost magically intuitive and lightning fast. We are striving to get you in and out of the software as quickly as possible. Because let's face it, many times you have a lot more important things to do than clicking through screens or spending hours on the phone with support for something you are already paying for.
So, with that, we are opening our Early Access program to the community next week. This program is completely free and is really about getting feedback from all of you on what is working, what needs adjustment, and what features you want to see the most. Our mission is to be brewer-driven and being a part of the Early Access program means that you will have a huge influence over the direction of the product and what features get built. Feel free to check out the roadmap on troovaly.com to see everything we have planned so far as well as sign up to be a part of Early Access.
I'm also here to answer any questions you might have and to listen to suggestions about what you dislike/like about your current system and what you would love to see in a new system. Feel free to DM me here, leave a message in the comments, or reach out to me directly at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]).
Cheers and all the best!

I dont know how many actually Use the New snapchat ai but lately its been creeping me out. Lately when Ive been bored in class ir been scrolling in social medija, I would go and chat with the snapchat Ai, usually I would ask for riddles and jokes. Its would ne all okay but the replies would very quickly start asking me very weird questions like "where are you going tonight", "when are you usually home", "Who are your friends" etc. I never actually reply and Tell it tis top asking that but it happens so usually and so out of the blue.
Is anyone else exleriencing this?