i am begging. please help. i need this badly and the pair i just ordered i have to return because it sounds like you’re listening under water.
PC windows 10 - i want a reliable, comfortable, quality wireless or bluetooth headset with mic, good for games where sound precision is important as well as instant voice communication and discord calls. i value comfort, padded earphones that aren't between the speaker and your ear, and prefer they fully cover the ear rather than rest on them. i also prefer if the mic is extended/adjustable because of background noise, needs to be close to my mouth. my desired ballpark is $100; more if there's good reason to.
my current headset is a $20 logitech bluetooth one. i’m very happy with the audio quality and the mic (it barely picks up bg noises) but it’s very uncomfortable as the foam is gone as i’ve had them for 6 years, and they rest on the ear instead of covering so bg noise is annoying.
thank you

i am begging. please help. i need this badly and the pair i just ordered i have to return because it sounds like you’re listening under water.
PC windows 10 - i want a reliable, comfortable, quality wireless or bluetooth headset with mic, good for games where sound precision is important as well as instant voice communication and discord calls. i value comfort, padded earphones that aren't between the speaker and your ear, and prefer they fully cover the ear rather than rest on them. i also prefer if the mic is extended/adjustable because of background noise, needs to be close to my mouth. my desired ballpark is $100; more if there's good reason to.
my current headset is a $20 logitech bluetooth one. i’m very happy with the audio quality and the mic (it barely picks up bg noises) but it’s very uncomfortable as the foam is gone as i’ve had them for 6 years, and they rest on the ear instead of covering so bg noise is annoying.
thank you

Hi all.
I've tried a variety of free CAD programs this afternoon FreeCad, Fusion 360 (free), Sketchup, TinkerCAD<, and SmartDraw only to discover either import/export limitations or flat out compatibility issues.
Is there a good samaritan out there who would be willing to convert the DWG to an STL file for me?
The file is available here under "3D CAD" link on the manufacturer's website.
https://houseofrohl.com/exposed-wall-mount-tub-filler-with-handshower-polished-nickel-with-metal-lever-handle-a1401lmpn/
Thanks for your time!

If you're in desperate need to get your hair under control, you don't have any hair gel, and there are few other options, then consider using a little bit of hand soap in your hair. It provides a little bit of moisture, weight, and some stickiness to help tame and shape your hair.
I didn't have any hair product with me today before some off-site meetings and my hair was doing all sorts of weird things after coming in from the rain and subsequent drying. I used a bit of foaming hand soap from the men's bathroom to lay down the frizziness and shape my hair a little bit.
Of course, some water can help, too, But may not help by itself because it evaporates. Soap will stay in your hair. Generally harmless and you can wash it out later.
Not sure how effective it would be for men or women who have longer hair, but it should at least offer some frizz control.

We recently moved into a newly built house and I want to change an ugly / mismatched bathtub drain on an acrylic / fibreglass tub. I have a drain wrench and the new drain. However, the drain is seeming to require a lot of force to remove. I don’t want to crack or break anything. Is that a risk? How much force am I expected to exert on the tub wrench tool? I assume they didn’t use plumbers putty but used silicone. Any way to do this carefully or to keep in mind? It would be horrible to crack the tub / any part of the plumbing as it is all integrated with the tile and it is slab flooring. Any advice would be appreciated!

I am The Bard, who taught men their first magics, which to this day endure when all others have. It is written into the blood and bones of all you have built, and so I shall never die.
I did not teach you how to dream. I only taught how to tell a dream to another who you would never know.
The phone rang. Karna didn’t bother to pick it up. The message machine clicked for a moment, tape starting to turn backwards as new words were written onto it. It clicked again, stopping dead. Karna didn’t look up from his meal of leftover takeout. He finished his noodles, checked again to see if there was any shrimp left, and sighed as he threw the box at the bin. It bounced off the others already filling it up.
He sighed, rubbing his head and eyes. Healing magic could cure a hangover. It couldn’t do anything about dehydration. He needed to get up and get a drink. He went over to his cabinet and looked around for a glass. When he didn’t find a clean one, he grabbed a coffee mug instead. It was the last one. He was also out of coffee. Irritating. No matter how much of it he drank, he was still tired. It just meant he couldn’t sleep.
Sex helped, a bit, but when it didn’t, things were worse. Lying alone in his own bed, at least he could toss and turn and work his sheets into tangles trying to find some position that would let him finally fall asleep. He could slip out of bed for a nightcap, a strong one, to try and help. With another, there was nothing to do but lie there, still and silent, trying not to wake the man or woman next to him.
Trying not to think.
Impossible to sleep, then suddenly too much sleep. Blink and it was three-thirty in the afternoon. He stood at the sink, filling up the mug and draining it repeatedly. The call was probably from work. Worse, it might be his mother.
”Karna, what the fuck are you doing with your life you useless bastard. You’re not immortal, it’s all slipping away, one day, one minute at a time, and here you are doing nothing with it.” He said to himself. “Because you’re too tired to anything and still can’t sleep.” Of course, he knew why. His mind, treacherous as a serpent, betrayed him then, in the dark, in the solitude. Every wound he had suffered, every scar erased by healing magic, those were nothing. He was a paladin, the training had gotten him used to the sight of his own blood a long time ago.
”Practice for healing magic. Isn’t that what the old sister called it?” He wondered aloud. “Tch. She was kind of a bitch. Still is. I wonder if she’s calling me to yell at me too? Of course, I suppose I deserve it. I-“Then he stopped himself, and slammed the mug down, forcefully. It hit one of the plates in the sink, and it cracked. Karna swore and picked up the mess, picking the shards of metal out of his sink and throwing them in the boxes in the bin.
He sat back down in the one seat he used at his four-person table. It was covered in books, loose change, an unopened letter from some survey, a candle, a mug, miscellaneous bits of stationary, a comically large six sided die with red and black patterns, and off directly to his left a stick of deodorant and bottle of cologne. Those last two were the only things he’d used on this table in a while.
He sat back in his chair and sighed. “Yeah, you know exactly what you’re doing with your life. Nothing of any use to anyone. Well. Useless is better than detrimental, so hey, at least there’s that improvement.”
He hit the button to play back the latest message from his telephone, and picked it up, placing the receiver to his ear. At least he could listen to his messages. That would be something for the day.
”Hey, Karna. It’s Bas.” Karna’s head slumped forwards. He hadn’t expected him to be calling to call him an idiot. “I’ve tried coming by your place a couple of times to visit, seem to have missed you both times.” Or he was asleep, or drunk, or otherwise being a bad cousin. “So, I figured I’d give you a call and leave you a message. Just checking in to see how you’re doing. I know… things have been rough, for all of us, and I know you were taking things hard.” I know you’re weak. “I hope you’re doing well, and hope you understand, if you’re not, then, well, you’ve got my number, and you know where I live. Even though my apartment’s not exactly stellar.” I know you could reach out. But you won’t. You’ve been given everything, inherited power, your house, your money, and you still do nothing with it. I have nothing our society considers important, but I am still a better man than you. “Hope to talk to you soon. Adonai watch over you.”
That last bit was a bit odd. Adonai. The old invisible god, or God, as those that believed in such a thing insisted. Karna wasn’t entirely certain that this wasn’t just a clever way of disguising atheism, given that philosophy’s associations. Why in the world would Basil mention it now? As far as he knew… well he really actually didn’t know anything about Basil’s beliefs. He presumed, given his training, he was a follower of the western philosophies, which were philosophies more so than religions. They were fairly popular these days, a sort of secular spirituality, a substitute for the holes growing in Ordani religious life.
When you’ve fought and killed a god in living memory, it becomes harder to worship them. Beyond that, the old rites simply that, old rites. A series of rituals nobody really believed in anymore. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a cleric. He paused. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a cleric he hadn’t been fighting to the death with. The gods really didn’t seem to have much of a place in a modern society. It was probably arrogant, but part of the point of the gods was meant to be that they were something so much bigger than oneself, that there was nothing that could compare. They were monumental figures, but when the monuments can be torn down by mere men, was it a monument worth believing in?
It was that way then. Some people turned to the western philosophies, realizing that their religious needs, the desire for mystery, for reverence, for prayer, meditation, moral laws and sacred communities were met there, without gods. Some, Basil included, turned their gaze towards an invisible, supposedly omnipotent, God. Well, the gods were supposed to be omnipotent, but if nobody could even prove your God existed, well, then there wasn’t any fear that anyone could kill Him. And then, there was the other kind. The kind which were kind of a bad joke.
He remembered his days in the warm sun, under the abbot’s orchard in Hearthfire Abbey, amid the warm red walls, the golden light of the day filtering through the green leaves, the bright red apples highlighted against a blue sky. Quite literally simpler times. He remembered the grave beneath the tree. Senket Zarathustra. Of course, that wasn’t really where she was. She was a few miles up the road, in a chapel nobody paid any mind to, next to six other graves, two empty. How much a contrast that was, compared with what was in the abbey. Her image, glaring down from tapestry, immortalized in statuary, and everywhere revered. Saint, they called her, but what was the difference between a saint and a god, when you treated one like the other.
They had made gods for themselves, gods born of and midwives to, their own people. A god that was distant enough to be worshipped, but near enough to be known. Something understood, something relatable, and something that had bested other gods before. Gods borne of the people of godslayers, for what else could they be? Of course, every pantheon needed its devil, its fallen angel. And now here he stood, a useless bastard, but also the same kind of thing as their gods and their devil. What a bad joke.
But at the same time, a joke they had believed in. A joke he felt the obligation to make a truth. A joke he had failed to make true. Up on a pedestal, and down in the dirt. That was what paladin of Order Undivided meant now. A hero, until people had no more need of them. Good, he wasn’t even a hero in the first place.
He shook his head. It was going to be a few hours before any clubs opened. He was going back to bed until then. It didn’t do him any good to sit awake stewing.
Basil was getting worried. He’d tried paying visits and making calls, but there was no contact. He quietly sat through office hours, grading the first assignments of the year. He was starting to regret assigning an essay, particularly to his 101 class. Fortunately, it was early in the year, so he was able to work through his office hours without being further disturbed. He finished his last paper, capped the red pen, and stood up. It wasn’t that far out of his way to visit Karna again, and this time he wouldn’t be ignored.
He made his way through the city, until he came to the Red Street. It had another name, but people remembered not what was given, but what was done. Fifty years ago, the blood of black and red lions flowed, as Elsior faced down her old mentor during the height of the black rebellion. The street’s architecture was eclectic, a mix of the old buildings which had survived the battle, and newer designs built up out of the ruins left from a clash of titans.
There were alleys off the street where you could still see the gashes left in the ground by arcane blades. It was a street where history lay heavy in the mortar and the air. It was also a decently affordable neighborhood, as the old houses, while historical, were also old, small, and lacked modern amenities. He was still never going to afford any of them on a teacher’s salary, even with his stipend as a paladin. Of course, Karna would have had a bitch of a time paying for his house as well, but he had simply inherited it.
Basil shook his head, as if to throw the jealous thought out of his mind. “You’re a grey-eyed monster already. Let’s not add green to the mix.” He growled at himself, as he kept walking up to Karna’s door and knocked. No response. He sighed, looking through the door. Only two of his eyes saw the normal spectrum of light. The others varied from arcane, ultraviolet, infrared, and a curious ability to see electrical signals. The end result was an overlapping view of information, an in-depth view of the world that saw the surface and the depths of everything. It had been a bit of a rude surprise for his parents to find out their son saw their brains at the same time he saw their faces. The practical upshot of this at the moment was that he saw Karna was clearly not at home, and had left a trail of lingering celestial energy behind him.
Well, Karna or another aasimar, but they were fairly rare. Even with the increasing numbers of extraplanar citizens in the union, there weren’t many descended from angels. Basil wryly considered that it might be the former keeping out the later. Baatorites weren’t strictly speaking enemies with most angels, but the distaste between the two species was deep, ancient, and mutual. As such, there was only one trail to follow.
Basil sighed when he found the end of the trail. It was a club, and of a particular sort. He didn’t need his enhanced vision to tell that. Technically speaking, strip clubs and even prostitution were legal. Practically speaking, everyone in any of them used pseudonyms. He sighed and headed for the entrance. The bouncer at the door, a towering ogre, raised a hand. “If you’re carrying, head around to the side entrance. They’ll check your swords there. No weapons in the club.”
”Not planning on starting a fight. Just looking to meet someone.”
”Yeah, well check em anyway. We’ve had boyfriends throwing hands with one another because they were looking at the guy on stage a little too hard, we don’t want em doing it with swords. That’s the kind of domestic dispute that doesn’t just get the cops involved, it’s also a bitch to get out of the floors.”
”Well, I’ll keep that in mind.” Basil replied, and headed around the side. He stepped in, greeted by another bouncer, a dragonborn. He always found it amusing how it was always one of the larger races as a bouncer. Given their job, it made a certain degree of sense, but it occurred to him he’d never seen a gnome as a bouncer. Then again, he didn’t go to many clubs. He checked his sword in, and left a pseudonym.
The dragonborn looked down at the paper, and narrowed his eyes slightly. “What’s the T.D. stand for, Mr. Law?” He asked curiously.
Basil shrugged. “Hells if I know, it’s an alias, same as everyone else is using here. I mean, look at the guy above me on that list, when was the last time you ever met somebody actually named Flamingo?”
”The guy kinda looked like a flamingo. Aasimar type, maybe his wings are pink.” The bouncer replied.
”If he’s the person I’m thinking of, no. Let’s hope they don’t start changing.” Basil replied.
”Ah, ex-boyfriend?”
”Cousin, and why’d you assume ex?”
”The only people I’ve seen who’ve been drinking that much and going home with that many different blokes are the ones going through breakups, and you’re the only person I’ve seen go looking for him, so I know he’s not a whore.”
”Nah, just a dumbass. Thanks for the info. Here’s hoping you have a quiet night.”
”Yeah, try to keep it that way for me.”
”I’ll do my best. Believe it or not, I hate fighting.” Basil replied, and headed past the dragonborn into the club proper.
To give the club some credit, they had a pretty decent band going. A small number, playing as much with style as they did skill. That was to say, a decent if unspectacular amount. The rolling tones of the lead singer washed over an atmosphere of casual conversation and lewd humor. Basil cocked an ear at the sound. He would have sworn he’d heard the woman on the radio at least once. He watched her closely for a moment, along with the rest of the band, but didn’t recognize them. Then again, he didn’t go to many concerts.
As the double bass thrummed, the piano crooned, and the saxophone danced center stage, he made his way through smoke and other scents towards the bar. A teifling danced a lurid show in the center of the building, sweat glistening on blue skin from the lights. One of Basil’s eyes kept a lock on the man, tracing the electrical signals running under his skin to enact their sensual motions. It wasn’t exactly something he was looking to copy, but it was an interesting interplay to watch. Dancing wasn’t something often done alone, done for the show. It was interesting to compare the flow of signals of this to more traditional forms.
He kept most of his eyes forwards through. He had a job to do, and he preferred white to blue anyways. A brief thought entertained his mind of what Zeal might look like in such an outfit. He snapped it off immediately, jaw snapping shut in anger at himself. That was wrong, and a bad place to go. He couldn’t allow himself to think of her, think of anyone, that way, but especially her.
He focused himself. He had a job to do, and he was going to die alone. The only thing anyone would ever love of him would be an illusion. Any intimacy would have to be built on lies. Throw those thoughts out of his mind. They would only bring distraction, and disappointment.
He centered himself, and took a seat next to Karna, as the aasimar knocked back what was looking like probably the sixth shot tonight. How the hell was he even paying for all this? He rapped the bar twice with his knuckles. “First time here, got mezcal?” He asked.
”Mezcal coming up, though I can’t say it’s gonna be quite as good as home’s.” The barkeep replied.
”I am home, just grew up away from it.” Basil replied. For all his illusions, he always forgot to cover his chultan accent. Then again, recognizing his voice was part of the point for the man next to him.
”Basil?” Karna asked, turning slightly. “You’re straight, well, nearest to it, the fuck are you doing here?”
”Checking on you, and about to drink a theoretically decent mezcal.” Basil replied. “I’m worried about you.”
”Well fuck off, you don’t need to be.” Karna replied. “Another.” He requested. Another shot of strong absinthe filled his cup.
”Might want to slow down there hoss.” The barkeep warned. “The kind you’ve been having is a hundred thirty proof.”
”That so? Huh. Would have thought it was about a hundred twenty. Guess I’m getting better at drinking. Stands to reason, it’s all I’m good at or good for.” Karna replied, clearly about as drunk as someone on their seventh shot of one hundred thirty proof absinthe should be.
”Politely, bullshit.” Basil replied. “Though you are going to manage to be the first paladin to ever give yourself liver cirrhosis at the rate you’re going.”
”Paladin. What a bad joke.” Karna spat. “Paladins are heroes, we, we’re not fucking heroes. You got closer, and you’re, well, you. Me. I’m just a fool. So what if I ruin my liver. I’ve ruined everything else.”
Karna went for his glass, but Basil put his hand over it, stopping him. He looked his cousin in the eye, gentle, pitying, but firm. “Karna, we should go. Let’s find somewhere, a park or something, and talk.”
”We should, as in you should get your hand off my drink, and then pull that pole out of your ass. Dancer might need a spare.” Karna spat back. “I don’t need to talk, I need a damn drink.”
Basil didn’t move. “Cut the crap and calm down. You’re drunk already, and clearly not in a good place. If you’re going to be this way, at least we can do it at a safe distance from anyone else.”
”Oh fuck right off.” Karna replied. “What, am I embarrassing you? More so that I already have? I know I’m a fucking disgrace okay. I saw it with my own two eyes and can’t stop seeing it. The least you could let me do is drink myself to death in peace so I stop being a bother for all of you.”
The bartender was steadily shifting away, looking towards the bouncer who sighed and began to approach. He briefly made eye contact with Basil, who tried to give him an apologetic smile and flicked his eyes back towards Karna. The bouncer nodded. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen this.
Karna continued. “But no, you can’t do that. Can’t just let me be a failure in peace. You’re not content just being the better man than me, being better in every way but looks than me. You have to prove it, have to rub it in. I already you’re better, okay, don’t need to slam my nose in it with this stupid pity schtick.”
”When did I say anything about that? I’m the weakest member of our party!” Basil protested. “And what the hells does that have to do with any of that. You’re my cousin, my family, and beyond that my friend. You clearly need help, so of course I’m going to try and help you.”
”I don’t need help.” Karna snarled back, green eyes glinting red with a dangerous, gleaming light. “LEAST OF ALL FROM YOU!” He roared. The red light flared. Basil flinched, covering his eyes as the roar slammed into his mind and ears at the same time. He focused, piercing through the growing crimson fog.
The music kept playing, a hidden tape rolling, but the band pretending to sing had stopped. The club had gone silent, save for that. The patron’s idle gossip and chatter was muted. The bar was silent, patrons slumped over on their chairs, the bartender and bouncer were on the ground, foaming at the mouth. Karna and Basil were the only two people conscious in that building.
Karna stared in stunned silence, quiet horror at the scene. Some part of him processed exactly what he had just done, rationality quietly ticking away behind a fog of alcohol and badly managed emotional issues. It only intensified the later, a combination of terror and guilt forming into a blossoming rage. Then he saw Basil’s face, saw realization peeling back and something shifting in how he looked at him, saw a cold fury, a hatred, spreading across his face.
Basil looked himself, horrified at what had just occurred, and mind flashing to the street in front of Zeal’s home. This was the exact same scene. The same power as Alexander, but now being used instinctually. He had no idea what had actually happened to these people, if Karna had meant it or not. One thing he did know for certain. He had to stop this. If Karna was out of control there was no telling how many people could be hurt so he had to end this now.
Karna opened his mouth, but it was too late. Basil whirled, placing a palm on the bar to leverage himself from a sitting position into a whirling kick. His heel hit Karna squarely in the face, with every ounce of strength he could muster. A sucker punch, meant to be a knockout blow so he could take the aasimar down, end this spell, and get him out of here before anything else went wrong.
Karna snapped back out of his chair, it tumbled to the ground, and the back of his head hit the floor hard. His headache roared, but he rolled over coming back up to his feet, coming to a ready stance. He might have been depressed and drunk, but he was still a paladin, better trained than most and tougher than pretty much everybody. It was going to take more than that to knock him out.
Basil kicked him squarely in the nuts.
Karna doubled over in pain, and Basil kicked him in the face again. Basil had trained under paladins and monks alike. His skill with his own limbs was on par with his swordsmanship. His training under the paladins in the tradition of Jort made him an expert at sneak attacks, sucker punches, and practical, dirty fighting. In other words, he was effectively an expert at kicking people in the nuts. He went for a chop to the throat, trying to finish the fight right then and there.
Karna caught his hand, and broke it by squeezing his fingers. He looked up, bloody eyed and berserk. “Ah. Fuck.” Basil swore. Then Karna threw him. Basil went flying, arm broken, and hit the wall shelves, covered in a hundred forms of expensive booze. The impact shattered his collar bone, and he kept going until he hit the solid wall on the other side of the bar. He landed hard on his face, shirt torn to ribbons and bleeding freely.
His hand and shoulder reset themselves, and shirt tore entirely as he burst his extra limbs out of it, and slammed them down to pick himself up. He drew in a breath, and Karna threw a chair at him. Basil dodged upwards, onto the ceiling as the chair smashed a hole in the wall behind him. He rushed his cousin, gathering shards of broken glass with his spare limbs and a bottle into either hand. He flung the glass before him, forcing Karna to cover his face. Then he hit him on top of the head with both bottles, dropped them, and hit him on both sides of the throat with a chop.
Karna struggled to breathe, nearly blacking out from the impact, and but threw a wild, blind punch. Basil evaded most of hit, but even a glancing hit was enough to send him flying. He caught his momentum on a support pillar, swinging around it with his tendrils. His ankle hit the side of a table and shattered. He wheezed in pain, falling to a knee on top of the table to mend it.
Karna roared and charged like a bull, giving Basil scant time. He palmed a lighter from one of the unconscious men lying next to him, and jumped clear. Karna smashed the table into splinters beneath his fists, tearing skin and breaking bone, but healing them just as quickly as he damaged them. Basil flicked the lighter open, and threw it. The expensive alcohol covering Karna caught light, stunning and blinding him as Basil set him ablaze!
He hit the flaming angel with everything he had before the fire burned away. Fists, feet, elbows, knees, tendrils. A devastating combination of every move he knew to put a man on the ground flew out of him. He hadn’t really trained to get into a bar fight, but damn if it wasn’t coming in handy. He finished with a powerful drop kick in the aasimar’s solar plexus, sending him staggering back against the bar, breath torn from his lungs.
Basil breathed heavily, as his cousin slumped, then swore as Karna got his feet under him, and pulled his head up still more than ready to go. He swore louder as Karna gripped the sides of the bar, and tore the granite countertop off of it, swinging it at Basil like an improvised weapon.
Basil leapt, running along the side of the countertop as it smashed through everything it came across. Fortunately, it was swung high, missing the unconscious clubgoers, and shattered when it hit a load bearing column, though that cracked ominously. Basil landed on his cousin, spines biting into him and wrapping around bones to anchor the assassin. He’d seen a similar technique used by velociraptors when they hunted, using their massive claws to hook onto larger dinosaurs. Once attached, the smaller reptiles would begin to eat their prey alive. He wasn’t planning on biting Karna though, instead he raised up his boot and began to stomp his cousin’s face, over and over and over again, desperately trying to bring the berserk paladin down before he brought down the building!
Karna flared his wings and soared upwards, slamming both himself and Basil into the ceiling. Basil fell off, and Karna grabbed him by the face. He slammed them both down into the floor, smashing Basil’s head into the ground once, twice, three times, then threw him with enough force to scatter blood across the entire club and snap the assassin’s neck. He watched as Basil hit the pole the dancer had been, ahem, performing with, and his illusion vanished.
Horror overtook him as he saw Basil’s true form break in two, snaped apart by the force of the impact, and fall like so much meat onto the stage. He rushed forwards, hands shaking as he realized what he’d just done. He reached for Basil’s head, bloodied and broken. But his hands went through him. His emotional pain was then matched by physical pain, as he felt a steel stripper pole strike him directly between the legs.
Basil didn’t let up, as he dropped the illusion and his invisibility, and beat his cousin into the ground with the broken pole. He went for joints, broke ribs, hit below the belt with every opportunity and he did not stop. He didn’t know what it was going to take to put Karna down but he did know that if Karna got back up, he was actually going to die. It was nothing but the good fortune of his unusual anatomy that had kept him breathing with a broken neck, and his healing magic to allow him to ever get up again. He wasn’t going to get another chance, and so he beat down his cousin until the pole was bent beyond all recognition and the stage was slick with golden blood.
When he finally stopped, Karna was finally, mercifully, down. Basil knelt by his side, mending him enough to make sure he could be moved safely, though not enough to bring him back into consciousness. The patrons were beginning to stir to consciousness. With a grunt, he picked up his friend, hoisting him over his shoulder, and covered both of them with a spell of invisibility.
Slowly, shakily, he retrieved his and Karna’s weapons, erased both their names from the registry, and slipped away as people began to regain consciousness and the police arrived. Then, he began the slow, tired business of carrying Karna back to his house. He grumbled as he went. “You are far too skinny to be this heavy, and put up way too much of a fight for me to need the extra weight of lugging your ass out of here. You stupid overpowered twink.”
Karna woke up with a splitting headache, and a slightly less splitting everything-else-ache. Paladin healing factors worked wonders, but if you took a beating that was going to make you ache for a week, you were going to ache for a week. He remembered what happened, and started to wish he didn’t. “Oh fuck. I nearly killed Bas. And… yeah, the rest of the club. I’m not going to be allowed back there.”
He rolled off his couch and got a drink, of water this time. He looked at his liquor cabinet, walked over, opened it, and grabbed a bottle. He emptied it into the sink. Then he emptied the rest. He looked down at the drain, drew in a deep breath, and focused himself. “I need to apologize. I need to talk. I need help. And I need to get my life back on track.” He resolved. “I can’t let that happen again.”
He clenched his fists, and opened them again, hands still shaking. There was a knock at the door. His first thought was that it might be Basil checking on him. The next though was that it was the police. His third thought was that it was Basil, and the police. Well, either way. Apologies would be made, he might just also need to call a really, really good lawyer, and probably a bank to take out a loan to pay all that property damage.
He opened it, and saw another aasimar looking back at him.
”Hello Karna.” Alexander replied. “I heard you had something of a rough night, powers going out of control, a rather ugly bar fight, that sort of thing?”
”Yes. How long am I going to be in jail for?” Karna asked.
”Not at all, I’ve covered the damages and fortunately, nobody has any memory of last evening. Dominion Flare has that useful side effect.”
”Dominion Flare? What I did has a name?”
”Of course. It is your inheritance after all.” Alexander mused. “Though, you might be the first one to awaken it while drunk, though you’re not the first to cause some degree of damage with it. These things happen, it simply requires training.” He looked Karna squarely in the eye. “And beyond that, I strongly suspect you may be looking for some help getting yourself back on track.”

I recently decided to up my skin care routine after many years of subpar skin. For the last decade [27f] my skin has been low maintenance but not really "nice". Not dry nor oily, not acne prone but dull and large pores that clog easily. I don't really have blackheads, but absolutely have issues with sebaceous/dirt filled pores around my nose and cheeks.
It's been one full month of about 95% consistency [morning routine always gets done, some Saturday nights I have missed the night routine] and I haven't seen any changes really at all. Please read my breakdown and let me know if I'm missing anything, if I need more time, professional services, or if I'm just doomed to have cloggy looking pores forever lol.
Morning:
> Burts Bees oil cleanser
> La Rosche Posay gentle non-foaming cream cleanser
> BHA/AHA exfoliation toner by Peachy - NOTE: pores look better after this but only temporary
> Glycolic undereye cream by Mario Bedasceau
> Niacinamide from the Ordinary
> Beija Flor Elasti-cream by Sol De Janerio
> Cetaphil sheer sunscreen
Night:
> The same except instead of sunscreen, I do a nighttime cream with retinol by Paulas Choice and a vitamin C under eye cream instead of glycolic.
> Occasionally use a velvet skin elixir 'drink' but I'm not sure the brand, it's a sample size
> Once weekly I use the red chemical peel from the Ordinary.
Everyone says not to extract the oil/filaments, but I don't know how else they would clear up. They're very visible, and while I have no major expectations because I know skincare isn't magic, but they just look so shitty for the amount of effort I've been putting in. As far as technique, I follow the instructions to a T on all of the products. I don't touch my face very much throughout the day and wash my hands frequently anyway!

"Would you like to have a near-death experience? By crossing the boundary between life and death."

Yukari Yakumo

Themes:

• Necrofantasia:
  
• Night Falls ~ Evening Star: 7.5, 10.5, 15.5
  
• Yorimashi Between Dreams and Reality ~ Necro-Fantasia
  

Yukari Yakumo is a legendary youkai with the ability to manipulate boundaries. She is one of the sages who created Gensokyo in the first place, and a good contender for its most powerful resident. Despite this she is also exceptionally lazy, spending most of her time sleeping and foisting most of the problems off on Reimu or Ran. Still, her incredible intelligence and completely inhuman nature means one can never tell quite what she's thinking, and making her angry is a very bad idea.

Notes

• Source Index
  
• Perfect Memento in Strict Sense and Symposium of Post Mysticism is an in universe book written by Hidea no Akyuu. She has a tendency to exaggerate and speculate, so her claims should be taken with a grain of salt.
  
• Yukari herself is noted to lie quite a lot, so her own claims should also be taken with a grain of salt.
  
• In 15.5 Yukari makes use of the urban legend Teke Teke, but her attacks while using this urban legend are fairly in line with her normal capabilities. As it's unclear what effect the Urban legend is having, these feats will be included in this section but marked with Occult
  
• Yukari scales to a large number of characters, so here is every Touhou respect thread for the games
  

Defining Some Terms

Spell Card System: The Spell Card Rules were put in place by Reimu Hakurei in order to make duels between everyone fair, formalized, and safe. It is also the method nearly all Touhou characters will use in-character. Spell card battles have very clearly defined rules and attacks that are agreed upon before a duel with the purpose being that the most beautiful attacks win. In general Spell Cards are characters going easy on the foe, with ZUN outright stating they're not something the characters would ever use if they were serious.

• Given the original rules of spell card battles and a characters being introduced to the spell card system stating it would prevent useless bloodshed, there is at least a decent amount of implication that Spell Card battles are inherently non-lethal.

Danmaku: Danmaku are the "bullets" fired in a bullet hell, take many different forms, and are able to be fired by most Gensokyo citizens. They're an essential part of duels in Gensokyo, being used to control an opponent's movement and overwhelm them. They can either be fired in intricate patterns, or just fired rapidly from a single point.

• Danmaku is intentionally not efficient or effective for serious combat
  
• Danmaku in general can be lethal to normal humans
  
• Danmaku from major characters is very consistently able to break rock
  
  • Seija is considered notably weak
  • Sanae is considered nothing special as far as humans in Gensokyo are concerned

Youkai: Supernatural beings typically born from humanity's fear of the unknown, and the primary residents of Gensokyo. Youkai can be highly varied, but tend to be highly resistant to physical attacks while far more weak to spiritual attacks, such as names and traditions.
Gensokyo: Genoskyo is the region Touhou takes place in, and is a small landlocked region of Japan. It is fully enclosed by the Great Hakurei Barrier (more information bellow). The clearest picture of it shows it containing a few mountains, with it also being noted Gensokyo is small enough to see almost all of it from the Hakurei shrine

• The Sages of Genoskyo (of which Yukari is a member) are the beings responsible for the creation and maintenance of Gensokyo

Urban Legend Incident: Due to the occult balls various Urban Legends begin to manifest in Gensokyo, and some characters are capable of controlling an urban legend in battle that matches their tempermant. It's worth noting that the effects are present even after the occult balls are removed from Gensokyo though Reisen notes it will soon settle down.

Boundary Manipulation

General Description: Summarized, Yukari's power allows her to manipulate the boundary between any two things.This can apply both to physical boundaries (such as between Gensokyo and the outside world), or even the boundary of concepts (such as human and youkai or night and day).

• Both her profile and she herself state that she can manipulate the boundary between any and all things
  
• An official magazine says her power can affect anything, and that for narrative purposes she has to limit herself to the spell card rule or it wouldn't even be a game
  
• The manual states the danger and potency of her power is beyond imagination
  
• Akyuu states that her power fundamentally undermines reality. She states that it can create new existence and reject existence, is the most powerful ability held by any youkai. Additionally she states it can be applied to pictures, peoples dreams, and even stories
  

Direct Combat Usage

• Feats/Statements
  
  • Being able to draw boundary lines along surfaces means there is nothing she can not split in two
    • Sumreiko comments on her seemingly cutting space, with opening gaps in space also being her main method of transportation (see below)
  • Her barriers can destroy large amounts of enemy danmaku and damage her foes
  • Creates a large boundary around the entirety of Suika's mist form, and then suddenly makes it much smaller to force her back into her physical form.
    • Suika's mist form covered all of Gensokyo
• General
  
  • Uses a barrier to block enemy danmaku and strikes
  • Creates a boundary line with her strikes to hit her foe
  • A fan granting her powers is able to crash through all obligations, directly hitting a foe while they're guarding
• Skills
  
  • Boundary of Intellect and Feet: Runs a straight boundary to split her foe
  • Universe of Matter and Antimatter: Creates two gaps that do nothing on their own, but when they collide they create a huge distortion attack
• Spell Cards
  
  • Border Sign "Quadruple Barrier": Creates several overlapping boundaries to produce a barrier that can strike foes
  • Sign I "Quadruple Barrier": Another version of the above spell card
  • Barrier "Charming Quadruple Barrier": A larger version of quadruple barrier that sucks the foe in
  • Boundary "Quadruple Barrier of the Imperishable Night": Creates a larger quadruple barrier to protect herself and attack her enemy
  • Border Sign "Boundary of 2D and 3D": Creates a boundary that travels along the screen edge and changes directions to follow the movements of the screen
  • Barrier "Objective Barrier": Fires off four linked borders that travel along the edges of the screen
• Last Word
  
  • [Occult] Lend Me Those Beautiful Legs!: Locks her foe in place with boundary lines and then uses a gap to split them in two before putting them back together

Gaps and Warping

• Feats/Statements
  
  • General
    • Able to travel to entirely different locations by opening up gaps in space, with (according to Akyuu) it being said that this can also access pictures, dreams, and even stories
    • Can open gaps in thin air
    • Opens up a large gap, and is gone when it clears away
    • Repositions a gap to use as a seat
    • Spiriting away Kosuzu doesn't leave a single trail any other youkai can follow to locate her, not even leaving a trace of her soul behind
  • Travel/Range
    
    • Uses gaps in space as her main means of transportation, with her warping around Gensokyo, up youkai mountain, and even to and from heaven (though how direct these trips are isn't clear given how the time of day changes)
    • Reimu states Yukari can travel anywhere she wants to in a flash
    • Is able to freely travel past the Great Hakurei Barrier into the outside world, and pulls Rinnosuke back into Gensokyo after he's accidentally pulled into the outside world
      • Casually travels out of Gensokyo to see cherry blossoms
      • Comments to Mamizou about what's currently going on in Sado
      • Sends Sumireko and dream Sumireko from Gensokyo to the outside world
    • Off screen travels overseas and brings back a Hobgoblin, which she states are a Western creature
    • Instantly sends Marisa from the Hakurei shrine to the forest of magic
    • Easily travels to the netherworld (though in Gensokyo the netherworld is a location you can physically travel to
      • Summons Ran and Chen to her while within the netherworld
    • Suddenly goes from behind Luna to in front of her
    • Disappears to somewhere... literally
    • Placed a gap in a doorway so that Flandre traveled from the Scarlet Devil mansion to deep underground without even realizing she had done so
    • Pulls Sumireko out of the dream world (though Doremy implies this isn't something she's supposed to do normally)
      • Reimu refers to the dream world as another reality that is two sides of the same coin with the real world
      • Is often lurking in the dream world
  • Utility
    
    • Claims to have an undending supply of electricity, kerosene, and nitroglycerin, and fills up Rinnosuke's heater with fuel while having a conversation with him, without him even realizing she had done anything
    • Covertly drops money into the shrine's donation box while having a conversation with Reimu
    • Puts a hand through a gap to block a hammer and grab a gameboy
    • Makes food disappear from right out from under Reimu's nose
    • Summons other characters like Reimu or Chen
    • Reimu implies Yukari can send just some body parts through the Great Hakurei Barrier
    • Left her arm dangling through a gap while asleep, and then puts her hand through another gap to douse a candle
    • Hid some of her own energy inside of a gap to revive herself after having all of her magical energy drained by Mizuchi's possession. Though she states it will soon run out and she needs to rest after. Also sticks her hands through gaps to grab cookies and wave at Reimu independently of her body
• General
  
  • Warps from one side of the screen to the other and grants Reimu the ability to do the same
  • Vanishes to dodge a spell card
  • Leans back into a gap while firing projectiles
  • Sticks her arm into a gap to strike her foe with an umbrella from another location
  • Drops into a gap and then appears in midair
  • After being knocked to the ground, creates a gap below and above her to redirect back to standing up
  • Opens a gap through which several pieces of wood fly out at her foe
  • Spawns street signs to attack her foe
  • Opens gaps through which rapid fire danmaku and lasers fire out
  • Summons a monstrous arm out of her gap to grab or strike her foe
• Skills
  
  • Rest on Stone, Rinse in Rivers: Opens up a hole that swallows up projectiles and stores them
  • Rinse with Stone, Rest in Rivers: Fires off stored projectiles
  • Chimera's Wings: Places a gap that she can then warp back to.
  • Fantasy Maniacal Rift: Disappears into a gap and keeps moving, before coming out to strike her foe
  • Flesh Dismantler: Drops down into a gap before leaping out while spinning her umbrella
  • Urashima's Box, Filled With Lament: Opens a gap in the sky to drop debris on her foe
  • Home is Where One Lays to Rest: Hits her foe with several pieces of wood
  • [Occult] World's Most Agile Torso: Uses a gap to send her upper body forward to attack her foe while her lower body remains in place
• Spell Cards
  
  • Evil Spirits "Yukari Yakumo's Spiriting Away": Repeatedly teleports around while firing off danmaku
  • "Boundary of Humans and Youkai": Vanishes entirely and attacks the foe with danmaku patterns while not physically present
  • Splitter "Thing That Splits All Into Two": Repeatedly jumps in and out of and moves through gaps while spinning her umbrella
  • Fantasy Nest "Flying Noctilucae's Nest": Opens up several gaps that fire danmaku forwards, always in the direction of the foe
  • Boundary "Overflowing Flotsam": Sends several pieces of wood flying at her foe
  • Abandoned Line "Aimless Journey to the Abandoned Station": Opens a gap through which an abandoned train comes from, though (in gameplay at least) it takes time to open the gap
  • "Unmanned Abandoned Railroad Car Bomb": Summons three train cars that fly into her foe before exploding

Great Hakurei Barrier

• The Barrier Itself
  
  • Feats/Statements
    • The Great Hakurei Barrier is a barrier of sense that surrounds all of Gensokyo, and keeps living creatures and their tools from passing through while allowing non-living things to pass through without issue. Via non-Euclidian space a person attempting to pass through the barrier will find themselves wandering endlessly, and they will find themselves back where they started upon turning around.
    • Even when Reimu and Marisa traveled to the moon they never left the barrier, and they consider getting through the barrier to be harder than going to the moon
    • Gensokyo is designed to be the opposite of the outside world, and things that contradict that concept cannot pass through the barrier
    • Akyuu states the barrier is a barrier of common sense and keeps the outside world's common sense outside, and that it's composed of multiple smaller barriers, but that it periodically weakens every 60 years
    • There is at least some difference in the seasons between Gensokyo and the outside world
    • Sumireko was unable to fully penetrate the barrier from the outside
  • Limits
    • Non-living things and certain creatures are able to pass through the barrier more easily
    • It's noted Remilia's scarlet mist would have spread past the boundary into the human world
    • Objects that violated common sense from the outside world being used on the barrier would threaten its very existence
• Manipulation
  
  • Yukari was one of the sages to suggest the creation of the Great Hakurei Barrier, though whether she's the actual creator is unclear. Reimu refers to her as the original creator but Yuyuko thinks the barrier is too strong for Yukari to make
  • States that she has torn holes in the barrier
  • Creates a powerful distortion in the barrier
  • Repairs the barrier after Reimu does something to weaken it
  • Whenever a human from the outside world wanders into Gensokyo, it's because of fluctuations in the barrier caused by her

Gensokyo's Boundary of Reality and Illusion

• General
  
  • Created a boundary of illusion and reality around Gensokyo, defining Gensokyo as illusionary and the outside world as real, so anything that becomes viewed as fantasy is pulled into Gensokyo, even from outside Japan. This was performed 500 years ago and still going strong.
  • Yukari seems to have at least some amount of awareness of those who enter and leave Gensokyo through this method
• Living Things
  
  • A snake wakes up in Gensokyo as soon as he transforms into a youkai, with Mamizou stating that when you turn into a youkai you wind up in Gensokyo. Said snake is potentially originally from India
  • When there's a demand for Zashiki-Warashi in the outside world they start vanishing from Gensokyo, and later return when that demand fades
  • New youkai created in the outside world immediately appear in Gensokyo as well, but due to not having a clear form they disappear just a quickly
  • Rinnosuke notes that Gensokyo is rather multicultural, as youkai brought with them foreign cultures as they were pulled into Gensokyo
  • A real life human shows up in Gensokyo after becoming a god
  • Animals that become endangered or extinct (at least in Japan) are more prevalent in Gensokyo
  • A completely ordinary seal winds up in Gensokyo after being forgotten while a youkai well integrated in human society could remain in the outside world
• Nonliving
  
  • Items that fall out of use in the outside world wind up in Gensokyo
  • People doubting or forgetting the moon landing is enough to cause several magazines about it to appear in Gensokyo as well as the Soyuz spacecraft
  • Lyrica implies that instruments and even noises can fall into fantasy
• Buildings
  
  • The Scarlet Devil Mansion is a western style mansion housing multiple powerful youkai that is assumed to have arrived in Gensokyo fairly recently, with Akyuu also noting that it seemingly wasn't designed for Japanese climates
  • Another western style mansion housing the Prismriver sister also exists in Gensokyo
  • Unused radio towers occasionally appear in Gensokyo
  • After Miko is forgotten by the outside world, her entire mausoleum arrives in Gensokyo
• Large Scale
  
  • Due to Kanako making it fall into fantasy the Moriya shrine and the nearby lake move to Gensokyo
  • According to legend the Bamboo Forest of the Lost appeared in Gensokyo after being washed away by a tsunami
  • It's thought (according to Keine) that Youkai Mountain in Gensokyo is the original mythical form Yatsugatake, before it had been torn down by a god, back when it was taller than Mt. Fuji

Misc

• Boundary of Reality and Illusion - Moon
  
  • Erases the boundary between the real and illusionary moon, turning a reflection of the moon in the water into a portal to the moon itself that allows for instantaneous travel
  • Can return to Earth by doing the same thing to a reflection of the Earth
  • Leaves the portal open by shoving an umbrella into it
  • The Watatsuki sisters state she can freely travel between the Earth and moon, and that she once brought a throng of youkai to the moon with her
  • Implies this can only be performed when the moon is completely full, and that she was trapped on the moon when the full waned more quickly than expected
• Netherworld
  
  • Weakened the barrier between Gensokyo and the Netherworld so Yuyuko could more easily enter Gensokyo. She is also responsible for its repair
    • The Netherworld's barrier weakening causes the boundary between life and death to become vague, with Youmu wondering if it's okay to leave the boundary between this world an the next so ambiguous, though Youmu also notes it hasn't changed up the natural order too much
  • States that she caused the borders between Hell and the Netherworld to fade
    • Both the Netherworld and Hell are massive, but it's not clear to what extent she actually merged them
• Lunar Capital
  
  • Breaks through the barrier of the lunar capital, but it takes her a while due to the complexity
    • This barrier separates the living fantastical moon from the scientific dead one, and requires a specific route in order to reach the capital
  • Opens a whole in the barrier hiding the house of the Lunar sage with her thumb, and leaves her glove in the gap so that Yuyuko and Youmu can later use it to enter the Lunar Captial
• Misc Conceptual
  
  • States she can manipulate the boundary between Gensokyo and the outside world, the worlds of the living and the dead, human and youkai, or even day and night
  • Claims she can give the immortal Mokou a near death experience by manipulating the boundary of life and death
  • States she thinned the barrier between human and youkai, possibly making Reimu a youkai temporarily
    • States she could set the boundary between human and youkai for Mai and Satano to make them one or the other
  • Manipulates the boundary between daylight and moonlight to cause both to happen at the same time
  • Makes the moon as bright as daytime by manipulating the boundary between day and night
  • Marisa speculates that Yukari manipulated the border between danmaku for play and danmaku for combat for one of her attacks
  • States she can easily manipulate the boundary between spring and winter
  • States she causes noctambulism (sleep walking) in humans by manipulating the boundary between asleep and awake
  • Manipulates the boundary of master and slave, causing both teams using perfect possession to swap said roles
    • Doing this required interfering with the dream world

Other Abilities

Note that a number of feats here potentially involve boundary manipulation, but it's less explicit
Energy Projection

• Feats
  
  • Individual needles can break rock, and destroy a large boulder with sustained fire
  • Effortlessly defeats the three fairies of light, throwing out projectiles made of light and non-light
  • Marisa considers Yukari's danmaku harder to deal with than Yuyuko's
  • Surrounds herself with rings of danmaku
• General
  
  • Fires out large amounts of danmaku in various patterns
  • Fires off danmaku in front of her with a swing of her fan
  • Attacks with lines of energy
  • Fires off several orbs trailed by lines of energy
  • Creates spirals of energy around her body
  • Using a bomb, unleashes a pulse of energy that knocks back her foe
• Skills
  
  • Purple Needles of Painful Reproach: Rapid fires needles in front of her
  • Bewitching Bait: Creates a bird's eye that high speed projectiles then fly through at random paths
  • Spacetime Seam: Creates a pulse of energy projectiles in all directions around her, possibly by cracking space
• Spell Cards
  
  • Standard Danmaku Pattern
    • Barrier "Curse of Dreams and Reality"
    • Barrier "Balance of Motion and Stillness"
    • Barrier "Mesh of Light and Darkness"
    • Evil Spirits "Dreamland of Straight and Curve"
    • Evil Spirits "Bewitching Butterfly Living in the Zen Temple"
    • Sinister Spirits "Double Black Death Butterfly"
    • Barrier "Boundary of Life and Death"
    • Yukari's Arcanum "Danmaku Barrier"
    • Outer Force "Infinite Superspeed Flying Object"
    • Border Sign "Boundary of Form and Emptiness"
    • Border Sign "Boundary of Wave and Particle"
    • Photon "Doppler Effect"
    • Aerial Bait "Hyperactive High Speed Flying Object"
    • "Yakumo's Nest"
    • "Impossible Danmaku Barrier"
    • "Casebook of Luck, Resilience and Perseverance"
  • Combo Attack with Others
    • "Perfect Possession and Dream Seal": With Reimu
    • "Boundary of Spirit Medium and Divine Spirit": With Reimu
    • "Secret God Barrier": With Okina
    • "Shoot the Danmaku Barrier!": With Marisa
    • "Unauthorized Danmaku Photography is Strictly Prohibited": With Reimu
    • Paper Sign "Barrier-Enclosed Zener Card Shuriken": With Sumireko
  • Misc
    • Aerial Bait "Addictive Bait": Opens several locations through which high speed projectiles travel from
    • Fantasy "Perpetual Motion Machine of the First Kind": Creates a perpetual motion device that automatically fires danmaku without her input
    • Spirit Medium's Melancholy: Fires off danmaku that only hits one part of a perfect possession duo
• Last Word
  
  • "Profound Danmaku Barrier -Phantasm, Foam and Shadow-": Creates an everlasting bullet pattern with her finger deciding its life and death

Shikigami: Shikigami are spirits that have been turned into tools via a patter, that have software installed to control them

• Feats/Statmenents
  
  • Has the ability to control shikigami, which like computers will follower her commands exactly. Her primary shikigami is Ran, who herself has her own shikigami Chen
  • Has shikigami possess various crows which she uses for scouting
    • A crow rapidly flies over large swaths of the lunar surface in what is implied to be a short span of time. Its flight is also described as unnaturally straight, with it following the special path required to reach the Lunar Capital with computer-like accuracy
    • [Limit] A crow is killed by being possessed exposed to the vacuum of space
  • Has eyes all over Gensokyo... literally, with this eyes noted to be her familiars
• Skills
  
  • "Apparotation Needle": Has Ran chase after he foes while firing off danmaku
  • Eyes that View Change: Opens a gap holding an eye, which attacks the enemy when it sees a weakpoint based on specific programming
• Spell Cards
  
  • Summoning Rand and or Chen to attack enemies
    • Shikigami "Ran Yakumo"
    • Sign III "Ran Yakumo"
    • Shikigami "Ran Yakumo +"
    • Shikigami "Chen"
    • Shikigami "Ran Yakumo & Chen":
  • Other
    • Magic Eye "Laplace's Demon": Opens up several gaps holding eyes which attack when they see an exploitable weak point

Umbrella

• General
  
  • Hits her foe by spinning her umbrella
  • Creates spirals of energy around her umbrella
• Skills
  
  • Bewitching Butterfly Lurking in the Zen Temple: Envelopes her umbrella in energy and spins it while slamming into her foe
  • Fantasy Manji-Parasol: Gathers spiritual energy on her umbrella, then spins and fires it off as a projectile
  • Full Moon Umbrella: Creates a ring of energy around herself with a swing of her umbrella
• Spell Cards
  
  • Sign II "Manji-Parasol of Yakumo"

Senses

• Sees the human village despite Keine attempting to hide it by trying to make it appear that nothing had ever been there by eating its history
  
• Youkai can see perfectly by moonlight
  
• Claims to see the backside of the moon bathed with sunlight, even during a new moon
  
• Detects that a tree is from the outside world
  
• Eavesdrops on Sakuya's conversation while not physically present, and speaks to Reisen before warping to the location
  
• Claims to clearly see the launch of the Scarlet Devil Mansion's rocket from a ways away
  
• Senses Eiki's presence
  
• Senses the weakening of the Great Hakurei Barrier while presumably asleep
  
• Realizes the Shinmyoumaru in front of her isn't the normal one
  
• Sees the outside world beyond the Great Hakurei Barrier
  
• Sees the flow of energy from living things and helps Youmu to understand it
  
• Able to see the god that Utsuho had absorbed the power of
  

Hello.
I have click vinyl flooring in my bathroom which needs removing due to broken sections. I don't have enough spare to replace the broken parts with cuts, and it's discontinued. It's only a small bathroom, so I was thinking of removing the floor and putting a vinyl roll down for now until I can afford a longer term fix.
The bathroom has a wooden subfloor (upstairs) and levelled with thin plywood. Under the current laminate there is an Aquastop foam underlay board system, which is around 5mm thick and perfectly sealed / level.
Question is, can I put the vinyl roll on top of this underlay for extra cushion and a tad warmth or will I need to remove it as well?
Finding mixed advice online and whether it's acceptable or not!
Cheers

None of this is gonna make much sense if you’re not familiar with the concept of a furry, so here’s a quick summary:
A furry is an enthusiast for animal characters with human characteristics, in particular a person who dresses up in costume as such a character or uses one as an avatar online.
With that out of the way, let’s get on with the story…
Last year, my boss sent me to Vegas for the CES tech conference and—inadvertently—booked me into the Bellagio the same weekend it hosted FURCATION. After checking-in, still drowsy from the 10-hour flight, I stepped onto the elevator just as two men dressed in full-body wolf costumes stepped out.
My pulse got set racing.
Despite the jetlag, I dumped my suitcase in the room, hurried back downstairs, and followed more furries into a convention hall crammed with anthropomorphic animal characters of all shapes and sizes: tall, short, ginger, grey.
Friends, for the first time in my thirty-two years on this earth, I was alive. Truly alive. I didn’t even realize I’d missed the ‘Bold Solutions for a Changing world’ keynote speech until the Bellagio staff started stacking up chairs, long after midnight.
Back home, I supressed this newly discovered part of myself. My engagement with the community remained confined to browsing fan art and the occasional Discord roleplay, all while my wife was asleep. But little by little, Andrew McCann receded into the gloom, and my fursona, Darkwind Summerpaws, stepped into the light.
To her eternal credit, my wife made every effort to accommodate this new lifestyle. But finding me—or, more specifically, Darkwind—in bed with another woman—again, a fursona—all but pushed her out the door, leaving me in the small house with a big mortgage.
At first, I sought comfort within the community. I neglected my family, my friends, and yes, even my health. Empty whiskey bottles piled up around the lounge while the written warnings piled up at work.
However, this was merely background noise. A hiss of static. Because Darkwind dogged my every step, unshakable. Unstoppable.
Yet still I felt constrained. Like a caged beast. I wanted more more more. Complete and total immersion.
Unfortunately, even my furiends couldn’t placate these inexhaustible appetites, and any complaints about their lack of furmitment fell on deaf ears. After a group member broke character mid-session by removing her mask because of a measly asthma attack, I got ousted from the group over my ‘volatile’ reaction.
This plunged me into a deep depression. Stuck without a release, I ended my engagement with the furmunity. Poor Darkwind got crammed into an old hamper and stuffed inside the attic.
Over the next six weeks, without my outlet, I became a balloon inflated to bursting point. Would this deep longing simply swell and swell until I popped?
But then, at the post office, a bulletin board flyer caught my attention. It said:
Attention all wolfkin! Are you struggling? Feeling alone? Does nobody understand your pain? Don’t fret! Join a group of like-minded individuals as we explore ways to celebrate our primal urges.
For more information, call Jacob on XXXXXX.
These folks sure sounded serious about roleplay. Finally, a place where I could unleash my true self.
Over the phone, Jacob gave me the details. Their clan gathered once a month, and wouldn’t you know it, their next meeting was scheduled for later that very same day, just before sundown. The leader passed on the location and said they couldn’t wait for “a new member to join the pack.”
Following his directions, I drove West out of town and along a dirt trail that broke from the highway,. It spat me out in a remote clearing in the middle of the forest.
Beyond the wall of trees, a grassy mound sloped upward. Pinched between the boughs there was a flickering, orange light.
A small group, twenty or so members strong, sat around a firepit on downed logs, not a fursuit in sight. My heart sunk.
There was no reason to panic, though. Not yet. Maybe, just maybe, rather than break immersion once the fun began, they gathered out of costume for refreshments? Either way, I’d travelled too far to turn back now, so I slipped off my costume, folded it into my pack, and then pushed through a nestle of ferns.
Several individuals roasted marshmallows while others conversed in groups of two or three. One man even strummed a soulful rendition of Moonage Daydream on an acoustic guitar.
“Andrew, I presume?” said a deep voice from behind me.
The first thing I noticed about Jacob was his immense height; he stood nearly seven feet tall, and thicker than a barge pole. “We spoke on the phone.” My hand looked like a child’s encased within his, and that powerful grip was tighter like vice.
“You’ve arrived just in time, we’re about to get started.” He guided me forward by placing a hand against the small of my back. “So, is this your first time?”
“Oh no, I’ve been to tons of these things.”
Those green eyes cut a quizzical glance in my direction. “Really? What clans?”
Clan? Did he mean convention? “Well, there was DragonCon over the summer. And last month I flew down to Furry Fiesta.”
“I’ve never heard of—”
An approaching elderly lady said, “Sorry to interrupt Jacob, but we should really get started.” She jabbed a thumb at the sky, barely visible above the canopy. The chief acknowledged her with a nod.
“Glad to have you with us,” he said to me, and then went and stood before the campfire.
“Good evening, everyone,” he said, drowning out the gentle murmur.
A chorus of, “Good evening, Jacob,” went up.
“I hope everybody’s doing well. I’m delighted to see such a great turn out tonight. Now before we get started, I have a couple of announcements. First, congratulations to Paul”—he gestured at a red-haired man in a denim jacket—“and his wife Donna on the birth of their first child, Damian.”
The group applauded as the new father received several hearty pats on the back.
Once the fanfare tapered off, Jacob added, “Paul told me the new baby has been a blessing…paternity leave means he’s been able to sneak in a few long sessions on the PlayStation while Donna does all the work.”
He waited until the chuckles died off. “And secondly, can everyone please give a warm welcome to Andrew.” He nodded in my direction. “Tonight’s Andrew’s first time with the clan, so I want to see plenty of butt sniffing.”
I laughed, realized nobody else joined in, and then cleared my throat and stared at the ground.
“So let’s make sure—”
“It’s starting.” The elderly lady interrupted, pointing at the sky. High above us, the full moon drifted out from behind a wisp of cloud.
Jacob said, “Here we go everyone, get ready.”
Around me, belts were unhitched, shirts unbuttoned. Finally! Delighted we could now change into our fursuits, I grabbed mine from my pack, stepped into the leg holes, and shimmied it up past my ankles, over the shoulders.
As I hopped around on one foot, negoating the suit on, Jacob shouted, “Andrew, what the hell are you doing? You’re gonna tear right through that thing.”
I paused and looked up.
Bare flesh surrounded me on all sides; large and thin, male and female. Everybody was naked except me.
Before I could ask what was going on, all that exposed skin got illuminated by a stray beam of moonlight that pierced the canopy, bright and shining.
Jacob coughed harshly, a desperate growl, while others snarled. Beside me, the elderly lady contorted her limbs, her head jerking from side to side. She moved in an awkward, staggered manner, almost despite herself. Was this a stroke?
Her neck arced forward, her top half bending at an extreme angle until she dropped onto all fours. Her chest and arms expanded rapidly as coarse, grey hairs grew all over her body. Her ribcage got teased to breaking point, her face now hideously elongated, capped by a long snout. Bones cracked in her hands as the nails shot out and became long, curved claws, same with her feet.
Paralyzed by fear, I could only look on, my feet rooted to the tangled ground. Snarls and barks went up around me. I ripped my eyes away from the lady and saw more limbs swell while knotted hairs engulfed every inch of skin. Mouths snapped open and closed, each now crammed with razor-sharp teeth.
My heart pounded so violently it almost made me pass out.
At last, the beast that had been a lady moments earlier threw its head back and howled. That lone voice soon became a symphony. Then, one by one, the creature’s turned their attention towards me. The only human within in the vicinity.
With my wolf mask tucked under my arm, I backstepped on unsteady legs, my free hand raised in a submissive gesture. Nice and slow, no sudden movements or startling noises. Countless wildlife documentaries taught me that’s how you survived those deadly encounters.
Out of nowhere, a black furred wolf snarled, which made David Attenborough’s calm voice completely melt out of my head. I spun on my heels and bolted off into the forest.
Low, criss-crossed branches sliced my legs and arms as I barrelled along, all but blind. In the narrow gaps between skeletal trunks, bestial blurs cut through the shadows, appearing and disappearing amidst the thick undergrowth.
Just as I reached the slope, half-running half-falling, a cavernous mouth filled with sharp teeth burst from the gloom, on a collision course with my throat.
Without meaning to, I stepped into the loop of an exposed tree root, bent my right leg at a painful angle, and performed an unplanned somersault.
As my back collided with the ground, hard, all air fled my lungs. The head of my fursuit fell alongside me.
A ferocious werewolf whizzed by overhead, snapping at my skull on its way past, and then collided with another that had mounted a surprise attack from behind.
Still dazed, I stagged to my feet while the two beasts righted themselves and then growled at one another, fangs beared.
Blood dripped from a deep cut beneath my chin and a labyrinth of gashes along my forearms. It was like ringing the dinner bell. Soon bright eyes emerged from the gloom and surrounded me on every side.
Werewolves circled my position, drawing closer with every rotation, gradually strangling any hope of escape until I had only a few metres of space to move around in. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
But then a roar cut through the forest, so low and so resonate that the ground itself shook. Those other werewolves lowered their heads, their ears pinned back.
Silhouetted against the moonlight, a single wolf—almost double the height of the rest with intense green eyes—stepped forward. Unlike the others, this one carried itself with unquestionable authority.
I choked out a feeble, “Jacob?”
Six slow strides brought the leader so close that its repulsive carrion breaths blasted my face in hot waves. Thick, white foam dripped from blackened gums, getting gobbled up by the dry, hungry dirt. Whichever direction I looked more wolves stood ready to feast on my grizzled remains, to do battle over the leftovers. This was the end.
But there, by my feet, lay the wolf mask. Out of nowhere a strange calm filled my veins. My inhales became steady. Controlled. And suddenly I knew what I needed to do.
With my free hand facing outward, I reached forward and picked up the mask. Although Jacob growled, he did not attack. Not yet.
In one smooth motion, I slipped the wolf head on. Goodbye Andrew McCann, hello Darkwind Summerpaws.
Jacob’s jaw opened and his back arched up, ready to pounce. Before the attack came, however, I growled. It sounded raw and visceral, issued from a place deep inside me. A place I didn’t even realize existed.
My aggressor and I stood nose to nose, face to face, man to man. No, scratch that last one—wolf to wolf.
Jacob hesitated. As I snarled again, tendons in my jaw creaked. I dropped onto all fours and pressed my shoulder blades together as though pinching an apple between them. For good measure, I even belted out another growl, so fierce my vocal cords became vibrating guitar strings tuned too far.
At first, Jacob only stared. Then, slowly, his head lowered, and he fell into line with the group, whimpering.
For a moment, the wolves only stared. Guided by pure instinct, I threw my head back and howled. Jacob followed, then the others, and within seconds the pack sang in perfect harmony. Afterwards, they all looked on, awaiting my next move.
In a playful manner, I rolled onto my back and kicked both legs in the air. Straight away the group rushed forward to lick my face and sniff my crotch, the tension now gone.
Back at the campsite, some wolves slept, others ate, and several fornicated. It wasn’t entirely dissimilar to the after-parties at a regular convention. And once the festivities ended and the group became exhausted, we curled up by the fire and slept in one giant mound.
I woke surrounded by a ring of human flesh, the sun creeping over the horizon. I sat up and ripped off my mask.
Jacob stepped forward, crouched low, and then offered me his hand.
He hauled me up by the arm, turned to face the group, and said, “Three cheers for Andrew, the new leader of the clan!”
The guild whooped and cheered and punched the air. Two burly men, still bollock naked, even grabbed me by the waist and hoisted me up onto their shoulders for a victory lap.
And at that moment, as I basked in their adulation, I knew my life had changed forever. I no longer needed to squander my wages flying to conventions and commissioning personalized fan art in a futile attempt to satisfy my desires. That was a world I could leave behind. Forever.
But don’t fret my friends. Because my journey into furdom wasn’t coming to an end. Oh no.
It was just getting started…

Hi guys! Just found this sub, because I've been having a lot of trouble keeping my terreriums at the correct temperature. Housed in those terreriums are dart frogs and Mourning Geckos. So not only do I need to keep all the plants alive, but the animals!
My target temperature, is an ambient temperature of 75 degrees Fahrenheit. (70-77 is ok)
I've tried everything I can think of to heat the tanks individually, including
1.) Heating/basking bulbs
2.) Ceramic heating emitter bulbs
3.) Heating pads (under and on the side of the tanks)
4.) Uvb lighting
At this point, nothing has worked, so I've decided to take a room, that's attached to my living room, and try to insulate it best I can, and use a space heater to heat the entire room, and use a dryer heating air "tube"? To direct the cold air coming out of that rooms vent, back into my living room. The issue is not a basking spot, I need to bring up the ambient heat of the entire terreriums.
That being said, the room has 3 walls, then I'm going to basically "stage" large insulating foam sheets, to create a make shift "wall" and then make a door out of thick curtains, and attempt to seal it with velcro.
The main issue is my house stays at 60- 65 degrees Fahrenheit.
So with all that being said, does anyone have any better ideas about making the makeshift wall, and/or a better idea of heating the tank/room?
Thanks for any responses or help in advance!
Cheers!

I started MC recently for pain relief and have found it to be pretty effective. I'm in my 50s and used cannabis heavily in my early 20's but then virtually none since. I'm using it for lower back pain, general muscle aches/pains and migraines.
I was prescribed CBD oil initially and advised to take it sublingually (under the tongue). I didn't find it very effective. Was then prescribed CBD/THC oil and flower. I tried the CBD/THC oil sublingually and didn't notice much effect (up to 12.5mg THC dose - 1ml @ 12.5mg/ml).
I bought a vape and vaped the flower. This was very effective. However, I developed a bad lung infection and ongoing cough that has put me off vaping for good.
So, I investigated oral use and have landed on a solution that works well for me. I describe this below for anyone else who has an aversion to vaping.
I learned you need to 'decarb' flower for oral use or it won't work (google it). Swallowing raw flower doesn't work.
I started with 2 grams of prescription flower with a 20% THC content = 400mg THC total. I ground this using one of those weed grinders you can get (see eBay or AliExpress). I spread this on baking paper and baked it in an oven at 120 C for 30 minutes. I used a temperature probe to ensure the temperature remained as close to 120 C as possible. If it went over 120 C, I let a little hot air out of the oven to reduce the temperature back to 120 C.
Next, I ground the decarbed flower in a stainless steel mortar and pestle. This resulted in a fairly fine grind - similar to freshly-ground pepper in size. After the baking, this now weighed 1.8 grams (= 1800 mg). Having started with 400mg total THC, 45mg of the fine grind should contain 10mg THC. It's impossible to know what percentage of that 10mg was actually decarbed though. 45mg of the fine grind is a tiny amount BTW - you really need scales with 0.001g resolution (see eBay/AliExpress) to properly measure it out.
Next, I filled empty gelatin capsules (size 1 - see eBay) with 45mg of the fine grind. This dose worked pretty well for me in terms of pain relief. It was a nice high for me too but probably not enough for seasoned users. Heavier users would need size 0 or 00 gel caps though you could probably squeeze 100mg of the fine grind into a size 1 gel cap. Size 1 is a typical pill size - size 0 and 00 are a bit larger than usual.
I found the result a bit variable in terms of onset time and effectiveness, so I tried topping the capsules up with olive oil to improve absorption. This seemed to give much more consistent results in terms of onset and effectiveness. Onset time is around 1 hour for me. The pain relief (and the high) last much longer when consuming it this way compared with vaping. For me, this dose gives pain relief roughly similar to, say, 30-45mg of codeine.
I tried the CBD/THC oil again by putting it in a gel cap. Oddly enough, it worked really well taken this way. The sublingual route didn't seem to work for me, but the same oil swallowed in a gel cap worked great. I found this puzzling considering when taking it sublingually it's either being absorbed sublingually or swallowed anyway.
Anyway, 10 grams of 20% flower = 200 doses of 10mg THC, so it's pretty economical for me at that dose. Obviously not as economical for heavier users.
FYI.

I lost Bear last February, just a couple of weeks shy of his 19th birthday. That's a long life for a cat, I know, but that didn't make that last vet trip any easier. It doesn't make things easier now.
I love BB, my current cat, I really do. He's a sweet, silly, goofy baby.
But he's not Bear. He'll never be Bear. I'll never have the bond with him that I had with Bear, I can't, because the circumstances under which they were both adopted are so different.
I was there when Bear was born. I held his tiny little body in the palm of my hand when he was only seconds old. I played with him when he was first learning to walk. He slept on my head and sat on my shoulders and sprawled out across my lap.
I paid $2,000 to fly him from Phoenix to Indianapolis after I graduated from college. When I had to leave him with my mom until I found pet-friendly housing, I visited him as often as I could.
When I finally brought him back home, he had a whole apartment to explore, but he was attached to my hip whenever I was home. Always underfoot, always curled up against my leg or in my lap, when I slept he slept between my feet or draped across my knees. When I had migraines, or was so depressed that I couldn't stop crying, he would lay in my lap with his head in the crook of my elbow and stay there and purr until it passed. Whenever he thought I was oversleeping, he would paw at my face and hands and stick his nose in my ear until I woke up.
He loved to be held, and he hated strangers.
Even when he was old, he would play like a kitten. He loved catnip, and attacking my feet, and he never once used his claws or bit hard enough to hurt (except for that one time he stole an olive right out of my hand and accidentally bit my thumb in the process, but still.)
The few times he needed a bath, he never tried to escape, he just sat in the tub and cried and cried and cried like a little baby. Whenever I was in the bath, he would sit beside the tub and whine, and sometimes paw at my arm, too.
And every single time I came home from somewhere, he would come running to greet me with his little "happy" song and dance. Every time, without fail.
And now he's gone and I'm never going to experience any of that ever again.
Nineteen years wasn't long enough.
I would do anything for nineteen more.

Credit for the original story goes to u/spacepaladin15. This is the final chapter of NoP 2177, although I personally consider it more of an epilogue. Either way, I hope you enjoy!
[First] [Previous]
---
Memory transcript subject: Tressa, Venlil outlaw
Date [Standardized Human Time]: January 5th, 2178
Location: USS Washington, dark side of Venlil Prime
A bloodcurdling shriek echoed through the hall, followed by the sound of claws scrabbling against the metal floor. A frantic chase ensued, a blur of fur and scales flying down the corridor at breakneck pace. But it was over before it began. A connecting door slid shut with a quiet hiss which silenced all hope of escape, leaving the terrified predator at the mercy of an increasingly impatient prey.
“Hy, we’ve been over this. You need to take baths, or your scales will get all yucky and stop growing. You don’t want that, do you?”
Hyacii was still frantically searching over the door for some way to open it. Her lovely gray coat, matted in oil from some ill-advised exploration through the ship, left streaks of iridescent sludge across the polished floor which would need to be cleaned up. But that could wait.
“Hy…”
Finding no escape from her grim fate, the young Arxur finally turned around to face her captor. “N-no! I don’t wanna!”
“Hyacii, I’m giving you ‘till the count of five. If you don’t come with me when I hit zero, I’ll go get Sasha and she’ll bathe you instead. Fiiiiiive…”
“NO!”
“Fourrrrrrr…”
“I’ll tell Mama! I’ll tell her you’re being mean to me!”
“We’ve talked about this with her, remember? Little Arxur need to keep their scales clean to grow up big and strong. You want to grow up all big and strong like she is, right?”
“She wouldn’t say that! I want to see! I want to see what she said!”
“Sweetie… you’re just stalling. You can’t read big Venlang words yet like she uses.”
She cast her head to the side in a pout. “Yes. I. could! I’ve been practicing with Trish, this much!” To emphasize her point, she stretched her little arms out as far as they’d go.
“Threeeeeee…”
Hyacii swept her tail across the floor in frustration, further smearing oil everywhere.
“Twoooooo…”
With time running out, she employed her final weapon, an expression which Sasha referred to as ‘Puppy dog eyes’. While normally adorable, it now only served to highlight the dark smears across her face.
“One and a half…”
Her full arsenal depleted, Hyacii finally capitulated and stormed over to Tressa’s side with exaggerated stomps. She allowed herself to be picked up, trying and failing to suppress an adorable noise of comfort as Tressa rubbed the scales around her shoulders. He’d need to shower later anyway, so the sludge staining his ragged fur was hardly a concern.
—
The little Arxur squirmed playfully in his arms, kicking up splashes which cut through the layer of bubbles to soak his bedraggled wool as he tried to dislodge more of the thick oil.
“Are you enjoying your bath, sweetie?”
“Yes!”
“I thought you hated baths.” He took a moment to stop scrubbing, and stretched his arms out wide. “This much, right? Isn't that what you said?”
“N— Yes! I do, they take so long, and they’re so… I hate them!”
“That so? What are you doing enjoying one, then?”
Hyacii had no response, which he took as his cue to get back to washing. He carefully cleansed the iridescent sludge, revealing a dense pattern of gray scales which shimmered like a rippling pond. She giggled as he washed around her snout, swishing her tail in a motion which was normally adorable but now only served to push more water out of the bathtub and onto the floor.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you earlier…” He started, pointedly ignoring the irritating feeling of water soaking into his fur and pooling at his ankles, “...but James’ll be out for the next couple paws. He took Beast with him, so no checking on the garden for a little while, OK?”
She grumbled for a moment, before a curious look flickered past her eyes. “Why does he and Sassa keep leaving?”
“Why do he and Sasha keep leaving, not ‘does’. Anyway… you know how we can’t eat the same food you eat?”
“Right! That’s why you’re build— uh, growing the garden!”
“Yeah, but the garden isn’t all grown yet. Until then, we still need to get food from the city. Once our garden grows, we can stay here all the time for you. Remember how we talked about patience?”
“But I don’t wanna be patient! I want him to be back now!”
“So do I, but everybody needs to wait for things. If you keep busy, he’ll be back before you know it!”
Hyacii pouted. “You’re just trying to trick me into practicing more words, aren’t you?”
“I might be. But you want to talk to your mom all on your own, right? If you keep learning with Trish, you can tell her all about the horrible baths we make you take. Speaking of… here, ready?”
After getting a human-like nod of affirmation, Tressa lifted her from the tub and onto a towel. They weren’t sure if the heat of an air dryer would harm her scales, so getting her dry was almost as laborious as getting her clean. It was worth it, though; she enjoyed the feeling of being towel-dried almost as much as she enjoyed tearing around the halls at Mach two. A muffled peal of delight issued from the heap of towel that used to be an Arxur, as he set to work wiping the water from her scales.
—
The USS Washington was once a proud human starship, one of several hundred which had so briefly encircled Venlil Prime to act as defense. Sasha talked about that brief period sometimes, usually when she was drunk; though it lasted only months, enough history was made in that span that it felt like a full decade.
Long, beautiful months for some; the ones who talked reverently about Tarva as though she was still Governor, who made dumb jokes about the Venlil’s behavior on first contact when they still regarded humanity as violent and strange creatures. Sasha, naturally, was one of these people. She’d go on and on about what a magical time it was when they realized the universe was far bigger than they ever knew, and how incredible it was to make friends among aliens. Her closed-lipped smile, a habitual remnant of a time when most Venlil froze in terror at a human’s teeth, spoke of how much humanity was willing to give up for the chance at intergalactic acceptance.
Miserable, chaotic months for others; those who talked about it as a time of strife and mistrust, when Venlil lived in fear of predation and humans suffered the agony of constant rejection and hate. Only following the first bombing of Earth did things begin to change in earnest, and even then it was hardly a clean transition. Refugee shelters and human-friendly businesses went up in flames in a grim foreshadowing of the fate that would befall Venlil Prime as a whole, the planet condemned to burn for sheltering uncured and unpacified humans. Of course, the fact that they were sheltered instead of willingly led to slaughter painted a somewhat softer view of the time period than many would admit.
Both narratives ended the same way. There was no debate over the justice of the Federation’s rule for the generation that remembered a time before; those city-scorching flames still burned fresh in everyone’s mind. Nor was there any debate over the trustworthiness of humanity, not among the Venlil who remembered the invasion.
When an exterminator fleet descended upon Venlil Prime, the UN pulled back the resources it desperately needed elsewhere to defend the planet. Earth itself was left all but unguarded in the effort to save a species that humanity had been allied with for less than a year, a task they set to with a desperate fury that hinged on madness. Hundreds of ships flung themselves at the enemy in suicidal charges once vital systems were crippled, targeting bombers and ensuring that the Venlil could not simply be annihilated from orbit.
​
The USS Washington was not one of those brave kamikaze vessels. It was one of the ships in orbit as a passive defense, knocked out of the fight with relatively minimal damage and able to make a hasty emergency landing on the dark side of Venlil Prime.
In the time Tressa had spent getting systems up and running, he’d never come across a single skeleton; the ship had been thoroughly picked clean by shadestalkers, or perhaps the crew had managed to evacuate without casualties. Or at least had the time and people needed to move the dead off the ship and hold proper burials. Whatever the reason, it made the difficult work of repairing the ship much less gruesome.
They’d fried any records for obvious security reasons, but left the backup power operational. They’d left a number of vital systems operational; if they had evacuated, they’d done so in a rush. Or perhaps they expected victory, and didn’t anticipate the need to scuttle the ship. Either way, Tressa’s job was a hell of a lot easier for it.
Restoring water had been a far simpler job than he anticipated. He’d been dreading the prospect of digging a well, but equipment scavenged from the ship itself had made that process far easier, and the onboard supply alone was enough to last months. With this abundance, they could even afford such extravagant luxuries as baths. Hyacii really didn’t know how good she had it.
—
Once he’d gotten the little Arxur all cleaned up and given her a stern talk about not crawling around the ship’s filthier corners, she was free to ignore his advice and go straight back to sprinting around the labyrinthian behemoth they called home.
He often wondered, watching her stalk around the ship, if this exploration of territory and practice sneaking through shadows was as vital to her development as physical contact was for Venlil children. Sometimes he wondered if so much affection was even natural for her species, or if they were smothering her every time they pulled her in for a hug.
She did enjoy it, but… not everything enjoyable was good for her. When she was younger and had no concept of restraint, they’d have to physically hold her back from gorging herself on berries which would make her violently ill, which she’d keep eating anyway because she loved the taste too much. Maybe it was the same thing with their parental love. Maybe they’d have to teach her how to be more independent for her own good, however difficult that change would be for all of them.
Ultimately, the idea was speculation. Depriving her of warmth would be cruel unless they were absolutely certain it would aid in her development. And the fact was, they had no idea. Despite their best search efforts, records concerning Arxur child rearing were nonexistent.
The Dominion actively suppressed any behavior seen as ‘weak’, so growing up under their reign was a harsh and loveless process; at least, that was what they’d been told by an Arxur who lived through the process, and they had no reason to doubt her. There wasn’t a way they could verify the fact, though. The Federation didn’t want anyone thinking of predators as people, so any records that might’ve existed were long since turned to ash.
As cruel as the Dominion could be, they had an interest in keeping their subjects healthy enough to fight. Without those records, and with only someone else’s faint memories to go by, they were largely on their own in regards to physical development.
Was their little Hyacii eating right? They’d been feeding her using an organ printer they’d managed to repair, but perhaps there were nutrients in bones and skin that she wasn’t getting. Her scales were getting slowly lighter; maybe malnutrition, or maybe that was a natural part of her development. Was she sleeping right? Lately, she’d been complaining about grogginess, though it didn’t seem to stop her from tearing around the halls.
And psychologically? There, they were completely in the dark. All species had different needs, especially at a young age. Venlil cubs needed a level of attention that most humans would find smothering. Human children required forms of play that reflected long-obsolete hunting instincts, games which involved chasing and manipulating projectiles. What types of play did a growing Arxur need? They played hide-and-seek with her (as best they could, though it was rapidly approaching the point where she could neither be caught nor hidden from), but that was hardly a replacement for hunting. Was she languishing without prey to chase?
A hundred different worries, a thousand different questions, and not a single easy, reassuring answer. On that fateful night, Tressa had assumed that living alongside a “true predator” would be the hardest part. In fact, that had come easy; how could anyone feel threatened by such a sweet little star?
No, the most difficult part was coming to terms with the fact that they would make mistakes. In their lack of knowledge, trial and error was the only way to gain ground. And “error” meant hurting Hyacii. No matter how much they loved her, they couldn’t help but hurt her. It was a difficult truth to swallow.
But it was a truth they had to accept. Ultimately, all they could do was try. Try, and love her, and hope that was enough to cover for their failures. Hope that one day, someone else would be insane enough to learn from their mistakes. Hope that their little Hyacii wouldn’t be both the first and last Arxur of her generation. Hope that one day, they wouldn’t have to hide. She wouldn’t have to hide.
​
In the cold shadow of Venlil Prime, it wasn’t enough to have power and heat. Plenty had fled to the frigid wasteland in search of respite, only to die cold and alone despite their physical needs being met. They’d simply lay in bed with no will to survive, waiting as their body gave up on life. It was once believed that the dark side was haunted by vengeful spirits, though modern science put the blame on Herdless Depressive Disorder combined with the harsh physical toll of living in such an inhospitable environment.
Someone with a herd could stave off death’s embrace for quite a while longer, up to months. Many on the twilight edge lived this way, dipping in and out of the darkness as their job demanded. However, they knew not to stay for too long; even with the warmth of companionship, the dark side of Venlil prime claimed all eventually. Life was impossible without light.
​
How fortunate then, that the USS Washington was flooded with light. A light like a ghostly lantern, darting through the hallways and crawling through obscure corners of the ship to come back covered in sludge. A light like a burning star, which filled their hearts with warmth every time it closed in for an embrace. The light of hope; what a strange twist of fate that it would take the form of an Arxur.
---
[First] [Previous]

# Today In Phishstory - June 6th Brought to you by tiph-bot. Beep.
All data extracted via The Phishnet API.

Phish

Phish, Saturday 06/06/2009 (14 years ago) Comcast Center, Mansfield, MA, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: 2009 Early Summer Tour
Set 1 : Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan , Nothing , Back on the Train , Golgi Apparatus , Sparkle > Gotta Jibboo , Lawn Boy , Let Me Lie ¹ , Taste , Makisupa Policeman ² , Prince Caspian
Set 2 : Seven Below , Fluffhead , Scent of a Mule , Heavy Things , Harry Hood > Possum , Bug
Encore : Contact > Julius
1 Phish debut. 2 No "keyword."
Jamchart Notes:
Possum - Mike figures prominently in the jam as Trey brings the volume way down early. Rousing finish to the jam.
Show Notes:
Let Me Lie made its Phish debut at this show. The first post-break-up Makisupa Policeman notably did not contain a "keyword."
Listen now at Phish.in!
Phish, Friday 06/06/1997 (26 years ago) Sands's& Carini's House, Charlotte, VT, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: Not Part of a Tour
Set 1 : Limb By Limb , Dogs Stole Things , Ghost , Water in the Sky , Vultures , Dirt , Twist , Piper , Wading in the Velvet Sea , Olivia's Pool , I Don't Care , Samson Variation , Bye Bye Foot
Set 2 : Samson Variation , Saw It Again , Waking Up , Limb By Limb , Dogs Stole Things , Ghost , Dirt , Vultures , Water in the Sky , Twist -> Piper , Wading in the Velvet Sea , Ain't Love Funny , Stand! -> Izabella
Show Notes:
This show, referred to as "The Fourth Ball" or "Bradstock," was played for friends before the band embarked on the European summer tour.
Listen now at Phish.in!
Phish, Thursday 06/06/1996 (27 years ago) Joyous Lake, Woodstock, NY, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: Not Part of a Tour
Set 1 : Split Open and Melt , Poor Heart , Runaway Jim , Funky Bitch , Theme From the Bottom , Big Black Furry Creature from Mars , Scent of a Mule ¹ , Highway to Hell
Set 2 : AC/DC Bag , You Enjoy Myself , Chalk Dust Torture , Sparkle , Stash , Waste ² , Character Zero ² , David Bowie , Fee > Sample in a Jar
Encore : Ya Mar , Fire
1 Trey on keys for portions. 2 Debut.
Jamchart Notes:
Scent of a Mule - "Sunshine Of Your Love" tease and Trey on keys for a portion of the Duel. An odd Duel for sure with howling and strange sounds, crazy Page, and chanting by Mike. Released on Live Bait Vol. 4.
Character Zero - Fun debut. Notable for a strong vocals, tight play, and a decidedly different arrangement, it's clear the song is here to stay, even though "[the band] don't know the end yet."
Show Notes:
This unannounced show was performed under the name "Third Ball." BBFCFM featured Trey using a Rolling Rock beer bottle as a slide. Scent of a Mule included a Sunshine of Your Love tease and saw Trey on keys for portions. Waste and Character Zero debuted at this show. The opening act was Juan Hung Low.
Listen now at Phish.in!
Phish, Wednesday 06/06/1990 (33 years ago) The Barrel House, Salem, VA, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: 1990 Tour
Set 1 : You Enjoy Myself , Walk Away , Reba , Foam , Tweezer , Bouncing Around the Room
Show Notes:
This setlist was derived from Mike's notes, which also mentioned there was no tape, official or otherwise. This setlist is incomplete, likely out of order and probably spread across both sets. The source of this setlist is phish.com.
Listen now at Phish.in!

Trey Anastasio

Trey Anastasio Band, 2020-06-06 None, Cleveland, OH, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/trey-anastasio-band-june-06-2020-nautica-stage-cleveland-oh-usa.html
Tour: Not Part of a Tour
Show Notes: This performance was cancelled as a result of the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak.
Trey Anastasio Band, 2002-06-06 UIC Pavilion, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/trey-anastasio-june-06-2002-uic-pavilion-university-of-illinois-chicago-il-usa.html
Tour: TAB - The Dectet Summer 2002 Tour
Show Notes: "Wilson" was a Trey Anastasio debut, was incomplete, and, along with "Chalk Dust," was performed by Trey solo, acoustic. Trey also played "Ray Dawn Balloon" acoustic. "Alive Again" contained a "Stash" tease. The performance of "Every Story Ends in Stone" appears on Trey's live CD, Plasma, as do sections of "Money, Love and Change" and "Mr. Completely" that appear under the title "Inner Tube."

Mike Gordon

Mike Gordon, 2015-06-06 Center Stage Theater, Atlanta, GA, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/mike-gordon-june-06-2015-center-stage-theater-atlanta-ga-usa.html
Tour: Mike Gordon - Summer 2015 Tour
Show Notes: This show featured the debuts of Take It As It Comes and The Last Step, as well as the Mike Gordon debut of Sleep to Dream.