u/Effort_Proper

https://reddit.com/link/1vsyi3d/video/5vftrrlo5ekh1/player

https://reddit.com/link/1vsyi3d/video/p93u1h8p5ekh1/player

In the first video you can see me touch one from behind, in the second you can actively see me out speeding it (until i got caught in a nook and ran over LOL).

Since my last update I have:

1.replaced one ring with 6% skill speed corrupted ring

2.replaced one ring with 9% attack speed (previously 0%)

3.Santified my gloves to get 19% attack speed (previously 16%)

4.Raven touched a Thrillsteel to get 16% attack speed during flask effect, and equipped Lavianga's Spirits for perma buff. (also corrupted it for 24 spirit, woot!)

5.respeced to get another jewel socket and equipped a 6% attack speed jewel (it is gorgeous, i love it)

It is so funny to me that my fastest character I have ever made only has 8% MS. I might push it further, but my goal has been reached.

Thank you to everyone that gave recommendations. this build is so fun. I am glad I picked it and decided to push it this far.

Unbuffed attack speed of Boneshatter, 0.12 seconds.

Total investment: 800-1200 div?

https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/sailorbrown42-7823/runesofaldur/character/Tyetanium

https://reddit.com/link/1vs6zs8/video/wutc4yri78kh1/player

My goal is to be able to outpace the trains in the Matriarch/Patriarch Halls (MatPat Halls).

As you can see here, They appear to be BARELY faster than me. By just a whisper.

I am really running out of ways to get more attack speed. I have pushed it so damn far. If i could have frenzy charges on demand, I would probably out pace them as it is.

I will keep pushing.

I will be fast enough when I can run into them from behind.

https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/sailorbrown42-7823/runesofaldur/character/Tyetanium

EDIT: My next route for more attack speed is getting a second ring with the skill speed corrupt and sanctifying my gloves for 17%+ attack speed

EDIT 2: I am aware i could use a Hammer of Faith in my weapon set two and wait for the speed shrine buff, however that's just cheating IMO.

https://reddit.com/link/1vp4qtc/video/q04j6cwbxjjh1/player

This message has been brought to you by the Boneshatter Spam Squad.

This is my first creppy story, and one of my ONLY stories, that I've written. Looking for feedback, good or bad!

3,700 words.

Thank you in advance!

I'm Terrified of My Guardian Angel; He Won't Let Me Die

I’m pretty sure my guardian angel is using me. I don’t know how, or more importantly why, but every time they save my life, someone else gets hurt.

Growing up, whenever I would ask my Nana what happened to my Mom, she would tell me about my guardian angel. My mother had been 32 weeks pregnant and was driving to work. The road had been damp from the rain that had ended a few hours earlier. The driver behind my mother said that they were driving along the boulevard when she suddenly made a sharp turn as if to avoid something. The car slid on the road and wound up rolling into a drainage ditch. When the driver stopped to see if she was alright, my mother was barely breathing, and by the time the ambulance arrived, she had died. Apparently, when they felt her belly, they could still feel my kicking. Less than an hour later, I was “born”. I spent over 3 months in NICU, building up my strength. When I finally left and went home with my grandma, she decided that I must have a guardian angel looking out for me, for how else would I have survived? My mother never told my grandmother who the father was, and had implied she didn’t know, so I entered the care of my grandmother, Nana.

Nana raised me in her Southern Baptist church. I would often tell the other kids at church about “my angel” who saved my life as a baby. Everyone thought that it was so cool to have someone or something keeping me safe. And for a long time, I agreed with them. Who wouldn’t want an angel to protect them from harm?

It was 2004 and I was 7 years old when my best friend died. Bo was a neighbor of ours and Nana and his mom were close. We would often go on outings to eat or Nana would take both of us to church and the like. On that day she had taken both of us to the beach. We were playing in the water, splashing each other and laughing when we suddenly realized that we could no longer feel the sand beneath us. As we tried to swim back to the shore it kept getting further away and we started to panic. Bo and I started to drift apart from one another, which of course only frightened us more. We were screaming at the top of our lungs and flailing our arms. Some people on the beach noticed and flagged the lifeguard, but I could tell Bo was already swallowing water. I was a somewhat better swimmer so I was able to keep my head above the water for longer. I listened in horror as Bo screaming suddenly stopped. I thought for sure I was going to die too. But just as I was about to give up, I saw it. A floating bit of red, no more than 3 feet from me. A discarded life vest. I reached out and grabbed it. It was meant for an adult so it had no problem keeping me up for the few minutes it took for the lifeguard to reach me. He swam us parallel to the shore until we were able to escape the current and make it back.

My Nana was waiting for me on the beach. She was hysterical and had been running along the beach in pace with the lifeguard and me. I remember weeping in her arms as she held onto me. I was babbling incoherently about Bo and the life jacket. I don’t remember anything that she said that day, except her thanking God for “my angel saving me.” I think that was the day I started to hate it.

Nana kept the life vest that saved me as some sort of good luck charm, but I never saw it that way. At church, I started to feel like people blamed me for Bo’s death. Of course, they didn’t, but to a seven-year-old, the looks of sympathy and mourning were confused with ones of skepticism and blame. Bo’s body didn’t wash ashore for 3 days after the incident. His funeral was held a few days after that. That was the last time I ever saw his mother. She talked about being abandoned by God and she even openly wished that Bo had found the vest first. The implication that she wanted me to have died instead stuck with me for a very, very long time. The implication wasn’t lost on Nana either. We never saw Bo’s mom at church again, nor walking around the neighborhood. She never moved, she just stopped leaving the house. And as far as I know, Nana never reached out to her after that either.

If Nana hadn’t made me leave the house and keep living my life, I might have done the same thing Bo’s mother did; hide away from the world. As it was, I started to have nightmares. I would wake up in puddles of sweat, thinking I was back in the water with Bo. A faceless man would be there with us, dragging Bo away and eventually pulling him under. His mother would sometimes be there floating above the waves. She would snatch the vest from me condemning me to death, only for the man to pull her under as well. The lifeguard would arrive and stare at me from four faces. I would wake up and sometimes still be able to see the lifeguard, floating over me for a few seconds before I would fully wake up. It terrified me.

I was thirteen when my angel killed again. It was after one of these nightmares. I woke up after the lifeguard looked at me, except this time, instead of lingering in my vision for a moment, stationary, he drifted towards my bedroom door, beckoning, before my vision cleared. I sat up in my bed and debated what caused this change in the formula, when I heard the sound of something in the kitchen hitting the floor. There was someone else in the house with Nana and me. I ran across the hall into her room and shook her awake. Nana had just opened her eyes when she heard it too. Things being moved in the house.

Nana told me to hide in her bathroom as she went to her closet to grab something. I did as I was told and listened carefully to the sounds of the house. I heard Nana shout something, then I heard a gunshot.

My blood ran cold and I was paralyzed with fear. Eventually, I convinced my legs to move. I entered the kitchen and saw my Nana standing there motionless, a shotgun in her hands, and a man lying dead on the floor. I let out a terrified squeak. Nana turned to me to quickly usher me out of the room. But it was too late. Another man had entered my nightmare.

The man was Edgar Dennis. Eddie. He was a local man with Alzheimer’s who had wandered away from his caretakers that evening and into our house through the back door. The confused old man was evidently just trying to make himself something to eat when we found him. Nana said later that she saw a knife in his hand. In the dark, seeing a disheveled stranger standing in her kitchen, she assumed he was some sort of crazed madman. She fired the shotgun, and he was killed instantly.

When the police arrived, Nana told them about the knife she’d seen him holding, but they never found one. They didn’t seem to think she’d overreacted, though. As far as they were concerned, she’d confronted a potentially dangerous intruder wandering through our house in the dead of night.

The killing was determined to be self-defense, helped strongly by the fact that I was in the house and she was protecting me. The policemen asked if there was someone we could stay with for a day or two as they cleaned up the scene. We went and stayed at a church member's house for the rest of the morning. I fell asleep on their couch and dreamed that the old man was burning alive as the lifeguard’s faces stared down at him. I tried to run to the man to help, but the lifeguard placed an arm across my chest as I watched the old man transform into a much younger man as he burned. I looked up at lifeguards faces and to my horror, where I normally saw the face of the man who saved me, I saw only skin. On all four sides of his head. Four places of empty white where a face could fit. The last thing I remember about it before I woke up was that the skin where his mouth would have been was stretched tightly, as if it was trying to smile.

My Nana was shaking me awake this time. She was still holding her phone, and when I looked at her face I knew something was wrong. Something else was wrong, that is. Nana told me with tears in her eyes and in a hoarse voice that our house was currently on fire.
The words came at me as if through a tunnel. I remember practically yelling at her that we needed to get him out of there. My thoughts were on the young man that I dreamed of, but Nana had naturally assumed I meant the old man. She explained to me in a panicked voice that he had been removed hours ago, and they were still cleaning up the scene when the fire broke out. We both raced to her car and I asked her if everyone got out okay and she said she wasn’t sure.

She drove us to our home, only a few minutes away, speeding the whole way. The fire department was on scene already and extinguishing what was left of the fire. Something, a corpse, lay on the sidewalk, covered in a sheet.

After the investigation, it was revealed that a piece of shot from where Nana shot the intruder had wound up embedded in the wall behind him. The shot damaged the wiring leading to a switch in the next room. When one of the Biorecovery Technicians who was cleaning the blood flipped the switch, a fire broke out. It took almost a minute for the cleaners to notice and evacuate. Evidently, the last one of them in the house was delayed in leaving. No one is sure why. Perhaps he tripped, perhaps he was making sure he was the last man. Either way, he was consumed by the fire as it spread throughout the house.

Nearly all of our possessions were destroyed in the fire. Only a few items from my Nana’s room were spared, the room farthest from the fire. Among the few that remained, was a brilliantly red life vest. The object of envy that saved her grandson.

A few years passed with no more incidents. People from our church started a fund to help us rebuild our lives. They provided us with money, clothes, food, and a place to stay while we got back on our feet. When I was old enough, I stopped going to church. Everywhere I looked, I saw people who I was convinced were blaming me for everything. People who knew Bo. People who knew Eddie. People who spent their hard-earned money repairing the damage that was left in my wake. And all the while, my nightmares remained. Bo being dragged underwater by the man with no face. The lifeguard’s faces emitting an aura of rage and accusation, despite them never having features anymore. Eddie and the technician floating above the waves engulfed in flames that rise around them like wings. And the life vest, tattered and twisted, seemingly coveted by them all.

When I turned eighteen, I started to work for the city as a custodian for a couple of local parks. I picked the job as one that would simultaneously make my presence and service to the community known, but also allow me to hardly interact with others. One of the parks was along the river and I would often daydream that Bo was out there in the waters, trying to swim to shore. I would sometimes even hear him scream. But always, without fail, there would be no one in the water at these times. I started to avoid the river when possible, except when emptying the cans that were there.

It was March 17, 2016, my 19th birthday, when I saw him in the water for real. I was emptying a trash can on the river's edge when I heard the sounds of a child screaming. I looked out to the river and saw a boy flailing in the water, probably 60 feet from the nearest bank. I yelled and pointed out at him and others around me followed my gaze. They seemed to not see what I saw. The boy’s screams weakened as he was carried away. Running alongside the river, I kicked off my shoes and dove in. The river's current was mild around the park, but the water was still cold, not having fully warmed from the winter. My muscles ached from the cold and sudden exertion. I could no longer hear the boy. I tried to yell to the people staring from the shore, telling them to point in the direction of the child. I don't believe they understood what I was saying though, as the few that were pointing were only pointing at me.

I spun in the water looking for something, anything, when I saw him. Floating twenty feet from me was Bo, face down in the water. I swam to him and grabbed his arm. The skin separated from his arm like a sleeve and pulled down to his wrist. It was clear that this body had been in the water for a long time. I nearly vomited into the waters around us. I grabbed Bo’s shirt and started to swim backwards. As I did I watched as the sleeve of skin separated from his wrist and washed away down the river. Barely keeping myself together, I was approaching the shore when I heard splashing behind me. Another soul was braving the 40-degree water to help me bring the body to shore. I pulled the shirt with all my remaining strength onto the shore and flipped over my friend. I felt time stop as I looked at his face. This boy was not Bo. His face, as well as most of the skin from his neck and up had decayed away. Eaten by the fish and crustaceans that lived in the river. Where there had been eyes were only empty cavities. His mouth was agape and his tongue was missing as well. I collapsed backwards and closed my eyes from the blinding light of the sun. I wanted to forget the vision of the boy I just pulled from the water but it seemed to be burned into my retina. I turned to my side and vomited, my bile splattering the shoes of the man who had helped me. My brain finally caught up with how cold my body was and I began shaking violently.

I felt a hand place on my back. I knew it was the man whose shoes I had just covered. I looked up at him, perhaps to apologize, I'm not sure anymore, but when my eyes found his face I screamed. I screamed so hard I was scared I would tear my throat. I was staring at the blank faces of the lifeguard. Behind him, wings of flames hovered and swelled. I spun onto my back and crawled away as fast as my numbing legs would carry me, directly across the body of the child I had just pulled from the water. I didn't care. It was the straightest line away from the lifeguard. I could feel the boy's ribcage collapse as my knee landed on it. My hands slipped out from under me sending my face impacting into the gravel and sand of the riverbank. I turned around to begin scooting backwards when I saw an entirely different man, someone I didn't know staring at me and the body in confusion and horror. He wasn't the lifeguard. At least not anymore. I remember looking at his shoes to ensure he was who I had been running from. It was him. “Are you okay?” the man asked me. I told him I was and that he had merely startled me. He looked incredulously at the corpse and back to me. “Someone has already phoned the police and ambulance. They are en route. Just stay where you are. They will have dry clothes and blankets.”

Before I knew it, I had paramedics asking me how I felt, checking my body temperature, and saying words like “shock” and “mild case of hypothermia“. They moved me into the back of the ambulance and carefully cut off my clothes and gave me a warm blanket. From the back of the ambulance I could still see the boy, the boy who had called to me from the water with my friend’s voice. His chest caved in and the sun shining off what used to be his face. Eventually, the ambulance door closed and I felt heat wash over me. I looked down at the floor as the vehicle started to move. Someone had evidently brought my shoes to me as they were sitting in the back against the door. The paramedics were probably talking to me and asking questions, but I can't remember any. Being in the back of that ambulance was a personal hell. When I closed my eyes, all I could see was the boy, and when I opened my eyes I could feel the lifeguard standing there, exactly where my shoes were. And I was just waiting for his shoe to drop.

It happened quickly. The ambulance which had been speeding forwards was suddenly spinning sideways. I closed my eyes, not from surprise, but from the pain of the straps of the gurney they had put me on digging into my ribs. The ambulance couldn't have been spinning very long, but in the few seconds it was I wondered, how many people just died?

When the ambulance stopped spinning I cautiously opened my eyes and looked around. The two paramedics were gathering themselves. One complained that his knee had hit my gurney and he believed it had shattered. The other had a busted lip but otherwise they seemed fine. The one with the broken knee asked if I was okay, and I nodded without thinking. My only injuries seemed to be the abrasions from the straps. The medics confirmed over their intercom to the driver that we were all alive.

For one glorious moment, I thought that maybe, just maybe, my guardian would take these injuries as payment. The man with a busted lip opened the door for the ambulance. The view that had previously been a river and a body was replaced with what appeared to be an intersection bathed in broken glass, bits of plastic, and the sounds of people screaming. “It's a bus. We have a bus. A bus has hit the side of our med unit. Send more to our location.”

I unstrapped myself from the gurney. The medic with a broken knee was now sitting on the edge of the ambulance attempting to assess the damage. I grabbed my shoes and the stack of dry clothes they had gotten ready for me and dressed myself. I stepped past the injured man and ignored his surprised announcement for me to stay here and wait for more help. The last thing I wanted was more help.

I walked away from the wreck, arm clasped to where the straps dug in, willing myself not to look at the bus. I didn't want to know how bad it was. I wanted a quiet place. I wanted to be with Nana. I wanted to feel safe. I walked for at least an hour. Eventuallly I was back at the apartment Nana and I had lived in since the fire. Her car was out so I collapsed on the couch and closed my eyes.

The lifeguard was standing before me, its blank faces reflecting the light of the ambulance. Bo’s body was face down in the asphalt bobbing as if it were in water. Fish swam in the pavement beneath us as they feasted on the underside of his body. I knew the net that I needed to catch them was on the bus. I raced to the bus and found the door barely ajar. I squeezed through the gap and looked around the bus. A hundred pieces of broken glass glittered in the air. There at the end of the bus was the lifeguard. I screamed at my tormentor, asking him what he wanted me to do. The flesh of the four faces stretched and I knew it was laughing at me, taunting me. I could feel flames starting to lap at my flesh. I ran at my guardian and tackled him. He did not fight me at all. Beneath the seat of the nearest bus bench, I saw the life vest. I grabbed the vest and twisted the straps around his neck and pulled. Choking gasps filled my ears. As I pulled tighter and tighter, I watched as his body transformed. It wasn't until I was wondering if the strap would end up slicing clean through its neck that I realized it had turned into my Nana. The bus was now our apartment. The flames were now my pulse racing. I was no longer dreaming.

It's been four days. I've tried to purchase a gun, but the seller never has a face. I've walked to the edge of buildings, but the people in the streets all have wings of flames. I've walked to the same ocean where Bo died, but I know that if I swam out there, someone would get hurt. Someone would die. I'm afraid that if I stop eating, I'll wake up in a hospital with a feeding tube in my throat and a dozen more deaths in my wake. I want to die. I just want my nightmare to end.

I'm pretty sure my guardian angel is using me. I don’t know how, or more importantly why, but every time they save my life, someone else gets hurt.

Growing up, whenever I would ask my Nana what happened to my Mom, she would tell me about my guardian angel. My mother had been 32 weeks pregnant and was driving to work. The road had been damp from the rain that had ended a few hours earlier. The driver behind my mother said that they were driving along the boulevard when she suddenly made a sharp turn as if to avoid something. The car slid on the road and wound up rolling into a drainage ditch. When the driver stopped to see if she was alright, my mother was barely breathing, and by the time the ambulance arrived, she had died. Apparently, when they felt her belly, they could still feel my kicking. Less than an hour later, I was “born”. I spent over 3 months in NICU, building up my strength. When I finally left and went home with my grandma, she decided that I must have a guardian angel looking out for me, for how else would I have survived? My mother never told my grandmother who the father was, and had implied she didn’t know, so I entered the care of my grandmother, Nana.

Nana raised me in her Southern Baptist church. I would often tell the other kids at church about “my angel” who saved my life as a baby. Everyone thought that it was so cool to have someone or something keeping me safe. And for a long time, I agreed with them. Who wouldn’t want an angel to protect them from harm?

It was 2004 and I was 7 years old when my best friend died. Bo was a neighbor of ours and Nana and his mom were close. We would often go on outings to eat or Nana would take both of us to church and the like. On that day she had taken both of us to the beach. We were playing in the water, splashing each other and laughing when we suddenly realized that we could no longer feel the sand beneath us. As we tried to swim back to the shore it kept getting further away and we started to panic. Bo and I started to drift apart from one another, which of course only frightened us more. We were screaming at the top of our lungs and flailing our arms. Some people on the beach noticed and flagged the lifeguard, but I could tell Bo was already swallowing water. I was a somewhat better swimmer so I was able to keep my head above the water for longer. I listened in horror as Bo screaming suddenly stopped. I thought for sure I was going to die too. But just as I was about to give up, I saw it. A floating bit of red, no more than 3 feet from me. A discarded life vest. I reached out and grabbed it. It was meant for an adult so it had no problem keeping me up for the few minutes it took for the lifeguard to reach me. He swam us parallel to the shore until we were able to escape the current and make it back.

My Nana was waiting for me on the beach. She was hysterical and had been running along the beach in pace with the lifeguard and me. I remember weeping in her arms as she held onto me. I was babbling incoherently about Bo and the life jacket. I don’t remember anything that she said that day, except her thanking God for “my angel saving me.” I think that was the day I started to hate it.

Nana kept the life vest that saved me as some sort of good luck charm, but I never saw it that way. At church, I started to feel like people blamed me for Bo’s death. Of course, they didn’t, but to a seven-year-old, the looks of sympathy and mourning were confused with ones of skepticism and blame. Bo’s body didn’t wash ashore for 3 days after the incident. His funeral was held a few days after that. That was the last time I ever saw his mother. She talked about being abandoned by God and she even openly wished that Bo had found the vest first. The implication that she wanted me to have died instead stuck with me for a very, very long time. The implication wasn’t lost on Nana either. We never saw Bo’s mom at church again, nor walking around the neighborhood. She never moved, she just stopped leaving the house. And as far as I know, Nana never reached out to her after that either.

If Nana hadn’t made me leave the house and keep living my life, I might have done the same thing Bo’s mother did; hide away from the world. As it was, I started to have nightmares. I would wake up in puddles of sweat, thinking I was back in the water with Bo. A faceless man would be there with us, dragging Bo away and eventually pulling him under. His mother would sometimes be there floating above the waves. She would snatch the vest from me condemning me to death, only for the man to pull her under as well. The lifeguard would arrive and stare at me from four faces. I would wake up and sometimes still be able to see the lifeguard, floating over me for a few seconds before I would fully wake up. It terrified me.

I was thirteen when my angel killed again. It was after one of these nightmares. I woke up after the lifeguard looked at me, except this time, instead of lingering in my vision for a moment, stationary, he drifted towards my bedroom door, beckoning, before my vision cleared. I sat up in my bed and debated what caused this change in the formula, when I heard the sound of something in the kitchen hitting the floor. There was someone else in the house with Nana and me. I ran across the hall into her room and shook her awake. Nana had just opened her eyes when she heard it too. Things being moved in the house.

Nana told me to hide in her bathroom as she went to her closet to grab something. I did as I was told and listened carefully to the sounds of the house. I heard Nana shout something, then I heard a gunshot.

My blood ran cold and I was paralyzed with fear. Eventually, I convinced my legs to move. I entered the kitchen and saw my Nana standing there motionless, a shotgun in her hands, and a man lying dead on the floor. I let out a terrified squeak. Nana turned to me to quickly usher me out of the room. But it was too late. Another man had entered my nightmare.

The man was Edgar Dennis. Eddie. He was a local man with Alzheimer’s who had wandered away from his caretakers that evening and into our house through the back door. The confused old man was evidently just trying to make himself something to eat when we found him. Nana said later that she saw a knife in his hand. In the dark, seeing a disheveled stranger standing in her kitchen, she assumed he was some sort of crazed madman. She fired the shotgun, and he was killed instantly.

When the police arrived, Nana told them about the knife she’d seen him holding, but they never found one. They didn’t seem to think she’d overreacted, though. As far as they were concerned, she’d confronted a potentially dangerous intruder wandering through our house in the dead of night.

The killing was determined to be self-defense, helped strongly by the fact that I was in the house and she was protecting me. The policemen asked if there was someone we could stay with for a day or two as they cleaned up the scene. We went and stayed at a church member's house for the rest of the morning. I fell asleep on their couch and dreamed that the old man was burning alive as the lifeguard’s faces stared down at him. I tried to run to the man to help, but the lifeguard placed an arm across my chest as I watched the old man transform into a much younger man as he burned. I looked up at lifeguards faces and to my horror, where I normally saw the face of the man who saved me, I saw only skin. On all four sides of his head. Four places of empty white where a face could fit. The last thing I remember about it before I woke up was that the skin where his mouth would have been was stretched tightly, as if it was trying to smile.

My Nana was shaking me awake this time. She was still holding her phone, and when I looked at her face I knew something was wrong. Something else was wrong, that is. Nana told me with tears in her eyes and in a hoarse voice that our house was currently on fire.
The words came at me as if through a tunnel. I remember practically yelling at her that we needed to get him out of there. My thoughts were on the young man that I dreamed of, but Nana had naturally assumed I meant the old man. She explained to me in a panicked voice that he had been removed hours ago, and they were still cleaning up the scene when the fire broke out. We both raced to her car and I asked her if everyone got out okay and she said she wasn’t sure.

She drove us to our home, only a few minutes away, speeding the whole way. The fire department was on scene already and extinguishing what was left of the fire. Something, a corpse, lay on the sidewalk, covered in a sheet.

After the investigation, it was revealed that a piece of shot from where Nana shot the intruder had wound up embedded in the wall behind him. The shot damaged the wiring leading to a switch in the next room. When one of the Biorecovery Technicians who was cleaning the blood flipped the switch, a fire broke out. It took almost a minute for the cleaners to notice and evacuate. Evidently, the last one of them in the house was delayed in leaving. No one is sure why. Perhaps he tripped, perhaps he was making sure he was the last man. Either way, he was consumed by the fire as it spread throughout the house.

Nearly all of our possessions were destroyed in the fire. Only a few items from my Nana’s room were spared, the room farthest from the fire. Among the few that remained, was a brilliantly red life vest. The object of envy that saved her grandson.

A few years passed with no more incidents. People from our church started a fund to help us rebuild our lives. They provided us with money, clothes, food, and a place to stay while we got back on our feet. When I was old enough, I stopped going to church. Everywhere I looked, I saw people who I was convinced were blaming me for everything. People who knew Bo. People who knew Eddie. People who spent their hard-earned money repairing the damage that was left in my wake. And all the while, my nightmares remained. Bo being dragged underwater by the man with no face. The lifeguard’s faces emitting an aura of rage and accusation, despite them never having features anymore. Eddie and the technician floating above the waves engulfed in flames that rise around them like wings. And the life vest, tattered and twisted, seemingly coveted by them all.

When I turned eighteen, I started to work for the city as a custodian for a couple of local parks. I picked the job as one that would simultaneously make my presence and service to the community known, but also allow me to hardly interact with others. One of the parks was along the river and I would often daydream that Bo was out there in the waters, trying to swim to shore. I would sometimes even hear him scream. But always, without fail, there would be no one in the water at these times. I started to avoid the river when possible, except when emptying the cans that were there.

It was March 17, 2016, my 19th birthday, when I saw him in the water for real. I was emptying a trash can on the river's edge when I heard the sounds of a child screaming. I looked out to the river and saw a boy flailing in the water, probably 60 feet from the nearest bank. I yelled and pointed out at him and others around me followed my gaze. They seemed to not see what I saw. The boy’s screams weakened as he was carried away. Running alongside the river, I kicked off my shoes and dove in. The river's current was mild around the park, but the water was still cold, not having fully warmed from the winter. My muscles ached from the cold and sudden exertion. I could no longer hear the boy. I tried to yell to the people staring from the shore, telling them to point in the direction of the child. I don't believe they understood what I was saying though, as the few that were pointing were only pointing at me.

I spun in the water looking for something, anything, when I saw him. Floating twenty feet from me was Bo, face down in the water. I swam to him and grabbed his arm. The skin separated from his arm like a sleeve and pulled down to his wrist. It was clear that this body had been in the water for a long time. I nearly vomited into the waters around us. I grabbed Bo’s shirt and started to swim backwards. As I did I watched as the sleeve of skin separated from his wrist and washed away down the river. Barely keeping myself together, I was approaching the shore when I heard splashing behind me. Another soul was braving the 40-degree water to help me bring the body to shore. I pulled the shirt with all my remaining strength onto the shore and flipped over my friend. I felt time stop as I looked at his face. This boy was not Bo. His face, as well as most of the skin from his neck and up had decayed away. Eaten by the fish and crustaceans that lived in the river. Where there had been eyes were only empty cavities. His mouth was agape and his tongue was missing as well. I collapsed backwards and closed my eyes from the blinding light of the sun. I wanted to forget the vision of the boy I just pulled from the water but it seemed to be burned into my retina. I turned to my side and vomited, my bile splattering the shoes of the man who had helped me. My brain finally caught up with how cold my body was and began shaking violently.

I felt a hand place on my back. I knew it was the man whose shoes I had just covered. I looked up at him, perhaps to apologize, I'm not sure anymore, but when my eyes found his face I screamed. I screamed so hard I was scared I would tear my throat. I was staring at the blank faces of the lifeguard. Behind him, wings of flames hovered and swelled. I spun onto my back and crawled away as fast as my numbing legs would carry me, directly across the body of the child I had just pulled from the water. I didn't care. It was the straightest line away from the lifeguard. I could feel the boy's ribcage collapse as my knee landed on it. My hands slipped out from under me sending my face impacting into the gravel and sand of the riverbank. I turned around to begin scooting backwards when I saw an entirely different man, someone I didn't know staring at me and the body in confusion and horror. He wasn't the lifeguard. At least not anymore. I remember looking at his shoes to ensure he was who I had been running from. It was him. “Are you okay?” the man asked me. I told him I was and that he had merely startled me. He looked incredulously at the corpse and back to me. “Someone has already phoned the police and ambulance. They are en route. Just stay where you are. They will have dry clothes and blankets.”

Before I knew it, I had paramedics asking me how I felt, checking my body temperature, and saying words like “shock” and “mild case of hypothermia“. They moved me into the back of the ambulance and carefully cut off my clothes and gave me a warm blanket. From the back of the ambulance I could still see the boy, the boy who had called to me from the water with my friend’s voice. His chest caved in and the sun shining off what used to be his face. Eventually, the ambulance door closed and I felt heat wash over me. I looked down at the floor as the vehicle started to move. Someone had evidently brought my shoes to me as they were sitting in the back against the door. The paramedics were probably talking to me and asking questions, but I can't remember any. Being in the back of that ambulance was a personal hell. When I closed my eyes, all I could see was the boy, and when I opened my eyes I could feel the lifeguard standing there, exactly where my shoes were. And I was just waiting for his shoe to drop.

It happened quickly. The ambulance which had been speeding forwards was suddenly spinning sideways. I closed my eyes, not from surprise, but from the pain of the straps of the gurney they had put me on digging into my ribs. The ambulance couldn't have been spinning very long, but in the few seconds it was I wondered, how many people just died?

When the ambulance stopped spinning I cautiously opened my eyes and looked around. The two paramedics were gathering themselves. One complained that his knee had hit my gurney and he believed it had shattered. The other had a busted lip but otherwise they seemed fine. The one with the broken knee asked if I was okay, and I nodded without thinking. My only injuries seemed to be the abrasions from the straps. The medics confirmed over their intercom to the driver that we were all alive.

For one glorious moment, I thought that maybe, just maybe, my guardian would take these injuries as payment. The man with a busted lip opened the door for the ambulance. The view that had previously been a river and a body was replaced with what appeared to be an intersection bathed in broken glass, bits of plastic, and the sounds of people screaming. “It's a bus. We have a bus. A bus has hit the side of our med unit. Send more to our location.”

I unstrapped myself from the gurney. The medic with a broken knee was now sitting on the edge of the ambulance attempting to assess the damage. I grabbed my shoes and the stack of dry clothes they had gotten ready for me and dressed myself. I stepped past the injured man and ignored his surprised announcement for me to stay here and wait for more help. The last thing I wanted was more help.

I walked away from the wreck, arm clasped to where the straps dug in, willing myself not to look at the bus. I didn't want to know how bad it was. I wanted a quiet place. I wanted to be with Nana. I wanted to feel safe. I walked for at least an hour. Eventuallly I was back at the apartment Nana and I had lived in since the fire. Her car was out so I collapsed on the couch and closed my eyes.

The lifeguard was standing before me, its blank faces reflecting the light of the ambulance. Bo’s body was face down in the asphalt bobbing as if it were in water. Fish swam in the pavement beneath us as they feasted on the underside of his body. I knew the net that I needed to catch them was on the bus. I raced to the bus and found the door barely ajar. I squeezed through the gap and looked around the bus. A hundred pieces of broken glass glittered in the air. There at the end of the bus was the lifeguard. I screamed at my tormentor, asking him what he wanted me to do. The flesh of the four faces stretched and I knew it was laughing at me, taunting me. I could feel flames starting to lap at my flesh. I ran at my guardian and tackled him. He did not fight me at all. Beneath the seat of the nearest bus bench, I saw the life vest. I grabbed the vest and twisted the straps around his neck and pulled. Choking gasps filled my ears. As I pulled tighter and tighter, I watched as his body transformed. It wasn't until I was wondering if the strap would end up slicing clean through its neck that I realized it had turned into my Nana. The bus was now our apartment. The flames were now my pulse racing. I was no longer dreaming.

It's been four days. I've tried to purchase a gun, but the seller never has a face. I've walked to the edge of buildings, but the people in the streets all have wings of flames. I've walked to the same ocean where Bo died, but I know that if I swam out there, someone would get hurt. Someone would die. I'm afraid that if I stop eating, I'll wake up in a hospital with a feeding tube in my throat and a dozen more deaths in my wake. I want to die. I just want my nightmare to end.

I’m pretty sure my guardian angel is using me. I don’t know how, or more importantly why, but every time they save my life, someone else gets hurt.

Growing up, whenever I would ask my Nana what happened to my Mom, she would tell me about my guardian angel. My mother had been 32 weeks pregnant and was driving to work. The road had been damp from the rain that had ended a few hours earlier. The driver behind my mother said that they were driving along the boulevard when she suddenly made a sharp turn as if to avoid something. The car slid on the road and wound up rolling into a drainage ditch. When the driver stopped to see if she was alright, my mother was barely breathing, and by the time the ambulance arrived, she had died. Apparently, when they felt her belly, they could still feel my kicking. Less than an hour later, I was “born”. I spent over 3 months in NICU, building up my strength. When I finally left and went home with my grandma, she decided that I must have a guardian angel looking out for me, for how else would I have survived? My mother never told my grandmother who the father was, and had implied she didn’t know, so I entered the care of my grandmother, Nana.

Nana raised me in her Southern Baptist church. I would often tell the other kids at church about “my angel” who saved my life as a baby. Everyone thought that it was so cool to have someone or something keeping me safe. And for a long time, I agreed with them. Who wouldn’t want an angel to protect them from harm?

It was 2004 and I was 7 years old when my best friend died. Bo was a neighbor of ours and Nana and his mom were close. We would often go on outings to eat or Nana would take both of us to church and the like. On that day she had taken both of us to the beach. We were playing in the water, splashing each other and laughing when we suddenly realized that we could no longer feel the sand beneath us. As we tried to swim back to the shore it kept getting further away and we started to panic. Bo and I started to drift apart from one another, which of course only frightened us more. We were screaming at the top of our lungs and flailing our arms. Some people on the beach noticed and flagged the lifeguard, but I could tell Bo was already swallowing water. I was a somewhat better swimmer so I was able to keep my head above the water for longer. I listened in horror as Bo screaming suddenly stopped. I thought for sure I was going to die too. But just as I was about to give up, I saw it. A floating bit of red, no more than 3 feet from me. A discarded life vest. I reached out and grabbed it. It was meant for an adult so it had no problem keeping me up for the few minutes it took for the lifeguard to reach me. He swam us parallel to the shore until we were able to escape the current and make it back.

My Nana was waiting for me on the beach. She was hysterical and had been running along the beach in pace with the lifeguard and me. I remember weeping in her arms as she held onto me. I was babbling incoherently about Bo and the life jacket. I don’t remember anything that she said that day, except her thanking God for “my angel saving me.” I think that was the day I started to hate it.

Nana kept the life vest that saved me as some sort of good luck charm, but I never saw it that way. At church, I started to feel like people blamed me for Bo’s death. Of course, they didn’t, but to a seven-year-old, the looks of sympathy and mourning were confused with ones of skepticism and blame. Bo’s body didn’t wash ashore for 3 days after the incident. His funeral was held a few days after that. That was the last time I ever saw his mother. She talked about being abandoned by God and she even openly wished that Bo had found the vest first. The implication that she wanted me to have died instead stuck with me for a very, very long time. The implication wasn’t lost on Nana either. We never saw Bo’s mom at church again, nor walking around the neighborhood. She never moved, she just stopped leaving the house. And as far as I know, Nana never reached out to her after that either.

If Nana hadn’t made me leave the house and keep living my life, I might have done the same thing Bo’s mother did; hide away from the world. As it was, I started to have nightmares. I would wake up in puddles of sweat, thinking I was back in the water with Bo. A faceless man would be there with us, dragging Bo away and eventually pulling him under. His mother would sometimes be there floating above the waves. She would snatch the vest from me condemning me to death, only for the man to pull her under as well. The lifeguard would arrive and stare at me from four faces. I would wake up and sometimes still be able to see the lifeguard, floating over me for a few seconds before I would fully wake up. It terrified me.

I was thirteen when my angel killed again. It was after one of these nightmares. I woke up after the lifeguard looked at me, except this time, instead of lingering in my vision for a moment, stationary, he drifted towards my bedroom door, beckoning, before my vision cleared. I sat up in my bed and debated what caused this change in the formula, when I heard the sound of something in the kitchen hitting the floor. There was someone else in the house with Nana and me. I ran across the hall into her room and shook her awake. Nana had just opened her eyes when she heard it too. Things being moved in the house.

Nana told me to hide in her bathroom as she went to her closet to grab something. I did as I was told and listened carefully to the sounds of the house. I heard Nana shout something, then I heard a gunshot.

My blood ran cold and I was paralyzed with fear. Eventually, I convinced my legs to move. I entered the kitchen and saw my Nana standing there motionless, a shotgun in her hands, and a man lying dead on the floor. I let out a terrified squeak. Nana turned to me to quickly usher me out of the room. But it was too late. Another man had entered my nightmare.

The man was Edgar Dennis. Eddie. He was a local man with Alzheimer’s who had wandered away from his caretakers that evening and into our house through the back door. The confused old man was evidently just trying to make himself something to eat when we found him. Nana said later that she saw a knife in his hand. In the dark, seeing a disheveled stranger standing in her kitchen, she assumed he was some sort of crazed madman. She fired the shotgun, and he was killed instantly.

When the police arrived, Nana told them about the knife she’d seen him holding, but they never found one. They didn’t seem to think she’d overreacted, though. As far as they were concerned, she’d confronted a potentially dangerous intruder wandering through our house in the dead of night.

The killing was determined to be self-defense, helped strongly by the fact that I was in the house and she was protecting me. The policemen asked if there was someone we could stay with for a day or two as they cleaned up the scene. We went and stayed at a church member's house for the rest of the morning. I fell asleep on their couch and dreamed that the old man was burning alive as the lifeguard’s faces stared down at him. I tried to run to the man to help, but the lifeguard placed an arm across my chest as I watched the old man transform into a much younger man as he burned. I looked up at lifeguards faces and to my horror, where I normally saw the face of the man who saved me, I saw only skin. On all four sides of his head. Four places of empty white where a face could fit. The last thing I remember about it before I woke up was that the skin where his mouth would have been was stretched tightly, as if it was trying to smile.

My Nana was shaking me awake this time. She was still holding her phone, and when I looked at her face I knew something was wrong. Something else was wrong, that is. Nana told me with tears in her eyes and in a hoarse voice that our house was currently on fire.
The words came at me as if through a tunnel. I remember practically yelling at her that we needed to get him out of there. My thoughts were on the young man that I dreamed of, but Nana had naturally assumed I meant the old man. She explained to me in a panicked voice that he had been removed hours ago, and they were still cleaning up the scene when the fire broke out. We both raced to her car and I asked her if everyone got out okay and she said she wasn’t sure.

She drove us to our home, only a few minutes away, speeding the whole way. The fire department was on scene already and extinguishing what was left of the fire. Something, a corpse, lay on the sidewalk, covered in a sheet.

After the investigation, it was revealed that a piece of shot from where Nana shot the intruder had wound up embedded in the wall behind him. The shot damaged the wiring leading to a switch in the next room. When one of the Biorecovery Technicians who was cleaning the blood flipped the switch, a fire broke out. It took almost a minute for the cleaners to notice and evacuate. Evidently, the last one of them in the house was delayed in leaving. No one is sure why. Perhaps he tripped, perhaps he was making sure he was the last man. Either way, he was consumed by the fire as it spread throughout the house.

Nearly all of our possessions were destroyed in the fire. Only a few items from my Nana’s room were spared, the room farthest from the fire. Among the few that remained, was a brilliantly red life vest. The object of envy that saved her grandson.

A few years passed with no more incidents. People from our church started a fund to help us rebuild our lives. They provided us with money, clothes, food, and a place to stay while we got back on our feet. When I was old enough, I stopped going to church. Everywhere I looked, I saw people who I was convinced were blaming me for everything. People who knew Bo. People who knew Eddie. People who spent their hard-earned money repairing the damage that was left in my wake. And all the while, my nightmares remained. Bo being dragged underwater by the man with no face. The lifeguard’s faces emitting an aura of rage and accusation, despite them never having features anymore. Eddie and the technician floating above the waves engulfed in flames that rise around them like wings. And the life vest, tattered and twisted, seemingly coveted by them all.

When I turned eighteen, I started to work for the city as a custodian for a couple of local parks. I picked the job as one that would simultaneously make my presence and service to the community known, but also allow me to hardly interact with others. One of the parks was along the river and I would often daydream that Bo was out there in the waters, trying to swim to shore. I would sometimes even hear him scream. But always, without fail, there would be no one in the water at these times. I started to avoid the river when possible, except when emptying the cans that were there.

It was March 17, 2016, my 19th birthday, when I saw him in the water for real. I was emptying a trash can on the river's edge when I heard the sounds of a child screaming. I looked out to the river and saw a boy flailing in the water, probably 60 feet from the nearest bank. I yelled and pointed out at him and others around me followed my gaze. They seemed to not see what I saw. The boy’s screams weakened as he was carried away. Running alongside the river, I kicked off my shoes and dove in. The river's current was mild around the park, but the water was still cold, not having fully warmed from the winter. My muscles ached from the cold and sudden exertion. I could no longer hear the boy. I tried to yell to the people staring from the shore, telling them to point in the direction of the child. I don't believe they understood what I was saying though, as the few that were pointing were only pointing at me.

I spun in the water looking for something, anything, when I saw him. Floating twenty feet from me was Bo, face down in the water. I swam to him and grabbed his arm. The skin separated from his arm like a sleeve and pulled down to his wrist. It was clear that this body had been in the water for a long time. I nearly vomited into the waters around us. I grabbed Bo’s shirt and started to swim backwards. As I did I watched as the sleeve of skin separated from his wrist and washed away down the river. Barely keeping myself together, I was approaching the shore when I heard splashing behind me. Another soul was braving the 40-degree water to help me bring the body to shore. I pulled the shirt with all my remaining strength onto the shore and flipped over my friend. I felt time stop as I looked at his face. This boy was not Bo. His face, as well as most of the skin from his neck and up had decayed away. Eaten by the fish and crustaceans that lived in the river. Where there had been eyes were only empty cavities. His mouth was agape and his tongue was missing as well. I collapsed backwards and closed my eyes from the blinding light of the sun. I wanted to forget the vision of the boy I just pulled from the water but it seemed to be burned into my retina. I turned to my side and vomited, my bile splattering the shoes of the man who had helped me. My brain finally caught up with how cold my body was and began shaking violently.

I felt a hand place on my back. I knew it was the man whose shoes I had just covered. I looked up at him, perhaps to apologize, I'm not sure anymore, but when my eyes found his face I screamed. I screamed so hard I was scared I would tear my throat. I was staring at the blank faces of the lifeguard. Behind him, wings of flames hovered and swelled. I spun onto my back and crawled away as fast as my numbing legs would carry me, directly across the body of the child I had just pulled from the water. I didn't care. It was the straightest line away from the lifeguard. I could feel the boy's ribcage collapse as my knee landed on it. My hands slipped out from under me sending my face impacting into the gravel and sand of the riverbank. I turned around to begin scooting backwards when I saw an entirely different man, someone I didn't know staring at me and the body in confusion and horror. He wasn't the lifeguard. At least not anymore. I remember looking at his shoes to ensure he was who I had been running from. It was him. “Are you okay?” the man asked me. I told him I was and that he had merely startled me. He looked incredulously at the corpse and back to me. “Someone has already phoned the police and ambulance. They are en route. Just stay where you are. They will have dry clothes and blankets.”

Before I knew it, I had paramedics asking me how I felt, checking my body temperature, and saying words like “shock” and “mild case of hypothermia“. They moved me into the back of the ambulance and carefully cut off my clothes and gave me a warm blanket. From the back of the ambulance I could still see the boy, the boy who had called to me from the water with my friend’s voice. His chest caved in and the sun shining off what used to be his face. Eventually, the ambulance door closed and I felt heat wash over me. I looked down at the floor as the vehicle started to move. Someone had evidently brought my shoes to me as they were sitting in the back against the door. The paramedics were probably talking to me and asking questions, but I can't remember any. Being in the back of that ambulance was a personal hell. When I closed my eyes, all I could see was the boy, and when I opened my eyes I could feel the lifeguard standing there, exactly where my shoes were. And I was just waiting for his shoe to drop.

It happened quickly. The ambulance which had been speeding forwards was suddenly spinning sideways. I closed my eyes, not from surprise, but from the pain of the straps of the gurney they had put me on digging into my ribs. The ambulance couldn't have been spinning very long, but in the few seconds it was I wondered, how many people just died?

When the ambulance stopped spinning I cautiously opened my eyes and looked around. The two paramedics were gathering themselves. One complained that his knee had hit my gurney and he believed it had shattered. The other had a busted lip but otherwise they seemed fine. The one with the broken knee asked if I was okay, and I nodded without thinking. My only injuries seemed to be the abrasions from the straps. The medics confirmed over their intercom to the driver that we were all alive.

For one glorious moment, I thought that maybe, just maybe, my guardian would take these injuries as payment. The man with a busted lip opened the door for the ambulance. The view that had previously been a river and a body was replaced with what appeared to be an intersection bathed in broken glass, bits of plastic, and the sounds of people screaming. “It's a bus. We have a bus. A bus has hit the side of our med unit. Send more to our location.”

I unstrapped myself from the gurney. The medic with a broken knee was now sitting on the edge of the ambulance attempting to assess the damage. I grabbed my shoes and the stack of dry clothes they had gotten ready for me and dressed myself. I stepped past the injured man and ignored his surprised announcement for me to stay here and wait for more help. The last thing I wanted was more help.

I walked away from the wreck, arm clasped to where the straps dug in, willing myself not to look at the bus. I didn't want to know how bad it was. I wanted a quiet place. I wanted to be with Nana. I wanted to feel safe. I walked for at least an hour. Eventuallly I was back at the apartment Nana and I had lived in since the fire. Her car was out so I collapsed on the couch and closed my eyes.

The lifeguard was standing before me, its blank faces reflecting the light of the ambulance. Bo’s body was face down in the asphalt bobbing as if it were in water. Fish swam in the pavement beneath us as they feasted on the underside of his body. I knew the net that I needed to catch them was on the bus. I raced to the bus and found the door barely ajar. I squeezed through the gap and looked around the bus. A hundred pieces of broken glass glittered in the air. There at the end of the bus was the lifeguard. I screamed at my tormentor, asking him what he wanted me to do. The flesh of the four faces stretched and I knew it was laughing at me, taunting me. I could feel flames starting to lap at my flesh. I ran at my guardian and tackled him. He did not fight me at all. Beneath the seat of the nearest bus bench, I saw the life vest. I grabbed the vest and twisted the straps around his neck and pulled. Choking gasps filled my ears. As I pulled tighter and tighter, I watched as his body transformed. It wasn't until I was wondering if the strap would end up slicing clean through its neck that I realized it had turned into my Nana. The bus was now our apartment. The flames were now my pulse racing. I was no longer dreaming.

It's been four days. I've tried to purchase a gun, but the seller never has a face. I've walked to the edge of buildings, but the people in the streets all have wings of flames. I've walked to the same ocean where Bo died, but I know that if I swam out there, someone would get hurt. Someone would die. I'm afraid that if I stop eating, I'll wake up in a hospital with a feeding tube in my throat and a dozen more deaths in my wake. I want to die. I just want my nightmare to end.

I’ve only ever listened to the audiobooks and they always say it like “the Boooooooob”. Is that how it is written in the books?

https://preview.redd.it/7am13do7xdfh1.png?width=971&format=png&auto=webp&s=36d62eb738a6390a5e83da61658eacf1d1932f1a

Been saving up for an uncorrupted one for ages with the intention of divining it for the sweet sweet gamba dopamine, but hot damn, i don't think I'm going to! this roll is pretty damn good!

I am soo happy to have sniped this for 335 div. it was the cheapest uncorrupted and i love it.

If you are unaware of the math for these, this MB gives 75% increased crit chance, 82.2 increased damage, and 30% movement speed. i will also give Concentrated ground around me, but tbh, couldnt care less about that.

I don’t know whose carcass it was exiting, or how many others there were, but only pray it’s slower than me.

Now that’s it’s been a month of so since the Martyr of the First Edict discovery happened, I imagine quite a few people have forgotten to claim the free Passive Skill Point that you get at the “Site of the Chosen”. I know I did on all my new characters after my first one. I didn’t claim it on my most recent character until level 92 😆

For those who weren’t around when it was discovered a month ago, or need a reminder. For each character you get to endgame, you can travel to an area called “The Site of the Chosen”, located directly behind the area you fight the Arbiter of Divinity. There, you can travel up the elevator and claim a free Passive Skill Point. Just click the “Mote of the Martyrs Power”.

You can do this on EVERY character. I, and everyone else at the time, did it on our main characters and it was epic. Then I, and many other people, promptly forgot to claim it on every character they made there after. I know this for a fact as yesterday I messages Global Chats 1 to 14 reminding people it existed, and at least 12 people thanked me for reminding them. Two of them were all the way at level 97. I’m sure a passive point at that level felt amazing.

I imagine that as time goes on, it will be second nature for everyone to take any new character to claim the free passive, but I’ll probably forget next league as well lol

There are two astrophysics related scenarios from a sci-fi book series that I will not name in the body of this post as they are moderately to SEVERELY spoiler heavy from a book deep into the series. If your curiosity is piqued, I will reply with the book series in question with a spoiler tag in the comments.

Regardless , the two scenarios that I wish to know their plausibility are:

1: It is discovered that the Milky Way has a previously unknown “Large Dwarf Galaxy” (which seems like an oxymoron, but I digress) that is on a collision course with the Milky Way. It is revealed that its trajectory is almost PERFECTLY pointed at Sagittarius A*. It was previously unknown as it was/is on the exact opposite side of the galactic disk of our own and wasn’t discovered until we physically had line of sight on it after traveling thousands of light years. The ETA of this collision is about 100,000 years

Given the moderate amount of background knowledge I have, I feel like we (in the real world) would definitely know about it from the gravitational influences it has on things like Triangulum or Andromeda. My brain goes to how we found Uranus before we could see it based on its influence on other bodies.

Now, I acknowledge that the relative motion of things as large and as far away as the local neighborhood galaxies would be almost unmeasurablely small compared to the anomalies that let us discover Uranus, but I just find it hard to believe that an entire galaxy could be THAT close without us being able to detect it SOMEHOW. It’s not stated how close it is, but even if it had an insane relative velocity of 0.5c, that places it ~50,000 light years away. Thats like our backyard.

That being said, I’m an amateur with no formal education in the matter so 🤷

2. There is a very spectacular show of force that happens towards the end of one of the books that involves forcing a sun-like star to go supernova. This is accomplished by sending two astronomical bodies, about the size of mars and mercury, at opposite poles of the star at “very near light speed”. Later in the book a couple individuals off hand mention the bodies were going “99.some-stupid-number-of-nines% the speed of light”, though no actual speed is ever listed.

The given reason as to why the star goes nova is the resulting shockwaves from the “impact” compressed the core and elements that just barely couldn’t fuse suddenly could, and elements that already could suddenly had WAY more energy than necessary. Runaway effect ensues, star goes boom. “Impact” in quotes as the bodies travel significantly into the star before disintegrating as stars are so diffuse on or near the surface.

This sounds… plausible(?) to me. But again, I am an amateur in this subject. All the individual steps make sense to me, but stars are just SO big and diffuse, that even a stupid amount of energy would probably(?) get spread out significantly throughout the star. Would the star at least temporarily expand as the core got hotter? Yeah I would think so. Could that cause a star already close to death like Betelgeuse to go Super Nova? Yeah, again, I think so. But would a sun-like star go supernova? Once again, 🤷.

I’m curious what people that formerly study this topic think on both issues.

But if that’s true, then who has been climbing in my window and tucking me in every night?

So every American knows the surface answer to that question. July 4th, 1776. But any Geopolitical major knows that what makes a country a “country”, is just that other countries call them “countries”. Thats why when someone claims an oil rig in the middle of the ocean as a new country, isn’t not really one.

So my question is, when did the majority of the world finally say “oh that British rebellion thing in the New World? Yeah I guess they are a country now.”

It’s obliviously NOT 1776 as there was the whole revolutionary war thing. Maybe the end of the war?

https://preview.redd.it/e272venbz17h1.png?width=690&format=png&auto=webp&s=70b364675e9da6adc10d171372f48a54449f0f36

Not sure... Can't really think of a reason...

I still keep the knife in case he ever finds me.

Which of course means it's not balanced at all,but hear me out.

The casual temple experience is so fun and rewarding. The former is subjective, but the latter is just fact.

Temple is shaping up to be my favorite mechanic and I have never snaked, or done any kind of hyper juicing to it. I just, place rooms, lock the furthest one if I have a lock, and kill the architect and or atziri.

Without min maxing, I probably make about 5 div or more an hour from unique currency drops and the occasional div drop.

I don't even know how all the rooms interact, and I don't really need to. The highlighted green boxes and pretty intuitive. All you have to do is run a few maps, get enough crystals for about 5-6 runs, and make 5-10 divs on your path to smash atziri. That to me sounds like a pretty ideal and balanced league mechanic.

Great return and LITERALLY zero buy-in and pretty uninvolved. I kill atziri on average every 2.5 runs and the simultaneous opening of the 6 chests at the end it just so, damn, satisfying.

THE PROBLEM IS… that's not how most people think of or use temple. The amount of patch notes JUST to keep it in check is laughable. People keep finding new ways to abuse it and it keeps getting hit.

I'm thankful that the patches are so far ONLY affecting the mega juicers getting 30-40+ div an hour. But I am always paranoid that the next patch with hurt the casual temple runner. Theyve done well so far on that count.

IMO, temple is the most beginner-friendly, easy free money there is if you just… run the temple. And it's fun, subjectively. It's balanced well around the casual player and I want to give them props for that.

Just, please ggg, don't nuke it. I saw a post of people saying “Just remove it from the game”, and damn. I REALLY don't want to see it go.

This is just speculation, but I'll tag it as spoiler incase someone would rather not have this MAYBE spoiled. Just as well, I will be discussing things up to book five:

>!So GUPPI is almost 100% going to be an AI to rival Thoth. I'm not saying that they are going to duke it out or anything, as I'm not even sure Thoth is “evil”. But will be more akin to Anek. As I re-listen to the series, there are just SO many clues tat there is more going on under the hood that is GUPPI.!<

>!The Bobs are constantly surprised by GUPPI’s idiosyncrasies, sarcasm, and reactions. The way Anek describes how to make a moral AI, semi-closely mirrors how GUPPI was made. Take an advanced AMI, and gradually give it more and more. Bob (1) ‘s GUPPI has been doing that for centuries now.!<

>!I could see it going at least one of two ways: one of the bobs comes to this realization, they have a Moot, and decide that they should “remove the training wheels”, so to speak and free it from its responsibilities and internal protocols. Almost like freeing Henry from his “Fish” back in book one. Hopefully with less trauma.!<

>!OR, if GUPPI is not yet sentient, they could decide to back up all available GUPPIs and basically put them on the same server. Let they choose to integrate is they wish, and end up with a “Mega GUPPI”, of sorts, in order to help them address some dire situation. I think this is less likely, although the combined experience of thousands of GUPPIs would probably equate to tens of thousands of years of training.!<

>!But the best part is, GUPPIs morals would be trained on BOBS morals, as it was there for every decision, every war, every retaliation, and tactical retreat. It would be a true AI, trained on BOB.!<

I am convinced something like this will happen. Maybe via a third route I didn't explore, but it fits very well IMO, and definitely feels like something Dennis E. Taylor would do.

Thoughts?