First there’s the towers and shrines, which seem to have disappeared from the map completely with no explanation. Towers most likely just went back into the ground, since they only came out of the ground after Link activates the Great Plateau tower. I think the same is true of shrines. Although the shrines were above ground before BotW (as seen in the memory), certain shrines do come out of the ground like Kass shrines and other quests. With their purpose being finished they may have gone back down.
Guardians that were found were likely scrapped as most people agree, and used for new sheikah tech.
But what about the Beasts, the furnaces, and the hundreds (or thousands) of decayed guardians or ones that just weren’t found? Where could they be? Logically theres no way Hyrules people could have just found EVERY guardian and scrapped it, especially not in a few years.
Same with the beats, but even moreso. The amount of tech that would need to be dismantled from just one beast is crazy, let alone four. That’s my main issue with the game, along with the fact that everybody just seems to ignore the existence of the technology altogether.
What are your theories?

I'm from EU,so GAMES SHOULD work pretty much anywhere
NOT BUYING GAMES,ONLY TRADES - games for games or selling for paypal
No interest in TF2 keys,CSGO cases or ANY other virtual currency
BUYER covers the FEES (if outside EU,EU F&F only)
My Steam account so you don't offer me something I own
My Wishlist
My SGSRep
My IGSRep
​
​
Only looking for Steam games - so don't offer origin,uplay,rockstar,bnet or ANY other launcher
100% of my games keys are bought by me from official stores & I expect the same in return,so don't offer me keyshop games or game keys you got in a trade as I will decline
I retain the right to ask for proof of ownership for ANY game I want - just like YOU have the right to ask me the same
​
​
List of games I have:
Also have the Earthquake Relief bundle but reddit wont let me write all the games cause my topic would be too big - just ask
7 Billion Humans
8Doors Arum's Afterlife Adventure
10 Second Ninja X
60 Seconds!
112 Operator
140
198X
911 Operator
A Case Of Distrust
A Year Of Rain
Absolver
Aeolis Tournament
Age Of Wonders III
Ageless
Airport CEO
AI War 2
Alien Spidy
Aliens Vs Predator Collection
All You Can Eat
Almost There The Platformer
American Fugitive
Amnesia A Machine For Pigs + The Dark Descent (1 key for both games)
Amnesia Fortnight 2012
Amnesia Fortnight 2014
Amnesia Fortnight 2017
Amnesia Rebirth (X2)
Among Us (X2)
Ancestors The Humankind Odyssey (EU & Africa lock)
Aragami (X2)
Archamon
Army Men RTS
Attack Of The Earthlings
Automobilista
Aven Colony
Avernum 3 Ruined World
Azkend 2 The World Beneath
Back 4 Blood (EU region lock)
Backbone
Band Of Defenders
Banished
Baseball Riot
Batora Lost Haven
Battlestar Galactica Deadlock
Behind The Frame Finest Scenery NEW
Beholder 2
Bendy And The Dark Revival (X2)
Bendy And The Ink Machine
Betrayer (delisted)
Between The Stars (X2)
Beyond Eyes
Beyond The Wire
Bionic Commando
Bionic Commando Rearmed
Bird Of Light
Black Paradox
Bohemian Killing
Book Of Demons
Bomber Crew Deluxe
Borderlands 3 + Director's Cut (ask about region locks)
Borderlands 3 Super Deluxe Edition NEW (ask about region locks)
Boreal Blade
Broken Age (X2)
Brothers A Tale Of Two Sons (X2)
Builder Simulator NEW
Butcher
Call Of Juarez
Call Of The Sea (X2)
Call To Arms Basic Edition
Call To Arms Gates Of Hell Ostfront
Car Mechanic Simulator 2018
Chenso Club
Chernobylite Enhanced Edition
Cities In Motion 2
CivCity Rome
Clone Drone In The Danger Zone
Clouds & Sheep 2
Coffin Dodgers
Cook Serve Delicious 3
Company Of Heroes Complete Edition
Control Ultimate Edition
Corridor Z
Cosmic Osmo And The World Beyond The Mackerel
Crash Drive 3
Creatures Inc
Crookz The Big Heist
Crossbow Bloodnight
Crusader Kings Complete
Crying Suns
Dagon The Eldritch Box
Danger Scavenger
Day Of Infamy
Dead Age
Dead In Vinland
Deadly Premonition Director's Cut
Deadbeat Heroes (X2)
Dear Ester Landmark Edition
Death Stranding Director's Cut
Death Squared
Deep Dungeons Of Doom
Deep Sky Derelicts
Demon Turf
Deployment
Desert Child
Destiny 2 Beyond Light NEW
Diaries Of A Spaceport Janitor
Dicey Dungeons (X2)
Dimension Drifter
Distraint 2 + Soundtrack
Divekick
Dog Sled Saga
Double Fine Adventures Complete Series Deluxe
Downwell
Drawful 2
Draw Slasher
Dreadlands
Dread X Collection
Driftland The Magic Revival
Dry Downing
Duke Nukem Forever Collection
Dungeon Marathon
Dungeon Of The Endless
Dungeons 2
Dungeons 2 Complete
Dungeons 3
Dusk
Dwarfs!?
Eador Imperium
EarthX
Eastside Hockey Manager
ECHO
Edge Of Eternity
Effie
Elderborn
Eldest Souls
Elden Path Of The Forgotten
Embr
Emily Is Away
Empyrion Galactic Survival
Epic Manager
E.T. Armies Deluxe Edition
Etherborn (X2)
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Europa Universalis IV
Evergarden
Expeditions Viking
F1 2018 (delisted)
Family Man
Fantasy Blacksmith
Fantasy Versus
Farmer's Dynasty
Farming Simulator 17
FIA European Truck Racing
Figment (X2)
Finding Paradise
Fire Ungh's Quest
First Class Trouble
Five Dates
Fling To The Finish
Fluffy Horde
Fobia St. Dinfna Hotel
Forgive Me Father
Framed Collection (X2)
Friday the 13th: The Game
Fun With Ragdolls The Game
Fury Unleashed (X2)
Gang Beasts
Garage Bad Trip (X2)
Gas Guzzlers Extreme
Gas Station Simulator
Gauge
Generation Zero NEW
Ghostrunner
Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams + Rise Of The Owlverlord
Gloria Victis NEW
GNOG
Go Home Dinosaurs!
Goat Of Duty
Goetia (X2)
Going Under (X2)
Golden Light
Golf Gang
GoNNER
Grand Ages Medieval
Grand Pigeon's Duty
Greak Memories Of Azur
Gremlins Inc.
Grip Combat Racing + Cygon + Nyvoss + Terra + Vintek DLC (X2)
Guts And Glory (X2)
Hack'n'Slash
Haiku The Robot (X2)
Hamilton's Great Adventure
Hammerfight
Headlander
Heal
Hedon Bloodrite
Hell Let Loose
Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice
Hello Neighbor
Hellbound
Hero Defense
Hero's Hour (EU region lock)
Hexologic
Hidden & Dangerous Action Pack
Hidden & Dangerous 2 Courage Under Fire
Hive Jump (X2)
Hiveswap Act 2
Hiveswap Friend Sim (X2)
Homeworld Deserts Of Kharak
Hotshot Racing
Hot Tin Roof The Cat That Wore A Fedora
Hot Wheels Unleashed
Hover (X2)
Human Resource Machine
Hurtworld
I Am Bread
I Am Not A Monster First Contact
Ice Lakes
If Found...
Ikenfell
Impact Winter (delisted)
In Between
Industria
Inexistence Rebirth
Infinite Air With Mark McMorris (delisted)
Influent
Inmost
Interplanetary Enhanced Edition
Intruder
Ion Fury
Iron Danger
Iron Harvest
Jack Axe
Jalopy
Jet Set Knights
Juanito Arcade Mayhem
Jump Stars
Jurassic World Evolution
Just Die Already
KartKraft
Kathy Rain Directors Cut
Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes (X2)
Killing Floor 2 Digital Deluxe NEW
Kill To Collect
Kingdom Classic (X2)
Kingdom New Lands
Kingdoms Of Amalur Re-Reckoning Fate Edition
King Oddball
Labyrinthine
Last Oasis
Last Tide
Lawn Mowing Simulator
Lead And Gold Gangs Of Wild West (X2)
Legacy Of Dorn Herald Of Oblivion (delisted)
Legend Of Keepers Career Of A Dungeon Master
Leisure Suit Larry Retro Bundle (1 to 7)
Lethal League Blaze
Liberated (GOG key)
Lifeless Planet Premium Edition
Light Fall
Little Big Workshop
Lost Planet Complete Pack
Lust For Darkness
Lust From Beyond M Edition
Magicka
Magrunner Dark Pulse
Maid Of Sker
Main Assembly (X2)
Mars Horizon
Masquerade The Baubles Of Doom
Max Payne 3 (Rockstar Launcher)
Mega Man Legacy Collection
Midnight Ghost Hunt NEW
Midnight Protocol
Mind Scanners
Mini Metro
Miscreated (X2)
Monster Crown
Moon Hunters
Morbid The Seven Acolytes
Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021
Motorsport Manager
Mount And Blade Warband
My Lovely Daughter
Naruto To Boruto Shinobi Striker
Nascar Heat 5 Ultimate
Nebuchadnezzar
NecroVisioN Lost Company
NecroWorn
Neighbours Back From Hell
Neo Cab
Neon Abyss
NeuroVoider
Neverout
Nickelodeon All Star Brawl (X2)
Ninjin Clash Of Carrots
No Time To Relax
Northgard NEW
Not Tonight
Obduction
Observation
Octahedron
Odyssey The Story Of Science
Of Orcs And Men
Old School Musical
OlliOlli World Rad Edition
On Rusty Trails
One Finger Death Punch 2
Onikira Demon Killer
Operation Tango NEW
Orbital Racer
Orcs Must Die 2 Complete
Original War
Orwell Ignorance Is Strength
Out Of Reach Treasure Royal
Overlord II
Overpass
Override Mech City Brawl
Oxenfree
Pacer
Paint The Town Red
Paper Fire Rookie
Paradise Lost
Path Of Giants
Paw Paw Paw
Payday 2 + Big Mike mask
Peaky Blinders Mastermind (delisted)
Penarium
People Playground (X2)
Perfect Heist 2
PGA Tour 2K21 (X2)
Phoenix Point Year One Edition
Pikuniku
Pine
Pinstripe
Pixplode
Plane Mechanic Simulator
Poöf
Popup Dungeon
Post Void
Pound Of Ground (X2)
PowerSlave Exhumed
Prehistoric Kingdom
Primal Carnage Extinction (X2)
Project Cars GOTY (delisted)
Project Hospital
Project Warlock
Propnight
Pulsar The Lost Colony NEW
Pumped BMX+
Punch Club
Purrfect Date
Quest Of Dungeons
RAD (X2)
Radio Commander
Rad Rodgers Radical Edition
Railroad Tycoon 2
Railroad Tycoon 3
Railway Empire
Raji An Ancient Epic
Rebel Cops
Rec Center Tycoon
Red Faction Armageddon
Red Solstice 2 Survivors
Redeemer Enhanced Edition
Redout Enhanced Edition
Re-Legion
Remothered Broken Porcelain
Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil Revelations (X2)
Resident Evil Revelations 2 Deluxe Edition
Retimed
Retrowave
Reventure
Revita
Ring Of Pain
Rings Of Saturn
Riot Civil Unrest
Rise Of Industry
Rise Of Insanity
Riven The Sequel To MYST
Roarr! The Adventures Of Rampage Rex
Roboquest
Rogue Heroes Ruins Of Tasos
Rogue Lords
Rogue Stormers
Rover Mechanic Simulator
RPG Maker VX
Rustler
Sable
Salt And Sanctuary
Satellite Reign
Satisfactory
Saturday Morning RPG
Say No! More
SCP 5K
SCUM (X2)
ScourgeBringer
Serious Sam 2
Serious Sam BFE (X2)
Serious Sam Classics Revolution
Serious Sam Double D XXL
Serious Sam HD The First & Second Encounter (1 key for both)
Serious Sam HD The Second Encounter Legend Of The Beast
Serious Sam HD The Second Encounter Serious 8
Serious Sam Kamikaze Attack
Serious Sam The Random Encounter
Serious Sam Bogus Detour
Shadow Tactics Aiko's Choice
Shady Part Of Me
She Remembered Caterpillars
She Will Punish Them
Shing!
Shock Troopers
Shogun's Empire Hex Commander
Shuyan Saga
Sid Meier's Civilization VI
Sid Meier's Railroads
Simulacra Collection
Skeletal Avenger
Skullgirls 2nd Encore
Skully
Slime Rancher
Slinger VR
Smoke And Sacrifice (X2)
Sniper Elite V2 Remastered
Sniper Elite 4 Deluxe + Season Pass
SOMA
Song Of Iron
Soulblight
Spacebase DF-9
Space Hulk Ascension (delisted)
Sparkle 2
Sparkle Unleashed
Spellcaster University
Spelunx And The Caves Of Mr. Seudo
Spiritfarer Farewell Edition NEW
Stacking
Starsand (X2)
Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy
Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic
Stasis
State Of Decay 2 Juggernaut Edition
State Of Mind
Steel Rats
Stick Fight The Game (X3)
Stories Untold
Streets Of Fury EX
Strider (X2)
Struggling
Stubbs The Zombie
Styx Shards Of Darkness
Submerged Hidden Depths
Suchart Genius Artist Simulator
Super Indie Carts
Super Magbot
Supraland
SurrounDead (X2)
Surviving The Aftermath
Suzerain
Swag And Sorcery
Sword Legacy Omen
Swords And Soldiers 2 Shawarmageddon
Swords And Souls Neverseen (X2)
Syberia II
Syberia 3 Deluxe Edition
Syberia The World Before
Syndrome
System Shock Enhanced Edition
Table Manners The Physics-Based Dating Game
Tabletop Playground
Tacoma
Take On Helicopters
Tales From Candlekeep Tomb Of Annihilation (delisted)
Tales Of Monkey Island Complete
Talisman Digital Edition + City,Frostmarch,Sacred Pool (trading only as a bundle)
Talisman Origins
Tank Mechanic Simulator
Telefrag VR
Teleglitch Die More Edition
Tennis In The Face
Tennis World Tour (X2)
Tesla Force
Tesla Vs Lovecraft
Tharsis (X2)
The Amazing American Circus
The Ambassador Fractured Timelines
The Adventure Pals
The Battle Of Polytopia Moonrise Deluxe
The Blackout Club
The Citadel
The Count Lucador
The Free Ones (delisted)
The Golf Club 2019 featuring PGA Tour
theHunter Call Of The Wild (X3)
The Invisible Hand NEW
The Journey Down Chapter Three
The King Of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match
The Last Blade
The Life And Suffering Of Sir Brante
The Long Dark Survival Edition (X2)
The Manhole Masterpiece Edition
The Mims Beginning
The Mortuary Assistant
The Night Of The Rabbit
The Serpent Rogue
The Signifier Director's Cut
The Textorcist The Story of Ray Bibbia (X2)
The Uncertain Last Quiet Day (X2)
The USB Stick Found In The Grass
The Walking Dead Season 1 + 400 Days
The Wild Eight (X2)
They Bleed Pixels
Think Of The Children
This War Of Mine
Thronebreaker The Witcher Tales
THOTH
Through The Darkest Of Times
Timeshift
Time Recoil
Titan Quest Anniversary
Toejam & Earl Back In The Groove
TOEM
Tohu
Tools Up
Tooth And Tail (X2)
Torchlight (X2)
Total Tank Simulator
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator
Toto Temple Deluxe
Tower Of Time (X2)
Tower Unite
Townscaper (X2)
Townsmen A Kingdom Rebuilt
Toybox Turbos
Tracks The Train Set Game
Train Station Renovation
Treasure Hunter Simulator (X2)
Tropico 4
True Fear Forsaken Souls Part 1
Tyranny Deluxe Edition
Unexplored
Unloved
Unmetal
Unshaded
Vambrace Cold Soul
Vane
Velocibox
Verdun
Vikings Wolves Of Midgard
Visage
Volcanoids (X2)
V Rally 4
Wanderlust Travel Stories (GOG key)
Warhammer 40K Chaos Gate Daemonhunters NEW
Warhammer End Times Vermintide
Warhammer Vermintide 2 NEW
Warlock Master Of The Arcane
Warpips
Warsaw
Wasteland 2 Director's Cut
We Are The Dwarves
We Should Talk
Western Press
We Were Here Together
When Ski Lifts Go Wrong
Where The Water Tastes Like Wine
While True: Learn() Chief Technology Officer Edition
White Day: A Labyrinth Named School
Windjammers 2 NEW
Wooden Sen'SeY
Worms Rumble + Legends DLC
Wrath Aeon Of Ruin (X2)
XCOM Complete Pack
Xenoraid The First Space War
X Morph Defense + European Assault + Last Bastion + Survival Of The Fittest (1 key for all)
XIII Classic
Xuan-Yuan Sword The Gate Of Firmament
Yet Another Zombie Defense HD
Ylands Exploration Pack
Yoku's Island Express
Yooka-Laylee And The Impossible Lair
Zack 2 Celestine's Map
ZIC Zombies In City
Zombie Army Trilogy

Intro

In this post I will discuss how you can utilize this NPC to improve your multitool hunting. Below, I divulge the never-before revealed secret that determines which class of multitool he gives you.

Who is the Armorer?

The Armorer is a hire-able Vy'keen NPC who you can hire to man a Weapons Terminal at one of your bases, including your freighter base.

How do you get a free multitool from the Armorer?

After you've completed a series of quests that he gives you, the Armorer will start offering you a free multitool, which he says that he has made "in your honor".

Daily Quest

The armorer's free multitool interaction is considered a "daily quest" in the game files.
This is one of several daily quests available in No Man's Sky from various NPCs. Each of the base NPCs goes into an endless loop of daily quests that they offer.
In the NMS save file, each quest has a "recurrence" time, after which the quest will reset. Inspecting the save file, you will find the recurrence time is a unix timestamp for the next occurrence of 3:00 AM GMT (8:00 PM PDT) after the last time the game was saved.
For example, if you open your save on Tuesday at 4:45 PM PDT on Jan 1, then the timestamp will be for 8:00 PM PDT the same day. If you open that save on Feb. 21 at 9:34 PM PDT, then the recurrence timestamp will be updated on all the daily quests to Feb. 22 at 8:00 PM PDT.
For certain daily quests, you can only do it once per day, such as the quest given by the exocraft NPC in your base (he sends you to an abandoned building).
However for the armorer's daily quest, the recurrence deadline is when the class of multitool he offers, changes. That is because the recurrence timestamp is also used as the seed value for the procedural generation of the class of tool given by the Armorer.

Example of a Guaranteed S-Class Date for the Armorer

I have discovered that certain recurrence timestamps/seed values will cause the Armorer to consistently give an S-class tool from most pools.
On Memorial Day 2023 (May 29), I noticed that no matter what system I flew to, I kept getting S-class tools from the Armorer aboard my freighter. Once or twice he offered an A-class, but almost everywhere it was an S. The next day, however, he went back to offering B-class. The day after that, C-class.
I have also seen him give S-class, A-class, B-class, etc. on different days in the past, but never knew what it was tied to. For a long time, I thought it was due to where he was, but it turns out, it's due to "when!"

Risk-Free Way to find a Guaranteed S-Class Date for the Armorer

Here is the risk-free way that I advise everyone to start using to find and spread the word whenever we discover a next S-class day for the armorer.
Simply visit the armorer at least once every day aboard your freighter whenever you warp into a system, and see if he's offering an S-class tool. If he is, please post about it on reddit either here or in nmscoordinateexchange. Since the date seems to be the same across all saves and players, that way everyone can know when it's happening and take advantage to get a free S-class multitool!

What NOT To Do

Please don't manipulate your console's date or timestamps within your save files unless you really know what you're doing.
Warning: manually changing your system date to sometime in the future does not seem to work for checking whether those dates will have a guaranteed S-class dates. Even if someone can figure out how to make it work, setting your system date forward and running NMS will cause it to update many unrelated timestamps in your save file using that future date. This can totally mess up your farms, refiners, settlement income, and other time-based aspects of the game, ask me how I know! So I highly advise against using manual date-setting to future dates for any reason.
If, despite this, someone really wants to know the steps to verify that I'm not bullshitting you, then read on.

For Advanced Players: Steps to Verify the Guaranteed S-Class Date Without Modding Save Files

After a lot of experimentation on PC using the NMS Save Editor, I discovered that you can temporarily (for up to 24 hours) make the Armorer almost always give an S-class by tricking the game into thinking that it's sometime after 8PM on May 28, 2023, and before 8PM on the following day, and ensuring the recurrence deadline for the daily quests is on 8PM PDT May 29, 2023. (I'm sure there are other dates that work too, just don't know what they are.)
A way to do this without hacking save files is as follows.
Disclaimer: do not open an existing save file while your console has the incorrect date. This can seriously screw up your save. Also, back up your No Man's Sky saves before trying this method, as I can't promise that it won't have an unintended consequence. To minimize the risk, only work with a fresh save if you're going to experiment with this. (Also, using an existing save you've opened recently won't work, because the game will only ever set the recurrence date can only be set to a time in the future once it has been exceeded.) The below steps are offered purely for experimental purposes by experienced and tech-savvy users who know how to make backups of saves and/or who are comfortable losing their save data if they screw up. Messing with dates can certainly impact save file syncing. You have been warned.

1. Disable the internet on your computer or console and force-quit No Man's Sky if it's running.
2. Set the date and time manually to 8:01 PM PDT (or equivalent in your timezone) on May 28, 2023. (The equivalent in GMT would be 3:01 AM on May 29, 2023.)
3. Launch No Man's Sky and start a new save. (Creative Mode is fastest).
4. Once you have a freighter with a Weapons Terminal in the base, recruit an Armorer to work there.
5. Go through all the Armorer's quests until they start offering a free multitool.
6. Warp to an inhabited star system that's not a pirate system.
7. Talk to the armorer aboard your freighter. He will offer an S-class multitool. (In some rare cases, it will be A-class, but if you repeat step 6 many times, you will find that it's almost always an S-class.)

Note: for some reason, the armorer gives a C-class tool if you're in:

• a pirate system
• certain uninhabited systems that appear to have red conflict level in the galaxy map (probably, systems that would be pirate systems if they were inhabited)

Steps to Verify the Guaranteed S-Class Date By Modding Save Files (PC only)

Disclaimer: I do not endorse cheating or manipulation of save files. The below steps are offered purely for experimental purposes by experienced and tech-savvy users who know how to make backups of saves and/or who are comfortable losing their save data if they screw up. Messing with dates can certainly impact Steam save file syncing. Modding your multitool to be an S-class is much safer. You have been warned.
Do steps 1. and 2. above, then do the below steps instead of the above steps:

1. Back up all your saves.
2. Using NMS Save Editor by goatfungus (available on Github), open the PC save file in NMS Save Editor. Be sure to use a save in which you have an armorer in your freighter base who is offering the free multitool.
3. Export the save file to JSON.
4. Open the exported save file using a text editor such as Microsoft VS Code.
5. Search for the text, "DM_WEAPON" -- this takes you to the mission data for the "daily mission" (DM) for the free multitool ("weapon").
6. Select the numbers after "Seed:". Press control-c to copy. This is your save's current "recurrence deadline" for the daily quests.
7. Press control-H for search and replace.
8. Click in the Find box, and press control-V to paste in the existing recurrence timestamp value.
9. Click in the Replace box, and type in 1685415600 (8:00 PM, May 29, 2023, Memorial Day).
10. Press alt-A to replace all occurrences of the prior recurrence time with 1685415600.
11. Press control-S to save.
12. Close out of your text editor and go back to the NMS Save Editor.
13. Select "Import from JSON" and select the file you just modified in the text editor.
14. Once it imports, then click "Save Changes" in NMS Save Editor.
15. Each save slot in NMS has two saves associated with it, the Autosave and the Restore Point. Make sure you perform steps 15 and 16 on BOTH the Autosave and the Restore Point.
16. Open No Man's Sky. Load the save you just modified.
17. Warp to an inhabited star system that's not a pirate system.
18. Talk to the armorer aboard your freighter. He will offer an S-class multitool. (In some rare cases, it will be A-class, but if you repeat step 6 many times, you will find that it's almost always an S-class.)

Obviously this is a lot of steps, and it's much simpler to just find whatever style of multitool you want, then use NMS Save Editor to modify it to be S-class, if you're OK with cheating. The above steps are just provided for people who want to further experiment and study the details of how the class of the armorer's multitool is determined.
Note: I did test this method on two different play-throughs on different systems, under different gamertags, but it's possible that the dates that work for me won't work for you. I'm not sure if there could be other factors.

What are Multitool 'Pools'?

While streaming on Twitch in May 2017, I discovered that restarting ones game on a certain planet X, then traveling to a different planet Y or space station, would cause the multitools available on that planet Y or space station to change to the ones that were available on the planet X on which you restarted your game. As well, the multitools available when first warping in or restarting in space, would carry over to any planet in the same system.
Having shared this on Twitch and on Discord, it wasn't long before this method spread and started being mentioned on Reddit. Later that year and in the following years, further refinements were made to this method. Eventually someone called these sets of multitool styles, "multitool pools", and the name stuck.
Note: while it's possible someone else independently discovered the same things I did, there's no evidence they did so before I streamed it and shared about it on Discord. So as far as I'm concerned, I'm the original discoverer of multitool pools.

How Multitool Class Relates to Multitool Pools

Some inaccurate information however has been reported by others regarding how multitool pools work in relation to the class of the multitools. The inaccurate version states that a multitool has a "native" class of S, A, B, or C, and can only appear one class better or worse than its native class. For example, a tool that's natively B class can only appear as A, B, or C. A tool that's natively C class can only appear as B or C. A tool that's natively A class can only appear as S, A, or B. This 'rule' actually only holds true for wall-boxes, whereas I have personally seen that monoliths can give an S-class of a native "B" or native "C" tool.
Aside from monoliths, I don't know if any other kinds of interactions with buildings or NPCs (including the armorer) disobey the rule, but I will update this post if we find out. I still believe that it might be possible to get an S-class of any style of tool from a given pool using the right methods.
Perhaps on the next S-class Armorer Tool Day, we can all check!

Hi, I have two spare tickets for day three of the ICC men’s WTC final, Australia vs India at the Oval. That is Friday, 9th June, 2023.
I’m going with my father, you would be sat next to me and my dad. But naturally you don’t have to chat cricket with us all day if you don’t want to. The seats are pretty good ones, in block 20.
I’m not a scalper, as you can tell because we are actually going to the game, I just don’t want to be out of pocket for the two spare tickets.
I’m selling for cost. Please DM if you are interested. We could meet at the ground and go in together if that helps with concern of the tickets not being valid.

i've previously felt very strongly that i'm a 5, and when reading descriptions of 5 i feel certain that i am one, but although my core motivations and behaviors seem to line up, there are just some differences that make me question things, and i'm unsure whether to chalk up to wing, tritype, instinctual stack, or just the individuality of different people within type. could also be mistyped. considering 3, 4, 7, or 9 most.
i think i am much more of an attention whore than most 5s. it's weird because my motives in my actual behaviors are 5-like and my anxieties are very strongly 5 - perpetually overwhelmed and unable to handle life, withdraw from people + minimize basic functioning when in stress, find Doing Things unreasonably hard, etc. i feel certain that the things i am 'running from' are consistent with 5 motivations, but the things i am 'running toward' seem more like 3 motivations. i do not consciously aspire to be competent in any way at all. while i will do whatever i can to avoid feeling INcompetent, i dont feel 'motivated' by competency. my fantasies/daydreams etc, the things that excite me basically, are usually excellence or mastery in a specific area, which isnt too far from 5 motivations, but will often contain some kind of showoffery, or be for a very 'center of attention' field, which is. potentially of relevance is that they often but not exclusively focus on making excellent art of some form or another.
while the mastery or excellence is often the focus of the daydream, i will often also be excited at the prospect of impressing others. it doesn't focus on the approval of anyone specific at all, usually a faceless group of people, or the general knowledge that everyone is impressed by the cool thing im doing. i definitely do want to be 'the best' at something.
i dont think this is something that is visible externally - and absolutely not something i would tell people about (telling people you actually know that you daydream about being famous sounds like hell And Is Also Why Im On An Alt) but i also might be disproportionately embarrassed by it. for a while i struggled to admit this was even a motivator for me at all.
despite being constantly sort of unconsciously motivated by a drive to avoid real or perceived incompetence, my largest constant motivations or excitements are related to the thought of Doing Some Cool Shit basically, bonus points if everyone else also thinks its cool. which doesnt scream 5 to me.
& even though my attention whoring is mostly relegated to fantasy, it does crop up in my behavior as well. for one thing im a twitch streamer, which like, i tried to tell myself was just because i liked streaming, but i genuinely think its impossible to be a twitch streamer and not be at least a little bit an attention whore. recently while streaming to my 3 Avg Viewers i came to the unsettling realization that i genuinely enjoy being the center of attention. i guess not universally - i dislike feeling 'put on the spot', for example if people want my opinion on a specific thing too quickly. but to be in the spot of people looking at me specifically for specifically entertainment, i do think i like that. which isn't something i've heard from 5 descriptions
on the whole i am much more of a clown than most 5 descriptions i've heard as well. i realize this is kind of shaky grounds for a '5 mistype theory', because anyone can be a funnyman, but this is a big part of me, and especially the way i interact with others, so the consistency with which i am at odds of 5 external presentation descriptions is strange for me. majority of time i am very very silly, and it comes to me very naturally. externally i'd describe myself as warm... apparently unless i dont like you or you say something i dont like, in which case i default to a blank expression and minimal responses, which in most cases is something im completely unaware that im doing until its pointed out to me. a sibling described it as "visibly being able to see my walls going up" (paraphrased). for the record as far as i can gather that in specifics is a 5 Thing.
its sort of a conflict-avoidance related impulse, i guess? which has caused me to consider 9, alongside being externally 'friendlier' than most 5s as far as i know. i dont know, i dont align with descriptions of 9 though. it doesnt feel like me. among other things, the reasons for conflict avoidance feel different. i just want to pick my battles, and a lot of battles aren't worth picking. in conversations, if something i dislike is mentioned in passing, i will probably choose to reply to the part i don't have an issue with, unless the thing i dislike is brought up repeatedly or my conversation partner wants my opinion in specifics on it. if it's in real life and not online, there's an added layer of 'i need to assess how i feel about this & if its reasonable before replying with any level of animosity, which i cant do right now because im in an immediate-response-requiring conversation, so i need to refrain from doing that until i can be sure', causing afforementioned blank face. so focused on not looking upset that i simply forget to look normal thus giving away my feelings anyway. funny deeply humiliating also though kind of stupid that people are allowed to look at you
another thing WRT attention whoring. i will semi-frequently feel the need to express thoughts opinions experiences etc. i will become convinced this is a really good idea, and while the words are coming out of my keyboard or out of my mouth, it will be! afterwards though, i feel Quite Bad. im writing this right now knowing its gonna happen again too. its uncomfortable, offputting, humiliating, and anxiety inducing, but for whatever reason, i keep doing it. also worth mentioning that in a good 75% of cases im sharing whatever it is to internet strangers and not anyone remotely close to me. just shouting it into the void. i would say a pretty significant portion of the anxiety i feel from doing it is actually from the possibility that someone i know could find it and know it's me, even if it's nothing worth hiding. much of this is actually seemingly just average 5 relationship compartmentalization, but the degree to which i feel compelled to share information about myself despite this is interesting to me and seems potentially unique? its like my desire to share & be seen or receive validation is clashing unpleasantly with my 5ish privacy anxieties. also worth mentioning but maybe kind of obvious is that this doesn't happen with jokes i make or, say, drawings that i make - im normal about sharing those. i can talkatively & sillylike stream for hours and feel fine that strangers have heard my funny ramblings, but if i try talking about my thoughts or personality traits, i will regret it for hours after. it just feels icky. i struggle greatly to articulate things in person as well, which adds an additional layer of just plain feeling stupid.
also worth mentioning but unrelated to potential 3 mistypes is the degree to which i am a complete babyman. genuinely dependent and incapable. i think often 5s fear of incompetency is mentioned as though its unfounded but it really cant be overstated how lacking i am in life skills. also seemingly running contrary to the '5' desire for independence and competence, i can reliably be brought to tears thinking about how i wish somebody would help or take care of me. i think maybe my brand of dealing with a lack of guidance is, rather than pulling myself up by my bootstraps or even leaning harder on other people, i just sort of recede to scraping along with what little i am able to do by myself and no more than that without complaint. i dunno, maybe that actually is the 5 Way, since minimizing needs is a whole Thing, but i see it more often framed as the first thing. my 'self-reliance' looks more like cereal for every meal and not showering for two weeks and acting as if that's normal and i'm fine with it than it does researching the skills i need to be independent. over time i've slowly expanded my sphere of knowledge somewhat but maybe obvious that aging, adulthood, and the passage of time entirely are still completely terrifying to me. i cant stand to rely on other people but relying on myself is even more terrifying because i know i cant do it, which i guess now that i say it does sound pretty 5y. <- actually, probably this whole section is more informed by my unique blend of personal issues than it is my type, but im leaving it here anyway in case it's of any interest. a few things i said here sounded somewhat 7like to me, anyway.
on that note, i don't think i'm actually a 7 but i do spend a lot of time chasing instant gratification && avoiding pain via distraction. for me specifically feels more like a disintegration + Humans Are Just Like That thing than a Im A 7 thing though, but if im wrong im wrong.
looking at it laid out like this, i feel as though i can say mostly conclusively that i'm a 5, but i'm interested in knowing why i'm different from other 5s? is there really a reason? is something about my tritype, wing, or instinctual stack jumping out at you in this post? maybe i'm mistyped after all? i'm interested in seeing thoughts.
BTW: this post might get deleted by me in not too long because i got shy. (SEE ABOVE)

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/Infidelity/comments/110zd36/my_30m_fianc%C3%A9_32f_cheated_on_my_while_i_was_away/
​
Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/Infidelity/comments/1156hrv/update_my_30m_fianc%C3%A9_32f_cheated_on_my_while_i/
​
Well /Infidelity, it has been about 6 months. Thought I should give a little update on how my life has been.
All in all, life is pretty good. Since moving back home to MI, I got a great new job (well into the 6 figures), got a very nice SUV, and have re-established many of the relationships with my old friends and am spending a lot of time with family. Was able to change enough stuff in my home so I'm not constantly reminded of my ex. In the gym almost every day (a much better gym than what the options were in Sacramento). My day to day is pretty good and I am beginning to get back some of my own self value that was lost during my last relationship with my cheating ex. I am happier here than I was in CA, minus the no longer having a fiancé and having such a failed relationship part of it all.
Dating life is also good. Lots of first dates and seeing many beautiful women (I am up front with all of them that I am healing and not pursing anything serious for the time being). Some of them I like quite a bit. Sex is great, but not as good as it was with my ex...I feel like I'm chasing after that feeling.
Even with all of that said, while life is good, I still feel like a huge part of me is missing. Not only did I lose my fiancé, but also my best friends. No longer do I have someone to lift with every day or just tell how I'm feeling. No one to go deeper with than the rather superficial dating pool at this point (although, I gotta admit its only superficial bc I am not letting any of them progress past that).
I am constantly thinking about and missing my ex. Have dream about her often. Shes still the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing I think about at night. I am very bitter. I heard from a friend that she has a new bf now (shoot, she was sleeping around town even while I was still there in CA, so having a full-blown new bf doesn't surprise me bc she doesn't like being alone). I haven't texted her yet, and we have had next to no communication since the breakup (except for a short exchange about mail). Part of me still wants to find out who the new bf is and warn him...but I know that's not the right move. I often wonder if she misses me like I miss her and wonder how it's possible she just essentially deleted me from her life like our whole relationship meant nothing.
Will I ever move on? I dont know how to. Trying to focus on myself has been good and has improved my day-to-day life as stated above, but how do I get over the sadness, betrayal, anger, jealousy, and finally just let her go? How do I stop loving her, even if it is just a memory of her?

When I started up the game I freaked out due to my fan going into maximum overdrive upon going afk on the main menu for a bit to switch to the purple lizard. I play on ps4 and I don’t know why it does this. When I looked at the character selection I noticed the monk, survivor, and hunter. Hunter was unable to be picked so I had to choose either Monk or Survivor. I ended up picking Survivor because I have played difficult games before, I don’t care if I die as long as the game is good. While I was watching the cutscene, my fan was screaming at me to turn it off, almost as if a bomb was going to go off. I ignored it and watched the sad opening cutscene with no context. Honestly, it was pretty sad, and I think that it did great at setting the mood for the rest of the game. Because this game is about survival, I made it my goal to die as few times as possible. Despite my goal, I died quite a few times, which is pretty frustrating. It is difficult surviving in such a dangerous place. Makes me think that I would not have a chance at surviving stranded in the wilderness. I started the game by following where the little yellow thing wanted me to go. That is how most of the beginning played out. I maxed out my stomach, followed yellow dude, and hibernated. My gameplay changed when I encountered a different little yellow thing resembling a plant. I don’t know what it is but I am able to eat it. I think that it keeps my level at where it is whenever I die, with only one use each time. I know this because I started to explore more and I intentionally ignored where yellow dude wanted me to go. This resulted in me figuring out that I can’t just face everything head-on like other games. Even in Minecraft, Dark Souls, and Sekiro, you can have a reliable offense or rely on mobility to face your problems. But in this game the enemies have the same if not better mobility than you. At first I would fight the lizards using a bunch of rocks I found thinking, “If I hit them enough times, they will die”. I learned through browsing this subreddit a bit that I need to use spears to attack and deal damage. I still haven’t killed an enemy yet. Ever since then, I stopped trying attack everything. A few deaths later trying to explore and I experienced my first drowning. It was an intense experience. I don’t know how they did it, but I always fear for my life when it starts raining. I managed to go to what I call level 3 or 4 and I found the blue little dude. I don’t know what they do though. It appeared twice because I died both times I managed to get it to come out. After a while, I realized that the red symbol on the map where there is a gate corresponds to one of the symbols I get when I level up. I came up with a new goal; survive until that level and unlock the gate to go see what lies ahead. I ended up doing just that and I headed over to the gate. At first, I didn’t know that there was a floor because I’m still not used to the 2d elements in this game, so I jumped to the other closed gate because I saw that there was an indent that I could stand on. Took me a bit to realize that there was ground right there. Also, a little side note, why are there heaters and why do the gates cause water to run through the area when they are activated? If this is a spoiler to the lore then don’t tell me. After I go through the gate, I arrive at the industrial complex(?) and find the next safe area. It is at this point that I would like to mention that I didn’t really learn how stealth works yet. It was only after I looked at the non-spoiler faq on this sub that I realized I needed to try to be smart about how I played the game. This revelation made the game more fun to play. I started to explore the new area but I encountered a purple lizard. I encountered one before and after a little bit of observation, I learned that they are capable of climbing EVERYTHING. Normally, this wouldn’t have been a big deal. But, I was in the middle of learning how to climb, so I was startled and started to make irrational decisions. Rather than trying to get into the safe area (I don’t know if the lizard was blocking the way or not), I continued trying to climb. After way too much effort, I managed to just barely avoid death about three times and climbed up to the next area. It was then that I encountered a new lizard, a blue one. I quickly learned that it could float through the air. Because it was in the way, I had no choice but to give up because there was a purple lizard chasing me from below and a blue lizard chasing from above. So I jumped off the tower into the area I was at previously, and so did the purple lizard. Then the blue lizard came into view from above, I have nowhere to go and died. This was an especially sad moment because not only did it not save that checkpoint, it also took away the level I needed to get past the gate, so I spawned all the way back at the last safe area I hibernated in. Lesson learned, hibernate in a new area before exploring. After a long break to do something else I came back and quickly leveled up and made way to the safe area again. It was at around this time when I started to learn how the stealth and movement mechanics worked. The game started getting more intense probably due to the immersion I felt. I explored a bit more and found out some new enemies; white lizards, weird birds, my negligence to look at the time, and fall damage. I still don’t know what white lizards do, but I am currently too scared of trying to find out. I also forgot to mention that I encountered these leech mosquitoes that I could eat back in the dirt area. I started eating one, but then all of a sudden, the big leech got mad and prepared to strike. I wasn’t dumb and I tried to run away, but I didn’t expect how it was going to attack. Because this game is new to me, I wasn’t used to how everything attacks in this game and it one-shot me. Lesson learned, don’t mess around with anything big no matter what. I’m starting to catch up to where I am at currently.

Posting here because Texas law and policy will define this kid's available options.
One of my nephews will have to sit out his first semester in high school after getting himself expelled at the end of this school year. Yes, the little twit deserved it, and he seems to be on a path leading to nothing good. According to my brother, school admins say he cannot enroll at any accredited Texas school during this period. Not sure if that is true, but if it is, having to sit out of school with no alternate program available would seem to only worsen his prospects for future success.
I think his parents and the rest of the family would hope to see him in some kind of structured program for troubled kids, whether it be connected to the public school system or even some "tough love" bootcamp program that his parents and other family might be able to pool money to pay for. We don't know what these kinds of options might be.
My brother and his ex wife co-parent, but they both work in ever-changing shifts, such that they're not going to be able to keep this problem kid grounded and safe from finding all sorts of misadventure in his newly-earned free time. Alas, they could really use a structured program that will keep him engaged, occupied, and out of trouble.
Any USEFUL and well-informed suggestions will be appreciated.

Welcome to RealDayTrading Live Chat!
***Please familiarize yourself with the rules and etiquette guidelines before participating.**\*
Etiquette:

1. Please read our wiki. If you have not read our wiki in its entirety yet, we encourage you to observe the Live Chat at first. Once you have familiarized yourself with the wiki, post trades that are only in alignment with the strategies and methods outlined in the wiki.
2. Every posted trade must have an entry and an exit. If you do not post an entry, do not post an exit. Trades must be posted in REAL TIME.
3. If you have a question regarding someone's trade, please do not ask them in the Live Chat -- instead, create a comment in the Weekly Lounge Thread and tag the trader.
4. If a Verified Trader or an Intermediate Trader questions or deletes your trade, do not post any subsequent actions taken on the trade (exiting for profit, loss, scratch). Any feedback made on your trades are done only with your best interests in mind. Please remember that this is a learning environment, not your personal proving ground.
5. If you believe that somebody's trade is unsound, please comment on the trade in a constructive manner that aligns with the strategies and methods as described in our wiki. Furthermore, please refrain from making excessively speculative comments on the market.

• Examples of constructive comments: "AAPL looks strong right now, but I am concerned about the SMA right above" or "I like that WMT long but it seems to be getting weak against SPY, keep an eye on it"
• Examples of unconstructive comments: "Why did you make that WMT trade?" or "AAPL is going to the moon!"
• Example of acceptable commentary: "Market is very bearish today eh"
• Example of overly speculative commentary: "I think the reaction to the CPI is an over-reaction and we will bounce back up."

​
Staying on topic during the session:

1. All comments during market hours should pertain to live trades or stock call outs (see: Etiquette point 5). Comments that do not adhere to these standards are subject to deletion at the moderators' discretion.
2. If you wished to add context to your trades, please keep them as factual, technical, and concise as possible.
3. If you wished to post EOD stats, please be sure to include win rate and profit factor, and only do so after the market closes.
4. Discussion is allowed during the pre-market and post-market hours, but please be mindful of the subreddit rules.

​
Format for posting trades:

• If Long stock: Long XYZ $102.40
• If Short stock: Short XYZ $102.40
• If Calls: Long XYZ 100 Strike, $3.50, 3/18 Expiration (no need to say "Calls" or "Long" again)
• If Puts: Short XYZ Long 100 Strike Puts, $2.59, 3/18 Expiration
• If CDS: CDS XYZ 95/100 for $1.89 (no need for Expiration Date unless it is not same week)
• If PDS: PDS XYZ 100/95 for $1.56 (no need for Expiration Date unless it is not same week)
• If exiting trade: Took profit / loss / scratch XYZ
• If placing limit order: Offering or Bidding XYZ at $102.40

Format for posting commentary:

• Watching XYZ, [notable technical event or movement] (if you are watching a stock, consider elaborating why you are watching the stock)
• XYZ! to highlight a stock that is showing a significant move up or down
• News that is affecting XYZ
• News that is affecting the market

​
*Please be mindful that moderators / traders are also focusing on their own trading as well. Comments that violate our etiquette or rules will be deleted. Repeat offenders initially warned, and further offenses will lead to a ban.\*
***PLEASE READ THE WIKI BEFORE COMMENTING, THANKS!**\*

Possibly the sincerest moment of the season is happening near the creek – a gosling is nibbling up dried blossoms and seeds that blew out of nearby trees and plants, then gathered in the seam between panels of sidewalk concrete. The gosling, whose body is the size of a coconut at this point, waddles in a line across the walk, eating up the tasty flora in quick little bites as it goes. I wonder about the nutritional value of the stuff but then, right, it’s competing with grass, so maybe the reasons don’t need to be that deep. The gosling knows the routine, finishes the sidewalk in under a minute, then goes back to the grass. Because the blossoms and seeds keep coming, this gosling has probably learned to work the sidewalk several times per day, figures out the optimal meal schedule, develops a discriminating pallet, a reputation for good taste.
Unlikely? Spring dines out on unlikely! The roasting temperatures – consistently in the 90s for days now, days to come – is interrupted this afternoon by an extraordinary peal of thunder that sounds like the contents of a container ship spilled onto the ground from a great height. I rush outside to get a better look, and oh my, the heat has fallen by 20 degrees, and the cloud cover looks like it wants to explain itself, and a bolt of lightning unites earth and sky for a fraction of a second, intensifies, disappears. Rain follows, and though the storm was not quite a downpour, the downspout next to where I was standing poured continuously into the grass. The storm was odd in how well lit it was – one of those storms where a sunny day is still playing out on two sides of it. Twenty minutes later, the storm was gone, and the temperatures returned to the 90s.
Above the chem annex, swallows chase each other in twos and threes. Blinking wing beats lead to these sturdy glides that remind me of kids coasting on bikes. The way they wheel through the air implies a point in space they are each looking for but never find, and as they modulate the nearness and farness of curves in space, I am witnessing the interior life of swallows, which finds an ecstasy in the stillness of the body as it sails through the air, regards the bodies beside it. Each set of flight paths add the next image of grace to the day, and I wonder if the whole day is made of bodies like this in motion – figures appearing above the rooftops, along sidewalks, streaking through the air at the speed of a spark.

Yay, new chapter is (finally) out! Only took a damn month. Why must May be so busy? At least I've managed to get chapter 9 mostly done as well, so that will be locked and loaded soon. Then I'm hoping to pick up the pace a bit.
Anyways, in this chapter both the snow wolves and Tostig plan their next moves, and the decisions made will affect the Ulstads.
As always, this story can be read up to the current chapter in both fanfiction and AO3 if you'd prefer those sites to reading all the text on reddit.
Fanfiction: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14198757/8/Land-of-the-North-Wind
AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45067345/chapters/119955676
Banishment
Tostig looked out at this city under siege. Part of him felt for his people, but at the same time they could not be allowed to bow to wolves. He would not bow to wolves and their demands. They were lesser, and they were rivals who were only useful for labor and trade in times of peace. And yet, the situation they were in now was not sustainable and everyone knew it. Just then, the door to his chamber was opened and his lead counselor, his right hand, stepped into the room.
“You wished to see me, my lord?”
Tostig took a sip from his wine chalice before turning away from his window and walking over to his desk with slow, deliberate steps. Upon locking eyes with his trusted advisor, the lord gave a small smile.
“Yes. I was hoping you’d have an inventory of our supplies ready to discuss.”
The counselor stepped forward, producing a stack of documents that had been written up by scribes. “Of course, my lord. Here are the inventory lists on the items you requested. Firewood, coal, wine, ale, spirits, bread, and meat are all right here.”
The counselor then placed the lists in his lord’s outstretched hands.
Tostig then got to the point of their meeting, “but all of these lists are to answer a single question. Do we have enough supplies to make it until spring?”
His counselor lowered his head and shook it slowly, “No sir. We’ll be out two months before the first ships can make safe harbor at the coast.”
Tostig sighed. “Then it’ll have to be done.”
“Are you sure, my Lord?”
“What choice do I have? We tried leaving, we tried getting necessary supplies, and even rations won’t carry us through the entire winter.”
“Those poor souls…”
“The keidran, overall, are tough beasts. And if you ask me, some of them played a hand in this whole mess, I just know it.”
“In what way could they be responsible, sir?” The counselor asked, confused.
“You really think every keidran in this town wants to be serving humans in some way or another? Their brethren are outside the walls, likely promising them a place of refuge for themselves and their slave relatives back east if they help the snow wolves kick us out.”
“That seems unlikely, my Lord.”
“Even if I’m wrong about their loyalties, the fact is keidran are more disposable than men. I can do without all these extra servants and menial laborers, but I’m going to need my miners and loggers when the snow clears, and the crown sends the best troops in Mekkan to our aid.”
“Your will is my command, sir. I’ll have Gerrick gather all his guardsmen in the great hall this evening. We’ll need every able-bodied member of the garrison.”
“Very good. Also, please send for the healer. These headaches… that medicine hasn’t been working.”
“Of course, my lord. Right away.”
The sun was setting on another day of the town under siege. The wolves had not made any moves to attack the walls, but why would they? They controlled the land and sea for hundreds of miles in every direction. A counsel of the elders was called in the camp overlooking the settlement. In the middle of the camp was a large, portable lodge made from thick timbers cut in the Snowy Pines. The frame was bound tightly by many hides, proving insulation and blocking the fierce winds that would often sweep across the tundra. Normally, settlements were permanent, but some wolves that had ventured into human territory took notes on how their rivals conducted war, and moveable houses were the answer to navigating across harsh country that was so brutal even the ever-adaptable humans had yet to conquer.
Outside the lodge entrance waited a tall, young snow wolf. Icy-white hair was bound tightly into a knot under a hat of seal fur. Extra layers of fur helped to protect the wolf from the elements, as even in winter the temperatures were colder than any canine could safely withstand. Blue eyes pierced through the growing darkness, a slight glow from his mana crystal necklace giving his face some soft illumination. He was waiting, watching for someone. Others came into the lodge one and two at a time. After a while, the young wolf was beginning to worry. “Where could he be?” The thought.
Just then a lone figure hobbled into view. A snow wolf much like him seemed to materialize out of the blowing snow that cut the visibility down significantly. Now only the glow of Callow could be seen in the distance. The old wolf, walking with a cane, finally found his way to the entrance.
“Grandfather, I was getting worried about you. You know I could help you up the hill, right?”
“Oh, don’t trouble yourself Bjorn. I might be almost as old as the wood holding that lodge together, but I can still find my way around camp. Now, let’s get inside, shall we?”
“Of course grandpa…” Bjorn then held the entrance to the lodge open so his frail kin could make his way inside where it was warm.
Following his grandfather inside, Bjorn was hit immediately with the warmth of a fire, fueled by wood brought in from the forest by sled, most of it cut down courtesy of the logging teams they had chased out a month earlier. The glow from his mana crystals was quickly overtaken by the bright, orange light of the fire. The young wolf removed most of his outer garments, placing them on the ground to use as a seat. He sat down behind where his grandfather had made himself comfortable. As an elder, the old wolf held one of the seats in the clans moot, the council of elders that had assembled to deal with the human problem.
All inside the lodge waited silently as their shaman conjured magical light structures from her crystal necklace in a ceremony to purify the air. The lights were dazzling. Bjorn’s favorite was seeing a replication of the night sky, a spell which was meticulously maintained through the generations showing each visible star as well as the moon. Another spell finished the ceremony, seemingly purging the air from the lodge, the fire reducing to embers, only to roar back to life as new, fresh air came in to fill the vacuum. It was then that the shaman gave a special blessing and prayer to each of the council members before taking her seat in the back as an observer. The five wolves then allowed for a silent pause to pass over all in attendance before beginning.
The designated leader of the council, tasked with mediating the clans moot, broke the silence, “my friends, our actions this winter may ensure the survival of our people and way of life, but one misstep and we will surely suffer greatly for our actions against the humans.”
A graying elder from the clan west of Widow Lake then saw fit to add in his thoughts. “Indeed, Bragi, but I believe our actions so far have been successful. The humans and their keidran servants have been completely cut off from their homeland and their king. No one will be able to help them until the snow leaves.”
Frey, the elder representing the clan at the split between the Widow and Pines rivers then spoke, “My warriors were successful in destroying any attempts by the humans to reach the sea. I’ve seen some of the bodies from their first attempt, and I believe that many of their most capable are dead. We ought to press an attack while we still have an advantage in the snow.”
Garth, Bjorn’s grandfather, and widely held to be one of the wisest elders in the North, urged caution. “It is true, Frey, that your warriors have slain many humans who could defend the walls, but many more are still inside. We’ve all seen the patrols along the top of the wall. Besides that, your warriors let one boat get away in the humans’ first attempt to summon help, didn’t they?”
Frey was forced to admit the mistake. “You are right, Garth, one did manage to slip away in the night. My warriors say they followed a light they thought was a lantern from the boat, but it was something else. It was alive, but they could not get a good look at it, and the light they followed led them into a sand bank. But a large storm hit shortly after. Surely, none survived.”
Garth had a different thought. “I would not so easily discredit these humans. Sure, they lack our fur, but they are adaptable creatures. I’ve seen with my own eyes the mines they’ve built. If they can bring the heart of Mekkan to the surface, their best may be able to survive winter.”
Bragi, always one to listen to a wolf with so much experience, wanted to know how this would affect their plans. “Garth, do you think the humans would bring reinforcements?”
“Assuming they survived, it could happen.”
Frey wasn’t as convinced. “Even if that one crew did manage to make it to the coast, it would still be months before the humans could bring an army to our shores. But that is all the more reason to find a way into the city.”
The last wolf in the council had been silent up until then. He was the youngest, though his offspring were still well into adulthood. He had earned a reputation as one of the best strategists among the snow wolves, having to regularly repel attempts by the forest wolves to gain more territory along the southern border. “An attack on the walls would be a failure. One does not kill a bear by fighting it on its terms. To kill a bear, one must outsmart it, and force the creature to fight in a way it is not used to.”
“So we should do nothing then?” Frey surmised, but the younger wolf shook his head.
“No, the wall is a bear. If we simply run up to it, our warriors will all die. But if we can find a weakness or fight the humans in a way they are not used to, then we will have the advantage.”
Garth then added is trademark advice of caution. “Though we must be patient, my friends. There will be an opportunity before spring arrives. As the weather gets colder and the snow gets deeper, our advantages will grow.”
Bragi then came to a possible plan of action. “I know Tostig. Once desperate enough, he will want an open battle where his trained guards can win, even in the snow. It would be too great of a risk to meet him in such a battle, but we could bait him to it.”
The wolf from Widow Lake then had an idea of his own. “My warriors could conduct raids on the humans’ stashes of firewood and supplies. There are some close enough to the walls that they can be reached. Once the humans start getting cold, they will be forced to either submit or do battle.”
Bragi nodded in agreement. “Do we have a plan then?”
All nodded and prepared to cast their vote when a shout from outside the lodge alerted the gathered snow wolves. A guard rushed in to deliver the news. The Shaman stood up upon this intrusion. “A clans moot is a sacred gathering, outsiders are not permitted unless invited. Child, why have you trespassed?”
The guard was gasping for air after running for a couple of miles to the main camp. “Apologies… humans… outside the wall.”
Perhaps the battle was coming after all? Bragi then stood. “Garth, have your grandson take your best warriors to trap these humans. This may be the beginning of the very battle Tostig would try to arrange.”
Garth then looked behind him at his nephew and nodded. “Go, Bjorn, I’ll find my way back. Be safe.”
Garth bowed his head slightly in respect of the others. “Thank you all for permitting me to the clans moot. I will track down and subdue these humans before they can cause trouble.”
With a wave of Bragi’s hand, Garth then exited the lodge with the guard and ran toward the main camp to find as many warriors as he could at a moment’s notice.
The Ulstads were preparing a dinner of rations in the empty tavern when a knock came from the front door. Anna Marie, who was closest, stopped sweeping to open the door. She was surprised by the evening visitor. “Sam, whatchya doin’ here at such an hour? We’re ya joinin’ fer dinner?”
Sam didn’t answer as he came into the foyer, but the look on his face told everyone that something was wrong. Liz stood up and quickly made her way to Sam, with Shadow and Asher close behind. Ivan leaned his head out from the kitchen. Liz took Sam’s hand in hers and looked him in the eyes. “Sam, what is it? News from Connor?”
Sam just shook his head. “I’m sorry Liz, I wish it was.”
Shadow then asked in a more direct voice. “Then what is it? You look pale.”
“It’s Tostig. He’s… well, he’s given the guard an order.”
“Come on, Sam, out with it?” Shadow said, worry seeping into her words. Sam took a deep breath to collect himself. They needed to know.
“Tostig has ordered every non-human in Callow… he’s banished them from the town.”
A thick, baritone voice boomed from the kitchen. “What?” A look of horror came across Asher’s face. Shadow too was shocked.
“Like Ivan said, ‘what?’” The leopard could hardly believe what she had heard.
“Liz, Miss Marie, you are both allowed to stay. But guards are going door to door right now and rounding up all the keidran. Shadow and Asher, you had better collect what you can before they arrive. I’ll escort you both personally so that neither of you have a hand laid on you.”
Anna wouldn’t have it. “They’s just as much people as us, Sam. Shadow, you and the boy should hide in the cellar. Ivan, get the darn hammer.”
“No Anna.” Shadow replied, letting it sink in. “We can’t just hide in the tavern all winter. Besides, what happens when you get caught?”
Sam had the unfortunate answer to that one. “Tostig has also ordered that anyone caught hiding keidran will be burned at the stake.”
That caused Anna and Liz to recoil at the thought of their own fate. It was more than enough for Shadow to make up her mind. “Come on Asher, we had better put on whatever clothes we can before— “just then, another knock came from the door, this one far more stern than before.
“Shit, they’re here already. I thought there’d be more time. Shadow, you can Asher meet Ivan in the back, I’ll get you three to the eastern gate.” Sam said before going to answer the door with Anna Marie. Asher didn’t quite understand all that was happening. He knew human well enough now, but things were progressing quickly for a seven-year-old. But Shadow quickly grabbed his hand and led them both into the room with Liz close behind. Once inside the room, Liz, locked the door to buy them at least a few more seconds.
Shadow, having been trained by assassins in the guild, wasn’t terribly concerned for herself. But being forced to leave Liz? She hoped that Anna Marie would keep the girl safe. Asher though was in trouble if they were being forced into the tundra. Her first thought then was to make sure the boy had as many warm clothes on as she could find.
“Here Asher, put this on, quickly.”
“I don’t want to leave, Shadow!”
“I don’t either, but we don’t have a choice. Sooner or later we’d be caught and thrown outside the walls anyway. Now bundle up as best you can be—”
Loud knocking came from the bedroom wall. “We know there are keidran in here! Open the door and come with us.”
Liz went up to the door to buy as much time as she could. “Just a minute!”
“Open it now woman!” Was the reply, but that was closely followed by Sam’s voice. “Hey, I’m highest rank here and I happen to know the two you’re after. Let me handle this and you two should continue down the stre—”
“Not a chance Sam, we’ve got orders from your father.”
“Then at least go get Ivan. Shadow and Asher aren’t going to put up a fight.”
Two more guards could be heard struggling to push the big wolf out into the street, and the intensity of the struggle caused the two guards standing near the room door to reconsider pushing their luck with someone who outranks them.
“Very well, they’ve got two minutes. If they aren’t out by then, we’re going to break the door down.”
Sam then moved to the side to let the two guards pass by.
Liz’s muffled voice came from behind the door “Are they gone?”
“Yeah, for the moment.”
A minute later, the door’s latch was undone, and it creaked open. Shadow and Asher had their wool jumpers on, along with whatever clothes they could find. Shadow was even wearing a pair of Connor’s pants. They were a bit tight but provided some extra insulation. Liz then followed the two, closing the door behind them.
“Why is this happening, Sam?” Liz asked.
“Apparently, we don’t have enough supplies to last the winter. So either everyone starves…”
“…Or the keidran freeze to death.” Shadow finished for Sam.
“Basically, yes. But you don’t have to freeze to death, there’s shelter that you can use, as well as food stores.”
“Where?” Shadow interrogated. Asher’s life as well as her own was on the line.”
“You’ll have to slip passed the wolves, but there are food stores and shelters in the new mining district across the river. It’s on the other side of Ditter’s Ridge.”
“Wolves?!” Shadow exclaimed. “How am I and the kid going to slip passed an army of wolves? They’d see us miles away!”
“I don’t know. I suggest hiding until the wind kicks up, the blowing snow will provide you with cover.”
The three stressed faces, Shadow’s looking like she was ready to murder, all stared at Sam.
“Look, this is a bad situation. I wish there was more I could do, but there isn’t. Tostig is Jarl, and his word is the law. If he says you must go, then you must go. If you try to stay, he could have us all executed.”
“Would your father allow that?”
“Tostig would execute my father too if that’s what it took to keep order in this town. I’m sorry, I really am, but—”
“But you’re doing whatever you can…” Liz grabbed and held Sam’s hand. “Is there a path or a tunnel or something that they can use to get around the wolves?”
“No, there isn’t. Look, you’ll have to move as quickly as you can. I’ll send help as soon as I’m able to, but right now this is your best chance of surviving.”
“Fine…” Shadow said, defeated and out of options. “Come on Asher, we had better go.”
The boy had other ideas “I don’t want to leave Liz! I want to wait here for Connor!”
“Connor…” Shadow thought. She tried to put it past her mind, but Liz knelt down in front of the boy.
“Asher, Connor isn’t coming back.” She said, tears forming in her eyes. “It’s been a month, and as much as I wish he’d bust into the tavern right now like he did with both of you back in the spring, it’s not going to happen. You need to leave with Shadow, she’ll keep you safe.”
“What about you?” Asher said, sniffling.
“I’ve got Anna Marie and Sam here to help. But you can’t stay here or Tostig would—”
“Kill us…” Asher said.
“I know we aren’t the closest, but Connor called you his brother, so I do too. Go, while you still can.” She then stood up. Before she could say anything else, Shadow embraced the girl.
“I’m sorry that I won’t be there to keep you safe.” Shadow said.
“It’s okay. But if you two stick together, we’ll all look back at this like a bad memory.”
“One of many bad memories.”
Sam knew time was up. “We better leave before those two assholes return. I’ll show you out a side entrance.”
Shadow and Liz let go of each other, and Shadow grabbed Asher’s hand before they both fled into the back alley behind Sam. The winding pathways between buildings eventually led them to a small door near the east gate. Shadow could see around the side of a building all the keidran being pushed out through the main gate. After looking around to make sure no one was watching, Sam produced a key, which began to glow as he recited an incantation. A hidden door nested into the wall glowed around the seal before opening, revealing a short tunnel to the outside.
“It’s one of the many emergency doorways out of the town. Only the guards have access, and most don’t know about them.”
Shadow, though impressed by the trickery, was hardly thrilled to be forced out of the walls. “If Connor ever comes back…”
“I hope he does, but for right now, you’re better off outside than inside.” Sam finished for Shadow, gesturing outside the wall.”
“Make sure nothing happens to Liz. Or I’ll find my way back,” Shadow lifted Sam off his feet and pinned him to the wall, “and burn this town to the ground with you in it.”
“I’ll protect her with my life if I must. You have my word. Now please, get out of here before someone sees me helping you.”
Shadow dropped Sam back to his feet, took Asher’s hand, and ducked through the hole in the wall. Once through, Sam closed the magic door with his key before slipping through an alley and joining the rest of the guards. Young ones were crying, old ones were being forcefully pushed, and at least one who tried to resist was savagely beaten. The guard was there to maintain order no matter the cost. After several minutes and much effort, the last keidran was shoved past the threshold. As the iron gate lowered from the ceiling, a couple of keidran made an attempt to get back into the town. But just as they were about to get through the inner gate, out of the crowd came several guards with crossbows. Without hesitation, their lieutenant gave the order to fire. In front of both humans and keidran, all those who tried to get through were cut down and left to die in the zwinger between the two gates. Their intentions made clear, the remaining keidran quickly fled from the walls just as guards took their positions along the walkway at the top.
Shadow couldn’t see what happened, but she could certainly hear it. Keeping Asher close, she used her skills at stealth to skirt along the bottom of the wall undetected. Asher at one point tried to say something but she quickly hushed him before continuing. Finding and avenue out in a blind spot from the guards, Shadow quickly moved past the ground torches could illuminate, finding safety in the darkness. Luckily, it was a clear night and Shadow could easily make out where the keidran had stopped. They looked to be in the process of scattering as keidran tended to do. They weren’t a clan or a tribe, instead they were in groups of individuals who knew each other. Shadow a year ago would have left them all to their fate, content to find the shelter she was informed of and waiting until spring. But now… now she could see scared children, elderly who wouldn’t make it two days in the winter snow, and many who were scared and confused, all in need of help.
“What are we going to do?” Asher asked, clutching onto her leg and looking up to her for guidance. He too was quite scared.
Shadow sighed, collecting herself. “We’re going to help them, Asher, and we’re going to survive.”
Just as the keidran were about to venture off in every direction imaginable, Shadow climbed up onto a rock and, illuminated by the moon, called for everyone’s attention. No one really seemed to care, at least until a loud, baritone voice cut through the air. Shadow looked to her side only to find a beaten and bloody Ivan standing near the rock, apparently having seen the pair in the cold. At once, everyone looked back toward the three figures next to and on top of the large glacial boulder.
“Good. Now everyone listen up! I’ve been told that there are stores of food and supplies as well as shelter across the river to the East. If we move now, we can be there by dawn, but we have to stick together, or we’ll all die.”
While some seemed ready to go, others weren’t sure. Arguing began between different individuals. Some wanted to make for the Snowy Pines, mostly the wolves. A few wanted to try and get over the mountain pass and into warmer country. Still others were talking about forcing their way back into Callow. None were, realistically, good options. But before consensus could be reached, or a complete breakdown in the large group of at least four hundred keidran, snow wolves approached from all sides, weapons at the ready. Out from the darkness emerged a big wolf, nearly as big as Ivan, wearing polar bear fur and brandishing a long spear.
Keidran tried to run but were quickly cut off. The group of exiles was completely encircled by several hundred strong warriors from the different clans. Bjorn then noticed something odd in the moonlight. Between all the people that they captured, only a handful had anything more than a knife. Certainly no weapons of war, and plenty were half-naked and freezing.
“Where are your weapons?”
“What do you mean?” A tigress asked. “We have none.”
“Then what is this? Are you all trying to run away or something? You’ll freeze out here.” Bjorn bellowed. A young child then pushed his way to the front. It was Asher, the only basitin in the group. “W-we were kicked out, sir.”
“Kicked out?”
Ivan and Shadow came out from the crowd, quickly finding Asher. Shadow grabbed the boy and held onto him tight in case things went south. Ivan tried to reason with Bjorn, who was a bit intimidated by the wolf that was bigger than even him.
“Da. Jarl Tostig pushed us into the snow.”
“Explain.” Bjorn said, spear tip not lowering even slightly.
“What the big guy is trying to say is that Tostig found out there wasn’t enough supplies for everyone to last the winter, so he decided to get rid of every keidran in Callow. We’re exiles.”
This shocked Bjorn. He didn’t think anyone, not even a human, would do something so cutthroat. “Well, if you were hoping for our help, I’m sorry. But we don’t have supplies for everyone here. I can talk to my grandfather and perhaps the council will—”
“There are supplies across the river, if you’d let us go to Ditter’s Ridge we’ll stay out of the way of your siege. We certainly aren’t going to help Tostig after this.
“The big hill near Widow Lake? I thought that was just a bunch of mines.”
“It is, but apparently there are stores of supplies and shelter there.”
Ditter’s Ridge was still technically snow wolf lands, and the recent mining activity was part of why this whole situation was happening now. But these weren’t humans, clearly weren’t loyal to Tostig, and had no means to defending themselves anyway. After taking in the sight, he knew that they were speaking the truth, and that many wouldn’t make it more than a few days even in thick winter fur.
“Alright. We have no quarrel with you. I and a few others will lead you across the river. There’s a ford at Ridge Gate that’s shallow enough you all can cross without getting wet above the knees. We had better hurry though; another storm is coming.”
Shadow then walked up to Bjorn, noting that she was barely taller than his shoulder. “Thank you.” She said gratefully, extending a hand.
Bjorn looked down and felt his heart skip a beat. In a land of ice and snow, before him was a black-furred leopard, a keidran he had never seen before. He immediately reached out to shake her hand. “I am happy to help. Now, we had better get a move on.”
“Lead the way...” Shadow gestured as she grabbed Asher once again and made sure he walked closely beside her through the snow.
It was tough walking through the drifts. At one point, Shadow broke through a layer of hard snow into soft powder below. She sank up to her chest and was struggling to get out when a pair of snow shoes appeared in front of her. Looking up, she saw Bjorn extending his hand. In one swift motion, he lifted the leopard clean out of the snow and onto his snow shoes.
“Thank you.” Shadow said, stunned at how easy it was for the wolf.
“It was nothing.” He said, smile on his face.
In the early hours of dawn, the group of keidran spotted the Ridge Gate, a pair of towering bluffs the river cut through in order to make it to the sea. Soon, Shadow and Asher were some of the first to reach the shore of the river. Shadow picked up Asher and held him as she tried to cross, but the icy water stung on her skin. Bjorn then offered his help once again.
“Please, allow me.” He said as he picked Asher up and placed the boy on his shoulders. Before Shadow could continue into the river, he picked her up as well and held her under her back and knees.
“Oh... my…” Shadow said, looking up at Bjorn. “You really don’t have to.”
“I assume you aren’t from around these parts, considering the black fur.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, the river water is cold enough that you really don’t want to get wet if you can help it. So hold on tight, I’ll walk you across.”
It took a few minutes, but Shadow and Asher found themselves on dry ground. Without a word, Bjorn turned around and waded across the river again. It felt… odd… to be carried like that. But apparently the snow wolves were doing this for many of the keidran, especially the children. It took close to a half an hour before everyone was across, but by then it was a simple matter of climbing the ridge. At the top, Shadow and Asher felt the first rays of sun peaking above the horizon. It would fill the valley below for only a couple of hours before setting again.
“We’re getting close to the equinox.” Bjorn explained. “The sun will only break the horizon for an hour then, and it will get really cold.”
“Thank you again.” Shadow replied. “But I didn’t catch your name.”
“It’s Bjorn, ma’am.”
“Well, thank you Bjorn. I am Shadow and this here is Asher.”
“Glad to know you, Shadow. Now, where are these supplies you were talking about?”
“I’m guessing they are down there.” Shadow said as she pointed at what looked to be an abandoned mining camp. Once at the bottom of the ridge, the state of the camp was sad. Tents were blown down by the wind, a couple of the makeshift shacks were caved in from the heavy snow. But one large structure was locked up tight. Busting in the door with a log for a battering ram, the keidran found the first of many supplies. While the food was mostly for humans, and thus was a lot of flour and coffee, there was plenty of dried and salted meats. It wouldn’t be much, but with some careful rationing they’d all be able to make it through the winter.

When you don’t see someone for a while, they tend to look kind of different the next time you meet. That’s not because they’ve actually changed, but rather due to your memory being inaccurate. Still, I don’t think my roommate has always had barnacles growing on her.
Kit Sutton did indeed look different. Beautiful, but different.
In the short time we’d been apart, her hair had grown to an impressive length. It trailed after her through the water as she effortlessly hopped from rock to rock before landing in front of us. She was even more scantily clad than usual; in fact, she wasn’t wearing anything at all. Her normally olive skin had adopted a pearlescent sheen, interrupted by the algae, starfish and seashells clinging to her body. Her eyes shone in the light of our torch and she regarded us with an unreadable expression, putting a hand to her hip.
"I can't believe you're actually here." She shook her head, sounding like she wasn't even sure herself what tone to strike. "You… you'd better leave. And fast. I-it's nice to see you, though."
I took a step forward and hugged her. She felt slippery. "I've missed you."
"Yeah. Me too. You should still go now."
"You need to come back," I said. "I'm sorry I ever gave up on you. There has to be a way for you to come back."
She shook her head. "Eva, you saw what my father can do. You saw the wave and you just saw his grotto guard. There's, like, a thousand more where that one came from."
"What are you doing here anyways? Isn't this a kinda way too lonely spot for you to hang out?" Elijah asked. "Doesn't seem very you."
"Yeah. It's… not." She rolled her eyes. "I'm basically grounded. My Dad's gonna keep me here for the next two hundred years or so. I'm not allowed to leave until he trusts me again."
"Two hundred years?" Eli echoed.
Kit massaged her temples. "I don't like it either, believe me." Looking up, a hopeful expression crossed her face. "How's Nettie?"
"She misses you," I told her.
"She does? That's, um… nice."
"It's cool, I know about you two."
"Oh. Well. I'm really glad she's thinking about me. Is that mean? Because I don't want her to be unhappy, it just feels good, you know?"
"I can imagine," I answered. "And it only proves my point. We have to get you out of here."
"Dude, I said no. You actually can't beat my father. I wish that was an option, but it's simply not."
"Kit…"
"It's Chandra." She raised her head to fix me with a stern gaze. So empty, so joyless, so… unlike her. "It was nice being Kit and running around up top and living with you. Those were a good few years, and now here I am, paying the price. There is nothing you can do against my Dad."
Silence descended upon us for a sober couple seconds. I studied her expression, her set jaw and taut shoulders. "And what about you?" I asked. "Can you do something?"
Kit snorted. "You've never even seen me use any sort of powers."
"But you have them, don't you?"
"Actually, I do." She casually raised a hand, her wrist slowly describing a circle. Eli and I watched in astonished silence as a trail of water snaked its way up from the lake, arching above her head and trickling back down on the other side of the stepstone. Kit Sutton looked after it disinterestedly, then turned to us with a bored shrug. "I guess I can sorta control water."
Elijah was gaping at her. "Could you do this the whole time?"
"Nope. Only when I'm in my natural habitat. I'm the crown princess—" she spat out the words in discontent, forming air-quotes around them— "and the heiress to the throne, so I'm, like, ultra connected to my element or whatever. Not like my siblings."
"But as of now, you are stronger than them?" I queried. "Is there any possibility you could become stronger than your father, too?"
For a moment, she stared at me, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. "Actually, let me show you something." Her naked feet never once slipping on the wet stone, she proceeded towards the nearest platform rock, jumping off with ease and landing gracefully. After trading shrugs with Elijah Carter, we scrambled after her. She led us back a little ways and then down one of the other passages we'd glimpsed before, barely losing a word the whole time. I stopped trying to strike up a conversation, focusing solely on keeping up with her unnaturally sleek, swift steps.
"The olm you saw before was one of my father's guardians," she called out sharply over her shoulder. "The sea breeds giants, as they say. Or rather, Dad does. He keeps creating abominations like that, and he uses them to ward off outsiders in places where they don't belong. They're obviously not stopping me from running away again—you've seen that they'll obey me. But his Majesty has made it quite clear that if I break out, he's going to turn the town into a swamp. I'm not going to be responsible for people's deaths, or the loss of their homes. Especially not… not hers."
She came to a halt, squaring her shoulders. Above her head, I could make out the silhouette of an opening in the tunnel. "We're here. This… this should be enough proof that he'll make good on any threat he's ever uttered." She stepped aside to make way for us.
We hesitantly pushed past her and into the room that lay before us. It was different from all the others we'd seen thus far—it didn't lure one into a false sense of security with its descriptive beauty. In fact, the second the beam of our flashlight illuminated its interior, every last fiber of my being started to cry out to me, telling me to run. My flight instinct kicking in, I tried desperately to stay grounded somehow, to keep control. I couldn't allow myself to panic. This was a horrible time to end up going dimensions. I had to remain in this reality, no matter how difficult the sight before me was rendering the task.
I heard Elijah Carter gag beside me, his stomach revolting at what he saw. His hand abruptly flew to my shoulder, cold, sweat-slick fingers clamping down on my skin, hard enough to bruise. With my own stomach doing kick-flips inside my body, I could understand his reaction far too well. Instead of shrinking away, I reached up to graze his knuckles with my own, a fleeting touch I couldn't find the strength to hold. It was hard to be reassuring given the circumstances.
We were looking at a gallery of corpses. They lined the walls, the floor, the ceiling, all in different states of wholeness and decay. A viscous, transparent fluid was gluing them to the stone, fixing them in their respective places. In some spots, it looked quite shiny and fresh, while in others, it had hardened, encasing the dead bodies like clear, pale amber. It was an unorganized chaos, the carcasses strewn practically everywhere, some overlapping, some upside down. Some had their eyes still open, their faces eternally frozen in void, empty expressions of terror. Most bodies weren't even complete—arms, legs or heads were missing, pronounced bitemarks marring the aged yet well-preserved flesh.
Elijah and I found ourselves standing rooted to the ground, too terrified to move, too dazed to speak. My friend's dark gaze frantically raced over the walls, flickering across the horrid display, taking in the carnage. My own eyes seemed to be burning. My head was spinning, and I had to hold onto his arm to support myself—it felt as though my legs were about to give way beneath me.
A shimmering light at the center of the room caught my attention. Somehow finding it within me to steady myself, I took a couple faltering steps towards it. Elijah Carter followed suit and Kit Sutton wordlessly trailed after us. Stepping over the dozens and dozens of corpses in my way, I tried hard to keep my wits about me. When I finally reached its source, I was surprised to find it to be a pond, or rather a bottomless hole of water. Another connection to the sea, no doubt. The shine however seemed fine from within it, from down below where there would normally be just darkness. Looking in, the breath was once again stolen from my lungs. It felt rather like peering through a small window into a very large hall. I could only see a fracture of what lay beneath.
Hovering within the endless masses of water was the enormous statue of a woman. Her stony pale arms were raised, her hands reaching out almost pleadingly, as if she was hoping for someone to pull her up from her cold, abyssal grave. Her eyes, one of which was about the size of my head, were wide open, her colorless stare holding a wild, unreadable mix of emotions. Her lips were parted in a silent scream. An unearthly, bright glow surrounded her; it seemed to come from within her body rather than anywhere else. It was disturbingly beautiful.
"Her name was Calypso."
Kit's voice pulled me from my trance. When I turned to face her, she pointedly avoided my gaze. An idea took shape in my mind, created by the faint, wavery undertone of mourning in her words. "She was someone special, wasn't she?"
"My mother."
I swallowed, my pulse still thrumming in my ears. Stepping forward, I tentatively grasped my roommate's hand. She let go of a soft breath, the corner of her mouth twitching. "These people here have been rotting away for centuries. It's the worst punishment imaginable, isn't it. The lucky ones are dead before they get glued down, but the ones he's really angry at, he covers in that goo when they're, like, lethally injured. I don't quite know what this stuff is, but it slows down all those organic processes, the death, the decomposition…" She paused. "With Mom, it was different. He turned her to stone. The same kind that grows from the ground here, you know; that smooth, shiny kinda rock that looks real pretty."
"What did she do to piss off your Dad?"
"What did any of these poor fuckers do? Most of these are failed cult leaders, actually. You'd never guess how many cults the deep ones have dedicated to them. As for my mother, I don't know. I can't even remember her, to be honest." She shrugged with affected carelessness. "You see it now? My father is… just beyond comprehension."
"So are you, though, aren't you? If you think about it."
"Eva, I know you're trying to boost morale here, but it's not working. Please let me get you out of here. And for heaven's sake, don't come back."
She led us back through the labyrinth of tunnels and corridors, staying well behind when we caught the first glimpse of daylight.
"I promise I'll think of something," I told her. "I'll find a way to get you out."
She merely shook her head. "No, you won't. Just go home and look for a new roommate. Or move back in with Nettie. She'll be glad."
I clenched my teeth, but allowed Eli to press his palm to my back, guiding me towards the exit.
"Actually, just… just wait. Could you tell her I, like, miss her? A lot?" Kit shouted after us, a sudden note of warmth softening her voice.
Elijah turned back to her with a sad smile. "Of course."
We didn't return to the car straight away, instead walking along the shore for a little while. My extra limbs having retracted and Eli's face having returned to a less nauseous color, we didn't bear any outward traces of our experience in the cave. We didn’t talk much, but we almost leaned onto one other with how closely we stuck to each other’s side. Eventually, I gathered the strength to break the silence. “This can’t stand, obviously.”
“You still want to get her out?” He gave me a sidelong glance. “This is more for Nettie’s sake than anything else, isn’t it?”
“I do like Kit Sutton, and I miss her tremendously,” I stated. “But largely, it is.”
Elijah, having nothing else to add, gave a noncommittal grunt.
“Would you mind if I asked you something personal?” I asked.
“Try it and find out.”
“I was wondering about what Mary Markov said about you earlier,” I began. “An incident at a highschool.”
He sighed. Silence fell, and for a minute I thought he wouldn’t respond at all. Then, he slowed down, coming to a halt and turning to look out at the horizon. “So how do we do this, Shirley? You really want me to pour my heart out to you and let you in on my tragic past as we stare at the tossing waves? That’s a bit too romantic for the two of us, if you ask me.”
“But you’d let me in on your tragic past in a less romantic setting?”
“Oh sure, anytime,” he said lightly. “Well, not any time. I’d be okay talking to you about it, though. See, it doesn’t matter to me if you know or not, the problem is kinda the headspace and getting the words out of my mouth in the first place.”
“I’m glad you feel like you could do that with me.” I regarded his profile, noting how he swallowed and shut his eyes for a moment.
“Let’s go back to the car.”
So we did. Only that it wasn’t quite how we left it. Elijah noticed it first—a low, hissed curse escaped him as he bent down to inspect the damage. The back window had been smashed in. The brown folder Mary Markov had given me was gone.
X
1
2: deadbeat roommate
3: creepy crush
4: relocation
5: beach concert
6: First date
7: Temp work
8: roommate talk
9: a dismal worldview
10: warehouse
11: staircase
12: explanation
13: hurt
14: hospital
15: ocean
16: diner
17: government work
18: something in the caves
19: shopping cart
20: olms and Jewels

This is going to be a little bit more on the serious than most posts on here, but I feel I can’t post this on splatoon because I will also preface that I don’t want to play this season because Stringer has been my favorite weapon, and now feels borderline unplayable. This will be a long read, so I appreciate if you read until the end, but I don’t expect you to.
For context of who is creating this rant, I was in S+7 rank last season making it with only Stringer. So now I’m currently in S rank. I also play Salmon Run more often than not, dabbling into PVP to spice things up every now and then.
BEFORE YOU COMMENT: Please for fuck sake don’t make any gross comparisons or invalidate anything I say unless they are actually good reasons. It’s rude, and I will ignore your comment if I notice it. Yes, I know Brellas still have their issues, but Brellas are moreso a victim of Splatoon’s bad net code, which this does not cover the same issue as the one I talk about here. I’m going to discuss more about why this specific season unknowingly decimated the weapon they try to constantly advertise to the public.

1. Backstory: Stringer Has Always Been a Bad Weapon

A lot of people don’t exactly know how this weapon works. That’s only fair, since there are no top players who bother with the thing. To put it briefly from my point of view, Stringer tries its best to be a kill assist tool, as well as attempt to provide area denial for certain areas from a distance. Because of this, Stringer can do well on Tower Control, but will struggle in basically every other mode.
Since landing critical hits from Stringer are terribly inconsistent, you’re generally encouraged to find nuanced ways to kill your opponents with the ground explosions and the arc the bullets create. Toxic Mist compliments this ability very well, while Killer Wail 5.1 is… meh. With the ability to shoot vertically or horizontally, it makes for a mid-to-back liner that requires creativity to get kills, which actually is incredibly fun to me.
However, this is also the reason the weapon is bad: because of the way damage is distributed, Stringer fails to consistently get kills when they were already well earned. A hit from all three dart explosions deals 84 damage. That sounds good right? Well, your opponent can just… shake it off in less than a second before you you get a chance to hit them again. I have been in situations where I have hit people well between 5-6 times in a single interaction(hitting with both the darts and explosions), just to die to the same guy I was just shooting at ACCURATELY for 5 straight seconds because he ran up and started shooting his Splattershot. Interactions like these are generally what leads to the downfall of a game.
Despite this, I have still found the weapon to be fun and would still play it regardless of the weapon’s flaws. Before I get into why I feel this season is unplayable for Stringer, I should probably explain the general matchup flow for Stringer before the new season.

1. Matchups

Generally, Stringer can do pretty well against weapons with average range and movement. There are some exceptions to this, like the fact that Stringers can usually safely apply pressure to Splatlings from a distance. Strangely, it’s significantly harder to apply pressure to chargers, as you usually need to make yourself vulnerable to a 1-hit KO every time you emerge from a wall while aiming.
So that being said, the counters to Stringer before Sizzle season are as follows: Range Blaster, all of the Ink Brush variants, Jet Squelcher(s), and Chargers. Let me go into a few specifics.
Range Blaster: Range Blasters generally want to threaten and intimidate back liners, which is fair since the weapon is very good at that. Generally If you get hit once by a range blaster and don’t notice where it is, it basically spells the end for you. However, there is a way you can fight back at the cost of compromising your position. If you try to swim closer and kill the Range Blaster with squiffs, you can actually take them down since they struggle to hit up close. For this reason I think this matchup is completely fair, while still favoring the Range Blaster.
Ink Brushes: Remember how I said Stringer is mainly about area denial? Brushes can completely ignore any trap a Stringer can set up just by running. Add the fact the most of them are out to flank me, and you have a matchup that is literally un-winnable unless you land a critical hit WHILE THEY’RE MOVING. You can’t run from them since they can just chase you down, with the only thing you can do is try to fight them in a pitiful attempt to deal a maximum of 60 damage(which most of the time it’s only 30 damage). Yes, this applies to all brushes.
Chargers: to dumb it down, it’s “one-shot or get one shot.” I have successfully won interactions with chargers in the past, but the precision required to even approach a long distance interaction with a charger, in comparison to what is required of the charger, simply isn’t worth it. It puts pressure on them allowing your team to move more, sure. But if you lose the interaction, which you basically always will, you leave your team with one less support weapon and a charger on the loose.

1. Sizzle Season

Firstly, thank you if you read this far. I know I had to give a lot of information before telling you the actual problems with this season, so I appreciate your patience. Unfortunately, I feel the information I had to dump was necessary to allow people to understand the general struggle of this weapon since it doesn’t have any known representatives. Now then, the problems with the season:
3a. The New Weapons
After talking about the weapons that counter Stringer, I think you can see where this is going. The most popular new weapons feel like an un-winnable matchup, and they’re EVERYWHERE. And based on the positive reception towards the new kits, they’re not going to slow down anytime soon. Since this is a subreddit for venting, I kind of want to go why you can’t fight any of the following.
S Blast ‘92: Remember when I said you could counter Range Blaster by attempting to fight it up close? Not an option anymore. The close shot is ENORMOUS, so it eliminates the counter play you could’ve possibly had to begin with. The only thing you can do is shoot them before they get close, but the gap to get close enough to secure a kill for S Blast is tiny. This basically forces Stringers to never interact with them under any circumstances.
Painbrush: Yep, just another brush that’s impossible to hit. With the added fact it has RANGE now. The two new main weapons feel like specific insults to Stringers.
Wiper Deco: This is honestly a problem just in general, but the amount this weapon refuses to interact while helping the rest of their team forces me to constantly be on the lookout for beacons and missiles, while never actually finding the source of it. Add that to the fact the main weapon is already good(not necessarily a counter), and I am forced to be on the move constantly.
Splatling Deco: Remember how I said that you can usually safely apply pressure to splatlings? What would happen if we gave a panic button? Basically if I didn’t one shot the Kraken, they can just… run or become a Kraken. Now I’m the one under free pressure for not being… precise enough? With an inconsistent weapon? Haha, skill issue, laugh it up. Fuck this thing.
Light Tetra Dualies: Stringer already stood no chance against this weapon from a moderate distance. Now it can hunt down back liners for free with Zipcaster. Coool. Oh yeah, and the dodge rolls make it so you literally can’t escape it, unlike Octobrush where you play a mini game to time it out until you’re safe.
The other weapons feel like I can stand somewhat of a fighting chance against them, and they definitely have solid enough kits to at least be an even matchup. My issue is that the weapons listed above are FAR more popular, and are WAY worse for Stringer. Will this change in a few weeks? Possibly. But with how the new weapons have been received, I doubt it.
3b. The New Stages SUCK
This is not a Stringer exclusive problem, but the design of these are very bad for Stringer in general. For some godforsaken reason, a charger can reach me over the gap on Barnicle and Dime when I’m on the OPPOSITE SIDE, but I can’t reach them.
Humpback Pumptrack is just flank points galore, and I die for not covering multiple players at the same time. I can’t play in the center since I’d be susceptible to attacks from all directions.
Add this with the new problems with matchups, and what the living fuck do I do??
3c. A Buff… I Don’t Think That’s Enough
When I’ve talked to people and try to explain Stringer, I’m usually asked “how could it be buffed?” I’ve said that the buff would need to be an overhaul to even stand a chance against the meta as well as other casual weapons, but is that enough? I don’t think making the main weapon better will change the fact that I’m still being hard countered by the community’s favorite weapons that I’d see every time I play PVP. The buff it would need to change the matchups would need to be absurd, and I don’t want to break what makes Stringer feel like a special weapon. Though, even if it doesn’t counter the weapons that I’ll be forced to fight, here’s what I would change to add consistency:

• Direct Dart Damage(charged): 35 -> 40
  
• Dart Explosion Damage: 28 -> 32
  
• Apply more ink to the ground at full charge by 30%(why am I currently spending more ink for LESS paint?)
  
• Anyone hit by direct hits cannot heal for 4 seconds.
  

These changes, as mentioned earlier, are just to make the damage more reliable and consistent. The buff that prevents healing is mainly to make sure you at least have enough time to attempt at least one follow up attack on your target, as well as being equally as threatening as other support/back weapons.
The full charge buff is more of a logical buff. You actually cover LESS ink by charging the move up completely, and I feel that doesn’t make sense. I feel the added paint would give additional incentive for players to shoot full charge shots more often, as they’d get more meter from the shot. After all, Stringer is probably the easiest of the back line weapons to approach.
The increased damage is to match up with how much damage chargers do, making it so landing a critical hit will score 120 damage. Triple explosions are not a guaranteed one hit KO, but the damage increases from 84 to 96, making the weapon more threatening from a trapping perspective.

1. It DESPERATELY Needs A New Kit

If buffs don’t get added, I can at least live with a new kit. They don’t have to counter any of the mentioned above specifically, but there needs to be more ways to play Stringer. This ends where I talk about the issues. Thank you for reading this far(if you actually read everything). With that being said, here are some of the kits I made up. Until Stringer has been fixed in some form of fashion, I’m gonna play Salmon Run. Y’know, an actually well designed game.
Here are some kits I came up with.

• Squidforce Tri-Stringer: Fizzy Bomb, Wave Breaker

This kit would be a more aggressive kit and especially good at threatening players hiding behind walls, as well as comboing darts with Fizzy Bomb, or using Fizzy Bomb to threaten certain movement options. Wave Breaker would help the Stringer locate stragglers and continue to threaten them from a distance with arc shots and Fizzy Bombs again. Generally, Stringer also benefits from specials that allow it to fight immediately, which Killer Wail 5.1 actually does get correct.

• Tri-Stringer Nouveau: Point Sensor, Big Bubbler

This kit would be more supportive and defensive, while also providing a good amount of poking opportunities after revealing each player’s location. Big bubbler mainly serves to protect against weapons that have enough range to poke at it, such as chargers and range blaster. If those weapons aren’t on the opposing team, the stringer can try to provide a good jump point for their team.
Rockenberg Tri-Stringer: Splash Wall, Ink Storm
This also a fairly aggressive kit, making it so you can threaten back liners by placing a wall in front of you, and then forcing the enemy to scatter using Ink Storm. As an added bonus, it will probably be easier to see your enemies in an ink storm, so you can try to shoot darts to either pick them off, or trap them inside by trying to read their movement.
P. S. If anyone says “Just play a different weapon lol🤓,” I’ll answer that now: No. Other weapons haven’t been fun for me in PVP. I tried shooters(Splash-O-Matic, Tentatek, Hero Shot), rollers, sloshers and splatanas. The only mildly fun class was Splatana, but that’s just because of how fun they are to use in Salmon Run(again, better game mode).

One I’m not crazy , two it’s been a long time and three I wasn’t in the best emotional state.so let’s get on with the story. I live in a moderate sized city in a mountainous area. The kind of place you can go hiking and pay an arm and leg for rent. Anyway I’m yammering.
On this shitty evening I was enjoying one of my favorite pastimes: alcohol. As I drank my problems away a gorgeous woman approached me. Short blonde hair, curves in all the right places. Something wasn’t right. Because She was interested in me.This may shock you but stuff like this just doesn't happen. We talked for hours, my jokes were landing. Hell we loved the same horror movies. Kind of ironic now that I think about it. Now I’m not ugly, at least I don’t think so, just a little awkward and dense. But she was way out of my league. I’d be damned if I didn’t look at this gift horse in the right part.
After talking we went to my place. Several things happened. One my life size chucky doll scared the crap out of her. On top of the fridge isn’t the best place for that. Two we cuddled and three she turned into a goddamn werewolf and bit me! All things considered I think I handled it pretty well. I treated my wounds, cried in the shower for thirty minutes and went to bed. What? You expected me to call the cops? They’d ask what kind of crack I was smoking.
Despite being a mythical monster and biting the shit out of me she wasn’t the worst I’ve been with. She cleaned up my place while I was firmly grasping my sanity. Honestly I thought it was a bad dream and I just had a great night with a neat freak. Of Course that didn’t explain the scar. Or how fast it healed.
It had been a week since the Werewolf incident and I was feeling kinda different. My senses were more sensitive. A lot of my neighbors need to take out their trash. Geez people that shit is disgusting. I also heard a friend of mine sneeze from across an entire Walmart.Freaked him out when i texted bless you. My vision has always been good. However now I can see fast moving objects a lot easier. I’m sure the parents of the kid who I pulled from the path of a car that ran a red light are grateful for it. It was awesome.
A week later it wasn't awesome. . I was invited to a party in a town an hour away. Nothing but forests on either side for miles. I was pissed after driving all that way just to find out the party had been canceled. Out of nowhere some asshole in an suv cut me off and I nearly crashed. I pulled off to the side of the road and I was so pissed. Without thinking I grabbed a rock and pitched the greatest fast ball of my life shattering the rear window. I was satisfied until the car stopped and my heart dropped to my ass when it drove back to me.
A mountain of a man stepped out of the car.”How the fuck do you fit in there?” Was my only thought before the rear driver side door opened.the man that stepped out was in his late 40s a few wrinkles on his face and slightly graying hair. He kinda reminded me of Will Ferrel. I mean aside from his hair and eye color he looked just like him. The two walked over to me. I’m gonna call them will and mountain since I never got their names. Will stepped forward and shook my hand.” Hey there. Seems like we’ve got a problem.”
Suddenly I was on the ground, the distinct taste of blood in my mouth and will leaning over me.” Now I understand my friend here was being reckless! “He yelled that last word over his shoulder.” However, you can’t break people’s things.”
He helped me up as Mountain walked over. In the movies you'd expect me to suddenly be an amazing fighter. This was not a movie. Mountain held me in place as Will did his best Rocky impersonation.
My only thoughts at that moment were. Where the hell are my powers.Will took that time to interrupt my thoughts.”Now I'm a fair guy and I can tell you don't have the money to pay for my rear windshield. So what I'm gonna do is beat you until I feel you have learned your lesson. How does that sound?” What an arrogant asshole.
Now if I was in my right mind I would have accepted this punishment but i wasn't in my right mind. I spat blood in Will's face and Mountain threw me to the ground before stomping on the back of my head. Blood dirt and mucus covered my face.
“You know there's one thing I hate above everything. It’s being disrespected!” Will continued his rant while walking back over to me dragging something with him as Mountain dragged me into the woods by my leg. We stopped moving but the ringing in my ears didn’t.
Flipping over to my back the full moon was the only thing I could focus on. “Come on werewolf powers!! Come on!!” I thought to myself. Will looked at me with a goofy smile on his face. He was laughing at me. I didn't think that I said it. I said it out loud. Those were probably gonna be my last words.
A lot of emotions went through my head at that moment. Fear,confusion,remorse,and Anger. Mostly anger . I was pissed. This is the textbook definition of overreacting. I broke a window and I didn't kill his dog. “ You know what Fuck this guy, fuck his car, fuck his friend and fuck werewolves!” Something hit me in the face and I blacked out.
when I came to it was still dark but I could see clearly. The area around me looked like a bomb went off. Several trees looked as if they lost a fight with The Hulk,I was covered in dirt and blood and there was a weird breeze. Looking down I found that The breeze was caused by me being naked.
My body felt like it had been stretched, reshaped and put back together by an angry toddler. By the grace of whatever deity is out there I found my keys and wallet and two more sets of keys and two other wallets.
I followed the smell of exhaust until I was back on the road. Will’s SUV was still there but no sign of him or mountain. I may have helped myself to a duffle bag full of cash in the trunk while searching for something to cover myself with. But I got into my car and drove off in my naked glory. Oh don't judge me, you just read what happened.

Hello lovely readers,
Welcome to the second and final discussion of Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton. This autobiographical comic was Canada Reads (an annual "battle of the books") winner for 2023. You can read the first discussion here.
Summary
The story picks up one month after that horrible party. Kate sleeps with Mike. She continues to get weird sexual comments from the men she works with, but she has started to laugh the comments off. Many of the men seem to have problems with her giving them orders, and her superiors get pissy with her for minor things or for wanting ‘special treatment’. Joe, a fellow Nova Scotian, overhears her swearing in frustration and tells her that everyone at the mine is just yelling at the guy next to them for work they’re not doing themselves, but that people tend to be friendlier to people from their own region of Canada. Kate wonders aloud to Doug whether the oil sands make people better or worse.
The men at the mine have heard that Kate’s ‘little friends’ (her sister Becky and friend Lindsay) are going to be joining them, and she warns them to leave them alone. When Becky and Lindsay arrive, they are wearing skirts and they quickly notice the staring and weird behaviour from the men on site. Kate apologises for it, and they wonder why she is saying sorry.
Kate tells Becky and Lindsay that the other men have been leaving her alone since most people know about her and Mike, and they tell her it’s because in their eyes she’s ‘claimed’.
They take a trip to Gregoire Beach, but Kate doesn’t wear a swimsuit or go swimming. Becky asks her what’s up with her, as she’s noticed something is wrong. Kate talks about how everything at the beach seems so normal, but that she isn’t. However, she doesn’t explain further.
Kate looks for other jobs online, and sees a post for a job at the Maritime Museum of British Columbia in Victoria, the capital of British Columbia.
Not long afterwards, she sees the man who forced himself on her at that party. He and the group of men he’s with see her and they start laughing.
Kate hears a man playing Peter’s Dream on his guitar, and joins in singing the song.
She goes to Becky’s room and tells her that she needs to leave the oil sands for a while, even though she and Lindsay have just arrived. She asks her to promise that she and Lindsay will look out for each other, and finally tells her about the assaults. Becky tells her that it wasn’t her fault, and wishes she had been there sooner to protect her as that’s her job as the big sister. She tells Kate that it happened to her too, at her university dorm. She tells Kate she should go.
We leave the oil sands, for a year in Victoria. Kate gets the museum job but it’s no more than 21 hours per week, so she gets a second job. In a coffee shop, she hears the song An Innis Aigh playing, and tells a woman who was wondering aloud about the language that it’s Gaelic.
Victoria seems like a nicer place than the oil sands, but it isn’t perfect – the city big problems with homelessness and mental health, but none of the old, rich people living there care [read runner note – according to Victoria’s Wikipedia page, the city is known for its disproportionately large retiree population. Some 23.4% of the population of Victoria and its surrounding area are over 65 years of age, which is higher than the overall Canadian distribution of over 65 year-olds in the population (19%). A historically popular cliché refers to Victoria as the home of "the newly wed and nearly dead"]. Kate is fired from her job for not taking American money and not wanting to sell the merchandise badly enough. One of her colleagues (I think?) sees her drawing a comic, and suggests that she should make a website.
Kate tells her parents that on her days off she works at a grocery store, and her father wonders what her degree was for. Shortly afterwards, she is fired from the grocery store for yawning and ‘being surly’. She goes on a date, but panics when the guy tries to kiss her at the end.
Kate can’t get a reprieve from her student loan payments, even though she paid half of it off the previous year with her oil sands earnings. She decides to go back to the oil sands to pay the rest off, and says goodbye to the museum.
After that brief reprieve, we’re back in the oil sands, this time at Shell Albian Sands. Kate has taken a job in the warehouse office, and her living quarters are a bit fancier than at the previous sites. The site also has a Tim Hortons, Wi-Fi and a gym, even yoga classes. Lindsay tells her that a lot of the warehouse crew from Long Lake have moved up there too. One of her new colleagues is Hatim, who is creepy in a new way, plaguing her with messages despite having a wife and children.
The team get a congratulations message with a gif for achieving three million man hours without a lost time incident (LTI). Kate’s boss, Ryan, tells her that they don’t have LTIs at the site because they look bad for the company, I guess implying that they cover them up.
She sees Doug again, who seems to feel that she’s all high and mighty now with her office job, and struggles with her ‘bossing him’ since she’s younger than him (and presumably because she’s female). When she has to cover a warehouse shift, Doug laughs about how she’s down from on high and has gone soft. He tells her that he sang with The Men of the Deeps and even sang for the queen, which she doubts because he has a terrible voice. She sings a bit of Coal Town Road (which I’m kind of disappointed doesn’t sound like Old Town Road) and asks if she could be in the choir too, but he seems annoyed about her singing a mining song when she’s not a miner.
Kate’s sister Becky is still working at Long Lake, but lives in Fort McMurray, and Kate goes to meet her there; she says it’s much better than living in the camp. She tells Kate, that one time a guy jumped out of the closet in her room, but she was able to kick him out. She always locked her door, but often heard the handle jiggling at night. She even had a stalker, who managed to get into her room with a bottle of alcohol and suggested doing body shots – she didn’t report it, but when he got fired everyone thought she had.
Kate struggles to read some of the order sheets because many of the workers are bad spellers or have unclear handwriting; many of the older men at the mine left school in grade six. Lindsay tells her about one of the lead hands from Newfoundland, who can’t read, and was humiliated by the other workers when they tried to make him read the safety memo aloud so they could laugh at him. Lindsay says she’s never seen a grown man ashamed like that, and they discuss how he’s one of the nicest guys there.
A group from the Calgary office visits the mine site, and Kate has to find the nice hard hats and safety vests for the visitors, the ones the actual workers can’t have because they’re too fancy. Basically, they have to put on a show for the head office people – everyone has to look sharp, make things tidier than normal etc. One of the visitors takes a photo of Kate. After they leave, Damian asks if he can have one of the fancy new vests, but they were taken back to Calgary even though they don’t need them at head office.
Kate continues doing her comics, and her colleagues occasionally read them. Ryan finds some of them in the scanner, which she had used to upload them to her website, and tells her not to leave her stuff lying around at work.
Becky and Kate discuss what it would have been like if their father had gone out to the oil sands to work when they were children, as many people did. They wonder if he would have been like the other men they work with, and how they must all be normal at home. Kate says she tries to remember that there are a lot of men who don’t bother her, but she doesn’t remember them because they’re not the ones in her face.
Their safety lectures tell them basic information about how ice is slippery and is all over the ground, which presumably every Canadian already knows. One of the men remarks that it’s not about safety, but an arse-covering exercise so that a worker can’t sue them if they fall. Kate doodles a pony in her notebook (thank you u/Amanda39 for linking to this comic in last week’s discussion!).
Many of the staff have families that they don’t see very often. One of the men gets a phonecall from his wife’s phone, which he answers thinking it’s an emergency as she never calls during the day; it turns out to be his young son, who is calling to see when he’s coming home next.
Brian asks Kate if she heard about the ducks (TITLE DROP!!); three hundred of them got stuck in a tailings pond at another oil sands site [read runner note – two years later, Syncrude was actually found guilty of the death of 1,600 ducks]. The site begins installing anti-waterfowl devices, and the staff are reminded that they have to wear PPE at all times. They’re also told about the death Gerald Snopes, another worker; some of the men talking amongst themselves, and Ryan tells them to have some respect. He had a heart attack while operating a crane, and threw himself out of the cab so that he wouldn’t land on the controls and cause an accident.
Kate hears about a road accident involving some men from Cape Breton. She asks Davy about it to see if she knows them, but neither of them do. Kate finds the news articles and feels annoyed that they were misidentified as Calgary men.
Kate notices some welts on her back; Lindsay has them too but doesn’t know what it is. Kate mentions all the dust they have to wipe off everything, and how there’s so much crap in the air. Lindsay wonders what kind of cancer they’ll have in 20 years.
Kate finds Doug building a scarecrow for the tailings pond, which is meant to scare off the ducks. Probably another arse-covering exercise.
Activists from Greenpeace try to block an oil sands pipeline, and 11 people are arrested. One of the workers gets angry about it, asking who will put their life on the line to unclog the pipe Greenpeace has blocked, and that it sure as hell won’t be the president of Shell. Kate hears about another death – a contractor was in his trucks, and one of the heavy haulers drove over it, crushing him.
Lindsay writes an article for a grassroots paper, giving the inside perspective on working at the oil sands. Kate considers doing a comic about it for them. Lindsay later wonders if she made a mistake writing her article, as many of the comments are critical, including many from women which Lindsay did not expect.
Kate sees a video on YouTube of Celina Harpe, an elder in the Cree community of Fort McKay, talking about the effect of the oil sands on the First Nation. Kate had not realised when she arrived there that Fort McKay was a First Nation, nor that it was so close to Syncrude. She thinks about how she’s not the president of Shell, but she’s still working there, and she can’t extract herself from having come.
At another safety meeting, the staff are down the safety pyramid, which has different levels: at the base it has at-risk behaviours, then near misses, then minor incidents, and it all leads to a major incident or a fatality.
Kate receives a phone call from a reporter at the Globe and Mail who had seen her comics about the oil sands. She asks several leading questions about her experience as a woman at the remote sites and the harassment, but Kate feels uncomfortable giving her examples. She later tells Lindsay that she couldn’t talk to the reporter as she felt like she just wanted gossip, and that the story was already written before she called.
The leering of one of the other workers bothers Kate in the lunchroom, and she tells Lindsay about her assaults. Lindsay is horrified that Mike and Brian laughed at her when she told them about it. Lindsay tells her that it happened to her in university as well.
Kate calls her parents to tell them that she’s finally paid off her student loan, but she needs to keep working at the site because now she has no money. She’s going to try making it as a cartoonist, and her parents are unimpressed.
Kate notices that Ryan is acting strangely, being absent a lot and not doing his work, and it can’t fully be explained by his recent divorce. She hears about other workers who are taking cocaine and behaving strangely too. She asks Ryan if he’s ok and he brushes it off. Kate contemplates the safety pyramid again. She finds a piece of paper on Ryan’s desk with an appointment for the employee assistance program. Emily later tells her that Ryan has left suddenly, and that they need to figure things out until a replacement is found.
Kate wonders why there are so many safety meetings but none have ever talked about drugs or alcohol. Her coworkers say that everyone knows why there is so much of both, and that the company can’t have safety meetings about illegal activities anyway.
Kate finally gets to leave the oil sands and go home. Her colleague Norman gives her prints of some of his photos of the northern lights as a leaving present, including one of a rainbow. Before she leaves, the company organises a staff photograph with all the workers on the site. Kate sees the man who assaulted her the second time, and he recognises her but can’t remember her name or who she is, and asks her how it’s going.
Kate trains her replacement, and finds out that she’s earning more than her despite not having any experience in tools. She complains to John about it, and finally rants about all her shitty treatment in the oil sands. She goes to see Gary in the head office, and demands her full bonus, which was going to be docked because she was leaving. Gary tells her it’s company policy. She tells him about the harassment, and he claims she could have come to them about it, but she fires back that he knows she couldn’t have. Gary agrees to give her the bonus. Her colleagues organise a going-away barbecue, and even Mike attends.
Back in Nova Scotia, Kate is reunited with her family. While out enjoying the seaside air, she chats to a farmer who tells her he’s keeping a field for his son who is working out west in case he ever comes back and wants to build a house. A man called Lauchie visits the house before moving west himself, and tells them there’s something for everyone out there and that the young people have everything they want. Out in Halifax with friends, she and Becky see a man from one of the camps, who tells Becky that they had a bet on who would sleep with her first. Their friends who haven’t worked in the oil sands can’t believe they’d let a man talk to them like that.
In the book’s afterword, Kate talks about how the book chronicles her specific experience at a specific time. She is wary of sensationalism of her story, especially because sexual assault is so common that it’s not actually sensational. She notes that neither of the men who raped her probably consider it to have been rape. She is also critical of the treatment of Indigenous people, and says the YouTube video of Celina Harpe was a “sword that cut through my ignorance”. We also find out that Becky died of cancer, and that her former coworkers pooled money together to send to her.
Bookclub Bingo 2023 categories: Non-Fiction, Graphic Novel (grey), Mod Pick (grey)
Other links:

• The first discussion
• Canada Reads page about Ducks [I hadn’t realised that Station Eleven, another recent bookclub read, was the runner up]
• Kate Beaton on Wikipedia
• Hark! A Vagrant, the archive of Kate Beaton’s comics website
• The original Hark! A Vagrant sketch comic about the oil sands (links to all five parts; I’ve posted the parts individually below this in case that’s easier)
• Original Ducks Part 1
• Original Ducks Part 2
• Original Ducks Part 3
• Original Ducks Part 4
• Original Ducks Part 5
• Lindsay Bird was one of the people in the book whose name wasn’t changed, and in 2019 she published a poetry collection about working in the oil sands called Boom Time. There’s a CBC article about the book here.

The questions are in the comments below. Thank you for joining me and u/fixtheblue in reading this book!

Hey Everyone!
Let’s go….
Newly Covered Today:

1. Interesting news about the currency in one of Cardano’s biggest metaverse projects. https://twitter.com/Pavia_io/status/1664240389610704896
2. Messari has released an article on operational decentralization in proof-of-stake crypto. https://messari.io/report/evaluating-validator-decentralization-geographic-and-infrastructure-distribution-in-proof-of-stake-networks
3. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has MASSIVELY revised their figures on Q4 of 2022. No surprise, the numbers were much worse than they told us. https://twitter.com/FrogNews/status/1664253845399130113
4. Looks like DAOs are getting a little hesitant about fee switches due to possible legal/tax implications. https://twitter.com/FrogNews/status/1664253845399130113
5. We even have Arctic block production. https://twitter.com/Laponia_pool/status/1664226409466740737
6. Questions are being raised regarding the blockspace consumption of dApps still on Plutus v1. https://twitter.com/matiwinnetou/status/1664385383122051073

Previously covered, but still interesting:

1. IOG wants you to know about the advantages of native tokens on Cardano. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1654077799697727488
2. Cardano Movies! https://twitter.com/coc_space/status/1653862307439542275
3. We really need to primary some members of the U.S. Congress. https://twitter.com/BradSherman/status/1653928972026093569
4. Wow! Not surprised at what’s being said here back in November. Just surprised it’s being said publicly. https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1654239504574853120
5. Here’s the longer video of that FDIC meeting for context. http://fdic.windrosemedia.com/index.php?category=Systemic+Resolution+Advisory+Committee
6. Looks like Western Alliance is up next. https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1654133106037739522
7. The weekly development update from IOG is out. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1655248376194105347
8. It’s not hard to make a meme coin on Cardano. https://twitter.com/nmkr_io/status/1654923697885532160
9. Still a crazy amount of mark-to-market losses that haven’t been absorbed by the system. https://twitter.com/BillyM2k/status/1655207860572422144
10. Warren Buffet gives a not too comforting answer to a question about the status of the dollar: “America…we’ve got everything going for us…but…you can’t print money indefinitely as debt.” https://twitter.com/GRDectestatus/1655203348033810439
11. …and then everyone remembered what fee markets look like in busy times. https://twitter.com/CryptoStylesUSA/status/1654711146673479680
12. …same for Bitcoin. https://twitter.com/MatthewPlomin/status/1655320093084057600
13. Cardano hit 94% load. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1655624561789112321
14. he MEV game is getting out of control over on Cardano’s biggest competitor chain. Convince me this shouldn’t just be called “theft” or “fraud”. https://twitter.com/0xNox_eth/status/1655615309695586306
15. Cardano Native Assets are vastly superior to BRC20 and ERC20 tokens. https://twitter.com/TheOCcryptobro/status/1655673557710692352
16. Rumor: SEC is going to make a move against Binance. Will the DOJ also? https://twitter.com/AP_Abacus/status/1655546961968103425
17. At the end of Q3 of last year, 722 banks reported unrealized losses greater than 50% of capital. https://www.federalreserve.gov/supervisionreg/files/board-briefing-on-impact-of-rising-interest-rates-and-supervisory-approach-20230214.pdf
18. Wyoming is inching closer to a state stablecoin. IOG’s significant presence there may turn out to be a huge advantage. https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/05/09/wyoming-stable-token-a-multibillion-dollar-opportunity-as-officials-wrestle-with-how-to-make-it-happen/
19. Paypal disclosed almost $1 billion in customer crypto in its latest 10-Q. https://blockworks.co/news/paypal-discloses-1b-crypto
20. MiCA is shifting the balance of crypto investment to Europe. https://twitter.com/paddi_hansen/status/1655883224726241281
21. Today (May 10) will be a joint hearing of the Agriculture and Financial Services Committees on Crypto. The CLO of Kraken will testify. https://financialservices.house.gov/
22. This is a legit point about centralized L2s: the best ones are called Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance. https://twitter.com/el33th4xostatus/1655845787593502720
23. There’s already a new version of Lace Wallet out. https://twitter.com/lace_io/status/1656347737355608066
24. A nice thread on the many strengths of Cardano. https://twitter.com/TobiasIlskov/status/1656388178369212416
25. Remember, lobster traps are a thing. https://twitter.com/TheCardanoTimes/status/1656064744225120257
26. Today (May 11 at 1pm EST) there will be a Messari Cardano Analyst call with Charles & Frederik. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1656272372452954112
27. I think we all love it when they start making our case for us. https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1656379837823561730
28. Ethereum is lamenting many of its poor design choices that Cardano already fixed. https://twitter.com/moo9000/status/1656215016016683008
29. Drunkenmiller says this is the broadest asset bubble he’s ever even studied let alone seen firsthand and we’ve only had a few soft landings since 1950. https://twitter.com/Stephen_Geigestatus/1656416819312222219
30. Live footage of meme coin investors accepting their ROI. https://twitter.com/KaylerSmithTV/status/1656130092966264834
31. Here’s the Messari call from today with both Fred & Chaz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouUhWwF74MM
32. People really seem to be enjoying the CF’s Blockchain Education Alpha Program. https://twitter.com/andreassosilo/status/1644263843743293451
33. The US Chamber of Commerce brief in the Coinbase case is calling out the SEC for acting “unlawfully”. https://twitter.com/MetaLawMan/status/1656737447756038177
34. About that whole self-custody thing we’ve discussed… https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1656706653801136132
35. The SPO poll on K and minFee starts today (May 15)! You should redelegate if your stake pool doesn’t vote the way you would vote! https://cardanofoundation.org/en/news/entering-voltaire-poll-experiment-live-on-mainnet/
36. There are also a series of forum topics for discussion of the various options in the Cardano.org forums. https://twitter.com/Lovecoach_nic/status/1657700010148896770
37. Coinbase spotlights Empowa! May be the first time they’ve ever given such a spotlight to a Cardano project. Tides are turning. https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1657081243518005254
38. Wow. Leaked “Key Messages” document for the joint committee meeting in the US House last week. Best part: they basically complain about separation of powers in point three. https://twitter.com/EleanorTerrett/status/1656362002577772544
39. Dr. Vanishree Rao on ZK-Rollups. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1657778843854274560
40. Here’s a new Decentralized Identity article from IOG. https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2023/05/11/atala-prism-pioneering-digital-identity-with-decentralized-solutions/
41. There are reasons we’re in a hard capped cryptocurrency like Cardano. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/15/business/argentina-interest-rates-inflation/index.html
42. What is a dRep? This video is for you. There will be additional categories of default dReps that vote abstain or no confidence on every vote. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1658034085401337857
43. The US Dept. of Justice is officially saying they are targeting exchanges. Great. Great. https://www.ft.com/content/5aac457e-cc80-44ae-ac40-9b51d9b601a3
44. Wow! Ledger just made what is possibly the greatest PR blunder in the history of crypto. Trezor will be poppin’ bottles tonight. https://twitter.com/Ledgestatus/1658458714771169282
45. People are claiming that the hysteria is a misunderstanding of cryptography. But, that’s not what’s going on here if Ledger plus one of the other two shard custodians can reconstruct your private key without having to use your private key. https://twitter.com/nimuepool/status/1658517533836574720
46. The Ledger Recover FAQ seems to support this understanding as it suggests you use a brand new device for recovery. https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/9579368109597
47. Wow. Unfortunate timing for this. https://twitter.com/Ledgestatus/1658095051375800321
48. Ken Kodama will be doing a Japanese language interview on CardanoSpot on May 18. https://twitter.com/Emurgo_Ken/status/1658838077136162828
49. The stake pool operator poll on network parameters of K and minPoolCost is live. See the results here. The re-delegation phase will begin on May 25th. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
50. Cornucopias dropped some new in-game footage. As expected, Solace is beautiful. https://youtu.be/j5iwNsQVMDQ?t=1846
51. Wow….the Ledger shards are encrypted with “a master key that is contained in all devices”. Wut? https://twitter.com/P3b7_/status/1658809445965606913
52. Sadly, the Ledger CEO seemed to be denying exactly the above just a day ago. https://twitter.com/_pgauthiestatus/1658508082941403144
53. Here’s why 340 ADA minPoolCost promotes multi-pools. https://twitter.com/ArmySpies/status/1659387255537176581
54. Numbers are emerging on the benefits of K=1000 over K=500. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1659398551917727744
55. Here’s the latest on the Stake Pool Operator poll. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
56. Rep. Tom Emmer is trying to help crypto by cutting crypto assets out of the definition of a “security”. He creates a new non-security asset category called “investment contract asset”. https://twitter.com/GOPMajorityWhip/status/1659291641281146886
57. Prof. Wadler (co-inventor of Cardano’s Plutus) has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society joining the likes of Einstein, Darwin, Hawking, and Isaac Newton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLOm-dWje-M
58. Huge amount of voting for economic self-interest by multi-poolers in the SPO poll. Earlier today (May 21), 84.73% by stake of the vote for K=500, Min Cost 340 ₳ was multi-poolers. Only 15.6% of the vote for K=1000, Min Cost 170 ₳ was multi-poolers. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
59. Large pools also voted heavily for economic self-interest with the K parameter. 70.02% by stake of the vote for K=500, Min Cost 170 ₳ was pools with delegation over 35 million. Only 30.57% of the vote for K=1000, Min Cost 170 ₳ was pools over 35 million. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
60. Apparently Cardano has its own wiki now! Probably better given our previous treatment by the big wiki group. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1660383700243329024
61. Rep. Tom Emmer is getting some reactions on the bill he sponsored with Rep. Soto. https://twitter.com/GOPMajorityWhip/status/1660329932495486977
62. You’re really gonna hold up a debt ceiling deal because you hate crypto so bad? https://twitter.com/gaborgurbacs/status/1660248530135515138
63. Looks like a few big multi-poolers have voted in the poll since yesterday. Pretty easy to predict what they didn’t vote for. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
64. Reports coming in that DCG has defaulted on the payment owed to Genesis. https://twitter.com/AP_Abacus/status/1660671386388504577
65. Ledger Recover would allow governments to confiscate crypto assets by subpoena? Called “not a real concern in the end.” Really? https://twitter.com/TheBTCTherapist/status/1660677064700178436
66. Frederik Gregaard on DeFi and regulation. https://twitter.com/F_Gregaard/status/1660655806709211137
67. Don’t Forget, the May Cardano 360 will be on May 25th. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1660621805017608194
68. Here’s the daily check-in on the status of the SPO Poll. We have surpassed 590 pools voting (as of May 23). https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
69. The Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong has decided to get our hopes up with a proposed regulatory framework for crypto exchanges that could mean more trading for coins like Cardano. https://apps.sfc.hk/edistributionWeb/gateway/EN/news-and-announcements/news/doc?refNo=23PR53
70. Here’s an IOG thread on the latest out of Atala Prism and Self-Sovereign Identity. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1660904360925188097
71. Here’s an IOG article on Cardano native tokens. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1660975383997448193
72. The difference in decentralization between Cardano and Bitcoin is still…laughable. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1660979639907500033
73. Ledger is finally caving (a little) to the backlash. It’s reported that they will focus on open sourcing parts of their code and only release the “Recover” firmware after that open sourcing is finished. https://twitter.com/NFTherdestatus/1661026174779420672
74. Looks like the Hong Kong announcement yesterday might have been a hint of what’s coming. https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1661391542504902664
75. The Cardano Layerverse is coming to life. https://twitter.com/TobiasIlskov/status/1660697833115385856
76. Wow! Incredible! Thank you for voting in favor of decentralization, 1PCT! https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1661460222203002880
77. Federal Reserve report debunks claim that crypto is not useful to people in the US. https://twitter.com/SebVentures/status/1661063483369177108
78. The SPO phase of the poll is over. Nearly 800 pools voted. Now it’s your turn to see how your pool voted and re-delegate if you think they voted against decentralization and for their own pocketbook. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
79. The May Cardano 360 is out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_bCa_xCoxA
80. Charles dropped an update today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfL2U2hAGWw
81. Sen. Cynthia Lummis declares her opposition to the 30% tax on bitcoin mining. https://twitter.com/SenLummis/status/1661803569341759495
82. Lots of volume being transacted on Cardano recently! https://twitter.com/cwpaulm/status/1662929296329981952
83. Recent subpoenas to the Python Package Index don’t bode well for those hoping to store seed phrases with third-party custodians. https://twitter.com/_jonasschnelli_/status/1662531840606093312
84. Transaction volume is looking very interesting right now. https://messari.io/charts/cardano/txn-vol
85. JPG Store has now launched Android and IOS apps. https://twitter.com/jpgstoreNFT/status/1663281982262919170
86. It’s true. Cardano is straight killing it on the security leg of the trilemma.https://twitter.com/cardano_whale/status/1662987243655684096
87. Just checked. Yep. The centralization in ETH is still staggering. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1663222056870350848
88. There’s a documentary about a 2022 Plutus hackathon in Argentina. https://twitter.com/LarsBrunjes/status/1663111319732535297
89. Pavia is testing NFT gating. This could get very interesting. https://twitter.com/Pavia_io/status/1663153213988823040
90. Marlowe is on mainnet! You can now code Cardano smart contracts in javascript or blockly via Marlowe! This is an amazing leap forward. https://twitter.com/marlowe_io/status/1663480828016435200
91. Don’t forget! We are still in the re-delegation phase of the CF Poll. See how your stake pool voted! If they were voting for their pocketbook instead of decentralization, you should re-delegate! https://twitter.com/Cardano_CF/status/1663564854572244994
92. Wow! Cardano projects are doing big things these days! https://twitter.com/CardanoCrocClub/status/1663468916843114498
93. The CCP has dropped a white paper on how it will develop Web 3 including NFTs and the metaverse. https://twitter.com/milestones_nft/status/1663458500922712064
94. Lace is now open source! https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1663953642045714433
95. Binance is back and apparently they don’t care if someone had that ticker first. https://twitter.com/pool_pm/status/1663809731603906560
96. Summon is now allowing for multichain swaps of ADA & ERG. https://twitter.com/N8iveToEarth/status/1664038846563225600
97. Charles did a Twitter Space with World Mobile. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1663984094252810283
98. Here’s an easy infographic on CIP-1694 Voltaire governance from IOG. https://twitter.com/Hornan7/status/1664007623799185409
99. Apparently, Cardano sushi is a thing! https://twitter.com/Allison_Fromm/status/1663841386074976257
100. This kind of sums up the problems with central bank behavior over the last 20 years. https://twitter.com/JeffWenigestatus/1664012650781585409

~Army of Spies