Tl;Dr - Any of you guys have any theories as to how Warframe's function? As in specifics, like "what is armour made of", or "how are they powered", etc. Not vague lore things like "The Heart of Deimos does it", but rather specifics as to how exactly those things work in universe.
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Hey! Obligatory spoiler warning! For a while, I've been wondering about the actual anatomy of a warframe, beyond just the old "person is infested, person is augmented, person is now warframe" that we know, and have been trying to theory-craft the specific details as to how they could be actually constructed in universe. The reason being is because I'm someone with a love for graphic design, and am considering getting into Tennogen, though I don't have a ton of actual confidence. Hence, I'm thinking of doing the single most complicated thing physically possible, and am going to use this knowledge to attempt to actually 3D model the full internals of warframes, removing pieces as needed whilst keeping others, in order to design the "Subderma" series of skins, which I'd then submit. The idea is to have them reveal the internal workings of a warframe, whilst not going full Sunder helmet and clearly showing a person inside to prevent spoilers. As a result, I'm wondering - what theories do you all have, based on what we know, as to how they function? Anything goes, so long as it's supported at least somewhat in game, and feel free not to read all of this before commenting, as what I'm about to go through is a god damned essay. But it is also a very detailed essay, so if you wanted any info as to how frames work, I guess here's a launching point for that. So without further ado, this is what I'm working from after six to seven years spent staring intently at at a monitor, doing literally anything other than studying:

Systems

Looking at the systems blueprint of any warframe, it's clear that it's representative of a skeleton. There's a clear collarbone and set of ribs visible, with a spine connecting it all. Looking at Xaku, however, won't actually reveal this structure anywhere on them, which to me implies that the systems are often directly implanted into the skeleton of a Warframe themselves. Now, Xaku isn't exactly a... normal... warframe, and so I'd be willing to wager that not all of the systems are present, instead just working through "void magic", and based on that, I can go on the assumption that all warframes contain a structure that at least superficially resemble that skeleton. Furthermore, whilst Xaku clearly has three different warframes making up their chassis, the skeleton is also just as clearly a single component, to me adding credence to the idea that warframe skeletons are all relatively similar, with similar (but not identical) shapes, and the same material across it, consisting of a tightly woven metal mesh. Plus, the systems blueprint only shows two ribs, but also shows an odd structure at the base of the spine, telling me that when crafting that component, all that's being made is the circuitry that's implanted into the frame's skeleton during infestation. As a result of these points, I'm quite confident that by finishing making a 3D render of the systems, and by slapping them onto Xaku's skeleton, we'd have a baseline on which to go from for all frames, ready to be customised individually when the time came around.

Power supply

Warframes clearly contain two power supplies, based on what we see in the Heart of Deimos quest. One being the Heart itself, providing a link to the void in order to power abilities and advanced, physics defying movement, and the other being designed to sustain basic functions such as comms, and simple, ordinary motion. The uplink to the Heart is actually really easy to design, as we already know what it looks like. The uplink would be directly connected to the systems, as they power abilities and such, and so all we need to do is get a clear look at some systems. Bringing out our old friend Xaku again, we can see that they have a small structure in their chest cavity with three glowing lines moving out in an inverted triangle pattern - the location on the skeleton where emissive effects are most prevalent. Now you may be thinking "Okay, cool, there's something that could be the Heart uplink, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is the Heart uplink", which is a fair point, though if you look at the file containing Xaku's model, courtesy of DE themselves on their "content files and examples" page, importing the FBX into Blender allows you to see the oh-so-conveniently individually named components that make up Xaku, with the structure in the centre of the skeleton being not only classed as within the same object data as the skeleton (aka entirely separate from the armour pieces you can see around it), but is also straight up called the Heart. Whilst this probably means nothing, lorewise, as nobody was really intended to see this outside of Tennogen artists, I'm taking this name and running with it.
The second power supply is a little more complicated, however, as we don't actually see it anywhere in game that I know of. In this case, the power doesn't come from any form of void uplink, otherwise during the Heart of Deimos quest, we would have instantly had our frame shut down with no way to move it. Through this, it'd make sense that whatever is providing energy here is some sort of battery. Based on this, and the fact that almost all frames require them for crafting in some capacity, I'd venture to say that this secondary power supply is made out of Orokin cells. In addition, as the cells are only rarely used when building individual components of frames, but rather are mostly featured as the fourth component, being used alongside the systems, neuroptics, and chassis, it'd have it's own mounting beyond being included in those. Due to this, I'd say that the secondary power source is probably sandwiched between the infested material and remaining muscle of the host, and the chassis, fitted just below it. In my eyes, it makes the most sense for this to be most often fitted atop the warframe's shoulder blades, as that region seems to have little in the way of actual mechanical parts.

Movement capabilities

Warframes contain ordinary people within them, however featuring extremely hardened, metallic skin, and immensely tough muscular tissues. The infestation used to make them is defined as a "technocyte", as seen in the description of nano spores, which means that infested cells are essentially tiny artificial machines in a similar vein to isos (and funnily enough, considering that the sentients are manufactured through a dark black sludge referred to by the tenebrous ephemera as "sentient unlight", and that the Alkonost has the ability to "birth neuro-carnivorous memes directly into the brain stem" of an ally, which results in them taking on a more sentient appearance - the sentients). Whilst Caliban would likely be made more of unlight than helminth cells, most frames therefore are a mix of human and infested flesh, which has hardened to become a very tight bond. Movement, thus, is accomplished exactly as in an ordinary human - with muscles.
However, some more advanced maneuvers, such as bullet jumping or aim gliding, become disabled when the Warframe looses connection to the Heart of Deimos. In addition, these specific methods of locomotion have effects associated. In the case of a bullet jump, a small explosion is detonated near the feet of the frame to act as propulsion (moddable with elements, implying void shenanigans); and in the case of aim gliding, the effect of the lifted status effect appears, but instead pointed downwards. As the explosion created when bullet jumping is entirely blast damage, and it's almost inaudible, I'd be willing to go on the assumption that it's less an actual detonation, but more just a rapid application of force in all directions from the feet of the frame - sort of like a radial aim glide at the feet. Whatever that visual effect is, it clearly applies force in the direction it's pointing (downwards for aim gliding, upwards for the Orvius/lifted status, and backwards when the Heart emitted a large energy pulse in the Heart of Deimos quest). As the Heart was able to generate a pulse in the same way that a bullet jump does (radial application to all nearby), I'd go on the assumption that this is effectively just pure void energy, as it either mimics the colours of whatever it's near, or takes on the energy colour of the influencing tool. Due to this, frames must have some method by which they can efficiently and reliably transfer void energy to near the outside of the frame, that isn't necessarily visible above the frame's skin. To work this one out, I recommend we take a look at Valkyr.
Valkyr is pretty useful to us, as when captured by Alad V, he removed all of her skin to put it onto Zanuka. Because of this, we can see to an extent what the chassis beneath looks like that's on every other frame. Looking here, we can see small silver inlays all across her body that appear different to the corpus technology that was grafted onto her, ending in small lights, with the same silver being used as plating in her head (As in by looking at the plates that cover her skull, they're tipped in the same silver. This is to distinguish it from the "halo" and collar that she was given by the corpus). To me, these look to be the most likely candidate for the void energy channels. They resemble a sort of exposed wire, in contrast to the other wires seen on her body, which are very clearly still coated in a cyan material. As these appear to encircle her whole body, in some capacity, and otherwise serve no clear purpose beyond sort of just being there, it makes sense to me that void energy is sent from the Heart uplink and through this specific cabling to allow for this temporary levitation, and for bullet jumping.

Shielding

Shielding is a short one, as we don't really ever see that much that indicates where it's generated from. What we do know, as a result of the Heart of Deimos quest, is that it's composed directly out of void energy. We also know that shield emitters are indeed a thing, as a result of Hildryn and her Balefire, but as for the construction of these, there's very little to go off of. Interestingly enough, these emitters appear to be biological in nature, as when Pillage is subsumed onto a Warframe, regardless of the frame that's using it, they will always have the pads appear atop their shoulders as a part of the animation, implying that Helminth augmented the frame to allow them to produce these. As these pads are also what allows Hildryn to roll, instead using a dash, and this isn't disabled by the destruction of the Heart, it implies that these aren't actually shields. This is also evidenced by the fact that Hildryn's dash doesn't affect her total shield count, and that Hildryn Einheri's shield blocks that comprise the skin are also not turned off when she runs out of shields. The Balefire, however, which does affect shield count, does make use of an emitter of almost identical design, and provides no defensive capability, does indeed become disabled when running low. This means that these emitters are capable of converting ordinary energy from orokin cells into a form of ineffective shielding that does little more than apply a slight force in a direction, however are also capable of using void energy to manufacture shielding constructs, such as a full protective barrier, or in the case of the balefire - a concentrated bolt. These emitters appear to essentially control where power is directed to on the frame, and how it's manifested. As a result, I believe that in some capacity, all frames outside of Xaku, Inaros, and Nidus make use of these emitters. Inaros and Nidus Lacking shields implies that they're using an alternate route by which they can cast abilities, and aren't at all employing emitters, meanwhile Xaku is almost completely corrupted and is more of a thrax than a warframe at this point, meaning their shielding likely come from the void tendrils somehow.

Chassis

The chassis is quite interesting in my opinion, as Valkyr and Limbo both clearly demonstrate that there are a lot of components to a chassis. Focusing on Valkyr first, there appears to be a combination of four different components that are integrated directly into the chassis, each distinguished by colour - black, orange, cyan, and silver. We already discussed silver in the "Movement Capabilities" section, however the others all seem to actually have an apparent purpose.
As we know that armour is integrated as a part of the chassis, because it can't be a part of the other components beyond natural toughness, we should in theory be able to see it here. Conveniently, Valkyr also happens to be the second most armoured frame in the game right now, second only to the actual tank that is Lavos. Due to this, I don't think it's unreasonable to infer that (whilst the skin of a warframe is described as "sword-steel" by Ballas) the actual toughness of a frame comes as a result of the orange plating that surrounds most of her body. Whilst the crafting ingredients suggest it's made of an alloy, I'd actually argue that it's some sort of highly resilient polymer. The reason for this is that polymers can be just as strong as metals when it comes to resisting damage, plus they're far less likely to corrode when facing the threats that a Warframe would be expecting to face. Also, if we're going on the assumption that Helminth is assisting in crafting these frames due to the nature of their assembly, and that they aren't made exclusively of the materials listed in the crafting recipes (just in majority), then taking a look at the description of a secretion made by any synthetic compound within Helminth tells us that they "exude these rope-like strands of filament", which could feasably make highly resistent armour, without requiring so many resources that it becomes a crafting requirement.
Adding credence to this is the second most prevalent type of component that we can see. As the alloy used to craft Valkyr comes specifically from pellets of ferrite and morphics, it makes a lot more sense that these materials make up the black sections of her body, assuming a strong, dark alloy, rather than becoming somehow corroded, making armour that's already compromised through rust, explaining the orange colour that way. As for what these sections of the body are, to me they seem to be a less dense form of armour that forms long, interlocking plates along her body, allowing for free movement whilst still providing some modicum of protection. Despite not being as strong as the polymer armour, this would still provide an added layer of protection, which to me says that frames with higher armour likely employ the polymer in their design, whilst those with lower make use of armour predominantly made from alloys. In certain cases, such as with Valkyr or Lavos, both may be present in the design.
Lastly, Valkyr has several cyan wires visible on her body. As Alad V used her skin to plate Zanuka (implying that even the skin of a warframe, despite it being physically far weaker than the armour plating beneath, still offers relatively strong protection), we can infer that there had to be a reason that these cabling-like sections were left untouched, implying that they're somehow integral to the warframe's function. As these sections can be seen passing into and out of the chassis, this says to me that the wiring here is actually the cabling used for the secondary power supply, as it's insulated like an ordinary wire would be (side note, exactly how gross is it that the wire insulation is literally just made of the skin of the warframe? Like actual tubes of skin inside the flesh. Blech).

Energy

In the section regarding the chassis of a Warframe, I mentioned that both Valkyr and Limbo provide a good insight as to how warframes work under the hood, however I didn't get into Limbo. This is because, whilst Limbo has a fully intact chassis, he does appear to have several glass "portholes" on his body, through which a constant swarm of raging energy can be seen. This answers a couple of very important questions, which is "if warframes draw void energy from the heart to power their abilities, then how do they run out of energy? And when they run out of energy, why don't they also lose the ability to bullet jump and maneuver in the ways that they do like when the Heart broke down?". The answer to this, in my headcanon, is actually pretty sneaky. In two specific transmissions over the radio on the top floor of the orbiter, it's possible to hear a grineer authorising ships for punching to different planets, and in these transmissions they appear to be monitoring for traces of what they specifically refer to as "Tenno energy residue". Not Void energy. This never sat well with me, as everywhere else, they refer to void energy as completely separate. So I was left wondering - what is this residue we keep hearing about?
To answer this, we can take a look back at Hildryn. Previously, we discussed how warframes often make use of a special kind of emitter that allows void energy to be channeled into specific forms, which to me says that whilst the tenno are capable of controlling void energy and directing it into each specific region of the frame, they are incapable of innately producing complex void constructs without at the very least a hell of a lot of training. If it were the same between tenno and warframes, then the newly awakened tenno wouldn't be capable of using any abilities until they started earning focus points, which clearly isn't the case. Tenno can fully master a warframe and their range of abilities without having any idea how to use void energy effectively without a frame. So what gives? Well, to me the emitters show that to make complex use of void energy, it has to pass through some sort of sequencing medium first. In the case of these emitters, they can produce slightly more advanced constructs, such as bolts, beams, thrust and auras in the case of Hildryn, however innately won't produce complex forms on their own.
I would argue that one way to resolve this would be to treat "energy" as two things. Void energy is raw energy from the void itself, and essentially works as you'd expect, however Tenno energy is entirely different, and isn't even energy at all. In fact, in my eyes, Tenno energy could be viewed as a form of technocyte cloud. By taking technocyte cells and charging them with void energy (which we know can happen thanks to Deimos showing infestation beginning to glow blue in the presence of void energy), they can be sent through emitters and can produce far more refined abilities. This would explain not only how Warframes can cast such advanced abilities, but also how they can manifest physical objects like exalted weapons. Physical things can be made out of void energy, but the only place we see this happen in lore is exclusively through conceptual embodiment (the love of Belric and Rania; the trauma that made Duviri; and the fear felt by the Zariman crew), and unless Wukong's iron staff is but a metaphor for something much worse, it wouldn't make sense for this to be made from the same Void energy. Saying it was constructed out of a technocyte swarm charged with void energy, however, makes far more sense to me. This means that energy is fundamentally just charged technocyte clouds, ready to be used as abilities, stored within the frame, explaining how we can run out. Limbo's windows show this energy within them, almost like viewing panes into the energy cells.
One small snag is that Sevagoth throws a bit of a spanner in the works with this one, as the shadow is described as being "concentrated void energy" by Cy, and was manifested long before Sevagoth himself went missing. Whilst we could hand wave this and say that the shadow is a manifestation made because Sevagoth was already searching for people to rescue before he went missing, and it's a manifestation of that need to save people, it doesn't quite feel right to me, and I'd be interested to know your thoughts on this.

The dreaded neuroptics

Ah, neuroptics. The thing that drove the Warframe community nuts a while back trying to work out what it's supposed to look like. The thing is, I was watching this debate, and I realised that I disagreed with every single side on display. Neuroptics is clearly just a portmanteau of "Neuron" and "Optics", very heavily implying that it's a device designed to link the visual feeds of the warframes with the operators undergoing transference. This is very unlikely to be crafting the ability for the Warframe to see, simply due to the fact that the warframes already contain people who could already do that. That'd be like crafting leg muscles. We got those already. For the same reason, this couldn't be building a brain of some sort, because again, we already have one of those to work with. So far, so simple. Instead, it must be some sort of device designed to facilitate some form of optical interfacing directly with the brain, rather than building those things itself. The issue I'm having with the debate, however, is that everyone appeared to be saying that it resembles a helmet somehow, and that you're crafting the helmet of the frame when making this. To me, this... makes no sense at all. Whilst I can see why one may see this as a helmet, especially as it used to be referred to as such in the foundry, this has since been changed, meaning it can't be relied on for current lore. Plus, when crafting alternate helmets, they're now called helmets in game. As a result, if we were just making the warframe's helmet, wouldn't we just see the head of the warframe instead of this vague shape? Just like when we make any other helmet in the game? It feels to me like a bit of a weird continuity error if we look at it that way. Considering that this was a deliberate change made by DE to specifically stop calling this a helmet, on top of the fact that there are many other things referred to as helmets which just show the actual result as their icon, I think it's safe to say that that isn't what this is. Plus, Citrine is missing, like, half her head, and unlike Xaku, there are no implied random void rules that would allow her to be visually missing a component. Also you can see all the way down to Umbra's eye, and there's clearly nothing between the chassis and the skull but flesh.
So, what is it then? Well, I think an alternate way to look at this would be to instead on trying to figure out what this looks like, to try and figure out how it specifically works. In the picture we see a side view, whereas in the systems and chassis, we see the front. As a result, it's possible that the side that we're seeing is simply the most external part of the device. In my mind, this would be implanted on the temple of a warframe, and would interface directly with the brain to harvest optical information through some form of internal wiring/direct connection to the nervous system, and would also double as the method by which operators controlled the frames. As it was stated by Ballas, warframes are fitted with transference bolts to allow for control, and so it isn't entirely out of the question that the neuroptics are effectively a variation on the transference bolt that also allows for the operator to see through the warframe's eyes, explaining how Umbra/the operator was able to override the control Ballas had at the end of the Sacrifice quest. Overload the bolt, drowning out his signal, and you can stab him. This is very much just theory-crafting, however, as there is very little in-game information regarding the neuroptics, and almost nothing we can gather visually from the blueprint beyond its shape. Another thing I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on.

Conclusion

If you guys have any further info or theories, or alternative ideas to those presented here, do tell! And if you just skipped to the end after seeing how long this was - fair enough, I have ADHD as well. I'm very interested to hear how you guys view this, and if I can get good enough with 3D modelling, I'd absolutely love to use this information to design some Tennogen based on it. There are probably some pretty cool designs you can do, and I'm already working on translating the systems blueprint icon into a full model around the size of an actual warframe's body, so as to employ variations of it when making future skins! Let me know your thoughts!
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Every day since I decided to look at this show, my obsession has only grown. Literally I cannot go a single day without absorbing hours, and I mean HOURS on various social media platforms just absorbing anything about this show.
I'll just be sitting down, drawing, like a normal person, right? and then 5 seconds later all I can think about is Bungou stray dogs, and the way it explores morality, the layers various characters have, and all the subtle little details, and it's just a downwards spiral from there.
The uncountable amount of fanfiction that I have read, all the silly little uquizzes, the time spent on pinterest just scrolling through memes that I wouldn't even glance at if they didn't reference the characters.
And I know it's not just me, but think show has officially become the food I consume, the water I drink, the AIR I BREATHE.
I genuinely could not imagine what my life would be like without Bungou Stray dogs. The worst part is, I just don't know why. I've hyperfixated on shows before, but never to this degree, and I notice a lot of people saying similar things. There has to be some kind of secret 💀

It honestly makes me sick how primal and depraved everything feels. It doesn’t matter what social media app I’m on or where I am—sexualization is everywhere. People draw over sexualized characters constantly, inappropriate ads pop up constantly and it feels like 90% of memes, TikToks and internet videos focus entirely on sex or NSFW content. Even the term NSFW doesn’t mean anything if the content is everywhere. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve had to filter anything I search up with “clean” proceeding the search and even then things still get through, I actively avoid sexual content and it still pops up in my feed. It’s getting worse and it feels like no one has any shame or prudence anymore. Even companies and advertisers on public billboards make disgusting innuendos in their ad campaigns and I can’t go on a single app without seeing boobs or a jiggling butt in my face.
As a recovering porn addict, it’s especially hard because I don’t want to backslide but I feel like I’m going to have to cut myself off from the internet entirely because everywhere I go, it’s just constant. And no one seems to bay an eye at all!

1) kangaroo chess: Same as chess, but a piece can just jump above another piece with these basic rules: a. You can not jump above 2 pieces the same time b. You can only jump one square further then the tool you are jumping above c. A king can do what's called: a kingaroo, meaning he can jump above tools which are in radius 1 of him, passing the tool by 1 square. d. Pawns can't eat while kangarooing, other tools can surely do that.
Point system:
Pawn=1 Horse=2 Bishop=3 Rook=6 Queen=10 I've put thought into this system after playing a few games against friends.
2) I wanted to call this anarchy chess but... I don't want anarchychess taking over my post and colonising even more subreddits:
In this game, the tools change. All tools are disks devided to 5 parts, each is equipped with a drawing of a different normal piece of chess. Now rules are: every time you move a tool, you switch the disk 1 unit to the right, transforming it to the next tool. The order of the disk is:
Pawn→Bishop Bishop→Rook Rook→Horseeee horse Horse →Queen Queen →pawn
Example: B1 horse to C3, but the horse now transformed into a queen, so it can do it's next move as C3 to E5.
3) nope chess / half anti chess:
For the 3 starting turns, everything is alright. The 4th round is the anti round, where each player plays a move for the opponent, in goal to make his position as much damage as possible. 1 more things, no undoing moves. Meaning if its now your turn after your opponent sent your queen from B6 to B4 you can't send her back. You can for instance take her to B5. Same thing if the opponent just played a move and you are now undoing it in the nope round. This rule applies only one turn after the move, meaning you can undo a move if it was done more then 1 turn ago.

Ok so I’ve been disappearing for a bit so I’ll explain
1-My finals are coming,yes they are,I might take a break from Reddit for a bit,however I’m still active on YouTube and insta,yes,I am totally active
2-some problems,for example I’ve got some requests from my followers to draw and I’ve been focusing on games
Yes I am still posting memes to the end of they day and I’m totally ok 👍

Ashes shaped like the entire rave remained in the outline of a single soaring rook. I awaited their arrival. I had known to go no further than Man's Bane. I first had to sort out the Choir. I had no choice but to choose which of them would stay and live with the animals and which ones could come with me and my talking crow Cory, back to our own world.
They had a chorus of questions, most of them difficult to answer, for they were the inquisitions of the enchanted and the insane. The gibberings of the transformed ravens, now escaped medieval asylum patients, earned the attention of the inhabitants of Man's Bane. I glanced around nervously at the various animals attempting to walk upright, some of them wearing a single article of clothing or clutching an artifact of the old world.
"We are here to sort out a few of you." I told them plainly. Many of the Choir were compulsive murderers and worse. I simply couldn't unleash them back on the world. They'd have to live among the animals.
I first pointed to Serene Sinclair. "Do you want to stay here or come with me?"
She walked over to where Cory and I were.
"Well if she's your first choice, why not all of them?" Cory squawked.
"You'll remain under my supervision, right?" I asked her.
"I just want to be helpful." She promised.
"You do? Is that right?" I stared. Cory made a grinding noise in the back of his throat that meant he found her words amusing somehow. He was laughing and said in Corvin:
"She quotes you, my Lord. Remember when you met my Winters?"
"Uh, yes." I clicked to him in annoyance. "She has magics."
"Oh. Is that all?" Cory sassed me.
We continued to argue in Corvin as I selected a few more of the Choir. I was being careful. If I picked the wrong one or wasn't careful of the commotion, I could have a riot of lunatics and beastmen. I just wanted to make it home in one piece.
"Dini Ghanat, Jessica Darling, Clide Brown." I called on several more dangerous ones, yet they were the ones that were too dangerous to leave behind. Cory clicked rapidly at me in disapproval.
"Your bird. It does not like me." Dini Ghanat said with his heavy accent. I reached into my bag and took out the little leather case with his serum inside.
"You will not operate without my oversight." I told him.
"Of course not. You are our fearless leader." Dini Ghanat grinned obsequiously. I trusted him as far as I could reach. I knew better than to leave him behind in the fertile world of unguarded labs and shuffling beastmen. He'd experiment on them and make some kind of weird animal-man realm that I would have to worry about. I wanted to leave Man's Bane behind and forget the world or time period entirely.
"Christo?" I asked the man with a different Christo in his mind. He looked at me as the Christo I could trust.
"You can come too." I told him. Then I told him he was on fire and the other Christo stared at me. I told that Christo: "Sorry. You gotta stay here. You will never have another birthday if you come with us. Here though, it is always Saturday. Tomorrow is your birthday, and you know what that means."
"I can play with Polly?" The other Christo asked. His menacing grin spread, reminding me vaguely of the cartoon of the Grinch from my childhood.
"Well, goodnight Christo." I smiled. Christo turned around and then looked at me and asked:
"Where are we going?"
"I'm going home and I am taking you with me." I promised.
"I don't think this is how this works." Cory advised me with mock cynicism.
"It was your idea!" I hissed back.
"Oh yeah." Cory made a noise that was his most mischievous.
I picked a few more before we took that final flight as ravens. I got Samual Monica, Castini Ishbaal and Father Dublin the Exorcist. We flew the rest of the way, backwards through time, as ravens. The Choir was split, I'd say those I left there became the Choir and those I took were no longer really of the Choir anymore.
The world had changed in many ways and yet it had stayed the same. What I mean, is that the disasters of the time when we struggled to close the book of evil, or the time we were in Dellfriar and the world ended, all seemed to be gone.
The effect of such horrors pressed in from the sides of the familiar world I had once known. I asked Cory:
"Am I experiencing hallucinations from the medications we were taking in Dellfriar?"
"No, my Lord. We are escaped mental hospital patients in the same world we left long ago. How is this possible?" Cory sounded amazed and spoke in English.
I looked at the assembled ex-Choir members with me. They were all somehow out-of-place if we weren't facing the post apocalyptic horrors I had expected.
"You look confused." Dini Ghanat told me.
"I thought." I stammered. "I thought things would be different out here."
"How? We escaped." Father Dublin smiled. "What did you expect?"
"A world in ruins and desolation. A world ruled by rampant monsters and vengeful enemies like the Folk Of The Shaded Places." I tried to explain what my expectations were. "This changes things."
"This world is coming apart at the seems. It is about to collapse. The ends of all worlds push at its sides, like a dying universe, everything dies." Serene Sinclair announced in proclamation.
"Now wait." I told her. "You sense all of that too?"
"Indeed. You have chosen a tribe of the most dangerous, and some might be too dangerous. You chose most of them not." Serene Sinclair prophesized me. "And you would know death either way. At least this way you shall know its form."
"I'm starting to like her too." Cory chirped meanly.
"Your bird doesn't like any of us, does he, Mr. Briar?" Dini Ghanat was somehow behind me. I'd taken my eye off of him for one second.
"He doesn't trust you. He's seen how dangerous you all are. I'm taking you home to my family, showing a lot of trust in all of you, despite what I too have seen you all do. However, unlike those we left behind, none of you have ever threatened me or Cory or my family. To be fair, you've never given me a reason not to trust you."
"You're speaking to all of us, then?" Clide Brown asked.
"Dude, you're a werewolf." I gestured that I was making my point anyway. He nodded and muttered:
"Good point. I see your point. Yeah."
"I couldn't leave you people behind. Over these years, stealing artifacts and everything, you all have become like this depraved, lunatic family to me. Stop drooling." I said. I was looking at Christo on my last beat. "The point is, I have another family. Can I count on all of you as I already have? I have to ask."
"You can't count on me. We don't know if the moon is full. I could kill everyone." Clide Brown had changed his discord as he spoke. His confidence always went out of him whenever anyone mentioned his other half.
"Cory, is the moon full?" I asked my talking crow. Cory called out and his crow's call was answered by another.
"Of course it is." Cory said in English.
"See?" Clide Brown started swearing.
"Relax, I am only joking. We have a few nights to get ready for your monthly puberty." Cory teased the agitated werewolf.
Clide Brown frowned but was obviously still far from any sort of anger. He had the best anger management skills.
We all got onto the back of a hay wagon with nobody driving it and rode into town. In the street outside Dr. Leidenfrost's apartment we stood, a gaggle of straight jackets and a gleaming razor sharp hook on the end of Jessica Darling's prosthetic arm. There were no other visible weapons, but I knew all of them were armed.
It was early evening and I sensed something watching us. They were in the shadows, moving along in the darkness and avoiding the streetlights as they turned on one-by-one in the gloom.
"What is it?" Father Dublin asked, fear beaded on his forehead as he realized we were being stalked.
"Folk Of The Shaded Places." I thought I saw one as a dark rod, moving in jagged animation through a patch of shade and shifting light. Somehow the Cambrian elder was like a centipede, in its general shape. They were intricate and with a hundred different limbs and their faces somehow evoked an image of all-teeth, the kind that snack on trilobites. I knew their intelligence too, an angry and ancient species, waiting for their world to return to their endless hands. It was just my imagination, but it was also reality. Folk Of the Shaded Places could travel instantly from one dark corner, into a dream, through a wall and back into another shadow. To see them in any capacity, always occurs as a partial glimpse, easy to ignore.
"What to they want?" Dini Ghanat was perplexed. He used a simple charm to look and try to see them magically. "I'd like to know them better."
"No, you wouldn't. Trust me." I assured the mad alchemist and disgraced scientist that stared after the spy from the darkness.
The spies in the darkness were gone, I could sense that they had left us.
"Daddy!" Came the voices of Persephone Briar and Penelope Leidenfrost, my daughters. They came running out to greet me.
"I knew you were coming. I've watched all of your flights." Penelope told me. Her heterochromic eyes were the most beautiful in the whole world. She blinked as she spoke to me for the first time in her life.
"Daddy, you're back. Sister told me you were here." Persephone told me.
I stared at her, unbelieving how she had grown. My mind flashed to the rampage of the giant horse, death, gemstones, all of it to serve the cats so that she would live. I had always loved her, even when she was not alive, at the beginning.
I hugged them both.
"Such a sweet reunion." Samual Monica commented. There was always a strange hint in his voice. Part of me was not happy to let him near my family, but also, he was family now too.
Then I looked up and saw the love of my life, after being away for so long. She stood there, every aspect of her was dark, as she stood in the shaft of light from her home. A fairy flitted from her shoulder back to the sanctuary of indoors.
"Heidi?" I stared and stood and trembled. My legs forgot their strength when I tried to walk towards her. Clide and Christo were there to hold me up.
"I can walk." I said softly and I did. I walked to Dr. Leidenfrost.
"Welcome home, Lord." Dr. Leidenfrost stared at me. I wondered if she still loved me too. I noticed Isidore approaching me. She hugged me and then stepped back next to Dr. Leidenfrost.
"Who are all of these people?" Dr. Leidenfrost asked me.
"These people are my new family members." I told her.
"A gang of murderers that have escaped from Dellfriar with you?" Dr. Leidenfrost asked strangely.
"Well - I mean -when you put it in that way." I argued against her wording.
"I've missed you so much!" Dr. Leidenfrost nearly jumped me in the parking lot.
"You all have to stay out here." Isidore told the escaped insane asylum patients. "Girls, come inside, now."
And our daughters obeyed and I went inside with my family and Cory flew on in ahead of me and landed on the back of the couch.
"Right now." Dr. Leidenfrost wanted to rekindle our marriage immediately. I went with her and did so. When we were rekindled we found it was almost morning already.
"Your friends are keeping quiet out there." Isidore told me, over breakfast.
"What is going on? You're the only people we've seen." I ate.
"There's a massive evacuation going on." Dr. Leidenfrost explained. "But Agent Saint called and told us to stay right here. She said it would be safe until she gets here."
"Why?" I asked.
"Supposedly there is to be a tsunami. That was more than two days ago." Dr. Leidenfrost nodded sagely. "It was all a lie."
"I see." I gulped. "We gotta feed them. No low blood sugar for our crazy people."
"I already fed them. I didn't want to stay in the apartment while you two, you know." Isidore blushed.
"Did you want some of him? He's still yours too." Dr. Leidenfrost teased her.
"Stop, Heidi." Isidore looked at me and our eyes met briefly. I wondered if she had ever loved me. It didn't matter, she loved me as a friend, which was fair enough. I hadn't felt particularly crazy about her, after-all.
Dr. Leidenfrost watched our gazes repulse each other like opposing magnets and made a clicking sound with her tongue. Cory appreciated the word and translated, hopping up and down with excitement:
"My Matron calls you both cowards!" Cory exclaimed in English.
"You are both cowards." Dr. Leidenfrost confirmed. "That's why I am the head of this family."
"Fair enough." I muttered. Isidore said nothing.
"I don't agree." The soft and melodious voice of our resident fairy spoke up. "Lord has shown courage when he fears for another's sake. I've seen him stand against wrongdoing with no guarantee he could survive."
I looked over and spotted Silver Bell alight upon Dr. Leidenfrost's shoulder. I smiled and greeted her:
"Hello Sylvia." I recalled her earthbound name and used it instead of her Faerie name.
"I've waited a long time to go home." Silver Bell was glowing. "Penelope has drawn my key, but she is not strong enough to conjure. She needs her father for that."
"What?" I asked.
"You stole the way for such a key to be crafted. In Faerie, it was your theft that removed the one who would have touched the gold to craft it into what we needed. No new key can be made, without the hand of a smith. Do you remember?" Silver Bell explained. In her voice she sounded tired, there was no resentment.
"I rescued a child from your queen." I recalled. "Is that the consequence?"
"There is a horror upon your world. If we do not reverse the ways of magic, Man will fall. Nothing good will rise in your place. I have learned of all these things while trapped in your realm. I must report to my queen that Faerie cannot stand and do nothing or we will be obliterated next. What happens to one part of the body affects the whole." Silver Bell spoke slowly and we all listened.
"What horror?" Dr. Leidenfrost asked, her voice hushed.
"Lord knows of it. That is why I know he will help me. Your daughter has drawn my key. Now her father will forge it for me. It must be done." Silver Bell demanded.
Dr. Leidenfrost stood up and went to her desk. She opened a drawer that contained a stack of drawings made by the girls that hadn't made it to the gallery on the refrigerator.
After a silent shuffling she found a drawing of a key. She stared at it and then her eyes watered. She hadn't known what it was.
I got up and walked over to her and said quietly:
"She is like me. She is also like you."
"I know Lord, that's what scares me."

Hi, my(24f) father passed away 11 months ago and since then I've had a spiritual awakening, quarter life crisis, substance abuse problems, broke up with my fiance (dated 5.5 years engaged for 3), got into another relationship sooner than planned, quit my job due to a mental breakdown and currently unemployed and clueless what to do, severe social anxiety, been trying to branch out and make friends and failing, wanting to pursue the arts and learn music such as guitar and piano but haven't actually practiced, ect..
I'm losing my mind right now. My new boyfriend (25M) is literally perfect. I didn't expect to meet someone that I manifested and he seems to really like me as well. We'll be together for 3 months next week and talking for 5. He's had some bad relationships in the past so I'm waiting for him to say I love you first but we basically say things like i really really like you ect and dance around the phrase. I know we are in love but haven't said it yet cause its "too soon". We don't text that often maybe one reply every 30-60 mins. It's been starting to bother me but he once thanked me for not constantly texting and that we are both okay with how everything is. I'm trying to play it cool. But I feel it starting to bother me more the longer he takes between replies because I know he's on his phone all day.
My main issue is he has really cool friends. And job. These cool friends are literally the cool kids from my high-school that I wasn't friends with. So I know ALL of them but they don't really know me. Most of them I've been following on insta since HS, only some follow me back. These are all artsy and theater kids. My man works for a art exhibit. His job isn't hiring but he's already asked for me when they start up again. He has one specific friend who is younger than us but she's literally everything I've been trying to become since my father died and I've been going through a identity crisis. She's super talented with photography, drawing and music. Shes in a band. Super cool. She's extremely funny and so is my BF. They joke and text a lot. She left a joke "parking ticket" on my bf car and he keeps it on his dash. He bought her merch on our first concert date (that I bought him tickets for) and just a bunch of other little things that bother me. Like I know he shows her music I show him and he reuses memes they send each other to me. He says he has female friends and I know he has a bunch but none of them he's attracted to like he is me. He's pansexual and has been in serious relationships with all the genders basically. I feel like im in competition with everyone. He's such a catch it's impossible to not believe everyone else sees him the same way I do. This one friend makes me extremely insecure. I've mentioned her in the past and he says it's nothing but does say how cool she is. She's apparently a-romantic and not interested in realtionships. I think emotional cheating is worse than physical and close friendships like that is a trigger for me. I'm immature and need help. It's like I hate him and build up the huge narrative in my head about him when we aren't together but I'm really not because I stalk their social medias and I'm upset by how great their lives are and how cool they are and how much they all want to be close to my BF. When we are together it's great. Its a rollercoaster. I also desperately want him to introduce me to them but I feel like that's so pathetic. I want to be their friends too but I'm not good enough or funny enough. I always clam up in social situations and I come off as rude or boring. I'm not quick witted. They are all into improv and high energy and I can't keep up. I don't want to watch them all flirt with my BF as I sit there quietly.
I think I'm jealous of my boyfriend's life. I wish I had the friendships and persona he has. I'm jealous of all his friends. I hate myself. I literally quit my job to focus on art and becoming more confident and it's been 3 weeks and I haven't done anything but lay around and have panic attacks. I need help. Please suggest self help books or methods to start being able to do things. I'm so sick and tired of being like this.
It literally feels like I'm flying too close to the sun. I'm terrified things can go wrong because things always go wrong and i ruin everything. I'm scared I'm going to take a flame thrower to everything before I even get the chance to try because to fail at this (becoming these people's friends and my relationship as a whole) I don't think I can recover from. This is too high of a stake for me. I'm so scared. But it's also like if this goes right and I can just become more confident in myself this would be a fairy tale ending. I'm under a lot of pressure I put on myself and can't stop.

Some of you may have noticed that I haven't been providing consistent updates in the back half of this spoiler season. Well, to be honest, between the Gamespot reveal turning out to reveal multiple cards that weren't part of the main draftable cards, and all the leaks that started to crop up, plus the open-ended nature of a few of these clues this time around, it became increasingly difficult to keep up with everything. I decided to wait until the end this time so that I could deliver a proper collection of clue results. I hope this is not something I will have to do again for future reveal seasons. That being said, let's check out the final results!
Link to the clues below:
https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/718159296243859457/maros-the-lord-of-the-rings-teaser-before

• five different card types get the legendary supertype (Artifact, Creature, Land, Enchantment, Instant)
• a decently sized "legendary matters" theme (first seen on Frodo Baggins and Delighted Halfling)
• new nonmana ward costs (Sauron, the Dark Lord, sacrifice a legendary artifact or legendary creature, Saruman of Many Colors, Discard an enchantment, instant, or sorcery card)
• a mechanic returns but now references a different creature type (Amass, but for Orcs)
• a card that makes a Smaug creature token (There and Back Again, it’s a 6/6 Red Dragon with Flying and Haste, and when it dies it gives you 14 Treasures)
• two three-color and one four-color legendary creature to go along with the five-color one already previewed (Sauron, the Dark Lord, Grixis, Saruman of Many Colors, Esper, and Aragorn the Uniter, RGWU)
• a lot of one-of "creature type matters" cards (Meriadoc Brandybuck, Halflings, Doors of Durin, Dwarves and Elves, Shadowfax, Lord of Horses, Horses, Gwaihir, the Windlord, Birds, Shelob, Child of Ungoliant, Spiders, Nazgul, Wraiths, Flame of Anor, Wizards, King of the Oathbreakers, Spirits)
• a mechanic returns that I had to fight tooth and nail to get into the set it premiered in (Historic)
• a new creature type gets its own equip cost (Dunedain Blade, Human)
• some counters in the set: burden (The One Ring), deathtouch, first strike, lifelink, vigilance (Aragorn, Company Leader), hope (Dawn of a New Age), influence (Palantir of Orthanc), indestructible (Arwen, Mortal Queen), lore (Tom Bombadil), stun (The Watcher in the Water), verse (Lost Isle Calling), and +1/+1 (a long list of them)
• "Whenever you attack with Merry and another legendary creature," (Merry, Esquire of Rohan, draw a card)
• "Then create a Food token for each creature you control." (The Battle of Bywater, destroys all creatures with power 3 or greater, then does this)
• "Remove an indestructible counter from Arwen:" (Arwen, Mortal Queen, do this to make another creature indestructible for the turn; Arwen and that creature also get +1/+1 and lifelink counters)
• "Copy any number of target instant and/or sorcery spells." (Display of Power, does exactly that)
• "Whenever you draw a card during an opponent's turn, create a 1/1 blue Tentacle creature token." (The Watcher in the Water, relevant as you can stun things when they die)
• "Whenever a creature an opponent control dies, put a +1/+1 counter on Legolas." (Legolas, Counter of Kills)
• "Target opponent gains control of target Horse you control." (Bill Ferny, Bree Swindler, when this is blocked you may do this to remove him from combat and create three Treasures)
• "When this ability resolves for the third time this turn, Gimli fights up to one target creature you don't control." (Gimli, Mournful Avenger, who gets a +1/+1 counter every time another creature you control dies)
• "You may pay 0 rather than pay the equip cost of the first equip ability you activate during each of your turns." (Forge Anew, an enchantment that also returns an equipment on ETB and lets you equip at instant speed during your turn)
• "Whenever you put one or more counters on Aragorn, put one of each of those kinds of counters on up to one other target creature." (Aragorn, Company Leader, relevant as you put a keyword counter on him whenever the Ring tempts you and he does not become your Ringbearer)
• Legendary Creature – Avatar Demon (The Balrog, Durin's Bane)
• Legendary Creature – Bird Noble (Landroval, Horizon Witness, "Gwaihir, the Windlord")
• Legendary Creature – Halfling Knight (Merry, Esquire of Rohan)
• Legendary Creature – Halfling Soldier (Pippin, Guard of the Citadel)
• Legendary Creature – Horse (Bill the Pony, Shadowfax, Lord of Horses)
• Legendary Creature – Kraken (The Watcher in the Water)
• Legendary Creature – Nymph (Goldberry, River-Daughter)
• Legendary Creature – Spirit Noble (King of the Oathbreakers)
• Legendary Creature – Spider Demon (Shelob, Child of Ungoliant)
• Legendary Creature – Wraith Noble (Witch-king of Angmar)
• "Birthday Escape"
• "Breaking of the Fellowship"
• "Fear, Fire, Foes!"
• "Grond, the Gatebreaker"
• "Horses of the Bruinen"
• "Lembas"
• "One Ring to Rule Them All"
• "Oliphaunt"
• "Second Breakfast"
• "There and Back Again"

As always, feel free to let me know if there is anything I've missed. I hope to see you all again for Wilds of Eldraine!

CONTEXT: The Iron Hands can simulate any recorded memory of past Iron Hands. This is used for training, intelligence and so on.
Stronos is an Iron Hands Marine. He is often disliked and mistrusted by his comrades due to his reluctance to embrace the mantra of the flesh being weak. Although he has significant augmentations himself, something about the Iron Hands' cold adherence to algorithms in battle and decision making bothers him.
As Stronos continues to question the doctrines and practices of his chapter, he begins to unravel the secrets of the Iron Hands which make the Dark Angels' internal politics look like children's play.
PART 1: THE CONCLAVE: Iron Father Kristos is a controversial, but increasingly powerful figure in the Iron Hands. His rise to power came with his crushing of a WAAAGH, but the specifics of that campaign are simultaneously very controversial & secretive.
His actions were so controversial, a conclave was created by Kristos to represent him to the Iron Council. Despite the controversy he creates, Kristos is incredibly powerful both as an individual and a commander.

“Blessings and benedictions of Mars.’ Velt smiled graciously. ‘Your criticisms are noted and welcomed–’ the scratching of meme-quill on parchment recorded his contrition for the future historians ‘–and I will be improved for the recognition of my prior failings.’
‘See to it,’ Verrox grumbled.
‘I will, Iron Father. As you know, the Iron Council demands the uprising be crushed immediately and utterly. To the last soul. Word of the Iron Hands’ failure to prevent insurrection within their own system limits cannot be allowed to spread. It will draw unwelcome attention at a difficult time, when the conclave of Kristos continues to engender discord within.’
‘I do not care what others think.’
‘What you will not have heard in open council,’ Velt went on, ‘is that Warleader Kristos himself has demanded the Mechanicus resolve this insurrection.’
‘Former warleader,’ said Verrox. ‘The Iron Fathers have chosen not to elevate one of our number to lead. Not since the debacle on Columnus.’
‘Putative,’ Quorus reprimanded the Iron Father. ‘The morality of Iron Father Kristos’ methodology remains in dispute. That is the entire basis of the conclave. He would undoubtedly emphasise that the Weirdwaaagh was crushed with minimal losses.”

So we can glimpse from conversations about him that Kristos is both disliked and respected. Guymer does an excellent job of portraying Kristos as someone worthy of this reputation, but most noteworthy is the mention of the Weirdwaaagh that he crushed.
Why is it so controversial? Stronos does not actively seek out the truth but it is eventually given to him.
PART 2: DISCORD BETWEEN IRON FATHERS: In this section, Stronos is shaken after learning a member of the Raven Guard was able to sneak around him undetected. He goes to the tech priests for a check-up and an upgrade, but encounters Tubriik Ares, an Iron Father and a Dreadnought.

“Is Stronos injured?’
Stronos considered silence, but decided that he could keep nothing from the ancient. ‘I am defective. I seek to rectify that.’
‘How so?’
‘The Raven’s son proved himself my superior. I must improve and adapt.’
‘Improve and adapt.’ Ares’ vocabularisers rumbled with scorn. ‘We recall a time when Iron Hands were less like Kristos and more like Kardan Stronos. They were ruthless, yes, but adaptable, not slaves to calculus.”

The calculus is a complex, algorithmic system that dictates every part of a battle to the Iron Hands. Most Iron Hands will follow the calculus to the letter during a battle, a practice that Stronos himself dislikes but is pushed for very strongly by Kristos and his conclave.
Interestingly, Ares, a Dreadnought and an Iron Father, dislikes the modern Iron Hands' reverence of it.

“The Kristosian question makes all matters subject to doubt,’ Stronos said to Ares, voice low. ‘All will be as it once was once the arguments are resolved.’
Ares turned from the Apothecary to him. His emptiness seemed for a moment… sorrowful. ‘Kardan Stronos speaks of the arguments, but what does he know of the question, for there is only one?’
Stronos made to formulate an answer, only to realise he had none. Often he had railed against the waste of energy that the conclave brought on the Iron Council, but had never found the time to learn for himself what, in effect, it was all for. He shook his head honestly. He had been built to be a war machine. This round voyage to Medusa was the first time since his novitiation that he had not been either in the thick of a warzone or in transit from one to another.”

Ares' sorrow is a noteworthy reaction. A sign that not all Iron Hands condone the actions of Kristos.

“I know little of Kristos beyond his roll of honours,’ said Stronos, stung. ‘I know that he was once considered an exemplar of the Iron Creed.’
‘As it is now interpreted for you, perhaps.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ demanded Haas [the Apothecary working on Stronos].
Ares did not answer directly. ‘It began on Columnus,’ he said.
‘Everyone knows that,’ Haas said, dismissively, then picked up a spoon-headed implement from his medicae trolley and bent towards Stronos.
‘And what happened there to cause such crisis?’ Ares countered.
Stronos couldn’t answer. He looked to Haas. The Apothecary let out a frustrated sigh and said nothing, focusing instead on Stronos’ eye. He had no answer either.”

PART 3: THE CALCULUS: To show him the truth, Ares takes Stronos to the Simulus. With the Simulus, Stronos can experience the memories of anyone at the event - the Simulus uses complex algorithms and calculations to accurately simulate the POV of anyone at a recorded event, even if the perspective of that individual is not recorded in data.
The simulus jumps to the planet Columnus where the Raven Guard and the Iron Hands are fighting an Ork Waaagh together. Stronos sees the events from the perspective of Captain Stenn

“ Stronos canted, and though he was unconscious of his physical body he could somehow feel that he spoke with a strained jaw and through gritted teeth.
He had a bitter, illogical loathing for the descendants of Corax that he could not explain. Having just experienced a small part of Orvid Stenn’s existence, he felt that he should feel greater empathy for his brother Space Marine, but he did not. What he felt was greater ambivalence, as though along with his body he had been dissociated from everything of his own experience that could have made him care. He was not Orvid Stenn, and the dissonant notion arose that he might equally not be Kardan Stronos. He was nobody, and anybody had the potential to be him.
He was simulus – the collective.”

...

“The Raven Guard were spread along the length of the thigh-height rockcrete wall that demarcated the bombed-out lot of haulage depot 764 from the adjoining premises. It wasn’t much, but it was something. With the exception of some minor damage, it had weathered the destruction of the outer defences relatively intact, a credit to the Administratum clerk that had overseen its construction, and ran roughly parallel to where the curtain wall had been until ten minutes before.”

After being driven back by the Orks, the Imperial forces realize that the Waaagh is being led by a warpboss who is granting the orks unnatural bravery and fierceness. The Raven Guard hold the front line alongside mortal troops.

“He had heard in dispatches of the psychic energies that flowed through their Gargants – weapon grids, shields and piercing uncanny augurs – and that brought their lumpen drop ships to ground still. He had heard too of the court of warpheads with which the self-styled warpboss, Zagdakka, surrounded himself, and had lost two squads of his most experienced Scouts in a failed attempt at thinning their “numbers. He saw now with his own eyes the weird energy that flowed through these greenskins in their battle-madness like some manner of psychic connective tissue, the brawn and sinew of some gestalt ork that drove them unto death with a single, overriding will. The fire discipline of the Raven Guard and their mortal allies slaughtered greenskins every minute by the hundred, but they didn’t seem to care, hurling themselves recklessly against the Imperial guns as though possessed.
Not that the blasted Iron Hands would allow for the slightest deviation from their precious calculus. Stenn sneered, his pistol emitting a final hiss as coolant jets sprayed from the weapon’s muzzle and the vents locked. He thumbed off the safety and selected rapid fire.
He could teach the Iron Hands a thing or two about logic.
‘Kristos, you honourless shell, I’m talking to you.’ He raged into the vox as he seared the heaving mass of orks with plasma. Too soon, heat warnings blinked red on the pistol’s side and he was forced to flick back to vent. ‘I need reinforcements and I need them now. Now, Kristos! I want a creeping artillery barrage walking outwards from the outer “wall over the southern highway and I want aeronautica backup. Kristos!”

As the Raven Guard fight tooth and nail, Captain Stenn and the rest of the Raven Guard realize the Iron Hands are standing behind them but not engaging.

“A squad of Iron Hands Centurions, almost as well camouflaged as the Raven Guard themselves in their huge black warsuits and perfect stillness. Their hurricane bolters were unloaded and pointed at the ground or at walls, whichever direction they had happened to be facing when the strange malaise of inaction had taken them. Stenn regarded them with fury. The few Iron Hands he had seen had been that way, ever since the unexpected psychic onslaught had levelled the south wall outright. At first he had wondered if it was a secondary effect of Zagdakka’s powers, but the Raven Guard and their mortal allies were unaffected. Yavid had a replacement eye as well as a bionic arm and he remained functional, as did the crew interfaces of their vehicles. As did the damned skitarii.”

...

“The Centurions moved!
There they were, silent as the blown-out repair shops through which they came, ghosts of the machine bound forever to a doomed cycle of destruction and repair. The firepower of the Centurions alone would have ripped a hole into the ork horde as wide as the gates of the Ravenspire, but six full squads of Tactical Marines also moved up through the rubble behind them. They spread out, taking fire-positions just beyond the chokepoint where Stenn’s efforts held the orks at bay. What were they waiting for? He saw a pair of hellfire Dreadnoughts lumbering into position either side of the smaller Centurions, and then heard the weary collapse of a pockmarked stretch of rockcrete as the glacis plate of a Redeemer pattern Land Raider drove through it. Its sponson flamestorm cannons traversed to track the flows of the ork horde, liquid promethium dribbling to the rubble floor.
Stenn cursed as he punched his lightning claw through a charging ork’s ribs. Never expect an Iron Hand to commit until he was good and ready.”

...

“What are you waiting for?’ He shot an ork in the face as it made to barrel towards Yavid, and found himself in the sights of the nearest Iron Hands squad. They had bolters locked and aimed, but for some reason held their fire. Their eye slits shone an ephemeral white, but they could have been decoy suits for all the urgency they showed. ‘Shoot, curse you!’
A horrible sense of premonition grew under his skin like a worm. Stenn looked over his shoulder and >> RESTRICTED DATA >>”

The simulus is interrupted and Stronos learns from Ares that these events have been hidden from normal viewers. However, the data cannot be falsified even by Iron Fathers so Ares and Stronos continue watching.
We continue watching the Raven Guard struggle against the Warpwaaagh as the Raven Guard line begins to fall. Captain Stenn valiantly holds the line but warp powered orks are chipping away at the Raven Guard. He recognizes that the Iron Hands are holding back because of their calculus, but does not anticipate the final tactic the calculus commands.

“Stenn gave a grunt of pain as psychic fingers tightened around him and squeezed. ‘Damn you >> RESTRICTED DATA >> Just kill me yourself.’ His armour cracked like a sea-crustacean’s shell, blood spurting from ruptured seals as his body was crushed. He screamed, genhanced anatomy fighting a battle with pain that had been stacked well against it from the outset. ‘Emperor forgive you!’
With every scrap of conscious thought locked away in hardened centres of his brain structure he cursed the Iron Hands. He cursed the casual brutality, the bare calculation of risk versus reward. His last thoughts before those final redoubts succumbed to braindeath were not of the pain, nor of his brother Raven Guard that fell to the mind-blasts of the warpboss’ retinue, nor even of the Iron Hands themselves as they finally descended on the fray. With the enemy leaders bottled up with the last of the Raven Guard, the Iron Hands opened fire. Tactical Marines, Centurions, Land Raiders, each warrior a cog in a war machine that sprayed fire to a perfectly choreographed maelstrom that consumed Warpboss Zagdakka, his retinue, the Raven Guard, and Stenn himself.
But he was not thinking about that. He was thinking about Dawnbreak.
Because Iron Hands did not make mistakes.
>>> TERMINATING SIMULUS.”

TL;DR The Raven Guard and Iron Hands are defending against a Warpwaaagh. In the final, climactic battle, the Iron Hands under the command of Kristos and the calculus, determine that the most efficient way to win the battle was to use the RG and IG as human shields, and only fire once the Warpboss was in range. Kristos rises to infamy because of his methods, which resulted in minimal losses for the IH.
In part, this incident is linked to an innate hatred of the Raven Guard that many Iron Hands have. However, as implied when Stronos first enters the Simulus, it's suggested that this hatred has been programmed into the Iron Hands' calculus.
The calculus itself isn't unlike incredibly important algorithms that exist in companies today. Any changes require a collective vote, and the entities that have worked on it include Iron Fathers and important tech priests. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of conspiracies. If you want to find out how the Iron Hands are actually way worse than the Dark Angels in terms of secret circles and internal politics, I highly recommend Guymer's books.
Stronos is one of the most complex Space Marine protagonists I've read. He believes in many of the Iron Hands' tenets, yet cannot help but question aspects that the rest of his peers readily accept. It's an interesting look at how the dogmatic attitudes of the Space Marines often prime them for corruption as much as it protects them.

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Chapter 27 - I Guess a Bathhouse Episode was Inevitable
Last Time: Having attained at least some measure or personal safety, the party recovered from their wounds in a forest clearing. Aiden awoke from his nightmare-troubled sleep to see everyone waiting. They had found a fortuitous ally in the form of Alex, a teamster who had happened upon them during their flight from Tripit, though they were away retrieving the party’s belongings. The day passed peacefully enough, and good news was had when Oxcard awoke from his sleep. In the relative quiet, plans were made for what the party would do going forward. Aiden, Laran, Leor, and Oriwyn would follow Arcadia and Oxcard as they made their way to Diareen, a distant trade city. In addition to following them, Aiden made Arcadia and Oxcard the offer to join their party. The two siblings deferred their answer but acquiesced to the party joining them on their trip, and thus it was that they set travel that night at a much more leisurely pace than they had been forced to take the night before.
We had been traveling for about three days. During the first, all of us had been jumpy. Many small clumps of people lined the roads that led from Tripit, little communities that arose in order to be near Tripit or which persisted despite the meteoric growth of their larger neighbor. Any time someone glanced over at us, I felt like they were going to report our whereabouts to Daisy and we would need to flee into the darkness. Luckily, however, there were no incidents and we began to be able to fully relax.
Oxcard was making a good recovery. He still rode in the cart more often than not, with Oriwyn often joining him to minister to his wounds as best she could. It quickly became apparent that he knew more about treating injuries than Oriwyn, so her attempts quickly turned into lessons. Arcadia normally walked nearby, chatting pleasantly with Oxcard whenever he otherwise didn’t have anything to do - I had noticed she didn’t talk to the rest of the party as much, but given the circumstances I figured that her joy at saving Ox merited a little bit of single-minded focus.
It felt strange to lead the group with nothing really going on. We had too many injuries to really try to train, and we wanted to spend as much time as we could traveling to put some distance behind us just in case someone was following, so we barely acted like an adventuring party. In general, it felt more like we were a group of backpackers who had run into each other and decided to stick together rather than an adventuring party on a quest for future glory.
All in all, I couldn’t say I really minded it.
In the quiet times after we’d made camp but before I fell asleep, I would occasionally check Lorna’s pocket mirror. The first time I did, I was unsurprised to learn we had all leveled up - I was level six, Laran and Leor were level seven, Oriwyn was level eight, Arcadia was level five, and Oxcard was level six. In addition to that, I had increased in bond with everybody. After such a harrowing venture, it felt right.
About midway through the third day of travel, Alex called out to us all, suddenly excited.
“I thought this looked familiar! See the weird tree that looks like it was hit by lightning? And that pile of boulders over there that kind of looks like a bunny? If we take the side road we’ll find in about ten minutes, then we’ll get to YaDa’s!”
I had no idea what Alex was talking about, so I shot a look around to the rest of the party. They seemed equally as mystified, so I decided to take one for the team.
“Uh, YaDa’s? What is that?”
Alex slapped a hand to their heart as if they’d been offended.
“You don’t know of YaDa’s? It's the finest combination inn, general store, and bathhouse in all of Tal!”
I snorted with laughter at Alex’s mock indignation. The place certainly sounded interesting - even after only three days on the road, I could do with an inn, a general store, and a bathhouse. If they all happened to be in the same building, then that was all the better for it. I did have one question though.
“I think we’re interested, assuming it won’t cause us too much delay. That being said, why is someone trying to run a business out in the middle of nowhere? Sure we’re not too far from Tripit and we’re on a decently large road, but I can’t imagine that enough people pass through to make it fully worth their while.”
Alex just shrugged and smiled.
“The owners seem to do just fine for themselves! Maybe it’s because they tend to get a lot of repeat customers. I’m not the only one who looks forward to my path taking me by YaDa’s - in fact, I stop pretty much every time I’m going to or from Tripit!”
I nodded along as Alex continued to ramble about some of the amenities of YaDa’s. Everyone else seemed interested too, so it wasn’t much of a decision to declare we would stop in and rest the remainder of the day. Everyone’s mood got an immediate boost and we all moved faster - even the pack animals pulling the cart seemed excited. Soon enough we found a simple wooden sign next to a side road, which Alex directed us down.
The sign had three pictograms on it - a coin purse, a plate of food, and a steaming bath. As I looked at them, my brain started to work out what order I wanted to do the actions they represented in.
Oriwyn’s eyes were bright and wide open as we came down the path. Already, a building could be seen in the distance. It was large for how little else stood near it - a big, blocky building that matched what I thought an inn should look like was flanked by a smaller, blocky building and a large geodesic dome. I blinked a few times, startled by the shape. It looked like triangular panes of glass rested on a wooden substructure, making a shape that I always associated with retrofuturism. Leor looked interested too - maybe she had some interest in architecture?
As we approached, Alex rumbled their wagon to a halt.
“You six - sorry Brams, seven - go ahead and run in ahead of me. I have an understanding with the owners so I’m going to hitch Peggy and Gary up in the stables before I try to get settled. Someone should be working the front desk - introduce yourself, they’re friendly!”
We thanked Alex for their insight and made our way into the building. We entered into a slightly small space - it wasn’t cramped, but it definitely felt small for what I associated with the entryway for an inn. A few plush chairs were arranged around a fireplace on one wall and a desk stood at the far end. It was currently unoccupied, but I saw a small hanging bell and a hammer on an iron stand on the desk. Shrugging, I took point and walked up to the desk. I glanced around but couldn’t see anyone, so I picked up the hammer and tapped the bell. The resulting noise was surprisingly loud and the answer was almost instant.
“So sorry! Be with you in a second!” came a deep but feminine sounding voice. Sure enough, after a short time had passed, a door opened and a woman stepped through.
To call the woman tall felt almost like an understatement. It seemed like she needed to duck under the doorframe - my best guess is that she was six foot eight or taller. She was built in a way that suggested the Ghost of Christmas Present to me - red hair and all - and when she walked behind the desk it looked comically small before her. She appeared to be human, but I wondered if giants were a thing in Tal - if they were, she definitely looked the part.
“Welcome to YaDa’s!” she said, smiling brightly. She swept a hand up to herself by way of introduction. “My name is Ya, and Da is around elsewhere, and together we run YaDa’s! I don’t think I recognize you - is this your first time?”
Leor was the one who stepped up to answer, which surprised me. I shifted back a little to let her take point.
“Yes, this is our first time, though you came highly recommended by our associate Alex. I believe they should be joining us soon!”
Ya beamed behind the desk.
“Oh! Alex is a good sort - glad to see them back! Their favorite room is even open right now - unless they’d be staying with you?”
“We hadn’t discussed how we would be doing lodging arrangements, but I assume Alex may want some peace and quiet after having us unexpectedly tail along for a few days. What sort of accommodations are there?”
Ya ran a quick count on our number. “For six? We have suites that can take six, or you could do three rooms of two. Honestly, it’s cheaper if you’re all together, and we have a harder time filling the big rooms anyway.
It was at that moment that Brams began to try to scale Ya’s desk. With a scrabbling sound and some snorting, he made his presence known. Ya looked down, looked a little surprised, then reached over the desk and held out her arms. Brams gladly stopped scrabbling and flopped into the proffered embrace, so Ya lifted him and placed him on the desk.
“My my, aren’t you a strange one, little creature! Can’t say I’ve seen your like before…”
Brams made a snorting sound that seemed almost indignant and shook himself. His tail wiggled with the end of the shake, then he sat and stared up at Ya. There was a moment’s silence and Brams looked very intent - all of us leaned in a little, as it seemed like Brams was about to do something. A violent sneeze burst from his muzzle, making us all jump, and the moment was over. Ya smiled at him and tousled the hair on top of his head with her huge hands.
“Well, sorry for not including you in the count. I’m sure that the room will fit seven, though you may need to squeeze a little. Follow me!”
With that, Ya pulled a bulky key from a pocket in her pants. She bent down and unlocked a drawer in the desk, withdrawing a smaller key. As she handed it to Leor, she gave her some instructions.
“Now this key is enchanted. After we’ve opened your door, you’ll have ten minutes to make as many copies as you’ll need. Just take the key, leave it on an open spot of the table, and make sure nobody looks at it for about a minute. When you look back, there’ll be a second key on the table. Take the key and give it to someone - have them put it out of sight - and repeat it until you have what you need! When you’re done, stroke the first key and tell it thanks and it’ll stop duplicating itself.”
I chuckled - hotel key cards had nothing on what I’d just seen. Sure the whole system seemed a little convoluted, and there was a part of me that wanted to keep summoning keys for a few hours just to see how many I could make, but it still felt really cool. In a way, it felt like proper magic, like in a fairy tale.
It was amazing how quickly parts of Tal had become passé to me. I figured since I’d been living in Tal for a while, it was natural that I'd done my best to try and fit in, which would explain how I so quickly became inured to the magical wonders of the world. After all, it seemed like my life was going to continue on as it had been for the foreseeable future. Still, sometimes something small would hit me over the head with a sudden feeling that I was somewhere different from Earth.
Over time, that feeling had been less and less negative.
We followed Ya as she led us to our room. She had to slow a little, as Arcadia made it a point to walk in front of Oxcard and walk slowly so he wouldn’t try to keep up with the tall woman and possibly re-open his wounds. Despite the delay however, we made it to our rooms fine before too awful long.
Our lodgings were simple but spacious. Beds lined two of the walls, creating a corner for sleeping that stood opposed to a clear space with some tables, chairs, and what appeared to be a simple wood-fired stove. A stack of small firewood sat in a basket and thick quilts covered the bed, and overall the whole place gave off a very cozy feeling.
We wasted no time in thanking Ya and starting to get settled in. Arcadia, Oxcard, and Oriwyn took the three beds on one wall while Leor, Laran, and I took the remaining. Leor busied herself making keys, though had some trouble because Oriwyn kept trying to sneak a peek of the key when it split, causing the magic to not work. Eventually though, each of us had a copy - we even made a copy for Brams and tied it around his neck loosely with a piece of ribbon, figuring that it would be a good backup. Leor had an odd look on her face when she began to stroke the key and tell it thank you, which got the rest of us laughing. The key shivered in her hand and let out a contented sigh, which made Leor drop it. Oxcard started laughing so hard that he doubled over in pain, but there was no damage done and the mood stayed high. I decided I should address everyone and come up with something of a game plan.
“Well everyone, it looks like we have some R and R time on our hands! What do people want to do?”
What followed was a pleasantly lively discussion. Arcadia, Laran, and I really wanted to see about the bathhouse side of things, while Oriwyn and Leor argued that they were hungry. Oxcard stayed quiet for most of the deliberation, offering noncommittal answers if ever directly asked about anything, which I found a little strange but which I didn’t press on. The whole time, Brams ran laps around the room, flapping his wings as he jumped from bed to bed. I noticed he seemed to be getting just the littlest bit of a glide going as he leapt over the longer stretches - I would bring that up with Ori later. It also seemed like a positive development that the movement didn’t cause him pain, despite the healing scar on his wing.
Eventually, a plan was settled on. We would go to the general store to see if they had bathing clothes and something to eat. If they did, we would make our purchases then head to the bathhouse, which we assumed was the glass-encased dome structure. If we couldn’t find something that worked as a snack, we agreed we would get a proper meal before swimming. Our plan solidified, Oriwyn calmed Brams down enough so that he stopped running laps of the room, and we headed back to the front.
When we got to the store, we found someone we hadn’t seen before. By the look of her, she seemed to be Ya’s daughter - she hadn’t inherited her mother’s prodigious height entirely, but still stood roughly six feet tall. As we all walked in, she perked up immediately.
“Hello! My name is Yada, and I run the general store here! Have you ever visited one of our shops?”
So many things hit me at once I had trouble figuring out what to focus on first. The first thing I came to grips with was that this person’s name was likely a combination of her parents’ - it wasn’t that hard to imagine, but it still felt weird. The second was that there were multiple shops. Obviously the concept of a chain of stores wasn’t foreign to me, but they were a concept I thought I had left behind with Earth. Curiosity overtook me, so I decided to press for a little more information.
“No I can’t say I have - where are they?”
Yada puffed up behind the desk and looked proud of herself.
“Oh they’re around! Pick three out of the four cardinal directions from Tripit, and there you’ll find a branch of Yada’s General store. My siblings - Yadayada and Yadayadayada - run those two stores, but I was the one who started the whole thing and got this shop made! Mom and Dad really mostly care about the hospitality part of things, so I was free to make the business as I wanted it.”
Leor snorted and bluntly asked Yada a question that I had to admit had occurred to me too.
“Yada, Yadayada, and Yadayadayada? Good thing your parents didn’t have more kids or that would get unwieldy. Are they not very creative people?”
I may have phrased things a little more delicately, but I was still curious of the answer. Luckily Yada laughed it off and didn’t seem to take any offense.
“No, they’re good hosts but not the most imaginative when it comes to naming. We always joked it made it easy for people to remember who was the oldest - take the number of syllables and divide by two!”
Leor just raised her eyebrows but Arcadia burst out laughing. I don’t think I’d heard her laugh like that before. Oriwyn looked at her and slowly began to chuckle along, slowly crescendoing to full-blown laughter as well. I managed to keep a straight face until I glanced over at Laran, who looked utterly mystified. Ox was smiling - the first time I’d seen him do so in the short and intense time since I’d met him - and even Leor was giving a disdainful look, which was tantamount to a grin from her. When everyone calmed down, we thanked Yada for the introduction and got to the business of shopping.
There were sandwiches wrapped up in little paper bags, which we all bought one or two of. Oriwyn, Leor, and Oxcard immediately wolfed theirs down while Laran, Arcadia, and I went to a small table set off to the side and had a more leisurely time of things. As we ate, the other three began to look at the wares of the shop.
Oriwyn immediately found little baubles and spent a good while combing through a small chest of brooches. While she was doing that, Oxcard went to some shelves that had what looked like medical supplies. He came up to Arcadia with an armful and asked for some money, which she hurriedly fished out and gave him. Finally, Leor seemed to be focused on a small collection of clothes. She held up a garment and wandered over to a mirror to see how she looked in it. It didn’t take me long to figure out it was some sort of bathing suit.
I was really, really thankful that Tal had the concept of bathing suits. Part of me had been quietly dreading the prospect of skinny-dipping with five people who were barely more than strangers to me. The fact there was some reasonable expectation we would all be clothed was a relief.
After we finished our sandwiches, we all went to look at the bathing wear. Yada wandered over and started talking about things, going over what was popular where and who had suggested certain styles. I did what I normally did and grabbed the first pair of anything that reasonably looked like it would fit me, and it seemed Oxcard did the same. Arcadia was the next to choose, then Leor. Laran and Oriwyn were debating extensively amongst themselves, going over minute differences in material and cut that I wouldn’t have even thought to look at, so we left them to it and told them to meet us in the bathhouse. They agreed, so we set off.
When we entered the glass dome that hosted the baths, I saw that I had been right. A wooden frame created triangular ledges that held up glass panes. Some of them seemed to be missing from strategic places, creating a cross breeze. Still, the glass held in a large amount of steamy air, and we quickly picked out a large pool to claim as our own. There were only two other bathers, and they were off in a much smaller pool off to the side, so we had plenty of choice. We saw some booths off to the side and went to get changed.
As we gathered by the pool, my head idly studied what bathing suits we’d all chosen. I had gone with what was familiar - a pair of baggy trunks that had a cinch at the waist so they wouldn’t fall down. They didn’t have the weird inner netting that I was used to in place of underwear, which felt a bit strange and loose, but otherwise they were comfortable enough. Oxcard seemed to have chosen much the same as me, but where mine were dyed a green color, his seemed to be wholly undyed. I wondered if they had been the cheapest pair available - that might track with what little I knew about him and Arcadia.
Speaking of, Arcadia was wearing what looked like a sports bra and spanks. I’m sure there were women back home who would have killed for her sporty build, though given her life I’m sure she hadn’t come by it in a way that was in any way pleasant. The last to emerge was Leor, and I had to stop myself from laughing. She looked like a candy cane, wearing a red and white striped one-piece bathing suit that made me think of the old-timey Victorian bathing suits I saw guys wearing in movies and read about in history books. The lower part nearly came down to her knees, and given her beard and candy-cane coloring I got the impression of one of Santa’s elves on holiday. The mental image was doubly funny given that Leor was very definitely a dwarf, but I managed to hold myself together regardless.
We all slipped into the water - it was warm and inviting - and had just started to chat when we heard the bathhouse door open. We waved at Oriwyn and Laran as they entered, and they quickly went and got changed in the hutches we had vacated. It was with some curiosity that I watched for them to exit.
Oriwyn wore a loose, draped garment that seemed to be gathered at specific places to preserve her modesty - it looked vaguely Greek to me. I only had a few seconds to observe the cut though, because she immediately took a running start and jumped towards the deepest part of the pool. Brams immediately followed, offering a secondary splash nearly as large as Oriwyn’s as he splashed down. He began to paddle around the pool happily, having tucked his wings up and out of the way, while Oriwyn surfaced, shooting a cheesy grin at Leor - who she had splashed severely with her entrance - and took a place along the ledge at the edge.
When Laran came out, my face turned a little red. Now I wasn’t a prude, and over the years I had seen several men in very, very revealing swimsuits, but Laran’s suit was drawing my eyes in a way that I felt like they hadn’t been drawn since I was going through puberty. He wore what appeared to be folded fabric instead of trunks like Oxcard and I had found - some distant memory thought it looked vaguely Roman in Earth terms. It was a dark burgundy and not even that revealing, but something about seeing him in it brought back the bashfulness I had experienced when he’d run around the edge of the house shirtless the first time I met him. He seemed to be thinking the same way as I saw his cheeks darkened, but ignored his self-consciousness and walked over without comment to join us in the pool.
We all relaxed in the warm water, trading the occasional bits of small talk. After a while Alex walked in and we waved, but they seemed bent on going to a particular pool on the opposite side of the room. After a while of discussing nothing important, Arcadia cleared her throat to get our attention.
“Excuse me? I don’t want to be too formal or anything, but Ox and I have been talking about your offer and I figured we should share what we decided.”
My heart nearly froze in my chest. My curiosity on if they’d join us had been burning away at me for the whole trip so far, and it seemed like it was going to be answered. Of course we would survive without them, but with what all we’d been through I very much wanted them to accept. Also, part of me wondered if I felt that way because their refusal would mean our group wasn’t worth joining. I tried to push the sudden jumble of emotions down and focus on what she was saying.
“We talked it over and decided we’ll join you. I didn’t have a much better plan long term, and you’ve already proved you’re trustworthy. So, assuming you’ll still have us, we’d like to join.”
Arcadia looked a little nervous while Ox remained hard to read. I felt a sudden soaring in my heart, but Oriwyn beat me to accepting the offer.
“Yes! Of course! We never rescinded the offer after all, plus we work well together!”
Arcadia looked pleased, and I thought I saw the ghost of a smile on Oxcard’s face. Leor smiled too, while Laran suddenly shot to his feet.
“This calls for a proper celebration! Wait ‘ere!”
With that, he got out of the pool and raced off. In short order, he returned with two wine bottles and a few glasses. He eagerly began passing them out, Leor enthusiastically helping get things uncorked and poured. When we all had our glasses, Laran raised his in the air.
“A toast! To new allies an’ a new team! May we do well, do good, and do well for ourselves in so doin’!”
He said the words as if he’d heard them before - I wondered from whom for a moment but abandoned that train of thought quickly. Everyone readily agreed to his toast and raised their glasses, myself included, before taking hearty drinks of our wine. It was a sweet, almost citrusy flavor that bordered on too sweet for me, but its flavor cut through the steamy air of the bathhouse well. I enjoyed it and it seemed everyone else did too. As we lowered our glasses though, we all got quite a shock.
“Cheers! Now where’s my glass?”
The voice came from Brams, who was happily paddling in the center of the pool. Laran choked on his wine, shooting a little out of his nose. Leor just stopped and stared into her glass, looking for an explanation there. Oxcard and Arcadia looked at the rest of us, vaguely confused, but it was Oriwyn’s reaction I really wanted to see.
She sat on her ledge in the pool, a broad smile across her face. I could see a hint of surprise in her eyes, but still she flashed her smile to the rest of us.
“Why are you all acting so surprised? Did you think I was talking to Brams just for fun?”
Elsewhere: The captain of the river barge stood eagle-eyed at the front. It wasn’t like he needed to steer very much - just about anybody could control a riverboat when it was being pulled by horses on the bank - so his attention was much better spent keeping an eye out for threats. He looked to the side - the group of three mercenaries he had hired to accompany his boat and walk by the horses trotted along, weapons sheathed and chatting amicably. He couldn’t blame them really, given that they’d been going for a full day and a half since he’d picked them up without trouble. Still, he knew this stretch of the river and knew he should expect trouble. He scanned the gently rippling surface of the river again, a sudden feeling of discomfort settling over him. A disruption caught his eye, and he let out a cry. The bubbles that caused the disruption began to surface more violently, making the calm stream look like a pot of water at a roiling boil, and the captain cursed his luck. He’d been a fool to try and make his run when he did, but he felt like he’d had no choice. Now he was going to pay for that specific incautious decision - all he could hope was that he didn’t pay too dearly in either coin or life.
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Chapter 27 - I Guess a Bathhouse Episode was Inevitable
Last Time: Having attained at least some measure or personal safety, the party recovered from their wounds in a forest clearing. Aiden awoke from his nightmare-troubled sleep to see everyone waiting. They had found a fortuitous ally in the form of Alex, a teamster who had happened upon them during their flight from Tripit, though they were away retrieving the party’s belongings. The day passed peacefully enough, and good news was had when Oxcard awoke from his sleep. In the relative quiet, plans were made for what the party would do going forward. Aiden, Laran, Leor, and Oriwyn would follow Arcadia and Oxcard as they made their way to Diareen, a distant trade city. In addition to following them, Aiden made Arcadia and Oxcard the offer to join their party. The two siblings deferred their answer but acquiesced to the party joining them on their trip, and thus it was that they set travel that night at a much more leisurely pace than they had been forced to take the night before.
We had been traveling for about three days. During the first, all of us had been jumpy. Many small clumps of people lined the roads that led from Tripit, little communities that arose in order to be near Tripit or which persisted despite the meteoric growth of their larger neighbor. Any time someone glanced over at us, I felt like they were going to report our whereabouts to Daisy and we would need to flee into the darkness. Luckily, however, there were no incidents and we began to be able to fully relax.
Oxcard was making a good recovery. He still rode in the cart more often than not, with Oriwyn often joining him to minister to his wounds as best she could. It quickly became apparent that he knew more about treating injuries than Oriwyn, so her attempts quickly turned into lessons. Arcadia normally walked nearby, chatting pleasantly with Oxcard whenever he otherwise didn’t have anything to do - I had noticed she didn’t talk to the rest of the party as much, but given the circumstances I figured that her joy at saving Ox merited a little bit of single-minded focus.
It felt strange to lead the group with nothing really going on. We had too many injuries to really try to train, and we wanted to spend as much time as we could traveling to put some distance behind us just in case someone was following, so we barely acted like an adventuring party. In general, it felt more like we were a group of backpackers who had run into each other and decided to stick together rather than an adventuring party on a quest for future glory.
All in all, I couldn’t say I really minded it.
In the quiet times after we’d made camp but before I fell asleep, I would occasionally check Lorna’s pocket mirror. The first time I did, I was unsurprised to learn we had all leveled up - I was level six, Laran and Leor were level seven, Oriwyn was level eight, Arcadia was level five, and Oxcard was level six. In addition to that, I had increased in bond with everybody. After such a harrowing venture, it felt right.
About midway through the third day of travel, Alex called out to us all, suddenly excited.
“I thought this looked familiar! See the weird tree that looks like it was hit by lightning? And that pile of boulders over there that kind of looks like a bunny? If we take the side road we’ll find in about ten minutes, then we’ll get to YaDa’s!”
I had no idea what Alex was talking about, so I shot a look around to the rest of the party. They seemed equally as mystified, so I decided to take one for the team.
“Uh, YaDa’s? What is that?”
Alex slapped a hand to their heart as if they’d been offended.
“You don’t know of YaDa’s? It's the finest combination inn, general store, and bathhouse in all of Tal!”
I snorted with laughter at Alex’s mock indignation. The place certainly sounded interesting - even after only three days on the road, I could do with an inn, a general store, and a bathhouse. If they all happened to be in the same building, then that was all the better for it. I did have one question though.
“I think we’re interested, assuming it won’t cause us too much delay. That being said, why is someone trying to run a business out in the middle of nowhere? Sure we’re not too far from Tripit and we’re on a decently large road, but I can’t imagine that enough people pass through to make it fully worth their while.”
Alex just shrugged and smiled.
“The owners seem to do just fine for themselves! Maybe it’s because they tend to get a lot of repeat customers. I’m not the only one who looks forward to my path taking me by YaDa’s - in fact, I stop pretty much every time I’m going to or from Tripit!”
I nodded along as Alex continued to ramble about some of the amenities of YaDa’s. Everyone else seemed interested too, so it wasn’t much of a decision to declare we would stop in and rest the remainder of the day. Everyone’s mood got an immediate boost and we all moved faster - even the pack animals pulling the cart seemed excited. Soon enough we found a simple wooden sign next to a side road, which Alex directed us down.
The sign had three pictograms on it - a coin purse, a plate of food, and a steaming bath. As I looked at them, my brain started to work out what order I wanted to do the actions they represented in.
Oriwyn’s eyes were bright and wide open as we came down the path. Already, a building could be seen in the distance. It was large for how little else stood near it - a big, blocky building that matched what I thought an inn should look like was flanked by a smaller, blocky building and a large geodesic dome. I blinked a few times, startled by the shape. It looked like triangular panes of glass rested on a wooden substructure, making a shape that I always associated with retrofuturism. Leor looked interested too - maybe she had some interest in architecture?
As we approached, Alex rumbled their wagon to a halt.
“You six - sorry Brams, seven - go ahead and run in ahead of me. I have an understanding with the owners so I’m going to hitch Peggy and Gary up in the stables before I try to get settled. Someone should be working the front desk - introduce yourself, they’re friendly!”
We thanked Alex for their insight and made our way into the building. We entered into a slightly small space - it wasn’t cramped, but it definitely felt small for what I associated with the entryway for an inn. A few plush chairs were arranged around a fireplace on one wall and a desk stood at the far end. It was currently unoccupied, but I saw a small hanging bell and a hammer on an iron stand on the desk. Shrugging, I took point and walked up to the desk. I glanced around but couldn’t see anyone, so I picked up the hammer and tapped the bell. The resulting noise was surprisingly loud and the answer was almost instant.
“So sorry! Be with you in a second!” came a deep but feminine sounding voice. Sure enough, after a short time had passed, a door opened and a woman stepped through.
To call the woman tall felt almost like an understatement. It seemed like she needed to duck under the doorframe - my best guess is that she was six foot eight or taller. She was built in a way that suggested the Ghost of Christmas Present to me - red hair and all - and when she walked behind the desk it looked comically small before her. She appeared to be human, but I wondered if giants were a thing in Tal - if they were, she definitely looked the part.
“Welcome to YaDa’s!” she said, smiling brightly. She swept a hand up to herself by way of introduction. “My name is Ya, and Da is around elsewhere, and together we run YaDa’s! I don’t think I recognize you - is this your first time?”
Leor was the one who stepped up to answer, which surprised me. I shifted back a little to let her take point.
“Yes, this is our first time, though you came highly recommended by our associate Alex. I believe they should be joining us soon!”
Ya beamed behind the desk.
“Oh! Alex is a good sort - glad to see them back! Their favorite room is even open right now - unless they’d be staying with you?”
“We hadn’t discussed how we would be doing lodging arrangements, but I assume Alex may want some peace and quiet after having us unexpectedly tail along for a few days. What sort of accommodations are there?”
Ya ran a quick count on our number. “For six? We have suites that can take six, or you could do three rooms of two. Honestly, it’s cheaper if you’re all together, and we have a harder time filling the big rooms anyway.
It was at that moment that Brams began to try to scale Ya’s desk. With a scrabbling sound and some snorting, he made his presence known. Ya looked down, looked a little surprised, then reached over the desk and held out her arms. Brams gladly stopped scrabbling and flopped into the proffered embrace, so Ya lifted him and placed him on the desk.
“My my, aren’t you a strange one, little creature! Can’t say I’ve seen your like before…”
Brams made a snorting sound that seemed almost indignant and shook himself. His tail wiggled with the end of the shake, then he sat and stared up at Ya. There was a moment’s silence and Brams looked very intent - all of us leaned in a little, as it seemed like Brams was about to do something. A violent sneeze burst from his muzzle, making us all jump, and the moment was over. Ya smiled at him and tousled the hair on top of his head with her huge hands.
“Well, sorry for not including you in the count. I’m sure that the room will fit seven, though you may need to squeeze a little. Follow me!”
With that, Ya pulled a bulky key from a pocket in her pants. She bent down and unlocked a drawer in the desk, withdrawing a smaller key. As she handed it to Leor, she gave her some instructions.
“Now this key is enchanted. After we’ve opened your door, you’ll have ten minutes to make as many copies as you’ll need. Just take the key, leave it on an open spot of the table, and make sure nobody looks at it for about a minute. When you look back, there’ll be a second key on the table. Take the key and give it to someone - have them put it out of sight - and repeat it until you have what you need! When you’re done, stroke the first key and tell it thanks and it’ll stop duplicating itself.”
I chuckled - hotel key cards had nothing on what I’d just seen. Sure the whole system seemed a little convoluted, and there was a part of me that wanted to keep summoning keys for a few hours just to see how many I could make, but it still felt really cool. In a way, it felt like proper magic, like in a fairy tale.
It was amazing how quickly parts of Tal had become passé to me. I figured since I’d been living in Tal for a while, it was natural that I'd done my best to try and fit in, which would explain how I so quickly became inured to the magical wonders of the world. After all, it seemed like my life was going to continue on as it had been for the foreseeable future. Still, sometimes something small would hit me over the head with a sudden feeling that I was somewhere different from Earth.
Over time, that feeling had been less and less negative.
We followed Ya as she led us to our room. She had to slow a little, as Arcadia made it a point to walk in front of Oxcard and walk slowly so he wouldn’t try to keep up with the tall woman and possibly re-open his wounds. Despite the delay however, we made it to our rooms fine before too awful long.
Our lodgings were simple but spacious. Beds lined two of the walls, creating a corner for sleeping that stood opposed to a clear space with some tables, chairs, and what appeared to be a simple wood-fired stove. A stack of small firewood sat in a basket and thick quilts covered the bed, and overall the whole place gave off a very cozy feeling.
We wasted no time in thanking Ya and starting to get settled in. Arcadia, Oxcard, and Oriwyn took the three beds on one wall while Leor, Laran, and I took the remaining. Leor busied herself making keys, though had some trouble because Oriwyn kept trying to sneak a peek of the key when it split, causing the magic to not work. Eventually though, each of us had a copy - we even made a copy for Brams and tied it around his neck loosely with a piece of ribbon, figuring that it would be a good backup. Leor had an odd look on her face when she began to stroke the key and tell it thank you, which got the rest of us laughing. The key shivered in her hand and let out a contented sigh, which made Leor drop it. Oxcard started laughing so hard that he doubled over in pain, but there was no damage done and the mood stayed high. I decided I should address everyone and come up with something of a game plan.
“Well everyone, it looks like we have some R and R time on our hands! What do people want to do?”
What followed was a pleasantly lively discussion. Arcadia, Laran, and I really wanted to see about the bathhouse side of things, while Oriwyn and Leor argued that they were hungry. Oxcard stayed quiet for most of the deliberation, offering noncommittal answers if ever directly asked about anything, which I found a little strange but which I didn’t press on. The whole time, Brams ran laps around the room, flapping his wings as he jumped from bed to bed. I noticed he seemed to be getting just the littlest bit of a glide going as he leapt over the longer stretches - I would bring that up with Ori later. It also seemed like a positive development that the movement didn’t cause him pain, despite the healing scar on his wing.
Eventually, a plan was settled on. We would go to the general store to see if they had bathing clothes and something to eat. If they did, we would make our purchases then head to the bathhouse, which we assumed was the glass-encased dome structure. If we couldn’t find something that worked as a snack, we agreed we would get a proper meal before swimming. Our plan solidified, Oriwyn calmed Brams down enough so that he stopped running laps of the room, and we headed back to the front.
When we got to the store, we found someone we hadn’t seen before. By the look of her, she seemed to be Ya’s daughter - she hadn’t inherited her mother’s prodigious height entirely, but still stood roughly six feet tall. As we all walked in, she perked up immediately.
“Hello! My name is Yada, and I run the general store here! Have you ever visited one of our shops?”
So many things hit me at once I had trouble figuring out what to focus on first. The first thing I came to grips with was that this person’s name was likely a combination of her parents’ - it wasn’t that hard to imagine, but it still felt weird. The second was that there were multiple shops. Obviously the concept of a chain of stores wasn’t foreign to me, but they were a concept I thought I had left behind with Earth. Curiosity overtook me, so I decided to press for a little more information.
“No I can’t say I have - where are they?”
Yada puffed up behind the desk and looked proud of herself.
“Oh they’re around! Pick three out of the four cardinal directions from Tripit, and there you’ll find a branch of Yada’s General store. My siblings - Yadayada and Yadayadayada - run those two stores, but I was the one who started the whole thing and got this shop made! Mom and Dad really mostly care about the hospitality part of things, so I was free to make the business as I wanted it.”
Leor snorted and bluntly asked Yada a question that I had to admit had occurred to me too.
“Yada, Yadayada, and Yadayadayada? Good thing your parents didn’t have more kids or that would get unwieldy. Are they not very creative people?”
I may have phrased things a little more delicately, but I was still curious of the answer. Luckily Yada laughed it off and didn’t seem to take any offense.
“No, they’re good hosts but not the most imaginative when it comes to naming. We always joked it made it easy for people to remember who was the oldest - take the number of syllables and divide by two!”
Leor just raised her eyebrows but Arcadia burst out laughing. I don’t think I’d heard her laugh like that before. Oriwyn looked at her and slowly began to chuckle along, slowly crescendoing to full-blown laughter as well. I managed to keep a straight face until I glanced over at Laran, who looked utterly mystified. Ox was smiling - the first time I’d seen him do so in the short and intense time since I’d met him - and even Leor was giving a disdainful look, which was tantamount to a grin from her. When everyone calmed down, we thanked Yada for the introduction and got to the business of shopping.
There were sandwiches wrapped up in little paper bags, which we all bought one or two of. Oriwyn, Leor, and Oxcard immediately wolfed theirs down while Laran, Arcadia, and I went to a small table set off to the side and had a more leisurely time of things. As we ate, the other three began to look at the wares of the shop.
Oriwyn immediately found little baubles and spent a good while combing through a small chest of brooches. While she was doing that, Oxcard went to some shelves that had what looked like medical supplies. He came up to Arcadia with an armful and asked for some money, which she hurriedly fished out and gave him. Finally, Leor seemed to be focused on a small collection of clothes. She held up a garment and wandered over to a mirror to see how she looked in it. It didn’t take me long to figure out it was some sort of bathing suit.
I was really, really thankful that Tal had the concept of bathing suits. Part of me had been quietly dreading the prospect of skinny-dipping with five people who were barely more than strangers to me. The fact there was some reasonable expectation we would all be clothed was a relief.
After we finished our sandwiches, we all went to look at the bathing wear. Yada wandered over and started talking about things, going over what was popular where and who had suggested certain styles. I did what I normally did and grabbed the first pair of anything that reasonably looked like it would fit me, and it seemed Oxcard did the same. Arcadia was the next to choose, then Leor. Laran and Oriwyn were debating extensively amongst themselves, going over minute differences in material and cut that I wouldn’t have even thought to look at, so we left them to it and told them to meet us in the bathhouse. They agreed, so we set off.
When we entered the glass dome that hosted the baths, I saw that I had been right. A wooden frame created triangular ledges that held up glass panes. Some of them seemed to be missing from strategic places, creating a cross breeze. Still, the glass held in a large amount of steamy air, and we quickly picked out a large pool to claim as our own. There were only two other bathers, and they were off in a much smaller pool off to the side, so we had plenty of choice. We saw some booths off to the side and went to get changed.
As we gathered by the pool, my head idly studied what bathing suits we’d all chosen. I had gone with what was familiar - a pair of baggy trunks that had a cinch at the waist so they wouldn’t fall down. They didn’t have the weird inner netting that I was used to in place of underwear, which felt a bit strange and loose, but otherwise they were comfortable enough. Oxcard seemed to have chosen much the same as me, but where mine were dyed a green color, his seemed to be wholly undyed. I wondered if they had been the cheapest pair available - that might track with what little I knew about him and Arcadia.
Speaking of, Arcadia was wearing what looked like a sports bra and spanks. I’m sure there were women back home who would have killed for her sporty build, though given her life I’m sure she hadn’t come by it in a way that was in any way pleasant. The last to emerge was Leor, and I had to stop myself from laughing. She looked like a candy cane, wearing a red and white striped one-piece bathing suit that made me think of the old-timey Victorian bathing suits I saw guys wearing in movies and read about in history books. The lower part nearly came down to her knees, and given her beard and candy-cane coloring I got the impression of one of Santa’s elves on holiday. The mental image was doubly funny given that Leor was very definitely a dwarf, but I managed to hold myself together regardless.
We all slipped into the water - it was warm and inviting - and had just started to chat when we heard the bathhouse door open. We waved at Oriwyn and Laran as they entered, and they quickly went and got changed in the hutches we had vacated. It was with some curiosity that I watched for them to exit.
Oriwyn wore a loose, draped garment that seemed to be gathered at specific places to preserve her modesty - it looked vaguely Greek to me. I only had a few seconds to observe the cut though, because she immediately took a running start and jumped towards the deepest part of the pool. Brams immediately followed, offering a secondary splash nearly as large as Oriwyn’s as he splashed down. He began to paddle around the pool happily, having tucked his wings up and out of the way, while Oriwyn surfaced, shooting a cheesy grin at Leor - who she had splashed severely with her entrance - and took a place along the ledge at the edge.
When Laran came out, my face turned a little red. Now I wasn’t a prude, and over the years I had seen several men in very, very revealing swimsuits, but Laran’s suit was drawing my eyes in a way that I felt like they hadn’t been drawn since I was going through puberty. He wore what appeared to be folded fabric instead of trunks like Oxcard and I had found - some distant memory thought it looked vaguely Roman in Earth terms. It was a dark burgundy and not even that revealing, but something about seeing him in it brought back the bashfulness I had experienced when he’d run around the edge of the house shirtless the first time I met him. He seemed to be thinking the same way as I saw his cheeks darkened, but ignored his self-consciousness and walked over without comment to join us in the pool.
We all relaxed in the warm water, trading the occasional bits of small talk. After a while Alex walked in and we waved, but they seemed bent on going to a particular pool on the opposite side of the room. After a while of discussing nothing important, Arcadia cleared her throat to get our attention.
“Excuse me? I don’t want to be too formal or anything, but Ox and I have been talking about your offer and I figured we should share what we decided.”
My heart nearly froze in my chest. My curiosity on if they’d join us had been burning away at me for the whole trip so far, and it seemed like it was going to be answered. Of course we would survive without them, but with what all we’d been through I very much wanted them to accept. Also, part of me wondered if I felt that way because their refusal would mean our group wasn’t worth joining. I tried to push the sudden jumble of emotions down and focus on what she was saying.
“We talked it over and decided we’ll join you. I didn’t have a much better plan long term, and you’ve already proved you’re trustworthy. So, assuming you’ll still have us, we’d like to join.”
Arcadia looked a little nervous while Ox remained hard to read. I felt a sudden soaring in my heart, but Oriwyn beat me to accepting the offer.
“Yes! Of course! We never rescinded the offer after all, plus we work well together!”
Arcadia looked pleased, and I thought I saw the ghost of a smile on Oxcard’s face. Leor smiled too, while Laran suddenly shot to his feet.
“This calls for a proper celebration! Wait ‘ere!”
With that, he got out of the pool and raced off. In short order, he returned with two wine bottles and a few glasses. He eagerly began passing them out, Leor enthusiastically helping get things uncorked and poured. When we all had our glasses, Laran raised his in the air.
“A toast! To new allies an’ a new team! May we do well, do good, and do well for ourselves in so doin’!”
He said the words as if he’d heard them before - I wondered from whom for a moment but abandoned that train of thought quickly. Everyone readily agreed to his toast and raised their glasses, myself included, before taking hearty drinks of our wine. It was a sweet, almost citrusy flavor that bordered on too sweet for me, but its flavor cut through the steamy air of the bathhouse well. I enjoyed it and it seemed everyone else did too. As we lowered our glasses though, we all got quite a shock.
“Cheers! Now where’s my glass?”
The voice came from Brams, who was happily paddling in the center of the pool. Laran choked on his wine, shooting a little out of his nose. Leor just stopped and stared into her glass, looking for an explanation there. Oxcard and Arcadia looked at the rest of us, vaguely confused, but it was Oriwyn’s reaction I really wanted to see.
She sat on her ledge in the pool, a broad smile across her face. I could see a hint of surprise in her eyes, but still she flashed her smile to the rest of us.
“Why are you all acting so surprised? Did you think I was talking to Brams just for fun?”
Elsewhere: The captain of the river barge stood eagle-eyed at the front. It wasn’t like he needed to steer very much - just about anybody could control a riverboat when it was being pulled by horses on the bank - so his attention was much better spent keeping an eye out for threats. He looked to the side - the group of three mercenaries he had hired to accompany his boat and walk by the horses trotted along, weapons sheathed and chatting amicably. He couldn’t blame them really, given that they’d been going for a full day and a half since he’d picked them up without trouble. Still, he knew this stretch of the river and knew he should expect trouble. He scanned the gently rippling surface of the river again, a sudden feeling of discomfort settling over him. A disruption caught his eye, and he let out a cry. The bubbles that caused the disruption began to surface more violently, making the calm stream look like a pot of water at a roiling boil, and the captain cursed his luck. He’d been a fool to try and make his run when he did, but he felt like he’d had no choice. Now he was going to pay for that specific incautious decision - all he could hope was that he didn’t pay too dearly in either coin or life.
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Are two claws better than three? That is one of the many questions I’ll be attempting to answer as we delve into X-23’s cards! Here I will go over her cards in great detail, try to predict which aspects and archetypes she will like, as well as estimate where she’ll rank in terms of power.
Disclaimer #1: X-23 has just been previewed. I have not played her, this is all simply theoretical and done for fun!
Disclaimer #2: This is my longest deep dive yet! Skip to the conclusion if you want a shorter read! Just read the bullet points at the end for the quickest read.
But let’s cut to the chase.
Identity Card - Alter-Ego
X-23 or Laura Kinney as she’s called in alter-ego is, in many ways, much like Wolverine. She has a giant REC of 6 and has a setup ability to put her claws into play. And while yes, she is high damage and has plenty of healing, the similarities really do end there. She functions entirely differently.
So let’s hit the boring stuff. She’s got 10 hp and the standard hand size - 6 in alter-ego, 5 in hero form. Not great, but not bad - distinctly average. She also has the Mutant alter-ego trait and X-Force hero trait as you'd expect.
As mentioned, she has 6 REC and this is by _far_ her best stat. 6 REC is monstrous and shouldn’t be underestimated - she doesn’t automatically heal when starting the turn in her hero form, meaning there’s no opportunity cost for going alter-ego to use it like with Wolverine.
Given how dangerous it can be to drop to low hp in the pursuit of not missing value from a large REC stat, she will like any well-costed increases to her hit points. So far, we haven’t seen an equivalent of Adamantium Skeleton, but you can bet that Endurance, the unannounced but probable Honorary X-Force card, or even Symbiote Suit are all on the menu as potential cards for her deck-building.
Increasing her hp will help her in other ways - but we’ll get to that.
Like Wolvy, she has a setup ability to put her claws in play. Unlike Wolvy, she has a second ability that she can actively use throughout the game. It’s an action to shuffle either the Honey Badger ally or the Sisterly Bond event from her discard pile into her deck and then draw a card. The shuffling of either card is a cost, so you are only able to use it for the sweet card draw if either is in your discard pile.
Unfortunately, it appears X-23 only has one copy of Sisterly Bond and she seems heavily incentivized to keep her signature ally around on the board at all times. Which is to say, her alter-ego ability won’t always be online to use. But it's much better than not having one. ...Like Wolverine.
But let’s get to the good stuff.
Setup Ability - Shhnk!
The ability is very simple. Put X-23’s Claws into play. So let’s talk about those.
Her claws have the weapon trait, the permanent keyword, and have a hero action that reads: Exhaust X-23’s Claws and take 2 damage → X-23 gets +2 ATK until the end of the round.
As you can see, suddenly her 6 REC is looking a lot more useful. And she has other sources of healing which we’ll soon cover. She also has multiple sources of readying, and thus you can really start to get excellent value from these. If anyone has ever played Quicksilver with Maximum Velocity, multiple readies with a +2 ATK boost is incredibly good! And she can pull the trigger every turn - as long as she has the hp!
Identity Card - Hero Form
Her form is, quite frankly, amazing - and her entire kit has fantastic synergy with it. As do a lot of aspect cards.
She’s another 2 THW, 1 ATK, and 2 DEF hero. The same as Cyclops and Angel - apparently this has become popular! But like both of those heroes, she has a ready source of damage. In this case, the claws we just talked about. By taking 2 damage, suddenly she’s a 2 THW, 3 ATK, and 2 DEF hero.
2 damage might seem steep, but remember those readies I talked about? They’re here. X-23 has an ability called Living Weapon. It’s a response which says after she takes any amount of damage, ready her (Limit once per phase.). So, at the most basic level on our turn, we can always thwart for 2, ready by taking damage from our claws, and then use our basic ATK for 3 damage (or even just another 2 thwarting!).
If she attacks twice, it’s 4 total damage (1 and then 3). If she thwarts twice, it’s 4 threat removal total (2 and 2). She has to take 2 damage to do so, but restoring 2 hit points is generally considered to be roughly the equivalent of one resource.
Remember Captain America? He's pretty good. By discarding one card (read: one resource), he too can ready to potentially attack twice, thwart twice, or some combination. And he too hits a maximum of 4 damage or threat removal, but even he can’t hit 3 damage and 2 threat removal like this while X-23 can.
What I’m trying to say here is that X-23 is going to be incredibly, incredibly consistent. Notably in solo play but still amazing in multiplayer. Even before you look at your cards in hand, you can basically guarantee defeating any one of most minions or clearing most side schemes. That versatility and output from Turn 1 is rarely talked about from Captain America but I believe it is one of his greatest strengths. Now? One of X-23's.
Lastly, I need to bring attention to the fact that the Living Weapon response, the thing that readies her, is once per phase. You can defend with her on the villain phase and, should she take a point of damage, she’ll ready straight back up. Nice. Cap can’t do that either.
In short, if you’re being compared to Captain America, you’ve done good. Right now? X-23 is looking very strong.
…But maybe all her other cards are bad? Heh.
Signature Ally - Honey Badger
…Who names these characters?! Anyway, Honey Badger is a key weapon in your arsenal. Why? Because she readies you. She’s a 1 THW, 1 ATK, 2 HP ally with a printed cost of 2. She also, curiously, has the X-Men trait. This is weak, but her ability is very strong.
Her Hero Response reads: After Honey Badger takes any amount of damage, ready X-23.
This is very good because X-23 has great stats and we’ve yet to scrape the surface of how high her ATK can really go. If you’ve ever used the Web-Warrior ally of Peter Parker, you know just how good allies that ready you can be. Since consequential damage works for this, the timing will be largely comparable to Peter Parker except she’ll be defeated first before you can use her response if you spend her last hp on an ATK or THW.
With a great ability comes great potential to boost her hp and/or keep her healed. Or even recur her with something like Make the Call, Chance Encounter or Regroup.. See, you are going to want to keep Honey Badger in play as much as you can. Because readying is awesome. And we have other cards that benefit from her sticking around.
By readying you, she effectively has a THW stat of 3 or an ATK stat of 4+. And, since she delivers 1 of either the ATK or THW herself, it’s in some ways able to be split and she can definitely pop Toughs for you. So she’s already a solid ally before you factor in boosting her hp and/or keeping her alive. And all those other cards that synergize with her.
Remember the X-Men trait on her? Every aspect has a Training upgrade that adds hp. Expect to see one or more of these in all her best decks. Maybe a little X-Mansion to heal her, or Game Time, etc. Med Team, Command Team… There are a lot of options. And all of them end in Honey Badger readying you a LOT.
…In short, if your signature ally is being compared to the Web-Warrior version of Peter Parker, you’ve done good.
…But maybe, just maybe, all her other cards are bad? Hehehe…
Let’s check out her events.
Claw Mastery
A 1-cost event with the caveat that it’s “max 1 per round”. What does it do? It’s a hero action that says, until the end of the round, X-23 gets +2 attack - and, if Honey Badger is in play, her attacks gain overkill.
This is super good.
If you don’t ready her again, it’s not so hot. But if you do even once? That +2 attack becomes four damage between two attacks. Combine this with her claws’ +2 ATK bonus and she us hitting 5 ATK and is really going to love more ways to ready. If you make a basic ATK, ready, repeat a few times? We’re in Quicksilver territory. And between Leadership shenanigans with Honey Badger, or Protection shenanigans with all its direct readies? You can deal massive damage here.
Battle Fury isn’t quite in the same league, but it’s starting to make sense why it was reprinted with Wolverine now. She’ll love that too.
This is easily one of her best cards, you just need to combo it. And I say it’s one of her best cards before we even discuss the potential overkill it gives you. Note the overkill is for all her attacks, not just her basic ATK. You could drop Into the Fray on a 1 hp minion and, in addition to removing 5 threat, deal 5 overkill damage. Nice.
Sisterly Bond
A 0-cost event that is a Hero Interrupt - when Honey Badger thwarts/attacks, add X-23’s matching power to Honey Badger.
So, despite Honey Badger having 1 ATK, if you have just played Claw Mastery and used your Claws? This 0-cost card basically gives her a total of 6 ATK for one use. And even without Claw Mastery, it’s still very good at giving either 3 damage or 2 threat removal for 0-cost.
This is like Leadership’s Teamwork card in reverse, except nobody has to exhaust either. If you boost Honey Badger’s hp and/or heal her, this card is a must-play. And her best builds are almost certainly doing this.
It’s very efficient and super flexible with serious combo potential on top. And remember her alter-ego ability? Once this is in your discard pile (looks like only one copy), you can shuffle it back into your deck.
…This is easily one of her best cards too.
Regenerative Longevity
A 1-cost event and an action, meaning it can be used in hero or alter-ego form, that heals you and Honey Badger for a total of 4. It’s reminiscent of Wolverine’s healing card and is one of her two previewed cards to have the Superpower trait.
So, for two resources (1-cost + the card itself), we get 4 healing. This is basically what we should expect for our money for identity healing. However, the ability to heal Honey Badger as well is extra valuable given how ridiculously good Honey Badger is for us.
Is it one of her best cards? You’re going to have to draw it at the right time (after you’ve played Honey Badger), but then? Kinda. Keeping Honey Badger alive and healthy is incredibly valuable. Every hp restored to Honey Badger is another ready, and your readies hit HARD.
Next up? Upgrades and supports.
Sisterhood
If all three of her events and her setup ability, her claws, all combo-ing with Honey Badger wasn’t enough of a clue, here’s the final card that cements the theme: Honey Badger is vital and you absolutely desperately want to put her in play and keep her in play.
X-23 is the first hero we’ve ever seen who works so closely with their signature ally. Wong, Mantis, Vivian and maybe even Gambit come close, but not quite like this. Though, to speak of Vision, keep his Hickory Branch Lane card in mind here. This is her version of it.
Sisterhood is a 2-cost support that has an action (alter-ego or hero form) that says to exhaust it, discard an X-23 card from your hand, then search your deck and discard pile for Honey Badger and add her to your hand.
In other words, wherever you are and whatever is happening, you can always find and thus play Honey Badger once Sisterhood is in play. Whoa.
Now, I generally think beefing up Honey Badger’s hp (and, ideally, other stats) is going to be the best move, but recurring her with this? This can be a great option if you lean into it. Notably, in leadership, the Team Training card is going to do huge work here by giving Honey Badger +1 hp every time you play her. This will also combo really well with Danger Room. Just grab her, play her, and use Danger Room to immediately find and put a Training upgrade on her. And repeat as necessary.
This card is basically infinite copies of Make the Calls for your best ally. As long as you have another signature card in hand that you don’t mind swapping for her.
Nice.
This card? Easily one of her best - for the right build. Otherwise, it’s probably dead to you if you find Honey Badger first and have built the deck to keep her alive forever. However, even with such builds, this could be pretty valuable to find Honey Badger sooner if you happen to draw this first. Honey Badger is just that good.
Puncture Wound This upgrade is basically a delayed event and is reminiscent of Nebula’s techniques. Play it, benefit from the passive bonus, wait, and it goes off in the next round.
And I love it.
It’s a 0-cost card that you can only attach to an enemy that X-23 or Honey Badger have attacked this turn. The attached enemy gets -1 ATK. And then, as a forced response that triggers after the player phase begins, you must discard it - but for doing so you deal 3 damage to the attached enemy.
So, first things first - 3 damage for a 0-cost card is great. This is Turn the Tide levels of efficient. The downside is that it's conditional, also like Turn the Tide. Given X-23’s crazy damage, minions are unlikely to survive - you’re mostly putting this on the villain aside from a few edge cases and mostly in multiplayer (Surprise Contender? Dragon? Sleeper? That Future Past guy I forget the name of?). Normal minions won’t live long at all.
But for a hero who hits hard and fast, hitting the villain is going to be something you want a lot of the time, especially in solo where she can definitely melt through their hp. And if you’re focusing down the villain, you don’t want to be putting a ton of resources into your defense. And this is where the -1 ATK comes in useful.
The slight downside, the anti-synergy here, is that if you reduce the damage you take too low while also defending? You won't take any damage and so won't ready back up with your hero ability. It's going to be a fine line to balance that will vary with each scenario.
We believe she has two of these in her kit and they do stack, so for a total of 2 effective resources you can put both of these on the villain, take -2 from any attacks they make, then they take 6 damage. That’s crazy.
What’s even better is when you consider multiplayer. First of all, this is an upgrade. Cyclops is going to be able to Optic Blast off of it. Secondly, every single attack the enemy makes will be affected by that -1 ATK. So you’re really helping to protect the whole table.
The combo I’m most excited for is with Cyclops (again) and Storm, two of the best multiplayer heroes already. If Cyclops attaches Practiced Defense and Storm changes to her Blizzard Weather, you can play one Puncture Wound too and now the villain has -3 ATK for that entire villain phase. Or -4 if you draw into both of these.
But a lot of other characters will love the -1 as well. Spider-Ham might not need the help, but this will help him take lower chunks of damage for efficient toon counter generation. Drax? Now, when he takes attacks, he takes less damage too. The Groot ally? Suddenly it’s surviving a lot longer. The same goes for Spider-UK.
There are probably even more multiplayer combos I have yet to think of. There are a lot of handy little interactions.
What’s also good about this is that it makes “taunt” cards a lot better as well - cards that make the villain attack. Traditionally, cards like Toe to Toe and Bait and Switch haven’t been worth it. Whether they are now is still debatable, but certainly they get better if you can factor in the villain having -1 ATK. And remember the new card with Angel, actually called Taunt? That works great here as well.
There’s theoretically a situation where, in 4-player where everyone has their own copy of all the content, you have X-23, Storm, Cyclops and Drax, all running 3x Taunt or 3x Toe to Toe, with the first three using their -1 ATK abilities to weaken the villain throughout the game while everyone grabs massive value from these cards.
I love this card.
Grim Resolve
And now for a traditional upgrade. So traditional, in fact, that it’s basically just Clarity of Purpose. The main difference? Its cost arrow says you must TAKE 1 damage rather than DEAL 1 damage, which is relevant with the new 1.5 rules when it comes to potentially blocking the damage.
If you block damage (let’s say with Energy Barrier) from a cost which says TAKE, then you have not actually taken the damage since you prevented it. But if you block the damage from a cost which says DEAL, the damage was still dealt - you don’t have to take it to have fulfilled the cost.
(If this is confusing, while I will try to help in the comments, I recommend looking for some youtube talks on it or scouring the pages of the new 1.5 rules reference!)
Like Clarity of Purpose, it’s a 1-cost card which you exhaust to generate a resource. Clarity of Purpose has you also deal a point of damage to yourself as an extra cost. Grim Resolve has you take a point of damage as its extra cost.
It’s good! Now, you can pop your Claws to get +2 ATK first before using X-23 at all, then make a big basic ATK, then use Grim Resolve to ready then and make a second one. It gives a lot of flexibility in the timing of when you want to ready with her hero ability.
But it’s also just an ever-so-slightly worse version of Clarity of Purpose. Still, Clarity is a powerful card and X-23 has a lot of healing. You can totally run both, whether to just to find one earlier or even put both into play.
Pain Tolerance
Last but not least, we have X-23’s consistent healing card. This upgrade is 2-cost, Superpower traited, and has a Response - meaning it works in both hero and alter-ego form. It says “After you play an X-23 card (including this one), heal 1 damage from your identity.”
Any rules followers will immediately recognize the reminder text being something absent from Sky-Destroyer, another card that triggers upon playing itself, so that is a welcome addition here that should help a lot of players out who otherwise might not realize it. And so we can, in some ways, also consider this to immediately include a 1 hp heal before we even really start using it properly.
So - three effective resources for 1 hp, then 1 hp every time you play one of your signature cards. I can tell you right now that, given how ridiculously good her signature cards are, you are going to want to play them already. And not just that but, as you may have spotted throughout the preview, all X-23’s cards are cheap. So, not only do you want to play them already purely because they’re so darn good, but you can play a lot of them because they’re so darn cheap.
In short, this thing is going to give a TON of healing. Outside of an unlucky hand, this is likely a minimum of 1 and sometimes up to 3 or, if the stars align, 4. And it will likely trend on the higher side if you thin your deck or build for card draw or some kind of recursion (Mutant Education, etc! And her alter-ego ability).
It’s not mind-blowing, but she’ll benefit more from the healing than most heroes will.
And that concludes the signature cards previewed so far - let’s take a quick look through some deck-building options for her.
Basic Cards
With the Mutant trait, she’ll love a lot of the X-Men supports. With an X-Men signature ally who is key to her entire deck, she’ll also love the X-Men supports.
X-Mansion? Heal Honey Badger. Danger Room? Beef up Honey Badger who you can easily recur, and thus get multiple uses from Danger Room on just her. Cerebro? Perhaps find her faster.
Weapon-X? Find more signature cards because 1) they are awesome and 2) she will heal the damage from Weapon X with the card drawn thanks to Pain Tolerance. This can also find Honey Badger sometimes.
X-Gene? Maybe. Definitely if you run Mutant Education.
Endurance? 110%. Symbiote Suit? Honestly, she is clearly one of the better characters for it in the entire game.
Professor X is also a stand-out ally. She lacks confuses and doesn’t always want to thwart. The confuses will help her go alter-ego and use her massive REC, cycle cards back, or heal Honey Badger with X-Mansion.
Oh yeah. And Game Time for Honey Badger. That should really speak for itself. Readying yourself through readying and healing an ally? All for 0-cost? Incredibly good.
Perhaps most importantly, the new basic side scheme she brings that rewards the linked cards will be super powerful for her. It’s called Specialized Training, and she really wants the Combat Specialist reward most of all in most decks. I’m not going into great detail on the new cards here but if you haven’t already, please please check these out. +1 ATK and card draw in any aspect is immensely helpful. It has a decent cost to get it, but if you do? It's superb.
Aggression Cards
X-23 has a plan. Boost her ATK and ready. Aggression can help with both.
In terms of ATK boosting? In addition to new card “Now I’m Mad”, there is the classic Combat Training and even Fluid Motion. I don’t see her loving Brute Force, but I’m sure there’s a novelty meme build where you boost her ATK to insane levels.
For readying, there is largely only Battle Fury. She doesn’t really need another source of incoming damage, but she loves readying so much I can’t see her not using it. Expect this in a lot of decks.
I also think Hand Cannon has her name written all over it. Certainly, she can get Overkill from her Claw Mastery event, but it’s not consistent every turn. Hand Cannon will boost your ATK further and make sure none of your damage goes to waste.
Skilled Strike definitely fits with what she wants to do. With the Weapon trait on her claws, she can technically use Mean Swing and Fusillade far more reliably than most heroes - but I think she’d rather focus on keeping her hp high to just use her claws directly. Better to block with allies or stun the villain than exhaust her claws for something else, in my opinion.
She will actually possibly like Quick Strike. One of the first heroes to genuinely do so without niche builds?
And let’s not forget Papa Wolverine. Who also, like Honey Badger, wants Attack Training which X-23 110% wants to run here.
And do you know what Skilled Strike, Wolverine, Hand Cannon, Combat Training, Now I’m Mad, and Attack Training all have in common? The physical resource. Drop Kick and Jarnbjorn are both on the table. And I think she’ll like them both.
While you might not want to use all of them, that is potentially a whole deck there that just wrote itself into existence. Just add Sunfire and Psylocke like almost every modern Aggression deck.
She is going to be strong in Aggression and hit very, very hard. With the thwarting to make it very solo-viable (if you don't just speed to victory with huge damage!).
Justice Cards
X-23’s plan here is in good hands. She can’t boost her ATK, but what if we, say, gave her Heroic Intuition and just readied her for thwarting? Or split her focus? Perhaps mixed in Making an Entrance to heal? Seems good, right?
Justice also has the best access to confuse. Which means the most reliable access to heal Honey Badger through X-Mansion. And, you know, use her massive REC. And she can find Honey Badger quickly with Chance Encounter if she needs to. One Way or Another? More card draw for her amazing cards, and more healing per turn on Pain Tolerance from those cards. Having a side scheme out to thwart also sets her up well to ready with her claws even if the villain only added a measly 1 to the main scheme. Thwart→Claws→Attack.
Everything here is going to run very smoothly. And she is going to want the cards Psylocke comes with. Something she doesn’t appear to have are any status effects and Upside the Head solves that very efficiently. And with great confuses, comes great ability to use Float Like a Butterfly. With her own ready and Honey Badger’s, she is getting a bunch of damage from it.
Mission Training? That’s Honey Badger’s Justice ticket to Game Time town. That goes in every Justice deck she ever has, surely.
I don’t see any other incredible cards for her here. Just lots of very solid cards that work for most heroes, and will for her too. While it won’t play as fast as Aggression for the most part? With fantastic threat removal here, great access to alter-ego healing, and her innate damage, it’s looking hard for X-23 to actually lose in this aspect.
Leadership
Good ol' Leadership. Where do I start? X-23 is the hero who, as mentioned, resolves the most around her signature ally. And Leadership is the ally-centric aspect. I could probably write a whole deep dive on the possible combinations here.
Let’s hit the basics. Danger Room Training to enable Game Time, X-Mansion, and just get more use from Honey Badger? Auto-include.
And if you’re bringing Danger Room Training, why not bring Beast along?
Pixie can grab Honey Badger for you, or Beast or Professor X, or anyone other X-Men should you bring more.
Inspired is great if you go for the voltron angle and keep her alive forever.
Rapid Response? Eh. This actually immediately gets us a ready from Honey Badger when it deals damage to her after reviving her - but it’s not optimal for her here. Regroup is obviously a great option in multiplayer, but when is it not?
Make the Call is going to be particularly exceptional for Honey Badger recursion decks. And is always an S-tier card in general for any ally you need at any time.
The Leadership side scheme we’ve seen so far, Call for Backup, will be another way to find Honey Badger.
Team Training, so Honey Badger gets an extra use every time you recur her? Super good.
Innovation to heal Honey Badger? Why not.
Then there is Command Team to ready Honey Badger and thus yourself. You might even run it with Lead from the Front given that both you and Honey Badger will get a lot of value from it. If Honey Badger attacks twice, and you attack four times, that’s 6 damage before you factor in other allies and potentially more readies from Game Time or anything else.
There is Clarity of Purpose which I’ve already talked about. You could totally put it on Honey Badger though if you plan to heal her and buff her HP! Is it worth it? Not sure.
And of course Kaluu. As a combo-centric hero, you’ll love it when he grabs you Claw Mastery when you have a bunch of readies lined up in hand. Or vice versa.
Leadership is, at the end of the day, Leadership. It’s incredibly strong on its own and, with all the support for Honey Badger, it’s going to be one of her most popular aspects.
Protection
And finally we have Protection. My initial instinct for X-23 was Aggression or Leadership, and I was already wondering if Justice might exceed them for its consistency, but Protection? Protection might just out do them all. At least for solo play.
Picture the scene.
You’ve used your claws and played Claw Mastery. You have 5 ATK. You wink at Drax, knowing you both share the same devastating damage now. It’s time.
Suddenly you use Leading Blow. What Doesn’t Kill Me. Then Counter-Punch.
BOOM.
And let's not overlook the potential with Repurpose.
The sheer amount of readying or cheap damage based on your ATK stat here is incredible. And with Repurpose, you potentially have more than 5 ATK for all those other readies and Sisterly Bond.
Energy Barrier can help you defend the villain attack and ready without taking too much excess damage. Perfect defense? Not here. She wants to ideally defend but still take at least 1 damage. And this, of course, is the best card to combo with Repurpose. And then that brings Electrostatic Armor into the mix for a splash more damage and another Repurpose target.
Protective Training goes straight onto Honey Badger. It’s basically an auto-include like all the other X-Men Training upgrades in the other aspects.
Med Team and provide extremely consistent healing for Honey Badger and can help you in a pinch.
Iron Fist and Tackle are going to help her keep the villain under control and still help her pile on the damage quickly.
But really, I cannot overstate the value of those readies/ways to use her basic ATK. Using X-23, her own ready, the ready from Honey Badger, and let’s say drawing 2 of them alongside Claw Mastery? That’s 25 damage. And all you had to play first was Honey Badger.
More with that Combat Specialty upgrade from the new basic side scheme. More from Repurpose.
She is potentially going to run faster than Quicksilver and hit harder than Drax.
Rush has never looked so good in green. And even if you don’t love rush strategies like me, it’s hard to deny the potential. You can try to go slower, use these tools to clean up the board, and still do extraordinarily well!
Conclusion
Overall, X-23 looks amazing. She is basically a fusion of Wolverine and Quicksilver that came out looking like Captain America with a tiny pinch of Drax who really, really likes their version of the Peter Parker basic ally. And if you like any of those heroes, or you’ve ever enjoyed readying a Web-Warrior with Peter, I think you will really like X-23.
At least if you can also enjoy working closely with an ally. Some people don’t like allies, and that’s okay. But, for X-23? She can be good without Honey Badger, I think. If you broke the official rules and removed the ally from the deck, she wouldn’t be the weakest character in the game by far still. But she does lose a lot.
Unrelated to the ally, I will say I am predicting her to be the least popular of the X-Force from a general standpoint. I think many players will just see her as a clone of Wolverine - which is only true in terms of her story, not her gameplay. I also think she is a combo-centric character where it’s hard to see the value of her cards individually/without playing her. But, like Drax, will likely become a fan favourite over time.
For me personally, and this goes beyond the bounds of a hero kit deep dive, I think the biggest strike against her is the card art. It might just be me, and I mean no disrespect to any of the artists or whomever is responsible for the creative decisions, but it doesn’t work for me. We have various greys and blacks on a grey/black background. Her alter-ego art is off-center, her identity card just had a plain brown background.
I like the art for Claw Mastery, Sisterhood and Pain Tolerance. But I do think she has the worst-looking cards of all the heroes from this wave so far, and perhaps the X-Men and Web-WarrioChampion waves too.
But you know if I’m picking on the art as my first and only negative, it’s a very good sign for the rest of her. In terms of fun? I think she’ll score high and pleasantly surprise people.
In terms of power? She has a lot of strengths, but also a couple of weaknesses. But her strengths definitely outweigh the weaknesses by a landslide. So far, I have mostly focused on her strengths. So let’s cover her weaknesses quickly.
Her only true source of resource generation or card draw we have seen so far is Grim Resolve. And it’s a good card! But it’s not quite like those heroes who can draw extra cards every turn, or have a couple of extra double resources, etc! So her economy, while fine, isn’t great. I don't believe her alter-ego ability is reliable enough to contribute much.
Fortunately, it’s partially offset by her low costs and she gains a lot elsewhere in areas many high economy heroes do not.
The biggest obvious weakness is that she has no status cards - but in a game where we are getting an increased amount of steady and stalwart, it’s less of a factor. Likewise, we’re getting more access to status cards in the aspects. The exception to both arguments are Toughs but, as a hero who wants to take damage, they are less desirable for her in many situations compared to the average hero.
Cyclops doesn't have any status cards, nor does Wolverine. They get get by. But it's still worth noting!
And lastly, she is somewhat fragile. She is a 10 hp hero who wants to take damage, just like Wolverine, but Wolverine has two advantages. One, his healing is automatic from Turn 1. And two, he has Adamantium Skeleton in his signature cards - a +4 hp upgrade. Now, she can defend and ready immediately with her hero power, but it’s not guaranteed. Against weaker villains, notably on standard, she might not take enough damage to ready. And against stronger villains, particularly on expert, she might still take a significant amount of damage despite defending and readying.
It is of course a great perk of her ability that she can ready in the villain phase, but putting her in the line of fire when she already wants to take damage on her imminent turn and likely did on the previous turn can surely be rough, especially if you haven’t got her healing upgrade out yet.
But smart deck-building can cover everything. As alluded to, we have a good few status cards accessible in most aspects now. She has access to X-Gene as mentioned earlier as well as things like Weapon X, and we have plenty of “fragile” characters who do very well with a healthy supply of allies or stuns built in - plus her healing when she finds them - plus her epic 6 REC.
Another small weakness is that she’s draw-dependent to a degree. Her stats are great with just the use of Claws, but she’ll have quiet turns and large turns. Drawing Claw Mastery? Her damage goes up a lot. Drawing it with Sisterly Bond or other readies? It spikes. But you’re not going to get all those pieces together all the time, and some turns none at all.
Fortunately, as kind of mentioned, her base output is veeery good. And if you build into Honey Badger, keeping her out and alive means every turn will still be huge.
The final weakness I see is her reliance on her signature ally. With some bad luck, Honey Badger (and Sisterhood) could be hard to find. There are ways to help find her - but again, you also have to find them to find her, and most of them have costs of some kind. It's possible for this to sometimes be difficult.
But that was just a look at what I think are her weaknesses, and I hope I have not hurt your impression of her. The rest of the article is strength after strength - and all in all? She is looking brilliantly powerful. Here’s a quick summary:
Strengths:

• Incredibly high damage
• Super consistent thwarting
• Very low setup
• Very low cost curve
• Mutant traited
• Lots of deep aspect synergy
• …Did I mention incredibly high damage?

Weaknesses:

• Low-ish economy
• Semi-draw reliant
• Reliant on her signature ally for full power
• No status cards
• Somewhat fragile

And I will say that the "weaknesses" aren’t really that bad while the strengths - particularly the top four - are especially good! She will hit hard, hit fast, find thwarting while she needs it, and have it all basically at her fingertips from early on.
So, where would I rank her overall and next to the other X-Force heroes? Great question. Of all the X-Force heroes, she has been my toughest one to rank. I will also say all five X-Force heroes revealed so far are ones I am predicting to be in the top 20 of what will then be 48 heroes.
For her specifically, I think the scenario is going to make the biggest difference compared to the other few X-Force heroes. She is damage incarnate, and I think tougher scenarios that can slow her down, that prevent her from winning too quickly, could see her notably fall off when she runs out of steam. On the other hand, she’ll glide through low hp villains like a hot knife through butter.
But I do think, with her best builds and some optimization, she will truly be a force to be reckoned with. So I’ll peg her to fall somewhere between the 7th best and 17th best, with my best guess right now specifically being 12th-ish. She hits very hard and can deal with pretty much anything from Turn 1, and I think that versatility is huge. But I also think that, for the most part, she’s fairly honest.
But, since she has so many combos and I've not played her at all with any of them or any approaches to Honey Badger, I really wouldn't put money on this exact placement. Just know she is going to be amazing.
In some ways, despite being so different to Wolverine, they are still very similar. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. He too is high damage, low setup and - especially early game - can be a little fragile unless you build otherwise or ignore his claws. And while it will probably depend on the rest of her cards and whatever X-Force support we get, I will end by saying I do think she will be the better of the two. In my opinion? X-23 > Wolverine - for fun and for power!
Whew! We got there. Thanks for reading and I’d love to know your thoughts! Am I way off the mark? Do you agree? And is there anything I missed? I am sure there are some great aspect cards I overlooked!

Hey there everyone! Thanks for checking out my post! I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m not as close with anymore and I miss having at least one awesome friend to chat with throughout the day, send memes to, and just have a real meaningful friendship with, so figured I’d try here since this is how you make friends now 😂
Some fun facts about me:
•I’m John
•live on the west coast of the US
•love sports (football, baseball and basketball) and working out
•big video game guy (PS5 and switch)
•I paint, draw, cook, write, anything to express myself creatively
•totally nerdy guy who loves everything from Godzilla, Star Wars, dinosaurs, Marvel, anime, and more!
•consider myself a happy go lucky jokester kind of guy who likes to see the best in things and just make people laugh and make the most fun memories I can!
If you think we’d get along feel free to start a chat or send a message and we can chat from there! Looking forward to hopefully finding a new awesome friend or two! 😄

Note: This takes place during the last third of Jerry and the Apocalypse, following Nick's encounter with the Asura in the spirit world.
Nick bounced against Kathy's hip as she walked, his topknot tied through the loop in her belt.
"I don't think I can wait," he said. She stopped and untied his hair, placing him on a fallen tree trunk and sitting on another one, facing him.
"What can't you wait for?" she asked.
"This thing with Danylo. I can't leave him in that place any longer, Kathy. I know I said I'd wait until this issue with Sarisa and the primordials settled down, but I can't."
"I understand," Kathy said, nodding. Nick opened his mouth, then paused, having expected her to argue with him.
"You're cool with it?" he asked. She nodded again. "Nick, you're trying to make amends. What's more, you're trying to help a child. How could I not be cool with that? You go ahead and do your thing. We'll get by."
"You won't have an oracle," Nick pointed out. Kathy shrugged. "Technically, that's not true."
"Technically," Nick said. "I think you know I'm not bragging when I say I'm much better at this than Jerry is, and I'm still maybe a mediocre oracle."
Kathy sighed. "I wish we had Jessica. She was a freaking ninja with this stuff." Nick made the little rock back and forth that was his version of a shrug. "I wouldn't know," he said, his voice quiet. He remembered Jessica, of course. He remembered laughing as her husband was forced to whip her bloody, along with the other greasers. He remembered suggesting to Astoram that he take her limbs as a method of keeping her subdued. He remembered taking her limbless, thrashing, weeping torso to his room and letting Tim come forth to...
He shook himself violently to escape that memory. It wasn't that he couldn't understand how he could have done such things back then. No, he understood exactly. He still had the same urges. To dominate, to humiliate, to tear people down. It was just... He needed to direct those urges. To focus them on people and beings who deserved to have those things done to them. But that need was a distinct thing from the urges themselves.
That was why remembering all that he'd done was so difficult. Because if he allowed himself to remember what he'd done to Jessica, he would enjoy it.
"We'll be fine," Kathy insisted. "Jerry's the smartest and most powerful guy I know. Whatever he lacks in oracle skills, he'll make up for in cunning and raw power."
"Thank you," Nick said. Kathy smirked. "Hey, I told you that we're friends, right?"
"You were just saying that, though, right?"
"Nah. I forgave you a long time ago. I can see how much you've changed. I'm not friends with the old Nick, but you? You're cool."
Nick smiled at her. "Thank you again," he said. She shrugged in response.
"So can I borrow some stuff?" he asked. Kathy laughed.
----
Kathy came with him into the spirit world, the better to facilitate the loans.
He made his body the same way he had the last time he was here. A tall, heavily-built body, dressed like a biker.
"Okay, let's see. You'll want a good rifle. I've got a backup Gen-4 Spear you can use," she said, drawing the weapon in question from hammerspace and placing it on the ground.
"You'll also need a backpack, since you don't have a hammerspace of your own. Let's do that. Um... Do you need to eat on this side?"
Nick blinked. "I actually don't know," he said. "Let me see if-"
"No, don't bother. We'll pack some food, anyways. And some cooking and butchering tools, just in case. You can hunt with that rifle."
"Hunt what? We're in the spirit world."
"Spirit animals, Nick. I've seen plenty of them."
"I can eat those?" Kathy shrugged. "Inanna told me they come from the material world. They're regular animals who crossed over."
"Huh. I always figured they were manifestations of the spirit world itself. You know, how it mimics the real world?"
"I mean, some might be... But there are real living things on this side. They have to eat something, so that means there's some kind of food here."
She brought forth some camping cookware, including a roll of knives and put them next to the rifle.
"Okay, there's armor, too. I've got some gen-2 body armor that should fit you. It's a larger size I keep around to lend out. You'll want a sidearm, too. And a melee weapon."
She produced a plate carrier and a handgun in a leg holster. Then she produced an ornate axe. Instead of putting the axe on the ground, she handed it directly to Nick.
"Wait, this is..." Nick said.
"Yeah. So take good care of it for me, okay?"
He examined it. The head was worked into an equestrian design, with more horses carved into the haft. He could feel the dense, powerful magics that inhabited the weapon.
"Thank you, Kathy. This... This really means a lot."
"I'm not letting you run off unprepared," she said. She began pulling MREs out of hammerspace and tossing them on the ground. Finally, she added a backpack.
"What else?" she asked.
"Water?" Nick prompted. Kathy snapped her fingers and produced a tube that looked kind of like a bicycle pump and a funnel.
"This is a purifier. It'll strip everything but heavy metals from the water. It's even rated to clear out bacteria, though it won't do anything for viruses, so I would suggest you boil stuff, too. The pack has a built-in camelback, so that's where you can store it. Here's a couple of canteens, as well." She added two canteens, complete with belt clips to the pile.
"Okay, so food, water, weapons and armor," she said. "What else?"
"I don't think I need anything else," Nick said. "Tools are kinda low priority, because I can use magic to do most anything here."
"Yup. Okay then." Nick stood and watched her for a moment, feeling awkward, now.
Kathy scuffed one of her feet. "Soo...." she said.
"Yeah," he responded.
"Well, good luck, Nick," she said. Without warning, she stepped forward and enfolded him in a hug. Hesitantly, he hugged back. The instant he began squeezing her back, though, it felt good. He enjoyed the hug for a moment, then made himself let go. She released him as well.
"Thank you," he said. "For everything, I mean. Thank you for forgiving me. Thank you for helping me. Thank you for taking care of me. Just... Thank you. I don't deserve any of it."
"Yes, you do, Nick. Maybe you didn't, back then, but you do now. So go on before this gets any weirder than it already is."
Nick laughed and stepped back. He picked up the backpack and began stuffing the supplies into it. When he was done, he pulled on the armor and adjusted it. He clipped the backpack to it by the plastic buckles on each, then strapped on the handgun, tying it off to his leg as well. Finally, he picked up the rifle and hooked the single-point sling over his head and arm.
"Looking good," Kathy said. "You look like one of us, now."
Nick looked down. "Even better than the biker look, then."
Kathy chuckled. "All right. Take care of yourself, Nick."
"You too, Kathy," he said. He turned before it got weird and started to walk off. A moment later, her voice came to him from behind.
"Kick some ass, motherfucker!" she shouted. Nick raised a fist and heard the soft pop of someone teleporting away. He fixed his eyes on the road ahead, picturing the blasted hellscape of Eschatos and quickened his pace.

In honor of the 4th years graduating medical school and getting ready for residency, I thought I would share some of the quotes I collected over my medical school journey. This post was inspired by this incredible thread many years ago.
As always, all comments were made by anyone and everyone during the time I was in medical school. All comments were made in good light hearted fun. Enjoy!
​
“The day is about 15 hours too short for what I need to do” -A very tired med student
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“If I was stupid, it would explain a lot. Unfortunately I don’t think I am”
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“Med school is about as real an example of “you either succeed or you die trying” as physically possible”
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“I’m too stupid to be a doctor today. I’ll try again tomorrow”
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“I accidentally waterboarded myself this morning in my shower so that’s how my day is going”
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“I’m not smart enough to use decimals”
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“Did you know there are TWO Adductor muscles in the leg?!”
“Yes, there’s actually three of them”
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“Med school is hard as hell and twice as fun”
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“It’s unstable and shit” -In reference to the wobble position
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“They haven’t gotten me until I lose points”
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“I’ve finally reached the point where I need drugs to make it through lecture” -Med student bringing coffee into lecture for the first time
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“Isn’t it fun when you know you’re shitty at something and not being able to fix it?”
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“I know people who are dumber than me that have made it through. At least that’s what I keep telling myself”
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“Ahh I’m naked!” -Med student changing shirts.
“Relax, you still have your pants on, it’s basically just like OMM”
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“How can we have so many labs left?! We’re running out of body at an alarming rate!” -Scared and confused anatomy student
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“Hey look, that’s the moon, we saw it last night!”
“Yeah we see it every night” -Med student referencing a blood moon and another being a sasshole
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“I’ve got a little bit of that Benadryl hangover”
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“I don’t have the force. It’s an unfortunate side effect of being me”
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“I’m basically a crack junkie” -Med student in OMM
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“Whoever put a biochem lecture after lunch just wants me fail”
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“I go to [restaurant] for a salad and leave just absolutely trashed. I’m serious, it’s a real problem, it happened to me last week” -PT student
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“Will you promise me when you go to AA, you’ll introduce yourself as student doctor [name]?” -Med student after a night out at the bars
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“I’m going to need you to calm the fuck up”
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“Hardy-Weinberg is my hardy-hard on”
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“Why are you so cold? Get some fucking capillaries.”
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“New block, new me”
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“It’s always nice to wake up breathing”
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“It’s the small things in life that they do to really piss me off” -Med student being slightly inconvenienced the professors only posted their PowerPoint instead of a PDF of the PowerPoint
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“I’m going to be furious fucking George if we have to do anything similar to this calculation on the test” -an annoyed Med student in Physiology
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“That’s the closest I’ve been to contracting autism in a long time.” -Med student after a required wellness lecture
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“Sometimes I wish I would get a brain tumor so I could have them cut my skull open and take a picture of my brain, just to prove to you I have one.”
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“Hi I’m former student doctor [Name] welcome to Walmart” -Scared med student planning their life after taking a final
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“You deserve all of the hell that you are going to.”
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“When do they start preparing us for boards?”
“I think it’s the spring of our second year”
“What?! Oh my god, don’t they know how stupid I am?!”
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“You gotta be tough if you’re gonna be dumb”
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“Alcohol goes down a lot easier when you’re irresponsible”
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“I will fake a MI before I call Dr. [Professor] over for my skills check” -A nervous student in OMM
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“If I had to move one more electron, I was gonna lose my shit” - A dentist recalling Ochem
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“It’s the multi step synthesis problems that made me want to drink bleach” -AA student also remembering Ochem
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“Not only are the babies stupid, their organs are stupid too” -Med Student talking about bilirubin clearance in newborns
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“I’m really good at feeling the imaginary movements” -Annoyed med student learning Cranial OMM
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“I probably had so many developmental delays as a child. Like I probably missed so many milestones. Sometimes I get stressed when I have to draw the perfect triangle.”
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“What the fuck are we supposed to say when our SPs call us?
“...[City] morgue, how can I help you? “ -Med students talking about doing a Virtual Standardized Patient encounter for the first time
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“How do you guys think I got into med school? I have a superhuman ability to bullshit”
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“I could really show my psychopathic side by going back to 2014 and wishing her a Happy birthday” -Med student on Facebook
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“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be stupid. It just happens”
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“Is it about to go down?!”
“No it’s not. But it’s real close”
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“God I’m about to get so fucking diabetic tonight” -Med Student at a doughnut shop
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“My whole life is a cry for help.” -A very distressed Med Student
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“Can’t believe we have to fuckin say this to you idiots, but that’s not professional” -Watching the first years fuck up
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“Going into medicine is like being lured in with Chick-fil-A…but it’s Sunday”
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“My whole body is a tender point today”
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“My body kept growing, and so did my mind, but my music taste did not”
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“You can’t get this abuse anywhere else” -A physician on the verge of retirement recalling his medical training
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“If he was trying to light a fire under our asses, he succeeded.”
“He wasn’t trying to light a fire under our asses, it’s more like he was shoving the fire up our asses. It’s like Indian food but in reverse.” -Very scared med students
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“I’m gonna go so fucked by this test, which is ironic considering it’s all about sex”
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“Are you even doing anything right now?” ‘Yeah I’m waiting for you to be soft, so really its your fault we are waiting.” -Med Students attempting cranial OMM
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“This meme is really sassy.”
“Give it to me, I need to be put into my place”
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“Its all fun and games in OMM until Dr. [Professor] finds a dysfunction” -Med Student in pain
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“I’m pretty sure I’m an invasive species” -Med Student trying to survive in a new state
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“I’m really hung over right now. And by really hungover, I mean my tummy is a little upset.”
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“At no point while reading this did I expect what I was going to read next.” -Med Student reading the Dean's email
​
Share your best quotes below. Its been real, i'll see you all in therapy

Dear members of FormulaE,
You may have noticed your reddit feed filling up with subreddits announcing their plans to "go dark" on June 12, in response to planned API changes on the platform that could see reddit's third-party apps, accessibility and functionality affected. See here for more information on the blackout.
After putting the question to a community vote, 84% of those who voted agreed that we should join the protest.

Why are we implementing the subreddit lockdown?

As passionate moderators of this community, we strongly believe in the power of third-party apps and their integral role in shaping the Reddit experience. These apps have provided countless users with unique features, enhanced usability, and diverse interfaces that have enriched their engagement with the platform.
However, recent changes to Reddit's API policies and the potential threat of limiting or even phasing out third-party apps have raised concerns within our team and the wider Reddit community. We believe that these changes may hinder innovation, limit user choice, and disrupt the vibrant ecosystem of apps that have flourished alongside Reddit.
By going private, we aim to draw attention to this issue and demonstrate our collective opposition to the potential consequences of these policies. We stand in solidarity with the developers, users, and moderators who rely on third-party apps to connect, share, and engage with Reddit in unique and valuable ways.

I don't use 3rd party apps, why am I being punished?

We understand that this temporary restriction may cause inconvenience, but we hope that by taking this action, we can shed light on the importance of maintaining a healthy and diverse ecosystem of third-party apps. It is not only the user experience that is at stake; the impact of these changes can also affect moderation tools, accessibility, and the helpful bots that have become an integral part of reddit. If you use the official reddit app, we encourage you to try to understand the benefit these apps bring, and the parity between the official and third parties are leagues differing.

What should you expect during the lockdown?

On June 12th, many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy. Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren't able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app. This isn't something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love.
Since Formula E's next race is the Portland E-Prix on the 24 June, this subreddit will be set to private between June 12th, 00:00 UTC +12 all the way to 22 June 00:00 UTC+12. During this time, the sub will go private and you would not be able to view or post any content on FormulaE. As the situation is changing rapidly, we will reevaluate our stance every 48 hours.
Updates will be posted in the Subreddit description after going private.

How can you join the protest?

While subs going dark is one thing, regular users can help as well.

1. Complain. Message the mods of /reddit.com, who are the admins of the site: message reddit : submit a support request: comment in relevant threads on /reddit, such as this one, leave a negative review on their official iOS or Android app- and sign your username in support to this post.
2. Spread the word. Rabble-rouse on related subreddits. Meme it up, make it spicy. Bitch about it to your cat. Suggest anyone you know who moderates a subreddit join us at our sister sub at /ModCoord - but please don't pester mods you don't know by simply spamming their modmail.
3. Boycott and spread the word...to Reddit's competition! Stay off Reddit entirely on June 12th through the 13th- instead, take to your favorite non-Reddit platform of choice and make some noise in support!
4. Don't be a jerk. As upsetting this may be, threats, profanity and vandalism will be worse than useless in getting people on our side. Please make every effort to be as restrained, polite, reasonable and law-abiding as possible. This includes not harassing moderators of subreddits who have chosen not to take part: no one likes a missionary, a used-car salesman, or a flame warrior.

Anything you can do with all the free time?

1. If you haven't already, go watch some of the classic Formula E races. Seasons 1 to 5 are available on Dailymotion. Season 6 and up are available on MotorsportsReplays. Then watch some FE documentaries available in the "Community Info" / Sidebar.
2. If you have a discord account and would like to join our discord server, you're welcomed to join. We never advertised it much but it is there.
3. Enjoy some of the other racing series out there!

Thank you for your understanding, support, and solidarity during this crucial time.
Best regards,
The Moderation Team of FormulaE
If you're interested in finding out more, the moderators at ELI5 have a fantastic writeup.
videos infographic
List of participating subreddits
2nd list of participating subreddits
Announcement from other motorsports subs:
Formula1 - https://www.reddit.com/formula1/comments/141jtll/were_joining_the_reddit_blackout_from_june_12th/
IndyCar - https://www.reddit.com/INDYCAcomments/143k78g/rindycar_will_be_joining_the_blackout_to_protest/
Discussion threads of current events:
https://www.reddit.com/redditdev/comments/144l86y/takeaways_and_recommendations_after_api_meeting/
https://www.reddit.com/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1451ldq/what_is_the_deal_with_apollo_any_why_are_people/
https://www.reddit.com/SubredditDrama/comments/144h7la/the_admin_v_app_drama_takes_a_dramatic_turn_as/
https://www.reddit.com/SubredditDrama/comments/1404hwj/mods_of_rblind_reveal_that_removing_3rd_party/
https://www.reddit.com/SubredditDrama/comments/13ww00k/reddit_admins_go_to_rmodnews_to_talk_about_how/
https://www.reddit.com/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/
https://www.reddit.com/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_will_shut_down_on_june_30_2023_in_response_to/?depth=11
https://www.reddit.com/ModCoord/comments/13xh1e7/an_open_letter_on_the_state_of_affairs_regarding/
https://www.reddit.com/ModCoord/comments/143rk5p/reddit_held_a_call_today_with_some_developers/jnbjtsc/
https://www.reddit.com/ModCoord/comments/142rzna/a_bot_to_make_your_subreddit_private/
https://www.reddit.com/ModCoord/comments/142rzna/a_bot_to_make_your_subreddit_private/jnc72oa?context=1 - https://github.com/DerfJagged/subreddit-blackout-tool
https://www.reddit.com/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/13yh0jf/dont_let_reddit_kill_3rd_party_apps/
https://www.reddit.com/Blind/comments/13zr8h2/reddits_recently_announced_api_changes_and_the/
https://www.reddit.com/Blind/comments/143d0t2/letter_template_reddit_api_changes_set_to/
https://www.reddit.com/modnews/comments/13wshdp/api_update_continued_access_to_our_api_fo
https://www.reddit.com/modnews/comments/141oqn8/api_updates_questions/
https://www.reddit.com/modnews/comments/134tjpe/reddit_data_api_update_changes_to_pushshift_access/
https://www.reddit.com/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3
https://www.reddit.com/toolbox/comments/141locs
https://www.reddit.com/RESAnnouncements/comments/141hyv3
https://www.reddit.com/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/comment/jmmptma
https://www.reddit.com/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/comment/jmolrhn
RiF and Apollo announcements:
https://www.reddit.com/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_will_shut_down_on_june_30_2023_in_response_to/
https://www.reddit.com/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/
https://www.reddit.com/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ceo_tomorrow_to_discuss_the_api/