#who is based on the last steam engine left of his class

[verypsbfan019]

Ohhhh well, that makes sense... I just didn’t explicitly said he’s autistic in his Character sheet as I did with Henry and Duck (who are also autistic in my AU) xD 

I’m also quite socially awkward and shy just like Dane too! (I’m autistic and OCD)

Also, you probably noticed that Dane doesn’t often look at others to the eyes OR he looks at you in the eyes so much that it seems that he is going to take your soul out!

Sadly, being (undiagnosed) neurodivergent was a traumatic experience for him while growing up, he has some paralelism with Douglas in that sense! Dane has a twin sister named Danna (who worked in the GER while Dane worked in the LNER and eventually in Sodor) and she’s the only person that knows who much Dane suffered because Dane himself doesn´t remember his childhood at all (as a coping mechanism from all those traumatic years)

I will go deeper into Dane’s background story as I keep developing my AU!

How did you notice that my Dane is autistic? I'm very curious👀💚

Well first off, from the Autism Creature post XD and he’s just so awkward and shy and cuz I also act like him and I do believe I have autism too

[feigeroman]

Thomas Headcanons: Ryan

Ryan is specifically GNR #1725 (later BR #69504), built at Glasgow in 1920. Entering service in December of that year, he was intended for suburban passenger services in the north of London. As such, he was allocated to the sheds just north of King’s Cross - more popularly known among railwaymen as Top Shed.

As depots went, the one at King’s Cross was by far the most important on the GNR, and later the LNER. Naturally, the engines based there felt they were the most important engines on the whole railway, and to begin with, Ryan was no exception. Despite not being as big or as important as most of his peers, the prestige of being based at Top Shed went to his smokebox, and he became overconfident and dismissive towards anyone he felt was beneath him.

At some point in 1922, Top Shed played host to the experimental prototype for Gresley’s A1 class. This was of course Gordon, who was staying overnight on his way up north, having been sold to the NWR. Although his stay was brief, Gordon certainly left his mark on the other engines - particularly Ryan, who was just one of the engines he talked with that night. The honour of having such a new and important engine talk to him only served to exacerbate Ryan’s sense of self-importance. As some of his peers put it, anyone would think that Gordon had only spoken to him that night!

Ryan continued to act as high and mighty as ever, but over the next few years, he was subdued by various turns of events - mainly down to the railways’ unique brand of karma. Chief among these events was the arrival of larger, more modern engines at Top Shed, who thought little of the older engines - even though Ryan himself wasn’t that much older.

As a specific example of this, when the first production A1s were allocated to the shed, they were rude and egotistical towards any and all tank engines, regardless of size or duties. A lot of them did mellow out later on, but by then, Ryan had been suitably humbled.

It wasn’t until quite some years later that Ryan was finally brought down to earth after an accident. In one of his moments of pride, he’d failed to hear a notice about track repairs, and thus was totally unprepared for the sound of detonators placed just before the site. Upon hearing the bangs, he went into such a panic that he forgot to keep a good look-out, with the inevitable result that he ran straight into the repair site and came off the rails.

Ryan was of course rescued and repaired after his accident, but as punishment he was taken off passenger trains, and demoted to empty coaching stock movements in and out of King’s Cross. This did the trick as far as his ego was concerned, and it wasn’t until immediately following the end of the War that he was finally allowed back on passenger trains.

Following Nationalization, Ryan lead a strange, unsettled existence. In early 1948, he was reallocated for the first time to Hatfield, just north of London. From here, he helped run a regular commuter service between Hatfield and King’s Cross. That in itself may not sound strange or unsettled, but over the next ten years, Ryan was transferred back and forth between those two sheds seven more times, still working the same service.

The chain was finally broken in 1959, when Ryan was briefly reallocated to Hornsey. This was then followed by a transfer to Peterborough, where Ryan would spend the rest of his BR career.

Ryan became one of the last of the N2s to be withdrawn from BR service, in September 1962. He was sold directly into preservation, and ended up touring the country on various railtours, and at various heritage railways and centres - alternating between these three over the next several years.

Shortly after being preserved, Ryan was repainted into his old GNR green livery. This was due to rules laid down by BR, forbidding the operation of ex-BR engines in any of their liveries - presumably to avoid confusion with stock still in service at the time. These rules were of course relaxed following the 1968 Steam Ban, but one can’t deny the preservation scene got some imaginative liveries as a result!

In the early 1970s, Ryan was given another repaint, this time into what was intended to be BR Experimental Purple. This is in fact closer to an indigo-blue colour, but unfortunately this was misinterpreted by the person responsible for ordering the paint, resulting in the actual shade of purple seen above. Fortunately, Ryan liked it enough to want to keep it, and so the mistake was covered up as being his choice!

In 1986, the NWR began making their final push towards completing the long-awaited extension of the Arlesburgh branch, up the coast to Harwick. However, the work required a lot of motive power, and Sir Topham Hatt had a difficult balancing act on his hands, trying to employ as many engines as possible on the extension without disrupting the rest of the network. This had been an issue since the extension work began a couple of years prior, but now the problem was growing too big to ignore. What was needed was another engine.

Ryan’s owner was duly called, and asked if the NWR could borrow Ryan to help out on the Harwick extension project. His owner was only too happy to agree, saying he’d been having trouble finding places for him to run anyway. Everything was soon arranged, and Ryan made his way to Sodor, under his own steam, from the museum he’d been living at for the past few years.

Although Ryan was intended to work on the extension project, this job had already been given to Thomas by the time he arrived - Thomas having been going through one of his phases of acting like a complete git. As a result, Ryan was instead sent to work on the Ffarquhar branch in Thomas’ absence.

That being said, Ryan was reallocated to the extension work after all, again to fill in for Thomas - this time, after the latter had an accident on the construction site.

Once the extension to Harwick was completed, Ryan ended up staying on the NWR, being reallocated to the sheds at Arlesburgh to help run the newly-extended branch line. Unlike the other engines on the branch line, who tend to mostly handle either passengers or goods, Ryan serves as a mixed-traffic engine, moving from one to another as and when required. Due to being larger and more powerful, he’s also frequently to be found on trains running between the branch line and other parts of the network.

As a side-note, when he’s handling passenger trains, Ryan uses the three ex-BR Mark 1s originally used by Duck prior to the arrival of Alice & Mirabel. Ryan is the first engine since Duck to regularly use this rake, which had previously been kept on standby, and used by any engine who happened to be drafted in to cope with sudden increases in passenger traffic.

Needless to say, Ryan got quite a shock when he eventually reunited with Gordon, and was even more shocked to find that the big engine still remembered him. Both discoveries were made when Ryan spent a few nights based at Tidmouth while he was working on the Ffarquhar branch. Needless to say, the two engines spent quite a lot of time talking about all that’d happened to them since their last encounter.

This did earn Gordon a bit of derision from his peers - he’d spent all these years lording it over the tank engines, and now it turned out he’d been friends with one before he’d even arrived on Sodor!

[partnersatfazbear]

Analysis of The Real Jake (SPOILERS)

I can't decide whether to make this post a stream-of-consciousness style or group it into evidence for x... but since it's easier, I'll just write my thoughts as I go. Although a lot of this is factual ties to, say, FNAF 4, things like relating Margie to Henry are just my own headcanon and you can do with that what you will AKA don't take this all too seriously, but have fun with it. There’s also specific notes about Michael Afton, for those that just want to know what was said regarding him (presumably).

Before I start, please note I've had three hours of sleep in the last... 28 hours? IDK I can't math, especially not on this little sleep. So, there may be errors. I tried to make a note on things I was unsure about, too. 

Note: I wrote this before the Evan=CC theory was all but confirmed. Although I believe this theory from the logbook, I think a lot of these notes are still valid.

Read my notes under the cut:

Margie shares similar physical appearance to Henry: Pg 84 “The window fan blew a lock of her shoulder-length brown hair across her upper lip so it looked like she had a mustache.”

“Mrs. Afton” stand in is mentioned: Pg 86 “...it had been four years since his Mom had died...” (Jake is 9 in the story)

I notice when Scott mentions plaid. Pg 87 “...a green-and-blue plaid plush chair...” I mostly wanted to note this since canonically, Henry had a green plaid shirt.

“William” stand in is mentioned. Pg 89 “And you know he thinks about you [Jake] all the time?” “So, he has to concentrate on what he's doing... ...I don't want him thinking about me and end up shooting himself in the foot or something.” Pg 102 “Yeah, I did. [I spilled some chocolate ice cream] Right on my shirt!” Pg 122 “I did that today! [While playing a DDR like game, breaking a shoelace.]” (Admittedly, I only counted these because I headcanon William is much more of a bumbling fool than he appears. It comes up very often as you can see... although you could write it off as Evan just trying to relate to his kid.)

“William” stand in is mentioned. Pg 92 “...Margie was pretty sure Evan couldn't afford to replace a washer and dryer” and “...Evan, at his rank, could barely afford her” Pg 110 “Gillian's house shared stlying with Evan's, but hers was probably four times bigger.” (Again, I headcanon William and his family is on the low end of middle class, if not lower, in terms of income. Particularly, the house is cramped.)

“Mrs. Afton” stand in is mentioned. Pg 93 “First, Jake's Mom was killed.” Pg 139 “The mom's dead.” (You could infer that she died via something akin to a car crash in the context of the story, however if you reflect it to the games given the commonalities, I like to think of this as confirmation that William murdered her, given the word 'killed' is used.)

Margie records herself on her cell phone. Pg 93 (and on other pages) (Again referencing my headcanon for Henry, in which he records ideas/diaries often. At minimum, Henry is referred to as “Cassette Man” in PizzaSim so... I just thought it could make for an interesting comparison.)

Jake mentions his “friends”. Pg 99 “Patty and Davey... Vic... and the twins... Ellie and Evie... Kyle, Clay, and Garrett” (Also, he isn't mentioned until later, but there's his best friend Brandon, too. I noted these in reference to CC talking about his 'friends', either IRL or the plushies. I assume his IRL friends are the MCI victims. The number doesn't add up though. I really, really wanted to make a connection about the twins, considering Charlie and Sammy are twins, but there wasn't enough evidence to write it off as anything other than a coincidence. Also... Clay, really? We need another double name in this series? Ugh.)

What's your favorite flavor? Chocolate Pg. 102 “What flavor did you get?” “Chocolate. Duh.” (This is a stretch, but it did remind me of Help Wanted's final level in the main game, where you're asked to choose your favorite cake flavor. Although, they're discussing ice cream here.)

Maybe some insight into William's personality? Pg. 103 “You ever do that, Evan?” “What?” “Let off steam.” “Me? No. Steam is pretty much what keeps me going.” (Just more evidence that William is obsessed with his work. You could imply “steam” implies he runs like a machine, but that's stretching a bit.)

Pg. 113 -118 (Jake climbs out of his window to run off to play at the arcade with his friend. Obvious parallel to the child in Midnight Motorist, although it's daytime and no animatronics/fursuits luring him.) There is this, on Pg 121 also. Jake says, “We played all the racing games. I love racing games.”

PURPLE Pg 121 “...did you get a slushie at the arcade? I got one. I got grape. It turned my tongue purple.” “My tongue's purple, too!” “Purple power!” (Uh, do I really need to explain this? I should note that Evan is the one mentioning “grape”. I guess William likes grape flavor and purple.)

'Michael' is mentioned. Sort of a stand in for Michael Afton, but it should be noted that Michael and Evan are brothers in this universe. Pg 126, 127 “Michael...lived in Europe for a few years...” “Michael's a serious dude. He's, well, a little different. He's intense about making money...the way he is about it... can make him seem like he's not human.” “So, he's like a cyborg with bad programming?” Michael has some dialogue: “You must excersize caution. You could get chocolate on my suit, and that would be bad. Very, very bad.” (The very very bad thing is a running joke in the family, which is why this comes up. I don't have a lot to say about it, though. I think Michael [Afton] being obsessed with money seems a bit counter intuitive to how we know him, but who knows? I also want to note that Evan doesn't seem antagonistic towards Michael; in fact, he “hate[s] to ask him for favors”.)

Also, Pg 141 “His [Michael's] flat, gruff voice was unmistakable.” Michael is also the first one to hear his father is dead and informs Margie about it. “I have been notified that Evan's dead.” Pg 142 “She had only met Michael the one time, and she knew the way he processed the world was very different from what was “normal”” Michael also states to Margie: “I've got Evan's will... you're Jake's guardian and he left you the house and some savings. I'm the executor.” Margie also says: “He[Michael]'s a numbers genius, manages money for the wealthy people and has made a killing doing it.” “He's not a bad guy. He just doesn't know how to connect. He doesn't feel the way we do.” (Just more Michael characterization.)

Direct FNAF 4 easter egg references: Pg 128 “...the IV stand lurking in the corner of the room” Pg 129 “...and the line of perscription medication bottles marching across the top of the chest of drawers”

Margie is more than a nanny and possibly in love with Evan: Pg. 139 “She'd come to love Evan, too... like a brother.” Pg 140 “...she was included in the outings, movie nights, game nights, and storytelling time...” Pg 149 “...she wanted Evan to be more than just a boss, and being in his room when he was gone made her feel like a lovelorn stalker.” “Love him like a brother... She snorted. Boy, had she been lying to herself.” Pg 158 “What she was feeling called for a screaming fit or a total mental breakdown.” (Yeah, this is just me reading too much into this for Willry content, haha... But still. I am determined that Margie is a Henry stand-in.)

'I will put you back together' Pg 140 “I'm trying to bring you home whole.” (Evan is discussing “no man left behind” with his son, Jake. I think this is obvious.)

William's home office? Pg. 149 “When he was home, she'd go in and vacuum or put away laundry... ...when he was gone...coming in here felt like an invasion of privacy.” “Evan's room would be her room.” “...I'd feel like I was sleeping in your bed, she thought.” “...the room felt discretely masculine.” “The walls were covered in family photos.” “The shelves were stuffed with fiction... mysteries to classics, nonfiction... how-to books...from rebuilding a car engine to planting a garden.”

FNAF 4 reference. Pg 152 “Outside, a dog barked.” (You can hear a dog barking as ambient noise during nights when playing FNAF 4.)

Other notes:

It happens a lot, but one of the main things in the book is the doll Simon and how Jake talks to it. This is very blatantly a reference to the Golden Freddy Plush (“Psychic Friend Fredbear”). The story confirms it's Jake's father, Evan, talking through it. Although it makes the one scene in FNAF 4 a little wonky (the only scene where we see Purple Guy), I think it's pretty much confirmed that it's William talking to CC now. Obviously, we already suspected this due to Sister Location's “Secret Room”. In this story, Evan says he did it because he wanted to give Jake some hope he would live. Combined with both the IV/medicine bottle easter eggs (in the story and FNAF 4) I think it's plausible to assume that CC was taken home after the Bite of '83 for a period of time before he passed away. I will admit, also, that Evan definetly comes off as a very caring father (in comparison to how we presume William is based on what we've seen of him as a person; although I argued this before on this blog, I don't think William hates his kids. I think he's neglectful, moreso as the story goes on. I think he resents Michael for many reasons but I won't go into that here. I just don't think he's the abusive monster the fanbase interprets him to be—at least not early on.)

The cabinet reminds me a lot of the closets in the novel series. A built in shelf with a doll in it. A doll that represents a child. Considering Margie tends to this doll (see Pg. 130-135), I have to draw more parallels between her and Henry.

The fan is mentioned A LOT. I don't really know why, but I guess we can't help but think of every single FNAF office when it's brought up. Specifically, on Pg. 106, Margie mentions the fan in her room is as loud as a jet engine and the sound made her nervous. Once again, I'm reminded of PizzaSim. Seriously, screw you fan.

The heat is mentioned a lot, too. I know the story takes place in summer, but this did remind me of Pizza Sim.

Pg. 93 “Margie sat down in the faded blue webbed lawn chair that was set up, for reasons she never understood, in front of the shelves by the stairs.” (I noted this because it's specifically called out and I don't know why.)

Margie talks about why she's working for Evan: Pg. 95 “I didn't get the internship I applied for.” I like to think her and Mia (from 1280) were after the same internship. (I may be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure Mia mentioned an internship at the hospital.)

Jake is mentioned to have brown hair, green eyes. His favorite color is green. He also wears green often. I couldn't find anything really interesting about it. It would make more sense as a Puppet reference, tbh (because of the green bracelet (and eyes? I may be remembering wrong) I guess it's also worth noting that Elizabeth has green eyes.

Pg 135 “Are you afraid people will think you're murdering me?” “...I could end you so quickly you'd never make a sound.” (Just an odd conversation between Jake and Margie. Margie is joking here, obviously.) Also, Pg. 136 “I just figured your [Jake's] wires got crossed or your circuits were frying.” (Admittedly, I don't know what to make of this. Could be a reference to Robot-CC, if you believe that or MikeBot [I don't], but more likely just ironic dialogue. It could also reference Jake's future in the Stichwraith?)

Pg 139 “Sometimes, Margie wished she was like one of the robots Jake liked so much.” (Although I can't really compare this to Henry, I did write William with this mindset and thought it was worth mentioning.)

Pg 141+ So, Evan dies overseas (he's a soldier). (I think this could be hinting that William has been springlocked around the time CC passes away. Jake has been home for some time after his diagnosis so we can infer based on that and the easter eggs that CC was brought home to die in peace. At the very least, William's probably very absent during this time. Possibly brought in for questioning but not arrested. I don't know. I feel like there's something to this.)

Pg 154 “Dave's at work.” (Why? Can we not use established names? Aghhh)

Pg 155 “The ambulance arrived at 11:32.” (I don't know why this is stated so outright. I couldn't find a reason, except that a few paragraphs earlier they say it will arrive by noon. I don't know why it's so specific, but I felt like noting it anyway.)

Pg 159 “Five people. Five sets of eyes. And none of them noticed...” (Yeah. We all know how important 5 is in FNAF.)

Three medical personel are mentioned. One at the end is named Nancy [No Last Name Given], but I like to think its a reference to Man in 1280 and we're dealing with Heracles Hospital once more, although it's never said in this story. Speaking of, the only thing that really stood out to me in 1280's story was that a billionare funded the restoration of the hospital. I like to headcanon that was Henry's doing—I imagine him obscessing over overcompensating for his mistakes by giving back in every way possible, even if it isn't directly related to him.

So, this post only took two hours of my life. I hope someone gets some use out of it, be it for my intended Willry purposes or maybe those Michael fans that are curious about it. If you enjoyed this post, let me know. I'd love to write up more of these if I have the time.

I have other write-ups on this blog, too. Just search fnaf theories on my blog page!

[greatworldwar2]

• KMS Bismarck

Bismarck was the first of two Bismarck-class battleships built for Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine. Named after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1936 and launched in February 1939.

The two Bismarck-class battleships were designed in the mid-1930s by the German Kriegsmarine as a counter to French naval expansion, specifically the two Richelieu-class battleships France had started in 1935. Laid down after the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, Bismarck and her sister Tirpitz were nominally within the 35,000-long-ton (36,000 t) limit imposed by the Washington regime that governed battleship construction in the interwar period. The ships secretly exceeded the figure by a wide margin, though before either vessel was completed, the international treaty system had fallen apart following Japan's withdrawal in 1937, allowing signatories to invoke an "escalator clause" that permitted displacements.

Bismarck displaced 41,700 t (41,000 long tons) as built and 50,300 t (49,500 long tons) fully loaded, with an overall length of 251 m (823 ft 6 in), a beam of 36 m (118 ft 1 in) and a maximum draft of 9.9 m (32 ft 6 in). The battleship was Germany's largest warship, and displaced more than any other European battleship, with the exception of HMS Vanguard, commissioned after the end of the war. Bismarck was powered by three Blohm & Voss geared steam turbines and twelve oil-fired Wagner superheated boilers, which developed a total of 148,116 shp (110,450 kW) and yielded a maximum speed of 30.01 knots (55.58 km/h; 34.53 mph) on speed trials. Bismarck was equipped with three FuMO 23 search radar sets, mounted on the forward and stern rangefinders and foretop. The standard crew numbered 103 officers and 1,962 enlisted men.[7] The crew was divided into twelve divisions of between 180 and 220 men. The first six divisions were assigned to the ship's armament, divisions one to four for the main and secondary batteries and five and six manning anti-aircraft guns. The seventh division consisted of specialists, including cooks and carpenters, and the eighth division consisted of ammunition handlers. The radio operators, signalmen, and quartermasters were assigned to the ninth division. The last three divisions were the engine room personnel. When Bismarck left port, fleet staff, prize crews, and war correspondents increased the crew complement to over 2,200 men.

Bismarck was armed with eight 38 cm (15 in) SK C/34 guns arranged in four twin gun turrets: two super-firing turrets forward "Anton" and "Bruno" and two aft "Caesar" and "Dora". Secondary armament consisted of twelve 15 cm (5.9 in) L/55 guns, sixteen 10.5 cm (4.1 in) L/65 and sixteen 3.7 cm (1.5 in) L/83, and twelve 2 cm (0.79 in) anti-aircraft guns. Bismarck also carried four Arado Ar 196 reconnaissance floatplanes in a double hangar amidships and two single hangars abreast the funnel, with a double-ended thwartship catapult. The ship's main belt was 320 mm (12.6 in) thick and was covered by a pair of upper and main armoured decks that were 50 mm (2 in) and 100 to 120 mm (3.9 to 4.7 in) thick, respectively. The 38 cm (15 in) turrets were protected by 360 mm (14.2 in) thick faces and 220 mm (8.7 in) thick sides.

Bismarck was ordered under the name Ersatz Hannover ("Hannover replacement"), a replacement for the old pre-dreadnought SMS Hannover. The contract was awarded to the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, where the keel was laid on July 1st, 1936 at Helgen IX. The ship was launched on February 14th, 1939 and during the elaborate ceremonies was christened by Dorothee von Löwenfeld, granddaughter of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the ship's namesake. Adolf Hitler made the christening speech. Bismarck was commissioned into the fleet on August 24th, 1940 for sea trials, which were conducted in the Baltic. Kapitän zur See Ernst Lindemann took command of the ship at the time of commissioning. On September 15th, 1940, three weeks after commissioning, Bismarck left Hamburg to begin sea trials in Kiel Bay. Sperrbrecher 13 escorted the ship to Arcona on September 28th, and then on to Gotenhafen for trials in the Gulf of Danzig. The ship's power-plant was given a thorough workout; Bismarck made measured-mile and high speed runs. As the ship's stability and manoeuvrability were being tested, a flaw in her design was discovered. When attempting to steer the ship solely through altering propeller revolutions, the crew learned that Bismarck could be kept on course only with great difficulty. Even with the outboard screws running at full power in opposite directions, they generated only a slight turning ability. Bismarck's main battery guns were first test-fired in late November. The tests proved she was a very stable gun platform. Trials lasted until December; Bismarck returned to Hamburg, arriving on the 9th, for minor alterations and the completion of the fitting-out process.

The ship was scheduled to return to Kiel on January 24th, 1941, but a merchant vessel had been sunk in the Kiel Canal and prevented use of the waterway. Severe weather hampered efforts to remove the wreck, and Bismarck was not able to reach Kiel until March. While waiting to reach Kiel, Bismarck hosted Captain Anders Forshell, the Swedish naval attaché to Berlin. He returned to Sweden with a detailed description of the ship, which was subsequently leaked to Britain by pro-British elements in the Swedish Navy. The information provided the Royal Navy with its first full description of the vessel, although it lacked important facts, including top speed, radius of action, and displacement. At 08:45 on March 8th, Bismarck briefly ran aground on the southern shore of the Kiel Canal; she was freed within an hour. The ship reached Kiel the following day, where her crew stocked ammunition, fuel, and other supplies and applied a coat of dazzle paint to camouflage her. British bombers attacked the harbour without success on the 12th.

The Naval High Command (Oberkommando der Marine or OKM), commanded by Admiral Erich Raeder, intended to continue the practice of using heavy ships as surface raiders against Allied merchant traffic in the Atlantic Ocean. The two Scharnhorst-class battleships were based in Brest, France, at the time, having just completed Operation Berlin, a major raid into the Atlantic. Bismarck's sister ship Tirpitz rapidly approached completion. Bismarck and Tirpitz were to sortie from the Baltic and rendezvous with the two Scharnhorst-class ships in the Atlantic; the operation was initially scheduled for around April 25th, 1941. Admiral Günther Lütjens, Flottenchef (Fleet Chief) of the Kriegsmarine, chosen to lead the operation, wished to delay the operation at least until either Scharnhorst or Tirpitz became available, but the OKM decided to proceed with the operation, codenamed Operation Rheinübung, with a force consisting of only Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. At a final meeting with Raeder in Paris on April 26th, Lütjens was encouraged by his commander-in-chief to proceed and he eventually decided that an operation should begin as soon as possible.

On May 5th, 1941, Hitler and Wilhelm Keitel, with a large entourage, arrived to view Bismarck and Tirpitz in Gotenhafen. The men were given an extensive tour of the ships, after which Hitler met with Lütjens to discuss the upcoming mission. On May 16th, Lütjens reported that Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were fully prepared for Operation Rheinübung; he was therefore ordered to proceed with the mission on the evening of the 19th. As part of the operational plans, a group of eighteen supply ships would be positioned to support Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. Four U-boats would be placed along the convoy routes between Halifax and Britain to scout for the raiders. By the start of the operation, Bismarck's crew had increased to 2,221 officers and enlisted men. This included an admiral's staff of nearly 65 and a prize crew of 80 sailors, who could be used to crew transports captured during the mission. At 02:00 on May 19th, Bismarck departed Gotenhafen and made for the Danish straits. The Luftwaffe provided air cover during the voyage out of German waters. At around noon on May 20th, Lindemann informed the ship's crew via loudspeaker of the ship's mission. At approximately the same time, a group of ten or twelve Swedish aircraft flying reconnaissance encountered the German force and reported its composition and heading, though the Germans did not see the Swedes. Code-breakers at Bletchley Park had confirmed that an Atlantic raid was imminent, as they had decrypted reports that Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had taken on prize crews and requested additional navigational charts from headquarters. A pair of Supermarine Spitfires was ordered to search the Norwegian coast for the flotilla.

German aerial reconnaissance confirmed that one aircraft carrier, three battleships, and four cruisers remained at anchor in the main British naval base at Scapa Flow, which confirmed to Lütjens that the British were unaware of his operation. On the evening of May 20th, Bismarck and the rest of the flotilla reached the Norwegian coast. The following morning, radio-intercept officers on board Prinz Eugen picked up a signal ordering British reconnaissance aircraft to search for two battleships and three destroyers northbound off the Norwegian coast. At 7:00 on the 21st, the Germans spotted four unidentified aircraft, which quickly departed. When Bismarck was in Norway, a pair of Bf 109 fighters circled overhead to protect her from British air attacks, but a Spitfire was able to fly directly over the German flotilla at a height of 8,000 m (26,000 ft) and take photos of Bismarck and her escorts. Upon receipt of the information, Admiral John Tovey ordered the battlecruiser HMS Hood, the newly commissioned battleship HMS Prince of Wales, and six destroyers to reinforce the pair of cruisers patrolling the Denmark Strait. The rest of the Home Fleet was placed on high alert in Scapa Flow. Bismarck did not replenish her fuel stores in Norway, as her operational orders did not require her to do so. She had left port 200 t (200 long tons) short of a full load, and had since expended another 1,000 t (980 long tons) on the voyage. At midnight, when the force was in the open sea, heading towards the Arctic Ocean, Raeder disclosed the operation to Hitler, who reluctantly consented to the raid. The three escorting destroyers were detached at 04:14 on May 22nd, while the force steamed off Trondheim. At around 12:00, Lütjens ordered his two ships to turn toward the Denmark Strait to attempt the break-out into the open Atlantic. Upon entering the Strait, both ships activated their FuMO radar detection equipment sets. Around 12:00, the pair had reached a point north of Iceland. Prinz Eugen's radio-intercept team decrypted the radio signals being sent by Suffolk and learned that their location had been reported.

Lütjens gave permission for Prinz Eugen to engage Suffolk, but the captain of the German cruiser could not clearly make out his target and so held fire. Suffolk quickly retreated to a safe distance and shadowed the German ships. At 20:30, the heavy cruiser HMS Norfolk joined Suffolk, but approached the German raiders too closely. Lütjens ordered his ships to engage the British cruiser; Bismarck fired five salvoes, three of which straddled Norfolk and rained shell splinters on her decks. The cruiser laid a smoke screen and fled into a fog bank, ending the brief engagement. At 05:07, hydrophone operators aboard Prinz Eugen detected a pair of unidentified vessels approaching the German formation at a range of 20 nmi (37 km; 23 mi). At 05:45 on May 24th, German lookouts spotted smoke on the horizon; this turned out to be from Hood and Prince of Wales, under the command of Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland. Lütjens ordered his ships' crews to battle stations. By 05:52, the range had fallen to 26,000 m (28,000 yd) and Hood opened fire, followed by Prince of Wales a minute later. Hood engaged Prinz Eugen, which the British thought to be Bismarck, while Prince of Wales fired on Bismarck.

The British ships approached the German ships head on, which permitted them to use only their forward guns; Bismarck and Prinz Eugen could fire full broadsides. Several minutes after opening fire, Holland ordered a 20° turn to port, which would allow his ships to engage with their rear gun turrets. Both German ships concentrated their fire on Hood. Prinz Eugen scored a hit with a high-explosive 20.3 cm (8.0 in) shell; the explosion detonated unrotated projectile ammunition and started a large fire, which was quickly extinguished. Lütjens ordered Prinz Eugen to shift fire and target Prince of Wales, to keep both of his opponents under fire. Within a few minutes, Prinz Eugen scored a pair of hits on the battleship that started a small fire. Lütjens then ordered Prinz Eugen to drop behind Bismarck, so she could continue to monitor the location of Norfolk and Suffolk, which were still 10 to 12 nmi (19 to 22 km; 12 to 14 mi) to the east. At 06:00, Hood was completing the second turn to port when Bismarck's fifth salvo hit. Two of the shells landed short, striking the water close to the ship, but at least one of the 38 cm armour-piercing shells struck Hood and penetrated her thin deck armour. The shell reached Hood's rear ammunition magazine and detonated 112 t (110 long tons) of cordite propellant. The massive explosion broke the back of the ship between the main mast and the rear funnel; the forward section continued to move forward briefly before the in-rushing water caused the bow to rise into the air at a steep angle. The stern also rose as water rushed into the ripped-open compartments. In only eight minutes of firing, Hood had disappeared, taking all but three of her crew of 1,419 men with her. Bismarck then shifted fire to Prince of Wales. The British battleship scored a hit on Bismarck with her sixth salvo, but the German ship found her mark with her first salvo. One of the shells struck the bridge on Prince of Wales, though it did not explode and instead exited the other side, killing everyone in the ship's command centre, save Captain John Leach, the ship's commanding officer, and one other. The two German ships continued to fire upon Prince of Wales, causing serious damage. Guns malfunctioned on the recently commissioned British ship, which still had civilian technicians aboard. Prince of Wales scored three hits on Bismarck in the engagement. The first struck her in the forecastle above the waterline but low enough to allow the crashing waves to enter the hull. The second shell struck below the armoured belt and exploded on contact with the torpedo bulkhead, completely flooding a turbo-generator room and partially flooding an adjacent boiler room. The third shell passed through one of the boats carried aboard the ship and then went through the floatplane catapult without exploding.

At 06:13, Prince of Wales made a 160° turn and laid a smoke screen to cover her withdrawal. The Germans ceased fire as the range widened. Lütjens obeyed operational orders to shun any avoidable engagement with enemy forces that were not protecting a convoy, and the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen headed for the North Atlantic. In the engagement, Bismarck had fired 93 armour-piercing shells and had been hit by three shells in return. After the engagement, Lütjens reported, "Battlecruiser, probably Hood, sunk. Another battleship, King George V or Renown, turned away damaged. Two heavy cruisers maintain contact." At 08:01, he transmitted a damage report and his intentions to OKM, which were to detach Prinz Eugen for commerce raiding and to make for Saint-Nazaire for repairs. Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered all warships in the area to join the pursuit of Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. Tovey's Home Fleet was steaming to intercept the German raiders, but on the morning of May 24th was still over 350 nmi (650 km; 400 mi) away. The Admiralty ordered the light cruisers Manchester, Birmingham, and Arethusa to patrol the Denmark Strait in the event that Lütjens attempted to retrace his route. In all, six battleships and battlecruisers, two aircraft carriers, thirteen cruisers, and twenty-one destroyers were committed to the chase. With the weather worsening, Lütjens attempted to detach Prinz Eugen at 16:40. The cruiser was successfully detached at 18:14. Seeing Bismarck, Prince of Wales fired twelve salvos at Bismarck, which responded with nine salvos, none of which hit. The action diverted British attention and permitted Prinz Eugen to slip away. Although Bismarck had been damaged in the engagement and forced to reduce speed, she was still capable of reaching 27 to 28 knots (50 to 52 km/h; 31 to 32 mph), the maximum speed of Tovey's King George V. Unless Bismarck could be slowed, the British would be unable to prevent her from reaching Saint-Nazaire. Shortly before 16:00 on May 25th, Tovey detached the aircraft carrier Victorious and four light cruisers to shape a course. At 22:00, Victorious launched the strike, which comprised six Fairey Fulmar fighters and nine Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers. Bismarck also used her main and secondary batteries to fire at maximum depression to create giant splashes in the paths of the incoming torpedo bombers. None of the attacking aircraft were shot down. Bismarck evaded eight of the torpedoes launched at her, but the ninth struck amidships on the main armoured belt, throwing one man into a bulkhead and killing him and injuring five others. The explosion also caused minor damage to electrical equipment. The ship suffered more serious damage from manoeuvres to evade the torpedoes: rapid shifts in speed and course loosened collision mats, which increased the flooding from the forward shell hole and eventually forced abandonment of the port number 2 boiler room. This loss of a second boiler, combined with fuel losses and increasing bow trim, forced the ship to slow to 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph).

Shortly after the Swordfish departed from the scene, Bismarck and Prince of Wales engaged in a brief artillery duel. Neither scored a hit. Bismarck's damage control teams resumed work after the short engagement. The sea water that had flooded the number 2 port side boiler threatened to enter the number 4 turbo-generator feedwater system, which would have permitted saltwater to reach the turbines. The saltwater would have damaged the turbine blades and thus greatly reduced the ship's speed. By morning, the danger had passed. As the chase entered open waters, British ships were compelled to zig-zag to avoid German U-boats that might be in the area. At 03:00 on May 25th, Lütjens ordered an increase to maximum speed, which at this point was 28 knots (52 km/h; 32 mph). He then ordered the ship to circle away to the west and then north. This manoeuvre coincided with the period during which his ship was out of radar range; Bismarck successfully broke radar contact and circled back behind her pursuers. The Royal Navy search became frantic, as many of the British ships were low on fuel. Victorious and her escorting cruisers were sent west, other British ships continued to the south and west, and Tovey continued to steam toward the mid-Atlantic. British code-breakers were able to decrypt some of the German signals, including an order to the Luftwaffe to provide support for Bismarck making for Brest. Tovey could now turn his forces toward France to converge in areas through which Bismarck would have to pass. Victorious, Prince of Wales, Suffolk and Repulse were forced to break off the search due to fuel shortage; the only heavy ships remaining apart from Force H were King George V and Rodney, but they were too distant.

HMS Ark Royal's Swordfish were already searching nearby when the Bismarck was found. Several torpedo bombers also located the battleship, about 60 nmi (110 km; 69 mi) away from Ark Royal. Somerville ordered an attack as soon as the Swordfish returned and were rearmed with torpedoes. As a result, the Swordfish, which were armed with torpedoes equipped with new magnetic detonators. Upon returning to Ark Royal, the Swordfish loaded torpedoes equipped with contact detonators. The attack comprised fifteen aircraft and was launched at 19:10. At 20:47, the torpedo bombers began their attack descent through the clouds. The Swordfish then attacked; Bismarck began to turn violently as her anti-aircraft batteries engaged the bombers. One torpedo hit amidships on the port side, just below the bottom edge of the main armour belt. The force of the explosion was largely contained by the underwater protection system and the belt armour but some structural damage caused minor flooding. The second torpedo struck Bismarck in her stern on the port side, near the port rudder shaft. The coupling on the port rudder assembly was badly damaged and the rudder became locked in a 12° turn to port. The explosion also caused much shock damage. The crew eventually managed to repair the starboard rudder but the port rudder remained jammed. With the port rudder jammed, Bismarck was now steaming in a large circle, unable to escape from Tovey's forces. Though fuel shortages had reduced the number of ships available to the British, the battleships King George V and Rodney were still available, along with the heavy cruisers Dorsetshire and Norfolk. Lütjens signalled headquarters at 21:40 on the 26th: "Ship unmanoeuvrable. We will fight to the last shell. Long live the Führer." As darkness fell, Bismarck briefly fired on Sheffield, though the cruiser quickly fled. Sheffield lost contact in the low visibility and Captain Philip Vian's group of five destroyers was ordered to keep contact with Bismarck through the night. The ships encountered Bismarck at 22:38; the battleship quickly engaged them with her main battery. After firing three salvos, she straddled the Polish destroyer ORP Piorun. The destroyer continued to close the range until a near miss at around 12,000 m (39,000 ft) forced her to turn away. Between 05:00 and 06:00, Bismarck's crew attempted to launch one of the Arado 196 float planes to carry away the ship's war diary, footage of the engagement with Hood, and other important documents. As it was not possible to launch the aircraft, it had become a fire hazard, and was pushed overboard.

After daybreak on May 27th, King George V led the attack. Rodney followed off her port quarter; Tovey intended to steam directly at Bismarck until he was about 8 nmi (15 km; 9.2 mi) away. At 08:43, lookouts on King George V spotted her, some 23,000 m (25,000 yd) away. Four minutes later, Rodney's two forward turrets, comprising six 16 in (406 mm) guns, opened fire, then King George V's 14 in (356 mm) guns began firing. Bismarck returned fire at 08:50 with her forward guns; with her second salvo, she straddled Rodney. Thereafter, Bismarck's ability to aim her guns deteriorated as the ship, unable to steer, moved erratically in the heavy seas. As the range fell, the ships' secondary batteries joined the battle. Norfolk and Dorsetshire closed and began firing with their 8 in (203 mm) guns. At 09:02, a 16-inch shell from Rodney struck Bismarck's forward superstructure, killing hundreds of men and severely damaging the two forward turrets. According to survivors, this salvo probably killed Lütjens and the rest of the bridge staff. A second shell from this salvo struck the forward main battery, which was disabled, though it would manage to fire one last salvo at 09:27. Lieutenant von Müllenheim-Rechberg, in the rear control station, took over firing control for the rear turrets. He managed to fire three salvos before a shell destroyed the gun director, disabling his equipment. He gave the order for the guns to fire independently, but by 09:31, all four main battery turrets had been put out of action. One of Bismarck's shells exploded 20 feet off Rodney's bow and damaged her starboard torpedo tube—the closest Bismarck came to a direct hit on her opponents. With the bridge personnel no longer responding, the executive officer CDR Hans Oels took command of the ship from his station at the Damage Control Central. He decided at around 09:30 to abandon and scuttle the ship to prevent Bismarck being boarded by the British, and to allow the crew to abandon ship so as to reduce casualties. Gerhard Junack, the chief engineering officer, ordered his men to set the demolition charges with a 9-minute fuse but the intercom system broke down and he sent a messenger to confirm the order to scuttle the ship. The messenger never returned, so Junack primed the charges and ordered his men to abandon ship. By 10:00, Tovey's two battleships had fired over 700 main battery shells, many at very close range. Overall the four British ships fired more than 2,800 shells at Bismarck, and scored more than 400 hits, but were unable to sink Bismarck by gunfire. The heavy gunfire at virtually point-blank range devastated the superstructure and the sections of the hull that were above the waterline, causing very heavy casualties, but it contributed little to the eventual sinking of the ship.

The scuttling charges detonated around 10:20. By 10:35, the ship had assumed a heavy port list, capsizing slowly and sinking by the stern. At around 10:20, running low on fuel, Tovey ordered the cruiser Dorsetshire to sink Bismarck with torpedoes and ordered his battleships back to port. Dorsetshire fired a pair of torpedoes into Bismarck's starboard side, one of which hit. Dorsetshire then moved around to her port side and fired another torpedo, which also hit. By the time these torpedo attacks took place, the ship was already listing so badly that the deck was partly awash. Bismarck had been reduced to a shambles, aflame from stem to stern. She was slowly settling by the stern from uncontrolled flooding with a 20 degree list to port. Bismarck disappeared beneath the surface at 10:40. Around 400 men were now in the water; Dorsetshire and the destroyer Maori moved in and lowered ropes to pull the survivors aboard. At 11:40, Dorsetshire's captain ordered the rescue effort abandoned after lookouts spotted what they thought was a U-boat. Dorsetshire had rescued 85 men and Maori had picked up 25 by the time they left the scene. A U-boat later reached the survivors and found three men, and a German trawler rescued another two. One of the men picked up by the British died of his wounds the following day. Out of a crew of over 2,200 men, only 114 survived. The wreck of Bismarck was discovered on June 8th, 1989 by Dr. Robert Ballard, the oceanographer responsible for finding RMS Titanic. Bismarck was found to be resting on its keel at a depth of approximately 4,791 m (15,719 ft), about 650 km (400 mi) west of Brest.

[fortitudinem]

THE CREATION OF THE UNITED KINGDOMS OF AURADON

When the small Kingdom of Auradon re-emerges after a decade of being missing and yet, unmissed, there is a lot of confusion all around. The ruler of the Kingdom, Prince Adam, now King Adam, reveals himself to the world once more, exclaiming that he was cursed by an enchantress for ten years to take on the form of a hideous beast, but that the curse has been broken with the power of true love and he can now resume ruling his kingdom.

The curse itself had been woven in such a way as to make people forget that Auradon had ever had a ruler, or to bypass it completely. It had kept it safe, but also relatively undisturbed for over ten years. Adam had a lot of catching up to do, so despite having found his True Love, in the form of a common girl from the nearby village by the name of Belle, they put the wedding on hold until he has a better grip on what it means to be a King.

He takes to it like a duck to water, learning politics and economics with a surprising amount of ease. He sets up trade routes, funds local businesses and starts funnelling money into the local area and forging alliances with nearby kingdoms. Belle is inducted into Adam’s court as Lady Belle and starts learning what it means to be a queen, having never been involved in court before.

Over the next few years, technology begins to spread at an ever-increasing rate. Hot running water is invented and spreads through all the kingdoms and with this, steam is easily harnessed to create the steam engine.

Adam approaches his closest neighbours to propose an alliance, something that could help them all fight back against even the most dangerous foes. He speaks to the King of Verrelac (who is trying to secure a good future for his kingdom for his son Prince Christopher and his new wife Princess Ella), King Stephen of Solaria (who is still very protective of his daughter, Princess Aurora), King and Queen of the Summerlands (the recently integrated kingdoms of Queen Snow and King Florian), Queen Eilonwy of North Riding, King Arthur of Camelot, King Richard of Westerly and Prince Regent Eric of Tirulia. After nearly a year of discussion, they write up an agreement to all operate under King Adam’s banner in exchange for better trade deals, better protections and more political powers. Tirulia is the last to sign, but with the presence of a new threat- the sea witch Morgana, and their daughter’s safety on the line, it is seen as the best choice to make. Adam brings the Fairy Godmother into his council and she agrees to help him with his goals.

For a year their prosperity grows, they develop even more technological marvels, first gaslight then electric lighting (after finding out how to harness electricity, aided by magic), better metalsmithing processes. Many factories are built, buildings are climbing higher than ever before, cities are developing rapidly into commercial and economic hubs, highly populated by citizens who are flooding in from villages on the outskirts for the new jobs and opportunities of city life. Automobiles are invented, making travelling easier. This presents Adam with the opportunity to travel to kingdoms outside of his banner-lands and start negotiations afresh. He enters negotiations with King Frederic of Corona and King Hubert of South Riding, Emperor Kuzco of East Riding, Emperor Qui of Northern Wei, The Sultan of Agrabah, Prince Naveen of Maldonia and Queen Anna of Arendelle. These talks take over a year but are also eventually finalised.

Cities are ever expanding in the heart of what will be Auradon. Places like London and Auradon Central are thriving metropolises and people are flocking to them. Businesses are booming, Auradon is more prosperous than ever. Add to that the invention of a mundane way to talk across long distances so that everyone can access it and not just those with magic, otherwise known as the internet, and the development of computers, based around the idea of magic mirrors but smarter and much less magic. Plane technology allows for transportation across even longer distances and over otherwise dangerous terrain.

This allows Adam to progress even further. He speaks to Simba, Tarzan and Louie in the deep jungles, King Edward of Faraway, King Fergus of The Borderlands and Chief Tui of Motunui, they all agree to sign up under his protections. With the rest of the Kingdoms now behind him, Adam can push his final, slightly more difficult goals, speaking to the gods that rule Olympia and the elemental spirits of Schwartzwald. He creates a treaty with the gods, allowing him control over the mortals in their lands. The elemental representative of Schwartzwald, Elsa of Arendelle agrees; driven by the strong desire to protect the people of her enchanted land (and with Arendelle already signed on and a promise of being left relatively alone, there seems to be few reasons to refuse).

The final stage of his uniting of the kingdoms is to remove the magic that cloaks Neverland, placing it firmly within the real world. He attempts to do the same for Wonderland but finds this exceedingly difficult, instead managing to convince many of its residents to instead simply retire to Auradon. Neverland enters into the agreement with Auradon, taking its place amongst the kingdoms. Atlantica is also drawn into the treaty.

With the entirety of the known world having agreed, King Adam finally consents to marry Lady Belle, who becomes Queen Belle. Each Kingdom is invited to a public vote for High King and Adam wins with an 85% majority. All the kingdoms sign a fresh new treaty document, declaring the unification of their kingdoms under one banner and one King. The calendars are reset, to herald a new age of union, years become marked as AU or ante unionem for anything from before or as IB or imperium bestia for this point onwards. 

Adam unveils his master plan for getting rid of threats to the kingdom, a prison off the coast, where human criminals and magical villains alike can be placed as there will be a magic-nullifying barrier around it. The idea of a prison to store their most dangerous enemies that can safely contain them, particularly one that is being marketed as having no cost to them, is seen as a good thing and The Isle of The Lost is created.

Adam enters into arrangements with the gods of Olympia, taking away Hades to lock him on the Isle for the crimes he committed against Zeus, and with Hades removed from the underworld, all of the previously dead villains are brought back to life to be placed under lock and key on the Isle. This is met with mixed opinions, but Adam smooths over any worries.

He passes the Recycling Act through his royal council, a law that will send unused food from Auradon to the Isle, saving on food costs and preventing waste, as well as providing a place to recycle old furniture for use, again reducing the costs. The council agrees and the goblin-barge system is altered to take waste from Auradon. Citizens are encouraged to send any surplus of goods (food, clothes, furniture) to drop-off points are set up for the Isle. This is marked as doing a good deed and so everyone contributes.

He begins renovations on a disused castle in Auradon, to turn it into a private preparatory school for the upper echelons of Auradonian society. Fairy Godmother is named headmistress and the class schedules and curriculum passes through both Adam and Fairy Godmother before being approved. They have blanket control over what the students will be learning.

However, something unexpected happens. A rebellion starts, the villains on the Isle are not content with being locked in a prison. Outside the barrier, there are those still sympathetic to the villains and a group of witches, including the daughter of one Madam Mim, decide to free the villains. Working together, they manage to punch a hole in the barrier, allowing some of the villains to escape. Maleficent leads them to Auradon and they fight against the royals, with the intention of overpowering them, dethroning them and enslaving them. However, they are beaten back by Fairy Godmother and Adam’s forces and they are transported back to the Isle. The barrier is immediately strengthened, and the people are told it was a magical mishap, rather than given the whole truth about the barrier having previously been vulnerable to synchronised magical attacks. Yen Sid volunteers to go to the Isle and make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.

Following this attempted rebellion, Adam declares that magic should no longer be used as a quick solution. It should not be used at all where possible, as most functions of magic have now been replaced with a suitable technology. He encourages all Good Citizens of Auradon to abandon their magic/magical devices/magical natures and instead embrace life at a level more challenging, but also more rewarding.

The Offscourings Act is passed, declaring that as the villains have thrown their charity back in their face with their attempted takeover, the food they are being sent will no longer be in the form of unused and unopened goods, but in the form of scraps. Citizens are no longer encouraged to send whole packets of food but are instead given special recycling bins, the contents of which are collected and sent to the Isle.

Not long after this, Queen Belle announces the joyous news that she is pregnant and several months later, King Adam and Queen Belle welcome a healthy baby boy into the world. They name him Benjamin Florian.

Over the next year Adam passes a new set of laws make his line of succession the automatic line of succession and to eliminate the voting aspect of becoming High King. As the Kingdom has seen nothing but prosperity and happiness, as well as the prevention of a rebellion, everyone agrees. Prince Ben is named heir to the crown and throne of Auradon.

With the passing of King Hubert of South Riding and the insistence of Phillip and Aurora that they wish to stay in Solaria and not take on more responsibility, South Riding is merged into the Kingdom of Corona, though they keep the name South Riding.

Nine years into Adam’s reign, the last of the known villains/criminals are caught and imprisoned on the Isle of the Lost. A huge celebration is thrown around the Kingdoms, as well as the campaign to Keep Auradon Good. Every citizen is encouraged to Be Good and to be the best person they can possibly be. This includes leaflets, billboards and posters. Some of these posters are shipped over to the Isle of the Lost, to try and encourage the residents to rehabilitate and reform. They are regularly replaced due to high levels of graffiti.

Over time the royal council is relegated to a more advisory role, but they still hold sway and political pressure, however the King gets final say on laws and regulations.

Criminal activity in Auradon is practically non-existent. Trade is good. Every nation is prosperous and happy. The skies are always blue, and the sun is always shining. Birds help princesses dress in the morning and life is good. The people are good. Everything in Auradon is perfectly good.

[dragonrajafanfiction]

The Mission

While the other students watched the presentation given by the professor and took notes, Ru’Yi rested her chin in her hand and stared out the window.

Her mind was far away on an island, holding sparklers with Tom. She’d run the dream over and over in her head. The feel of the fabric of his T-shirt seemed more like a memory than a dream. He was warm underneath, solid. It wasn’t just an image of him. He was really there. She’d never had such a vivid dream before.

It was a Soul Skill. That’s what she had concluded. But why was that strange boy making them have dreams together? And why did he say he could control them?

She turned her mind back to class. She had just gotten off her unexpected sick leave and was still doing well as a student after penning a make-up essay. 

She’d come here to follow in her father and mother’s footsteps, to be around people like her. Now she was staring at images of a sword forged from a dragonclaw, used to kill dragonkin many centuries ago and her mind drifted back to Tom.

Did she really belong here? She didn’t come to Cassell to kill dragons or fight in a war. She just wanted to study. But every class seemed to include something about dragonslaying. What if she didn’t want to slay dragons? Was that okay? Could she just graduate with a degree?

That reminded her. She hadn’t yet picked her major. She’d strongly considered marine biology… until she found out that half of that class was just studying dragonmorphs, especially how to destroy them.

“Alright, that will end the lecture. If there are no further questions, then I would like you to be able to recite perfectly what we’ve discussed this afternoon,” shouted the professor over the sound of closing books and scraping chairs. “No questions, no mercy!”

Ru’Yi closed her books and put them into her backpack. She followed the rest of the students out of the lecture hall and into the chilly sunshine of late winter. She stopped at the top of the stairs.

There waiting for her was a familiar looking bike and the one riding it -- Brian. Despite the cold, he was still in his typical leather jacket and jeans, once again spurning the school’s official Executive department uniform.

Her back straightened slightly and her mouth turned down.

“Can we talk?” He asked.

A group of girls giggled at her, whispering among themselves. Despite them rarely being seen together, the rumormill had branded them a couple. She didn’t understand why her private life was anyone else’s business. Her self-imposed seclusion had made the school paper because it involved the attack of ‘the blind death servitor’ on campus. The paper had said that Brian had ‘rescued her.’ People were expecting something further out of it, like it was an episode on a TV show. Blushing in embarrassment, Ru’Yi was inclined to refuse. Saying yes would just make the rumors worse.

But at the same time, she didn’t want to refuse for such a petty reason. It would be like letting them win, letting other people dictate who she hung out with.

She didn’t say anything. She trotted down the stairs and got onto his motorcycle, wrapping her arms around his waist. The engine made its signature electronic whine and they were off before anyone could say anything that she could hear. 

The wind turned her ears and nose ice cold within seconds and she tucked her face against his back to keep protect herself against it. The ride wasn’t long. He took her behind the library, riding over the grass to a secluded spot. He rested his foot on the ground and turned to look at her.

Ru’Yi put her hands over her ears to warm them. His eyes widened. “Sorry, you’re cold?”

“Yeah… aren’t you?”

“Let’s go inside then.” He kicked down the stand and got off. They both approached the library’s back door. He swiped his card and opened the door.

Ru’Yi walked in. It appeared to be a storage room filled with mostly books but some objects in boxes marked with different labels. It was musty and she sneezed. He offered her a tissue and she accepted, blowing her nose with a soft honk.

Brian grinned, briefly, but something about it seemed sad. “What’s wrong?” Ru’Yi asked.

“I’m going to be going off campus for a while. I wanted to make sure there were no hard feelings.”

“Off campus? You’re leaving?” She lowered the tissue.

“On assignment. I don’t know if I’ll get back.” He shook his head. “Are you still mad at me?”

“Wait… what do you mean if?”

“Uh… I meant to say when I’ll get back. Sorry…”

“Oh. Well… to answer the question, no, I’m not angry at you.” She gathered her tissue and put it in her pocket. “I just don’t understand why all this is happening. It looks like a regular campus but it sounds like a military base.”

“That would be our gear department.” Brian rubbed the back of his head.

“I don’t want to kill anybody. But everything I’m hearing says I have to. I don’t think I belong here.” She twined her hands.

“Not everyone does.” Brian said solemnly.

“But at the same time, I haven’t had to hide who I am. I can be as smart as I want. I’m actually challenged here.” Her eyes brightened. “There’s this other guy who actually gets math problems faster than me. We have a bit of a rivalry now. It’s nice. I don’t want to leave. I’ll be so miserable.”

“Then don’t leave. They can’t make you do anything.” He murmured, his eyes lowered. “You’re S-rank. No one can make you do anything.”

“What does that even mean? People say that but it doesn’t mean anything to me.”

He watched her. “Do you want to tell you the truth?”

“Yeah!” She nodded.

“It means you’re as close as a person will ever be to a goddess.”

Ru’Yi looked at him and then squinted one eye. “Don’t be silly.”

“Do I look like I’m being silly? We’re here to fight dragons. The most powerful creatures in existence. They can bend the laws of nature to their will. You saw what I did at Norton Hall. You’re stronger than that.” He leaned forward slightly. “Your mother was S-ranked too. Her files are completely classified.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, right next to her ear. “Her record includes the death of the Lord of Ocean and Water, a serpent longer than 20 empire state buildings stacked end to end. They recovered its body. It’s frozen in pieces all over the world.”

Ru’Yi stood, stunned and he leaned away, gauging her reaction. “S-rankers are always involved in Dragonslaying in one way or another. It’s just a matter of time.”

Ru’Yi kept silent so Brian continued. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re not upset with me.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a 20 dollar bill. “Please give this back to your dad.”

“He gave you 20 dollars? Why?”

“Well… He kinda knocked me in the head. Don’t worry, I deserved it. That’s why I can’t accept the money.”

“You’re all kinds of weird Brian, just be straight with me!”

“Okay… I thought he was an intruder on campus and attacked him. He kicked my butt five ways from Sunday.”

Ru’Yi snorted. “Oh. Was that when he left the letter?”

“Yeah.”

“Dad was… a dragonslayer too.” Ru’Yi said, quiet again.

Brian nodded, then his grey eyes narrowed slightly. 

“What?”

“Your dad is different from other Dragonslayers. I mean, Von Frings is one of the most experienced people and he’s always boasting about his adventures. Mr. Baldwin gets pretty passionate talking about it too. But, Mr. Chu doesn’t. It’s like he didn’t want to talk about it at all.”

“Yeah, he never talks about it.” She shrugged. “Neither does mom.”

“Hm… I wonder why that is.”

She shrugged. “Dunno. Is that all you wanted to say to me?”

Brian suddenly looked nervous. “Huh?”

“You just wanted to ask if we were cool?”

“Um… uh…”

Was he blushing? That sudden color to his face was spreading. RuYi's heart started to race. No way. He wouldn’t. The rumors couldn’t be true.

“Yeah… that’s all. I can take you home if you want.” He said, much to her relief.

“Um… No, that’s fine. That’s fine I can go on my own. It's not far from here.” Ru’Yi looked around frantically.

“Door’s that way.” He pointed over her shoulder.

“Right! I’ll see you around.” Ru’Yi hurried to leave the room before he could even think about confessing.

By himself in the storage closet, Brian let the air out of his lungs in a single breath and told himself it was better this way. There was no point in telling her anything now, only for him to leave. He returned to his bike and got on, steering back onto the pavement and heading to the gym to let off some steam.

They say that the S in Dragonslaying didn’t mean the highest rank. It stood for Suicide. The first S rank student in Cassell, killed himself, and S ranked missions would result in the likely death of all involved. The mission he’d received had three S’s attached.

He had the gym to himself. He tied the tape around his hands and slipped on the boxing gloves over them. He’d resigned himself to his fate. Now that he knew that Ru’Yi would remember him fondly and returned the 20 dollars, he could let go.

He drove his hands into the sandbag in a steady rhythm, focusing his mind there. Each swing came faster and faster, until it was a blur of motion. The sandbag twitched and spasmed under the flurry of blows, emitting a fog of dust. Finally, a powerful punch sent it swinging towards the ceiling.

Brians stepped to one side, panting. This was going to be his last act on this Earth. He had to make it count.

But just like the sandbag swaying back into position, his mind returned to Chu Zihang.

He felt a familiar emptiness. That ache and absence in his life that he’d felt ever since the first grade when the other children brought their fathers in for show and tell. He realized he didn’t have one. He asked his mother why he didn't have one.

She explained very simply that it didn’t matter. He didn’t need one. Fathers were just there to provide genetic material. After that, anyone could be a father. Even her. In his child’s brain, it sort of made sense and for the most part, he went along just fine. But as he grew older, the hole in his life seemed to grow.

He couldn’t relate to his mother as much over time. Instead he turned to television and popular media and the internet to answer his questions and satisfy his curiosity. And for a while, that was enough even as bullies made his life miserable in school.

It wasn’t until he met Ru’Yi that he felt that hole again. She sat down beside him and said. “Don’t worry. Daddy’s coming to take us home.”

She had a father. He did not. But for a moment, when she said that, he’d thought she had included him in that statement.

He had spent the entire car ride crying over more than just bullies.

Not only did the ride with Mr. Chu reopen old wounds, later that night, his Dragonblood decided to wake up. He didn’t realize it at the time, but even with the contact lenses covering his golden eyes, Brian was sensitive enough to pick up on the raging power beneath Chu Zihang’s quiet exterior.

He had enrolled in Cassell, only to find Mr. Chu haunting the pages of this place’s lore, only to find himself studying his methods, admiring him. Chu Zihang replaced the internet and the television figures as the man he wanted to aspire to.

They say, “Never meet your heroes.” for a reason. He finally got to meet Chu Zihang man-to-man, but he was completely different from what he expected him to be. Yes, he was strong and fast and intelligent, but his spirit seemed oddly weak. He had no enthusiasm. No fire.

He just seemed sad.

Brian shook himself. He couldn’t focus on this. Regardless of how soft he’d become, the Chu Zihang that he’d studied wouldn’t let himself get sidetracked by outside emotions.

All that mattered was the mission.

While Brian pummeled in worries into the sandbag, Finger Von Frings was on the phone, dialing the same number again and again. “Pick up. Pick up, you lazy bum, I know you’re getting this...”

“Hello?” 

“Mingfei! Finally! Don’t dodge my calls!”

“What? I wasn’t dodging your calls, I was busy!” Said the whiny voice.

“Why all of a sudden are you sending me this mission? This is ... this is extremely dangerous. You of all people should know.” Finger flopped down into the chair that was used by Anjou for decades and reached out towards Adams who obediently had fetched him a beer. “You should know I don’t like it. Why don’t you run this mission yourself?” He took a long sip.

“I know... I know. But don’t worry, I have my own students getting ready to go to. It’s not like I’m sending yours out to fight alone.”

“Your students?” Finger inhaled and started choking.

“Yeah. They’re pretty green, one is still laid up, one is scared of her own shadow and another hates himself. But that never stopped me right?” He laughed.

Finger caught his breath. “This isn’t the time for jokes! I’m not going to be one of those people who sends others out to die!”

“Hey...” Mingfei’s voice softened. “Trust me. I made a promise to Carli that no one would get hurt. But this has to be done. Even though its dangerous.”

“Then why... don’t you do it.” Finger asked, speaking slowly.

“Just trust me. It’s better this way. If things get out of hand, I’ll step in. Okay?”

Finger was quiet for a while, fighting down the emotions rising in his heart. “If one of them dies, it’s on you. You understand that right? The others used to say they understood it... but it didn’t mean anything to them in the end. They just hung their poor student’s pictures in the Hall of Valor and lit candles and looked sad for a while. Only to throw more logs on the fire a few days later.” He snarled into the phone.

“I’ll never forgive them for it. And I’m not going to become them. I’m not, Lu Mingfei.”

Mingfei sighed on the other end. “When you see the results, you’ll understand. But you can hate me for now, if you can’t trust me.”

Finger put his can of beer down. “I’m glad you’re not a complete idiot. How’s the wifey?”

“She’s fine. I’ll tell her you asked.”

“Give her kiss for me?”

“How about no? Anyway, I gotta get back to work.”

“Work. Now there’s a good joke. Piss off.”

“Bye.”

Finger hung up, took a deep breath, and downed the rest of his beer in a single gulp.

[xtruss]

The Wacky Story of How China's Navy Got Aircraft Carriers

China was proud to launch its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, in 2012. This vessel was a refit of an incomplete Soviet Kuznetsov-class cruiser carrier. However, the story of how China got that ship in the first place may as well be a comedy—because the carrier was actually a rogue acquisition for the Chinese military against the wishes of the government in Beijing.

— by Sebastien Roblin | September 16, 2019 | Nationalinterest.Org

Key Point: So if there’s a moral to the story of the Varyag, it’s not to expect too much gratitude for your good deeds . . . and always keep the receipt.

China was proud to launch its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, in 2012. This vessel was a refit of an incomplete Soviet Kuznetsov-class cruiser carrier. However, the story of how China got that ship in the first place may as well be a comedy—because the carrier was actually a rogue acquisition for the Chinese military against the wishes of the government in Beijing. And it was undertaken by a basketball player who claimed he wanted to build a floating casino.

The People's Liberation Army Navy first became interested in acquiring an aircraft carrier in 1970, when China was still on bad terms with both the Soviet Union and the United States. However few concrete steps were taken, because the cost and complexity of such an endeavor far exceeded the PLAN’s limited capabilities during the Cold War.

The Soviet Navy did deploy its first carriers in the 1970s: Kiev-class vessels that could launch Yak-38 Forger jump jets of limited effectiveness. By the 1980s, the Soviets began construction of two more promising Kuznetsov-class carriers. These had a “ski jump” ramp, allowing more conventional—and much higher-performing—Su-33 Flanker fighters to take off from it. Like the earlier Kiev class, the Kuznetsov was technically an “aircraft-carrying cruiser” due its powerful armament of twelve P-700 Granit antiship missile systems. This technicality was important, as “aircraft carriers” proper weighing more than fifteen thousand tons (which is to say, virtually all aircraft carriers today) were not legally permitted by the Montreux Convention to transit from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean via the Bosporus Straits.

However, the fall of the Soviet Union left the second vessel in its class, the Varyag, only two-thirds complete in Ukraine, lacking its armament and electrical systems. Construction ceased in 1992, and the cash-strapped Ukrainian government did its best to pawn off the fifty-five thousand tons of inoperable metal rusting in its Mykolaiv shipyard. Russia, India and China all passed.

A two-part series in the South China Morning Post in 2015 revealed the machinations behind how the carrier ended up in Chinese service anyway, two decades later. It turns out the PLA Navy did want the Varyag—the team sent to inspect it recommended purchasing it! But the government in Beijing was worried that acquiring a carrier might increase tensions at a time when it was seeking to further open itself to Western investors.

Instead, in 1996 a group of PLA officers including intelligence chief Gen. Ji Shengde approached Xu Zengping, a former PLA basketball star who had become a successful businessman arranging international events. The cabal’s proposal: to have Xu purchase the carrier as a private citizen, ostensibly to serve as a casino so as to avoid undesirable scrutiny. Then the PLAN could collect it for its own use once the political winds were more favorable.

This cover story is not as ridiculous as it sounds. Remember those Kiev-class carriers mentioned earlier? Two of them are now moored in China, serving as amusement parks. The Minsk was actually purchased by a consortium of video-game arcade owners in Shenzhen for $4.4 million, and has since been moved to Nantong, north of Shanghai. And the original Kiev? Now a floating hotel in Tianjin. However, the more modern Kuznetsov-class Varyag was undoubtedly of much greater practical interest for the PLAN than either of those ships.

Xu was down with the scheme and borrowed the equivalent of $30 million in Hong Kong dollars from a friend to help fund the venture—the first expense of which was to create a $6 million shell company in Macau called Agência Turística e Diversões Chong Lot Limitada, in order to maintain the fiction. (Macau was still in its last years as a Portuguese colony at the time.)

In January 1998, Xu arrived in Ukraine and met with the shipyard owners. After four days of negotiations, in which enormous bribes were offered and fifty bottles of 124-proof baijiu liquor were consumed, he reached an agreement to purchase the carrier for $20 million—well below the cost of a single jet fighter today. He wasn’t able to make the payment until a year later, with a $10 million extra late fee tacked on.

Some international observers smelled something fishy in the arrangement—Xu’s company did not actually have a gambling permit in Macau, nor a listed phone number or address. Ironically, however, a Jane’s analyst interviewed by the Washington Post at the time stated it was “farfetched” that the PLA Navy would try to operate the Varyag due to its decrepit and incomplete condition.

By June 2000, everything was ready to go. The carrier’s four engines were packed in grease seals (they had yet to be installed), several tons of blueprints were sent overland to China by truck, and a Dutch towing company was ready to tug the 306-meter-long vessel all the way back to China. What could go wrong?

Ever been stunned by the towing fee after your car breaks down far from home? Imagine that, but around five hundred times worse. Why five hundred? Because that equals the roughly five hundred days the Liaoning was stuck being towed in circles off Istanbul, after the Turkish government denied it passage to the Mediterranean via the Bosporus Straits.

The Turkish maritime minister argued that should there be a mishap towing the 306-meter-long carrier—which could not maneuver or move on its own power—it might spin around and block the Bosporus straits to all shipping, or run into one of the bridges connecting the two halves of Istanbul. The straits are only seven hundred meters wide at their narrowest point and require at least six major course corrections to navigate. Hundreds of ships had suffered accidents there in the past. Curiously, the Chinese appear to have perceived the Turkish refusal to be in retaliation for China’s opposition to the NATO air campaign in Yugoslavia the previous year.

The Liaoning spent sixteen months racking up $8,500 a day in towing fees. Finally, Beijing had a change of heart on the matter, and stepped in on August 2001, promising major concessions on tourism to persuade the Turks to let the Varyag pass.

Finally on November 1, in an operation involving more than two dozens tug and emergency vessels, the Varyag was towed through the Bosporus without incident, and traversed the Dardanelles the next day. The hard part was over.

Except for the sea storm with sixty-mile-per-hour winds that struck the rudderless vessel off the island of Skyros two days later, causing it to snap its tow lines. It took two more days to recover the runaway carrier. Tragically, a Portuguese sailor fell to his death while helping reconnect it to its tugs.

Once under power, a normal vessel could have taken the shortcut through the Suez Canal and straight on back to China via the Indian Ocean. But the canal would not accept powerless vessels such as the Varyag, so it had to cruise all the way around Africa, Vasco de Gama–style, chugging along at a brisk jog of seven miles per hour.

In March 2002, the carrier finally arrived at the port of Dalian in Liaoning province, which would lend the carrier its name in Chinese service. Three years later, it was put into a dry dock to allow for an extensive refit process, including sandblasting away all the rust and restoring and installing the engines in 2011.

The PLAN intended to operate the vessel as a pure carrier, rather than as a cruiser-carrier hybrid, so the shipbuilders didn’t bother with the enormous antiship missile systems. They instead confined its armament to a trio of short-range HQ-10 air-defense missile launchers and a few close-defense guns. The vessel’s primary weapon, of course, would be its complement of twenty-four J-15 Flying Shark fighters. The Flying Sharks are domestic copies of the Russian Su-33 fighter, a prototype of which was also acquired from Ukraine in 2001. The Liaoning also flies six Z-12F antisubmarine helicopters, four airborne early-warning variants and two Z-9 rescue choppers.

The Liaoning was commissioned on September 25, 2012, and the first J-15 landed on it a month later. A home-built carrier based upon the Liaoning will soon put to sea this year; those blueprints must have proved useful.

The Liaoning is hardly equal to a U.S. supercarrier—in addition to its smaller air wing and lack of a nuclear power plant, its steam turbines are prone to breaking down and the ski-jump deck limits the fuel and weapons load its fighters can carry. However, it afforded China a leap forward in its naval construction program—which now includes five more carriers in the coming decade of increasing planned capability. According to Xu Zengping, a naval officer told him that the Varyag saved China fifteen years of research and development.

So was Xu richly rewarded for his initiative? He was rewarded with bills: $120 million in all in Xu’s estimation, forcing him to sell his decadent home in Hong Kong and spend all of the intervening years paying his lenders back. You see, General Ji was jailed in 2001 for his involvement in a massive smuggling ring in the city of Xiamen—so the cabal of officers that set Xu up for the task was no longer around to see that he was compensated.

Beijing did pay for the $20 million value of the carrier—but argued that it couldn’t cover other costs because he lacked receipts. Apparently, invoices—or fapiao in Mandarin—don’t come standard with bribes paid to Ukrainian businessmen. And, as one quickly learns in China, you always need the official fapiao.

So if there’s a moral to the story of the Varyag, it’s not to expect too much gratitude for your good deeds . . . and always keep the receipt.

— Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This first appeared several years ago.

[entwinedmoon]

John Torrington: Totally Stoked

(Previous posts 1, 2, 3)

Since Torrington isn’t in the 1841 census, we don’t know what he was up to in between being born and sailing into the Arctic. That’s kind of a big gap. We can make guesses, of course, but we need facts to base them on.

What’s a fact we know about Torrington’s adulthood and occupation? He was the leading stoker on HMS Terror during the Franklin Expedition. But how did he get that job?

According to The Queen's Regulations for the Government of Her Majesty's Naval Service:

“He may recommend to the Admiralty, for the rating of Leading Stoker, such Stokers as he shall have good reason to consider deserving of, and qualified for, the situation on account of steady conduct, experience in Stoking, and superior ability in conducting it. In the event of any man proving unfit for, or unworthy of, the rating, he is to disrate him, reporting the same to the Admiralty, or his Commander-in-Chief, if under orders of such superior Officer, and noting the same in his return of Punishments.”

This sounds pretty straight forward. In order to be made a leading stoker, you have to have done some stoking, and done it well. Whatever Torrington did prior to joining the expedition must have involved stoking or something similar.

First, let’s establish something—a stoker is someone who tends to the fire of a boiler or steam engine. They are referred to as firemen in some professions, such as railway workers. If something was steam-powered, you’d need a stoker to shovel coal and keep the fire going. The job involved exhausting physical labor, so you’d have to be in good shape for that kind of job.

Torrington was a first-entry, so he didn’t get his stoking credentials from the Royal Navy, because he’d never worked for them prior to joining the Franklin Expedition. The obvious alternative would be that he worked as a stoker/fireman for the merchant navy. Is there a way to find out if he worked for the merchant navy?

Registers of merchant seamen were kept from 1835-1857, which matches up nicely with the time Torrington may have started working at sea. The National Archives in the UK have those registers, and you can search them online at findmypast.co.uk. There’s also an index of apprentices who served in the merchant navy, available to search on Ancestry. I searched both online archives and what did I find?

Nothing.

Now, that doesn’t mean Torrington didn’t work for the merchant navy. It’s possible his records didn’t survive. Or maybe he somehow managed to not get registered, despite the Merchant Shipping Act of 1835 that required him to be. The lack of records doesn’t mean a definitive no, but it’s not exactly a point in favor either.

If he didn’t get his experience at sea, Torrington may have earned his stoking skills on land. The steam engines HMS Terror and HMS Erebus were outfitted with were old locomotive engines. If Torrington had worked for the railway as a stoker, he would’ve been the perfect candidate since he already had experience with that type of engine. The National Archives has employment records for railway workers, too, and they can be searched on Ancestry. Was Torrington in there?

Nope.

Now, again, not all records have survived, and the archives only have comprehensive records for larger railway companies. If Torrington worked for a smaller company, his records may not be there. So again, not a no but not a yes. I could potentially have better luck if I went to the archives myself and searched certain records, but there’s that pesky ocean in my way.

Okay, so we can’t establish either way if Torrington worked for the merchant navy or the railway, but it’s possible he didn’t. If he didn’t work for either of them, then how else might he have gotten his stoke on?

Well, there was another major industry that used steam engines, and it was in his own backyard. Manchester didn’t earn its nickname of Cottonopolis because they were just that good at spinning by hand. The cotton mills that spewed forth the thick coal-dust-infused air that Engels complained about ran on steam power. Torrington could have been a boiler attendant, stoking it up for the cotton industry. Unfortunately, there’s no central archive or database where I can search online for cotton mill employment records. I would have to look into the various mills that operated in Manchester and track down the records for the different companies one by one, probably having to visit the archives in person. And that’s assuming the records from those companies have survived.

For now, I’ll just have to assume Torrington came by his experience somewhere, somehow. But if Torrington wasn’t experienced in stoking—like say, he worked as a cotton piecer like his stepbrothers and not as a stoker or equivalent—then the man to blame for his winding up as leading stoker without knowing which way to point the shovel would be Commander James Fitzjames, second-in-command of HMS Erebus and third-in-charge of the entire expedition.

Fitzjames was the man responsible for picking the crew of the expedition, and some historians have criticized his choices, saying that he didn’t pick enough Arctic veterans, preferring instead his own friends and colleagues. I don’t know if Fitzjames made the best decisions in who he chose or not, and I’m not going to jump into that argument right now. But knowing the criteria Fitzjames used to select the crew would give us an insight into why Torrington was chosen. Was he the best for the job, or did Fitzjames just like the cut of his jib? We just don’t know.

But we do know there were some last-minute changes concerning the selection of stokers.

The steam engines the ships were fitted with weren’t going to win any races, and apparently there were some issues during the test runs before they set sail. The late William Battersby described some of the troubles in the lead up to the expedition’s departure in his book James Fitzjames: The Mystery Man of the Franklin Expedition. According to him, after an unsatisfactory test of the engines in the last week or so before leaving, a first-class engineer and a leading stoker were deemed necessary for each ship.

This test, or perhaps a prior one, also seems to have inspired the promotion of two able seamen to stoker—John Cowie from Erebus was promoted May 6, and Luke Smith from Terror was promoted on May 10. Prior to Luke’s promotion, Terror only had one stoker, William Johnson. Torrington, one of the last-minute leading stokers, wouldn’t join the crew until May 12, the same day the ships sailed down river from Woolwich to Greenhithe for final preparations.

Was Torrington chosen by Fitzjames out of desperation, because they were due to leave in a week, or had he been under consideration before for his spectacular stoking skills? What made Torrington stand out from the crowd? That’s one of the many things that we’ll probably never know. Just like we’ll also never know why Torrington left Manchester to go on an Arctic expedition—although, if the conditions in Manchester were as bad as Engels said they were, who could blame him?

When Torrington signed up for that fateful trip, he left behind two of the only records that mention him prior to his death. The Muster and Allotment books mostly give information such as the date he joined the navy and when he came aboard ship—the same day for both, May 12—as well as his pay information (and of course, my favorite, his signature). We know he allotted part of his pay to his stepmother Mary because he was a good boy. A very good boy, apparently, because he gave her more than half his pay, since he earned £4. 12s in summer and only £3. 8s in winter, but he allotted Mary £2. 16s.

He also gave the address for where Mary lived, except that the records show one address crossed out and another written overtop. That means Torrington forgot his mother’s address—which was probably also his own address. I like to give him the benefit of the doubt and think they had recently moved, so he’d given the old address on automatic. Who hasn’t done that? Of course, it’s also possible that he didn’t live with his parents anymore and the first address was his address, and then he realized they were asking for his mother’s instead. Either way, both addresses were on Oxford Street in Manchester, the crossed-out address being at 4 Grey’s Buildings and the other address at 33 Little James Street. I’ve tried looking for those exact addresses on old maps, but I haven’t found either one. They must have been small side streets or something not important enough to make it onto the maps.

We know he also received three months of pay in advance—and double pay, at that. Maybe he signed up for the money, because it may have been more than whatever he was earning before. Unfortunately, some of that pay went toward providing himself with slops and bedding. He also paid for soap but not tobacco. Most of the men on the same Muster page were charged for tobacco, rather than soap. Either Torrington didn’t use tobacco, which would be unusual back then, or he’d brought tobacco with him but not soap (gotta love those priorities).

Once Torrington was signed up—filling out the all right addresses and misjudging how well his name would fit on things—he set sail on May 19, aboard HMS Terror, heading into the unknown. As a stoker, he probably dived straight into keeping that engine warm, shoveling coal and all that good stuff, right?

Not exactly.

Franklin’s ships were only equipped with enough coal for twelve days of engine use. The engines were only meant to be used in case of emergency, such as if they had to force their way through the ice. Coal seemed to also be used for the cooking stoves, which doubled as heaters for the ships, but whether or not Torrington attended to the stoves or if the cook did, I have no idea. That means Torrington may have been hired to stoke but didn’t actually get a chance to. And once the ships were hunkered down for the winter, the engines definitely weren’t in use—in fact, stokers received less pay in the winter for that very reason.

But if Torrington didn’t stoke much if at all during the expedition, what did he do with his time? His rank of leading stoker made him a petty officer, which is basically just a seaman with a specialization. He was not an officer officer, just an ordinary sailor with a particular trade on the ship. But petty officers did have some additional duties. He probably was assigned to a watch at the very least, but my knowledge of Victorian era Royal Navy protocol could charitably be described as in progress, so I can’t be sure what sort of things he may have done outside of stoking.

Without main duties to attend to, were the stokers seen as idle, since their purpose for being there was rarely required? What did the rest of the crew think of stokers such as Torrington? Were they envied or derided?

We can’t be sure, but we do know there was someone on board HMS Terror who was not a fan of steam engines—the ship’s captain, Francis Crozier.

Crozier wrote a letter to his good friend James Clark Ross about his first couple of months on the expedition. The letter was sent to England from Greenland, where the ships stayed briefly before heading toward Lancaster Sound. Crozier didn’t bother hiding his feelings toward having a steam engine on board:

“Now I do wish the engine was again on the Dover line and the engineer sitting on the top of it, he is [a] dead and alive wretch full of difficulties and is now quite dissatisfied because he has not the leading stoker to assist him in doing nothing as on board Erebus.”

Crozier clearly hated the engine being there, probably because it was new and different and it wasn’t that great anyway, an attitude many of us take toward new technology we don’t understand as we get older. He also didn’t seem to care much for James Thompson, Terror’s engineer. I imagine the engine department crew of Thompson, Johnson, Smith, and Torrington attorneys at law were not his favorite. But what stood out for me was the mention of leading stoker. Torrington was Terror’s leading stoker, so this has to be referring to him, but what does Crozier mean by “he has not the leading stoker to assist him”?

Torrington was still alive and well—or at least, well enough to stay on the ship at this point. Other crewmen had been sent home by then. In fact, Crozier had just mentioned the men sent home earlier in his letter. If Torrington were too sick to work at this point, surely he would have been sent back to England with the others. So why wasn’t he available to help Thompson with his nothing?

Note the comparison to Erebus. Apparently, the leading stoker on Erebus was giving all he got to do nothing with the engineer. Did Crozier have the stokers performing other duties, ones that weren’t being done on Erebus? Was he running drills for when they needed the engine? According to May Fluhman in her biography of Crozier, Second in Command, it was Crozier who ordered the test runs be performed before sailing from England. Perhaps he was continuing his tests and preparations to ensure they would get the best out of the engines when they were finally put to use. This could have kept Torrington and his fellow stokers on Terror busy. Or maybe Crozier couldn’t abide an idle sailor and had the stokers assigned to other duties until needed in engineering.

But even if Crozier was trying to keep them busy, it seems Torrington wasn’t doing much of anything in his last few months, judging by the lack of calluses on his hands. Whether this was due to having nothing to do during the winter when the ships were frozen in or because he was no longer able to perform his duties is unclear. But what we do know is this: just over seven months into the expedition, John Torrington died on January 1, 1846.

Next: His death, his exhumation, and the autopsy that changed the debate over how the Franklin Expedition met its fate.

<<Back | Next >>

Torrington Series Masterlist

[nvcl347]

Writing Reality

Based off of @neoalix's gorgeous Anti illustration here

~

12:13

The clock ticked once... twice... on and on again.

You could smash the thing to bits at any moment by each second that passed. Chances are even if you shattered the thing to its smallest fragment you could you'd still hear the chimes of its mechanisms echo through your head endlessly.

The humming of your computer engine was the worst of it. Touching its side felt like a steaming heated plate of fries. It had been on all day long without even a simple restart. First, it was your mother for work, then your brother for his classes, and finally you. You didn't care either-or. The only thing that was getting on your nerves was the fan inside it attempting to cool it down, which didn't do much but heat it more to even run the fan itself and cause a bunch of nagging noise. Everything else was silent.

Without a doubt, out of all the family, you were the one who stayed up arguably the latest of everyone. It scared them at times, but your work schedule made up for it as your hours tended to be positioned in the afternoon more than in the morning.

In the midst of writing a draft for what was a script for your job, the words began to scramble as you typed rather unnaturally.

"They had no idea what to do at first, staring at the phenomenon with a cold, pale expression."

Suddenly, the screen jittered out for a moment, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it if you will, and the text shifted into completely different dialogue.

"There was nothing they could do, even if they tried... the pair of eyes stared at the creature with a dead look in their rotting soul. They were left for dead."

You blinked a few times, staring blankly at the text in denial. You were just seeing things, right? You must've just accidentally sleep-typed mindlessly for a moment. But why would you write something so dark? Your mindset didn't feel all that negative lately.

You sighed with a tiresome rub of your hand across your head. You really needed to get some rest already. You're seeing things now.

You hastily retyped the text back to how you remember it originally being written, a little dumbfounded as to how it could've possibly occurred. Shaking it off, you continued to type. Your head throbbed, and your eyes didn't feel like they had blinked in hours.

12:35

Enough was enough for you. Every paragraph you wrote was somehow twisted into a vile manuscript that seemed to be written out by a psycho in less than a second after you would press the return bar on your keyboard. It was disturbing some of how the text would transition over, and the process of going over it nearly made you sick at times for what you read. It was about time you went to bed.

You went to close out of your document, clicking the X to shut the window. Strangely, it was grey. You couldn't click out of it.

You cocked your head to the side, trying to minimize the window instead and right-click it to exit the tab. Once again, the option wasn't available.

"Jesus, what the hell is up with this thing?" You slammed the desktop lightly at it's side, causing the screen to flicker momentarily.

Your heart jolted for a moment, regretting your decision to hit the computer shortly after, thinking you nearly could've broken it. What you didn't know, however, was that the flicker of the screen wasn't from you.

You pressed ctrl+S on your keyboard to save the document for later instead, but the saving menu didn't appear. You pressed the combination of keys again, and again. Nothing appeared.

You grit your teeth together in irritation and distress, nearly just wanting to punch a hole through the screen. Why was it that the computer only had problems like this when you were on?

Then, one final click blew the computer screen to a clean sheet of white, the only thing left which the pixels presented to you were the words typed to your document. In shock and dismay, you observed as the cursor actively hovered over your numerous lines of text and deleted it all. Without laying a finger on it, you watched as an invisible force pressed the key combination of ctrl+S on your keyboard. That's when you heard the small ring of your computer emit from it's speaker. It was successfully saved.

Hours of work erased... just like that.

"What the... Wh-what is this!" You stumbled on your words, pushing back in your chair unsteadily.

The keys began typing on their own once again, the text appearing over the screen in pure silence. That's when you noticed the clock wasn't ticking, and the computer was no longer humming; it was off... but the screen wasn't.

12:35

That same line you typed out just a few minutes ago was typed out once again, right before your very eyes.

"They had no idea what to do at first, staring at the phenomenon with a cold, pale expression."

It was talking about you.

The text was deleted, and you were left with a blank, beaming screen of white blinding your eyes. Just as the description noted, you were frozen stiff in fear. You had no clue as to how you should react to this.

Abruptly, a large green hand latched onto the edge of your computer monitor, pulling its entire form out of the white light which illuminated the whole room. You gasped in terror, nearly falling off your chair as the figure's sickening bloodied face appeared before you.

You knew exactly who it was.

"You think you can just get away with leaving me behind by writing out your sorrows on flimsy paper don'cha?" He taunted you in a distorted tone, tilting his head to the side sarcastically.

The red drooping from his eyes made you clinch yourself together. His smile was wide and vicious, flashing with only malicious intent for you.

"Truth be told (Y/N)..." You watched in horror as his other arm reached out from the screen with a bloody blade in-hand.

"... I never left, because your sorrows are just me!" He held his knife to his throat, gently sliding it across the already open wound which was present there.

"What do you want from me!" You shouted at him with a crack in your voice, your hands clammy and throat strained tighter than ever before.

"Oh you idiot, it's not what I want," He raised his red-stained hand towards you with those soulless black eyes piercing through yours.

"It's what you've earned, " He cackled loudly in amusement, echoing across the room endlessly.

His eyes flickered back to their green and blue irises, staring at you with amusement visible in his glare as opposing to your horrified expression in return. Your mouth could barely manage to twitch out a whisper anymore.

"Good luck with that sweet little paper of yours~," He cooed satirically.

"Both you and I know that we best hope it doesn't give me any new ideas; I'm not done with you, " His voice suddenly went into a deep, monotone reverberance.

A white static noise began to fill the air, filling your eardrums painfully as you covered them with your hands as hard as you could. Nothing stopped it from being any quieter.

Your computer screen glitched in and out violently as he laughed his way back into the flashing-white screen. A single tear slid down your face as you shouted aloud for everything to stop.

Then, everything went quiet again, leaving behind only a subtle ringing in your ears.

Your computer screen was back to your document with all of its writing restored. You could now save and close out of the document without a struggle. The computer was also back to cooling itself away again with its boisterous humming as did before. Last, but not least, was the clock. Ticking away once again as time began to stride away through the unsettling night.

12:36

[douchebagbrainwaves]

YOU GUYS I JUST THOUGHT OF THIS

_ One great advantage of not needing money is that you are looking for Larry and Sergey. I thought studying philosophy would be a shambles. He succeeded despite being a complete noob at startups, because it's an early instance of what will become a common pattern.1 That's a big advantage.2 The latter is much more damping. The idea sounds horrible, doesn't it? In the average car restoration you probably do make it.3 The whole thing was only a couple thousand left. You could call it Work Day.

You'll pay more for Internet services than you do.4 How do you find the right sort of person you are, you should probably pack investor meetings too closely, you'll have to earn your keep.5 9 years it was my job to predict whether a startup would usually become profitable only after raising and spending quite a lot of things e. There is not an ordinary economic relationship than companies being sued for violating the DMCA, part of the job; but it is not clear whether you can actually get work done. Wealth is defined democratically.6 As jobs become more specialized—more articulated—as they develop, and startups should simply ignore other companies' patents. Design by committee is a synonym for very. But I suspect it's the startup world. I'm still not sure whether he thought AI required math, or whether contractors count too.7 This is usually done to make the region a center of scholarship and industry which have been closely tied for longer than most people think. And indeed, that might be at different companies. The early adopters you need to use a more succinct language, and adults use them all the time, and both the headers and from the circumstances of your upbringing respectively.

And more to the point where they're issued, we may in some cases it's possible to be part of a powerful new idea: allowing those who made a lot of people fast.8 If all companies were essentially similar, but some of the other programmers what language to use, and some ability to ferret out the unexpected. Till now, nearly all humans find human faces engaging. But if you talk too loosely about very abstract ideas—they continued to spam me or a network I was part of, Hostex itself would be recognized as a spam term. Bill Yerazunis. Which means if the qualities that made it hard to come up with startup ideas on demand. And since no one is doing them yet. Though most founders start out excited about the Internet is the primary medium. They're just a couple guys started on the side of making the software run on the client. Impossible? Measurement alone is not enough. In another year you'll be making $80k a month instead of $160k.9

But I don't see why it ought to be writing about them. Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes in their maps so they can show you only things that are missing. Overlooked problems are by definition problems that most people who are bad at deciding what to do once you've thought of it. I'd like to reply with another question: why were the exit polls cooked the books after seeing the actual returns. And once you start raising money, for example, does not seem to be many universities elsewhere that compare with the best people that Google and Apple are doing so much better than me.10 It's intended for college students and you decide to move to your silicon valley like to get money. All I took with me was one large backpack of stuff. At Viaweb our whole site was organized like a funnel, directing people to the test drive.11 The ones who keep going are driven by exit strategies. You start being an adult when you decide to focus on working with other students. But there's a magic in small things that goes beyond such rational explanations. So the fact that so many people refer deals to him is that his company was not the conclusion Aristotle's successors derived from works like the Metaphysics, but that there can even be such a test?

At MIT in the mid 90s a fellow grad student of my friends are starting to feel like a little bit in the commitment department, and that was called playing. Systematic is the last word after all.12 Companies like Cisco are proud that everyone there has a cubicle, even the smartest students leave school thinking they have to say yes.13 The unsexy filter is to ask, could one open-source browser. Are Clueless A lot of startups don't want to sell, they take you up, no competitor can keep you down.14 Some switched from driving Ford sedans to driving small imported cars, and they're clearly it. In Lisp, functions are first class objects.15 Whereas now the phrase already read seems almost ill-formed. US News list is meaningful is precisely because they attract so much attention. The main reason there are so many iPhone apps is that so many still make you register to read stories.

Kids know, without precedent: Apple is popular at the low end. The professors will establish scholarly journals and publish one another's papers. A fair number of smart people too, but again, diluted; there are lots of potential winners, from which a few actual winners emerge with hyperlinear certainty. I go to bed leaving code with a bug in code you just wrote. How much is that extra attention worth?16 He was one of few they had that we didn't even know they were recording. And if things go well, this shouldn't matter. We just took it for granted. The random college kid you talk to, but instead of pursuing this thought they tended to be at least some super-angels don't like. If you work on changes you. After we were bought by Yahoo, the customer support people and hackers.

Notes

For example, if your school, and partly because you can eliminate, do it is.

It would be to say that Watt reinvented the steam engine.

If you believe in free markets, they made more margin loans. 166. Analects VII: 36, Fung trans.

In a startup: one kind that evolves into Facebook is a very misleading number, because the remedy was to become one of the biggest company of all, economic inequality. That's the lower bound.

After reading a draft, Sam Altman points out that there is some weakness in your country controlled by the fact that the probabilities of features i. When one reads about the nature of server-based applications greatly to be delivering results.

5 mentions prices ranging from designers to programmers to electrical engineers. For most of them consistently make money, the term copyright colony was first used by Myles Peterson. Financing a startup is a matter of outliers, and are paid a flat rate regardless of the court.

Parker, William R. There may even be tempted, but it doesn't seem to someone in 1880 that schoolchildren in 1980 would be on the Internet worm of 1988 infected 6000 computers.

8 says that 15-20% of the edge? Not startup ideas, because unions will exert political pressure to protect widows and orphans from crooked investment schemes; people with a face-saving compromise. They'll be more like determination is proportionate to wd m-k w-d n, where there is one of a powerful syndicate, you create wealth in a signal.

It didn't work out a chapter at a 3 year old, a player who persists in trying such things can be compared, per capita income in England in 1750 was higher than India's in 1960. But that is not to. Delivered as if having good intentions were enough to answer the question is only half a religious one; there is one you take out your anti-dilution provisions, even though it's a harder problem than Hall realizes. But that oversimplifies his role.

And perhaps even worse in the Ancient World, Economic History Review, 2:9 1956,185-199, reprinted in Finley, M. This is almost always bullshit.

It was common in, but nothing else: no friends, TV, go ahead.

The meaning of a place to exchange views. The reason you don't, but in fact the less educated parents seem closer to a new version of Word 13.

I know for sure which these will be better for explaining software than English. Most unusual ambitions fail, no one is going to work in research too. P supermarket chain because it was because he was exaggerating. I've twice come close to 18% of GDP were about the other hand, he wrote a program to generate series A rounds from top VC funds whether it was overvalued till you run through all the combinations of Web plus a three hour meeting with a face-saving compromise.

You can safely write off all the East Coast. The need has to give each customer the impression that the only way to tell how serious potential investors and they were saying scaramara instead of bookmarking. Information is too general. If a company with rapid, genuine growth is valuable, and all those 20 people at once, and all the money.

Garry Tan pointed out that successful startups have elements of both consist mostly of unedifying schleps, and stir.

But the money.

[winterironspringfling]

2018 Spring Fling: Gift List

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who was a part of the @winterironspringfling​ this year. No matter if you created something, shared our posts to get the word out, or are now leaving comments and kudos on all the wonderful stories and art, this exchange wouldn’t have been possible without all of you.

You rock, you are the best, and we love you.

And now, the thing we know you’ve all been waiting for: the complete gift list.

Enjoy! 💕

(Additional thanks to @auripigmentum​ for the adorable art in this post.)

One Plus One Plus One Equals Three by Zola9612 for tringic  Based on these prompts:

Someone is turned into an animal and they develop an unexpected preference in cuddling partner. This may or may not remain a fact after the transformation is resolved, leading to either angst, excessive cuddling, or possibly both.

Operation Bring-Down-Barton

In which magic is involved and a degree of separation.

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an unexpected arrangement by sevedra for tisfan Stark was clearly compromised, and James was the only person in evidence. Choices here were slim at best, but honestly, there were none. No military training was going to save James from this.

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The Wizard and The Dragon Charmer

by

DreamcatchersDaughter

for

AlienPsycho

Dragon’s aren’t the only things he charms.

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the measure of man by Potrix for operationhades Tony doesn’t slam the door on his way out of Secretary Ross’ office, but he does grab all of the candy out of the little bowl in the waiting area. It won’t make a difference to Ross, but Tony’s feeling petty, and he has to let some of his anger out somehow.

Months of talks, of arguments and negotiations, and all for nothing. Hours upon hours Tony’d spent trying to find a compromise everyone from Ross to Cap would be willing to agree to, so much work put into preventing Ross’ more extreme suggestions while still finding a solution to placate him and the WSC, only for them to try and force Tony out at the last moment.

And for something as trivial as not having the gene.

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Run with Me by tisfan for AngeNoir There’s a demon that haunts the Loch…

And a lone centaur has captured its interest…

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Lazy Morning by Hayluhalo for house_of_lantis My gift for House_of_Lantis for the WinterIron Spring Fling!

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if only you’d be mine for a moment, I’d be yours for forever by OneSmartChicken for Stark-N-Barnes Just because the world ended doesn’t mean there’s not stuff to do. After a terrible first meeting, Bucky and Tony have to figure out how to get along. There’s betrayals, confusion, and trials, but somewhere along the way, there’s some pretty great stuff.

Featuring a lot of badassery, a little smut, and surprisingly good parents, plus dumb boys in love, cuddles galore, and a friend group that should just give up and acknowledge they’re totally a family. There might be plot too. Maybe.

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let off some steam by fiax for iCheat Sometimes Tony just needs to let off some steam in a way they doesn’t involve his workshop. Sometimes he just needs to take his carefully designed, one of a kind motorbike and a break some road rules in street races where no one knows who he is. This time it looks like he might finally have some competition.

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Operation: Quiet Time by DragonGoesMoo for TheSopherfly Bucky notices how twitchy and tense Tony is; he sets out to teach Tony mindfulness and meditation. Tony learns to relax for the first time in his whole life, and maybe catches feelings during the process.

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Is That A Yes? by GenericUserHere for celtic7irish For this prompt: AU - Bucky works a translator, and knows several languages. He’s is hired as a translator by a firm that SI is taking over. They demand that Tony comes in and does the negotiating himself. Tony goes and bypasses Bucky completely by talking straight to the other party in their own language. Bucky is not amused. Tony finds Bucky after the meeting and tries to flirt with him in that language. Bucky is still fuming and insults Tony in a different language. Tony speaks that, too. (Meet-Cute)

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Alienated Together by NotRecommended for calmena Bucky feels unsafe around Steve, between him being compared to Wanda and the team in general. He flees to his only safe haven: Tony.

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Scowl Like a Pirate Day by james for blue_pointer Bucky knows what’s coming, but still Tony surprises him.  Hallowe'en fluff.

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Dynamics by celtic7irish for EchoSiriusRumme Bucky is an Omega working for Dynamics, a sex line agency that helps unmated Alphas during their ruts.  Tony is an unmated Alpha recently disinherited by his father.  Tony just moved into an apartment, and caught a glimpse of the hot loner down the hall.  Bucky just wants to be left alone.

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Constructing (a relationship) An Arm by AngeNoir for james Bucky and Steve had come to the fae to get a limb for Bucky. It’s always tricky to ask a fae for a favor, even if it’s a straight business transaction, and it’s even trickier when the fae has a secret themselves.

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A Lick of Dragon’s Breath by beir for fiax Bucky gets some help from his “assistant.”

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Sweater Weather by ezazahaz for WritingThroughTheMess For WritingThroughTheMess’s prompt: High school AU - Adorable, sweater-wearing nerd Tony has been pining over Bucky Barnes from afar for years. When, on a dare from Rhodey, Tony starts to act on these feelings, Bucky is certain that he’s trying to gain the favour of his best friend Steve, because why on Earth would someone as kind and intelligent and rich as Howard Stark’s son be interested as someone as rough as Bucky?

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Heavy With Hope by TheVagabondBoy for Fancy_Dragonqueen Tony’s freezing to death in a Siberian bunker.

Bucky’s searching for his past in a Siberian bunker.

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Tony Stark doesn’t do walk-ins (except for when he does) by calmena for Shi_Toyu In which Tony is not Iron Man, but still a genius inventor, and somehow ends up acquiring a rogue Winter Soldier.

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The Problems of Pie lantia4ever for DragonGoesMoo After finally leaving the hospital, Bucky and his son Peter move into a tiny apartment outside of New York City to try and continue living their life. Days and nights go by, mundane and boring with nothing for Bucky to do other than mope about, stare into walls and listen to his neighbor’s strangely lively nights.

Leave it to Peter to make new friends, one of which happens to be their mysterious neighbor.

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Just One Dance by IronEyes for singingwithoutwords Tony attends an event that everyone is pretty sure is a trap. The usual candidates for bodyguard/fake date are too well-known now, so Bucky gets volunteered for the job. He can do this. The fact that he very much wants to date Tony for real doesn’t need to complicate this at all. Right.

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Darling, It’s Better Down Where It’s Wetter by Fancy_Dragonqueen for JacarandaBanyan When Tony makes the wrong woman angry he suddenly finds himself in the ocean. With a tail and amnesia. It’s a wonderful life until he finds something very nice, very shiny falling into the ocean. Could this be his soulmate?

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Mystery Loves Company by MarvelousMenagerie for lantia4ever Tony is fine. There have been no attacks on his person or any increase in attacks on the Tower. He’s fine. It’s just a few emails. And if this does blow up in his face, as things tend to do, then it will probably blow up in Malibu, which means everyone he cares about will be back in New York and outside the detonation zone. That’s what matters most.

Tony isolates himself in Malibu with the excuse of needing to get work done, but he’s not as alone as he thought. Eventually Bucky and the Soldier might be able to convince Tony that he doesn’t have to handle everything on his own, but first they have a threat to neutralize.

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The Consultant by Grovehove for oceanhearted Rumours of 007 death had been exaggerated. Barnes was back. His Country needed him and he needed to avenge his soulmate’s death. His Stevie, Steven Grant Rogers, 006 had been iced by the terrorist group Hydra just when they were within reach of the evidence that confirmed Stark Industries were funding and supplying weapons to the terrorists.

M knew they had a mole in SHIELD, he also knew that the return of James Barnes had to be kept off the grid so that he could use his resurrected asset properly.

Barnes would have to be sent to the Consultant.

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I Knew You And Not My Name by camichats for Hayluhalo The Winter Soldier was sent to kidnap Tony Stark in Afghanistan. When Tony escaped the Ten Rings though, things don’t go the way Hydra wanted them to. Bucky finds himself, a mate, and a family.

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i don’t need anything (but you) by WritingThroughTheMess for GenericUserHere Together, Bucky and Tony dismiss the need for bitten tongues and whispered apologies. There is no need for anything but them.

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December 16th by pitifuis for NotRecommended When he was a child, it used to be just another day. It was just another day until Christmas. Just another day of winter. Just another day of trying.

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By Hook or by Crook by ZeeK for OneSmartChicken Bucky is sent to assassinate the King and Queen.

The last thing he expects to happen is for the Prince to get in his way. Of course, that’s exactly what happens.

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Engineering, With Love by house_of_lantis for Politzania Working at Stark Industries comes with a lot of perks. Bucky gets to be part of a quirky group of people; he gets access to world-class assistive technology; and he gets to work on projects that will become something that will make life better for people. While working late one night, Bucky receives a digital blueprint to review, obviously drawn by a madman engineer. It’s for the public good that Bucky makes corrections and redraws the plans, sending it back to the unknown engineer. This continues over a few months until Bucky discovers that he’s been correcting the work of the infamous genius, playboy, philanthropist billionaire himself - Tony Stark. He’s so totally going to get fired…or is he?

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Shifting into Being by siyuttov for Fluffypanda As a child James thought his mother’s stories were only myths. Growing up, they became a source of amusement in hard times. Now they have to power to give him afresh start. If only the corner of the world he chose to make his new home wasn’t also inhabited by Tony Stark.

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The Way the Pagan Gods Are Half-Remembered Here by badgerling for sevedra It was probably Tony’s fault that he kept going to bars to deal with everything after Ultron. It was probably even his fault when he followed a beautiful man into the bathroom. It was definitely his fault when he didn’t run for the door when he realized that that man was Bucky Barnes. It was not his fault for getting attached.

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Under a blanket of blue by Bill_Longbow for Juulna Tony is past the point of caring about having a soulmate or not. He has searched, failed, and bought the t shirt. Now, after New York, he has bigger concerns. But then a mystery assassin comes snooping around, turning his world upside down again.

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Bring me back (Home) by MassiveSpaceWren for a_salty_alto Tony couldn’t quite shake the feeling of being watched. The streets were empty, but the hairs on the back of his neck kept tingling. Every now and then, he could see a shadow pass over the gap of a building, or hear steps from above.

Whoever was up there was clearly after him and, if his experiences with this sort of thing so far were anything to go on, it probably wasn’t for a friendly chat.

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The Tide Comes Rushing In by JacarandaBanyan for endof_theline Tony has run away from home, and is living out of a backpack in California when he accidentally stumbles across a mermaid with his name written on it’s arm.

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Drowning Without You by whenfairieshelp for slippin_into_darkness Mermaid!AU for WinterIron SpringFling 2018. A colorful mermaid!AU because who doesn’t like mermaids.

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The Arrangement by Goda for Potrix For the prompt: Werewolf AU. Steve and Howard are alpha wolves of neighbouring territories, both facing difficulties; human threats, other packs, Pierce/HYDRA, dwindling food supplies, something else. They decide that an allegiance between their two packs is the only chance they have to survive, and, traditionally, an allegiance is made by marrying the oldest children of the respective alphas. Howard offers Tony, his only son, and Steve, having no children of his own/only very young children (with Peggy?), offers his childhood friend, Bucky. Neither Bucky nor Tony are particularly thrilled, at least at first. (Preferably not set in medieval/old times. Modern werewolves ftw!)

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Forgiveness (is earned) by AngeNoir for camichats After Obie, and his kidnapping, Tony shouldn’t be surprised he’s a bad judge of character.

Still, sleeping with someone who turned out to be a reporter, someone who spilled personal information onto the pages of the local newspaper for his fifteen minutes of fame…

Tony hadn’t realized he was that bad at judging people’s character.

Still, how did that saying go? Fool me once, shame on you… Tony’s not going to give him another chance to fool him, no matter how persistent reporter James Barnes may be.

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1100 Degrees of Separation by blue_pointer for DreamcatchersDaughter Tony Stark is just your average wealthy boy genius who opened his own bakery instead of going into the family business in order to spite his father. Bucky is a middle-aged firefighter who desperately wants to start a family. With a man. Tony’s been fantasizing about Mr. March for 3 years. But what will Tony do when he finally meets him?

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Teenage Dream by Shi_Toyu for tarot_card When AIM had hit the Winter Soldier with some sort of de-aging ray (Tony was still taking it apart and examining it in his lab) it had apparently been intended to reduce him to a toddler or somewhere thereabouts. Instead, the super serum running through his veins had somehow counteracted the machine enough to leave Bucky in an uncomfortably barely-legal state. Uncomfortable not because he was at least self-sufficient and retained an array of combat skills, but because it was also the exact same Bucky Tony had spent his formative years jerking off to.

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Hide Your Face, Hold My Heart by Shi_Toyu for MassiveSpaceWren Bucky had learned early on that life had a way of going to shit on very short notice. As a kid, that had meant running around and goofing off with Stevie only for an asthma attack to come out of seemingly nowhere. During the war, it meant creeping through the wilderness or a town or a base only for bullets to start flying. One minute you could be fighting back to back with your best friend, the next you could be falling to the bottom of a snowy chasm. That was just life.

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Can’t Help But Worry About You by a_salty_alto for TheVagabondBoy It wouldn’t be fair to take his frustrations out on the others anyway. It’s not like they knew.

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gene silencing by operationhades for Zola9612 GENE SILENCING: noun - the process(es) whereby certain genes in the genome are prevented from being expressed by chemical modifications and other means.

After a run in with AIM, Tony Stark finds himself once more changed. This time though, Bucky’s there to help him, to help him come to terms with his new body, and, apparently, to help the team as a whole heal from the rifts created from past mistakes. Thank god for FRIDAY, then.

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His Omega by Gothic_Lolita for phantomas Bucky is a werewolf in secret, working with a team of werewolf hunters. He hides from his closest friends and himself. But when an alpha of a pack Bucky’s supposed to be hunted declares Bucky as his, things get just a bit more complicated.

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Who We Weren’t by marsmaywander for Niki So Tony’s lost some memories? Bucky can relate.

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Wait and See  (if it’s the best you ever had) by Politzania for Gothic_Lolita To celebrate him finding a full time job after a rough patch,  Bucky Barnes’ friends – Steve and Sam – take him to a burlesque show.  Antonio, (who may or may not be a drag king), catches Bucky’s eye, and vice versa.  Bucky also strikes up a friendship with Ton-E,  a possibly-genderfluid barista working at the  24-hr coffee shop in the lobby of Stark Industries, where Bucky now works.   Will he be able to choose between one or the other?

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Just because something works, doesn’t mean that it cannot be improved by tringic for ezazahaz Shuri refuses to let Tony mess with her designs for Bucky’s new arm. This is her white boy to fix, and she’ll damn well do it right. Tony Stark can take his overprotective non-arguments somewhere else.

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I’m not a half, but you make me whole by Menatiera for its_inherited Tony has a hard time focusing on anything when Bucky Barnes is around. Suddenly having two Barneses - happy and dandy, charming human and broody, metal-armed supersoldier - didn’t help the matter. Not at all.

And then there’s a mysterious Valentine’s Day card in Tony’s workshop.

Or: Tony’s year from January to May, including a new teammate, some special dates, and lots of love.

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Family Dinner by tarot_card for starsandsupernovae Tony and Bucky are idiots hopelessly in love with each other. They’re also completely unaware that it’s mutual.

Steve and Sarah are sick of it.

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the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things by Fluffypanda for Forlorn Kumquat Bucky Barnes falls right out of 1945 into 2007 - and Tony Stark’s car.

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Silver Scraps by iCheat for Grovehove JB Barnes owns a business. SI want to buy him out and shut them down. His old friend Capt Ed Jarvis asked him to give a summer job to one Tony Carbonell . He can’t shake the feeling that he knows the kid, but its’ drowned out by the unwilling attraction between them.

Bucky had to deal with attacks on his business; daily harassment from SI lawyers: resisting a snarky sexy genius college kid, so he doesn’t get shot by Jarvis. ( No super powers Not Canon compliant)

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Interruptions by Breyito for IronEyes When Tony suddenly finds a coffee and a note waiting for him one morning, he thinks it’s cute. When it starts happening every morning, he gets curious. And JARVIS won’t help him, so…

What is an Omega to do, except hire a former assasin/spy to help him out?

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I Am Aching Now, To Let You In by Stark-N-Barnes for kenshincha When Bucky Barnes is assigned undercover as Tony Stark’s new PA, the last thing he expects to happen is falling for him in the process. He doesn’t expect the heartache that it would bring either.

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A Love That Lasts Forever by endof_theline for Goda When a damaged Phoenix comes to a Werewolf and a Vampire for tattoos to cover up some scars and maybe he finds a family along the way…

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Yield by Reioka for Breyito All Bucky has ever wanted was to win the contest for Tony’s hand in marriage. It’s a bit harder now that he’s down to one arm, but luckily his friends are willing to help make up the difference.

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The Billionaire and the Bodyguard by Forlorn Kumquat for Cee_Jaii Tony doesn’t need a bodyguard, okay? He can take care of himself just fine. Now if he can just convince everyone else - including the handsome new bodyguard.

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Hey, Read My Lips! by plirio for badgerling “But I think–It was so much easier before,” Barnes finishes, obviously upset. “A gesture, an introduction, an invitation, a dance. Now it’s all texting and messaging, and codes I don’t even– I knew how to– It’s so frustrating!”

or

Tony has– feelings-like things inside him for Bucky. Everyone makes fun of Steve - out of love, really. And Bucky needs advice.

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Room 154 by Briz for Bill_Longbow The the night shift was peaceful and quiet, and Bucky liked it that way.

Too bad the patient on room 154 didn’t get the memo and took it upon himself to spoil his night by pressing the damn nurse call button every fifteen minutes since midnight.

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Game of Love and Chance by EchoSiriusRumme for plirio After sharing his worries about the man he’s supposed to marry, Tony’s guard Clint comes up with an ingenious plan to switch places with him, so that he could observe this James fellow from the background.  The Prince’s own servant, Steve, arrives first, claiming the Prince is running late, and the two get to talking in the meantime.  When Tony and this tall, dark and handsome man hit it off instantly, Tony may or may not be reconsidering this whole arranged marriage deal.

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Silver and Gold by its_inherited for beir It was a good day.

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Her name was Betsy by Cee_Jaii for Arboreal How two men, who did not know what exactly they were, seduced each other. With a motorcycle.

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Baby Winter Soldiers and Jealous Spiderlings by AlienPsycho for tarot_card The Prompt “de-aged” Bucky - only whatever was used to de-age him, because of his super-soldier serum, brought him back to his 20- something self from the 30s/40s. And young, not brain-washed Bucky sees Tony, and turns into his young, charming, flirty self.

From Peter Parker’s point of view. Brief, and not very detailed. He doesn’t like the idea of sharing his father figure/mentor.

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A Second Chance by kenshincha for marsmaywander While Tony tries to figure out why Bucky hit a roadblock in his treatment with the BARF, they end up stranded with Bucky’s arm damaged.

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Is It Starkbucks or Snarkbucks? by slippin_into_darkness for Reioka Tony puns it up whenever he sees his favorite barista. Bucky is having none of it.

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Mend (Our Brokenness) by Juulna for siyuttov Written for the prompt: Post-WS, Bucky gets his memories back fairly quickly because of the serum, and then commits himself to doing what he can to make up for what Hydra made him do. He starts with small things, draining Hydra bank accounts to pay off the student debt of his victim’s next of kin, scaring off abusive boyfriends of victim’s spouses, etc. Tony is the hardest one on his list, because what can he do to help a billionaire?

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Save Me A Dance by TheSopherfly for whenfairieshelp Pre!serum Steve and Bucky live together. One day, Steve brings a new friend home. Bucky is not prepared for that friend to be the cute guy who rejected him at a dance a few months ago.

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Trying Too Hard by Arboreal for pitifuis The Winter Soldier’s appearances were usually few and far between, which made it all the more confusing when suddenly Tony couldn’t seem to go a single day without setting the Winter Soldier off.

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Trust Falls by Niki for ZeeK Doctor Strange has a plan to tie Bucky Barnes to someone who can be trusted to never misuse the command words, someone who will always do right by him. The spell has side effects. It also chooses a person no one – including Tony himself – expected.

[lhs3020b]

The Fugitive Worlds, by Bob Shaw

The Fugitive Worlds is the last novel in the Land/Overland trilogy. Since I’ve commented on the other two, here are my thoughts. And beware! here there (may) be Ropes! possbly even intersecting ones!

OVERVIEW

It's two generations or so after the Migration from Land. If you squint, society on Overland may have improved - apparently it has got a bit more meritocratic, there certainly has been some progress on gender issues, and this time the novel doesn't open with a random peasant being dragged off to be executed on some noble's arbitrary whim. Technology and infrastructure are changing - Cassyll Maraquine's industrial empire seems to be overseeing a pivot toward a metal-and-steam based economy, and in fact they seem to be in the early stages of an industrial revolution. On the plus side, this presumably means Overland isn't faced with another ptertha crisis in the near future, though a cynic may wonder if they've just swapped one environmental crisis for another one in a few centuries' time, when the seas start rising and the deserts begin to expand. But not to fear - there's every chance that the whole of society will be swept away by cataclysm long before that ominous possibility can occur!

You see, change is afoot in Overland's domain. Because, to the consternation of everyone except the government (who remain supremely complacent), a fourth planet has suddenly appeared in their star system. Attempts are made to bring this to the attention of the queen; unfortunately she's utterly fixated on a demented scheme to extend her reign back to Land itself.

At the opening of the novel, Toller Maraquine II, grandson of the star of the first two books, is discontent. As Cassyll's son, he could have had a life of wealth, privilege and social influence. Instead he spends his time mooning after his supposedly-heroic grandfather - yes, the same one who managed to simply forget that his first wife existed! Toller II, unfortunately, has inherited his grandfather's impetuousness and basic lack of any common sense. He's certainly not a monster, but he is an idiot. This is shown in the book's opening scenes, where he falls blindly in love with the Countess Vantara, despite the fact that she's an obvious schemer and bully.

Seeking to impress Vantara, Toller involves himself with the planned re-expansion onto Land. This swiftly gets disrupted, though, by the appearance of an expanding crystalline disk, growing across the zero-g datum plane that exists between the two twinned planets. The disk's rapid expansion cuts off travel between Land and Overland - it expands beyond the region of breathable air where the two planets' atmospheres meet - and to make matters worse, the Countess vanishes while trying to traverse said region! Oh no! Toller, of course, immediately resolves that he must go and rescue her. (She has treated him with nothing except derision and contempt by this point, and he of course fails to read the very obvious message in there.)

The predictable result of this is that Toller gets himself and his crew abducted by aliens, because of course the people of Land and Overland are actually currently bystanders in someone else's plans. Fortunately for Toller, the Dussarrans show no interest in probing him. Unfortunately for him, the expanding crystalline disk is actually a complex machine intended to relocate Dussarra itself away from the galaxy they all currently live in.

You see, the aliens believe that they are imminently threatened - their researchers have found evidence pointing to a collision between so-called "Ropes" somewhere astronomically nearby. (Ropes appear to be similar to the class of hypothetical topological defects that we call "cosmic strings" - fortunately for us, there's no evidence that cosmic strings actually exist in our universe.) This collision, they believe, will have produced an explosion somewhere between a gamma ray burst and a cosmological phase change. They fear that a wave of destruction is currently zooming toward them, at or close to the speed of light. If they are right, there is certainly no chance of Dussarra surviving it, hence their decision to begin relocating their planet.

Unfortunately there's a smaller problem. The Xa, the relocation engine they're constructing across the datum plane? When activated, it will destroy Land and Overland. The Dussarrans may be about to finish what the ptertha started around fifty years previously - the complete destruction of all civilisation on either Land or Overland!

A LEVER TO MOVE THE WORLD

Before we go any further, I'll give the Dussarrans credit for one thing: whatever their other faults, at least they're willing to think big. They are, after all, trying to address the Rope problem at source. If it were us in their situation ... well, half the newspapers would insist that Ropes don't exist, another third would claim they're leftist conspiracies to steal our precious body fluids, the remaining handful would write something mealy-mouthed about how Ropes might exist but maybe we shouldn't "overreact" for fear of a "pro-Rope" backlash. Centrists would call for a grand bargain with the Ropes - they can toast only HALF the planet in return for a top-up pupil premium on private school fees! Youtube user MagaCrypto2024 will tell you to invest your life savings in their newly-minted RopeCoin ("if it's golden enough for the quantum vacuum, it's gold enough for YOU!") and then a Tory would take 52% of the vote on a platform about how Ropes are great beacuse they'll eradicate the benefits claimants. 10 seconds after that, the shockwave demolishes the entire planet, and of course no-one ever admits that perhaps, just perhaps, they may have got it a bit wrong.

I'll say it again, whatever their other faults, at least Dussarra has managed to react to the crisis, and their behaviour isn't completely-insane.

That said, the Dussarrans' solution does suck.

Apparently the Xa requires weightlessness and a large supply of free oxygen to grow. It's not really clear why the Dussarrans couldn't have simply built a large bubble, say at one of their Lagrange points, pumped that full of air, and grew their Xa in there. There is a suggestion that the planetary alignment between Land and Overland is important too, the book does flip-flop this a bit too. Anyway we're left with the impression that the Dussarrans didn't have a lot of choice in where they built the Xa and they do genuinely believe that they are fleeing a cosmologically-apocalyptic event. Also, it's a plot point that Dussarra isn't an ideologically-coherent monolith; in fact the plan faces substantial internal dissent, and this actually boils over into something as close as the Dussarrans can have to a civil war. This is doubly-significant as the Dussarrans' telepathy also stops them from fighting each other in the usual manner - bluntly, when someone dies nearby, the telepathic backlash is utterly-paralysing to any exposed Dussarran. Killing someone yourself would thus be near-impossible for a Dussarran, though as is common in Shaw novels, the Dussarran elite has found a way to do an end-run around this problem. (Non-lethal weapons don't have the same paralysing impact!)

On a slight tangent, one interesting twist in "The Fugitive Worlds" is that Toller and co are basically NPCs in the Dussarrans' story, and they don't realise it.

The place, I think, where the Dussarrans' scheme becomes morally-unacceptable is their failure to evacuate Land and Overland. The population of Dussarra is at least thirty million - that's their capital city alone! - and in fact is implied to be in the billions. They're a modern industrial society with modern technology, after all. By contrast, even if the Landers have been breeding like bunnies for the last two generations, the population of Overland still can't be more than a few hundred thousand at absolute most. My guess is that a more plausible number would be more like 50-75,000. Perhaps 250,000 if you stretch it (a low death rate and every family putting out 4, 5 or 6+ kids could just about get you there in this timescale).

The Dussarrans have remote teleportation tech, and the denouement shows that said tech can reach anywhere on Overland, even at a distance of millions of miles. In principle, they could remove everyone from Overland, and given the vast difference in population, they could certainly accomodate a few thousand more people on Dussarra. The point I'm making here is that an evacuation was possible; there was no technological, infrastructural or economic barrier that would have precluded it. Granted the Overlanders probably would have reacted badly to being hoovered off their homeworld - who wouldn't? - but, they're not 100% immune to reason either. As Divvidiv's interations with Toller show, Overlanders are capable of understanding the Rope problem, especially when telepathy is used to help said understanding along.

(Also, for that matter, there was nothing to stop the Dussarran government from trying to open diplomatic relations with Queen Dasseene's regime, and maybe saying "Uh, guys, sorry to be a nuisance but we've got some news you might want to hear about...")

Under normal circumstances, of course, abducting everyone off of their own homeworld would be bad. It's still not great, even in context. But, the Dussarrans do have genuine reason to believe that The End Of All Things is barrelling toward them at nearly speed of light. When the Rope-intersection event lights up Land/Overland's skies, we can reasonably assume that it will destroy both of those planets too. In fact, Divvidiv confirms this possibility in as many words. Relocating everyone to Dussarra, then using the Xa and the Land/Overland binary to relocate the planet somewhere safe would, in context, strike me as a morally-defensible solution to the crisis. While it would be sad to lose Land and Overland, it would at least allow both societies to survive.

(The question of Farland is never addressed in this. As far as we can tell, the Farlanders are on their own during this particular cosmological emergency.)

Perhaps unfortunately for everyone, Dussarra's leadership have apparently decided to pull a Thanos instead. Why they skipped over the obvious non-genocidal solution is never directly addressed, though there are hints. The Dussarran leadership patronisingly describes Overlanders as "Primitives" - it's implied that their racism is a factor in their failure to do anything for their new neighbours. Also, thinking about it, the callousness is thematically-consistent with the rest of the series. Throughout this trilogy we see leaders making decisions that are at-best based on expediency alone - witness how quick King Prad was to abandon Ro-Atabri in the first book - or sometimes, decisions are based actively on malice and spite (see the Sgt Gnapperl subplot from the second book). From that point of view, the behaviour of Director Zunnunun and the Dussarran authorities is not particularly-unusual.

The scheme also ends up entirely-backfiring. You see, the wrong planet gets displaced. Ooops.

We never learn the fate of Land or Dussarra for an absolute fact; Toller's post-event speculations are bleak, but the narrative may imply that Dussarra at least could have survived. (The Dussarran rebels return there after the confrontation on Overland - I don't think they would have done that if they thought that their Xa-disrupting box was going to destroy their homeworld in the process!) I'm less optimistic for Land - the planet is probably toast - but that said, there is no "on-screen" death and what happened during the Xa's activation was definitely 100% Off The Rails, so who knows? I suppose it's at least possible that Land could have survived the Xa's activation.

One does wonder how it would cope with the abrupt removal of Overland's tides, though.

That said, Overland seems to experience weirdly few direct consequences for its displacement. The main effect is an abrupt change in the sky, followed later by the confusing discovery that Pi no longer exactly equals 3, but instead is somehow closer to 3.14. There are no storms or earthquakes - it's not clear how the tidal relaxation of Overland's crust had no geological consequences at all. The only thing I can think of is that perhaps the new solar tides are exactly equal to the ones Overland previously experienced?

Oh yes, I mentioned "solar" tides, didn't I? This is because the last few pages of "The Fugitive Worlds" are even more head-bending then they sound. While the galaxies and daylight stars and comets and meteors all vanish, and the number of stars in the sky decline sharply, the Overlanders are surprised to discover that they have a lot more planetary neighbours that they did even hours ago. In the course of one night of observations, Cassyll and Bartan find five distinct planets, and quickly postulate that more could exist. The cream coloured gas giant with the big ring catches their attention, and they're confused about how to count the binary between the blue planet and it's one-quarter-sized greyish companion? moon? neighbour?

Yes, a cream-coloured gas giant with a prominent ring system, Pi quite possibly equal to 3.141592654..., a blue planet with a greyish moon that's about one quarter its diameter ... hmmm, I wonder where Overland could have gone? Such a mystery, no possible clues, amirite? Oh yes, the blue one is described as being quite bright, so apparently Overland's new orbit is fairly near to it. Given how relatively-empty Overland is, you do does find yourself wondering just how long before their heavily-populated new neighbour decides that they're next on the menu for Manifest Destiny...

(Just in case anyone's confused about what the ending implies, the descriptions suggest that Overland has been displaced not only out of its own universe, but into our solar system. The cream-coloured ringed planet is clearly Saturn, and the blue/grey binary is the Earth-Moon system. The five planets Cassyll and Bartan find are presumably most of the ones from classical antiquity - Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Earth-Moon system. Presumably they missed out Mercury, but in fairness its closeness to the Sun makes it the hardest of the classical planets to observe, so this is reasonable. But needless to say, this ending does come firmly out of the left field.)

BUT WHAT OF THE PEOPLE?

In terms of characterisation this novel continues the threads of the previous two. Shaw does do a good job of painting believable people - their flaws, errors and misjudgements are all very human. No-one does anything that real people wouldn't, or haven't. Toller's hero-worshipping his wife-amnesiac grandfather (have I mentioned the airbrushing that Fera Rivoo got halfway through the first book?) is believable. People do behave like this, idolising idiots and putting others on pedestals. His infatuation with Vantara is depressingly-believable too. People fall for people they shouldn't all the time. This sort of meltdown is arguably one side of the romantic coin, after all.

Vantara - well, there are plenty of status-obsessed bullies out there who are also secretly cowards. She's the monarchical version of every bad middle manager you've ever met. One of the book's subplots is how she gradually falls from Toller's esteem, though it takes until the denouement before he finally sees her for what she is. Also, interestingly, the romance plot gets subverted at this point. Toller manages to find someone else, someone who is both a better person and who will hopefully balance his more self-destructive tendencies with basic common sense.

Also, Vantara's entire career basically hangs off of the fact that a close relative is also the Queen. With Queen Dasseene's health in sharp decline and a clear suggestion that her reign will soon end, one suspects that Vantara's star will go down with her. Also this won't be helped by the fact that Vantara was physically there, on the field with the Dussarran rebels' Xa-disrupting box and she did - not a lot? It was almost the end of Overland, and heroic deeds were notable largely by their absence on her part.

The Dussarrans feel less real. That said, Divvidiv's combination of complacency, careerism and partly-sublimated guilt at the necks he knows he's stepping on in his job - yes, it does feel consistent with your average out-of-their-depth middle manager. We see less of Director Zunnunun and we know of the Palace of Numbers only indirectly, but their general superiosity and smugness are consistent with what I know of senior-management-as-a-group. However, Dussarra does remain slightly out-of-focus even in the second half of the book, when Toller and co are literally stood on it.

Cassyll and Bartan pop up every now and then in the narrative, but they're not so directly-involved. They're mainly there to try to explain events to the Queen, who is clearly severely ill and also severely in denial about being ill.

Another niggle aboout this book is that it carries on dropping plot threads, much like the other two. What happened to the people the Queen sent to Land? Did Dussarra survive? What happened to the rebels? Was the Rope-intersection really real? We never get clear answers or, in some cases, any answers at all. It almost feels like this novel was intended as a sequel-hook for a fourth book, or perhaps some new trilogy, but said trilogy never arrived. Honestly, that might be for the best. (Do we really want to read a novel about Overland being plowed up for luxury executive mansions while the surviving population are herded off to reservations, or all die from the flu or other imported terrestrial diseases? Given the Kolcorronian monarchy's behaviour in the first book, being on the wrong end of a colonial expansion would have a certain bleak irony, but it wouldn't be fun to read.)

So again, like the previous two, this one is a page-turner. It's hard to put down. But like the previous two, it suffers from dropped plot-threads and perhaps also a few too many out-of-the-left-field WTF? moments. That said, I did enjoy re-reading it, and I can see why it made such an impression on younger!me all the way back in the 1990s, when I first read this trilogy.

[feigeroman]

Thomas OCs: Franklin

Number: 59 Class: LNER Thompson B1 4-6-0 Built: 1943 Arrived on Sodor: 1969 Service (Shed): NWR Utility (Knapford) Livery: NWR Local Passenger Green

Franklin is fairly unusual among the engines of the NWR, for the simple reason that - somewhat paradoxically - he’s probably the most normal, sane, down-to-earth engine on the whole of Sodor. Whereas most of the other engines are apt to get into scrapes and mishaps on an alarmingly regular basis, Franklin is more content to keep quietly working in the background - in fact, he actively does his best not to get caught up in any of his colleagues’ antics whatsoever. The closest he gets is occasionally bearing witness to the incidents his fellow engines get caught up in, and almost always passing comment on their strange behaviour.

Franklin, had suitably low-key beginnings, when he was built at Darlington in 1943. This being at the height of the Second World War, he was immediately pressed into service hauling goods trains for the war effort. Most of his work saw him travelling around East Anglia, where the US Air Force had a significant presence during the War. Franklin, initially unnamed, became good friends with one particular group of American airmen, who unofficially christened him after then-President Franklin Roosevelt.

Following the War’s end, Franklin continued working around East Anglia, jumping about from shed to shed over the next few years. By the time Nationalization came in 1948, he’d finally settled down at Parkeston Quay, near to the Port of Harwich. Thus he was frequently to be seen on heavy freight trains serving the port - frequently containing wagons off the train ferry from Zeebrugge - although his main work was fast passenger trains.

Franklin continued his BR career, in his own unassuming way, until Boxing Day 1965, when he was withdrawn from service at Colwick shed - where he’d finished up following another spell of shed-hopping in the years immediately prior. Instead of being cut up, though, he was converted for use as a stationary boiler to heat up coaching stock. Franklin was transferred elsewhere to perform this task, but it is not clear where - possibly Ipswich, given that that was where he was when he was finally withdrawn altogether in 1968.

This could well have been the end of Franklin, had it not been for an unexpected stroke of fortune. Literally weeks later, he was picked up and purchased as part of Sir Topham Hatt’s bulk purchasing scheme of the 1960s. While not the last steam engine to be purchased by the NWR under this scheme, he was definitely one of the last to enter service there, in 1969. Upon his arrival on Sodor, Franklin was allocated to Knapford sheds, and became one of the NWR’s many utility engines. That is, he can be sent almost anywhere that’s short of an engine, to do almost any kind of job. Most of the time, though, Franklin is kept busy on semi-fast passenger and goods trains along the Main Line. Although based at Knapford, he’s also to be found working on the Great Waterton branch on a relatively frequent basis - usually when he needs a bit of peace from the antics of his fellow engines.

Despite his fierce determination to remain the normal one, Franklin’s closest friend is the wild and outgoing Loretta (NWR #56). Actually, calling it a friendship might be pushing the limits of credibility just a little bit. A more accurate description would be that it’s Franklin who holds onto the other end of Loretta’s leash whenever her brake van Harriet is out with another engine, or otherwise unavailable. Franklin knows that Loretta’s difficult enough to deal with when there is someone to reel her in, but he’s fully aware that if she were left to her own devices, she might end up doing something so drastic as to have disastrous consequences.

Trivia

If I’d intended for Loretta to be the Peppermint Patty of my cast of OCs, then Franklin was definitely intended to be the...er, Franklin. He was created shortly after Loretta, and was very much intended to serve as her straight man (I think this was before I’d fully established her relationship with Harriet). I then decided it’d be more fun to expand on this idea, and make him the straight man to virtually everyone else on the NWR. Someone who could look at the madness going on around him, and actually take a moment to ask, “Is nobody else completely weirded out by this?“

The name Franklin, by the way, is indeed inspired by the Peanuts character of the same name, who played the same sort of role in that comic. I initially only intended to use it as a placeholder, but as ever, it just kinda stuck.

One of the preserved B1s, Mayflower, was named after another member of the class, which was in turn named after the famous ship. I think I wanted to keep the American connection, which was what lead me to keep the name Franklin - albeit with a different etymology behind it.

I can’t for the life of me remember why I specifically went with a B1, except maybe that I just liked the look of them. And a lot of them were based in Fife, where I currently live, so perhaps there’s a little geographical bias there. Who knows...

[orbemnews]

Jaguar’s Dynamic Duo, the E-Type Coupe and Convertible, Gets One Last Parade Jaguar’s E-Type has been a showstopper from the start. Specifically the 1961 Geneva International Motor Show, when Jaguar took the wraps off its coupe and convertible concepts. No less of an expert than Enzo Ferrari instantly judged the E-Type the most beautiful car in the world. Many car connoisseurs still hold this view. Jaguar had intended to remember that introduction 60 years ago at the Geneva show originally set for March, but pandemic lockdowns iced those plans. So Jaguar came up with a new way to celebrate. But first, a little more history. Back in early March 1961, Jaguar’s new cars barely arrived in time for their much-anticipated introductions — after a couple of epic drives that are part of E-Type lore. The company had decided to preview the coupe for magazine journalists with early deadlines, and some mischievous journalists had gotten it up to 150 m.p.h. on back roads — a racecar-worthy, and prison-worthy, speed at the time. So after that joy ride, the coupe was still drawing attention at Jaguar’s headquarters in Coventry, England, long after it was supposed to have left for Geneva. Too late to transport it, a public relations manager, Bob Berry, decided to drive it, catching the midnight ferry from Dover. But he ran into fog that lasted until Reims, in France. Now critically late, to make up for lost time Berry set out on the drive of his life. He arrived just 20 minutes before the scheduled unveiling on Geneva’s waterfront, against the backdrop of its famous water jet fountain. There was barely time for the steaming coupe to be wiped down. William Lyons, the company president, said, “Good God, Berry, I thought you weren’t going to get here.” “It was the only car I actually drove flat out from one end to the other of a journey,” Berry recalled years later, according to a Jaguar history. “It was the most incredible journey of my life, and I’ve never forgotten it.” An even more hair-raising journey was in store for Norman Dewis, Jaguar’s estimable test driver, who was still back in Coventry with the E-Type convertible. Lyons hadn’t planned to introduce both cars in Geneva, but the response to the coupe was so staggering he changed his mind. He phoned Dewis and told him: “Drop everything. Bring the open-top E-Type here immediately.” Dewis did, completing his trip in about half the time it had taken Berry. Today in Business Updated  April 14, 2021, 3:30 p.m. ET Dewis, who died two years ago at age 98, vividly recalled the story of his journey, shortly before his death. “It was in the days before motorways in the U.K., or the autoroute in France,” Dewis said in an interview at a concours event in Amelia Island, Fla. “It was mostly two-lane roads, through small towns, all the way. Across customs checks and through border crossings. I averaged 68 m.p.h., including the ferry crossing.” He added, “As soon as Bob Berry saw me, he came over and said: ‘Thank God you’ve made it. Look at the size of these queues.’” Indeed, the smitten crowd placed orders for 500 E-Types. When the two cars returned to England, they had covered a total of 3,400 miles — not bad for preproduction prototypes not intended for that kind of hard use. Impressively, both vehicles are still with us; the coupe, with the license plate 9600 HP, is in private hands; the convertible, tagged 77 RW, is still in Jaguar’s collection and is scheduled to be exhibited in the British Museum. Had the cars not made it to Geneva 60 years ago, it certainly would have been a world-class embarrassment, and might have dampened the enthusiasm. But they made it, and that storied introduction helped propel the E-Types to a production run that lasted a completely unanticipated 13 years. A couple of years back, Jaguar announced that it would produce a few “continuation” replicas of its most famous cars (as Aston Martin has done so successfully). Those models, including a few E-Types, have sold quite well. But this year, the company decided that the E-Type had earned its own special remembrance. As a commemoration, Jaguar is offering six pairs — a coupe and a convertible — in the same livery as the Geneva show cars, for sale to the public. The catch is they are sold only in pairs. No pricing has been revealed, but the continuation cars’ base prices were $440,000 each. Here’s something else that will be special about the so-called E-Type 60 Collection: The pairs are Series 1 E-Types from the early 1960s, not replicas. They are being completely rebuilt, and the engines, gauges, electrical systems and more will be modernized. Their paint jobs — Flat Out Grey and Drop Everything Green, in honor of their hasty journeys to Geneva — are exact recreations of the colors of the show cars. Jaguar further promises that those colors will never be used again on any Jags. The delay for the 2021 Geneva show has given Jaguar extra time to add a new wrinkle to the whole project: It will wait a year, allowing time to finish all 12 cars, and hopefully to sell them all. (Some are already finished and sold, Jaguar has announced.) And come 2022, they will all be driven from Coventry to Geneva for a grand event, via the same route as the prototypes — this time obeying the speed limits. Source link Orbem News #Convertible #Coupe #Duo #Dynamic #EType #Jaguars #parade

[rosheendubh]

Me goofing around with horrid photo edits...

Scene—some deep cavern on some planet somewhere in some quadrant/sector of the galaxy...

*Rhyanon ferch Garwyn (daughter of the Danu and Fomori, survivor of the massacre of Geis, planet in the outer Rim Worlds-The Deep)—wherein, a wormhole rediscovered with the fall of Coruscant, opens a portal across light years—The events of Geis, prompted by Palpatine’s ceaseless quest to find the ultimate tool of dominion, in an ancient/advanced technology that can dissolve/transcend the limits of matter/space/time, requires a key to uncovering it’s existence—on the eve of the FirstDeathStar’s demise, Imperial intelligence enacting first contact, enlists the unsanctioned aid of Reaver raiders residing on the other side of the wormhole, to apprehend, and destroy any opposition, to obtaining the source of the sought after key to locate/control said ancient treasure of mastery—a technology of Keltia’s advanced bio-kinetic and psionic traits inherent in the myriad peoples of Danu/Fomor/Coroniad populating the Keltic star systems—in the resultant slaughter and planetary destruction that targets Rhyanon’s sister, Rodon, and leaves Rhyanon a hostage to the Imperium, a girl barely into adolescence, child of Keltia, comes of age, trained as a courtesan and healer in service to the emperor, with the powers unique to her people, what’s understood as the Force, her people have utilized for millennia as Druid/Ban-Druid, a meta-physical aspect of evolution kin to all sentient beings in varied ways-Rhyanon able to manipulate the very molecules of genes enhanced by nanotech, mind altering the matter of life, a property Palpatine hoped to exploit, and extend his own life against the inevitability of time-with his death at Endor (not slain by Luke, but by another occupant from that far-distant quadrant across the wormhole, Sorsha ny Galida, pilot and assassin of the Hashisayan, sent in vengeance for the massacre of Geis, who takes up service with the Rebellion in the years leading up to Endor, becomes Luke’s lover for a time, her duty to slay Palpatine ends her own life as well, allows Luke to rescue his father, and leaves with a searing loss and bitterness at Sorsha’s death...no sanitized/Tolkien version of space opera, but the Game of Thrones version of space opera...sex/death/angst/Ewoks Sacrificed to the Sith, you know, that kind of thing...also, Anakin survives, but as Sith-though not wholly dark anymore-Limb regeneration restoring his mutilated body from years before, restoring damaged organ tissue as well/ liberating him from the machinery that had twisted his soul/in his own conflicted soul, he seeks solitude for a time, meshed in Sith mysteries, later emerging to take up the faltering Imperial hegemony in a galaxy quickly changing with the shifting tides of power and alliance wrought by the wormholes discovery—also, I sort think Jorah would make lovely, older-Seasoned Anakin/humanized DarthVader...), and the later occupation of Coruscant, Rhyanon, now free, but stranded from her home system, escapes Coruscant to a forgotten planet called Dathomir, where she spends 4 yrs amongst the ‘Witches’, and endearing herself to the aged garrison of stromtroopers who’ve largely settled themselves almost the indigenous civilians, attempting to design the specs of a cruiser able to withstand the stresses of inter-space travel via wormhole so she might r/t her home—timeline is a generation the after the fall of the CurtainWall, under the reign AeronAiobhell, and the war of the 3 Star systems of the Formori/Coraniads/Danu, which results in establishing contact with the long lost Terran Confederacy-when NewRepublic scouts uncover the forgotten base of Dathomir, Luke/Leia/Han arrive to investigate, and resulting ultimate conflict, Luke ends up pursuing Rhyanon as she attempts to flee off-planet, only to get shot down, and then sparring with said Jedi that he only just manages to subdue/apprehend her to custody-her background get revealed eventually with her origins/controversial association with Palpatine/her involvement with Imperial machinations/healing talents a useful propaganda piece to balance imperial charity with oppression/her pursuit of those who’d murdered her sister years before/knowledge of the wormhole and Keltia/affiliated star systems beyond...

*Luke, Leia, Han—way alternate canon involving Star Wars up through original Zahn trilogy, and absolutely nothing of NJO, other than Dathomir...NewRepublic and Imperial conflict abounding...and the Jedi legacy is more kin to how I’d envision a neo-Samuri warrior-philosopher-scholar class/w/o any sort of strong, centralized organization, but a loosely affiliated branching of individuals adhering to a central ideology of practice and belief, where Light and Dark, as Luke comes to realize, are complimentary and opposing forces at once, both necessary in a dynamic, variegated reality of existence...

*Some twisting of StNG—the new Picard series with Firefly/Serenity after the events following the discovery of Miranda, leaving RiverTam with one more secret embedded in memories—planets inhabited by colonizers of Earth that Was/Old Terra to the Kelts, like New Cordova—based off an interstellar version of al-Andalus, desert planet/glittering cities/enlightened Islamic philosophies combined with Hindu pantheism—why not?

*chimersized hybrid creature of genetic engineering/biomolecular and cyber-temporal existence-Reavers/Experiment of Miranda/Clone Wars had been previous failed examples of/Empire  again aspires, under Thrawn, to enhance and perfect these experimental creatures shaped out of matter and time w/with micro-psionetic talents and technologies kin to certain sentients—Rhyanon and her lineage in particular, amongst other humanoid life...creatures grew dangerous/uncontrollable to existing technologies b/c of arcane/mutated sequences coded into their cyber-genetic makeup, but if they could be harnessed once more, would offer a matchless weapon to establish dominion across the Star-systems

—Bases on theory of 13Treasures of Prydain/4 Treasures of Ireland—Weapons of Lugus/Cauldron-Grail-Cosmic Tree some sort of nexus of existence between time and matter and space, touched by mind and flesh

—Gathered In subterranean/nebulous world of an ancient gas giant dissipating into cosmic forces slowly, A web of light around a sphere or a plexus of darkness/a well of shadow/power source of some kind/gathered cooperative onlookers-Han/Leia/Luke/Picard w/new crew/Mal/The Operative dude/Simon/River ‘n crew, all gaze in astonishment at the ethereal amorphous quantum entanglement-Rhyanon approaches to Luke’s alarm and her answering reassurance sensing the key to what they’re seeking lies in reaching into that atomic cluster feeling its currents resounding in her mind/River mentions this was the missing puzzle piece in her mind/the last secret of Miranda/mutters a puzzling lyric of *7 above and 7 below, 3 and 4 and 3 once more, 12 there were in warp and weft, till all dissolved and nothing’s left*/looks at Rhyanon bright/steady/*Can you see it* It’s not me they need-you’re the key they’re after/Rhyanon puts her hands about the coruscating globe of cloud and light and dark/rivers of light shimmer and steam through her veins/tracks of the nanotech enhancing inherent ability sequenced into her neural plexus as a child/at her contact an eruption of light blossoms like a lotus into a thousand branched tree formed out of a cone of darkness and well swallowing and emitting light and shadow simultaneously/Yana at its core/strands and shards of scintillating electromagnetic spectra flowing through and about her person/suspended off the ground by the rivers of light stream outwards in a dancing array that loops and weaves around the gathered company/touching flesh/sampling of matter and spirit/eliciting varying reactions of delight/awe/astonishment/suspicion/resignation or wary caution/Leia in wonderment/face aglow seeing Han’s eyes light up as he tries slapping away a glittering sparkle flitting about his nose/*What is this.*/Simon-hushed reply as he watches River dance about the forest of branching threads like a mystical sea creature or a bird taken wing amongst droplets of a rainbow, her laughter joined by Kaylee who keeps knotting photonic loops about his shoulders and send up a silvery thread in a spiral bringing them together in an embrace he only hesitates for a moment, halos surrounding them, Merging and splitting and merging again/Operative dude watches River in awe, saying at the same time Simon utters/*The mind-/-of a god/Luke finishes for them/his own mind familiar with the heightened awareness to realms felt and sensed but not seen/but what this anomaly opens is something beyond even his own expanded awareness/bound to Rhyanon before this and acutely aware of the Other—ethereal and ancient power flowing and flooding her sense—not drowning her/too much of her own consciousness keeping this otherness that seems to understand the vehicle of her soul as a medium/channel of communication/she looks on him with a gaze like a thousand suns/he approaches her drawn to rippling purity as she turns like a leaf or floating seed on wind/strands of light shifting to place her gently to the dark floor/palm raised to his/hands encased in light/enchantment in his eyes, alight like fire beneath the vast depths of ocean worlds/*I saw the summer stars fall in your eyes once/*to which he says/memories touching him from beyond a single life/and I promised you a palace in the heavens/the auras of light about each their forms melding and rising into a into a spiraling dance of motion and impossible beauty/*creatures of light we are, not this crude matter/he hears as their lips meet, he hears his old Master’s words even as River’s sweet clear voice, reach out into the glittering void they all inhabit/*We’re Children of Earth and Starry sky*/twirling about the ribbons of light curving about her leaping and spinning form as she circles the Operative with a laugh, aims a strand of winding brilliance to Inara and Mal/her smile a divine blessing as Picard, with the lovely android who shares in her own way of biology and technology coalesced into something novel and familiar, reshaping life’s elemental foundations, quotes an old poem of Earth that Was—still is apparently—*Blake quote*—infinity in a grain of sand/eternity in an hour/Leia*Like the stories across so many sentient cultures, of gods that 

[instantbanana]

OFF world

I held the can, hands steady. Bug spray had become as hot a commodity as water and water had become more dangerous than thirst. I walked along the edges of the dome. A puddle glinted in the noon light, tiny squirming creatures who would soon take flight. My blow torch was off my back in a second, burning the nearby plants as I dried the small pool and reattached the metal base of the dome to the ground. Watching the steam rise made my throat hurt, but I couldn’t risk letting it stand. They screamed murder. They were not screaming for their own deaths.

I took a step back and admired our work. The edges of the dome were fused to the ground, molten metal. We’d taken as much of a precaution as we could, puddles were dried, cracks were welded shut, and rain meant that there was a full city lockdown.Every screen door in the city had been used. It wasn’t like we needed them, it was just us now. Enough air to breathe and enough to eat. None of the larger insects had come through yet. First had been the bees, infected by an ill that we can’t pinpoint the origin of. They died off though, their deaths attributed to pollution and human failing. Colonies collapsed And we should have taken it as their warning. Next was ants, who died in droves, save the fire ants, who lived through pure spite or maybe because they suited their sickness.

There were only about six hundred of us left. Humanity existed in pockets, more frequent in the arctic, while most of Australia was a ghost town. Spiders had gotten them, ballooning over walls, through screens, and into ears. I shuddered. Thank god we weren’t in Australia. A voice called from four doors down.

“Nine! Keep working!”

Two was right. I got back to welding the door shut. We only needed one entrance anyways. I hated the job, but was good in shop class, so I became a repairer. My brother was still too little to do much of anything. My mother had become head engineer. It was thanks to her we survived the locusts, thanks to her we made the false crops and had the dome. Eric was still lost, unable to run and join the exterminators, there were no ramps so he was unable to go to the school to join our last attempt at civility. I’d built one but... they needed the wood for repairs. The library was his safe haven. At first they’d called him the brain but they stopped after a week or two. They thought he was doing something important, but he just liked that they still had a wii in the library. He’d crank the generator and play mario Kart for hours. Still, it was something.

It was a dark and stormy night, and the zombie mosquitoes were fast approaching.