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grailfinders · 4 years ago

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Fate and Phantasms #144: Quetzalcoatl

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re making the Ruler of the West, Lord of the Day and the Winds, and the White Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl! She’s a Battle Master Fighter to get her lucha techniques, an Ascendant Dragon Monk to throw in muy caliente jumps and drops, and a Circle of the Land Druid for some extra bonuses and her faithful companion.

Check out her build breakdown below the cut, or her character sheet over here, yes!

Next up: I’ll sleep when I’m dead!

Race and Background

As a divine demiservant, you certainly fit the mold of an Aasimar, but given the fact that you’re half bacteria, you’re probably closer to a Scourge Aasimar. This gives you +1 Strength and +2 Charisma, as well as Darkvision, Celestial Resistance to necrotic and radiant damage, Healing Hands to help your loyal followers, and the Light cantrip.

Raising your own personal army out of anyone brave (or stupid) enough to face you makes you the Goddess Alliance Legionnaire. This gives you proficiency with Athletics and Intimidation, as well as an expanded spell list we’ll get into when it comes up.

Ability Scores

If you’re planning on flipping Ivan the Terrible on his back, mammoth and all, you’ve got to invest in Strength. Lucha’s also just as much about how you hit people as it is about how hard you hit them, so make Dexterity number 2. After that is Wisdom, yes! You are a great judge of character! (Character is found by fighting people, right?) Your Constitution isn’t particularly amazing, but you typically got your opponents in a crater somewhere before they can hit you. Sadly we couldn’t make your Charisma as high as I’d like, but your racial bonus helps a bit. Finally, dump Intelligence. Like a lot of these builds, it’s just the least bad ability to dump. Sorry Quetz.

Class Levels

1. Fighter 1: Starting in the fighter class gets you proficiency in Strength and Constitution saves, as well as two fighter skills. Acrobatics will make your mid-air maneuvers more amazing, and Animal Handling will help you control your pets. And Jaguar Warrior.

You also get the Unarmed Fighting Style, giving your unarmed strikes a serious power boost. Now they deal 1d6 damage, or 1d8 if both your hands are available.

You can also take a little siesta once per short rest thanks to Second Wind, healing yourself as a bonus action.

2. Monk 1: Bouncing over to monk real quick for a second, just here to pick up Unarmored Defense, giving you an AC of 10 + your dexterity modifier + your wisdom modifier as long as you’re not wearing armor. You also can’t wear a shield which is unfortunate, but trust me, it’ll be worth it.

Your Martial Arts also lets you use your dexterity when attacking with a monk weapon or your fists. You can also make an unarmed attack as a bonus action after attacking with your main action, and all your monk attacks can do at least a d4 of damage. That last one doesn’t really apply, given the circumstances, but it’ll get bigger over time. Again not to a point that matters, but it tries, dammit.

3. Fighter 2: Back in fighter for a bit to grab an Action Surge, letting you slap an extra action onto your turn once per short rest. Now you can make your enemies tap out in round one! You also gain a Necrotic Shroud, transforming yourself for 1 minute. When you transform, creatures nearby have to make a charisma save (dc 8+proficiency+charisma mod) or be frightened of you for a round. Plenty of people would say this should charm them instead. They aren’t wrong, but we work with what we’ve got.

Also, once per your turn you can add extra necrotic damage to an attack, equal to your level. You can pull out your scary face once per long rest.

4. Fighter 3: As a Battle Master, you become a Student of War, giving you proficiency with one artisan’s tool. Statues are big in Babylon, or at least those are most of the things that survive, so I’d look into that.

You also learn Combat Superiority, giving you three maneuvers that you can use with superiority dice, four d8s that recharge on short rests. This gives you a Commanding Presence, adding the die to an intimidation, performance, or persuasion check so you can become a star in the ring. You also gain a Pushing Attack to launch rudos out of the ring, and a Tripping Attack to land them on their culo before going in for a pin. The latter two also add the die to their damage roll.

5. Fighter 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to grab the Grappler feat, giving you advantage on attacks against grappled creatures and the ability to pin them with another grapple check, restraining both them and you. Not super useful, but it is very flavorful.

6. Fighter 5: Fifth level fighters get an Extra Attack each attack action. It’s not that flashy, but it is useful.

7. Fighter 6: Your last fighter level is another ASI, bumping up your Dexterity for a higher AC and the ability to use dexterity or strength for equally powerful hits.

8. Monk 2: Second level monks get Ki, which will be very useful later, but right now lets you attack twice, dash/disengage, or dodge as a bonus action. You get a number of ki per short rest equal to your monk level.

Your Unarmored Movement also lets you move just a bit faster. It’s handy now, indispensable later. Trust us.

Finally, you can spend a bit of time with your Dedicated Weapon to make any non-two-handed weapon a monk weapon. I’d say a macuahuitl is a bit too big to count as a short-sword.

9. Monk 3: As a ninth level character you can finally take your monk subclass, the Ascendant Dragon. This lets you change the damage type of your unarmed attacks to fire damage (and others, but c’mon), you can read, write, and speak Draconic, and you can re-roll a failed intimidation or persuasion check, turning it into a success once per long rest.

The Breath of the Dragon also lets you replace an attack action attack with fire (or other energy type) breath, dealing two martial arts dice worth of damage to creatures that fail a dexterity save within a 20′ cone or 30′ line if they fail a dexterity save (dc 8+wisdom mod+proficiency). You can use this a number of times per long rest equal to your proficiency bonus for free, or by spending 1 ki point.

Like all monks, you can also Deflect Missiles as a reaction, possibly sending them back if you reduce the damage to zero.

10. Monk 4: Use this next ASI to bump up Dexterity again, bringing up your attack power and AC. You also learn how to Slow Fall as a reaction, preventing an amount of falling damage equal to five times your monk level. Trust me, this is good.

11. Monk 5: Fifth level monks get Stunning Strikes, letting you spend ki points to force constitution saves on your opponents, stunning them for a round if they fail. You get nothing else. Certainly not any “extra attacks”, where did you even get a silly idea like that?

12. Monk 6: Sixth level monks get Ki-Empowered Strikes, making your unarmed attacks magical for overcoming damage. You also get the big selling point of the dragon monk, Wings Unfurled. When you use Step of the Wind to dash or disengage as a bonus action, you also get wings until the end of the turn, giving you a flying speed equal to your walking speed. This means you can now grapple someone with your action and pull them forty feet into the air for one hell of a piledriver.

You can use this a number of times per long rest equal to your proficiency bonus, or by spending an extra ki point when using step of the wind.

13. Druid 1: We’ve had enough of beating the crap out of people, let’s make you a proper rider! First level druids learn Druidic. It’s a language. You also know how to cast and prepare Spells based on your Wisdom modifier. I’ll be honest, it’s not good.

You can cast Resistance and Gust as your cantrips, and you also get first level spells. Thanks to being a legionnaire, you also learn Fire Bolt and Sacred Flame for some muy caliente casting, and Guiding Bolt and Heroism so you can properly lead an army. This is also usually where I’d explain the kinds of spells you might want to prepare, but we’re literally only here for one third level spell, so let’s get cracking.

14. Druid 2: Joining the Circle of the Land gets you the Guidance cantrip so you can do everything just a bit better. Your Natural Recovery also lets you regain spell slots of combined level equal to half your druid level as a short rest once per long rest.

You also get Wild Shape, which isn’t in-character, and Wild Companion, which you can use a combined total of two times between short rests. The latter lets you cast Find Familiar without spending any money. The creature also only lasts a number of hours equal to half your druid level.

15. Druid 3: Third level druids get second level spells, including your circle spells Spier Climb and Spike Growth. Neither of those are particularly in-character, but you also get the more military-minded spells Aid and Scorching Ray from your background.

16. Druid 4: Fourth level druids get a Wild Shape Improvement if you’re into that sort of thing, an ASI to bump up your Wisdom so your spells are stronger, and the Produce Flame cantrip, because you couldn’t do that plenty already.

17. Druid 5: Fifth level druids get third level spells, including your freebies: Lightning Bolt, Meld into Stone, Beacon of Hope, and Blinding Smite. This is also the level you can finally prepare what we came here for in the first place, Conjure Animals. This spell takes an action to summon a beast of CR 2 or lower, which hey, look at the stats for a Quetzalcoatlus, it fits the bill exactly.

18. Monk 7: Okay, we got the silliness out of our system. Getting back to monk, you get Evasion, turning your failed dexterity saves into successes and your successes into ignoring the fireball entirely. Your Stillness of Mind also lets you spend an action to end one effect charming or frightening you. You are the one doing the frightening around here.

19. Monk 8: Use your last ASI to become Tough, getting an extra 38 HP now, and two more the next time you level up.

20. Monk 9: Your ultimate level gives you an Unarmored Movement Improvement, letting you run up walls and over water, as long as you don’t end your turn there.

Pros:

Flight is always a great addition to any build, even a limited amount like in here. Having an effective 90 feet of flight gives you great mobility, and it gives you a decent piledriver to boot! Grapple something with your action, fly up using your bonus action, and drop them for a guaranteed 4d6 damage!

Spells like Spike Growth, your own pins, and your maneuvers mean you can control enemy movement as well. Fly/push enemies off cliffs, box them in with spikes, or pin them to the ground so they can’t cast any spells.

Taking so many classes gives you great flexibility, with healing and fighting spells from druid, as well as combat skills from monk and fighter.

Cons:

Your flight only lasts one turn, and if you use all your movement getting someone up into the air that means you’ll probably take as much damage as they do when you fall. Obviously being a monk helps, but then you’re eating all your reactions just to pile drive people into the ground. Totally worth it, but something you’ll have to work around.

Since we have to focus so much on your strength and dexterity, your wisdom lags a bit, making your spells and AC a bit weaker than I’d like.

We spent five levels in Druid for just one spell. Unless you really want that quetzalcoatlus, I’d suggest just putting that into fighter and/or monk for consistency.

#Fate Grand Order #FGO #Quetzalcoatl #D&D 5e #Fate and Phantasms #Monk #Fighter #Druid

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kweebtrash · 4 years ago

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Streamhearts Timestamp 12:47am

Title: Nakie Stream

Pairing: Camboy!JohnnyxCamgirlOC (Rem)

Word Count: 4.2k

Genre: Smut

Features: recording sexual acts, daddy kinks, pet names (good girl, bunny, etc), Soft(ish) dom Johnny, use of sex toys, blowjobs, some finger sucking, anal/vaginal fingering, teasing/whining, shy sub OC, anal fucking, choking, swallowing/messy cumshot

Synopsis:

Though Rem is a smart business woman she hides behind a computer screen all day designing websites for large companies. However, when her day is done she’s still behind a computer screen but now showing the world how hard she can cum. She never wanted to be a camgirl but when financial duties called she took it upon herself to make it. The spotlight (and money) got to her and she expanded to showcasing her nerdy side; livestreams, lewd cosplay photoshoots, let’s plays, subscriptions, review, vlogs, tutorials, you name it. Her streams catches the attention of a fellow cammer, Johnny, who on a whim decided to message her. Both aren’t the sexed up dolls they pretend to be in the online life and instead ease their way into a relationship with not so perfect sex, mistakes, and total confusion.

A/N: This used to be on my Kofi which im closing down and just putting everything up on here. This isnt continuing.

Masterlist Johnny Only Masterlist

"It's time for Nakie Stream!" I giggled as I looked into the camera hooked up to my computer. Dozens of people had already logged on and the number was slowly creeping into the hundreds. I blew kisses and greeted the new arrivals as I showed off my boobs and bounced them a little. Even as I stood around and posed I was getting a few tips. This was all I did it for. I didn't really enjoy it nor did I want to continue doing it for the next ten years of my life. But for now it was another addition to my finances.

I slipped on my pink kitty headphones and connected the bluetooth. The ears lit up, twinkling neon. They were my favorite and I spent some time talking about the specs. Many people would rather just watch me fuck myself but some were actually interested in the fact that I was a "gamer girl™". I hated that title but whatever sold the aesthetic. The truth was that I was indeed a nerd. I had a master's degree in computer sciences and web design, I created websites for companies under an alias and different VPN so nothing would be connected to my other life. The other life, this camgirl/cosplayer/social media influencer/let's player, was my home. I wanted to travel across the country to show off the cosplays I engineered and get my foot in the door to speaking with video game companies through my let's plays. I could sail on that life and would never have to step foot in a retail store or office space again. I would have my own freedom.

I signed softly as a saw a drop in viewers and stopped talking about the headphones. This was the hardest part, being the stupid sex doll for the ones who were only interested in getting off. I turned on the video capture and started up the game so I could properly start my stream. I was just about ready to sit in my gaming chair when I felt warm thighs beneath me. I jumped up and turned quickly, surprised by my boyfriend. He pulled me into his lap, a poised erection parallel to his stomach. He had helped me gain confidence in performing on camera and he was my safety net when we made videos together. I was much more comfortable and relaxed when he touched me. "JJ is joining me today." It was his stupid online nickname because he couldn't think of anything else. "Hope you don't mind. He challenged me to a bet. If I win a few rounds while he's fucking me he will buy me whatever I want, no matter the cost. If I cum or get distracted too much and fail then I get punished in anyway he wants and he'll upload that on his page. I think I can win though. I've spent days awake during releases and playing games straight through so this is nothing."

Johnny scoffed. "You say that now, but just you wait." He set his hands on my hips and turned me away from the camera and let my ass be the center of attention. I bent over and cupped his face gently to plant kisses over his lips while his hands shifted to spread my cheeks apart and show off the heart shaped gem of the butt plug that was nestled inside me. He grabbed a hold of the gem and pulled the plug out slowly, not all the way but just enough to work up some thrusts. I moaned softly, the headphones capturing the sound loud and clear so I could hear it as well as the viewers. The familiar ping of a notification that I received a tip racketed one after the other and Johnny smiled before whispering under his breath. "Blow me for a bit. That'll stall us and give a chance for more people to log on."

I nodded, following his advice and kissed down his bare chest until I reached the junction of his happy trail to the hair above the base of his cock. He turned the chair slightly to adjust the view from the camera and used the small remote beside my computer mouse to move the lens and zoom in more to focus on my face. He was an expert on camera mechanics and even helped me get better equipment for my set up and I had seen my following grow substantially.

I lowered myself to my knees as he spread his thighs apart. Grabbing the base of his cock, he tapped the head against my lips a few times, chuckling on the outside but both of our eyes showed annoyance. We hated doing certain things for the camera but sucked it up anyway. He found the motion stupid while I found it to be a turn off but with my attraction to him outweighed all our discomfort. I parted my lips and slipped his head into the heat of my mouth. The soft moan he let out was definitely a real reaction and I instantly flicked my eyes up to his. His own had closed and his head leaned back against the chair. Gripping what I couldn't fit, I held him steady as I bobbed my head. I swallowed around him and tightened my throat as a slight buck of his hips moved him deeper.

Another moan came, this time from me that was muffled by the invasion. I upturned it into a drawn out exaggeration to add to the stream. Johnny set his hand on the back of my head and kept me close, forcing me to breathe through my nose. "More, baby girl. I know you can do it." He encouraged. I furrowed my brow and tried to calm my gag reflex as I wiggled down more of his shaft. "That's good." He groaned. "That's my good girl."

My cheeks tinged with rose colored fire at the compliment. I held on as he pushed his hips up, dictating a rhythm I was forced to follow as he fell into controlling the situation. I was at his mercy and he knew how to test my limits without going overboard. Deep throating was just another thing we were trying to check off our list but I still struggled to take down his length. He was so perfectly thick and long, nothing over the top or short of disappointment. It was enough to challenge my small body without me crumbling under intense pain. Our size differences, both in height and ratio of his cock to my hole, drove him absolutely stark raving mad. There had been plenty of times where he had to reel himself in before he devoured me completely in a rush of brutal thrusts. But that was exactly what I wanted.

He pulled out of my mouth just as I felt the first drop of precum fall on my tongue. I licked my lips to disconnect the saliva from us-another thing I hated but knew sloppy blowjobs were another aesthetic cash grab. "Get the lube." He commanded with a hard spank to my ass that made me squeak. I trotted away from my desk and rummaged through my nightstand drawer to get the large bottle of lube I had. "And your favorite toy." He added.

I smiled to myself as I pulled out the elongated orb shape of a vibrator that Johnny could control through an app on his phone. He disappeared from the camera view to retrieve his phone before taking his place back in my gaming chair. He guided me to sit on his lap, resting my feet on the armrests so I was spread open. I hid behind my controller a bit as I was too shy to be so splayed out with everything visible. Johnny shoved the controller down right away though, not letting me hide for even a second. I pouted and looked back at him, glaring. He only returned the stare, adding a "what did i tell you?" kind of expression. I exhaled through my nose and pressed start reluctantly. As I was flicking through the menu and character selection I found Johnny's long fingers creeping towards my mouth.

"Open." He demanded and my jaw lowered to accept him again. During a loading screen he thrusted his fingers, pinching at my tongue and stroking the sensitive area at the back of it. My toes squirmed as i wanted to gag but he pulled his fingers forward just before the sensation could worsen. A few more thrusts and he removed them completely, showing off the now glistening skin. He moved between my legs, stroking along my slit and just barely circling my clit. Small tingles started to form in my legs but i was able to concentrate as my battle started. It was nothing special as of now. He just wanted to work up one hole before the other so by the time he was shoved deep in my ass i would be more relaxed. The vibrator always helped in that aspect.

He squeezed a single digit in inside me, his honey eyes looking over me to gauge my reaction. My breath had sped up a little but i kept playing even when his tender lips began decorating my neck in the softest of kisses. I loved when he destroyed me but when he was so gentle it drove me more crazy. His kisses gave my tummy butterflies and I tried to squirm away. His finger only plunged deeper and his other hand gripped a fistfull of hair to keep my head straight, making me wince slightly. My eyes widened and brows furrowed just after as I dodged an attack that almost depleted my character's health. I grew irritated at my lack of assistance from the online players. "FUCKERS!" I shouted. "Do I have to do everything myself?!"

"You're so cute when you're irritated." Johnny chuckled.

"Oh piss off." I scoffed. I wasn't cute, I was dead set on capturing the target come hell or high water.

Johnny didn't seem to like my response as he shoved in another finger quickly. He curled them and fucked me faster then he had been and i almost dropped my controller. I swallowed back a moan and tried not to close my shivering thighs. He would hate that even more. "Make noises." He said into my ear. "Remember what I told you."

"Y-y-yessss!" I hissed. That wasn't faked at all. His fingers were magical and I dug my nails into my controller, scratching into the rubber hand grips.

"What was that?" He smirked as the sound of my wetness started to grow louder alongside the tip notifications. "Use your words."

"S-stooppp." I whimpered and paused the game as I squeezed my eyes shut.

"Giving up already? I've barely just started."

I shook my head quickly and renewed the game,keeping myself determined at the sudden reminder. I thought about what I wanted him to buy me, my end goal and reason for this stupid bet. "N-no. I-im not! I'm not giving up!"

"Oh?" He scooted the chair closer to my desk, still making sure to keep the camera poised perfectly. Reaching for the bottle of lube i had collected, he dabbed a little onto his fingertips. I barely noticed his movements until the cold gel was being circled and pushed inside me. I continued to command myself to ignore it. I had to. I exhaled slowly in an attempt to steady my breath but it hitched as soon as i felt the pressure of the vibrator slowly sink into me.

He didn't turn it on right away. Instead he wrapped his arms around my waist and squeezed me tight while he buried his face into my neck. It garnered more kisses and occasional nibbles that gave me just a few moments to get back to the game. Slowly, he moved his hands to cup my breasts, giving them both a good squeeze before capturing the nipples between his thumbs and index fingers. Gently, he tugged them into stiff peaks and rolled his fingers over the raised flesh to send small jolts of electricity down my neck. Quiet noises were held in by my lips pressed together though Johnny impatient at the fact i wasn’t letting them out. "You're still not making noises." He growled lowly.

"I can't help it! Im not loud!" I nudged my elbow back into his ribs, trying to squirm away as much as I could. He gave a light tap to my clit and pinned his arm around my waist again. I wanted to move now and I was too afraid to as i saw him make a grab for his phone. The familiar graph like control screen popped up and Johnny pressed his thumb to it. A cursor appeared beneath the pressure and at first he kept it low. That was simple enough for me to handle. He faced his phone to the screen, showing what he was doing to the audience. He chuckled as he read through some of the comments in the chat box.

"Even they think youre gonna lose." He said. "You're doing such a shit job, Remmy."

"Shut up! I'd like to see you try it! Maybe you should be the one trying to play while i fuck your ass." I pouted and crossed my arms as it took longer for my dead character to respawn.

"You're always wanting to fuck my ass." I felt the vibrator increase the intensity and my stomach clenched tight. "Maybe we could do another bet and that could be the stipulation but i don't really see you winning that one either."

"It's not over yet! I can still win!" I said with slight uncertainty.

"We'll see, bunny. I'm gonna take the plug out now." Johnny warned as he wrapped his fingers around the gem base. I nodded and leaned into him, begging for a kiss. He satisfied my craving as he slowly pulled the plug out of me, leaving my gape to flex around the emptiness. He tossed it onto the desk with a hard clunk before gripping my chin firmly. My jaw dropped open as he intensified the kiss, forcing his tongue to fill my small mouth completely. I held onto his shoulders to try and support myself as I got light-headed from the lust clouded thoughts that were spiraling in my head. He parted from me with a quick bite to my lip then reached for the bottle of lube again. He repeated the same motion of swiping it inside me as his fingers worked to stretch me even more.

I could relax around two fingers but he soon added a third which stretched me farther than the plug had. With his clean hand he increased the speed of the vibrator on his phone and I yelped helplessly. I saw him smirk through the video feed on my computer and wanted to wipe it off his face. With shaking hands I gripped my controller and resumed my pathetic attempt at playing the game. The vibrations would send sharper shocks throughout me every once in awhile as Johnny made sure i would feel comfortable taking his cock.

My bottom lip was starting to swell as my teeth kept digging into it. My toes were curling against the armrest and my controller vibrated with each bit of damage i was taking. The toys' own vibrations increased and I was nothing but a squirming mess on his lap. "Are you gonna give up, bunny?" He cooed in my ear. "Are you gonna give up and let daddy win? Please be a good girl for me, ok?"

"N-no! That's not fair! I d-dont wa-wa-nnghh-!" I clenched my teeth tightly as I felt a sudden urge to cum wash over me. He was being relentless with his thrusts now, plowing faster and making lewd sounds as the lube squelched against his fingers.

He made the vibrations spike again and I tossed my head back onto his shoulder, begging him to just slow down a bit. He nuzzled against my cheek and kissed my neck. "Look how loud you're getting for me." He turned my head to the computer monitor as he swiped his thumb across my clit. "Show the viewers how pretty my baby is when she wants to cum, hm?"

I flicked my eyes to the screen, embarrassed but wanting to comply so i could cum. If not i'd be stuck in this hell forever. Hundreds of comments were pouring in and i was able to see a number in tips i had never seen before. I swallowed hard and looked at Johnny. "It's going so well." I whispered.

"See what happens when you listen to me?” I nodded, upset that he was right but at least I could pay my bills with the money we earned. “Are you ready for me?”

I swallowed hard as my heart rate escalated. “I..um..” His erection pressed harder into the center of my back. He felt so swollen and even though I wanted to stay strong, the sub in me wanted to take care of my daddy. I nodded and felt his fingers slid out slowly. With his hands on my waist he was easily able to hoist me up with enough space to guide him towards my hole. Carefully, we worked together, me moving down while he thrusted upwards, to have him fill me entirely. My game kicked me back out to the menu screen as I had died again and it questioned if I wanted to continue. It stayed in limbo, not receiving my decision as my ass had touched the top of Johnny’s thighs and his lips had overcome mine. He scooted down in the chair, giving himself more ease of access to thrust.

The first few motions were careful, paired with a plucking of my nipples and an occasional clit rub. It wasn’t until I started grinding back on him did he increase his speed, pulling out almost completely before shoving himself back inside with a harsh speed. Our whimpers and groans were muffled by our tongues colliding over and over. In between the warm presses of his lips, his tongue would slip out to lap at mine or he would place love bites against my bottom lip. With dreamy and heavy lidded eyes I watched the small contortions of his facial features as his pleasure increased. When his mouth would drop open slightly to release nothing but a strained sound or when his brows furrowed with the intensity of my grip around him, i would drink it in, in love with everything about him.

As I squeezed my walls around him tighter, his hand ascended from the softness of my belly, to between my breasts, and finally to wrap around my neck. My muscles went rigid and my breath strangled. His fingers were formed into a grip that was growing tighter and tighter. I dropped my controller, letting it fall to the floor and found solace in dragging my nails into the plush pads of the armrests. The sound it created seemed to echo in the headphones as my mind transformed into lusty swirling thoughts. The dull burn of his girth inside me started to disintegrate but my stomach still churned with the fantastical feeling of his cock shoving against my insides. “Roll your hips.” He commanded me.

I couldn’t nod but showed my submission by moving my feet onto his thighs and lifting my body slightly. I circled my hips around the head of his cock, concentrating all the strength I could muster into the most sensitive of places. “Fuck, that’s good, angel.” His head fell back and his fingers pulsed their strength around my neck, giving me moments to hiccup in tiny breaths. My thighs burned and my knees buckled as my hold on the armrests made my knuckles splatter with the white color of straining. As he saw my body buckling he wrapped his free arm around me and hauled himself onto his feet. With the hand on my neck he tossed me into the gaming chair, making it skid across the floor a foot or two.

My eyes watered as i looked up at his; darkened and dilated with the idea of ruining me further. The veins in his arms dispersed beneath his skin, deepening into a soft blue hue as he clenched his fists around the armrests now, keeping the chair in place. He pulled the chair forward allowing him to slam back into me. The sound I left out was a mix between a squeak and a scream giving the satisfaction of me being loud on camera like he wanted. Ignoring the way a few tears streaked along the tops of my cheeks from the overwhelming stimuli, he rolled the chair backwards, repeating his motions of dragging me forward to fall into a pattern of ruthless thrusts. I had never regretted getting my gaming chair until this very moment. How he found the simplest household items to torture me with I’ll never know but he sure knew how to make sure I wouldn’t be able to walk tomorrow. I held onto his arms as my back arched and body squirmed and I was unsure if I could hold back any longer. “Give up?” He chuckled darkly. “Just say the word. You’ve already barely played a round and kept dying so I think it’s a given that I’ve won.” he taunted.

If this was the torture during the bet I feared what his punishment for me would be later on. It was too late to change the way I felt and I was already falling into a subspace that needed to be filled with his cum. “D-daddy…” I cried softly.

“Say it.” He worked in another rushed thrust. “I wanna hear you say it.”

I pressed my lips together and clawed at his forearms. My stomach clenched harder and my toes curled, pulling the tendons taught and shooting cramps up my legs. “Fine! Fine! You win! Please let me cum!!!”

Johnny turned to the camera and stuck his tongue out, adding a peace sign, in victory. “Guess you guys get a little punishment video soon.” He leaned down and gave me a soft kiss. “Go on, bunny. It’s okay.”

I let out a small sigh of relief and imagined he would continue his thrusts but instead he reached for his phone one last time. He turned the vibrator up on full strength and I gave in then, growing louder as my cum showered the seat of the chair and onto the carpet below. The tense contractions of my orgasm caused the vibrator to crash to the floor, the buzzing rattling against it. Johnny shut it off completely and waited until i was curled up and suffering from aftershocks to grab a fistful of hair and pulled my head up. “Ahh.” He said.

“I want it in-inside.” I shuddered.

“Nope, that’s for girls who win bets. Open.”

I reluctantly opened my mouth, unhappy with his choice, and watched his large hand stroke over his heated skin just above my tongue. His fist worked faster and faster and his eyes fell shut. He kept my head in place and the sweet heat of his cum covered my tongue, sliding down my chin and dripping onto my chest. I swallowed and licked up as much as I could, even lapping at his slit to make sure he gave me everything he had. Once he relaxed, my hair was let go and i sat back in the chair. I swiped my finger across my chin and licked the last bit of cum that I missed. My legs fell as my body slumped; I better get a bath and cuddles after this, I thought, a pout sprouting on my lips. Johnny made up some quick exit greeting and shut off the cameras and bright ring lights. “You ok?”

“I’m sleepy and sore and want cuddles and a bath.”

He smiled and picked me up from the chair, wrapping my legs around him. “I will make you a bath and give you all the cuddles you want, okay?” I nodded and buried my face in his neck as he walked us to the bathroom. “But to be honest, you were such a good girl today. I’m proud of you for being louder and showing your face more.”

I squeezed my arms around his neck, trying to hide as much as I could for my cheeks were burning crimson. He could be rough but also sweet and docile when he took care of me. I loved him so much it almost hurt. “Can you say thank you?” he asked as if I was a child that had forgotten their manners.

“Thank you, Daddy.” I mumbled against his skin.

He rubbed my back before setting me down on the toilet seat cover. “I’ll let that one slide. I can tell you’re sleepy.”

“You’re gonna stay the night, right?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but with you.”

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hypnoticwinter · 4 years ago

Text

Down the Rabbit Hole part 16 (nsfw elements)

“Take a break!” comes the barked command through the squad radio link, and it takes all of my willpower not to collapse onto the fleshy ground then and there. I take the camera slung around my neck and turn it off, telescope the lens back into itself, and then find a nice soft bit of wall to sink into before I pop the helmet and give Elena a weary gaze. She grins at me cheekily.

“How you doing, cutie?”

I barely have enough energy to grin, but somehow I manage it. “God,” I tell her. “I had no idea there was going to be this much hiking.”

I had never thought of myself as much of a slouch as far as physical activity went. I liked keeping myself fit, liked the rush I got after a workout. I did a lot of cardio, a lot of jogging, that kind of thing. Occasionally I’d lift some weights but it didn’t appeal to me as much as just the inchoate joy of moving quickly and feeling air push in and out of my lungs. I had a fair amount of endurance as well; I wasn’t running marathons or anything but frequently I’d end up jogging for upwards of an hour, just for something to do, just to unwind after work or take my mind off something. I’d looked at the several miles we’d have to travel today, down there in the stinking guts of the Pit, and thought something along the lines of ‘no sweat, I’m active, I take care of myself, it’ll be a workout but nothing more.’

Christ.

What neither Peter or Makado had mentioned to me is that if you aren’t travelling in a Made Place down here, in a place that’s been specifically sanitized and reinforced and structured for something the size of a human, something that moves like a human instead of crawling or writhing or wriggling, it is capital-letter Tough Going. Everything down here, down to just the texture of the gigantic veins we pushed through, our suits sopping with nameless excretions and juices, seemed designed to only sullenly give way to us, and that after a great deal on our part to convince it to do so.

Example number one – the tightness of some of the veins is so great that we had to use something called a venterial jack, a pneumatic, hydraulic device that Slate carried slung over his back, in order to force them open so we could pass through. Everyone kept saying that once we hit the organ trail it’d be more open and we wouldn’t have to use it, but in the meantime in some of these conduits Slate would have to get three or four of us to help him pull back the weird, spongy tissue of the sides back far enough for him to plant it there in the middle, and then we’d all back away, and with a thundering sound like a pile-driver it would expand and splay open, pushing the tissue back with such force that at times it would leave a gigantic bruise coloring the Pit’s peach-hued flesh afterwards, and then we’d be able to crawl past it in the newly expanded space perhaps twenty feet or so before we’d have to hit the small trigger on its hull to collapse it, and then lug the thing back up to the front and repeat the process.

Example two – these vents aren’t perfectly straight, flat areas to walk in. They dip and bend and curve; sometimes they roll upwards, great creased crinkles of flesh stretching upwards into a ninety-degree angle. Then there’s nothing to do but get over it somehow, either by pulling yourself up if it’s small enough, or by breaking out the damn rope and pitons and climbing up, and then helping everyone else up after you. Then imagine doing all of this in pitch darkness, the only light coming from everyone’s headlamps. Then imagine that the floor is damp and sticky and squishy and generally revolting. Slippery with fluid at times. Imagine that it groans and writhes and wriggles around you if you manage to unstick your cleats at the wrong time and it bucks and pitches you to the ground. And then imagine that if you do fall to the ground, in the space of time it takes for someone to come and help you up you become covered with all forms of parasites, tiny things ranging between the size of a knuckle and the size of a fist, all urgently eager and hungry. Tiny worms like nematodes, crablike mites, stranger, less defined things that scuttle or slither or undulate off at the first sign of motion but are altogether too eager to swarm over you and excrete digestive juices or sensory pheromones or urine or shit or what the hell ever else.

I ask Elena about them and she explains that the duct that we’re moving through is part of the Pit’s digestive system and that all of these little creatures snag scraps of food whenever it passes through, or sometimes they prey on each other. They evolve quickly, down here in the dark, generations zipping by in the course of a day.

I can see my helmeted reflection in the glossy visor of Elena’s helmet and I shudder. My camera is already splattered with grime, no matter how careful I’ve been to keep it clean. Nothing that interferes with its operation, thankfully; I don’t relish the idea of grappling with the clunky, low-resolution camcorder secreted somewhere in its case in my pack. At least the operation of my DSLR is second-nature to me; at least I don’t have to think about it.

Peter stomps over and sits down next to us. In here, in these wider basins, the little scummy creatures crawling all over don’t seem to venture into the middle, leaving a broad round circle of bare flesh where we can sit without being molested. I’ve already popped my helmet and I keep my eyes on Elena as she takes hers off, shakes her head doggedly, smooths her hair out. She catches my eye and grins, and then flicks her eyes over to Peter.

“Peter, right?”

“Yes,” he says. He holds his fist out and they touch knuckles. A less complicated gesture than trying to shake hands with the suit gloves on. “Sorry I haven’t been around much, I’ve been ��“

“Too busy with Veret?” Elena interjects smoothly, and I nearly choke on the mouthful of water I’d taken from my canteen. Peter claps me on the back and grimaces.

“I hoped people wouldn’t have talked much,” Peter says, and Elena laughs.

“Please,” she says. “People are going to do nothing but talk if you’re fucking the boss. I’m Elena, by the way.”

Peter’s blushing. I nudge him. “So you and Makado, huh?”

He snorts. “Slate walked in on me and her, um. Well, you know. In one of the supply closets the other day.”

“And of course,” Elena adds, “considering that Slate is a 12-year-old girl, he ran and tattled to everyone.”

“That’s Slate,” Peter agrees. “When did you join?”

“Three years ago.”

“Huh. That’s back when I was here.”

“Yeah, I was attached to a research team for a while. They were doing some gastric stuff and they needed a diver. Probably why we never met.”

“Makes sense,” Peter nods. Elena’s eyes flick over to me and she reaches out a hand.

“Want me to open that for you?” she asks, and I shake my head. I’ve almost gotten the granola bar open now, but these damn gloves –

“I’ve got it,” I tell her. “I almost –“

“You sure you’ve got it?”

“Shut up, Pete.”

“Here, let me –“

“Fine,” I say, tossing the granola bar to Elena. She strips the wrapper off it with one deft motion and I shake my head. “How the hell –“

“Lots of practice,” Peter says. “So Elena, when you joined, did you…”

As I sit there munching and letting the quiet rustle of conversation blur into the background, letting some of the strength come back into my weary legs, I think for a moment about the fleshy, veined interior of the basin I’m sitting in. There are places in my body just like this, I think to myself. This is just the same as me, writ large. And I’m sure I have parasites just like those squirming things, all the mites and leeches and worms and other tiny things, just even tinier, single-celled or at the very least simple organisms, living inside of me, just like these are.

I put my hand on the floor hesitantly and I swear I feel, just for a moment, the throb of a titan heartbeat somewhere resounding in it like the echo of a vast drum.

“Alright people! Let’s get moving!”

I push myself up, nearly bang heads with Elena. Our helmets are off still so it’s dark, the lights are strobing all around as everyone puts theirs on. “Sorry,” I say to her, but before I can get the word out fully she’s seized me by the shoulders and kissed me hard and deep on the lips, her tongue skating over my teeth lightly before we part, her gleaming grin the only part of her I can really see, and I’m left breathless. For the next fifteen minutes of hiking I can’t seem to wipe the smile from my face.

* * *

The first difficulty arises only about an hour after we left the rest site. The vent we were passing through widened out, a sign Elena explained meant that we were beginning to enter the old Organ Trail, sort of a central hiking path through some of the more interesting areas of the Pit. It meant easier going, which I was thankful for; the area had been cleared and levelled a long time ago, back before 2007, and even though some of the built areas had been wrecked by those titan convulsions, now years past, there was still a great deal of flat ground and even in some parts metal platforms and walkways for us to use, which certainly gave my aching arms and legs a little solace.

It happened just at the end of one of those walkways, a short, narrow tunnel through a conic gape of flesh that truncated down from the ceiling like an abraded sphincter. The walkway through it still had age-old hydraulic jacks keeping the fleshy ceiling from collapsing inward on it, and though the Sergeant and Fumi, up at front, showed a little trepidation at the notion of passing through with only those jacks to secure it, there was no other real option; the portable jack Slate had wasn’t strong enough to provide any sort of security, even if we set it up in the middle of the passage at full load strength. Plus, Crookshank had loudly and crudely reasoned, if the fucking thing hadn’t caved in in the last four fucking years, what are the fucking odds it’ll fuck us in the ass right as we walk under it?

Hard to argue with that logic. And, to Crookshank’s credit, the fucking thing didn’t fuck us in the ass, although I couldn’t stop myself from staring up at the bloated, swollen flesh of the ceiling as I passed under it, a tiny ice-cold trickle of fear welling in my gut as I considered the sheer weight that was likely behind that glossy, straining surface. Suit or no suit, that’d kill me.

We hardly make it thirty yards from the ending of the tunnel before Joker tears through the flesh of the trail and plunges down into darkness. Euler actually yelps and we all whip around and see the outline of the pit the robot had fallen through, an irregular craggy chasm of flesh. We make our way cautiously to its edge and peer down and I almost laughed, for there just fifteen feet or so below us is Joker, his head inclined upwards, the running lights on the side blinking anxiously, looking for all the world like a forlorn and anxious dog waiting for its master to come rescue it.

Then all manner of cursing and expletives. It was for all the world like watching the groups of construction workers you’d see sometimes on the side of the highway, about six of us standing around mutely with our arms folded or akimbo, watching, while two others ran about frantically trying to accomplish something. The Sergeant and Euler had another shouting match which ended with the Sergeant throwing up his hands in disgust when Euler explained that the damn thing weighed around five hundred pounds and that nobody had told him to look out for crevices like that. Crookshank was in favor of jumping down and tying a rope around Joker’s waist and then the rest of us hoisting him out that way, but Klaus stops him and tosses a tiny white tab down into the murky liquid pooling around Joker’s feet.

“Acid test strip,” Elena murmurs to me when I shot her a questioning glance.

Nearly a dozen headlamps focus in on the tiny floating strip. Crookshank spits a disgusted curse when it turns a violent shade of pink.

“Good thing Klaus threw that in,” Elena calls, a tiny smirk coloring her words, and Crookshank rolls his eyes at her.

“What’s going on – oops. Sorry.”

Makado’s voice had flourished in my ears, sounding as rich and full in the helmet as though she’d been standing right next to me. Then the transmission clicked off. A couple of chuckles from the rest of the squad and then I realized – she must have dialed to the wrong frequency, spoken to all of us instead of just the Sergeant. He inclines his great slab of a head, one hand pressed to his helmeted ear, nodding occasionally, and then motions to Euler. “Euler,” he says. “Can you make it dig in and climb out?”

Euler stares at him blankly. “You mean into the - ?”

“Yes, goddam it, into the side of the wall.”

Poor Euler. It’s obvious he doesn’t want to. His hands are shaking lightly on the remote and all of us staring at him waiting for him to do it probably isn’t helping. He presses a complex series of buttons, manipulates the joystick carefully, and down in the pit Joker reaches up and plunges his hands into the fleshy wall, using about as much effort, it looks like, as it’d take to push into sand. Joker lifts himself off the ground and then hesitantly pulls one hand out, dripping with gore, and reaches upwards.

“Today, Euler.”

I almost, almost snap something at the Sergeant, but I bite my tongue. Whatever sort of peace we brokered the other night, it seemed like a tentative one, and I’d rather he was yelling at Euler, not me.

Sorry, Euler.

“Hey, Roan?”

I reach down to the radio and click it on. “Makado, what’s up?”

“Hi,” she says. “I just wanted to let you know that earlier today I got a call from our mutual friend Erica.”

I can feel my eyebrows raising of their own accord. “Really?” I ask. “Was she able to get in touch with - ?”

“With her guy down there? No, she wasn’t. She was calling to let me know that she was sorry,” Makado laughs, “and to tell you the same, that she’s sorry.”

“Christ,” I mutter. “Wasn’t expecting that.”

“I’ve already spoken to the Sergeant about it and we’ve decided that on the way back up you’ll make some detours, check some spots that he might be holed up, but since we can’t make contact with him…”

“Right.”

“How are you doing down there?”

“Um. I’m alright. This is a bit of a new experience for me.”

“That’s one way to put it. Getting good footage?”

Me and my camera watch as Joker pokes his head up over the lip of the crevasse. Next to me Elena gives a little whooping cheer. “Yeah,” I say, turning so that Elena’s in the shot. She looks over at me, looks down, the lens reflecting in her helmet, flashes index and middle finger in a v at me. “You could say that.”

“Good. Well, that’s all, just wanted to check in with you.”

“Heard about you and Peter,” I blurt before I can stop myself. Makado grunts questioningly, and I roll my eyes at placing my foot directly in my own mouth as usual. “You know,” I clarify, “in the supply closet.”

There’s a moment of frozen silence and then Makado bursts out laughing. “Goddam it,” she sputters. “Slate told everyone, didn’t he?”

“More or less.”

“That fucker. Well, yeah. We, ah, got a little carried away.”

“I’m happy for you,” I tell her, and I find myself mildly surprised that it’s actually true. “He’s right here if you want to talk to –“

“No, no, it’s okay, I’ve actually been talking to him all day, more or less. Cause, you know, the equipment up here, I can put a direct line in to whichever one of you I like.”

“Right, of course.”

“Well,” Makado says, and I smile softly to myself beneath the helmet.

“See you, Mak.”

“See you.”

The radio line clicks off and then I’m alone inside my own head again.

Joker is dripping with blood now and I make sure I take plenty of video of him; a couple of stills as well, just because it looks metal. Like something straight out of a movie. Then once Euler has checked him over and wiped off the worst of it we go back to trudging down the vent like nothing has happened. Euler takes more care to keep Joker walking in step behind us and though Elena points out a couple of the fissures to me, skin crawling as I examine the thin membranous layer separating them from the air, nobody falls into any more.

Another couple of hours of walking and then another break. I have to go back three menus to check the time on my camera; some of the others’ helmets, I’m told, have heads-up displays on the interior that show details like that; mine either doesn’t have this functionality or it’s switched off so as to not overwhelm me with extraneous visual noise. It’s six in the evening; Elena tells me that the plan is to make it to our stopping point for the day by nine or ten. We’re over the worst of it, she says grinning, and then because we’re towards the back with only Joker behind us to see, she reaches down and squeezes my ass lightly and I respond in the only way I know how, by upping the ante, and reaching for her and groping her taut breasts clumsily through the suit before she spins away from me laughing. I still cast a nervous glance behind and meet Joker’s faceless metal gaze. I peer at him again for a little before I turn back around. I haven’t told Euler yet of what happened in the gondola on the way down but the more I think about it and turn it over in my head the more I’m convinced it must have been nothing. Just a little software glitch of some kind.

It amazes me how easily the fantastic surroundings I’m in become mundane. Just scant hours ago I was nearly getting sick breathing the air but now I’m grateful for it when I pop my helmet and gulp down great lungfuls of it, cloying and organic and thick but not recycled, not passed through a dozen filters before reaching my lungs.

We’re in the Organ Trail proper now, great wide cavities and veins and vesicles and all these other little fiddly medical names that pass between everybody like old friends but which leave me halting. What’s the difference between a vein and a vent? A vesicle and a ventricle? What about an organ and a cavity? I don’t know, and if I asked I’d only expose my ignorance, I’d only be patronized. I did ask Elena a few innocuous questions in that nature but every time she answered me she did so with a smug little smile and it made me feel small so eventually I stopped asking, even though I know she probably didn’t mean to do it.

Break. Another granola bar, another bottle of water. Have to stay hydrated. Sergeant comes around to all of us, makes sure we’re drinking enough. He doesn’t bark at me, he’s – not kind, but not awful. I hold hands with Elena surreptitiously there in the dark and though I can barely feel her through the thick suit, knowing she’s there is a comfort.

I think about Erica’s boy, whoever he was to her. There wasn’t enough of a resemblance for me to think that they were family but obviously she cares about him. I think about him alone down here for almost four days now. I think about how scared I’d be in the same position.

I have to fucking piss.

I get up and Elena eyes me. “Where’re you going?”

“To take a leak. What’s the protocol down here, just squat down and go wherever?”

She makes a face. “Unfortunately. If you’re male you have the luxury of using an empty water bottle but if not…”

“Right,” I say. I’ve gone camping before so the concept isn’t entirely foreign to me but it still isn’t particularly tasteful either. I make my way towards a discrete corner, a little fold of flesh that drapes down from the ceiling like a curtain.

“Don’t go far!” Elena calls from behind me, and I throw her a thumbs-up without turning. It’ll just take a moment anyway. Behind the curtain is actually another corridor – a vent, I guess, is the term everyone else seems to use most commonly. I eye it a little warily before I step forward. It’s dark in there, and I feel a little more exposed than I thought I would as I unzip the bottom portion of the suit and squat down, choosing a dingy little corner, a little wrinkled knot of flesh like the accordion-like joint between the thumb and the rest of the hand.

I do my business quickly and then seal the suit, taking time to check all of the joints like I was shown in the brief training the engineer fitting me had given. I –

Something moves in the vent ahead of me and I freeze. I can’t see it properly, it’s far too dark, but it seems large, larger than I am. I take a hesitant step back, eyes locked on its wavering silhouette, and then I reach down with my thumb along the side of the helmet, carried loosely at my side, and press the button for the headlamp, and it casts a beam of light over the thing, and it is so large, larger than me, towering at least eight feet tall there in the vent, all whipping tentacles and soft spongy tissue. It has wide, strange eyes that peer at me blearily in the sudden light, its long, snakelike, curiously vulnerable-looking body surrounded by a halo of pale venous fronds or tendrils, light pink and throbbing. It reaches out for me and I start to scream but the sound catches in my throat, and then I take a panicked, scrambling step backwards and the cleats dig in the wrong way and I pitch to the ground. I hit hard, knock the air from my lungs, and then I really can’t scream even though my brain has finally caught up with what’s happening and I’m trying to force my abused lungs to work, all I can manage is a little croaking noise.

The thing scuttles closer to me. The tendrils are starting to wrap around my leg and I kick at it and scoot backwards, but they tighten around my ankle and hold me still. I can feel terror inside of me like I’m a cocoon, like it’s clawing at my skin and if it makes a hole in me I’ll disappear, evaporate, vanish, I’ll scream and scream and -

“Roan?” Elena calls. It sounds as though she’s coming towards the coil of flesh I’d hidden behind. “We’re getting ready to go.”

“Help,” I manage to croak, and then Elena bolts around the corner, her pistol already clearing the holster. I feel the tendrils around my leg loosen and then slip away as she marches towards the thing completely fearlessly. She isn’t even pointing the gun at it. She stands up on her tiptoes as best she can in the bulky cleats and stares at it, stares it down, the thing retreating on its millions of whiplike tentacles, before finally it turns tail and flees down the vent, making a noise like pudding being poured into a bag full of live eels.

“Jesus Christ,” I mutter as Elena helps me up. “What the fuck was that?”

“Venous shamble,” she tells me. “Big one, too. Would have stuck a proboscis in you and sucked you dry if you let it. Why didn’t you shoot it or something? They’re pussies, even if you missed it would have run away.”

“I didn’t think of it,” I say quietly, looking at her. I can feel myself trembling with the comedown of the adrenaline and I feel defensive. “I didn’t - I don’t know, I froze up and -“

Elena’s face falls, and then she is crouching next to me and undoing my helmet gently, cradling me in her arms. “It’s okay,” she tells me. “It’s okay, nobody could expect you to do any different.”

I blow a big breath out. “Okay,” I say. “Okay, I’m good.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. Here, come here.”

“What is it?”

“Kiss me,” I tell her, and I see Elena grin.

“We are moving, ladies!” the Sergeant calls from back in the main chamber, and both of us jump. Elena hauls me to my feet and I slot the helmet back onto the neck of the suit.

“Thanks for saving me,” I tell her, and though she rolls her eyes she still smiles at me.

“Why do I feel like I’m going to hear that a lot from you?” she asks, and I shrug and then we hold hands for the next two hours, there at the back with Joker trudging along behind us with squishy pneumatic footfalls, and after long enough of that I finally, finally feel my insides loosen up and the terror that had been lurking inside of me gradually vanish.

The rest of the night passes without incident. We make it to the broad flat exposed bone plate that we’d planned to camp on and Fumi sets up a portable stove and passes around MREs. I get one that’s a vegetable omelet and though Elena offers to trade with me because apparently it is the foulest piece of food science that the US Military has ever seen fit to inflict on its soldiers and I, being a mere civilian, am unprepared to face its manifold horrors, I actually kind of like it, especially once I mix in the little hot sauce packet.

Afterwards, Elena helps me set up the weird hexagon-panelled tent, which I am hopelessly confused by, inside one of the many vents leading to the basin, which she explains is necessary because the tent has to brace against the vent walls in order to keep its shape. Eventually she laughs at me, though not unkindly, and tells me not to worry about it, she’ll set it up. The tents are two-person, and there seem to be a series of accustomed pairs, Fumi and Ellis, Klaus and Slate, Crookshank and the Sergeant. Elena, when I ask her, tells me that she got a tent to herself normally. That leaves Peter and Euler to bunk up together, but they seem to be getting along alright, so that all works out, I suppose. We’ve left Joker there on the bone plate by himself. Euler hasn’t shut him down but put him into some sort of guard mode so he’ll wake us if anything gets into the basin, but Elena assures me that up this high in the Pit nothing noteworthy is going to bother us. The biggest things up here, she says, are the shambles, and they only bother to attack isolated stragglers, things they know they can kill. They’re very fragile, apparently, and know it.

Elena goes to relieve herself and I clamber into the tent, lay out the mats and sleeping bags. I double-check the map on my suit computer, make sure I know which vent leads to the ballast bulb Makado had mentioned to me. Just thinking about it gives me shivers but I resolve not to worry about it until later. Then I strip my suit off and then shrug out of my underclothes as well. My hair is a little lank from being in a helmet all day and although I’ve applied antiperspirant liberally I can’t escape the suspicion that I don’t smell anywhere close to roses.

No matter. I drape myself across the sleeping bags in what I hope is a sexy manner and play with myself lightly until finally Elena unzips the tent.

“Sorry I took so long,” she says, clambering inwards. She hasn’t seen me yet, she’s making sure her pack makes it inside. “Fumi is fucking with the stove and –“

She sees me then and her mouth drops open. I keep my voice low and sultry.

“How should I reward my savior?” I ask her, and she puts the bag down slowly, a grin spreading across her face.

“I could think of a few ways,” she says, her voice low and husky, and then she is crawling over to me. Her lips meet mine and become entangled and she is slipping her suit down around her shoulders with my one-handed help, and then her hands are roaming over my breasts and my stomach and my thighs and the place where my thighs meet, and then what she does to me next makes me stop thinking.

* * *

“Mm.”

“That was nice.”

“Here, hold me. Tighter.”

“If I hold you any tighter you’ll break something.”

“Do you ever feel,” I ask, shifting myself slowly around in her arms so that I could face her, “as if you simply can’t get close enough to someone once you’ve just made love? Like, you’ve got your arms around them and you’ve put your leg up over their hip –“

“Like this?”

“Yes, just like that. And you’ve got your face pressed just here into their collarbone and you can feel them breathing against you, but it just isn’t close enough?”

“I know what you mean.”

“That’s how I feel.”

“That tickles, don’t kiss me there.”

“But you have such a nice collarbone,” I tell her. “How can I not kiss it?”

“God,” Elena laughs. “That’s so cute. You are so damn cute, has anyone told you that?”

“Once or twice, but I don’t mind hearing it again.”

“This really is your first time with a girl?”

“Yes, if we don’t count last night.”

“You’re very good.”

“Mm. Call me a good girl.”

“You’re a good girl.”

“Your good girl?”

“If you’d like to be.”

“I think I’d like that.”

Elena reaches up and puts her hand in my hair, holds me closer to her. I feel such a giddy upswelling of joy in my heart and stomach that I nearly start laughing. Elena feels it, some little shake or shudder in me, and looks down at me with sudden concern. “Are you okay?” she asks, and I nod.

“Yes, I’m just – happy.”

We are silent for a long while. I can feel Elena’s nimble fingers counting the vertebrae in my naked back, and her soft tapping touches make me shiver and clutch closer to her.

“Tell me about yourself,” she tells me, and I feel a little irrational stab of fear clench in my gut. “I don’t know hardly anything about you, just that we get on well.”

“Alright,” I say after a moment. “I grew up in Corpus Christi. No siblings, only child. I – “

“Me too.”

“Only child?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s nice, isn’t it?”

“God, no,” Elena laughs. “I was so lonely as a kid. My family, we lived way out in the boonies in Wisconsin, nobody around hardly. Just me and my folks.”

“It sounds nice.”

“You are not very much of a people person, are you?” she asks. She inclines her head downwards and kisses me on the forehead, and then I manage to scoot myself up enough that she can find my lips.

“What gave it away?”

“Tell me more. You grew up in Corpus Christi.”

“Went to school in Oklahoma. Got a degree in Literature, bounced around for a while doing journalist things. Worked at a television station for a while, ended up here.”

“How the hell did you end up here?”

“Same way you did, probably,” I grin. “Dumb luck.”

“No, really, I’m curious.”

Goddam it, Elena. I cup her breast in my hand. When I pull back from her to do so I can still feel her breathing against my chest, the ocean-swell rise and fall of hers fitting into mine. I run my thumb over her nipple and see her bite her lip, and I smile to myself, trying not to look too self-satisfied. Elena doesn’t let me enjoy it, though; she shakes her head at me and slips her hand over her breast, covers it from me. “Don’t avoid the question,” she says.

Goddam it, Elena.

I shrug, pretend embarrassment. “I knew someone in management who pulled the strings for me. Came in as an intern then got offered a full position and I accepted cause the pay was fantastic. I do clerical stuff, mostly, you know, data entry, office stuff. I was afraid to tell you, cause…”

“Cause why?”

I decide, for once, to tell her the truth. “Because you intimidate me,” I say. I look her in the eyes for as long as I can muster before I shut mine and bury my face in her collarbone again. I lasted about five seconds. Her eyes are ferociously grey. “Because I feel like you’re going to realize that I’m not –“ I start, and then I realize what I’m saying and cut myself off.

“I don’t want to know how that sentence ends,” she says firmly, taking my head gently in her hands and bringing it up to hers. “You lock that down,” she tells me, pressing her forehead to mine, staring at me. I force myself to look at her, even offer her a tiny smile, or at least I try to, but it feels like the same great hand that’s wrenching at my heart is tugging at my lips as well.

“I just don’t – Elena, there’s –“

Where the hell am I going with that? What am I going to say? There’s nothing I can say.

“Shh. Don’t.”

“Goddam it,” I mutter helplessly. She doesn’t understand, I can tell from the way she’s looking at me. Mute sympathy writ large in those wide, pretty eyes. Fuck.

“Look,” she says. “If you’re having doubts it’s, it’s okay. If it’s just sex maybe that’s one thing, but I don’t know if you want to think of anything more, I don’t know how you feel, but if I make you feel bad or wrong or guilty or -“

“Don’t let’s talk about it,” I tell her. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?”

I let out a little laugh, barely a breath’s worth. “I have a lot of things I’m sorry for.”

“Has it been a while for you?”

“How do you mean?”

“Being with anyone, I mean.”

I feel like I’m going to cry. This isn’t going how I wanted it to. I don’t know how I wanted it to go. This isn’t it.

I feel a huge, stupid paroxysm of guilt welling up inside of me. I turn around so I don’t have to look at Elena, so she doesn’t have to look at me. She puts her arms around me, one arm draped across my chest, tucking me close to her, the other slipping down around my hip and pulling me closer in to her. I can feel the tapered v that her hips and her thighs make resting softly against my ass. She’s so warm.

“Roan,” she says. I can feel her lips moving against the back of my neck. “I don’t know what’s happened to you in the past, I don’t know what kind of shit you’ve had to go through. But I promise that nothing you can tell me is going to change –“

She thinks it’s about her. I almost laugh out loud at the simplicity of it. She thinks I’m having regrets, she thinks – she thinks whatever kind of pathetic moral compass I have spinning in circles inside of me is disagreeing with my monkey hormones’ efforts to make me cum. Goddam it.

“I’m gonna hurt you,” I tell her, knowing as I say it that it’s true. “I’m not going to mean to but I’m going to anyway, I’m going to hurt you, I’m going to fuck this up, and I don’t want to –“

“Roan –“

“- and I’m fucking dreading it because the last relationship I was in was not good, and I don’t want to believe that I’ve been changed by it, but –“

Alright Roan, you can stop now.

“- and I’m just scared because I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want you to hate me, and -“

“Roan!”

I stop. I put my face in my hands. I feel a tiny drop of moisture on my back and I realize that Elena must be crying, and I roll over. “Oh no,” I tell her. “No, no, goddam it, don’t cry, I didn’t mean to –“

“You didn’t make me cry,” she tells me. “I’m crying because whatever happened to you, you didn’t deserve it, and hearing you like this makes me so sad –“

“Elena –“

She hushes me again and for a long, long while we lay there entangled, her lips pressed to my collarbone now, her sweet-smelling hair in my face, and she holds me so tightly that I finally begin to calm down. I think for a long, long while about what I should say, about what I should tell her that might excuse the – the mess I made of what should have been a relatively pleasant evening, but then as her breaths ripsaw upwards into tiny wheezing snores, I realize that it doesn’t really matter.

It takes me about ten minutes to slowly extricate myself from her grasp, to grab my suit and snake my way out of the tent with it in tow. I turn back around to zip the tent back up and I see Elena’s eyes cracked open, watching me, and though I almost jump I give her a soft little smile.

“Where are you going?” she groans, reaching out for me, and I lean back in and take her hand, bring it to my mouth and kiss her on the knuckles.

“I have to take a piss,” I tell her. “I’ll be back soon, go back to sleep.”

She looks as though she wants to protest but she’s too sleepy to do so. She gives me a little smile and then falls back onto her pillow, and I zip the tent up and shrug into my suit quickly. It feels strange and coarse on me, not having bothered to put on any underclothes beforehand, but it’ll do.

Then I turn and make my way as silently as I can towards the dark branching offshoot of tunnel that I marked as the path to the ballast bulb.

Continue with Part 17

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#mystery flesh pit #alt lit #writing #writeblr #thriller #Michael Crichton #horror #caving #disaster #acid

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writing-the-end · 4 years ago

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LoL Chapter 12: Family Dynamics

Masterpost

A Wizard Hermits tale (AU belongs to @theguardiansofredland )

Safe on their home island of Eremita, the hermits need to practice, grow their magic stronger. A day in the life of the illegal guild of hermits includes food- practice- more food- practice- contemplating of life.

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The Order returned to their island, healed by the remaining Asklepions and left with more questions than answers. They know almost nothing more about dark magic, despite fighting it twice now. When they thought husks only appeared around crystals, Danes proved they can move. When they believed they understood why a husk appeared, the monsters just tore apart their theories.

One thing they did learn from the two experiences is they need more training. More experience, especially against dark magic. The hermits were strong, but the forces of darkness were stronger. But before any of them can take on each other, they first need to take on breakfast.

Which is a challenge in itself. Half of the hermits want to jump right into training, ignoring the guild hall and insistence of TFC. The other half are easily enticed by the scent of food.

Grian is practically vibrating in his seat, to the point that Iskall has to reach out and press his hand on the blond hair to keep him seated. “Who thought it was a good idea to give him syrup?”

“It’s not the breakfast, I can’t wait to get back to sparring!” Grian grins, turning to Mumbo. “You ready for another round of quickdraws?”

Mumbo groans, head falling back and mouth falling open. “Gri, you know I can’t quickdraw my magic circle.”

“Like, at all, dude.” Iskall hums, picking the skin off an orange.

“That’s how you’ll get better! Learn by doing!” Grian points out. He knows that Mumbo struggles with his magic- it’s a lot of magic to handle, being a multi-mage. But he’s seen Mumbo’s strength, he sees the potential in his best friend. And only someone as equally powerful as him, like Grian, can take on that power. Once it shows itself.

Stress walks by, rolling up her sleeves and brushing the rat’s nest from her hair. She sits down next to False, squeaking as the sharp slice of rock against metal cuts into the air. Stress realizes the shining alloy isn’t a plate. “False, haven’t we said before- no weapons on the tables?”

“It’s no used weapons. This is brand new, just finished forging it last night.” She picks the chakram by the handle in the center, tossing the disk blade across the table to Wels. “Why don’t you give it a try today?”

Wels laughs, giving the weapon a slice and a spin. “Let’s see Etho dodge this.”

Etho, hearing his own name, abruptly stands up from his seat and scurries into the nearest shadow, a strip of bacon shoved into his mouth as he pulls up his mask. Doc and BDubs only laugh, divvying up the remains of Etho’s breakfast.

Under the quiet seats under the massive oak, as old as the island itself, Keralis and Xisuma are studying. Keralis stopped by his family’s bookstore on the mainland, sifting through ancient tomes in hopes of finding something about dark magic.

“Ugh, why does no one write about dark magic, sheshwammy?” Keralis growls, his thick south Lairyon accent struggling to say Xisuma’s central name.

“Probably because it’s illegal to practice it, so no one knows anything about it.” Xisuma sets down another book, picking up the egg sandwich he made and taking a frustrated bite. “Though someone obviously does. But we need proof that this is dark magic, written proof.” He knows they can’t stop it themselves- that’s the arcane guard’s job. But after seeing all of Gildara abandoned, and most of the Asklepions killed, the least he can do is this.

“You really think the pen is mightier than the sword?” False questions, raising an eyebrow. She presses her knife into the sausage patty on her plate, daring Joe to answer.

“I mean, when my pen can make a giant magic sword with fire and lightning, yeah.” Joe grins, pressing his chin to his open palm. A dangerous glint appears behind his glasses, and he uses the other hand to push them up. Sun reflects off the spectacles, making it impossible for False to see anything beyond the smirk and the light- infuriating her.

“Cleo,” False grabs the pirate by her long coat and dragging her into the conversation. Without the paladin here to back her up, she needed someone else with a way with words. “You get what I’m saying. Tell me your blade there wouldn’t completely destroy Joe in a fight. I mean, all I’d have to do is cut up that journal of yours and your magic is useless!”

“Well, Joe does have a point. Sure, your forged weapons are the best in the kingdom, and Joe is screwed if he ever has to face you without his magic.” Cleo pauses, watching the two. “But I’m inclined to believe that words should come before violence- which is why anytime Mr. Joe of the Hills here refuses to finish his breakfast, I remind him with my words that I’m going to break his knees before i actually do.” Cleo pulls out her sword, setting the tip on the wood table.

Joe shoves the last of his pancakes into his mouth, quick to retreat from Cleo. He was asking for trouble with False, but he knows any of the women could easily kick his ass. Even as an S-Class. “Hey False, why don’t we take this debate to the training field, see how mighty the sword is to the pen?”

“You can’t escape me forever, Joe!” Cleo calls, watching as the two S-Class mages run down the hill and onto the latter half of the island. Their home island, Eremita, was separated into two parts. The southern side of the island lays claim to where the hermits live. An odd mix of towers and forges, ships and caves. It was up to the hermits to chose their own style of household- which created some disunion of the overall complex, but allowed for each member to express themselves. Everyone helped, whether Scar packed stone bricks or False forged iron nails.

The other half of the island, however, was left mostly untouched. A large field of grass, combed by the salty sea air, dotted with targets and barriers. A dirt circle cuts into the field, where hermits can duel one on one. Beyond the field, a large pond expands like an eye to the face of the island. Caressing the other shore, a dense forest grows on a slow rise of a hill, before stopping at the edge of the cove of a broad, sandy beach. It was a perfect home, a perfect place for an illegal guild to lay claim.

Training grounds quickly filled with groups and teams, even TFC getting in on strengthening himself. He wasn’t going to let some little rock keep him down for long. “Hey Cub, lets show these guys a thing or two about magic.”

The two silver haired, bearded men join the others well settled into today’s training. Deep in the forest, a soft explosion can be heard, followed by the giddy laughter as Zedaph leaps from tree to tree. Tango and Impulse struggle to follow him, and the birds diving for their heads don’t help. At the interface between trees and grass, Doc and Jevin have teamed up to amass an army. Objects under the devious control of Doc’s puppeteering magic, violent and unshaken to mimic the husks they fought. Jevin’s slime soldiers add bodies to the battle, flanking Iskall, Ren, and Xisuma. Hiding behind a barrier, Etho is waiting for the sun to reappear and for shadows to return, ducking his head as the chakram whizzes past. Despite his terrifying predicament, he has a coy smile on his face.

In the field, BDubs is practicing his aim with Scar, shredding apart haybales with their unique magic. Plants grow from one, thorns dug deep into the tightly bound material. The other has been knocked over and crushed by a boulder, Scar cheering his success. And in the center of the dueling ring, Mumbo and Grian stand still as stone. The quietest Grian ever has been. In a flash, as simple as a shift in the wind’s direction, Mumbo rushes to summon his circle. A second later, he’s blown off his feet, Grian grinning with blue embers fading away from his fingers. Mumbo groans, rubbing the dirt stained fabric on his rear. “You couldn’t have given me a few seconds? It’s not like I’d ever win.”

Grian offers an easy smile, waving Mumbo closer. “Come on, let’s practice the basics again. I know you can do it, friend.”

The hermits continue into the afternoon, only stopping their training briefly for lunch under the cool relief of the oaken guild hall. Groups disband and reform, training and practicing and learning from each other. Trying to be better, stronger together. So that next time they come face to face with an enemy, or the dark magic, they can win. They will win.

No guild is quite like the Order of Hermits. Apart from being illegal, they’re a mix of just about every kind of magic. A healing mage like Grian can stand side by side with Cleo’s underworld magic, no set skill required on requested. Varying strengths train side by side, not separated from better or worse. They all have something to learn from each other, even the strongest S-Class can be surprised by the newest mage. And often, Grian is. The magic is just as diverse as the people, the hermits that call Eremita home.

Training is cut short by a squall, appearing like magic and blowing across the Ashioll sea. Broiling grey clouds engulf the sun, and quickly send the hermits scattering into shelter. Well, most of them. The ZIT trio remained wrestling in the mud, and BDubs couldn’t help but join in.

Wels returns the chakram to False, a number of other hermits huddled around the blasting heat of False’s outdoor forge, nestled under the stone roof. Stress jumps back as an ember sparks out, nearly catching the trim of her robes. She rubs her exposed arms, the warm material of her fur coat wrapped around her waist. So much for the hot summer day.

Joe and Cleo have made up, and are plucking books from his library to read as the rain pours down, laughing as they watch Ren skitter away to his home, ears and tail tucked.

Xisuma sits at a window, looking out across the clouded green sea from his tower. He chose the Ashioll sea for a reason to make this his home. To start a guild here. No one else dared called these waters home. Old magic, magic so wild and arcane that not even the kiplings can control, residing here in these waters. Merchant vessels and battleships avoid the sea, and even the hermits don’t have every island mapped out. Though Grian and Xisuma are working on it. The sea was their safe haven, the island their home.

Xisuma turns his head, glancing at the white envelope on his desk. The yellow seal bearing a sun remains unbroken. He’s not ready to think about his brother. He knows he could have valuable information, and is likely concerned about him, but he can’t bear to open the letter today. He turns his head back to the storm, watching lightning streak across the sky, smelling the scent of the void left behind by the bolts. He doesn’t need his brother- he has his own family, right here.

They’ll do this, without Ex.

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clockmovementsmotors · 3 years ago

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Use 31 Day Movement Dials to Intrigue Others

With 31 day movement dials one opens up an entire new globe of appealing timepieces that are a complete revelation to many people. The 31 day motion dials expand timekeeping so that not just is the moment of day offered yet likewise the day of the month. The presentation is frequently done by publishing the twelve numerals indicating hrs in Roman type (in their average places), and uniformly dispersing Arabic numbers from 1 to 31 along the dial area.

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A more intricate form of time expansion is the once a week cycle, differentiating days of the week from each other. Here, the dial shows the names of the days of the week in the center, emitting exterior from the facility. An unique motion and also fourth hand are called for (as they remain in the 31-day schedule dial) to ensure that the hand shows the present day and also advances to the next just after midnight.

In the past when all clocks were mechanical, such unique dials and movements could be, and were, attained, yet only if the clockmaker was diligent, patient, and also capable of working through all the intricacies called for. The forces for inducing torque were springs or weights, thoroughly computed ratios of equipments generated the exact rotational velocities of the hands, and timing was controlled with pendulums as well as escapements. If an attribute was added or altered, the clockmaker had to redesign the whole format and also spend hours of labor to bring it about.

Today clock movements are digital, not mechanical, as well as the essential rotational regularities are derived from a stable pulse train of very high frequency. The motorist is a quartz crystal that reverberates with accuracy. Essentially, counts of pulses are collected right into electronic registers, and software is used to establish the matter thresholds at which hands are moved into new positions.

The upshot is that all modern-day clock movements have the same standard style, constructed online and also operated with software program. Thus, it is a lot easier today for a clockmaker to be imaginative as well as innovative with the function sets he chooses; fancy or ordinary, the quantity of work is roughly the exact same as well as marginal. The only concern is that her feature collection has to be manufactured and offered from a clock parts distributor.

Hence one discovers numerous possibilities for interesting clients, as well as there's really nothing holding you back. In fact, not all movements are temporal; as an example, you can obtain climate motors that use sensing units and transform the information to report temperature level, moisture, or air pressure. Furthermore, unique features can easily be included, such as chimes that sound on the hour, or cosmetic (i.e., not useful) pendulums and the like that add beauty and/or fond memories to your wrist watches.

You even have great deals of selections in regards to colors, dimensions, and styles, and controls for when things leave sync. For instance, just 7 months have 31 days, so our included movement supplies a change for shorter-month payment. We ensure you will captivate others by utilizing 31 day activity dials.

clock parts

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kriscme · 4 years ago

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One Life to Live

Here’s the latest chapter. Thanks to Ronja for permission to write fanfic of her Hunger Games fanfic “The Chance You Didn’t Take.” It can be found on A03 as this can too (under Kris22). Thanks for reading. Chapter 35 I wake to bright sunshine and the citrusy perfume of evening primrose wafting in from the open window. Such a lovely dream I had last night. I was following Prim through the woods and the further she took me, the happier I became, even though we never arrived at any place. But then I remember my current predicament and my spirits plummet again. I turn to face Peeta, expecting to see him, but he’s not here. The only sign that he was in my bed last night is the impression his head made on the pillow close to my own. Somehow, we both seemed to have gravitated to the middle of the bed during the night. From downstairs I hear movement and two voices in conversation. That could only be Peeta and Haymitch. No one else would be in the Village and in my house at this hour. The clock by the bed tells me I have an hour before it’s time to leave for work. I use most of it to shower and dress. I don’t want to face either of them just yet. They’ll only talk strategy. Haymitch seems to have relished getting back into his old mentor role which is odd, because he hated it when he actually was one. As for Peeta, I haven’t seen him like this since the Quarter Quell when he had us all training like careers. There’s the same energy and focus. It’s as if he’s determined to get me home a third time. Only this time his reasons are . . . well, I don’t know what his reasons are but it is good to see him back to his old self. I should make an effort to stop being so sulky and disagreeable around him. It’s not his fault he doesn’t love me anymore and he is doing me a huge favor at risk to himself. As soon as I see the food laid out on the table, I wish I had come down earlier. Peeta has cooked my favorite breakfast of sausages, eggs, potatoes, bread, juice and hot chocolate. I tuck in, ignoring Haymitch’s scowl. It’s my house. I’ll come down when I want to. “We keep to the schedule as planned,” says Haymitch. “And it goes without saying – “ “Stay in love,” Peeta and I say in unison. “And don’t be afraid to lay it on thick,” Haymitch adds. “That’s what the public is used to seeing from you. This isn’t an old settled relationship. Or a continuation of one. It’s brand new. You want to avoid any talk that this has been going on behind Lace’s back and it’s why the wedding was called off. After the cameras are gone, you still have to live amongst these people. No one likes a cheater.” “It won’t be a problem,” says Peeta, as he starts to clear away the dishes. I grab the plate with the potatoes before he takes it. “It actually works out well. Lace was worried that people might think the same of her and Arthur if their relationship became public too soon. But if she and I both have partners, they’re far less likely to think that one of us had cheated on the other. I’ll let her know sometime today that Katniss and I are together.” I bet that will shock her. After all his talk of me being an illusion, he’d better have a convincing excuse for why he’s changed his mind. But at least I know that he’s aware that Lace is with Arthur now. What’s most surprising though, is that he doesn’t seem upset about it. And they’re still talking to each other. On Haymitch’s advice, we take the most public route into work so as to be seen by the maximum number of people. That takes us through the main street past Lace’s shop. I catch a glimpse of her through the window sorting through fabrics. She has her back to us. The shop next door is vacant but there’s carpentry in progress, probably for new fittings for Arthur when he moves in. We turn down a side street and pass by Arthur’s shop. He’s opened early as usual. I don’t see him but I know he’ll be hard at work, saving for that factory he plans to own one day. The salon is closed at this hour but I spy Flavius at the front desk, head down, consulting the appointment book. He raises his head as we walk by. I move closer to Peeta and rise on tiptoe to kiss his cheek before giving Flavius a wave. The news will be all over town by the end of the day. We meet for lunch at the small park adjacent to the school. It’s a hot day but the old oak tree provides plentiful shade. We eschew the bench seat and sit on the grass because it looks more romantic that way. I kick off my shoes to cool my feet and smooth out the folds of my dress. It’s the sunset dress that Peeta likes. It just happened to be the first thing on hand when I reached into my closet this morning. Peeta has brought us food from the bakery. He holds out in each hand a white paper bag with the Carter logo on it. “Beef or chicken?” “Um . . . beef,” I say. Peeta hands me one of the bags and keeps the other. It’s not a pie but a sandwich with layers of thinly sliced roast beef, cheese, lettuce, tomato and some kind of sauce. I take my first bite and moan appreciatively. This might just overtake cheese buns for me. “Since when did the bakery sell sandwiches?” I ask. “Since last week. And coffee and other beverages too. It’s an experiment, to see how well it does. In the Capitol, the bakery also functioned as a café, with indoor seating. It will mean moving to larger premises but it might be needed anyway. Did I tell you we’re getting cake orders from as far away as the Capitol now? The one I did for Cressida’s wedding seems to have started it.” “That’s great, Peeta,” I say, genuinely happy for him. But then a terrible thought occurs to me. Cass told me that Peeta could get work anywhere. What if he leaves 12 for the Capitol for bigger opportunities? I’m suddenly consumed with fear. I don’t want him to go. “I’ve also been offered a fourth share partnership in the business too, along with Julius, Cass and Cornelia,” he adds, his face alight with enthusiasm. “They want to keep you,” I say. “Probably,” he concedes. “But there’s more to it than that. We’re more than just coworkers. I feel disloyal saying this and no one could ever replace them, but in a way, it’s like having my brothers back. And Cornelia is the woman one of them might have married. Does that sound bad?” “Not at all,” I say, thinking of Johanna and how she’s like a sister to me. Loved ones can’t be replaced but it doesn’t mean your circle can’t expand to include others. “I suppose you won’t be opening a bakery of your own any time soon then? Wasn’t that one of the plans you made with Lace?” Peeta gives a short, self-depreciating laugh. “That was never going to happen. Responsible for running a bakery? Ugh! I like what I’m doing now, decorating cakes and leaving the management side of it to others. I think we just chose what we thought the other expected of us, not what we actually wanted for ourselves. Lace would never have been happy giving up her shop to work from home. She’s worked too hard for it. And five kids? At this stage of my life, I’m not even sure about one.” “Really?” I ask. That was the only part of it that made any sense to me – that Peeta would want a large family. “I thought you’d like to have children.” From the school grounds nearby, I can hear the shrieks and laughter of children at play. It wasn’t long ago that the mere thought of having to teach Peeta and Lace’s children had filled me with dread. I was sure that if it was Peeta’s choice, they’d have had them straight off. “One day, perhaps,” he says. “But I want to be in a better place than I am right now. You know, with the attacks and everything. And we’re only twenty. There’s plenty of time.” Twenty-one. Lace is twenty-one. “You?” he asks. “Oh, um, the same as you, I guess,” I say, surprised to have the question turned back on me. “I’ll think about it when the time comes. But for the moment, no. I want to see how things turn out. With the new government, I mean. Whether the peace lasts.” I want to be certain the Games will never return before I’m be ready to bring children into the world. “I meant more general that that,” he says. “How do you see your future? What do you want to do?” I take a moment to think about it. My future isn’t something I’ve given much thought to other than in terms of what I can’t do because of my confinement. But it dawns on me that even if had the choice to live wherever I wanted, I’d still choose Twelve. It’s my home and the people and places I love are here. “Keep on teaching, I suppose, and finish getting my qualifications. Mr Matson suggested I could teach archery to the older students. So maybe I’ll do that. I doubt there’ll be much hunting once the woods officially become national park so it seems a good compromise. I can continue to use my skills and pass them on at the same time.” “Sounds perfect,” says Peeta, smiling at me. We go back to eating our lunch. I see a few people walking past on the opposite side of the road but foot traffic around here is thin and sporadic. It’s an out-of-the-way place to be seen but Haymitch’s rationale is that we can’t just frequent the popular places because that would cause suspicion in itself. We have to appear as a normal courting couple doing what a normal courting couple would do. Picnicking in a sequestered park is apparently one of them. But there’s at least one onlooker. A squirrel, perched on one of the lower branches watches expectantly. He seems used to people as he doesn’t show any fear. And probably used to being fed by them too. I break off a piece of crust and throw it a short distance away. He doesn’t hesitate. He scampers down the tree, grabs his prize, and scurries back up. I catch Peeta observing me, a look of amusement on his face. “What?” I demand. He had better not be laughing at me. “It’s just seeing a new side of you, that’s all. You know, relaxed. One time, that squirrel would have ended up with one of your arrows through its eye. But now you share your lunch with it. I like it. It means you’re in a better place now. Not so concerned with survival.” Humph! The last time I heard anyone talk about me and survival was in the basement of a dingy little shop in the Capitol that sold fur underwear. “Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can’t survive without.” Gale said it, and Peeta didn’t refute it. The same resentment I felt then wells up in me. There it is again, the implication that any finer feelings are subservient to my need to survive. Not love, or desire, or compatibility, or even just throwing a crust of bread to a squirrel. I didn’t get to defend myself then, but I will now. “That’s a horrible thing to say.” Peeta’s eyebrows shoot up in a surprise. “I hate that people think that of me – that I’ll put my own wellbeing ahead of anything else. If I’ve tried so hard to survive, it’s because I had people depending on me. What would have happened to Prim, or my mother, if I hadn’t been around to make sure there was food on the table? Prim would have ended up in the Community Home and that meant as good as dead. I’ll do anything for the people I love. Die for them if need be. I would die for you. I –“ I stop short, remembering all of a sudden that I’m supposed to keep those feelings hidden. Heat rises in my face. “I mean – “And then it’s Peeta who cuts me short. He takes my face in his hands and kisses me. Really kisses me, not the closed mouth playacting kind, but softly, insistently, plying my mouth open with his own. For a few seconds I’m stunned into inaction. But then I feel that thing. That thing that happened in the cave and on the beach. And I put my arms around his neck and kiss him back hungrily, greedy for more. He pulls me closer and we sort of meld together, the points of his body picking out the counter-points of my own and I moan somewhere deep in my throat. I forget we’re in a public space and only a short distance from a school. Nothing exists but Peeta and me and when I feel his hand slip between my thighs under the cover of my dress, lightly as if seeking permission, my legs fall apart in open invitation and I will it to go higher, to that place that wants him so badly.

His fingertips barely make contact when from some faraway place the pulsating ring of a school bell sounds. With great reluctance, I am dragged back into the present and reality returns with a thud. I pull away, confused. What just happened? Why did he do that? My head whips around looking for the audience he’s playing to, but there’s no one about.

“Don’t. Don’t let’s pretend when there’s no one around,” I say, getting quickly to my feet. It’s not . . . we shouldn’t do it. It’s how lines get blurred.” And people get hurt. People being me. I shove my feet into my shoes. “I have to go. Class is about to start. Thanks for lunch.”

I don’t wait for a response from Peeta. I race off, leaving him to dispose of the remains of our lunch, a look of bewildered concern on his face. The kiss leaves me shaken and it takes a concerted effort to concentrate on my work. That was so close. Too close. How am I going to get through this without breaking down? There’s at least three weeks to go. This week before the television crew arrives, the following when they set up, and after that a week of filming. I don’t know how Peeta did it. All that kissing and hugging on the Victory Tour. And the nights on the train. And then when we shared a bed in the Capitol just before the Quell. It must have been torture. As it will be for me tonight, and every other night until this is over.

Luckily, Peeta and I don’t finish work at the same time so I’m spared walking home with him. As I’m home first, I set the table and prepare the food for dinner, allowing extra in case Haymitch turns up, which he probably will. And then I go into the living room and take a book from the shelf. I hope reading will be a distraction because I just can’t get that kiss out of my mind. It’s a book on conservation that Marcus left behind, and it’s as dry as you’d imagine but it does nothing to lessen the wetness between my legs. I am so aroused; I’m fit to burst. There’s only one solution. I slip my hand under my dress to take care of it myself, and I’m just on the verge when I hear the front door open. It’s Peeta.

I quickly open the book and pretend to be immersed in it.

“Good book?” Peeta asks, as he comes into the room. He takes the seat opposite and reads the title from the cover. “’Wetland Techniques.” I suppose we could all benefit by brushing up on our wetland technique. Maybe I should read it after you.” “

Maybe,” I say noncommittedly, and lower my eyes back to the page. I hope he’ll take the hint that I’m not in a sociable mood and go away.

There’s a long pause. “Katniss, I think we should talk about what happened at the park.”

I don’t think that’s a good idea at all. If Peeta has a flaw it’s that he likes to talk about things that shouldn’t be talked about. It would be better for both of us if we pretended it didn’t happen.

“Things got a little carried away, that’s all,” I say. “It was bound to happen with us forced into this situation again. We just have to be more careful next time.”

“Is that what you want?” he asks, frowning. “I think it’s best, don’t you? If we’re to get through this, we need to set boundaries. After all, we have to go back to living normally after this. We have to stay friends.” I try to sound convincing but there’s a faint tremor in my voice. I stare down at my book to avoid looking at him.

“All right, Katniss,” he says tiredly. He rises from the chair. “I’ll get dinner started then. Haymitch should be here soon.”

After he leaves the room, I let out my breath. I don’t think he believed me but maybe that’s not important. We only have to preserve the veneer. But he makes it so hard. Always wanting to open wounds instead of just leaving them alone. I’ll just have to stay on my guard and make sure to keep him at a safe distance. Obviously, Peeta isn’t averse to having sex with me if what happened at the park is any indication. But then, I was practically begging him. I know you don’t have to be in love to have sex. And if sex is all I wanted from Peeta, I’d do it in a heartbeat. But I know, I just know, that if we went down that path, the floodgates would open and I’d be as helpless as ever and in an even worse place than I am now. Nothing will have changed. I’d still be in love with someone who isn’t in love with me.

While Peeta makes dinner, I take a shower. A cold one. And change out of the sunset dress into something that makes me feel less vulnerable – tight-fitting trousers and a t-shirt. I’d wear a chastity belt if I had one because I don’t really trust myself. I wait until Haymitch arrives before I go downstairs. The less alone time I have with Peeta, the better.

Unfortunately, Haymitch doesn’t stay for very long after we’ve eaten. I was hoping that he and Peeta would get the chess board out again so I could avoid interacting with him.

“It’s Monday,” I tell Peeta, when he comments on Haymitch’s early departure. “He wants to be home to watch “One Life to Live.” He’s something of an addict.” I dry the last of the dishes and put it away while Peeta makes tea.

“That’s the show Plutarch talked about, isn’t it?” he asks. “Yeah, that’s the one. It’s the most rubbishy, most stupid thing ever. I was insulted when he compared us to Celia and Blake. Idiots, both of them.”

“I can’t really comment. I’ve never watched it,” he says, as he pours tea into two mugs.

I sniff derisively. “Well, you haven’t missed anything. I can’t think why Haymitch likes it.”

“Let’s find out.” “What? You actually want to watch it?”

“Yeah. I do. You can explain the plot so far.”

He picks up one of the mugs and I take the other. “That will take about two seconds.” Nonetheless, I follow him into the living room and sit down beside him on the sofa. I guess there are worse things to do than watching television together, even if it is “One Life to Live.” At least it’s a distraction and we won’t have to talk much. My gaze flickers over to Peeta. I’m acutely aware of him. His well-muscled thigh only inches from my own. The fine blond hair on his strong capable hands. Hands that can lift heavy sacks of flour yet wield a paintbrush with the most delicate precision. Hands that were on me only hours earlier. A throbbing starts between my legs at the thought of it. I cross one leg over the other to alleviate the sensation but then quickly uncross them. The movement makes the crotch seam of my trousers rub against me in a most stimulating way. I should have worn a dress.

With a click of the remote control, the opening credits of “One Life to Live” appear on the screen. I swallow hard and force myself to focus. “Well, Celia and Blake are from neighboring districts . . . “

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mustafa-el-fats · 4 years ago

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HOW TO LIVE MULTI-DIMENSIONALLY THROUGH SACRED GEOMETRY

Adapted from a lecture at the Astrological Society of Connecticut

19 August 2012

All the graphics are originally from the two volumes of the Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life (c) by Drunvalo Melchizedek, although I have altered them in many cases (for instance, I created the looping gif, and the multicolored Flower of Life sphere, and colored the merkaba positions).

Sacred Geometry is not what you learned sophomore year of high school. This is something much different and much more fun. Sacred Geometry is the organizational basis of all that exists, has existed and will exist. Found within these patterns are both two and three dimensional shapes which carry archetypal memories.

This is a very brief introduction to what Sacred Geometry is and how you can use these concepts to expand your consciousness. The basic form of sacred geometry is called the Flower of Life. It is a beautiful interlocking series of circles. Each circle’s circumference crosses other circles’ center points.

You can draw the Flower of Life yourself, using a high quality compass. The basic steps look like this, with the finished product (usually illustrated with a double circle as a frame) in the lower right.

The eye-shaped space in between each set of circles has its own meaning. One circle represents universal consciousness, the gold/solar source, and unchanging archetypes linked with, in the other circle, empirical consciousness, the silver/lunar reflection, and the changing realm of the senses, through the eye-shaped center that encompasses balanced human consciousness.

The curved lines of the Flower of Life promote feminine, right-brained thinking. When you apply the straight lines of Metatron’s Cube (connecting all the centers), you add in the left-brained, masculine thinking. So if you need to concentrate more on one type of thinking or the other, or you feel unbalanced, you can meditate on either the curved shape, the straight line shape, or the combination.

I call this Flower of LIfe figure “the mother of sacred geometry” because every important shape can be found within it, including the five Platonic Solids, named for the great Greek philosopher Plato. It is an ancient symbol which has been found all over the ancient world.

The five Platonic Solids are the tetrahedron, the cube (hexahedron), the octahedron, the dodecahedron, and the icosahedron. If you have ever been involved with role-playing games, these will be familiar to you, as the shapes of the dice.

To find the 5 shapes within the Flower of life, you extract a shape called Metatron’s Cube. You select these 13 circles from the Flower of Life shape—this is called the Fruit of Life—and then join all the centers with 78 straight lines to make Metatron’s Cube. This ancient shape, named for an angel, has been used to ward off evil and can be carried as a talisman.

From within Metatron’s cube, you can find the five Platonic Solids:

Tetrahedron

Cube (hexahedron)

Octahedron

Dodecahedron

Icosahedron

The 5 Platonic solids are ideal, primal models of crystal patterns that occur throughout the world of minerals in countless variations. These are the only five regular polyhedra, that is, the only five solids made from the same equilateral, equiangular polygons. They have the same face shape on every side and only 1 angle per edge. All other shapes have different faces and/or angles. Also, if you spin any of these 5 shapes around its center point, its corners will describe a perfect sphere. The Platonic Solids occur in the crystal world. Working with them connects us to nature and the higher realms of the cosmos, especially those attributes associated closely with each polyhedron.

Each of these shapes has metaphysical properties, making them valuable tools for meditation and rituals.

The Tetrahedron is the four-sided pyramid. Each side is a triangle. (The pyramids of Egypt, Central America & elsewhere are five sided pyramids--four sloping triangular sides and a flat square/rectangular base.) It represents the powers of manifestation & creation, the element of Fire, the color Red and the Solar Plexus (third) chakra. Can help you burn through problems. It is masculine.

The Cube (Hexahedron) is the six-sided box. Each side is a square. It grounds the creation of the Tetrahedron into the physical realm. It represents the element of Earth, the color Green and the Base (first) chakra. Use for grounding. It is masculine.

The Octahedron is the eight-sided diamond. Each side is a triangle. It represents love, the heart and compassion, integration, the 8-fold path to Enlightenment, the element of Air, the color yellow and the Heart (4th) chakra. It can help you move forward. It represents your inner child.

The Dodecahedron is the twelve-sided ball with the pentagon faces. It represents the 12 faces of the God/dess within, Ascension, Mystery school teachings, the color Gold, the element Ether/Spirit and the higher chakras (8-12 and up). It connects you to the universal life force. It is female.

The Icosahedron is the twenty-sided ball with the triangular faces. It represents prayer, transformation, the color blue, the Naval (2nd) chakra and the element Water. It can help you sustain focus and momentum. It is female.

Each of the five Platonic solids carries special teachings. The tetrahedron invokes the power of manifestation and the cube grounds that creation in our bodies and this reality. Our core heart is found in the octahedron as an expression of selflove and compassion. Prayer is invoked in the form of the icosahedron. The twelve faces of 'God within' are discovered in the dodecahedron.

Four of the five platonic solids embody the number thirteen. The cube and octahedron have twelve edges or lines surrounding one center. The icosahedron has twelve corners around one and the dodecahedron has twelve faces around one.

The only solid not supporting this is the tetrahedron and when two tetrahedrons are joined (star tetrahedron) there are twelve edges around one. More about the star tetrahedron in a moment.

Platonic Solid

Edges

Corners

Faces

Total

Numerology

Tetrahedron

Cube

Octahedron

Icosahedron

Dodecahedron

Star Tetrahedron

n/a

There is a 6th mystical shape, also found within Metatron’s cube. This is the star tetrahedron, made up of 2 tetrahedrons. This powerful shape is also called a Merkaba. It is basically a 3 dimensional Star of David. It contains within it the geometry of the cube, the octahedron and the tetrahedron. The word Merkaba, in ancient Egyptian, is translated as MER: rotating fields of light, KA: spirit, and BA: soul and in Hebrew it means 'chariot'.

Everyone knows about auras. You can get the colors of your aura photographed or looked at by a psychic. What a lot of people don’t know is that your aura is not really a shapeless blob. It’s the shape of a star tetrahedron. Three of them, actually.

Stand up straight. Hold out your arms. Your static field is a hand’s width past the edge of your finger tips and the top point of that field is one hand’s width above your head and the bottom of that field is one hand’s width below your feet. These are your hands’ widths so for each person it’s slightly different.

Running from top to bottom is a tube, the pranic tube, which carries energy from both earth and sky into your physical body. It is as big as the circle made by your thumb and forefinger. The top of the pranic tube is your soul star chakra, and the bottom of your pranic tube is your earth star chakra. These lead into your crown and root chakras (which also point straight up and down, unlike the other five, which point front and back). Your root and crown chakras are actually two ends of the same tube, and the energy running through it is changed as it passes the other 5 horizontal chakras.

The alignment of the static star tetrahedron in your aura depends on your gender. If you are male, the point of the sun tetrahedron (yellow, in the drawing) is in front of you, the flat part behind you. If you are female, the flat part of the sun tetrahedron is in front of you and the point behind you. These star tetrahedrons do not rotate. They represent your physical body and are neutral.

There are two more star tetrahedrons in your aura. (The term “merkaba” refers to all 3 of these star tetrahedrons together.) One star tetrahedron is male and electrical in energy and it rotates counter clockwise (to the left), and relates to your mental/logical thinking. The other star tetrahedron is female and magnetic and it rotates clockwise (to the right) and relates to your emotional thinking.

Meditating with the merkaba activates the left and right brain together, raising your consciousness level. It brings dualities into balance—male and female; heaven and earth; everything that is yin and that is yang. You can, with practice, use the Merkaba field to lift your consciousness to higher realms.

When you meditate and use any kind of breathing method, you should be aware of the breath and energy going in through both ends of the pranic tube and meeting in your heart. It’s almost like pumping up your heart, it gets bigger and bigger with each breath until it explodes into light from all the combined energies of earth and sky. When you visualize that happening and you’re working with the merkaba, the ball of light that surrounds you should look like a flower of life sphere in rainbow colors.

Crystal Grids and Sacred Geometry

One of the many things you can do with all these wonderful shapes is make crystal grids. This is a layout of crystals chosen for a specific purpose, placed in sacred geometry-based patterns to connect, clear, amplify, generate and re-direct energy. Crystal grids help to better formulate and ground intent, then assist to spread and manifest the sole purpose of that intent. Working with crystals and sacred geometry together can raise our vibration, clear physical and emotional blockages, expand our perception and reconnect us with Source.

You can use as the base the whole Flower of Life shape, and place a crystal on each line crossing. Or you can use a Metatron’s cube and concentrate on whichever of the Platonic Solid shapes (or the Star Tetrahedron) you feel the need to connect to. You can purchase sets of Platonic Solid crystal shapes and Star Tetrahedrons to use in the grids (or just hold the single shape you need). You can make permanent grids by gluing the crystals in place and keep them in your car or in certain places in your home, as needed. Build them with a clear intention and purpose in mind.

Star Tetrahedron grids are multipurpose. If you want to concentrate energy, and bring energy in from above and below, point the crystals toward the center. If you want to spread energy over a large area, point the crystals outward.

This is a quickie grid I put together for this lecture, using a star tetrahedron in Metatron's Cube. In the center is a large amethyst star tetrahedron (which is for sale! contact me) surrounded by long singing laser quartz crystals and small Herkimer-type quartz.

No matter what shape you use, activate the grid in the same way. Join up all the crystals in the pattern you laid, using your finger, a special crystal, or a wand. Do it 3 or 9 times, concentrating on bringing energy in from above and below, and putting the energy toward whatever purpose you built the grid. If you know Reiki or anything similar use that energy as well to program and empower the grid.

Looping animation of Metatron's Cube,

the Platonic Solids and the star merkaba:

You can build them for healing yourself or for healing someone else, for protection, or any other positive thing you can think of. You can put a piece of paper under the grid with the person’s name or photo, or with your affirmation written out (always phrased in the present time, and with gratitude).

You should recharge and empower the grid at least once a day until it has served its purpose and then take it apart, and cleanse the crystals, freeing them of the programming.

I offer for sale sets of crystal Platonic solids and loose merkaba crystals of all sizes, from $10 up. There is no page for these; contact me if you're interested.

All the fold-up Platonic Solid & star tetrahedron patterns below are (c) by Bruce Rawlins from his excellent Sacred Geometry Sourcebook, which I HIGHLY recommend. They are all PDFs requiring the free Adobe Reader.

Star Tetrahedron fold up

Tetrahedron fold up

Hexahedron fold up

Octahedron fold up

Dodecahedron fold up

Icosahedron fold up

Here is the promo video I created to loop on my tablet and advertise the talk:

All material on this site is copyright (c) by Gevera Bert Piedmont except where noted. All rights reserved. Contact me for permission to republish. Information on this site is for entertainment purposes only. Enjoy! })i({

Page created: 12.19.19.16.8 11-Yaxkin 3-Muluc (12 August 2012)

Page modified: 13.0.0.16.6 5-Cimi 4-Ceh (12 November 2013)

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tigerkirby215 · 5 years ago

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5e Isaac the Time-Traveling Archaeologist build (Skullgirls)

(Artwork by Lab Zero games)

Skullgirls was the first fighting game I ever really properly got into. With a memorable cast of Roaring 20s-designed characters (Bae-owulf <3) and very solid fighting game mechanics the game is a blast to play for players of all skill levels. Probably the most memorable part about Skullgirls has to be its cast: despite having only 14 playable characters they all feel distinct and have unique personalities which make them memorable. (Granted the exception of Fukkua who was mostly made as a joke.)

But the non-player characters are equally memorable: Lab Zero’s orphaned scientific misfits, Ben’s old police force, the Canopy Kingdom’s democracy... and Stanley! While these characters are expanded a great deal in the mobile release they were still lovable additions to the cast. But the character who stood out the most for me was Isaac. DLC character 29, his theoretical time travel kit was truly unique and I’m really sad that we didn’t get to try Isaac as a fighter (we got Beowulf instead which I can’t complain about, but I could honestly do without Eliza thanks) and only got a mention of Isaac in one of the story modes. (No spoilers.)

Ever since the inclusion of the Archivist subclass in the Artificer UA I had a concept in my mind to recreate Isaac using that subclass. Naturally you can imagine my disappointment when Archivist was not included in Eberron: Rising from the Last War. But thankfully with the release of Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount we get the Echo Knight subclass which was exactly what I was looking for! And with a time travel theme no less? With the ability to create time clones I can finally make Isaac a reality: this was one of the builds I made this Tumblr for and I’m super excited to finally be able to publish it!

GOALS

Infinite Timelines - The core of Isaac’s kit was going to be based on summoning clones to fight for him, which we now have a class for in 5e!

Power Glove - Isaac is a smart cookie with theonite-powered inventions giving him the upper hand.

いちびょうけいか - Isaac is of course a time traveler, so we’re going to need some time traveling powers.

RACE

While never specified I’m pretty sure Isaac is a human, but that being said some variations can be taken for a time traveler... Screw Variant Human though we’re going for Eberron races because I’m a hipster like that! Originally I considered Mark of Passage humans for a one-time time traveler Misty Step but ultimately I decided on Mark of Sentinel as it fits the theme of an all-known time traveler far better. Your Constitution score increases by 2 and your Wisdom score increases by 1, and you Sentinel’s Intuition allowing you to add a d4 to Insight or Perception checks because of course you’ve been to the future and know the truth about people and where things are already.

You also get Guardian’s Shield letting you cast a Theonite Shield once per Long Rest, and you get the Vigilant Guardian ability which will let you swap places with a nearby ally if they’re going to get hit by a weapon attack: blocking a projectile is a good use of an assist too! You also get a language of your choice along with Common as a human and I’d suggest Giant to talk to your partner, but of course pick whatever you please.

ABILITY SCORES

15; INTELLIGENCE - You need to be a smart cookie to time travel, and we’re going to be using Intelligence for a lot of our features.

14; DEXTERITY - This is primarily because I like even ability scores and we need this to multiclass.

13; WISDOM - Seeing as our Wisdom is increased by our racial traits we may as well get it at a 14, and professor badass would know basic medical procedures as well as the history of the Canopy Kingdom.

12; CONSTITUTION - Extra bulk is always nice when some washed-up wrestler is hitting you with a folding chair, and we also need Constitution for our skills as well.

10; CHARISMA - Isaac has a degree of rough charm: he wears the vest well but that hair isn’t doing him any favors.

8; STRENGTH - We simply don’t need this for the build and your partner handled most of the brute forcing.

BACKGROUND

Isaac is stated in-lore to be an Archaeologist and luckily there’s a background for it in Tomb of Annihilation! You get History proficiency and I’d personally swap the Survival proficiency with Arcana since we can’t get it as easily otherwise. You can also choose between either Cartographer’s Tools or Navigator’s Tools: I opted for the former but honestly either of them work. You also choose one exotic language of your choice and again: pick whatever you think is useful.

Your feature Historical Knowledge lets you use some of your Indiana Jones skills to determine the original purpose of any ruin you enter, who built it, and if any artifacts you find are valuable. Fortune and glory kid.

(Artwork by MagicBunnyArt on DeviantArt)

THE BUILD

LEVEL 1 - FIGHTER 1

Starting off as a Fighter primarily for their saving throws. You get two skills from the Fighter list: I’d recommend Athletics to compensate for your low Strength score but you can honestly choose whatever for your second skill. (I chose Perception personally.)

Fighters get a Fighting Style of their choice and while Unarmed Fighting from the Class Feature Variants UA would make sense for a fighting game character we’ll be getting some time-travel boxing gloves shortly so I’d opt for Defense instead for an increase to AC. (Dueling is also a good choice if you want more offense instead of defense.) You also get Second Wind, letting you sit in the back and regenerate red health equal to 1d10 + your fighter level once per short rest.

I will quickly mention that as a Fighter you get a choice between either Leather Armor or Chain Mail in your starting equipment and I’d recommend taking the Chain Mail. Yes you can’t wear it because of your Strength score so see if you can also grab some Medium armor before you head out but that chainmail is going to serve us well shortly.

LEVEL 2 - ARTIFICER 1

The real starting class of this build is Artificer, and we only really took level 1 in Fighter for proficiency in Strength saves. Regardless Artificers get Magical Tinkering which lets them do some theonite tinkering on non-magical objects: I recommend reading the feature yourself to see what it can do, because you can do it a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier.

Artificers also get access to Spellcasting. You get two cantrips of your choice: Fire Bolt is a simple Quarter-Circle-Forward Punch to shoot a projectile at your enemies, doing 1d10 fire damage and lighting flammable objects on fire. Guidance will let you give a mentorly pat-on-the-back to your Gigan partner, letting them add a d4 to an ability check.

For your leveled spells Artificers are prepared spellcasters, meaning they can swap their spells out on a long rest. Regardless the spells I’d prepare would be Cure Wounds to regenerate some red health and Detect Magic to locate any theonite reserves in the ruins you’re exploring.

LEVEL 3 - ARTIFICER 2

Second level Artificers can Infuse Items: you know 4 total Infusions and can have two active at a time.

A Bag of Holding will help you carry that chainmail I told you to grab.

Enhanced Defenses will let you block a little more damage when block.

A Rope of Climbing will help you while spelunking, and speaking of spelunking a Wand of Secrets will help you find any hidden rooms or trap doors in the ruins you’re exploring.

But remember that the key to Artificer is picking infusions that your party will find useful! Pick a good assist, or else you’d be better working solo. You can also prepare another spell and Identify will let you further identify anything you find in a ruin... duh.

LEVEL 4 - ARTIFICER 3

3rd level Artificers have The Right Tool for the Job, letting them make a set of artisan’s tools over the course of an hour. But more importantly you get Artificer Speciality and the Armorer Unearthed Arcana subclass is perfect for an inventor with a heavy time gauntlet.

Armorers get Power Armor, or as I call them power fists. You can wear Heavy Armor regardless of its Strength requirement (which is good because your Strength is poo poo garbage) as it merges with your body and can’t be removed against your will.

You can choose between two different models of Power Armor and the Guardian armor will give you a dragon punch! Your fists count as Thunder Gauntlets and do a d8 thunder damage on hit, and causes enemies you hit to have disadvantage on attacks against targets other than you until the start of your next turn. You can also create a Defensive Field as a Bonus Action to get a number of temporary hitpoints equal to your level in Artificer: remember that blocking is as good as attacking!

IF UA ISN’T ALLOWED: This build honestly works fine with Battle Smith instead of Armorer since all we really need is the ability to use Intelligence to attack. We have enough Dexterity for you to wear Medium armor instead of using the Battle Smith’s Heavy Armor. The only reason for the Armorer multiclass is that I wanted punching gauntlets instead of a robot dog.

If you’re going to play Battle Smith instead take a bludgeoning weapon (IE a flail, warhammer, or maul) and flavor them as your punchy gauntlet. A maul does more damage but can’t be used with a shield, so it’s a great option if you want harder hits but less defense.

You can also cast your Artificer spells through the Power Armor, which is neat since Armorers get the Magic Missile and Shield spells innately.

LEVEL 5 - ARTIFICER 4

Taking level 4 in Artificer for an Ability Score Improvement, or rather the Linquist Feat to be able to gather information no matter what part of the world you’re in. Along with a plus one to your Intelligence score you learn three languages of your choice (pick whatever you think will be useful) and can write ciphers. A creature can only decode your messages if you teach them the code or if they succeed an Intelligence check equal to your Intelligence plus your proficiency bonus, so Scythana won’t be reading your research papers.

With the increase to Intelligence and the level up you can prepare two more Artificer spells: Feather Fall is useful to stop you from having a ground-bounce so your opponent can extend their combo, and Farie Fire can open up an enemy for a high hit if they’re blocking low.

LEVEL 6 - ARTIFICER 5

Ah screw it may as well take another level in Armorer to get your Extra Attack already. You can punch twice now in a combo: woo hoo!

You can also cast second level Artificer spells now: Armorers can innately cast Mirror Image and Shatter, and you can prepare second level spells from the Artificer list which I’ll discuss later.

LEVEL 7 - FIGHTER 2

Bouncing back to Fighter now; level 2 Fighters get Action Surge, letting them take one additional action in combat once per short rest. Extend that combo with some time stop! WRYYYYYYYYYYY!

LEVEL 8 - FIGHTER 3

Third level Fighters get to choose their Martial Archetype and woo boys there it is: Echo Knight! Echo Knights can Manifest Echoes of themselves from the future as a bonus action. You can put a single echo down 15 feet away from you which lasts until its destroyed, you dismiss it, you make another echo, or you’re incapacitated and unable to send yourself into the past.

The echo has an AC of 14 plus your proficiency bonus, 1 hit point (don’t worry you won’t feel it if your future self gets hit... which presents some weird paradox problems), and immunity to all conditions. If it has to make a saving throw it uses your saving throw bonus for the roll. It’s the same size as you and occupies a space. On your turn you can make the echo to move up to 30 feet in any direction without using an action but if your echo is more than 30 feet from you at the end of your turn it is destroyed.

You have several things you can do with your echo:

You can swap places with your echo with 15 feet of your movement, regardless of the distance between the two of you. Clearly it’s just you time traveling to where your future self is.

Any attack you make with that action can originate from the echo’s space if you choose to do so.

When a creature that you can see within 5 feet of your echo moves away from it, you can use your reaction to make an opportunity attack against that creature as if you were in the echo’s space.

You can use Unleash Incarnation to make one additional attack from your Echo’s location when you take the attack action, adding up to 3 attacks total. You can use Unleash Incarnation a number of times equal to your Constitution modifier.

LEVEL 9 - FIGHTER 4

Talk about a lot from one level huhn? Well all you’re getting from this level is +2 to your Intelligence with an Ability Score Improvement.

(Artwork by Pantalewns on DeviantArt)

LEVEL 10 - ARTIFICER 6

May as well grab level 6 in Artificer now for more Infusions! A Radiant Weapon attachment on your gauntlets will let you use them as a flashlight which can blind enemies that hit you! A Repulsion Shield meanwhile will let you push block an enemy that attacks you. Both these items take your reaction yes, and you have Shield for Reactions as well. But remember that these are just suggestions and you’re more than welcome to build other Infusions that will help your party.

You can also prepare a lot more spells now: two total with your levels and your Intelligence, but I will be suggesting 3 since we’ll get one more spell from an Intelligence increase later on and you’re a prepared spellcaster anyways so you can swap out your spells whenever.

Enhance Ability will let you provide an assist outside of combat, aiding your allies with checks and providing them other boosts.

Heat Metal will let you put a DoT on your opponent while you fight: more of Valentine’s thing but it helps!

Magic Weapon will let you punch a little harder, turning your Radiant Fists from a +1 weapon to a +2!

I again need to reiterate that Artificers are prepared spellcasters, so remember to swap out your spells when you need them!

LEVEL 11 - WIZARD 1

Speaking of prepared spellcasters oh god it’s Wizard. Welcome to the first use of Wizard on this blog and don’t worry: we have a lot more Wizards coming after Wildemount, which scares me because I don’t play Wizards. Anyways Wizards get some more spellcasting: Mending will let you repair any chains your partner might break, and Message will let you chat with her privately. Finally Mage Hand will let your future self reach out and grab something for you in the moment. Did I just pick the three cantrips that were right beside each-other on the massive list of Wizard cantrips? Yes, but that doesn’t mean these spells aren’t good.

Sapping Sting is also worth a mention as a Dunamancy-specific cantrip that causes your opponent to trip! Remember: gay tripping is gay.

Speaking of spells you learn two Wizard spells whenever you level up, and can add more spells to your spellbook if you find them on a spell scroll. Regardless Wizards have a big list of spells they can learn so uhhhhh...

Fog Cloud is ideal for a getaway, letting Scythana kick up a cloud of dust to heavily obscure the area.

Tenser’s Floating Disk is perfect for any spelunker, as it lets you create a three foot diameter theonite disk to carry up to 500 pounds of artifacts you discover.

You also get Arcane Recovery, letting you recover a level 1 spell slot on a short rest. More uses of Shield; neato!

LEVEL 12 - WIZARD 2

Ultimately the reason for the Wizard multiclass was to get some more time manipulation powers from the Chronurgy Magic subclass from Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount. That’s right we’re using two Wildemount subclasses; rejoice Critters! Chronurgists have Temporal Awareness, letting them add their Intelligence modifier to their Initiative rolls which is nice because your Dexterity is only a +2, and this will bump Initiative to a +6.

You also get Chronal Shift: when you or a creature within 30 feet of you that you can see makes an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you can use your reaction to force the creature to reroll after you see whether the roll succeeds or fails. You can use this reaction twice per long rest, so don’t meddle with the timeline unless its absolutely neccessary!

You also learn two more 1st level Wizard spells at this level:

You should be able to afford a 50 gp diamond by this point, right? Well Chromatic Orb will let you shoot a more powerful fireball at an enemy for 3d8 damage... or an ice ball. Or an acid ball!

Gift of Alacrity is a Chronurgy-specific spell so you may as well take it, as you can speed up time for an ally and give them a d8 to their initiative. Just remember that the spell does take some time to cast!

Oh god Wizards are overwhelming. Remember: you can get more spells if you find them in scrolls, which is good because right now you can prepare more spells than you have. Also if you have the chance see if you can find a Spellshard instead of a spellbook, just to keep the Theonite shard themeing.

LEVEL 13 - FIGHTER 5

Good god Wizard never again. It’s just straight through Fighter now, though it’s not like Echo Knight is an easy class either. 5th level Fighters get an Extra Attack... that you already have.

LEVEL 14 - FIGHTER 6

6th level Fighters get an Ability Score Improvement: max out your Intelligence for maximum damage with your gauntlets and your spellcasting.

LEVEL 15 - FIGHTER 7

7th level Echo Knights get Echo Avatar. As an action you can see and hear through your echo instead of your own senses. During this time you are deafened and blinded and you can see through your echo for up to 10 minutes. You can end it at any time without using an action and you can be up to 1000 feet away from your echo while using this action. Clearly you were just there the whole time, and are telling your allies what you saw.

It should be mentioned that technically you can teleport up to 1000 feet while using this ability, making it great for infiltration. Just saying!

LEVEL 16 - FIGHTER 8

8th level Fighters get another Ability Score Improvement and we’re going to improve our Constitution so that we can get back up when a detective with tuba lungs does a JoJo impression on us.

LEVEL 17 - FIGHTER 9

Level 9 Fighters get Indomitable, letting them reroll a saving throw once per long rest. Reminder that you have two rerolls that you can use on anything with Chronal Shift, and now you have one saving throw you can reroll for yourself. Turn back the clock if you get hit because life isn’t worth wasting seconds.

LEVEL 18 - FIGHTER 10

Level 10 Echo Knights get Shadow Martyr. As a reaction you can cause your echo to teleport in front of an ally you see being attacked and make them take the blow instead. Your echo appears within 5 feet of the ally and the attack is directed towards them, and you can use this reaction once per short rest. Remember to spend the next turn going back in time to save your friend: and don’t get hit when you do!

LEVEL 19 - FIGHTER 11

Level 11 Fighters get an Extra Attack that actually goes above and beyond regular Extra Attacks, so now you have three attacks total! Rejoice!

LEVEL 20 - FIGHTER 12

The final level is the 12th level of Fighter for your last Ability Score Improvement and you’re going to want to increase Constitution again for a 20 health boost at the end of the build.

(Artwork by MagicBunnyArt on DeviantArt)

FINAL BUILD

PROS

Hang on to your hat - A good Constitution modifier and most of your levels in Fighter means a health bar that’s very close to 200, and you have a positive saving throw score in everything except for Charisma with the ability to reroll up to three failed saves.

I'm all there is of the most real - Have I ever mentioned that Artificer is dumb when it comes to AC? 21 AC with just chainmail and a shield being both improved, and up to 23 AC if you get your hands on Full Plate. Even if your DM doesn’t let you wear Heavy armor because “Armorer is OP” a Breastplate will still give you 21 AC if you also use a shield. (18 without a shield.)

Bad puppies! (Good puppies) - You are great no matter where the enemy is with three Thunder Gauntlet attacks in melee range, several spells to use at range, and your echoes to let you teleport around and effectively be in two places at once.

CONS

Smart Cookie - Even though you’re a professor you’re not the most talented. You know hella-lot about History and Arcana but your Perception is about average and your Athletics leaves something to be desired.

Push Block - You’ve got a few too many options in combat with four different Bonus Actions (one of which is one-time use and one of which is only used at the start of the fight to be fair) and Reactions for Shadow Martyr, Chronal Shift, Vigilant Guardian, Opportunity Attacks from you or your Echo, and reactionary spells like Shield and Feather Fall. The problem with infinite timelines is that there’s infinite options to choose from.

Seconds count - A lot of your abilities have a limited number of uses, and while some of them (Second Wind, Shadow Martyr, Action Surge) come back on a short rest a lot more of them (Spell Slots, Chronal Shift, Vigilant Guardian, Arcane Recovery, Indomitable, Unleash Incarnation) only come back after a long rest.

But infinite foresight means you won’t be caught without a plan, even if you don’t have the Foresight spell. Throw a punch or ten at a zombie cat-girl and then tap out and rest up. And do get your partner out of jail: someone needs to carry your equipment.

(Artwork by Kitty-Katskratch on DeviantArt.)

#DnD 5e #DnD #dnd build #dnd multiclass #skullgirls #skullgirls isaac #explorer's guide to wildemount #echo knight #critical role

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phuketrealtor12 · 4 years ago

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Why Invest in Phuket Real Estate?

buy property thailand

The Popularity of Phuket Properties in Phuket continue to change hands regularly as International investors increasingly want a piece of paradise. The island is popular with those looking to spend the winter in a warmer climate and return home with a tan. And because Phuket is centrally located within Asia, it’s very accessible being just a few hours flight from most Asian countries.

Phuket has weathered the storms of the Asian financial crisis, SARS, and a devastating Tsunami and has emerged stronger, safer, and more stylish than ever before, making it one of Southeast Asia's most popular destinations for travel. Many of these travelers have looked into Phuket real estate and now own a holiday home.

The amount of tourists visiting the island continues to grow and with many new property developments being built in Phuket the number of investors and investment opportunities has increased.

Phuket real estate has never had it so good and the property market is booming. Every year Phuket attracts millions of tourists which has created investment opportunities for those wanting to take them. The Island is well known and respected as one of the best places in the world to relax, unwind, and possibly retire.

With sun-drenched beaches and a vibrant nightlife, people of all ages are attracted to this tropical paradise. This has helped boost property values and increase prices on Phuket real estate every year since 2005. Currently, many developers are now well vested in Phuket.

Interesting Developments in Phuket The days of an undiscovered paradise are long gone and the speculators with a more genuine interest to develop on the back of a robust and maturing infrastructure have found Phuket properties very agreeable.

Among the new developments are many upscale shopping centers. The most notable of these is the Blu Pearl Plaza that will consist of a world-class theme park and a wide variety of upmarket shops and restaurants. The mall is expected to open in 2022 and will be bigger and more impressive than Bangkok’s largest shopping center, Siam Paragon.

This will be part of a collection of large scale venues. Among these will be a duty-free retail complex, a floating market, and a giant Ferris wheel. Along with the expansion of Phuket's Central Festival which will contain the largest aquarium in Asia. Real estate in Phuket will surely benefit.

Phuket’s International Airport is currently being expanded to accommodate the increasing amount of visitors. The extension is expected to be finished in 2018 and will enable the airport to handle over 12 million passengers per year.

To make it easier to travel around the island, a light-rail train line will be developed. These improvements in infrastructure will be needed to absorb the growth from increasing tourism. The total length of the light-rail line will be about 60 kilometers, starting in the North and connecting the airport and then running through Phuket Town and ending near the Chalong Circle, in the South of the island. The boost that this light-rail will give to Phuket’s economy could be very similar to the positive economic effects of Bangkok’s Skytrain.

All of these developments will make Phuket more accommodating and Phuket properties will keep rising. Visitors will be able to enjoy all the benefits that this tropical island has to offer without having to miss out on the shopping opportunities that you’d normally find in the capital city of Bangkok. Real estate in Phuket will become even more desirable.

Phuket is Transforming Creating upmarket shopping centers is in response to the increase in the number of tourists visiting Phuket. Although tourists generally like to visit the beach, many also like to shop during their holidays.

Offering a high-end shopping experience for these groups can add to their experience and benefit the island. The area in which many of the new malls will be built is centrally located making these new Phuket properties easily accessible.

These new developments will help Phuket possibly tap into a new market and offer more than just beautiful beaches and great nightlife. This brings more investment opportunities for real estate in Phuket and overall should be positive for the Phuket property market.

Real Estate Phuket Phuket is considered relatively safe when it comes to your money, and long-term returns are very encouraging. Accessibility, location, style, and size are all important when investing in Phuket real estate and Phuket properties.

Entry-level properties in Phuket are not considered inexpensive, and they're certainly isn't the mass amount of apartments that Spain built in the seventies and eighties. Investment in Phuket is more up-market.

Some areas of Phuket are becoming more developed and investments in these areas are becoming more costly. However, there are still opportunities. The West Coast of Phuket has seen the most real estate growth over the last 15 years.

Mid-level properties in Phuket are made up mostly of private pool villas. These Phuket properties are usually within a 5 to 10-minute drive from the beach and located in a gated estate. They are tastefully built with tall privacy walls, tropical gardens, and private pools. Many of today's travelers now prefer to stay in villas over hotels and resorts due to the conveniences of a full kitchen, parking, and privacy.

It doesn't matter how nice the swimming pool at your hotel is if it's just too crowded. This is a problem that can be quite common in high season and may explain the big increase in demand for private pool villas.

High-end properties in Phuket will be very close to the beach. They will include a sea view. This luxury segment can have a broad range in prices depending on location and level of luxury. When it comes to luxury, Phuket is the pinnacle of popularity amongst the luxury traveler so it should be no surprise that Phuket has a magnificent choice of luxury villas.

Phuket has established itself as a global destination, offering a range of investment opportunities from modest to high-end. Phuket properties are comparable to those offered in the Mediterranean and Caribbean.

Using a Realtor At Phuket Realtor, we provide straightforward advice and from an honest perspective. Having years of experience in the Phuket real estate market we can assure you that you will be guided safely through the process of purchasing a property in Thailand by using our services. We provide everyone an interactive website portal to help with your search.

We would be happy to discuss in more detail our services and why using a Realtor can be extremely helpful when looking to buy or sell a property in Thailand. Give us a call at +66 93 606 0906.

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innovationshealthwellness · 4 years ago

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Don't Wish For It

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Posted by Heather Parker – Work. #Fitness #Motivation #Inspiration

5 Pro Tips on How to Get Motivated to Workout

We’ve all experienced it at one time or another– a precipitous lack of motivation to work out. In this quick guide 15 top trainers, strength coaches and fitness superhumans stop by to share their best strategies for staying motivated to exercise.

Whatever your goals are in the gym you full well know the struggle: it’s minutes to go until you are supposed to hit the gym, and you feel any and all workout motivation plunging through the floor.

While every person’s level of ambition in what we want to achieve in the gym varies, we all experience the same difficulty in getting things going so that we get through the doors of the gym. We look at our fit friends on social media and their incessant #fitlife hash-tagging and gym selfies and wanna punch em, if only because they are at the gym and here we are, sitting on the couch wondering if crushing two bags of Doritos in one day is next level shame.

Luckily, today we got some serious back-up for you. 15 of the top trainers, strength coaches and fitness professionals stopped by to share their favorite tips and strategies for unleashing a bottomless pit of motivation to crush your workout routine.

1. DO IT YOUR WAY.

Social media can be a real son of a bee sting. Sure, it helps us stay in touch with friends and family, but it also shows us the endless trove of workout pictures from our gym addict friends, which tend to make us feel even worse about ourselves. And so we try to do what they do.

First mistake, bucko. Odds are you already know what works best for you.

“I think the most important part about motivating clients is to let them lead the conversation,” says Kelly Gibson, CPT, of Kelly Athletics.

“They know what works best for them, they just need someone to hear that they understand and support their beliefs. Once there is a mutual understanding, it is a good time to introduce clients to ideas of what foods and exercises might help them on their path.”

Remember: we all respond differently according to interests, exercise history, and everything else that goes into making us a special little snowflake. Embrace your individuality and stick with what you know that works instead of trying to emulate what someone else is doing.

2. WHAT YOU WANT VS. WHAT YOU WILL LOSE.

Much of the time we are motivated by fear. We don’t want to lose our health, our youth, our strength. And so we become very loss-averse instead of focusing on trying to achieve things.

Scott Abel, physique transformation specialist and weight-loss expert who has four decades of experience working with bodybuilders, pro athletes and figure competitors, emphasizes encouraging clients and athletes to pursue goals instead of trying to avoid the things they don’t want to have happen.

“The rationale is simple,” says Scott. “What you focus on, expands. So if you are always focusing on what you don’t want, you just manifest more of it that very thing.”

Instead of getting stressed out over negative goals, set yourself some positive targets and goals to dish out punishment on when you step into the gym and drop the hammer on your workout routine.

3. SURROUND YOURSELF WITH PEOPLE DOING THE STUFF YOU WANNA DO.

Like it or not, we are products of our environment. The friends we surround ourselves with end up influencing our actions and behaviors often far more than we are willing to give them credit for. This can be an awesome thing, or you know, be the other way around.

Dr. Joel Seedman, CSCS, ACSM, FMS, of Advanced Human Performance echoes this sentiment when it comes to choosing your coach or trainer.

“There’s nothing that stifles motivation more than a trainer who doesn’t care and lacks passion as this has a tendency to rub off on the client as well,” says Dr. Seedman.

“In contrast enthusiasm from the trainer and coach is very contagious and does wonders for sparking motivation from the client.”

We all have those friends who will tug at your sleeve and whisper, “It’s just one workout, what’s the big deal?” They might be fun to hang out with, but if you are looking to dial up your workouts it might be time to dial down the time you are spending with ‘em.

4. BUILD AN AWESOME SUPPORT CIRCLE PART 2.

Seriously, it’s crazy how much certain people in our lives can push in a certain direction.

Build an inner circle that is all positive, all caring, and all awesome. We are products of our environment.

“No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care,” says Mike Boyle, who for the past 30 years has worked with Olympians and pro athletes including players from the Boston Red Sox and Boston Bruins. “(As a trainer) if you want motivated athletes, care about them as people. Know their story, their why.”

Sounds good to me, Mike.

5. MOTIVATION COMES FROM OVERCOMING ADVERSITY.

If you are training on your own, make sure that you are constantly setting the bar just a little bit higher. Otherwise, you are inviting burnout and boredom.

Motivation, the white-hot, scorching type, comes from seeing your work pay off. From improvement. From overcoming challenges and limits.

Steve Whiteside, BA Kin, B. Ed, CSCS, NSCA-CPT, knows that the key to keeping his clients pumped up and interested over the long haul “involves an aspect of struggle.”

“It may be as simple as increasing the number of push-ups that can be accomplished in a set, going up in weight on a certain exercise or completing a tough metabolic challenge such as sprints,” says Steve.

“When the client completes the challenge, it becomes a high point in the workout and leaves them feeling hugely successful,” he adds.

“If they don’t, they’ve probably come close enough to keep them motivated to conquer it during the next workout. This ensures that each workout is a memorable and worthwhile experience, and that they are continually striving towards improvement.”

#exercise #healthy #meme #motivation #weightloss

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theculturedmarxist · 5 years ago

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My dad was born in 1917. Somehow, he survived the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919, but an outbreak of whooping cough in 1923 claimed his baby sister, Clementina. One of my dad’s first memories was seeing his sister’s tiny white casket. Another sister was permanently marked by scarlet fever. In 1923, my dad was hit by a car and spent two weeks in a hospital with a fractured skull as well as a lacerated thumb. His immigrant parents had no medical insurance, but the driver of the car gave his father $50 toward the medical bills. The only lasting effect was the scar my father carried for the rest of his life on his right thumb.

The year 1929 brought the Great Depression and lean times. My father’s father had left the family, so my dad, then 12, had to pitch in. He got a newspaper route, which he kept for four years, quitting high school after tenth grade so he could earn money for the family. In 1935, like millions of other young men of that era, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a creation of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal that offered work on environmental projects of many kinds. He battled forest fires in Oregon for two years before returning to his family and factory work. In 1942, he was drafted into the Army, going back to a factory job when World War II ended. Times grew a little less lean in 1951 when he became a firefighter, after which he felt he could afford to buy a house and start a family.

I’m offering all this personal history as the context for a prediction of my dad’s that, for obvious reasons, came to my mind again recently. When I was a teenager, he liked to tell me: “I had it tough in the beginning and easy in the end. You, Willy, have had it easy in the beginning, but will likely have it tough in the end.” His prophecy stayed with me, perhaps because even then, somewhere deep down, I already suspected that my dad was right.

The COVID-19 pandemic is now grabbing the headlines, all of them, and a global recession, if not a depression, seems like a near-certainty. The stock market has been tanking and people’s lives are being disrupted in fundamental and scary ways. My dad knew the experience of losing a loved one to disease, of working hard to make ends meet during times of great scarcity, of sacrificing for the good of one’s family. Compared to him, it’s true that, so far, I’ve had an easier life as an officer in the Air Force and then a college teacher and historian. But at age 57, am I finally ready for the hard times to come? Are any of us?

And keep in mind that this is just the beginning. Climate change (recall Australia’s recent and massive wildfires) promises yet more upheavals, more chaos, more diseases. America’s wanton militarism and lying politicians promise more wars. What’s to be done to avert or at least attenuate the tough times to come, assuming my dad’s prediction is indeed now coming true? What can we do?

It’s Time to Reimagine America

Here’s the one thing about major disruptions to normalcy: they can create opportunities for dramatic change. (Disaster capitalists know this, too, unfortunately.) President Franklin Roosevelt recognized this in the 1930s and orchestrated his New Deal to revive the economy and put Americans like my dad back to work.

In 2001, the administration of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney capitalized on the shock-and-awe disruption of the 9/11 attacks to inflict on the world their vision of a Pax Americana, effectively a militarized imperium justified (falsely) as enabling greater freedom for all. The inherent contradiction in such a dreamscape was so absurd as to make future calamity inevitable. Recall what an aide to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld scribbled down, only hours after the attack on the Pentagon and the collapse of the Twin Towers, as his boss’s instructions (especially when it came to looking for evidence of Iraqi involvement): “Go massive — sweep it all up, things related and not.” And indeed they would do just that, with an emphasis on the “not,” including, of course, the calamitous invasion of Iraq in 2003.

To progressive-minded people thinking about this moment of crisis, what kind of opportunities might open to us when (or rather if) Donald Trump is gone from the White House? Perhaps this coronaviral moment is the perfect time to consider what it would mean for us to go truly big, but without the usual hubris or those disastrous invasions of foreign countries. To respond to COVID-19, climate change, and the staggering wealth inequities in this country that, when combined, will cause unbelievable levels of needless suffering, what’s needed is a drastic reordering of our national priorities.

Remember, the Fed’s first move was to inject $1.5 trillion into the stock market. (That would have been enough to forgive all current student debt.) The Trump administration has also promised to help airlines, hotels, and above all oil companies and the fracking industry, a perfect storm when it comes to trying to sustain and enrich those upholding a kleptocratic and amoral status quo.

This should be a time for a genuinely new approach, one fit for a world of rising disruption and disaster, one that would define a new, more democratic, less bellicose America. To that end, here are seven suggestions, focusing — since I’m a retired military officer — mainly on the U.S. military, a subject that continues to preoccupy me, especially since, at present, that military and the rest of the national security state swallow up roughly 60% of federal discretionary spending:

1. If ever there was a time to reduce our massive and wasteful military spending, this is it. There was never, for example, any sense in investing up to $1.7 trillion over the next 30 years to “modernize” America’s nuclear arsenal. (Why are new weapons needed to exterminate humanity when the “old” ones still work just fine?) Hundreds of stealth fighters and bombers — it’s estimated that Lockheed Martin’s disappointing F-35 jet fighter alone will cost $1.5 trillion over its life span — do nothing to secure us from pandemics, the devastating effects of climate change, or other all-too-pressing threats. Such weaponry only emboldens a militaristic and chauvinistic foreign policy that will facilitate yet more wars and blowback problems of every sort. And speaking of wars, isn’t it finally time to end U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan? More than $6 trillion has already been wasted on those wars and, in this time of global peril, even more is being wasted on this country’s forever conflicts across the Greater Middle East and Africa. (Roughly $4 billion a month continues to be spent on Afghanistan alone, despite all the talk about “peace” there.)

2. Along with ending profligate weapons programs and quagmire wars, isn’t it time for the U.S. to begin dramatically reducing its military “footprint” on this planet? Roughly 800 U.S. military bases circle the globe in a historically unprecedented fashion at a yearly cost somewhere north of $100 billion. Cutting such numbers in half over the next decade would be a more than achievable goal. Permanently cutting provocative “war games” in South Korea, Europe, and elsewhere would be no less sensible. Are North Korea and Russia truly deterred by such dramatic displays of destructive military might?

3. Come to think of it, why does the U.S. need the immediate military capacity to fight two major foreign wars simultaneously, as the Pentagon continues to insist we do and plan for, in the name of “defending” our country? Here’s a radical proposal: if you add 70,000 Special Operations forces to 186,000 Marine Corps personnel, the U.S. already possesses a potent quick-strike force of roughly 250,000 troops. Now, add in the Army’s 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions and the 10th Mountain Division. What you have is more than enough military power to provide for America’s actual national security. All other Army divisions could be reduced to cadres, expandable only if our borders are directly threatened by war. Similarly, restructure the Air Force and Navy to de-emphasize the present “global strike” vision of those services, while getting rid of Donald Trump’s newest service, the Space Force, and the absurdist idea of taking war into low earth orbit. Doesn’t America already have enough war here on this small planet of ours?

4. Bring back the draft, just not for military purposes. Make it part of a national service program for improving America. It’s time for a new Civilian Conservation Corps focused on fostering a Green New Deal. It’s time for a new Works Progress Administration to rebuild America’s infrastructure and reinvigorate our culture, as that organization did in the Great Depression years. It’s time to engage young people in service to this country. Tackling COVID-19 or future pandemics would be far easier if there were quickly trained medical aides who could help free doctors and nurses to focus on the more difficult cases. Tackling climate change will likely require more young men and women fighting forest fires on the west coast, as my dad did while in the CCC — and in a climate-changing world there will be no shortage of other necessary projects to save our planet. Isn’t it time America’s youth answered a call to service? Better yet, isn’t it time we offered them the opportunity to truly put America, rather than themselves, first?

5. And speaking of “America First,” that eternal Trumpian catch-phrase, isn’t it time for all Americans to recognize that global pandemics and climate change make a mockery of walls and go-it-alone nationalism, not to speak of politics that divide, distract, and keep so many down? President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said that only Americans can truly hurt America, but there’s a corollary to that: only Americans can truly save America — by uniting, focusing on our common problems, and uplifting one another. To do so, it’s vitally necessary to put an end to fear-mongering (and warmongering). As President Roosevelt famously said in his first inaugural address in the depths of the Great Depression, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Fear inhibits our ability to think clearly, to cooperate fully, to change things radically as a community.

6. To cite Yoda, the Jedi master, we must unlearn what we have learned. For example, America’s real heroes shouldn’t be “warriors” who kill or sports stars who throw footballs and dunk basketballs. We’re witnessing our true heroes in action right now: our doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel, together with our first responders, and those workers who stay in grocery stores, pharmacies, and the like and continue to serve us all despite the danger of contracting the coronavirus from customers. They are all selflessly resisting a threat too many of us either didn’t foresee or refused to treat seriously, most notably, of course, President Donald Trump: a pandemic that transcends borders and boundaries. But can Americans transcend the increasingly harsh and divisive borders and boundaries of our own minds? Can we come to work selflessly to save and improve the lives of others? Can we become, in a sense, lovers of humanity?

7. Finally, we must extend our love to encompass nature, our planet. For if we keep treating our lands, our waters, and our skies like a set of trash cans and garbage bins, our children and their children will inherit far harder times than the present moment, hard as it may be.

What these seven suggestions really amount to is rejecting a militarized mindset of aggression and a corporate mindset of exploitation for one that sees humanity and this planet more holistically. Isn’t it time to regain that vision of the earth we shared collectively during the Apollo moon missions: a fragile blue sanctuary floating in the velvety darkness of space, an irreplaceable home to be cared for and respected since there’s no other place for us to go? Otherwise, I fear that my father’s prediction will come true not just for me, but for generations to come and in ways that even he couldn’t have imagined.

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grailfinders · 4 years ago

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Fate and Phantasms #131: Anne Bonny and Mary Read (Archer)

Bonny and Read are back again for another round of D&D in today’s Fate and Phantasms! Once again, we’re making a pirate duo who can sniff out treasure wherever it may lurk, but this time they’re in a bathing suit.

Check out their build breakdown below the cut, or their character sheet over here!

Next up: Met a boy, cute as can be!

Race and Background

No surprises here. Variant Human, and Pirate. This gives you +1 Dexterity and Charisma, and proficiency with Athletics, Perception, and Deception. You also get the Crossbow Expert feat because that’s the closest thing base D&D has to a gun. This lets you ignore the loading property, fire at melee range without disadvantage, and also dual wield, but that last bit doesn’t really matter for this build.

Ability Scores

Keeping your sea legs requires a lot of Dexterity (and so does stabbing and shooting). You also need to keep your Wisdom up to spot treasure on the open seas, so make that second. Your Charisma isn’t bad, lying and scaring the crap out of people is half the job. Your Constitution is above average, because you can’t have a gimmick about missing HP if you don’t have HP to miss in the first place. Your Strength isn’t bad because sea legs could also be athletics, but we don’t need it for anything. Finally, dump Intelligence. Your day job is theft and murder, that doesn’t usually require calculus.

Class Levels

1. Fighter 1: No surprises here, if we want to be two people there’s really only one class that can help with that. Before that though, you get proficiency with Strength and Constitution saves, as well as Intimidation and History checks. Pirates live and die on their ability to terrify their opponents, and also you’re literally history. That one’s a gimme for any servant.

You also get the Archery fighting style for more accurate arrows, and a Second Wind that can heal you as a bonus action.

2. Fighter 2: Your Action Surge lets you add an extra action to your turn once per short rest. You’re two people so you should get two turns per turn, but we’ll take what we can get.

3. Fighter 3: It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for, the moment you become an Echo Knight! Echo Knights can Manifest Echo, creating a copy of yourself that has to stay nearby or be destroyed and also has only 1 HP. That’s not too much of an issue though, as there’s no limit to how many you can make, and they only take a bonus action to do so.

You can also Unleash Incarnation once per action and a number of times per long rest equal to your constitution modifier. This lets your echo make an extra attack from its position, as long as it’s melee. Thankfully Bonny’s in charge this time, so you can use this more easily.

4. Fighter 4: For your first Ability Score Improvement we’re taking the Magic Initiate feat. You’re not exactly a wizard, but we’re only picking up Friends, True Strike, and Mage Armor this way. You’re naturally good at intimidation, aiming, and not dying in a bikini, so it’s not a huge issue for you.

5. Fighter 5: Fifth level fighters get an Extra Attack for an extra person. Now you can make two attacks per turn, four with your action surge, or up to five with your unleash incarnation. It would be six, but you still only have a +1 to constitution.

6. Fighter 6: Our last bit of fighter gets you another ASI, which is going towards your Dexterity. Like last time almost everything we want is in dexterity- there’s really no reason to spend ASIs elsewhere right now.

7. Ranger 1: Rogue’s such a winter class, everyone knows ranger is in this Summer! First level rangers get Investigation proficiency- sometimes looking for treasure’s a perception check, sometimes it’s investigation. Now you’re prepared for both.

Either way, you also get a Favored Foe proficiency times per long rest. This lets you concentrate on a creature after hitting it to deal an extra 1d4 damage once per turn. That’s not a lot, but it grows as you level up.

You’re also a Natural Explorer of the coast, doubling your proficiency for intelligence or wisdom checks made in the terrain for extra treasure detection, and you also get a bevy of travel benefits, such as:

Difficult terrain doesn’t slow the group

You can’t get lost

You stay alert while doing other stuff

You can stealth faster if you’re alone

Foraging gets buffed

You get extra information about tracking creatures

Niche? Yes. But you’re spending all your time at the beach, you might as well be good at it.

8. Ranger 2: You get the Dueling fighting style to help out Read, and you can also cast Spells now by using your Wisdom Modifier.

You can Detect Magic to find fancy treasure, or Absorb Elements to hit back harder after getting hit. This halves damage from an elemental effect, then adds 1d6 to your next melee attack. That spell is literally the closest thing we have to your Noble Phantasm, you do not translate well to D&D.

9. Ranger 3: If we can’t make you more deadly the more damage you take, we can at least make you more deadly the longer a fight drags on, and Hunters are pretty good at that. When you take the subclass, you become a Colossus Slayer, adding an extra 1d8 to damage dealt to a creature without full health once per turn.

You can also cast Longstrider since you’re clearly not being weighed down by clothes.

10. Ranger 4: Your next ASI makes you a Sharpshooter, letting you attack from further, ignore most cover, and take a harder shot to hit even harder. If you going to lug a gun around in the ocean, it’s best to make it as deadly as possible.

11. Ranger 5: This extra attack doesn’t stack with your fighter option, but you can still cast Locate Object to find treasures that aren’t magical.

12. Ranger 6: At sixth level your favored foe grows to a d6, and your Natural Explorer expands to the Underdark! That’s kind of like a cave, right?

13. Ranger 7: We continue your “take damage, get better” kick with the hunter’s Multiattack Defense! If you get hit by a creature once, you get a +4 AC bonus for the rest of the turn.

You can also cast Find Traps now. Traps aren’t treasure, but the two are highly correlated. I wonder if that’s intentional...

14. Ranger 8: Use this ASI for more Constitution, which equates to a bigger health pool, more unleashed incarnations, and better concentration saves. (This gives you +14 to your health, not +1: health gets changed retroactively.) You’re also Fleet of Foot, allowing you to ignore nonmagical difficult terrain, as well as nonmagical plants. You also get advantage against magical plants, like Entangle.

15. Ranger 9: Ninth level rangers get third level spells. Water Breathing won’t give you a swim speed, but a snorkel’s always useful at the beach.

16. Ranger 10: You move inland now, expanding your Natural Explorer to the Grasslands. You also learn how to hide yourself within Nature’s Veil. Normally a swimsuit’s about turning heads, but now you can spend a bonus action to turn invisible for a round a number of times per long rest equal to your proficiency bonus.

17. Ranger 11: Focusing on ranger instead of fighter left you without a lot of attacks, but we’ll fix that this level with your Volley, letting you attack any number of creatures in a 10′ radius circle with ranged attacks. There’s perks to this origin changing stuff!

If you’d rather spend spell slots on basically the same thing but worse, you can cast Conjure Barrage as well.

18. Ranger 12: Your last ASI is also going to Constitution for even more health! Your frontliner still only has 1 hp, but at least she’s replaceable. That’s a really mean thing to say about your girlfriend, I’m sorry. She is though.

19. Ranger 13: Your first and only fourth level spell is Freedom of Movement. Handcuffs aren’t your thing. Or maybe they are, I’m not here to judge. But seriously, escape from prison first.

20. Ranger 14: Your capstone level bumps your Favored Foe damage up again to 1d8, and you can also Vanish now, hiding as a bonus action. You also can’t be tracked unless you want to be, or they’re using magic. You don’t need anyone finding this treasure after you do.

Pros:

You have plenty of ways to pile on the damage when you hit a creature, which means you can really hurt them when a shot connects.

Are the ranger’s abilities situational? Yes, absolutely. That being said, your ranger goodies and spells combine to make you very hard to run away from. Can’t teleport? Good luck.

You have an effective Range of 400′, and most of your damage bonuses are totally effective at that range. Getting close enough to fight you will be a trial in itself.

Cons:

Are the ranger’s abilities situational? Yes, absolutely. Not only do plenty of your abilities only work in certain areas, a lot of your damage only affects the first attack, which can really hurt if you’re unlucky enough to roll a 20 on the second shot.

Focusing on all those tracking and utility spells means your magical combat is very lacking, both in the sense that you have few spells to help out in a fight, but also in that the ones you do have aren’t that strong.

Just like last time, one of you wants to be as close as possible, one of you wants to be as far away as possible. You’ll have to balance these mixed ranges to get the most out of this build.

#Fate Grand Order #fgo #D&D 5e #Anne Bonny #Mary Read #Ranger #Fighter

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ethdifi1989qi-blog · 4 years ago

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Low-key and mystical performance praise What is the investment idea of ??Spark Capital

Two weeks ago, a number of companies invested by Spark Capital completed acquisitions and exits and the next circular of investments by additional first-tier money, including food delivery company Postmates, clever mirror firm Mirror, quick messaging company Discord, and so forth. In June, they also completed 6 new investments. Such outstanding performance during the epidemic is quite rare in the VC circle. This program discusses what kind of fund Spark Capital is definitely, and the evaluation of these invested and acquired companies. What sort of company is Spark Capital Lively and lively: Although Spark Capital is in Silicon Valley, it seems that there is not much discussion about it, in fact it is not really a first-line fund. Louis: Because they started in Boston and are not of pure Silicon Valley descent, they are not on the list of top-tier Silicon Valley funds. But judging from their purchase portfolio, it really is an extremely competitive company. The founders of Spark Capital (Bijan Sabet, etc.) also mentioned that they encountered many obstacles if they "fight" from Boston to Silicon Valley. Lively and vigorously: Their team is not big, mainly divided into two funds, one for earlier investment and the other for growth. Today their initial administration scale is 450 million U.S. bucks, and the growth period is 900 million. The total amount is approximately 4 billion U.S. dollars in AUM (property under management). What makes me more eye-catching is the businesses that Bijan has committed to, such as Twitter, Tumblr, Trello, OMGPOP, Foursquare, and also Stack Overflow. Generally, one vote is one standard. Louis: Bijan is still very good. Both Twitter and Tumblr invested quite early, and he invested in the business when Twitter got just 12 employees. Founder of Bijan Sabet Spark Capital Their partners are not many, and some are drawn from the investee company. For instance, in the first days of Twitter, Kevin Thau was employed as a fund partner. Kevin later on led the investment in Mirror, which was recently acquired. Which companies have you invested in? Lively voice: Let's talk about the most famous Postmates first. Louis: Postmates may be the top foods delivery business in the United States, and its market share is most likely No. 4. The first choice is DoorDash, accompanied by Uber Eats, No. 3 is Grubhub, and No. 4 is basically Postmates. Lately Postmates was acquired simply by Uber, and you will furthermore see Uber Eats' ambitions. Image supply: foodondemandnews.com Suffering from the epidemic, Uber's first-quarter financial report had been ugly. Although overall revenue is rising, the net loss is approximately 3 x that of the same time period this past year, reaching $2.936 billion. They also laid off employees consistently, layoffs about a quarter of these employees inside a month. Although Uber's overall loss is expanding, Uber Eats's business has skyrocketed. Uber Eats' total bookings are US$4.683 billion, which is 30% of total revenue and a 52% year-on-year increase. So the epidemic actually taught Uber a lesson. We all said before that if startups can grasp among the four requires of humans, they may become giants. But Uber is rolling out to this year, and it has discovered that the 4 major rigid requirements may also be in order. Image source: digital.hbs.edu More than a month ago, there have been rumors that Uber can acquire Grubhub, the company with the 3rd largest market share. DoorDash's current market share is 45%, Grubhub has 28%, and Uber provides 17%. If Uber successfully acquired Grubhub a month ago, its total market talk about could be add up to DoorDash. Afterwards, a European giant named Just Eat Takeaway acquired Grubhub, that is equivalent to the merger of Ele.me personally and Baidu Waimai. So Uber could only turn around to find Postmates. Around 2012, Nabeel, somebody of Spark Funds, entered Postmates in a valuation of 73 million through the B circular, and the business was eventually acquired by Uber for $2.6 billion. Spark Capital offers its own expenditure philosophy. The CEO of Postmates will be neither a graduate of the CS main from an American Ivy League college nor a senior executive encounter in a big company. Its CEO is really a German. After dropping out of university, he's got experienced various locations in European countries for a long period. Although the price of $2.65 billion isn't high for Spark Capital, it is not a case of sensation like Twitter. But it can be seen that their investments have become stable. Lively and lively: Postmates has a total financing of nearly 900 million US dollars, so the price of 2.6 billion US bucks did not help make everyone earn often, but at least it is profitable. Their Website had two rounds of financing this past year, one in January and something in September. As you stated, this industry is as well money-burning and competition is as well fierce. Louis: For early investors want Spark Capital, it is still a good result. Uber nearly bought Grubhub. If this list is completed, it is unlikely to end up being still left to Postmates. Lively: How will be Mirror, a relatively new company? Louis: Friends who make use of Instagram should be able to see this company's ads frequently. It is a D2C brand that is a yoga exercise mirror for exercise. It looks no different from ordinary mirrors, but electronic, you can try yourself in the mirror, follow the yoga instructor in the mirror to accomplish yoga, and there are other fitness lessons. Mirror's mirror markets for under US$1,500, also it had approximately US$100 million in revenue last year. Image supply: Mirror official website The home fitness field in the usa is relatively popular. Probably the most popular one is Peloton, which is a bike for exercising in the home. Many huge tech circles and VC circles have this type of bike in the home. The cost of this car is expensive, more than 2,000 US dollars. Peloton was also successfully listed this past year, and the existing market value is about 19 billion US dollars. Lively: Where is the selling point of Mirror? Louis: The prospective market for Mirror is relatively high-end. Individuals above the center class in the usa are suffering from good fitness routines. They cannot visit the gym during the epidemic. Increasing numbers of people are considering how exactly to maintain health and fitness habits in the home. Mirror's $100 million in revenue this past year was not a big explosion, thus Lululemon's acquisition of this company was also a bold attempt through the epidemic. The features of Mirror are reflected in product design and social attributes. The high stickiness of Peloton customers is also due to the social nature. You can view how far your friends have ridden by riding a bicycle every day. Just like Line's methods ranking, there will be peer pressure. Image resource: Peloton official website And the complex threshold of Mirror hardware isn't too high, a few courses on a mirror. Additionally, there are many home fitness startups in China, including startups that benchmark Peloton or Mirror. The prerequisite for home fitness in the usa may be the maturity of the exercise industry and the popularization of outdoor exercise practices. But it continues to be a comparatively new thing in China. As a result, whether domestic exercise can achieve how big is the United States remains to be verified. Another company Spark Capital invested in is certainly Discord, the former entered the marketplace at a valuation of $22 million in the A round. The new round is led by Index Ventures, and today has a valuation of 3.5 billion U.S. dollars and keeps growing very fast. Image source: medium.com Discord can be an software for tone of voice and textual content chat. After logging in, you can see that its interface is very much like Slack, but their audiences are very different. Slack is really a SaaS firm of to B, and their users are all enterprises. The primary audience of Discord is in the gaming circle, where the voice function can be used the most. To place it bluntly, this is a software application for everyone to play video games, and the CPU occupies very little. Along with game communication, additional communication may also be performed on it. Many users of Discord are attracted from Reddit. Reddit is an extremely popular discussion board in the usa. Peer-to-peer conversation is fairly laborious. There is no personal messaging and quick messaging functions. Therefore, many large Reddit stations will open their own servers on Discord. Currently Discord has 45 million users and 9 million DAU. Even though initial feature set was even more casual, which was not the same as Slack's starting place, some schools in Europe already are using Discord for classes. So actually, Discord has mixed the functions of Slack and Zoom. This is a thing that many startups wish to accomplish but have not completed, because the United Claims can be used to doing a single function, and performing a good job first. Discord also found a good entry point in an individual dimension after combining the features of Slack and Zoom. They entered the market through the overall game segment and expanded to other areas. I think the potential customers are quite good. Lively voice: simply talked about the voice interaction and chat field, we are able to mention Clubhouse again. Louis: Clubhouse is also an extremely popular startup in Silicon Valley recently. A16z invested 12 million US dollars, with a valuation of around 100 million US dollars. But Clubhouse's products have not however seen everyone, as the current consumer invitation system. Now generally there are only 1,500 customers, basically all are tech giants, journalists, CEOs or some Hollywood celebrities. The product is founded on voice social media, and Clubhouse really wants to disrupt the podcast industry. They believe that podcasts can be converted into real-time chats. For example, many large bosses are usually chatting, and ordinary people can pay attention to them instantly and take part in interaction. Image source: techcrunch.com Clubhouse's environment is that users can easily see many areas after successfully logging in. For example, in this chat room, you can find leaders from Spark Funds discussing some emerging topics, and I wish to proceed in and pay attention. We just mentioned that it had been invested 12 million US bucks by a16z, including 2 million secondary shares (old shares). Both founders have cashed out US$2 million before the product came out. This is rare in the VC circle, and I don't believe this is a good sign. However, from the perspective of two extremely popular businesses, Discord and Clubhouse, after the epidemic, there is still a lot of room in the voice social and video fields. Lively voice: Spark Capital committed to 2 new companies in June, and the remaining 4 companies are fresh rounds of previous investment. One of the newly invested companies is called Teooh, which is a bit like the Sims 3D avatar. It could socialize, hold meetings, or hold workshops, reside podcasts or remote control team building. There are several consumer scenarios. Spark Funds casts a seed circular. Image resource: teooh.com Louis: Considering its web site now is quite "fun". It has made a 3D animation model for everyone, and the animation level is quite rough. But in the beta stage of the product, we can't use its current design to predict its future development. In case you are beginning to consider the prototypes of Google or Facebook, you may find it inexplicable. Maybe after a year or two, this type of product could have a qualitative leap. Lively voice: Another company that Spark Capital committed to in June is Tatch, whose function is to monitor sleep quality. This company was established in 2017. The form is a small patch like a plaster which can be connected to your body to monitor sleep high quality in eight various dimensions, including breathing and switching over during sleep. In the future, there may be cooperation with doctors. There are various such companies. Why do Spark Capital spend money on this company? Image supply: tatchhealth.com Louis: There are many people in this industry, including Apple. Apple also lately introduced a sleep monitoring function. Spark Capital recently committed to a company, that i think is quite interesting, called Quaestor. It is a SaaS item that connects investors and founders. On the main one hand, it helps investors manage the business they spend money on, and alternatively, it helps entrepreneurs manage investor relations. The management of most VC organizations is in fact very "primitive", and everyone uses Excel and E-mail. The founder of the product can be a VC background, and one of them was something manager at Carta before. Lively voice: Carta can be a particularly interesting product. Essentially, during the past two years, everyone has used it to communicate with investors about the stock situation. Louis: Indeed, Carta basically achieved the monopoly of this type. Carta is really a SaaS software managed by way of a startup company's shares. Start-up companies need to open choice pools for workers and manage shares for traders. This software program can do 409A valuation. You can even trade shares on it. Equity dealings in the principal market supply the impact of a secondary market. So Carta's item supervisor was dug out to accomplish Quaestor, which is reasonable. Image source: Quaestor Quaestor's products presently do not directly cope with equity dealings. At the beginning, they could still start from the perspectives of CRM, data collection, and data management, rather than directly starting finance. Lively voice: Quaestor's main function is to see how very much money is in the account of the invested company, quarterly earnings, etc. Whether it's for entrepreneurs or traders, this is actually very challenging to manage. How to talk about these data regularly without leaking the data is still very complicated. If this piece can be achieved, it'll be a good market segment. The founder's judgment on the problem of the VC industry Louis: Both main companions of Spark Funds are usually Bijan and Nabeel. Bijan may be the founder of Spark Funds in Boston, and Nabeel is really a partner in the San Francisco office, both with an excellent investment history. Each of them also have a podcast, Hallway Chat. In the latest episode, they talked about the development trend of the VC sector this year. Image source: Apple company Podcast Weighed against the household VC sector, Silicon Valley seems "lazy". It feels as though half a year is on christmas every calendar year. There are always a group of holidays beginning with Halloween, Thanksgiving, Xmas and New 12 months. There are basically no people in the last two months Worked. Because these VCs may also be bigwigs, they are not young and their children are older. In summer time, the kids have summer holiday, and they went again during the past two months. Therefore, the overall US VC sector feels very lazy. When the epidemic broke out, it experienced that individuals were not working. Bijan of Spark Funds also asked Nabeel, how can you think the overall purchase of VC changes this year. Nabeel's thinking is not exactly like everybody else. He thinks VC will undoubtedly be increasing this year. Companion, Nabeel Hyatt Spark Capital He said that whenever the epidemic simply started, everyone started to panic. After therefore a long time of VC work, he felt like a startup business for the first time. Following the fall in the US secondary market place, it rebounded strongly, which lots of people did not expect, and it also gave the primary market a enhance. Early investment may not have been affected an excessive amount of, however the growth stage is certainly picking up. It is a boost from the secondary market, and the panic provides gradually stabilized. Nabeel also mentioned that it might not be possible to talk to the founder face-to-face when making investments, so it is often necessary to make more decisive decisions. One pattern they notice is that good startups are becoming more popular. Why Clubhouse can be rushed to vote by the two top VC companies, Benchmark and a16z before the product release, and finally won by a16z, is because of the higher price. Therefore Nabeel believes that this year's VC industry scenario might not decline. But Bijan stated that previously two years in Silicon Valley, everyone feels that bubbles must exist, especially in the technologies industry. In 2019, the bubble in fact existed. So in 2020, if the VC market is still in an upward craze, both of them think it is a far more dangerous signal. Recommended reading Chinese giants retreat overseas. In 2020, overseas dating giants are embracing changes and digging into the wants of owners. Dig An app isn't plenty of. The e-commerce economy is made on Facebook. What would a country look like? The number of confirmed cases is second on earth. What opportunities does the double-edged sword of the epidemic provide to Brazil? Business Cooperation Cassie | Line: 18506490569 Media consultation Ares | Line: 18060664421 Developer docking Liu Yanting | Range: 18850230356 Long press the picture to scan the code Sign up for the Beluga community

#bitcoin price #bitcoin news #ethereum games #crypto mining game #top crypto games

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