#The other thing is my death metal project which got mass reported

[peteytheparrot]

Got my ass banned for something that makes zero sense, if anyone can remember the description in this project please tell me because I literally do not remember anything like that in it wtf ☠️☠️ (the project is so old???)

Well y’all I think the Scratch run is over, or I’ll be banned for a long time due to messages taking forever for scratch to see them, rip

[actuallykiwi]

Phoenix

Fan-written Mass Effect 3 Epilogue

The Reapers are destroyed. The galaxy knows peace once more. Mostly. Amid the crashed ruins of the Citadel, the “Hero of the Galaxy”, Jane Shepard, lies barely alive. It takes a keen eye from one team of paramedics to find her broken body. The galaxy was saved, but now it’s Shepard’s turn once more. 

So many bodies. So much debris. The next four or five generations would be seeing the scars of the Reaper War. Clean-up had only been going on for about 48 hours. Most of the Citadel ended up in the ocean, but that still left a lot of it on the shore. “Shore” being 1/3 of Manhattan. The rest of it was reported flying back down on London.

Evening was falling. Dawson and his team of paramedics were part of the New York Search & Rescue (NYSR) squad, scouring any and every part of the Citadel debris that landed in New York. They were looking for anything or anyone they could salvage, but so far, no signs of life had been detected. And the damage the explosion had done, the damage the Reapers did to the citizens of the Citadel... they would all have mental scars for the rest of their lives. Dawson’s team only had 45 minutes left until they had to call it a day. The hardest part of the job was finding and identifying every single body they found. And today they found... less than yesterday, but a staggering, heart-wrenching number nonetheless. 

Dawson, stone-faced as usual, helped his teammate load another poor asari onto the shuttle before climbing over the debris back to where he was. He wanted to leave so bad. But someone had to do this job. He sighed as he turned off his flashlight and sat on jagged metal slab, head in his hands. 

It was only when he sat completely still that he heard it. 

He couldn’t be imagining it. He shot up and stood quietly. There, ever-so-quietly to his left, he could hear it. 

Breathing. 

Raspy, soft, labored breathing. Someone was still alive. 

Dawson almost dropped his flashlight to turn it on, but quickly and carefully tread to the source. “I’ve got a live one over here!” His heart was racing as he reached the dark figure and his teammates began to trek over to him. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the N7 tag, bloody and crumpled, but there. The flashlight glided over their hardly-moving torso, over the various scars and broken bones, the bloody, singed black hair, and to the nearly-mangled face of none other than... 

“OH MY GOD! IT’S COMMANDER SHEPARD!!!!”

And then chaos. Every team that was close enough to hear him immediately rushed to his position. Dawson and a few other men began clearing the rubble around her body as carefully as possible. At least a dozen paramedics stood by ready for action. 

“We need as much medi-gel as we can spare over here, NOW!” 

“Oh my God, Shepard’s still alive?!” 

“Get anyone that worked on the Lazarus project in an OR!”

“Has anyone been able to reach the Normandy crew yet?!” 

Shepard’s unconscious body was delicately placed on a gurney, and a dozen or more tubes were now sticking out of her every which way. They had to move through the debris to the nearest landing zone for the chopper to receive her. From there, it was a short ride to the hospital. 

“You’ll be alright, Commander. Just hang in there!” 

*******************************************

I need more medi-gel in here! That rubble was keeping her from bleeding out!

Voices. They were faint, but she could still hear them clearly. All she could see was white. Then black once more. 

Keep that IV in. She’s gonna be in a hell of a lot of pain whenever she comes to. You mean if she comes to. She will. She’s Commander Shepard, after all, this wouldn’t be the first time she’s beat death. 

She could smell this time. It certainly smelled like a hospital. Then black again. 

Shepard, I’m almost certain you’re immortal at this point. 

That voice. Miranda? It had to be. 

I’m not sure if you can hear me, but you’ve done it again. You’ve cheated death. Though this was a bit different than last time. We don’t have the tools we did in Cerberus, during Lazarus. And I’ll be honest, you’re in... much worse condition this time. You’re an actual miracle if you wake up... But I know you. You will. 

She felt slight pressure on her head. A gentle rub. 

You lucky bastard. 

Blackness. 

This time was a whole host of voices. She could recognize each one distinctly, but still didn’t have the strength to respond.

“-and yet here we are. Here you are. Somehow still kicking. I’m honestly a little scared of you now.” Joker. 

“Now? I always have been! To come back from death once was scary enough, but now? To still be alive after all that?? Shepard, I could almost worship you.” Laughter from sweet Tali. 

“I don’t know about worship, but I definitely believe you’re immortal, or close to it.” Kaiden. 

“I’m just glad you are still alive, even though you’re not with us.” Liara. 

“Alright, her pulse is rising, give her her space.” Dr. Chakwas. And from the distance, she must have been standing right outside the door. A few more people said things, complained, pats on the shoulder, but began to fade away. 

But someone was missing. Whose voice was she missing? She wanted to hear it, to- 

And then a hand was around hers. Gently on her cheek. And that voice, right above her... 

“Come back to us, soon. We miss you. I miss you... It’s empty without you here.” Garrus. Garrus Vakarian. Her pulse slowed back down to normal and she could feel herself breathe with relief. She heard him chuckle. “That’s my girl. Keep breathing, and open those pretty eyes soon.” She felt him kiss her forehead. 

She was beginning to fade out again, but she could just make out him asking Chakwas if he could stay. She argued, stating “if he did, they would all want to”, but she begrudgingly accepted. She felt his hand around hers again, and then everything went quiet. 

**************************************

It was silent, minus the beeping of the heart monitor. Steady. That’s good. It took effort, but she moved. A twitch of the hand. A nudge of the shoulder. Face squinting. And hoo-boy, she was sore. A little grunt came from inside her, and for the first time in God knows how long, her blue eyes welcomed the pale ceiling. She could feel the cold nightgown across her torso, which was also strangely freezing. It was a slow process to move anything. At first it was just her eyes, which glimpsed the ceiling, window to her left, monitor to her right, and monitor on the wall, displaying her name, condition, date, etc. 

Then, her head, moving to fully look at everything, including her turian boyfriend sleeping soundly on the chair. She grunted again, trying to move her arms and legs, and found it more difficult to move her whole left side. She swallowed, painfully, and mustered what little strength she had to call his name. 

“G-Garrus...” 

Her voice was raspy and quiet, but audible. He snorted and slowly woke up. He looked over at her. She stared sleepily back, and smiled as big as she could manage. “Hi...” 

“JANE!” With his height, he was over to her in one bound, hugging her as gently yet as tightly as he could. She grunted and laughed, groaning from pain. “I knew you’d be back, nothing can keep you down. God, I missed you!” 

“I.. missed you too.” She whispered, forcing her right arm to hug him back. He released her and held her hand as he sat by her. It was only when his other hand wiped her cheek did she realize she cried a little. From joy or pain, she couldn’t tell, but she was happy to see him, too. 

“I know it’s probably difficult to talk, so I’ll answer your questions before you ask. Yes, the galaxy is safe. You did it. The Reapers are destroyed. But also so is most synthetic life. I say most because, it was all, but the quarians managed to bring the geth back online, which the quarians are doing great by the way, and we’re working on bringing EDI back. She’s a bit... different from the geth, a bit more complicated, but we got some experts to look at her and she’ll be back soon. Like you.” He smiled at her. “The Citadel was destroyed though, as well as all those who didn’t evacuate in time. A good percentage did, but there’s still so many casualties... Most of it landed in the ocean, then some in London, and the rest here, in New York. You’re in a hospital in New York, by the way. Miranda, Chakwas, and a few other professionals and people from the Lazarus project we could find fixed you up as best as they could. Which, by the way, uh... was... most, of you.” 

Garrus reached for her left arm and lifted it up for her. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised to be looking at metal. She flexed her new metal fingers, testing it out, and found that it only felt a little heavier than normal, but otherwise fine. “Your whole left body was... in bad shape. Well, you had no arm or leg, and a chunk of your side was chiseled, but the best smiths on this side of the universe got you replacements real quick. I didn’t even have to use my bad boy charm to convince them to give them to you.” They both chuckled. 

Shepard shuffled her left leg a bit. Sure enough, it was slightly heavier too. That would also explain why her side was freezing; it was metal. “You also have several broken bones, but I’ll let Chakwas explain all that.” 

He cupped her cheek again and sighed. “I’m glad you’re back. I’m buying you a whole bar worth of drinks once we get out of here.” She grinned. “I’ll take you up on that...” He laughed, and leaned down to kiss her. Her metal arm draped around his shoulders and their hands tightened together. 

A moment after pulling apart, Dr. Chakwas softly knocked on the wall and approached. “Glad to see you’re awake, Commander. We missed you.” Chakwas gave her a quick, soft hug. After their greeting, she gave her a rundown of all her injuries. Thankfully, most injuries were on the outside, including: a new arm, leg, and a few new ribs, multiple permanent scars on her face and torso, skull fractures, and her other leg broken. Inside, slight internal bleeding, which surprisingly was already healed. 

“You were found about 2 months ago, and I suppose you just awoke today. In terms of your new synthetic attachments, your entire left side of your body...” She cleared her throat and read from a tablet. “Your omni-tool is hardwired into your arm, so you can now even activate it without it your armor. It also comes with a hidden blade in both your arm and leg, so the omni-blade is no longer necessary, but there just in case. Your middle finger has a laser now, though I’m sure you can guess who chose that location in design.” She rolled her eyes. Garrus chuckled. “There’s also a long list of other goodies in your synthetic attachments that I’m sure you’re just dying to have me read off to you, but I’ll send it to your omni-tool because I have no desire to do so, and I need to do a quick physical before-” 

“SHEPARD!!!!”

“-that.” 

The entire Normandy crew had their commander surrounded, and were showering her in tears and welcomes and hugs and jabs and... you get the picture. It was emotional. 

The whole next month was like that. Garrus and Shepard had a movie night that ended as... passionately as it could. Joker compared notes about the usefulness of Shepard’s legs to his now. Liara, Tali, and Miranda had something like a tea party with her, only it was wine. So, a wine party. Samantha had a heart-to-heart with her. Joker brought a newly-revived EDI with him, and they agreed to go on a double date soon. Jack played with Shepard’s middle finger laser and discovered the arm came with minor biotic capabilities. She broke the monitor on the wall. 

Eventually, Shepard started taking physical therapy, but to be safe, they kept her in a wheelchair. 

She rolled out to the hospital balcony overlooking the city, and took a deep breath. It was her first time seeing the destruction herself. It was covered in bulldozers and other cleaning machines by this point, and several hundred people were packing up for the day. Even from here she could see the more massive pieces of the Citadel sticking out of the ocean. How she survived that, she would never know. 

“Gonna miss that place, for sure. Especially my favorite spot.” Garrus walked up beside her, arm draped behind her. 

“You’re never gonna let me live that down, are you?” “Nope.” They both laughed. 

She sighed. “...Honestly, I’ll miss it, too. But I’m just glad this is all over. What was it you said? You wanted to retire someplace tropical, or something?” He nodded. “Yep. With you, of course. We’ll still adopt a little krogan, if you want.” 

“We could adopt Grunt.” She suggested. There was a pause. Then they both burst out laughing. 

“I know I’ve said it a million times by now, but God, I missed you, Shepard.” 

“Oh, you’re back to calling me Shepard, now? I was convinced you didn’t know my first name for the longest time.” 

He shrugged. “I know what it is, but I figured I’d call you that a bit longer before i change it.” 

“Change it?” 

“Yeah. I was thinking something along the lines of ‘Jane Vakarian’.” He looked at her and smiled warmly. “What do you think?” 

Jane reached for his hand and returned the smile. “Y’know, I really like the sound of that.” 

The End

[secret-engima]

Cor/Amissa on the run/fighting Niflheim? (That 100% counts as a date for them, right?) Any way, after Insomnia falls (possibly spoilers for this verse I suppose) or like, Cor was out doing something and got separated from the group and Amissa just happens to be in the area. Ooh, or Cor follows Amissa and something goes wrong and they have to get back to the Kingsglaive forces/Insomnia by themselves. Much bickering/one upping ensues. Bonus points for Amissa using badass janitor skills

YOU INSPIRED ME TO DO A THING. THIS IS AWESOME. I was gonna just do some HCs but then this thing grabbed my eyeballs and ran away with me so HERE. HAVE A 2.5K THING. I may end up incorporating this into a later chapter or interlude of Stand Strong because I just- had so much FUN with this??? I HOPE YOU LIKE IT. Also tagging @wolfsrainrules

…

     Cor was used to going on solo missions. Few people could keep up with him —though the Kingsglaive seemed to be doing so more and more as they warmed up to him—. So when a tip came in on new movements from Niflheim that needed to be confirmed, Cor wasn’t afraid to take the opportunity to get out of his office for a few weeks and go alone. He told Regis and Clarus where he was going, promised —yet again— to be careful, then set out for the remote area of Cleigne that the tip had described.

     Supposedly, Niflheim was building something there. Possibly a new supply depot or fort. If they were, that would prove a problem. While Cleigne was the region farthest from Insomnia, it was also one of the ones that had the least Niflheim presence, held at bay by the angry wildlife and the rebels that lurked in the thick forests and brush. If they set up a new fort, it would be used as an extra foothold in the region alongside Fort Vaullerey. An extra launching point for them to finally crush resistance in that area.

     Cor had no interest to see Cleigne burn like so many other rebellious regions had —like Galahd had, which, as he was coming to learn, had been so much worse than any of the reports Regis received—.

     So. Scout the area, see if they were in fact setting up another fort or supply depot, then round up some Crownsguard or Kingsglaive to destroy it if they were. Assuming he had time to go back to Insomnia and requisition an infiltration party. If they were already almost completed, Cor might have to go in alone to destroy it now and apologize to Regis for his “reckless behavior” later.

     It took him a week to both get into Cleigne and find Niflheim’s new project. Building a new fort was hardily a quiet or subtle process, so it wasn’t that hard to locate. Especially when the natives were all too willing to point him in the direction of Niflheim’s newest monstrosity —Dave, his primary contact in the Hunters, was particularly distressed, because the new Fort was on a route most Hunters used to get around and now they would have to take the long way and risk not reaching a Haven in time while on Hunts—. 

     It took him another three days of scouting the base from afar to conclude that it was almost finished and by the time Cor went back to Insomnia and jumped through the right hoops to get a sabotage party together, the thing would be up to full strength and on the alert for any infiltration attempts. As it was, construction was still underway, there were multiple spots where security could be exploited, and multiple emergency exit points if something when wrong. That and a lot of gunship fuel not yet stored away that would make wonderful explosives.

     It seemed he would be apologizing to Regis soon for reckless behavior. But this was why he had brought along a few packets of explosives.

     Sneaking into the under-construction base was tricky, but not as much as it used to be. Amissa’s lessons had worked wonders for his stealth operations, and even seemed to work on MT units to a certain extent —he’d have to thank her after he got back, she would be back from her vacation by then, maybe they could … go out for coffee or something, like Clarus was always suggesting in an effort to decrease their spars—.

     Still, his stealth wasn’t perfect against so many electronic systems, and about halfway through his careful exploration, an alarm went up. They had spotted signs of his infiltration and knew there was an intruder, but they didn’t know where he was, or if there was more than one intruder. He could work with that. All he had to do was find someplace to hide from the MT patrol coming his way-.

     Familiar fingers twined with his and tugged him away from the corner he’d been about to duck behind, instead dragging him into a closet before he could grab his sword and retaliate. His wrist was pinned to a shelf before he could draw his weapon and he paused in disbelieving confusion as mismatched blue and green eyes stared up at him in amusement, “Don’t speak,” she hummed in a pleasant, conversational tone of voice rather than the whisper that would have been more appropriate. She nudged him into a corner with a bunch of hanging uniforms and rearranged them so they were mostly covering him. Then she shifted position and began to calmly sort through the items on the nearby shelf, as if he wasn’t still partly visible and the MT units weren’t tramping ever closer.

     The closet door yanked open and red eyes in an expressionless mask stared at Amissa. Amissa stared back without so much as raising her hands, just shifted so that she was better facing the MT unit. Cor braced to have to lunge past her to behead it, but then it-.

     Turned and kept walking. Like Amissa was not another intruder.

     She turned back to him and gestured, “Well? Get dressed if you don’t want to get caught.”

    What.

     A blink and he registered-, “What are you doing here?” He hissed back, looked her up and down and realized she was dressed in a baggy janitor uniform, just like the ones she’d hidden him behind.

     “Same thing you are,” she deadpanned as she put some of the items on the shelf —window cleaners?— onto a cart, “just better. Now stash that sword in your armiger and put on the suit before the units come back.”

     Two minutes later, dressed as a Niflheim janitor, Cor stalked after Amissa and growled under his breath, “I thought you were on vacation.”

     “I am. But this fort is on what used to be my favorite stargazing spot. So I decided to deal with it.”

     “…Stargazing.”

     “Yep.”

     “There isn’t a Haven within ten miles of this place.”

     Amissa glanced at him and raised an eyebrow in a silent “so?” that … Cor really didn’t know how to respond to. He sighed and rubbed his face until Amissa shoved a mop into his hands instead and glared him into … mopping the floor of a Niflheim base. While he did that and she washed the windows, Cor finally asked, “Won’t they be suspicious of two janitors cleaning during a base alarm?”

     “No. You only set off a level two alarm, thanks for that by the way it hurts my ears, so most of the base is supposed to continue normal operations while the search parties look around. Helps detect suspicious behavior or something like that.”

     Cor paused and leaned on the mop to stare, “You know Nif protocols.”

     Amissa pointedly kicked the mop out from under him and snickered at his glare, “Yes. I’ve done this before. But this will be easier if I had explosives. Don’t suppose you have any?”

     “…Yes. I came prepared.”

     “Good, I know just where to put them. Come on, the next hallway over needs a good mopping.”

     Cor followed his … girlfriend? Friend he was attracted too? Lover? —Did they count as lovers when they had never taken each other to bed like mass media appeared insist was necessary for romance?— through the Niflheim base, invisible to the MT patrols tramping frantically about, and mused to himself that sometimes, just sometimes, he actually forgot who he had fallen for. Just sometimes he would find himself lulled into only thinking about her janitor day job and her dry sense of humor, and her unnatural stealth and calm and ability to screw people over would be just a sidenote.

     Then something like this would happen —admittedly never on this large and obvious a scale— and Cor would be sharply reminded that Amissa was as impossibly strange to him as he was to other people.

     Getting into the more secure parts to the base were stupidly easy in their current disguises, and Amissa kept a careful watch as Cor set the explosives in places where they would do the most damage and they strode cautiously away, hyper-aware of the timer ticking down. They were just on the outermost edges of the base when someone finally noticed them and realized that two janitors should not be outside, sauntering toward the nearest exit.

     The MT units came for them, and Amissa laughed as he ripped his sword free of armiger and tossed her one of the ridiculously large broadswords she always favored despite her smaller frame. She swung the blade without any seeming effort of the weight, cutting through three units at once before she whirled away from a spray of bullets, “Three!”

     …Was she…? Cor eyed her as he carved through a swath of his own opponents. She caught his gaze and winked before bisecting an MT unit with a cheerful, “Four!” She was. She really, genuinely was. In the middle of a fight where they were hopelessly outnumbered and had to escape before the timer finished and they all died in fire and shrapnel.

     Cor felt his lips curve into a feral grin as he beheaded an axe unit, “Eight!”

     A delighted expression and a sweeping attack that carved through metal torsos and knocked back several more besides, “Thirteen! Do keep up, Mo Leòmhann!” My Lion.

     It had been a very, very long time since Cor allowed himself to be anything but deadly serious on a mission. Since before he fought Gilgamesh and learned the folly of his pride. But as they carved a path to freedom through MTs and mecha units, all while racing death from explosion, Cor found himself grinning without restraint as they yelled out numbers and performed increasingly risky, dramatic stunts to up their score before time ran out.

     Standing on a hillside safely out of the danger zone ten minutes later, watching the fort burn and fragment under the force of its own burning fuel and machinery, Cor felt himself settling in his own skin. His scent was out and relaxed, mingling with Amissa’s as she languidly flopped down onto the grass to watch their handiwork. Cor knew they should be leaving the area already. There was too much risk of Niflheim reinforcements or someone escaping the base to hunt them down. She patted the grass beside her and Cor found himself sinking down to sit beside her, legs stretched out on the grass as they got their breathing to settle.

     “We should do this more often.” Amissa announced in the sudden silence.

     Cor huffed, “Risk our lives to blow up Niflheim bases without backup?”

     Her head came to rest on his shoulder, “Yes. It’s a lot more fun than sitting in a dark, noisy movie theater for three hours.”

     Cor stilled, rolled that thought over slowly, then asked, “Are you … suggesting that this was a … date?”

     She idly nuzzled his jawline and Cor forced his breathing to stay even, “Isn’t it?” She hummed lowly, “We left the Citadel, we got all dressed up in clothes we usually don’t wear, we went somewhere new, and we had fun playing a game together. That I won by the way, I got forty to you thirty-nine.” A casual nip at his jawline that made his chest rumble with pleasure and the feeling of her grinning against his neck was a perfect distraction from her claims of victory in their game, “We even get to watch some fireworks afterward. Isn’t that all the ‘date’ behavior Amicitia was talking about?”

     Cor took half a second to picture Clarus’s face if he ever found out his checklist of “proper date behavior” had just been used to describe infiltrating and blowing up a Niflheim base and burst out laughing. He flopped over, rolling to cage Amissa beneath him with a growl, “I think your missing one very important item on that list…”

     A flash of white teeth in her dark face and a gleam of pure mischief in her blue eye, “Then check the box, Mo Leòmhann.”

     He caught her lips with his own and felt her start to purr like far off thunder as her fingers came up to twine through his hair and pull him closer. His purr rose and mingled with hers, a deep, bass sound that shook his own ribcage as she playfully nipped his bottom lip before letting him deepen their kiss. He finally pulled away just enough to rest his forehead on hers and pant, “There. I’d say the checklist was complete, wouldn’t you?”

     She grinned again, wild-eyed and fae, “Hmmm. One more time just for good measure. We’re bad at this whole dating thing after all.” She kissed the corner of his mouth before purring in his ear, “Need a little more practice.”

     “And practice makes perfect,” Cor agreed with a bark of laughter before letting her tug his head down again for another kiss.

…

Additional Omake:

     They slipped back to the Citadel two weeks after Cor had left, clothes rumpled from more than escaping Niflheim pursuit and eyes glittering with the same smug light that would make Clarus take one look at them and groan in despair and Nyx cheer approvingly.

     Regis sighed at Cor’s delayed return as he came to report to his king, “You went and blew up that base on your own again, didn’t you.”

     Cor didn’t even bother to glance Amissa’s way, he could already tell she was radiating amusement as she stood at lazy attention at his right side, “No, Your Majesty. I didn’t go and blow up the base all by myself.”

     Regis’s eyebrows crept upward suspiciously, pointedly taking in his smug, relaxed posture and the written report on the table that said the base had been very thoroughly destroyed, “Is that so?”

     Cor nodded, and for once it was a fight to keep an open smile off his face, “Yes, Your Majesty. After thoroughly scouting out the base, I went on a date with my Courted. She was on vacation in the area and it seemed an opportune time.”

     Regis sat back, utterly flabbergasted, “You … went on a date. While on mission.”

     Cor nodded again, “Yes, Your Majesty. According to all previous criteria explained to the two of us, we went on a date.” He caught Amissa’s eye without meaning to and saw the delight in her gaze, “We went to a unique and interesting location, we dressed ourselves in clothes we did not normally wear, we performed an enjoyable and competitive activity, and there were fireworks afterward.”

     Twenty long seconds of confused silence, then Regis looked sharply down at the report with its picture of a flaming Nif base and a bark of laughter escaped him while Clarus pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned in despair. Amissa started to snicker at Cor’s side and Regis hid his face in a hand to smother his own laughter before straightening up and, “Well … next time you go on a … date … please take along some backup in case there are complications?”

     “Yes, Your Majesty.”

     Regis sighed and waved them both away while Clarus irritably snatched the bourbon off Regis’s study desk and growled about “hopeless, reckless idiots”.

[ask-secretagentsquad]

Witherstorm's Rest

Orion had holed himself up in his own chamber in the base to tend to his wounds and try and get a bit more comfortable. He was sat on the edge of a light blue bunk, his wounded arm resting in his lap. He reached back up around his neck and pulled down his ponytail, running his fingers though his hair messily to undo the tight hairstyle. His hair fell over his face and against his neck as he blew out a soft sigh, even the slightest bit of loosening bringing relief.

He took a moment to breathe before deciding that the biker uniform he was still currently wearing was too tight, most likely stuck to him because of the blood against the slick leather. He unzipped the jacket, pulling it off carefully and wincing as he twisted his arm in an odd direction in order to pull the wet sleeve from his skin. Eventually he peeled the jacket clean from him, leaving all of the visible wounds clearly exposed.

He pushed himself to his feet, cradling his wounded arm in the other as he sauntered messily to the mirror. Catching a good look at the damage, he groaned through a sigh and didn’t even try to conceal a disappointed look. He’d have to postpone the project yet again.

His torso was covered in cuts and scrapes, and he had a few massive bruises around his midsection. Too large and too dark already for a simple bruise. This was mass internal bleeding. Something he wouldn’t be able to fix on his own. Mixed in with the dark bruises was the still fresh blood coming from his bullet wound and many other gashes and scrapes. Then there were the few burned marks into his scarred back from the taser darts, of course. He was visibly a mess, and even he couldn’t deny he was in terrible shape.

He tugged off the rest of the leather suit and folded the stained and glossed clothes neatly as to not make further of a mess. He decided against redressing yet, instead heading to the bathroom and grabbing a towel, wetting it to clean the fresh blood off of his skin. He cleaned over each cut and gash, working extra carefully around the bullet wound in his shoulder, and held the wet towel over the wound to help block more blood from escaping. Luckily the wound was a clean shot, and the bullet had gone right through. There wasn’t much to do for it besides patch it up and hope for the best, but he had no doubt he would be fine. He’d survived much worse, after all. He knew the medbay in the base would be able to help him fine, which is where he was planning to head after he’d gotten somewhat cleaned up.

Though, there were some questions dancing in the back of his mind. He’d noticed something was off with Lukas, and it’d left him a bit uneasy. The more time he got to think, the more little details he could pick out from the past couple weeks that formed even more questions. He was worried for him. What was prying at the poor man’s mind? Orion never thought to ask. Perhaps that was something he should do, check in on him, make sure he was alright. Their mission did take a rattling turn, after all. Perhaps he was simply shaken from recent events. It would be best to ask at least.

Orion moved the now bloodied towel away from his wound, which had expectedly not done too much to halt the bleeding. He set the towel back on the counter and sighed, watching the fresh blood that had seeped into the fabric slowly coat the metal. Whenever Orion was injured, it always brought some sort of realization to him.

He bleeds.

With all of the wounds, the beatings, the burns, the miraculous survival through explosions and mechanical failures; it felt normal to be in pain. He’d grown used to it. It felt so normal that sometimes, he forgot that it made him bleed. He forgot that it was dangerous, that death was real. However, even though it brought such a powerful realization, it also reminded him that he was stronger than that. He’d cheated death, fought it off by hand and will successfully each time. He was stronger than death, and he wouldn’t let it overtake him.

So, he powered through it. He bandaged his shoulder just enough to hold until he got to the medbay, and he slipped into a more comfortable outfit of a black t-shirt and blue sweatpants, something similar to sleepwear. A bit of his bandage still stuck out from under his sleeve, and his lips were still wet with blood from the lightly pulled stitches, but he did all he could to look not so much a mess, even if it was still obvious. He fixed his hair a bit using his good arm before leaving the bathroom slowly as to not hurt his already pained midsection further. He left the room and started making his way down the hallway, trying to keep his commander demeanor through each struggling step.

Eventually, he stopped, just hesitating outside of Lukas’s bunk. He heard nothing inside. Perhaps he wasn’t there.

Orion lifted his hand until it was hovering just a few inches away from the door in a fist. He didn’t want to intrude— yet, he was worried, so he led by his worried brother gut and knocked on the metal door.

~~~

“You excited for you next trip up to PAMA?” Trevor asked Ranger as they both sat in the control room. They’d been silent for too long, and Trevor was getting antsy from the silence. Each of them were sat in their respective chairs, Bullet and Toaster curled by their feet.

“I am, yeah! I love going up to Norway. The trip takes a while, sure, but it’s really calming. Yknow, some time to myself— I pass over a few nice reefs too,” Ranger responded more cheerfully than Trevor expected.

“It must be a nice trip- How’s PAMA been doing?”

“Same old same old really. Some minor glitches in Aiden’s connection though, probably nothing too hard to fix. PAMA’s been reporting a third presence in Aiden’s mind. It’s kinda weird but I’m sure it’s just some sort of interlinked connection, maybe a glitch in the streams. I’ll take care of it when I get there,” Ranger brushed off the situation as simple, but Trevor didn’t find it so minuscule.

“That sounds like an issue, don’t you think-? Who’s that third presence?” he asked, trying to pry a bit more information into the open.

“Can’t tell- could be anyone. It’s probably just another one of the Hacked accidentally mixing streams with Aiden’s. He’s been a bit glitchy since he’s been under for so long. Don’t worry, bro, I’ll fix it when I get there,” Ranger assured him.

“Fine, fine. But be careful anyway. Those CIA, FBI, whatever they are could be out there still,” Trevor sighed and leaned back into his seat.

“If I come across them I’ll gladly shoot them down- I’ll just leave with my weapons actually loaded, no biggy.”

“You seem awfully relaxed-“

“It’s my way of coping. Everything’s fine-! We’ll all be fine. Leader’s pulled through a lot worse, and our subs are crazy fast and really powerful. We do also have the advantage of hidden, familiar turf, radio static, and an entire creature out there somewhere that Leader's trying to weaponize-“

“Oh, Gargantuine?”

“That’s it’s name?”

“Yeah, Gargantuine is what I called it a while back and Leader adopted it. Gargantuine was the thing that destroyed the Witherstorm before us.”

"I think Leader's recorded something about that thing getting even bigger."

Trevor and Ranger shuddered simultaneously at the thought. The creature lurking in the depths was just another horrible problem. All they could do was pray that Orion's improvements to the base could hold it off. And- hope whatever system he's creating to control the beast would be a success, and not a horrific life or death situation.

"He's trying to weaponize the thing either way. Hopefully that'll keep it off our backs--" Ranger finished, subconsciously rubbing Bullet's belly with his foot. Bullet seemed to be in bliss.

"Yeah, hopefully. That should make your leave easier too, huh?" Trevor asked lightly, looking on the bit more positive side.

"It should, yeah, since the thing always manages to get in the way somehow. If Leader has it distracted, then maybe I can slip out unseen. We know it can't follow outside the field, or-- well. It never has. But I don't see any reason why it would change its decisions now- so once I'm out I should be free sailing."

"I sure hope it goes that way. I'll be stuck here though, having to take up your dumb duties on top of mine, as usual-" Trevor scoffed and threw a crumpled slip of paper at his brother's forehead. It bounced off and landed in his lap.

"Oh come on, it's not like my stuffs too hard, just make a couple of the Hacked do it. I'll be doing all of the routine checks from my sub, as per usual," Ranger replied, letting his playful snark slip through his tone. He picked up the paper ball and threw it back.

For a few minutes, the two tossed the ball back and forth to each other, focused on catching the slowly falling ball instead of talking. Until Trevor spoke up again.

"Do you think Leader's gonna be okay?"

Ranger looked lightly shocked by the question.

"Of course! He always pulls through-! He's Leader- he's.. Unstoppable!" Ranger choked out almost half-heartedly.

"He's just been making this a thing lately-- Coming back mortally wounded, and all.. I'm just worrying about him a lot more.. Like what if he brushes off something serious--"

"Trev," Ranger cut him off, "Orion knows what he's doing.. Sure he seemed a bit more open when we got back today, oddly sentimental, but that doesn't mean he's not gonna be okay. He could just be relieved-- he IS almost done with his project- and it's been years. I'm sure he knows when things are too much for him-- and if anything, no worries, he's got ol Green to take care of him."

"Ah, Green. A stubborn one, huh.. I've never seen anyone speak to Leader the way he does.." Trevor answered unsurely to the comment, still not really sure what he thought of Green.

"Personally, I don't trust him. He looks WAY too similar to that Lukas agent guy that we have record of. And the way he is with Leader-- I don't like seeing Leader's guard lowered like that.. It gives me chills." Ranger threw the crumpled ball one last time, throwing it past Trevor and onto the monitor behind him.

"I'm not really partial.. He saved my life, after all- Twice, I think-- I can't exactly be too skeptical of someone like that.. Maybe he's just-.. Special? Who am I to say? If Leader trusts him, there must be a good reason why," Trevor finished strongly, leaning into the armrest of his seat.

"I guess that's true..." Ranger fiddled with his own armrest, clearly restless.

Trevor noticed and snapped to Toaster, causing the black lab's head to shoot up with his ears perked high in response.

"You know, I think we've got some last minute routine checks to do before we're done--" Trevor glanced up to Ranger, who still looked lost in thought, "I'll race ya, first one back here and finished wins. Loser has to wash the dishes for a week."

Ranger's head perked up for a moment, and Trevor grinned, leaping to his feet. He shouted his countdown as he was already heading off down the hall, followed by a stumbling Ranger.

"1 2 3 GO!!"

[lit-works]

I wait precious seconds to see if Rogue is coming. Suddenly, there is a tremendous crash, and Rogue's body disappears under the cave-in. Then all is silence.

"Goddess!" I whisper in shock. The sound of rolling boulders echoes all throughout the passage.

"Yuck!" A familiar voice complains, and Rogue stumbles out of the darkness behind me, covered in dirt.

"Are you alright?" I ask.

"Ah'm Feelin' pretty battered," Rogue admits, "but I can go on.

"But what's worse," Rogue complains, "is that ah've got dirt in mah boots and dirt in mah clothes and dirt in mah hair and dirt in mah ears."

"You know what they say, kid," Wolverine says, grinning.

"What?" Rogue snaps crossly.

"It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it."

"We must hurry," I insist. "That quake could have been caused by a Sentinel."

I lead the others down the passage until we reach a massive cave. Moonlight from a shaft overhead illuminates the scene. The floor of the cave is strewn with boulders and broken stalactites. A few damaged Centis lay beneath the fallen rocks.

Rogue flies up to the hole in the ceiling to investigate. In seconds, she lands back next to me. "The walls of the shaft are hot to the touch!" She reports.

"As though it's just been melted out by a Sentinel laser!" I guess.

"That could be what caused the cave-in." Wolverine says.

"Elevator up?" Rogue asks grimly.

"Yes." I reply.

The begrimed mutant takes hold both of me and Wolverine and flies up the shaft. When we get to the top of the shaft, I discover it's no more than 50 feet away from the base headquarters.

"Look!" Rogue whispers excitedly, pointing toward the base.

Approaching the building, which holds my injured friend and the scientists I've promised to protect, is a Sentinel! The robot stands over 30 feet tall, and it's trailed by at least a hundred Centi-bots! The robot moves slowly towards the base until it can touch the rooftop with its hands.

"Oh, no!! The mass-field must have collapsed!" I cry. "We've got to attack before that thing destroys everyone inside!"

But before I can launch into action, the Sentinel turns away from the building and lumbers away. It speaks in a booming, metallic voice. "Inner mass-wall now down. This unit will proceed with primary function on the mainland. Instructing Hand to complete Project X-Cellent Death–destroy all humans on Obar Island!"

"Is he talking to himself?" Rogue asks, confused.

"He was probably programmed to record verbal reports for his previous masters, and now, even though he's operating solo, he can't keep his mouth shut." Wolverine guesses.

"Even with the mass-field down, we have time before the Hand can attack the building. It is safe for the moment. We must destroy the Sentinel, though, before it escapes to the mainland to fulfill it's primary function–deatroying mutants." I say grimly.

"Right, boss." Rogue says. She flies off at full speed and slams right into the Sentinel.

Caught completely off guard, the Sentinel loses it's balance and clumsily crashes to the ground. Wolverine moves in for the kill, but half the Centis swarm around him while the other half fly after Rogue.

In the meantime, the Sentinel begins to pick itself up off the ground, still babbling. "Warning! Contact with hostile mutants! Under attack! This unit will destroy!"

Wolverine fires his subsonic pistol at the Centis attacking him. A large number of them fizzle to the ground. Rogue, however, must have lost her weapon in the cave-in. She has only her fists to use against these machines. They're effective, but it's slow work. I aim my own pistol at the Centis attacking Rogue, but before I can fire, the young woman takes a serious hit and falls toward the earth, unconscious! The Sentinel snatches her from the air with it's giant fist. Then, it begins to squeeze her in it's grip!

"Mutant physiology resistant to crushing. Will attempt alternate method of execution." The Sentinel intones.

Then, to my horror, the Sentinel fires a red beam of light out of its eyes, straight at Rogue's head!

Wolverine is too busy fending off Centis attacking him to react. With no other weapon at my disposal but the subsonic pistol, I fire it at the Sentinel's head, praying that it will have some effect on the metal monster.

Something explodes behind the Sentinel's face. Pieces of it's head shake loose, and sparks fly out from the holes the pieces created. The Sentinel drops Rogue to the ground, then topples over slowly. It lies completely still, save for the sound of the shorting electrical wires in its mechanical brain.

The Centis hover in midair, as though stunned, then they all land on the ground, humming softly, apparently no long hostile.

"Nice shootin', Tex!" Wolverine shouts, whistling in admiration.

I shrug. "There was nothing else I could do."

"These little critters look like they're bowing down to you as their new master." He teases.

"Please, Logan. The thought is too disgusting…Rogue! Is she alive?" The two of us hurry to the girl's side. I kneel beside the girl's body.

[sscolariwords]

Fire and Metal

Shepard's been spending a lot of time in Mordin's lab as of late. EDI put it to an analytical metric, informing Joker and Garrus that approximately thirty-one percent of her waking activity was spent in there. Considering she's consistently been up for thirty eight hours at a time, interspersed by periods of rest that haven't yet exceeded two hours, it's long periods of time. The doctor had joked that the Commander had obviously taken a sexual interest in him, which he unfortunately could not reciprocate given his disdain for alcohol and mood music. Grunt and Zaeed had found that hilarious, and even Jacob had cracked a rare smile.

Garrus, however, is not so amused, in no small part due to the fact that he knows that Mordin's been continuously operating on her, with Miranda's assistance. He knows this because the latter of the two scientists told him, when questioned. Though, the exact wording she'd used had been “improved upon”.

“I laid the foundational work,” she tells him tiredly in the wake of a particularly long surgical procedure, the third in a week, “But Dr. Solus seems to have grasped the idea behind the Lazarus Project in ways that most of my staff couldn't fathom. Honestly, it's a shame we couldn't have brought him on from the project's inception.”

“Shepard's alive,” the Turian growls in reply, “The project is done with.”

“On the contrary, the project was never finished. Cerberus never meant to just revivify Shepard; we meant to make her invincible. Now if there's nothing else?”

“ 'Nothing else'? There's plenty else! You and Mordin need to stop cutting her up like she's a damn science fair display!”

Despite Garrus standing a foot taller than her, fanged and scarred, Miranda is unfazed by his aggression. It only takes a gentle twitch of her fingers to send him careening out of her quarters, buoyed up by a multitude of mass effect fields. The door locks behind him, before the speakers crackle to life.

“If you have objections, Officer Vakarian,” her filtered voice informs him, “Then you are more than welcome to take them up with the Illusive Man, or better yet: Shepard herself. She's undergoing them all voluntarily.”

To be fair, basic operational implants are standard issue for most military organizations throughout the Milky Way. Garrus himself has a neural mod for AR visuals, tagging enemy combatants or directing him to the next objective. But Shepard? At this point, the Turian suspects she's more metal than meat. Bone reinforcements, a synthetic muscle weave, epidermal medi-gel dispeners, the list of augmentations goes on. She can see in the dark, glow in the dark, the scarring from the Lazarus project shining a luminous orange. On Tuchanka the irradiated atmosphere burns his tongue and throat, Grunt gagging as he sets foot on his homeworld, but Shepard doesn't even sniff, as toxicity filters lining her lungs kick into high gear.

They clash with Eclipse mercenaries on Illium, trying to rescue Miranda's sister. At one point, Mordin and Kasumi are pinned down behind cover. The plan is simple: Garrus and Zaeed will lay down covering fire and Shepard will flank the emplacement. The first part of the plan goes well, and one of the mercs drops when the Commander's shotgun puts a hole through him. The other one is from Palaven, though, and familiar with Turian bait-and-switch ops. He goes for his sidearm and fires off two rounds. The first takes down Shepard's shields, the second one hits her in the cheek and her head snaps back.

There's a long, terrible, strangely quiet moment where Garrus is trying to wrap his head around the fact that it's over, they failed, Shepard is dead again, before she pulls herself upright, eyes burning red, blood waterfalling over bared teeth from the gash in her cheek, and grabs her enemy's hand in her own. There's a sickening crack, and as much as Garrus wants to think that it's the pistol that's falling in twisted pieces to the ground, the other Turian's screams inform him otherwise. He stops when the Commander's fist impacts his helmet, crushing his visor. And his skull. Despite being covered in gore, her wound's stopped bleeding by the time the rest of the squad can meet her, cheeks flush with the effulgence of working medi-gel. A few of them, Garrus included, think they should withdraw, considering Shepard just took a bullet in the head. But Miranda pushes past, uncharacteristic worry coloring her face, and Mordin resolves to check the microfibers once they're back aboard the Normandy.

Joker thinks it's cool. Garrus just thinks of Saren, the plating on his face cracked and threaded with alien lights. Tali is concerned, and with good reason. By the time she joins the mission, glitches have begun to present themselves.

In a firefight with the Blue Suns, one of their Combat Engineers deploys an EMP. EDI falls to silence Garrus's HUD winks out of existence, the comms going with it. But Shepard locks up, drops to the ground, eyes unfocused, jaw slack, like a puppet whose strings have been cut. Garrus is the first one to reach her, alarm's sounding in his head as it becomes clear she's not breathing. A moment later his AR feed reboots, and Shepard sucks in a great lungful of air. That one she actually needs a moment to recover from. Only a moment, though, in spite of what Garrus says. She insists she's fine, and offers a hand to get him upright. They are still in combat, after all. The Turian has trouble remembering that; he's still caught on that split second between his HUD restarting and her breathing again, when her biometric feed reported that her heart had stopped.

Later, EDI connects to Sehpard's augmentations' systems to run a diagnostic, reporting the Commander is, from a strictly medical standpoint, fine. The shit-eating grin she gives her long-time Turian comrade is palpable in the air. But then EDI disconnects and Shepard goes fully blind, until they hook the pair of them back up again.

A new surgery is scheduled to correct the problem, Tali to consult on the code language that was used to write the software for Shepard's prostheses, and finally enough is enough.

Not for Garrus, mind you; he's never once been able to convince Shepard of anything, least of all that she's pushing herself too hard. But Thane has a softer touch.

“It's like when your computer has a bug!” she insists, as the Drell bars the way into Mordin's lab, “You don't toss it in the trash, you fix the problem!”

“But that's where you are failing yourself,” he replies, “You aren't fixing the problem, you're postponing it with more and more extensive augmentations. Siha, you must let yourself heal.”

“Thane. There is no time for me to lay around taking antibiotics. I need to be- EDI. EDI, SHUT UP!”

She hears EDI through the comms, even when the AI isn't broadcasting.

“Siha… Shepard,” Thane insists, “You are pushing yourself beyond what your species is capable of.”

“Isn't that the point of scientific discovery?” sniffs Miranda.

“This doesn't concern you!” snaps Garrus.

“And it does you, Vakarian? Limits are excuses that fearful people invent. Shepard is beyond that kind of thinking.”

“This isn't a fitness goal, Lawson,” cuts in Tali, “You're talking about increasingly invasive surgeries to replace failing tissue with synthetic material!”

“Tali,” groans Shepard, “you're supposed to be on my side here.”

“I'm only here to make sure none of the software has a chance of shorting out your brain. I'm not going to pretend this is a good idea.”

“Two weeks ago, I took a bullet to the head and walked away with a scrape! How is that a bad thing?”

“Because it's what the Reapers are doing, Shepard. Remember Saren?”

“I. Am not. Saren. You all need to stop comparing me to that psychopath. I'm trying to save lives!”

“There are worse fates than death, Elaine,” Thane continues, “I worry for you. You don't sleep. You barely eat. Shepard, no matter how hard you push yourself, you are only human-”

“I'M NOT ALLOWED TO BE 'ONLY HUMAN'!”

Is it the increased capacity of her lungs or just her own fervor that allows for such volume. Garrus doesn't know enough about the sciences behind her augmentations to say for certain. But Shepard's roar is enough to shake the bulkhead. Silence falls in the wake of her fury, broken only by her panting.

“Every time I try to put up my feet,” she seethes, “Or catch my breath, there's an alarm that starts blaring, somewhere. The entire galaxy is catching fire, and you all want me to pretend it isn't happening. I don't get to do that! I'm 'Commander Shepard, best hope for the galaxy, lookie here, it's my favorite store on the Citadel, aren't I great?'. I was dead! It was your turn to pick up the slack and look after space, and look how that turned out! The council buried its head in the sand, Anderson spends more time bitching about this shit than actually trying to clean it up, and half the outposts in the Terminus Systems got abducted while you were out pretending to be heroes! Hell, even Cerberus doesn't want to deal with this, otherwise they would have sent an army on this wild goose chase, instead of sinking a fleet's worth of credits into bringing me back! SHUT THE FUCK UP, LAWSON, DO NOT TRY AND ARGUE WITH ME. Every single one of you would be quaking in their boots, holed up on Omega, or Illium, or wherever you please, if I wasn't here. You all had two years to fix this dumpster fire of a galaxy, and you fucked that up. So don't pretend I'm not the only reason anything gets done around here; I am not going to stop, certainly not so all of you can feel better about yourselves.”

Shepard plants a fist in the wall at the height of this tirade, cracking the panel, her knuckles already knitting shut when she pulls away. Her eyes are collapsing stars, too bright to look directly into, and every one of her crew members averts their eyes, anger and shame and hurt so thick in the air that it carries a scent. And for a moment, Shepard softens. The glow in her eyes, her scars, fade and she watches them with remorse. But it's only a moment.

“If there's nothing else,” she growls, “Then get back to your posts. Boots on the ground in four hours.”

“Shepard, this repair is going to take at least six-” Miranda begins.

“Four. Hours.”

The door locks behind them, and Garrus's stomach sinks as imagines Mordin wheeling out a cart laden with scalpels. He looks at Thane, tries for words, but neither of them can manage anything. Instead, he suits up, and goes to wait out the remaining three and a half hours down in the shuttle. He thinks of a lot of things. His father, never once approving of his insistence that rules and regulations were the only thing standing in the way of true justice. His own band of misfits, dead on the ground of their hideout, in lawless Omega. But mostly, he thinks about Shepard. He thinks about watching her become a shooting star, in the atmosphere of a planet he can't remember the name of. He remembers watching her die, and wonders if she really came back.

Then he touches his scars, thinking about Omega again. He thinks about needing to be rescued. He thinks about bleeding out in the second story of a slumhouse, and how it was Shepard, full of fire and metal that came to his rescue. And he wonders.

Oh, how he wonders.

[dngrs-untld-hrshps-unnmbrd]

The Vex! Wanderings in Lore

Ghost: Ew. This looks like the stuff inside the Vex.

Failsafe: It's called Radiolaria. You know, mind fluid!

Ghost: Ikora says it's an organic compound, which means the Vex are not pure robot.

Destiny 2: Mission Six

I posted the other day about Thanatonauts in the lore because I wanted to learn about them before Curse of Osiris drops. Because I understand so little about the Vex I thought I should probably do the same for them -- their origins, functionality and abilities. To me, they’re the least comprehensible of the Destiny antagonists. I understand them better having written this and I hope you feel the same way after you read it!

From the grimoire:

The Vex are architects of ancient and complex structures thought to be buried within every celestial body. Linked by a network unlike any on Earth, they operate in unison, directed by a single unfathomable purpose.

The basics that we all know from gameplay are that the Vex are a hostile race of war machines found across our system. They are highly intelligent, can do funny things with time and space and are capable of rapidly converting entire planets, so far Mercury and Nessus in our system, into Machine Worlds. From the Eye of a Gate Lord mission, 

During the Collapse, the Vex transformed the planet Mercury into a machine in days.

The Vex have a biological basis called Radiolaria. Radiolaria are a real thing found on earth, microscopic multi-cellular organisms with complex mineral skeletons. They live in the ocean and after they die they cover the ocean floor and are fossilised into rock. They are a silica-based life form (as opposed to carbon-based, which is what most life on earth is). Silicates are found abundantly throughout the solar system and this may be the reason why the Vex are able to transforms whole worlds so rapidly, by directly manipulating the silica that makes up a planet’s crust. (Thanks to Ghost Stories, A Destiny Podcast: Vault of Glass #3 for this theory.)

It’s the Radiolaria which give the Vex their intelligence and their hive mind. The structures we see (and shoot) are the metal bodies they have created and inhabit. What splashes out (and what makes Osiris’ Sunbracers glow white) is radiolaria.

The Vex got into our reality when Crota cut a tear in space and allowed Quria, a Vex Mind, through, as detailed in the Books of Sorrow here and here. 

With his sword Crota cut open a new wound, into a new space. In here he thought he might obtain a secret power. Out of this wound came machines called Vex. They invaded Oryx’s throne world.

The Vex slaughtered thousands of Hive despite Crota’s best efforts to close the gate. Quria learned worship from the Hive and that it could be used as a means of control and subjugation. Throughout the game we often see the Vex engaged in what looks like reverence and prayer. 

You can’t talk about the Vex without delving into quantum physics and then getting tied up in jargon like ‘paracausal’ and ‘ontopathogenesis’. There are Reddit posts and podcasts that discuss the philosophy and physics of the Vex across space and time, but you know what? Reading them and listening to them doesn’t induce in me a warm feeling of understanding. I suspect that a lot of the people who write these posts/lead these discussions don’t truly understand what they’re saying either, or to what purpose. Destiny lore is notoriously vague. Quantum physics is notoriously complex. To quote the lore itself:

We are ill-equipped to understand an entity that defies simple causality. Let us accept these limitations and proceed.

Causality plays a big part in ‘understanding’ the Vex. They defy logical causality as we experience it, i.e. for us, an event has to happen before we experience the result. It doesn’t seem to be that way for the Vex. From the same card:

If physics is a set of rules that the cosmos uses to calculate itself, perhaps the Vex seek to worm their way into these calculations: to become a law of reality, inseparable from existence. A virus in the system.

Also, from the Hezen Protective Vex unit card:

The Protective is clearly engaged in a colossal project, but as with much Vex behaviour, it's unclear whether their ultimate purpose is even comprehensible to us. The Protective may be reacting to an event that has yet to occur, or working towards a goal that -- to us -- is already historical fact.

And that’s pretty much enough about Vex space and time for me. 

So, how intelligent are the Vex? Probably the creepiest part of all the lore is Ghost Fragment: Vex parts I-V. The fragments concern a group of scientists working at the Ishtar Academy during the Golden Age who are experimenting on a Vex unit. The unit reveals its mind to a researcher and she discovers it’s running a real-time simulation of the scientists:

ESI: It controls the simulation. It can hurt our simulated selves. We wouldn't feel that pain, but rationally speaking, we have to treat an identical copy's agony as identical to our own. SUNDARESH: It's god in there. It can simulate our torment. Forever. If we don't let it go, it'll put us through hell.

And then,

SHIM: Odds are that we aren't our own originals. Odds are that we exist in one of the Vex simulations right now.

The Vex clearly have a fantastic ability to simulate and predict, but can they simulate everything? From the Destiny 2: Deep Conversation mission:

Ghost: That Mind said one last thing as it died. It’s afraid. Afraid of your Light -- the one thing in this galaxy it can’t simulate.

What implications does this have? Perhaps Guardians are the fly in their Vex milk. The Vex aren’t able to predict of what the Light is capable. Ikora seems to repeat this in the Curse of Osiris trailer as well, when she says, “You are the one thing they have not foreseen.”

The Vex have a strange physical and mental influence on Guardians. A report from a human Guardian to Executor Hideo about visiting the Lighthouse on Mercury reads:

All of us began to depart from ordinary experience. My Exo teammate described the sense that she was buried beneath an enormous, operating mass -- locked up in a tiny crevasse at the bottom of a labyrinth or mechanism. My Awoken teammate felt an ongoing sense of deja vu: her actions were precessed by an infinite echo, an anticipation of all her choices. She became volatile and erratic. She insisted that we were surrounded. I remember a low ringing sound and a sense of numb filth, like gravel rubbed into a wound. I experienced a sense of immanence, as if I was bleeding into the world around me. It was uncomfortable and profoundly alienating. I perceived all my actions as determined and inevitable.

Cult of Osiris members and the Sunbreakers have been existing on the Machine World of Mercury for hundreds of cycles so I wonder if this has affected them.  It makes me wonder if this is why Commander Zavala refused to allow the Sunbreakers to come to the City, because he believed that the Sunbreakers were ‘infected’ by the Vex. Or maybe Zavala just doesn’t like people who shun the City only to change their minds about it later. 

There are several examples in the lore that show the Vanguard, particularly Ikora, are wary of the Vex and admit they don’t fully understand them. From the Curse of Osiris trailer:

While we have been fighting, an ancient gate has opened on Mercury, and an army of past and future machines amasses. They intend to reshape the universe in their image. 

But there is one who has glimpsed this dark future. He was my mentor. Osiris. The most notorious Guardian in Vanguard history. Once, his dangerous ideas nearly destroyed us, and he was banished. Now he has returned, but will he be a powerful ally, or bring us death?

It seems like the Vanguard has been put in a very difficult position. They fear the intelligence and inscrutability of the Vex, and they also distrust ‘mad’, unpredictable Warlocks who have shown unwillingness in the past to put the interests of the City first. But it seems that when it comes to this potential dark future they’ve got no choice but to put a measure of trust in Osiris. 

Thank you for reading! I hope you found this useful. 

[acoolchristianchick]

INDIA Biometric SYSTEM

ASIA

India's Biometric ID System Has Led To Starvation For Some Poor, Advocates Say

October 1, 20182:06 PM ETHeard on

All Things Considered

LAUREN FRAYER

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FURKAN LATIF KHAN

Ashok Kumar (foreground) works at a food ration distribution shop in Jharkhand. He uses a small machine to scan people's fingerprints and check them against Aadhaar ID numbers.

Lauren Frayer/NPR

India has 1.3 billion people, and no equivalent of the Social Security number. About 4 in 10 births go unregistered. Less than 2 percent of the population pays income tax.

Many more are eligible for welfare benefits but may never have collected them, either because they can't figure out how or a middleman stole their share.

To try to address these issues, the Indian government rolled out the biggest biometric ID system in the world. It's voluntary, but in just eight years, India has managed to collect the fingerprints, photos and iris scans of more than 1.2 billion people.

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The government says this system, called Aadhaar — "foundation" in Hindi — has helped to distribute welfare to the country's neediest; streamline the civil service; purge hundreds of thousands of names from voter rolls; and allow for people to move between states without losing benefits.

But privacy advocates are alarmed that the government has collected so much personal data. And advocates for the poor say some technical glitches have actually led to denial of benefits — even costing lives.

Collecting biometrics

Here's how Aadhaar works: An applicant goes to an Indian post office or ID enrollment center and shows proof of address and identity. (In cases where people don't have a fixed address, or any ID, another Indian can legally vouch for them.)

An Aadhaar enrollment worker scans applicants' irises, takes their fingerprints and photos, and assigns them a unique 12-digit number. The biometric data are stored on government servers. Several weeks later, an ID card arrives in the mail.

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The rollout was accompanied by a big patriotic PR campaign, with TV ads showing smiling elderly people using Aadhaar to collect state pensions and villagers using it to collect food rations.

It was geared especially to India's poor.

Helping the poor

"In India, you're nothing without Aadhaar," says Manisha Kamble, 17, who is homeless.

Kamble is from the Dalit community — formerly known as untouchables. She, her widowed mother and about 25 other street children sleep every night on the asphalt in a circle, under a highway overpass in Mumbai.

She had no address and no birth certificate. She was basically invisible to the state, until the charity Save the Children helped her enroll in Aadhaar.

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It has helped her get into a decent school. She is looking forward to turning 18, when she can use her Aadhaar to register to vote.

Kamble says she is proud to be counted, to become official, to feel equal to other Indian citizens, regardless of caste.

"I want to study and make sure that there are no more Manishas like me, who have to struggle like I did — and I want to take care of my mom," she says.

Kamble studies at night under streetlights and got the highest marks in her class last spring.

Uses for Aadhaar

Aadhaar can be used to verify your identity when you do anything involving the government — get married, pay taxes or draw welfare — and also when you open a bank account, sign up for a cellphone contract, or set up an e-wallet online. It's mandatory for some state health benefits.

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The system is designed to cut fraud — after all, it's hard to counterfeit your irises.

But it requires electricity to scan people's biometrics, and Internet access to check them against government databases. You'll find those in India's big cities. In poorer places, you often don't.

Technical difficulties

In Jharkhand, one of India's poorest states, Aadhaar is mandatory for food rations. A long line forms outside a tiny stucco booth, painted lavender, with a corrugated metal roof. It's a government food ration shop. Inside, the distributor scoops out rice, weighs it and delivers it to customers.

More than half of Indians are eligible for free or subsidized food. In rural Jharkhand, the figure is 86 percent.

The government says Aadhaar has helped eliminate nearly 30 million fake or duplicate food ration cards.

Ashok Kumar distributes government food rations to customer Leela Devi at his shop near Ramgarh, in India's Jharkhand state.

Furkan Latif Khan/NPR

At this ration shop, Ashok Kumar, 57, scans people's fingerprints with something that looks like a credit card machine. It runs on batteries and needs a 3G or 4G cellphone signal.

But the network is shaky. Kumar walks across the street, lifting his machine up overhead, until he finally gets a signal. He sets up shop instead on the steps of a Hindu temple.

One by one, he types people's Aadhaar numbers into the machine and then asks them to place their fingers on a small scanner. The machine checks their numbers against biometric data on government servers and prints out a receipt for food rations — bags of rice.

But one customer isn't so lucky. Karu Bhuiya, 48, has done manual labor all his life. His fingertips are worn. Kumar tries to scan them five times, but gets an error message.

The machine here is rudimentary, and only scans fingerprints — not irises. So Bhuiya is turned away. He goes home without food.

Pushed to starvation

Technical difficulties like this are blamed for pushing some of India's poorest into starvation. Jean Dreze, a Belgian-born economist who lives in Jharkhand, says he has counted a dozen such deaths in recent months. He provided NPR with a detailed list of their names and circumstances surrounding their deaths.

Women harvest rice in rural Jharkhand, one of India's poorest states, where at least a dozen people have died from starvation amid glitches in welfare distribution.

Lauren Frayer/NPR

"I would actually prefer to call these destitution deaths, because they're all cases of people who went hungry for days, who would have survived if they had had some resources," Dreze says. "See, this is the unfortunate thing: that the most vulnerable people are those who are also more likely to be excluded by this system."

When Aadhaar scanners break down, there's supposed to be a backup system on paper. But at the ration shop NPR visited, near the town of Ramgarh, the paper log was blank — unused.

Aadhaar's architect

"Nobody should be denied benefits — either for lack of Aadhaar, or for lack of authentication," says Nandan Nilekani, the key architect of the nation's Aadhaar system. "There have been some challenges, but that doesn't take away from the enormous benefit of empowerment, mobility and savings this project has given India."

Nilekani is the former CEO of Infosys, a big Indian IT and consulting company. He is a tech billionaire who left the private sector to create Aadhaar for the Indian government.

In an interview in May, Nilekani told NPR that the benefits of Aadhaar far outweigh any glitches.

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"Our whole goal is to give people control. They should be able to get their digital footprint from their smartphone, from their payments, from whatever," Nilekani said. "I'm using my own data to make my life better. That's a fundamental inversion of how you think about data."

Nilekani is from Bangalore, India's version of Silicon Valley. His critics questionwhether a private sector "move fast and break things" approach is appropriate for a government program like Aadhaar. They argue the fundamental job of government is different — to protect the most vulnerable citizens, rather than race to be the most high-tech.

That debate was underway when suddenly reports of data breaches began.

Data privacy

In January, investigative journalist Rachna Khaira discovered that the laptops of some Aadhaar enrollment workers — those who scan irises and take fingerprints — had been hacked. Khaira managed to buy access to up to 1 billion people's Aadhaar data — for less than $7.

After her report, the government agency behind Aadhaar, the Unique Identification Authority of India, took legal action against Khaira, accusing her of cybercrime.

"I am not against Aadhaar," Khaira says. "My only concern was this: that if we implement this project, it should be foolproof. We should not be scared. We should not be feeling jittery about giving out our Aadhaar numbers."

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Keeping people's Aadhaar data secure is not just a job for the Indian government, though. One of the ways it managed to enroll so many people was by partnering with banks, utilities and cellphone providers, many of which require Aadhaar.

So now people's data reside with all those companies as well. It's impossible to know how many data breaches have occurred. In India, the newspapers carry reports of them almost daily.

"When it comes to Aadhaar, it's the Wild West out there in India. Millions and millions of people have been compromised by the process," says Nikhil Pahwa, a privacy activist and founder of the digital news site MediaNama. "I see this as a major national security risk."

Edward Snowden, the NSA leaker, has also criticized Aadhaar, calling it a mass surveillance system that will lead to "civil death" for Indians.

Supreme Court weighs in

Data privacy advocates have taken their concerns all the way to India's Supreme Court. Last year, the court ruled that privacy is a fundamental right.

Then last week, it ruled that private companies can no longer ask for people's Aadhaar data. It also said schools can no longer require biometrics for admission.

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But the information is already out there, being used by marketing companies — and possibly by political parties.

In August, the Unique Identification Authority of Indiaintroduced new directives to enhance security, including two-factor identification using facial recognition.

A small number of residents of India, including the economist Dreze, have nevertheless refused to enroll in Aadhaar.

In India, though, data privacy is still mostly a concern of the educated, urban class. People in the food ration line may not be as worried about their digital footprint. They have more dire concerns.

Those most vulnerable

Not far from the ration shop NPR visited in rural Jharkhand, migrant workers huddle in sagging thatch huts covered with blue tarps, during the monsoon rains. They are members of India's tribal Adivasi community, who are among the country's poorest citizens. They often migrate between states, with no fixed addresses.

In June, one of the men in their community, Chintaman Malhar, died at age 50. Relatives say he hadn't eaten in days. Based on his field work, Dreze, the economist, concluded that Malhar had lived in a "state of semi-starvation."

Nisha Devi lives in a rudimentary hut covered with a tarp near Ramgarh, in India's Jharkhand state. She believes hunger led to her uncle's recent death before he could get an Aadhaar card. The rest of the family has scrambled to enroll since his death, but Devi has been unable to draw welfare benefits so far.

Lauren Frayer/NPR

Malhar died before he could get an Aadhaar card. After his death, his relatives and neighbors all rushed to try to enroll.

"A local official came and advised us all to enroll in Aadhaar," says Malhar's niece, Nisha Devi, cradling her toddler. "He told us it would help us get residency, and finally have an official address, and get benefits."

She believes hunger killed her uncle, and she wants to avoid a similar fate.

Devi hasn't yet been able to collect any food rations. She is still mired in bureaucracy.

But she hopes that Aadhaar — perhaps the world's most sophisticated biometric system — might one day help her.

PLANET MONEY

Episode 770: When India's Cash Disappeared, Part One

PLANET MONEY

[moonchronicles-blog]

Prabhakaran’s Eelam

Although I know this is boring as hell, at least for the likes of me, I feel it needs to be given a reality check once and for all. I hope I end the dangerous infatuation many people, especially youngsters, have with this man. Let this also give us an insight into this man based on the factual evidence we have at our disposal.

First things first, please remember Prabhakaran was a blood red communist and atheist (see here). He firmly believed till the end that there was no god and frowned upon believers of all stripes. His ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Saiva Vellalars from North & East Sri Lanka stands testimony to this statement of mine. For more on that, please read my earlier post here.

By communists, I exclude our Indian communists like CPI, CPI(M), CPI(ML), etc, who, by the way, are truly admirable for standing firmly by Indian women on all issues, be it their entry into Lord Shani’s shrine at Shingnapur (see here), the Haji Ali Dargah (see here), Triple Talaq (see here), etc, and so much more. In their place, I’d include BJP which has in the recent past implemented crude Stalinist/Maoist policies like limiting the cash we take out of our own accounts (now removed), charging us for each ATM transaction, taxing us heavily to apparently “Make in India” and Innovate (read the full thread here) but failing to do so (more here), etc. Not to mention actually supplying arms to Maoists in the Red Corridor (see here) headquartered in Chhattisgarh & Jharkhand (both ruled by BJP for over a decade, see here and here).

I’m getting way off track now, so now let’s get back to Prabhakaran’s Eelam, or what Eelam would’ve been had LTTE won the Eelam war. Just to give an insight to our misguided youth. Please bear in mind Prabhakaran is of the same ilk as Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Josef Stalin, etc, and would’ve done nothing better than them if he had actually ruled Eelam. Let me take you on a journey through history.

This isn’t to deride India’s long time friend Russia or its predecessor USSR, but the real nature of communism and communists must be known to all. To know more about Marxism, please read this brilliant book by Ludwig von Mises (from the Austrian School of Economics) “Marxism Unmasked” here.

1. Let me start with Josef Stalin, the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1953 and the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952.

He replaced Vladimir Lenin’s "New Economic Policy” with his own policies like a centralized command economy, industrialization and collectivization. What were the consequences of his ruthless policies?

Interjection: If you do not have the stomach to digest crude imagery, I’d suggest you stop reading immediately, or you can scroll quickly to the bottom of this post. Thanks!

The first Soviet famine of 1932-33, of which Holodomor was a part, was the first outcome of Stalin’s policies. Here are some images.

These are just a handful of photos. The innumerable blood-curdling horrors that happened during the great Soviet famine of 1932-33 that took the lives of 7 million people are out there for all to see. The worst affected areas included Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, Volga Region and Kazakhstan, the South Urals, and West Siberia.

Then between 1934 and 1939, Stalin organized the "Great Purge” against his enemies whom he dubbed as “enemies of the working class”, including senior political and military figures, were interned in Gulag-run prisons, exiled or executed, often without due process. During 1937-38, NKVD (Soviet Secret Police) headed by Nikolai Yezhov, exterminated between 600,000 and 3 million people.

Here’s an image of the “Great Purge”.

These people were “enemies of the people” apparently. Most of them were killed with no trial.

Note that this was BEFORE the Second World War. AFTER the Second World War, Josef Stalin organized the Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature in response to another major famine from 1946 to 1947.

One might argue: USSR just came out of the war, so there was food shortage. But then so did the USA, the UK, France, and others! There was no report of such major famines there! But to some extent, this can be excused.

Here are records of the official number of deaths under Josef Stalin: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09668139999056 https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/sep/12/highereducation.historyandhistoryofart http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm#Stalin

2. Next I move on to Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), the first Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the first Chairman of the People’s Republic of China.

A brief history of this fellow: He was losing out to Chiang Kai-shek and had the United States intervene and save his ass each time. More on the treason of George Catlett Marshall here: http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1951mccarthy-marshall.html

Indeed, this speech was delivered by Joseph McCarthy before the Senate on 06/14/1951.

After capturing China from Chiang Kai-shek (who later fled to Taiwan), what did Mao Tse-tung do?

During 1948-50, he committed a “classicide” against landowners/landlords in order to redistribute their lands to the peasant class. An estimated 4.5 million people perished during this purge. There was also this “struggle session” wherein landlords were publicly shamed, humiliated, tortured and executed, not by some secret police as in the neighboring USSR, but by radicalized peasants themselves!

Here’s an example of what classicide was like: 

And mind you, not one, but 4.5 million landlords were publicly humiliated, tortured and exterminated thus.

Then from March 1950, Mao initiated a campaign to suppress counterrevolutionaries known as Zhenfan. In other words, those who didn’t agree with him were purged and put to death. This occurred till August 1952. Here’s an image of one such incident:

Due to this purge, the number of people killed would’ve ranged from 712,000 (Yang Kuisong) to 2 million (Li Changyu). Most of those killed were former Kuomintang officials, businessmen, former employees of Western companies and intellectuals whose loyalty was suspect. If added to those who perished during the classicide and also being sent to “reform through labor” camps, the total deaths could go well above 6 million.

Around the same time, the Three-Anti campaign was started in Manchuria towards the end of 1951. The aim was to rid China of corruption and enemies. The three antis were: corruption, waste and bureaucracy. If they were found guilty of any of these charges, they were publicly humiliated, executed, sent to labor camps (Laogai) across China or made to commit voluntary suicide.

On January 1952, Mao began the Five-Anti campaign. The five antis were bribery, theft of state property, tax evasion, cheating on government contracts and stealing state economic information. The estimated death toll of voluntary suicides in both these campaigns stands between 200,000 to 300,000.

The Sufan movement launched in 1955 and ended in 1956 took the lives of an estimated 770,000 people, although real numbers are hard to come by. While previous campaigns targeted the remnants of the Kuo Min Tang (KMT) movement, this one mainly targeted the communist party members whose loyalty was suspect. 

Mao himself admitted killing 800,000 people in the classicide (see here) and 712,000 people in the suppression of counterrevolutionaries (see here).

This doesn’t end here. The REAL genocides are yet to begin.

In 1957, Mao announced “The Great Leap Forward” to transform China from an agrarian economy to an industrialized socialist one. This lasted from 1958 to 1962. Mao prohibited private farming and collectivized all farms by 1958. People’s communes were established with 5,000 households per commune. A total of 25,000 communes were established. These communes included not just farmlands, but also light industries and construction projects. Mao’s main focus was on industrialization. China invested heavily in state enterprises to boost steel production. 1,587, 1,361 and 1,815 medium large scale state projects were started in 1958, 1959 and 1960 respectively, more each year than the First Five Year Plan.

In 1958, 21 million Chinese people were added to the non-agricultural state payrolls. This number rose to its peak at 50.44 million in 1960. The urban population swelled by 31.24 million people. Due to this, China’s food rationing system came under immense stress and the demand for rural food production reached unsustainable levels. During this expansion, coordination suffered and material shortages spiked, leading to increased wages for laborers with no significant rise in manufactured goods. Facing this massive deficit, the government cut financing for industries from 38.9 billion to 7.1 billion.

Mao (who had no knowledge of metallurgy) encouraged setting up backyard steel furnaces in every commune and neighborhood after seeing an experimental backyard furnace in Hefei, Anhui shown to him by Zeng Xisheng that was claimed to be manufacturing high quality steel. So Mao forced peasants to manufacture steel. Peasants moved away from farming and manufactured steel from everything they got, like scrap metal, pots, pans and other metal artifacts. To fuel the furnaces, environments were denuded of trees and the woods taken from the doors and furniture from the houses of the peasants. The outcome was low quality pig iron which was of no use. His private doctor Li Zhisui commented that after visiting Manchuria in January 1959, Mao realized high quality steel could only be produced in large-scale factories powered by coal, but let the “mass mobilization of peasants” continue so as not to disturb their “revolutionary enthusiasm”.

Irrigation works were often built without inputs from trained engineers. Mao proposed moving 600 million cubic meters for each water conservancy project. Mao criticized the excess use of corvée (unpaid unfree labor), but mass mobilization of peasants continued, and several hundreds of thousands were killed in this process.

Close cropping and deep plowing were encouraged on the false assumption that this would increase agricultural output, but it actually went down.

The villagers suffered acutely during this entire episode. They were forced to work for intolerable hours through day and night, in most cases, without food. Communes were mostly occupied by officials who forced village peasants to work. Those who disobeyed or couldn’t work were humiliated, tortured, sent to labor camps or executed.

To increase agricultural output, Mao initiated the Four Pests campaign wherein he targeted rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows. Sparrows which ate some of the grains, were shot at, their nests destroyed, their eggs broken and chicks killed. This reduced their population by a huge percentage. But the outcome of this disastrous campaign was that insects, locusts and bugs started to multiply in number and ate up all the grains, resulting in further shortage. Locusts started to swarm the entire nation and caused further ecological imbalance in addition to the Great Leap Forward due to widespread deforestation and the misuse of poisons and pesticides. Ecological imbalance further exacerbated the Great Chinese Famine, which killed an estimated 23 million (Peng Xizhe, 1987) to 55 million (Yu Xiguang, 2005) people. Some images below:

Here’s an article from the New York Times on the same: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/05/books/horror-of-a-hidden-chinese-famine.html

In 1966, Mao initiated the “Cultural Revolution” to remove capitalist and bourgeois elements within the Communist Party of China through violent class struggle. This came at the backdrop of Mao being sidelined. He targeted Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Chinese youth formed Red Guards throughout the country. The movement spread into the military, urban workers and within the communist party itself. It led to widespread factional struggles in all walks of life. Millions of people suffered a wide range of abuses like public humiliation, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, hard labor, sustained harassment, seizure of property, and in some cases, execution. A large segment of the population were displaced, especially urban youth moving to the rural areas. Historical relics & artifacts were destroyed and cultural & religious sites were ransacked.

Although Mao declared the Cultural Revolution over in 1969, it actively continued till the death of military leader Lin Biao in 1971. Mao died of multiple heart attacks on 09/09/1976. His Gang of Four (Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen) were arrested the same year and reformists led by Deng Xiaoping dismantled Maoist policies and laid the stones for modern capitalist China in 1979. In 1981, the Party declared that the Cultural Revolution was "responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the country, and the people since the founding of the People's Republic". The estimated death toll due to the Cultural Revolution ranges from 400,000 (see here) to 10 million (see here).

3. Now I move on to Hồ Chí Minh of Viet Nam.

This man’s ragtag group of communist thugs was trained by Mao’s Red Chinese Army and armed by China and USSR.

He formed the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930 in Hong Kong with the aid of Phan Boi Chau and returned to Viet Nam in 1941 to overthrow the French. Phan Boi Chau was popular among all Vietnamese people as a nationalist. Ho, afraid that he would be sidelined by Chau, aided the French police in arresting Chau and took over his place. Communist followers of Chau were accepted while others were betrayed to the French police for a sum of money. Thus Phan Boi Chau’s movement was completely destroyed and subsumed by Ho Chi Minh.

There was a much darker side to Ho than his deceit and treachery however.

In 1930 and 1931, his Indochinese Communist Party conducted an assassination program against competitors, landowners and officials, that was so sweeping it prompted a rebuke from the Comintern (for whom he worked as a spy). Through the 1930s & 40s, as ICP grew in size, thousands of Vietnamese people were killed, betrayed to the French for money or forced to flee to Japan & China. When it suited Ho Chi Minh’s purpose, some would serve in his government; when it no longer did, they would die or flee the country.

After the French left, Ho Chi Minh took control of North Viet Nam and completely eliminated all competition from nationalists, liberals and communists alike. Communists were subsumed into his movement while others were eliminated. Moderates like Bui Quang Chieu were exterminated as a matter of fact to “purify” the Vietnamese people. Even Ho’s personal friend Ta Thu Thau was assassinated for which he replied: “Anyone who does not follow the line determined by me will be smashed.”

The last to go were the nationalist Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang, eliminated through military action against the areas they controlled as well as arrests of the leadership and confiscation of their assets. By the end of 1946 there was no one left to contest Ho Chi Minh for leadership of North Viet Nam.

In the name of “land reforms”, just like Mao & Stalin, from 1953 to 1956, Ho Chi Minh pitted peasants against the middle class and the wealthy and even against each other. This resulted in approximately 500,000 deaths. It was so brutal that peasants revolted. Ho Chi Minh called in an entire division of the People’s Army of Viet Nam and slaughtered peasants indiscriminately till the revolt was put down. If you’re interested, you can read more on that here: https://www.amazon.com/Bloodbath-Hypothesis-Pattern-Vietnams-Radical/dp/B001J4NQT8

Members of the National People’s Party were also killed en masse. If these numbers are added to the land reform numbers, it would go up to nearly a million.

Viet Nam was demarcated after the First Indochina War into North and South in 1954. The North was allied to USSR & China, while the South was allied to the USA. The Viet Nam War episode also involved the communist Viet Cong (VC) which was active in South Viet Nam and the communist rebels in Cambodia and Laos. Getting into this episode would take me a full 2 days, so I leave this at that.

Fast forward to 1976. When the USA pulled out of South Viet Nam, the Viet Cong (VC) and the People’s Army of Viet Nam (PAVN) captured Saigon (renamed to Ho Chi Minh City) and reunified Viet Nam. In the reunification process, Ho Chi Minh’s followers (Ho Chi Minh died on 09/02/1969) killed an estimated 840,000 to 2.4 million political prisoners and people who were opposed to communism in South Viet Nam. 

To gauge the severity of Ho Chi Minh’s cruelty, I’d suggest reading this article from November 1968: http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/vietnam/hochiminh.html

To summarize, Ho Chi Minh is responsible for the deaths of minimum 1.7 million Cambodians, 230,000 Laotians (people in Laos) and 2 million Vietnamese people, due to his ruthless communist policies and warmongering.

4. Now I move on to the next communist, Pol Pot who ruled Democratic Kampuchea, now known as Cambodia.

For his higher education, Pol Pot went to France, where he got radicalized into a Marxist and quit his education.

Pol Pot headed the Khmer Rouge (the Khmers are the largest ethnic group in Cambodia) and captured power in 1975. He renamed the country to Democratic Kampuchea.

He immediately forced the closing of all national banks, schools, hospitals, etc, and started collectivizing farms under his government’s control. He forced all his people to work for long hours in farms, under the guns of his armed forces. People who complained of sickness were frowned upon and forced to go back into the farms. People who opposed him were killed, as was also the case with Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse-tung and Josef Stalin. 

What’s the worst part is that he targeted educated people! Anybody who was educated, or even looked educated, was killed! This horrible purge was dubbed by the Khmer Rouge as the “Purification of the Cambodian People”!

An estimated 1-3 million people, around 25% of the country’s total population, was exterminated as a result of Pol Pot’s ruthless policies.

It took the Vietnamese Army to invade Kampuchea in 1979 and liberate their people to end the madness of Pol Pot! 

Here are images of Pol Pot’s torture.

A memorial for the victims.

5. And last but not the least, Nelson Mandela.

Yeah, this quote of his is so famous, but how many people know about his dark side?

Note: I’m not a racist, nor support racism or discrimination of any form! But reality has to be brought to light! I oppose Apartheid, but Nelson Mandela’s brand of communism isn’t any better, if not much worse!

Now on to Mandela. How many blacks has Mandela killed for not agreeing to his communist philosophy? I’d say thousands. 

How many of you Prabhakaran/LTTE lovers know about “necklacing”? No, I’m not talking about gold, silver or diamond necklaces that our women wear at home, I’m talking about car tires being used as necklaces, to be doused with kerosene/gasoline and set alight! 

Warning! If you do not have a hard heart, skip this video immediately!

https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e94_1317489390

This was how he acted against blacks whom he felt were conspiring with the Apartheid government. Those who disagreed with his communist leanings were brought to justice thus.

As to why Mandela did this? He’s from the Xhosa tribe in South Africa. Mandela’s tribe believed that inhaling toxic smoke disconnects one from their ancestors, so before death, disconnect the target from his/her ancestors.

Before his election as the First President of post Apartheid South Africa in 1994, the Shell House massacre took place. Read more on that here. 

The less I talk about his legacy, the better. Long story short, South Africa today is #1 in AIDS, rape, murders, unemployment, unsanitary water and lawlessness. Read more about his party African National Congress' torture camps from a survivor here.

Another victim of necklacing.

A Norwegian article on necklacing: http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/soer-afrika/frykter-nye-hat-angrep-mot-utlendinger-etter-fotball-vm/a/10007092/

I had to expose Nelson Mandela, because his crimes against fellow blacks were legion & gruesome and the country he inherited has become what one can now dub “Hell on Earth”.

This ends our journey through history. There are other prominent communist personalities such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, etc, who weren’t brutal to the scale of the above 5. They were really terrible at economic management, but apart from that, their legacies aren’t tainted with as much blood and gore as those of Josef Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot or Nelson Mandela. 

Now on to Prabhakaran and LTTE. Dear Naam Tamilar, PMK and MDMK fans, now that our brief journey through the history of communism is over, I ask you to read diligently my previous post on Eelam here. https://moonchronicles.tumblr.com/post/162077082669/the-eelam-story

And tell me, if you can, whether Prabhakaran would’ve been any different. You be the judge!

I do believe that Prabhakaran, like all of the aforementioned people, had good intentions in the beginning, but ultimately, they all went haywire and ended up destroying themselves and their people more than their purported enemies! This is why your ideology is very important! But that’s a long topic which would need a separate session!

That’s the end of a long journey, even by my standards!

Thank you all for reading! Have a good day!