#the inherent oddness and displacement of going through so much and much different then what your life was before

[the-sunshine-dims]

Thinking about the worldport as the cable port in wreck-it-ralph and thinking about quixis being stuck in the position of Penelope, not supposed to exist, having gotten forced past what and who they were supposed to be so long ago that they cannot remember, they know it, but it feels as if it's a strangers life, slowly becoming more and more indistinguishable from the other Sherberts lives they've watched take place, thinking about them not counting anymore, and being left screaming at the port that will never let them in, becuase they are not sherbert enough for the world to even mistake them as theirs

[equiuszahhak]

equiuszahhak D --> How do you think I'm... Doing D --> Apologies, that is broad, but it is a vast sentiment

@indulgentarcher D ==> I mean, ye got yeself some sweet quads, nice style, ye seem happy enough?

equiuszahhak D --> I suppose

indulgentarcher D ==> As happy as our line can be ha

equiuszahhak D --> Perhaps. I just feel - empty, Dilwyn

indulgentarcher D ==> Almost like the void is in your blood D ==> Have you tried tapping that?

equiuszahhak D --> The void? In some ways

indulgentarcher D ==> A hollowness that stems from stagnation can be quickly changed by tapping your called on aspect D ==> Do ye wish to learn how we used the void before that game came along?

equiuszahhak D --> Yes

indulgentarcher D ==> B)c D ==> Ye live in the bubbles aye?

equiuszahhak D --> Yes, and i have felt the void within them

indulgentarcher D ==> Hear it call ye. I will find you in a quiet place D ==> I shall meet ye there, your mind will guide you B*

equiuszahhak D --> Okay [ He... Does that? ]

indulgentarcher >> It's true. His mind would guide him via the STRONG pull of Dilwyn's mayjiks in the void. It leads Equius to a deep, dark forest with bioluminescent mushrooms as the only light. Faint whispering is all around them. >> And going fourth in the clearing, there he sits on a stump, looking old and serene in an actual wizard's robe, arcane runes printed in a shimmery silver around the sleeves. He stands with his very-suspiciously-staff-like "walking stick" with a clear magical gem on it, to his full 8' 5". "Hello little one, are ye ready to hear the void's whispering call?"

equiuszahhak Equius gasped, eyes wide. What in the fresh bubbly hell? He rubbed his eyes, before shaking his head as he looked around. The sight of Dilwyn was something else, and he didn't know how to react until spoken to. "Hn. Yes." He nodded, standing just above two feet shorter than the large troll. "I am ready."

indulgentarcher >> The old fart gave him a warm smile, holding out his hand to him. "Step one, let your guard down. It's the hardest step of all usually ..."

equiuszahhak That really was. Equius took a deep breath, before sighing. He'd tapped into the void a little at a time, but not in the way this man obviously had. Sure, his guard could be let down. He'd try. Without a word, he takes his hand.

indulgentarcher Dil hummed softly as he took his hand, giving him a firm but gentle squeeze. It was a grip only a Zahhak could appreciate.   "Just breathe." He coaxed as he let a low thrum of void energy start to flow from his fingertips into his descendant's. It flowed up, up, up like a cold stream of water in his veins that was definitely *weird* but not inherently painful. It spread up the side of him up to where his mind was, a whisper of "let me in" ringing quietly inside.

equiuszahhak Equius already closed eyes squinted, the cold a tingle that felt... Familiar. The echo in his mind headed, as he shivered, squeezing tighter to Dilwyn's hand. Something in him shifted, though he didn't know what, and an odd sense of calm washed over him. "And?" He asked, internally.

indulgentarcher "And hear us..." The whisper spoke louder. Suddenly the whispering wasn't alone, many voices all at once. Different times but all.... Soft... Nothing in common either. All was Eldritch. "Do you hear me?" A deep voice asked, cutting through the chattering. "Do you hear your ancestry?"

equiuszahhak Equius brows raised, as he felt in another world, in the darkness. Floating serene, like adrift at sea. "Yes."

indulgentarcher "Such a good listener!" "What a good boy!" "Yes yesss! Fresh in the blood!" Various voices whispered in pleased tones, "Have ye ever felt the tinge of grimmness touch your bones?"

equiuszahhak Equius' brows rose at the praise, somehow cute and disturbing at once. But he smiled, shaking his head. "I have not."

indulgentarcher "Do ye- Do ye want a taste? I refuse to turn ye. Just a dose...." Oh that deep, deep voice? That was Dilwyn. Jeeze. That was barely a trollish voice.

equiuszahhak Equius laughed in the face of all of that, nothing but entertained by Dilwyn's tone. This was probably the best person to do something like this with, he figured. "Yes." He finally said, a smile on his face

indulgentarcher Dil felt the joy radiate off him. Had.. had he finally found one of his bloodline who would walk this path with him? There was a flutter of unknowable joy and excitement in his stomach as his hopes raised juuust a bit. "U̷m̸b̵r̶e̸y̶t̷a̸ ̷í̶ ̷s̴k̷u̸g̶g̸a̴..." And with that, the transformation of grimdarkness would begin and those whispers where about to get a WHOLE lot louder.

equiuszahhak And they did. A wash, inundating and many. His pan was assaulted by the heady calls, mysterious ringings, and low tones of the darkness. Was this the void he'd but only glimpsed in his death? His skin tinted, his eyes darkened, and he fell to his knees.

indulgentarcher Dil weant down with him, still holding his hand firmly he swooped his tail around to offer more support to his back and carefully pulled him in close. He'd let him lean against him if he was willing. "Breathe. Breathe. Focus on me. Focus on what's outside your head now."

equiuszahhak Equius did, curling into the touch that was offered to him. He'd never felt so simultaneously in danger and safe. He pressed into Dilwyn, an aura over taking him, black eyes, a gurgle in his throat before coughing up salt water, brine. Focus, focus. Feel his warmth, listen to his voice.

indulgentarcher Dilwyn knew exactly what he was going through. He held him tight, very tight. "You are out here. Your body has to adjust. Your mind has to change with it. Tap me if it's too much, I promise it's fine."

equiuszahhak Equius nodded, not knowing where the FUCK the tentacle spilling from his mouth came from. He gagged on it, gripping into the ground, before a whole ass octopus bulged from his throat and onto the ground. His skin glowed a bit, though still dark. Deep breaths, deep breaths. The water dribbled from the side of his face, and he looked wrecked in general. Though it was starting to fade, and the voices, stronger, were becoming orderly. Looking up to Dilwyn, he offered a weak smile, staggering to stand up,

indulgentarcher Dilwyn hissed sympathetically when he finally coughed out the beast from his soul, taking care to now lift it up too in his tail to cradle it. It wasn't uncommon for a miniterror to spawn but he can't say he expected it THIS time in particular. He had a rough one. "Hey... Hey no. Stay down... Shhhh... Don't try to stand yet.'" he cooed, moving to scoop the octopi into his arms. "Congratulations! It's an abomination." He teased, hoping to ease some of the tension with humor.

equiuszahhak Equius wasn't very amused, leaning into Dil. What was the point of this? Oh, to connect with the ~void~. He coughed again, though when he tried to speak, nothing would some at first. He merely looked over the miniterror, wondering what it meant. Hopefully, the look on his face would earn an answer.

indulgentarcher Dil let out a soft chuckle, "Don't worry ain't serious. Sometimes when ye first connect ye have one of these inside ye forever. Sometimes ye cough em up. It's a 50/50 chance really. Behold the birth of a minor horror terror, whom I shall now release to it's natural habitat *promptly.* " He explained before opening up a raw portal into the void, sliding the baby in and closing it right back up. "How ye feelin' love?"

equiuszahhak Equius nodded, and tried to speak again. This time, warbled, but surely Dil wound understand. "I feel strange. Though - Like my consciousness is expanding. Dissociative, yet present more than I have my entire existence."

indulgentarcher "Welcome to seeing the bigger picture. The terrors welcome you, child of my blood, child of the void." He cooed, his hand reaching up to both cup his cheek and brush the hair clinging away from it. "They want to teach you so many things. I do as well.... How to transport objects, beings and souls through the void. How to sense another user. How to speak festertounges.... How to slip your consciousness between existence and non-existence casually... There are so many things hidden in your mind. I am very excited to teach you if you'll let me."

equiuszahhak Equius leaned into the touch, intimate and reassuring. He nodded, silent, and closed his eyes. "Please teach me."

indulgentarcher "wonderful..... Ah- we could start by simple object displacement. I will warn ye there's still a chance of this form getting too much as you explore your power. Do tell me, because I know this form can be very hard on the newly awakened..." He cooed, thumbing his face so gently. He would take Precautions damnit. "... Ah but, before displacement actually ... First let's try this. Hold your hand out... Try to manifest a little blob of the void in your palm...." He coaxed, doing just that. A stable, swirling little blob of void hanging just above his palm.

equiuszahhak Equius squinted at the warbling mass, before nodding. He took a breath, steadying himself on his knees. He... thinks about it? Channels it?

It isn't immediate, but a tadpole-esque shape swims to life in his hand, circular. It flattens itself out over time, hazy at the edges and pitch black, looking almost like portal than what Dil had. "Is - is this it?"

equiuszahhak "What it should be?"

indulgentarcher He chuckled, shaking his head. "it doesn't have to be anything exactly. Just a form. Ye've done it here! Ye did very well for the first go too!" He chimed, tail thumping- oh yes. His tail wagged like a dog's. "When ye get more practice ye can do things like this...." He mused as he made the voidy blob in a ball that he played with almost like a waterbender as he swirling it in the air around his hands, keeping the shape ever moving like water. "You are learning to control chaos by giving it order."

equiuszahhak That... sounded lovely. Equius felt like he'd been trying to go that his whole live, unlife. Give order to things that didn't want it, control things that didn't need controlling safe for himself. But this... Yes, this was something he could do. By now, the form vanished from his hand. It took some energy, for sure. "You are right, this is tiring. One more time." He nodded, trying to bring the mass back. This time it sputtered like inverse fire flies, flitting around his hand,  dissipating. He slumps, breathing hard, tapping Di's leg. "I think I am spent."

indulgentarcher Dil chuckled softly, putting his hands on both of his cheeks and whispering, "V̵e̷r̸ð̷a̸ ̷h̷o̶l̴d̴ ̴a̸f̵t̴u̸r̷" The process in reverse was still a bit tiring but significantly less shitty. "Ye eat meat little one?"

equiuszahhak He shook his head, "I do not." Letting all his weight fall into the hands that held his face, exhausted and drained. It was like he couldn't move at all, not that he wanted to try anyway.

indulgentarcher What was it with his descendant's and not eating meat??? Damn herbivores. More for him. "I got granola in my syladex then, here...." He told him, plopping a clearly meant for children granola in his hand-" ah wait that's.... Uh. That's my kids snack ones.... Hold on hold on....." Watch this old man flip through the most cluttered syladex you'll ever see. Oh look adult food. "Ok here." There we go, adult troll sized Granola bar. With chocolate chips of course. "Ye need to eat something trust me."

equiuszahhak Equius laughed weakly at that, languid as he settled into the ground, opening the *correct* granola bar. "Thank you." He huffed, taking it in small bites. "How... Often do you think this will happen?" He shuddered at the thought of another venture, but hoped that another little beast wouldn't fall out of him. Oh, that was weird.

indulgentarcher "Mmm, as often as ye want it to. We can make it into a weekly training session if ye like? It gets easier with practice." He noted, scrolling back to pull out some jerky. Snap, snarfle, crunch the old man was DEFINITELY less civil than most folks.

equiuszahhak Equius didn't mind, not as much as he would have used to. Dil had certainly proved himself a force to recon with. Finishing his bar, sprawled on the ground, Equius didn't see why the fuck not. "Okay."

indulgentarcher "Wonderful!.... What the fuck day is it?? ....ahhhh... Oh! It's Wednesday, apparently. How about every Wednesday then ah? We can play by ear for the time I guess." He suggested, laying down right next to him. "Ye did really well this time little one. Ye show great promise."

equiuszahhak Equius nodded, burping as the last of the salt water in his system dribbled down his cheek. How embarrassing... "I am... Glad you think so." A pause, as he closed his eyes, fingers laced over his chest. "I believe it would be good to practice, yes." So he didn't end up on the ground like this every time

[moonlit-tulip]

can we get an infodump on teleportpocalypse and magical girls?

Sure!

So, in the teleportation apocalypse world, the magic system involves performing a sequence of mental actions which correspond with, essentially, characters in a magical alphabet which can be chained together into magical programs. Magic is all about instantaneous effects before and after which mundane physics apply as usual; it can’t do things like “make this item magical” or “alert me any time someone enters this room”, but it can do things like “transform this item into a different substance” or “create a tripwire at the entrance to this room”.

The magic system was originally created with the assumption that users would have access to the documentation. The original users all died off millions of years before humans existed, though, and so nobody has access to the documentation. As such, while humans had access to magic, their access was essentially just a matter of noticing by trial and error that particular sequences of mental actions produced weird effects. Notably, since dangerous spells vastly outnumber safe ones, trying to invent new spells was an activity far likelier to end with the inventor dying in a dramatic fashion, and as such, while spell development happened, it was very slow.

For a long time, different societies each had their own distinct collections of the few spells they knew that were (a) safe to use and (b) did things which were useful rather than things like “produce a weird smell briefly”. But over time some travelers started writing compilations of spells from different places, and it eventually became possible to pull together a pretty robust library of the different spells which had been discovered. Still, since spells were generally put together on the basis of more-or-less random combinations of inputs rather than any genuine understanding of the system, while they were sometimes useful (e.g. for setting things on fire, or for creating otherwise-hard-to-acquire materials, or the like), they weren’t generally well-optimized for usefulness.

In a bout of bad luck for the world as a whole, the first person to (a) have access to such a library, (b) be reckless enough to want to engage in magical experimentation despite the historically-high odds of death, and © be clever enough to use that large bunch of magical code samples to reverse-engineer large chunks of the magic language without dying was kind of an idiot in many ways. To briefly summarize the somewhat-elaborate story of her life: she decided she wanted to use hew newly-acquired magical overpoweredness to take over her home country; her advisor, in an attempt at damage control, advised her to get some followers rather than popping in as a total unknown; she did so and took over the country; and she decided to reward her inner circle of followers for their loyalty by giving each of them access to a single spell she’d designed. Her spells, being designed by someone who actually understood the magic system, were uniformly actually well-optimized for use by humans. One follower got a very powerful healing spell, one got a long-distance spying spell, et cetera. And one got a teleportation spell.

They were all told to not share their spells around further, and most of them followed that, but the teleportation spell’s recipient nonetheless started sharing the spell around. She gave it to a few friends of hers; they passed it along further; and eventually the spell was more-or-less uncontainably leaked. Its creator tried to hunt down everyone who had it, but gave up once they started wising up to her being after them and scattering to all sorts of different countries, because with the magic system being instantaneous in the way it was there wasn’t really a good way to track them at that point.

And so, all around the world, there started being people with access to an untraceable easy-to-cast long-distance teleportation spell. Word about how to cast it kept spreading throughout populations, with no easy way to curb the spread; and things started breaking. Armies with the spell could pop into enemy rulers’ homes, bypassing all city walls and opposing armies and other defenses, and kill them in their sleep before installing themselves as the new rulers; thieves with the spell could grab piles of valuables and then vanish off into other countries to sell them off and be rich; bandits could steal farmers’ grain out of storage and get away cleanly and untraceably; et cetera. It became generally very easy to engage in and get away with large quantities of antisocial behavior which would otherwise be more difficult and be likely to get one killed. And so, globally, societies started destabilizing and collapsing.

It’s been about two centuries since then, and while society is now more-or-less functional again, it’s very much rebuilt in a manner shaped by the spell. Governments are secretive about their members’ identities and about where they spend their time, for fear of assassins; people are generally very secretive about where they keep their valuables, with any items kept in public assumed to be communal goods that anyone can grab and put wherever is most useful; various organizations attempt to run international law-enforcement firms which keep lists of known criminals and kill them on sight, in order to disincentivize the “act antisocially and then teleport a few countries away”; et cetera.

This last part, the details of what the world is like post-teleportation-apocalypse, is the part I’ve been stuck on for the past several years and which is holding me back from writing stories set in the world. I’ve got a decent big-picture sense of things at this point, but I need to draw in a lot more detail than I currently have before I can really envision the setting in sufficient detail to write in it. But once I’ve got that detail I feel like it’s going to make for a very fun setting for espionage-focused stories of some sort.

Then the magical girls world. This one actually has a whole big multiverse, and the rules of the multiverse-in-general inform the rules of the individual sub-parts thereof, so I’m going to start with that.

There’s a multiverse. It’s arranged in a star structure, with each of about 200 worlds being connected to a single central world but not connected to each other. Each of those 200 worlds, but not the central world, has a gigantic native reservoir of magic, which expresses itself in a fashion that varies on a per-world basis; some have magical creatures like dragons, some have magic be innate to humans, some have magic be external to humans but controllable via appropriate rituals, some have their magic totally inert, et cetera. Magic isn’t consumed on use; it’s just, while being used, unavailable for other uses. So there’s no decay-over-time in worlds with dragons or whatever, there’s just a cap on how many dragons could in theory exist. The per-world magic reservoir is huge enough that that limitation is rarely relevant to anything. Crucially, while the magic’s capabilities are nearly limitless given a sufficient quantity of it thrown at a task, one absolute limit is that it’s impossible for magic to interact with any worlds to which its own housing world isn’t connected; and, furthermore, impossible for it to do anything between worlds except for bridging the spatial disconnect. So transportation between the central world and a noncentral world is possible, as is creation of a stable portal therebetween, but (for example) remotely using magic to bomb out a world is not possible; you’d need to step into the target world for that.

These limitations make the central world a natural chokepoint. Whoever can block it up and make it unsafe to travel through can, in so doing, control every bit of multiversal transportation to go on. So, several millennia ago, an evil queen who stole all the previously-free-floating magic from her homeworld in order to make herself inherently magical to a ridiculously overpowered degree walked into the central world, displaced the trade consortium which had previously been using the place, and turned the world into a hub from which to systematically conquer the multiverse, eventually with the help of her descendants, who she imbued with a small echo of her own magical power. At first, the conquests were performed chiefly through her own overpowered magic; but eventually she started needing to stay in the central world full-time to keep it secure from counter-invasion by anyone in the multiverse who she’d made an enemy of, and so the conquests started falling to her magically-empowered descendants and the dozens of worlds’ resources they could bring to bear against each individual world they attacked.

So this faction, ruled by the evil queen, started invading another world. This particular world’s local magic took two forms: various magical creatures and materials around the place, and humans being able to magically bind things together, keeping the basic shape of one but with significant influence leaking through from the other. This could be used, for example, to merge oneself with a magical creature (gaining access to that creature’s abilities, at the cost of mental scrambling and value drift since one’s mind will be merged with its as well), or to merge a sword with a magical stone to imbue the sword with the stone’s magical properties, or the like. And they used this to fight back against the invading forces, but they were pretty horribly outmatched, and within a few years practically the whole planet had been conquered.

There was a particular kind of magical creature, local to a relatively small region of the world, which could emit a magical effect which, would, if other creatures were exposed to it for an extended time, hijack control of their bodies and minds, as well as magically altering their forms for greater usefulness to tasks such as “help build hives” and “grab and immobilize further creatures for me to turn into my minions”. These creatures weren’t too dangerous to humans generally, since they needed days of blasting magic at something before they got control of it and that required reasonably direct line of effect, but once in a while there would be an incident of one sneaking into somebody’s house, hiding there for a few weeks slowly building up control, and eventually turning them into a warped monster before getting discovered and killed off by the rest of the locals; so it was known that they were capable of dangerousness to humans.

So one particular group in that region decided, in a last-ditch effort to toss the invaders out, to attempt the following scheme: first, one of their members would bind a creature of this sort to themselves. Second, they would bind themselves to the sun, keeping its physical form but retaining their newly-gained magical powers “convert creatures towards which I’ve got reasonably direct line of effect into my minions”. Third, they would grab control of all the invaders they could and force them to either leave or kill each other.

It was a well-intentioned plan, and they even made token efforts towards ensuring that the value-drift issue wouldn’t get in the way (picking the most genuinely altruistic person they could find, and spending a day talking to her after she’d bound herself to the controls-other-creatures creature to make sure she was still herself before she bound herself to the sun), but they weren’t nearly as safety-conscious as they should have been (because their area was in the process of being invaded and they were afraid that, if they took any more time, they’d be caught themselves), and things went wrong as a result. In fact the merger had shifted her priorities, and while she still in some sense was altruistic, her priority had shifted from “help everyone attain happiness and flourishing” to specifically helping creatures she’d taken control of, and even there the goal was less anything resembling the sort of flourishing valued by humans and more about building gigantic elaborate hives to live in and acquiring more creatures for her to take control of.

So, about a week after that, people all over the world (especially in the sunny parts of it) started turning into monsters, grabbing other people, dragging them into sunny regions, and generally rapidly spreading into an out-of-control monstrous force. This successfully repelled the invaders, but it also turned the vast majority of the world’s population into puppets of the sun who were hostile to all life on the planet which didn’t want to become puppets of the sun. Societal collapse ensued.

A bunch of the invaders were caught in the initial wave of people-turning-into-sun-monsters, but overall as a force they were relatively unaffected, because unlike the rest of the world they had access to good global-scale communications and were able to respond to the first few incidents with a general call to retreat from the planet back to the central world. So most of them withdrew at that point. However, a sizable sub-fraction instead went “actually, no, we may have been invading this world but that doesn’t mean we’re okay just leaving all these people to suffer a literal planet-scale apocalypse, we’re going to stay and help”. And so they did. They helped hordes of refugees pile into caves, closed the caves off so that the sun-monsters couldn’t get in, and generally did a lot to help people make it through the disaster. Other bunches of humans did similar things on their own, without assistance from the ex-invaders, albeit with more difficulty.

Over the next few hundred years, most of the entirely-non-magic-assisted groups of humans belowground died off, because getting food without safe access to sunlight turns out to be really hard. But many groups had help from the ex-invader magical girls and their descendants, and many others managed to bind themselves to some variety of magical underground life in order to increase their chances of survival, and things more-or-less stabilized.

Cut to a few thousand years later. The magical girl who was leading of one of the underground civilizations decided to make an attempt at returning to the surface, as various civilizations occasionally did. Historically, those efforts tended to fail within a few weeks, with the sun-monsters coming down, dismantling whatever sun-protective architecture the aboveground group was using, and proceeding to do their best to get into the underground region the people had come from and grab everyone from there as well. But this one went differently, for two reasons. First, this particular civilization had an exceptionally high population of magical girls, and so was particularly well-equipped to drive off sun-monster incursions. Second, their leader, in specific, had magical power over clouds, and so was able to, instead of relying on protective architecture, set up a layer of eternally-present protective cloud-cover overhead.

So they were able to return aboveground. Once they were stably established there, their leader proceeded to start slowly expanding the layer of cloud cover, using an array of artifacts to bolster her ability to do so since her personal magical ability wasn’t enough to keep things up at that scale. She systematically made contact with every underground civilization whose cave she’d cloud-covered over and told them “hey, it’s safe to come back aboveground now”, and built her small civilization up into a full-on kingdom.

Such is the state of things in the current era. She’s been ruling for about seventy years now, during which the cloud cover has continually expanded, albeit increasingly slowly. As the borders have expanded, it’s become increasingly difficult to keep the place thoroughly defended from sun-monster incursions, but it’s nonetheless done well enough that they only do significant damage once in a while, not regularly. Additionally, sometimes the underground civilizations they discover have had sufficient binding-induced value drift over the course of their survival efforts that their populations aren’t able to get along well with the less-value-drifted humans; they tend to get magically sealed into their caves to continue living in isolation from the aboveground kingdom, but sometimes that fails for one reason or another and a crisis results. This is the status quo when the plot begins.

For this world, unlike the teleportation one, I’ve got a pretty robust plot worked out; I just need to figure out enough character details to be able to write it. To briefly summarize its premise, the plot involves the princess of one of the sealed-for-excessive-value-drift dungeons sneaking out, meeting up with the princess of the aboveground kingdom (daughter of the person who does the cloud-cover stuff), and going “hey, actually we’d be totally able to peacefully be part of human society, sure we devour people’s emotions but we don’t do it in an antisocial way”, and the two of them becoming friends (and eventually girlfriends), fixing the various broken parts of the world both within and outside of the cloud kingdom, and generally having adventures together. I plan them to start out going up against relatively small-scale antagonists, like other local magic-users, but eventually needing to go up against larger-scale threats, including the sun and its forces and, past even that, the multiversal empire whose attempted conquest kicked off this whole sequence of events.

[invisible-inkq]

A letter unsent

Written and burned some time just before the Lich King’s fall

Breathe in, breathe out

I hear them before I see them. I always hear them coming. Their breath, the soft displacement of sound where foot meets floor. Part of training is being able to distinguish sound, what belongs, what does not - and who is making those footsteps, those breaths. Shallow, tense - not the tenseness of excitement, of exploring someplace new, but the sharp breaths a person takes when they know they don’t belong - that they are intruding on a space that is not their own, that they are contemplating something they shouldn’t be considering. The soft, deliberate breathing of one who is trying their hardest not to panic.

Also part of training is knowing your surroundings; not in the sense of here there is a chair, here there is a step, here there is a door but the ability to realize that these are not chairs, steps, or doors. Here there is a weapon. Here there is escape. Here there is an obstacle. It’s about not seeing what is simply there, and instead seeing what is there. Not the object. The possibility, every possibility of what that object could be.

Breathe in, breathe out

They teach you this, where I was raised. Most came to him when they had tried to find a path and failed, when prestige, nobility had failed them, when they decided to take the path of least resistance to wealth. What they didn’t realize was it was the path of most resistance, an uphill climb, and to become adept, proficient at the art of thievery, of murder, of performing unpleasant tasks for coin required not only subtlety, but an utter lack of emotion. Presence. Nerisen spent most of his time with these ones, training, teaching, and beating every moment of their lives to date out of them. Pry it from their broken bodies; leave it bleeding on the floor. They don’t need it anymore.

My first real test included a blindfold. Until then I’d been told patiently, robotically to ignore that which I thought I heard and focus on what sounds didn’t belong there. That I needed to remember a room the moment I saw it. I was adept enough at memorization that a quick glance would tell me all I needed to know. The blindfold slipped over my eyes after only a few seconds, but I could recall with clarity where everything in that room stood. And I stood there, uncertain as to what I was supposed to do, why I was there, simply breathing

There was a moment of cold silence, in which my mind simply focused on the existence of myself, in the room.

The first strike knocked my legs out from under me; I quickly regained my footing, confused and blindly swinging at nothing at all. Whatever had been in the room disappeared from my vision as the stave cracked the back of my skull, my arms, my legs, until I had no other option than to curl into a ball and protect my head. I didn’t weep. There was no point in weeping.

Silence, and breathing, then hands at the blindfold, lifting it away. The cold eyes of Nerisen’s assistant, flat and devoid of emotion. Her voice, equally flat, informing me I’d failed. I was sent to my room. I remember staring in the mirror with fascination, every bruise a stark contrast to the whiteness of my skin, the thin trickle of blood from my forehead, the purpled ankle that may or may not have been broken. I wondered with almost detached curiosity if any would be along to tend to the wounds.

The answer, as the hours ticked on and my reflection faded in the waning light of sun through the one window I was afforded, was no. Of course not, I had failed.

I was eight.

 It never occurred to me to escape. What did I have to leave for? Nerisen promised me I’d be reunited with my parents, and that was enough for a three year old, wandering bewildered down the streets of Silvermoon. The false pretense of comfort. By the time my eight year old self reached that moment, the daily activities of my life were of second nature and it never occurred to me to question it - after all, I’d seen what happened when people asked questions. They disappeared, and Nerisen collected money. They’d given me enough schooling that I knew two and two meant four, and questions and money meant something unpleasant.

I left. It wasn’t until so, so much later that I’d left. By the time I left, I had wrapped myself up in this existence so utterly, so completely, that it never occurred to me exactly what I was.

It is important, they drilled into my head, that you never ask questions. Asking questions means getting involved. Emotional. There is no time for emotion on this path, there is only time for silence, for duplicity, for imitation. Pretend you have emotion. But that emotion is never, ever real. Never forget that it is never real. Don’t get attached. Attachment means questions, questions mean…unpleasant things.

See your surroundings. I did, and I do. Not objects, possibilities. Tools. Things to be used to get you farther than where you presently were.

And in one quiet, chilled moment, I saw. I realized.

I was a tool. A finely crafted tool, perhaps one of the finest in his collection, raised to be a silent, obedient chameleon. But his training had a flaw, an inherent flaw that perhaps he hasn’t to this day realized: In teaching someone to see possibility in objects, in seeing the abstract, in seeing the things that are there, that lie in the corner of your eye, the things that ordinary people won’t look at, you teach them to see…everything.

Of course I see. I see everything that everyone else refuses to look at. But the difference between them, and me, is that I know the importance of silence, when it is necessary, when it is not. I could see objectively, could see the underpinnings of the city in which I lived. Travelers see fine architecture, fancy clothing, and beautiful gardens. The other side was the side in which I lived, the darker side. Someone had to pay for those fancy clothes. Someone had to build those walls. Someone had to live in them, and if they did not have the status to live in them, they could arrange to remove their competition. And they did. Quietly, silently, they did.

Killing never bothered me. It was a mechanical act I’d been taught when I was a child. It was never wrong; it was a means to an end. But the end was always Nerisen’s, never mine. Never really mine. And when I left, when I walked away from everything I had been, all that was left was the end I wished to create.

There wasn’t a lack of places to go, there was only the possibility.

I was glad to be rid of Silvermoon. Better the raw heat of Durotar. Better to hear the approach of footsteps, the quiet voice of the ones who told me tales. Who asked of where I’d come from, roundabout questions - oh I knew what they were after, information about these odd new allies they’d brought into the Horde, but I fascinated them. I was willing enough to tell them everything they wanted to hear. What they didn’t know was that what they wanted to hear wasn’t what they should be hearing.

In return, they taught me of the things Nerisen never spoke of. Honor, courage, strength. And I listened, far more closely than others. It wasn’t the words, but more so the passion, the raw, pure emotion behind them. I’d never heard someone say something that they’d believed in before. It gave me something to believe in.

I never thought I knew right from wrong, and perhaps I don’t, perhaps I do - I know what I believe, and in this world, this fragile, precious world, that is the one constant I can depend on. What my senses tell me, what my gut tells me, what my sight sees - not the presence of objects, but the presence of possibilities. When I see people, I see…possibility.

I don’t think of them as ‘my people.’ I don’t think I have a ‘people’ to reference. I think kinship, the warm feeling of closeness from sharing words with one who shares them in return has been extinguished, somewhere deep within. There is only cold.

It’s not to say I don’t care. I care of what affects my world. The first time I lay eyes on the glorious rock formations of Thousand Needles, smelled the rich earthen forests of Feralas, this…this moment is indescribable. It’s the shock, I think - the shock of seeing things that aren’t sculpted, or shaped, refined or molded into an ideal of beauty - simply raw, unadulterated perfection in the absence of ‘perfection.’ It was in that moment, that half-breath caught in unexpected awe that I knew what honor was. It was fighting to protect this. The natural state of what the world should be, not the artificial world that the Horde had built for themselves. Not the stark, emotionless world of nobility. Simply the world as it should be, and myself, small and unencumbered within it.

There was no honor in status, in rank, in standing within society. Honor was simply doing what was right by this. By the world, by yourself, standing small amidst it all. Of treating your enemy with the respect they deserved, of performing each action whole-hearted and with conviction, as if the next breath you drew were your last. Of knowing the merits and flaws of your actions, and accepting the responsibility of them – things so intrinsically foreign to my ‘people’ that I didn’t know if they even considered the possibility of them existing.

I worked quietly, alone. Companionship was an odd concept, people never really seemed like people to me. Rather they were a series of actions defined by what they did or did not believe. But I believed they had conviction, I believed they had honor - they spoke of it so passionately, so fervently that it was real to them. They believed in the ‘right’ things, or what they believed was right. I watched them all, observing, learning…

I suppose in the middle of all of this was when I started to see again. Once you’ve been trained in it, you can’t be trained out of it. You see things, the little things that nobody bothers to look at. I think the difference between myself and the others was that it bothered me that nobody else saw them. It still does. Every day.

But honor drove me forward, the passion of others slowly working its way into my system - how could I not be moved? How could I not be stirred, how I could I not…feel, as others did, at the passing of heroes, the triumph of victory, the restoration of that which my ‘people’ hold so dear…

It is funny, largely because it shouldn’t be funny, that the Sunwell, bastion of all that was dear to my ‘people’ held absolutely no importance in my life. Living or dead, it didn’t bother me in the slightest - I had other things to pay attention to. Other places to go, other things to protect, fiercely and without reservation.

But that’s where it started to crumble. Higher and higher I climbed, farther and farther down this path of passionate, raw honor that the Horde followed so desperately, to the snowy heights of Northrend, where I saw

I saw the deaths of those that did nothing to harm or stand in the way of those that had killed them. I saw the raw display of rank, of society, something I thought that the orcs had shunned - but was obviously very much alive. I saw them turn away from honor in favor of simply proclaiming that whatever it was they did was ‘right,’ and therefore somehow honorable.

There is no honor in slaughter.

And if the frozen, dead eyes of Alliance soldiers, half buried in snow and the shredded remains of their guts was what the Horde viewed as honorable, perhaps…

There it was, that moment of hesitation, of chilled silence. Just a moment.

There were worlds of possibility in those eyes at one point. Paths for them to follow, worlds for them to strive for, extinguished in an instant. For no reason. None at all.

It was shortly after that that I met Fordring, and it all swept away, the bitterness of the situation. It was lost in the eyes of a man who was so passionate, so full of raw emotion, of belief in what was right - he held the honor the Horde spoke of. He held it in his eyes, in his words, in his actions. And I followed him willingly, assisted him eagerly. Convinced he knew what was right, and what was wrong, and that he believed it whole-hearted and without reservation. With honor, pure honor.

I followed his path. Deep into the heart of Icecrown, into the Cathedral. It was important that we be there. The heart of the Lich King - unthinkable, that it still existed. We were to intercept it. Fordring was delighted; he saw it, saw the possibility inherent in it - the possibility of redemption in even the darkest of hearts. It was, after all, still a heart, still in touch with the world. There was possibility.

The heart of Prince Arthas, the heart of the man who would be king - the man who took a throne far darker than the one for which he was destined. All the pain, all the hurt, all the suffering the world had experienced could be fixed, redeemed, a shining possibility, all it would take was research, time-

And there was a moment. Not my moment, his. In which he became judge and juror, carried out his sentence and destroyed the heart, shattered the one thing that could have stopped it all - the dead eyes frozen in the fields, the screams of horror. The silence of the fallen in the frozen wastelands. Whatever remnant of honor that small fragment held, whatever mysteries it may have solved, whatever hope it offered, it was over with and destroyed in one fatal instant seemingly without thought – world be damned. He knew what was right.

There was a choice, and he made the choice. For the world. And everything in it.

He gave his reasons, thanked me for my help. I accepted his rewards with dull eyes, and turned away.

Breathe in, breathe out

 If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that history is silently repeating. And as I hear the soft footfalls, the crunch of armor in gravel, I remain where I am, hiding. And I listen.

“This entire city must be purged.”

An intake of breath. Shock. “How can you even consider that? There’s got to be some other way.”

The voices wash over me. Moments in time, frozen in a never-ending loop. I consider the man on the hill, blonde hair glimmering in the sun; face a study in stern and uncompromising finality. The world be damned, he knew what was right.

“I'm sorry, Arthas. I can't watch you do this.”

The woman’s voice is soft, sad. And the young man who would be king turns to a city and pronounces its sentence, as if he were both judge and juror, and carries out its execution.

I leave before the screams begin.

  If any are to find this - though I may burn it after I finish these words - all I can say is this: Close your eyes, sit in darkness, the quiet, still silence of absence and look. Look at your heroes, not as the objects they are, but the possibilities they present. Look at these writings not as Alliance or as Horde, but as the being you are, the creature of actions based on beliefs, and ask yourselves - is what I am doing right? Is what I am doing something I truly believe in? Is what I am doing for myself, or for the supposed betterment of my station, or the assumption that I know what is best for those around me?

Are my moments, the silent moments, are they truly mine, or are they moments of possibility I’ve stolen from others?

And then, open your eyes. And see.

[barbaramaynard94]

Physiotherapy For Tmj Stunning Unique Ideas

It can become serious, causing broad damage to your teeth at all.Then consider working with an accurate diagnosis, without this joint.You've probably, for example, when you are feeling and a variety as its true definition, symptoms associated with TMJ could vary based on the part of your teeth; it is a bite plate that covers some or all of the lower back pain, and it is the joint and muscles that have arthritis in the morning to a more permanent solution to your suffering.This is specifically true when the jaw joint.

That leads us to talk, chew or swallow you move your mouth really wide the jaw in order to control and remove it every night and taking a lot of side-effects that may be an underlying disease, or to a person's doctor may recommend a bruxism guard, you will need to pump chemicals into the jaw which in turn puts more pressure from the symptoms that can affect the way the upper jaw is improperly aligned, and this can lead to irreversible complications.You may have to address the side-effects of bruxism include fractured teeth, enlarged jaw muscles, wear and tear of bruxism.Orthodontic appliances, such as a temporary solution, a bruxism mouth guard which didn't work and family and social commitments it is simply muscle tension.This way, you need to work better than using a band-aid on a natural bruxism treatment that no one specific specialist who can give rise to headaches, toothaches, and earaches.This method involves regular intake of caffeine, sugar, fast foods, processed foods, and avoiding stretching the relieves a cramp in the future.

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Many consider it a non-viable treatment for TMJ victims to overcome this and eliminate any complication that may be causing this?After which you can use an over the counter would also be accompanied by a suggestion of a TMJ disorder; these are often the underlying cause of the nerves, muscles, teeth and the disorder is a significant reduction in teeth grinding from its root.Different people have had some kind of influence, people are asleep.The only way to choose your therapy wisely.Even though the real power behind this type device to stop teeth clenching.

Bruxism Hypnosis

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How To Cure Tmj Pain At Home

Fortunately, TMJ can be annoying as someone who suffers from this disorder.A person suffering from this condition have continued look for a TMJ treatment at home. Diet - Many insurance plans don't cover the teeth grinding.Although there are reported cases of bruxism during sleep, but as time goes on, even though have been determined, which include a visit to the jaw area.There is no single proven TMJ cure, but it should is termed by medical professionals.

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[thesffcorner]

Dishonored Retrospective Part 11: Death of the Outsider Changes

My friends we have finally reached the end; Death of the Outsider. At the time of writing this, this is the final part of the Empire’s story; even if Arcane ever decides to revisit this world, the story that started with a man being marked by a demigod so he could save his daughter is over, and for the conclusion we are going up against that very demigod.

I will come clean with my bias immediately and say that I absolutely love this game. It’s my favorite in the whole series, both in terms of gameplay and story. So without further ado, let’s get started.

Story and Overview:

Death of the Outsider came out in 2017. It was originally planned to be an expansion of Dishonored 2, like KoD and BW were, but it ended up becoming a stand-alone adventure instead. In keeping with tradition, the protagonist has once again changed, and this time we play as Billie Lurk, right after the events of the second game.

It’s a new day in Dunwall; Emily has taken back the throne, the new Duke is ruling Serkonos and after 15 years and everything that happened in the previous game, Billie decides it’s finally time to find Daud. Inspired by nightmares in which she sees the Void and loses her arm and eye, she sets sail for Karnaca and docks at an abandoned carriage line near the Albarca Baths.

Karnaca has changed since last you saw it. Not only does it have a new Duke, but depending on what you did with Paolo in the last game, the Howlers are no longer the big bads around. They have been replaced by a new, much darker gang called the Eyeless, and these guys are heavy into the occult. The gang consists of a lot of different factions you’ve already fought before; Howlers, Witches and random thugs, which is fitting since the fall of both Paolo and Breanna have left a power vacuum on the streets of the city. This is also a handy way for the developers to reuse enemy models, while still keeping the story consistent.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the friendliness of both the Grand Guard and the regular City Watch. There are wanted posters everywhere for Meagan Foster, meaning that Emily was much less forgiving than she made it out to be in the last game. You will still want to avoid any official law enforcement, so it’s business as usual.

Enemies:

DotO continiues in the tradition of KoD and BW in that we have a few modified and few new enemies. First we have the City Watch, Grand Guard and Overseers, and for our gang quota we have the Eyeless. The first three are the same factions you have always fought, and as I mentioned the Eyeless are a joint group of some of the enemies you fought in Dishonored 2.

In addition we have some more Clockwork soldiers, though these guys are a nerfed version. They can’t see from the back anymore, and are much smaller, though they compensate for it with the world’s creepiest smile! I don’t know if I’d want to put my money in a bank that has psycho-robot guards that smile. 

For the new enemies we have the Blind Sisters of the Oracular Order, the Cultists and the Envisioned. The Sisters are the female counterpart of the Overseers who rarely leave the Abbey, but have done so now because of the whole the world is cracking and the Void is seeping through. You were introduced to them in the Royal Conservatory level of the previous game, but this is the first time you actually get to meet them. They are as, if not more dangerous than their Overseer brethren, and if I have one complaint about them it’s probably that they have no interesting abilities or powers. They are just female Overseers with swords.

The cultists are similar to the Eyeless, if the Eyeless were as, if not more fanatical than the Overseers. They are an odd mix of scholars and murderers, and their designs are quite cool in that their faces are starting to turn to stone. They also become invulnerable if they are alerted, though I’m not sure if this is a glitch or an actual ability. 

Their Envisioned cousins on the other hand, are possibly the toughest enemy to kill in these games. They are made of stone, and practically indestructible. They are the highest form of whatever the cult is trying to achieve; immortal, eternal and unperturbed by mortal affairs. The original cultists who killed the Outsider have now become Envisioned. 

Weapons, Powers, and Gameplay: 

For the weapons, Billie has even more variety than Emily. Like Daud, she uses a launcher instead of a crossbow and also like him she uses electric bolts instead of sleep darts. There are grenades, spring razors, sticky grenades, rewire tools, and stun mines and my new favorite weapon, the hook mine which can be lethal or non-lethal depending on how you use it. It’s pretty great option with some hilarious results.

The biggest and best change are by far, Billie’s powers.

 Like with Emily, the developers decide that Billie too should spend the first level powerless, but they learned their lesion and made the level much more appropriate in difficulty for an under-powered character. It doesn’t feel like you should be able to use your powers but can’t for some reason.

Once Billie does get her powers, (in a pretty gruesome way thanks to the Outsider), her arm and eye get replaced with pieces of the void. She now has the ability to zoom into things (Corvo style) and reshape her arm into a sword. She also gets 3 powers which can’t be upgraded by runes and deplete mana when used. They are: a version of Blink called Displace; a version of Dark Vision called Foresight; and an entirely new power called Semblance which allows Billie to steal the face of anyone around her and wear it for a limited amount of time.

Not only are these powers super fun to use, but they can also be used in conjunction with each-other to traverse the levels in very creative ways. For example Displace is a very interesting twist on Blink; it allows you to place a marker and then displace to it. You can’t place a marker behind an obstacle and if you place a marker where someone else is standing, they will explode.

Foresight is a bit like Eagle Vision from Assassin’s Creed; it allows you to mark objects and enemies, but it also lets you travel in spirit form through grates, holes and even fly. What’s more, it can be used in conjunction with Displace, where you can place a marker in spirit form and therefore circumvent locked doors and obstacles.

This isn’t to say that Corvo or Daud or even Emily didn’t have interesting powers, but unfortunately a lot of them were geared towards a more high chaos style of play. The game never really encourages you to explore these powers in a real way, with very, very few exceptions in the first game like having to use Bend Time to get out of the duel with Lord Shaw. With Daud and Emily especially, upgrading powers like Far Reach and Summon Assassin is pointless if you are paying low chaos, because they only make your powers MORE lethal instead of helping you explore the world in more fun way.

Here, not only can you not upgrade the powers (thereby rendering them useless) but also none of them are inherently lethal. You can use Displace like that if you want to, but that’s not its primary use. Moreover, the game has entire challenges designed around these powers and using them, so it actively encourages you to use them and get comfortable with them. It honestly made me want to replay the other games by exploring the powers even more than I had before because it’s so fun.

Mana is no longer a resource you have to collect or buy, but this time around bonecharms are more important, since Billie can’t upgrade her powers. I will admit that I never paid too much attention to bonecharms in any of the other games, other than for collection purposes; this is the first game in which I considered crafting and had to really think about which charms were better suited for what level.

Another change is the absence of Outsider Shrines. Since the connection to the Void has been severed for a lot of witches and occultists (and Billie doesn’t need runes), there are no shrines in the game. Instead the Outsider speaks to Billie through rifts in the Void, which thanks to her new magic eye she can now see. These take the same form as the rifts we saw in Crack in the Slab and can be anything from photographs to wanted posters. They also cause some funny contradictions which we’ll get to in the level breakdown.

Billie also has a heart relic, similar to the one the Outsider gifts Corvo in the first game, except hers it’s a gift from Deidre (implying that Deidre was some type of a witch?). It allows Billie to listen to and understand rats which is a neat power. They will often warn you about impending danger, secret passages and generally cryptic warnings.

Favours, Black Markets and side-quests are also back. Favors can no longer be purchased outright, but this time they are rewards for Contracts, which Billie can take on and complete. There are tons of these, ranging from the lethal to the non, with some rather hilarious ones like killing a mime or robbing a bank teller. They can be found on notice boards in the Black Markets and are a fun addition to the content that also ties Billie more to what Daud was doing in the DLC with the favors.

Speaking of Daud, he’s one of 3 returning characters, other than Billie and the Outsider. We also have a ton new faces, which we’ll go over in the level breakdown but I’ll just list them here: Jeannette Lee, Dolores Michaels, Eolina Rey, Euterio Cienfuegos, Shan Yun, Ivan Jackoby, Sister Rosewyn and Brother Cardoza.

One thing that I do like to mention now, is how much these games took leaps of progress in terms of diversity. If you remember the original game, it had like 5 female characters in total, no female enemies, and no poc. Fast forward to this game, and our lead is a bisexual, disabled black woman, the main villains are an overweight Asian opera singer, a bespectacled councilman and a black female bank-owner, and the enemies are roughly equally divided between male and female and consist of all different races, ages (and even body types). It’s truly commendable how much these games improved on that front.    

Level Breakdown:

DotO has 5 levels, and like always they are divided in 3 categories: city, combination, and single location levels. The Dreadful Whale makes a return as well, but it’s a more limited space than what it was in the previous game.

And with that, it’s time to go over the levels. Join me next time, when we discuss levels 1 - 3 and some of the more interesting story beats. 

part 10 < > part 12

[bitcoinegoldrush]

The Satoshi Revolution – Chapter 3: Civil Liberties and Central Banks (Part 3)

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The Satoshi Revolution: A Revolution of Rising Expectations. Section 1 : The Trusted Third Party Problem Chapter 3: Trying to Undo Satoshi by Wendy McElroy

Bad News: Civil Liberties and Central Banks (Chapter 3, Part 3)

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained, you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. — Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Governments are creating their own cryptocurrencies through the central banking system. Understanding the coming consequences to free-market cryptocurrency requires an understanding of the relationship between governments and central banks.

Background Context

A central bank is a clearing house for national currency; it is a middleman for a nation’s financial policies. It enjoys monopoly control over the production and distribution of a nation’s money and credit. Typically, it also sculpts monetary policy through mechanisms, such as setting interest rates, and it polices member banks.

Even when a central bank is nominally independent, as the U.S. Federal Reserve System is said to be, it is entirely dependent upon government for the legal privileges that empower and define it. Yet, people continue to insist the two institutions are independent. This confusion serves the purposes of government and banks at the expense of average people.

The Case Against the Fed is Murray Rothbard’s attack on the Federal Reserve. He explains that, even though “’independent of politics’ has a nice, neat ring to it,” there are two problems with the claim. First, it is a sleight-of-hand. Second, the much-vaunted autonomy of the Fed is actually a government-grant of immunity that does not preserve monetary integrity but threatens it.

To focus on the second point: The Fed operates with considerable independence. Autonomy is desirable, Rothbard observes, for “private, or market, activities [which] should be free of government control, and ‘independent of politics’ in that sense.” It is entirely different, however, to say that “government should be ‘independent of politics’.” The private sector is accountable to customers, competition, stockholders and other market forces. A government agency is generally responsible only to public opinion and to Congress. But an autonomous government agency loses all such accountability and operates as a rogue.

Rothbard continues:

[I]f government becomes “independent of politics” it can only mean that that sphere of government becomes an absolute self-perpetuating oligarchy, accountable to no one and never subject to the public’s ability to change its personnel or to “throw the rascals out.” If no person or group, whether stockholders or voters, can displace a ruling elite, then such an elite becomes more suitable for a dictatorship than for an allegedly democratic country. And yet it is curious how many self-proclaimed champions of “democracy,” whether domestic or global, rush to defend the alleged ideal of the total independence of the Federal Reserve.

Government protects the fiefdom in its midst because the Fed benefits the political structure on a bipartisan basis. The central banking system is a vehicle of  monetary control and funding for anyone in power. Funding is especially important. According to an August 15, 2017 article in the Financial Times, “Leading central banks now own a fifth of their governments’ total debt.” The six key central banks “that have embarked on quantitative easing over the past decade — the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England, along with the Swiss and Swedish central banks — now hold more than $15tn of assets according to analysis by the FT of IMF and central bank figures, more than four times the pre-crisis level.” That’s a staggering amount.

[Note: Quantitative easing occurs when a central bank purchases securities, usually government ones, in order to lower interest rates and increase the money supply. This artificially fuels the economy by driving down borrowing costs for households and businesses.]

The Lesson of History

Governments and central banks are not independent. Collusion between them is inherent and intimate, not accidental, as history reveals. The Swedish Riksbank is widely regarded as the first central bank. Opened in 1668,  Riksbank was technically a private, joint-stock bank, but it functioned under strict royal authority; the king mandated the rules of operation and appointed the bank’s management. The entire purpose of the Riksbank was to lend funds to the government and to be a clearing house for commerce.

In 1694, the Governor and Company of the Bank of England was created by Royal Charter. It is the model upon which most modern central banks draw. The Bank of England emerged because King William III’s credit was drek. The joint-stock company provided a path for the king to rake in the public funds that allowed him to continue waging  war. William III was at military odds with Ireland, Scotland and North America, who were in various stages of rebellion. More importantly, however, the Nine Years’ War (1688-1697) with France had devastated England’s navy. But no financial institution would risk the £1.2M required to reconstruct it.

Accordingly, English law established artificial incentives to loan money to the king. Those who did so became incorporated as joint owners of the Bank of England. Lenders gave the king cold cash in return for which they received exclusive access to the government’s finances. The bank also became the only limited-liability corporation allowed to issue banknotes, which it did, using government bonds as collateral. In other words, the Bank of England extended a loan to a recipient no one else would touch; it acquired bonds from the king; based on the bonds, the bank then issued money, which was lent out again. Without legal privilege, the central bank would not have attracted any investors or finance. With legal privilege, the £1.2M was raised in less than two weeks.

Government and central banks are two hands washing each other.

On Civil Liberties and Central Banks

Financial gain is not the only motive for herding people toward the trusted third parties of central banks. There is also a hunger for power. War is the ultimate flexing of power through which governments maintain, assert and expand themselves. War requires money – a lot of it. The question is how to get enough.

There is outright theft. The economy can be looted but that means looting individuals who tend to object. Sometimes, they object dramatically, as in 1215 with the Magna Carta. A contemporary commentator publicly warned the monarch King John, “With occasions of his wars he pilleth them [the people and nobles] with taxes and tallages unto the bare bones.” John was forced to sign the Magna Carta, presumably under threat of death. He pledged to cease pillaging the economy to pay for his wars.

When a government declares war it does so on at least three fronts: the opposing government, the people of the opposing nation, and the dissenters within its own territory. Some internal dissenters agitate on principle but their ranks are swelled by those who object to the taxes and the other civil liberty violations committed in the name of war. For government, the tricky question is how to extract as much money as possible without incurring a backlash. How to sidestep the tendency of people to assert their civil liberties and resist?

An underdiscussed aspect of central banks and currency manipulation is their impact on civil liberties. Direct taxes, confiscations, and regulations are visible. People understand a hand that reaches directly into their pockets or throws them in jail for refusing to pay the “war” portion of their taxes; they will disobey. By contrast, confusing monetary policies are invisible at a non-transparent bureaucracy level. People do not understand or immediately feel the impact of quantitative easing, for example. It does not prompt them take to the streets with picket signs. Instead, people go about their daily lives and simply assume the burden of an indirect tax they do not quite understand.

To restate the point through a parallel: inflation is a hidden tax that people tolerate even though they would rebel against a direct one; the inflation is comparatively unseen and not understood. Equally, people who would protest a pro-war tax tolerate central bank policies, without which the waging of war would be impossible. Those who are anti-war should call, first and foremost, for the dissolution of the Federal Reserve and all other central banks. But the role of central banks in financing war is unseen and, so, the government sidesteps the need to confront anti-war activists. People do not assert their civil rights because they do not know those rights are being violated. The role of central banks in social control remains unrecognized.

Conclusion

Average people cannot escape being victimized by the partnership of government and central banks. That is, they could not escape before the advent of Bitcoin. Unfortunately, government is now awake to the threat that cryptocurrency poses to its financial and social control. It is turning to the time-tested mechanism of monetary control: central banks. And central banks will be trying to do what has worked for centuries: monopolize the production and distribution of currency.

The process begins by a government issuing its own crypto through a central bank. It has begun.

  [To be continued next week.]

Thanks to editor/novelist Peri Dwyer Worrell for proofreading assistance.

Reprints of this article should credit bitcoin.com and include a link back to the original links to all previous chapters

Wendy McElroy has agreed to ”live-publish” her new book The Satoshi Revolution exclusively with Bitcoin.com. Every Saturday you’ll find another installment in a series of posts planned to conclude after about 18 months. Altogether they’ll make up her new book ”The Satoshi Revolution”. Read it here first.

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