Hello everyone!! This theory has two parts as said in the title. The first one about what the D. means and the second one is about how I think Luffy and Imu are each others counterparts, simbolizing dreams vs nightmares, and how Imu´s surname "Nerona" takes inspiration on emperor Nero and what lies behind that inspiration with Imu´s possible fruit, hope you guys like it!!!
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FIRST THEORY: The clan of the "Dreamers"
Following chapter 1085, Oda has given us some information about the possible meaning of the "D.", after showing us the conversation between King Cobra and Imu sama. While these dialogues have not directly revealed what it means, he does seem to have specified with certainty that the "D." is not a family name of a particular family or dynasty, but is actually a moniker according to TCB's translation.
If we take this premise of the moniker I believe that the meaning of the "D." could be an adjective that was given to those who fit within that moniker.
An important fact I should mention to try to give substance to the theory is to recall Oda's use of anglicisms in One Piece, the most well known to all being the revelation that Raftel (Rafuteru) was really "Laugh Tale". To mention some of the most significant anglicisms within the very many that exist, we can name the Levely, which we all knew as Reverie (the change is confirmed in chapter 905, it is seen in the flag of a man in the background) or the case of Joy Boy's title.
I make a disclaimer here that, despite using the romanization of Japanese, I know nothing about Japanese; but it is true that as simple readers many of us, with or without knowledge of Japanese, have seen a certain tendency of Oda to play with words and their possible meanings. Thanks to people like Artur - Library of Ohara, fans who do not understand Japanese can be informed of these nuances that enrich One Piece.
From the beginning of One Piece we see how dreams are very important in the story, with each of the Mugiwaras having a dream to fulfill, in addition to the famous and mysterious dream of Luffy and Roger that Oda keeps up his sleeve. Let us also remember one of the most famous quotes said by Kurohige himself "A man's dream will never die". It is well known that dreams are one of the pivots of the story.
Therefore, joining the knowledge about the "D." as a moniker, the use of English words directly used by Oda to "mislead", and the great importance that dreams have in the story of One Piece and its characters, I believe that the meaning of the "D." could well hide the adjective "Dreamers". The famous clan of "D." could actually be the clan of the Dreamers, not as a genealogical lineage, but as a distinctive in the form of a moniker given to the people who came from the Great Kingdom/Ancient Kingdom (Kyodai na Ōkoku) that perished during the void century. It could also directly mean "Dream" but I opt more for the "Dreamers" option.
To explain why I think the "D." has this meaning, I will first comment facts that we know 100%, for having already appeared in One Piece, and then the part of my own imagination.
As we know so far the "D." that have appeared and have been important in the story, have great and ambitious dreams for which they fight. As an example of this we have the dream of Xebec, who wanted to be the King of the world; or that of Kurohige who aspires to be the king of pirates and found a pirate nation recognized as such by the World Government; and well, as I mentioned, earlier the dreams of Roger and Luffy, which although unknown, it is clear that they must be big and imaginative dreams by the reactions they have provoked to those to whom they have been revealed.
Why Dreamers? To answer this question I will first quote what Vega Punk said in chapter 1069, which although it is the character's own theory and not a definitive explanation, I am of the opinion that it can serve as a basis:
“- We owe all ther is to desire (dreams)!! For instance the devil fruits!!
Each devil fruit embodies a different wish (dreamt) someone had for our evolution.
“If only I could do X… It´d be great if Y were possible”.
The powers actulize these sentiments, showcasing potential futures for humanity.
Of course, since they cause unnatural aberrations they earn the ire of mother nature… the sea itself. Such blasphemy cannot go unchecked.
Those who have eaten a fruit face a totally alien reality born from boundless imaginatiom!!
That´s my theory at least, whether you believe there´s a god out there or not… (i will explain the idea of maybe Nika isn´t a god but a man from the Great Kingdom) … one thing´s for sure, we live in a wondrous world!!
And as he finishes by saying, that is his theory but it is not something fully proven.
It could be that in the Old Kingdom they reached such advanced technology in general, and specifically in genetic scientific research, that from the dream or the thought of desiring they could make fire (mera mera no mi) or become x animal (zoan), they experimented until imbuing those abilities into fruits (like Vegapunk does, but perfecting the process), which they could then eat and alter their base DNA, mixing it with the chosen ability. This idea of creating fruits that genetically modify people by eating them to achieve x or y ability would come from imagination, from dreams.
The people of the Old Kingdom perhaps traveled throughout the world and visited different islands, both inside and outside the Grand Line, and those who came from the Old Kingdom, being users of "Akuma no mi" and having abilities that would seem impossible, fantastic or divine to the people of these primitive people (when I say primitive I mean that they were less technologically advanced, as may be a stage similar to the middle ages, for example), were at first deified. The case of the Sun God Nika, who could have been a normal human being but with the abilities of the gomu gomu no mi or hito hito no mi, could be a perfect example of that possibility. In the eyes of people who were not from the Ancient Kingdom he would appear to be a God, provoking smiles and happiness in the places he visited and carrying the hopes and dreams of the people. If we think about it, it also makes sense in our context. In One Piece we already have internalized the idea that supernatural powers exist, that there is a reason for them, but if someone appeared today with the power to create earthquakes, fire or light out of nothing, without knowing where those abilities come from, he would be a supernatural being in our eyes; in the eyes of ancient civilizations, a God.
It is worth making reference here also to the theory of evemerism, either because of the possibility that Oda was inspired by it for his representation of religious cultures in One Piece, or simply as a tool to understand the vision of the gods that is being proposed. Evemerus of Messene was a 4th century B.C. thinker who proposed in his work the possibility that what classical culture considered gods were nothing more than mortals who gained great prominence in their society. He argues that figures such as Zeus or Cronus could thus be ancient rulers of another civilization, and that their divinity would be an idealized memory by society of them, exaggerating their attributes and greatness. Thus, Zeus would have been only a revered king. In essence, evemerism is the search for a "rational" explanation of the divine.
In One Piece we see several cases where a certain character is shown for a particular culture at first, as one who possesses divine powers when in reality this conception is only given due to a lack of knowledge about the origin of his powers. The most obvious case is that of Enel, who in the eyes of the Shandians is a God, but only because of ignorance and low presence of the akuma no mi in Skypea.
An example of this deification in reality would be the first impression that the pre-Columbian people had with the arrival of the Spanish armies, thinking at first, (although this thought did not last long) when they saw them mounted on horses with shining armor and guns that shot fire, that they must have been gods. And we already know how much Oda likes to take real historical references for inspiration.
This relationship between the people of the Old Kingdom and the "primitive" kingdoms could be maintained over the centuries allowing the "primitives" to become familiar with the unknown of those who came from the Old Kingdom, perhaps they even came to mix and have joint offspring, but the first writings deifying them would have already been captured in the history of One Piece, passing from legend to myth. The reality would have been distorted by the different versions of the different civilizations that would have been told from generation to generation, undergoing the modifications of each culture, as it happens in reality with the historical evolution and being in the end the person of Nika considered the God of the Sun.
So, if we accept that the members of the Old Kingdom may have been seen as gods, perhaps they taught them their knowledge as a gift and showed the reason why devil fruits were created. It may be that at that time the akuma no mi were called by another, less derogatory name, instead of "devil fruits". The name "clan of the Dreamers" could then be because they were people who believed in the improvement of human evolution and with the power to materialize what they dreamt and desired into a fruit that would provide the desired abilities. For example, the dream of wanting to cure and save people's lives would have been the origin of the ope ope no mi. It is also possible that people from kingdoms with a more backdated technologi, transmitted their dreams to members of the ancient kingdom and the Dreamers, as a gift, created the appropriate fruit to achieve such dream, thus forging a reputation that motivated them to be assigned a nickname, the Dreamers, for being able to materialize dreams.
Therefore, I think it is a possibility that "the clan of the Dreamers" was the moniker that less advanced kingdoms gave to the people coming from the Old Kingdom. Perhaps the "D.reamers" first introduced them to the akuma no mi and told them that they came from their imagination, ideas and dreams.
Likewise I also believe it would make sense of another mystery of the story, "the inherited will of the D." Will is something that only people possess, and the idea of inheriting implies that something is also necessarily received from a person. This interpretation would be in contrast to the possibility that the "D." stands for "Dawn" (which is also an interesting theory, and one that I would equally like if it were the final meaning), since a concept or natural phenomenon such as dawn, which has no will and cannot be inherited, fits less in my opinion, than the idea that inheritance could be that of ideals or principles passed from one civilization to another.
Regarding the reason why the word Dreamers stayed in the initial D. I think it was the way they chose for those who defied the 20 kingdoms, to recognize each other but also so that the enemy did not, it would be the same thing that happens with the tattoo on the ankle of the people faithful to the kozuki clan in Wano.
In short, I think the clan of the Dreamers would be formed by the people of the Old Kingdom, and the inherited will of the Dreamers would be the will of the people who pursue and fight to make the world a better place, people whose ideals include the pursuit of freedom and happiness of all people throughout the world of One Piece, and thus bringing the eventual dawn of the world, as said in Lili´s card.
Pd: this is a part that I don't quite know how to substantiate, but going back to Oda's puns, the word "dream" in Japanese would be pronounced "dorIMU" (meaning "Mu" emptiness in Japanese), and it could be a kind of very vague interpretation that "Imu" or "Mu" (as he/she calls him/herself), was the one who betrayed the Dreamers' clan. He/she would then be "the void" that absorbed all the dreams and hopes of humanity by ending the said Clan.
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SECOND THEORY: Luffy vs Imu, and Imu´s devil fruit
Connecting with my theory that the D. stands for Dreamers, I see a clear antithesis between Luffy and Imu that I will try to explain below.
Luffy being the Sun God Nika, personifies happiness, freedom, hopes and dreams while Imu symbolizes the opposite, terror, oppression and in my opinion also nightmares. It is very interesting to highlight how while Luffy is free and travels around the world living adventures and being happy, on the other hand, Imu despite being the king of the world and having all the power, is someone who is hidden from the world, imprisoned in his own room without anyone knowing of his existence.
From here I will give my opinion on what Imu's fruit may be after seeing chapters 1085 and 1086.
The first option is that Im's fruit is the "akumu no mi", the fruit of nightmares. I believe in this idea because of the design Oda has drawn for the manifestation of Imu's powers, a formless being, full of darkness that engulfs the whole empty throne room. In addition akumu contains the same kanji as Mu (as Imu calls himself), whose meaning besides nothingness or emptiness, can be translated as dream, And what would be the antithesis of dreams? Nightmares, which would be what could symbolize Imu, in front of Luffy as symbol of the dreams, and this fits very well with the idea that the clan of the Dreamers would be the natural enemy of the nightmare (Imu or Mu). Therefore the first option would be the nightmare against the dreams.
The second option is that Imu would directly have the akuma no mi, the devil fruit as such. While in chapter 1085 there are times when Imu's power is blurred and formless, in other panels we have been able to see the shape of an arrow-tipped tail and sharp teeth. It is mainly because of the arrow-tipped tail that I think it could be the akuma no mi. To substantiate this theory I have to refer to the possible full name of Im revealed in this last chapter 1086.
Saint Imu of the house Nerona. The surname Nerona could be inspired by the Roman emperor Nero, whose reign is associated with tyranny and extravagance, being the architect of a series of systematic executions and a relentless persecution of Christians. It is for this last reason, that in a book of the Bible, the number of the beast (666) is associated to the emperor Nero being considered the devil. Therefore, if the surname Nerona comes from this emperor, the idea that Imu has the akuma no mi is quite feasible. Below in brackets, I leave the long explanation of this, but if you don't want to read it you don't need to. Then follow it up with a third possibility about Imu's power.
[In the Apocalypse of St. John, Rome is criticized in a veiled way for its persecution of the Christian population, and in this book the Beast (which had 7 heads, like the 7 hills on which Rome was settled) is mentioned, represented by the number 666 (or 616 as well). The specific quote is "He that hath understanding, let him calculate the number of the Beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is 666". The Greeks and Hebrews at that time used gematria, that is, the assignment of a numerical value to each letter of the alphabet. So, the sum of the Hebrew letters of "Caesar Nero" adds up to exactly 666. And therefore, Nero is the Beast/the devil who wants to destroy the world].
The third possibility is that Imu, like Kurohige, has more than one devil fruit and perhaps has both akuma no mi, akumu no mi, devil and nightmare fruits, again being the complete antithesis of Luffy, having on the one hand the God of Dreams and the Devil of Nightmares Imu.

This describes what I do to make my bytecode interpreter faster. It stops short of using (tracing-)JIT methods, which I consider far too complex, and not pure. What I do below is always executing a bytecode at a time (although it may merge two into one), and never generates custom native code sequences for the input program.
Note that this is for a language with tagged dynamic types. I mention this because people usually omit this important detail! An interpreter for a static language can be trivially JITed, if for some reason you can't just use AOT compilation.
First here's a summary of the byte-code dispatchers I have used, in order of slower to faster:

Function-table -fn Use a table of function pointers, one per bytecode handler Switch-based -sw Use a giant switch operating on bytecode indices Label-table -lab Use a table of label pointers, ie. 'computed goto' ASM-based -asm Use inline assembly within a set of threaded-code functions, one per bytecode 

My 'bytecode' is actually a sequence of 64-bit values: a bytecode index, followed by 0-4 inline operands depending on instruction, so it is variable-length. However, for -fn -lab -asm dispatchers, the bytecode index is usually fixed-up to the address of the function or label. It is sometimes left as an index when debugging.
My -asm dispatcher was so effective that I eventually dispensed with the middle two, and now mainly use -fn and -asm. (However, when I sometimes transpile to C to take advantage of gcc-O3, that only supports -fn, as -asm is not portable. It turns out that -asm is usually faster than even using gcc-O3, and would be even if -sw -lab were available; it's not often that you can say that. See example timing below.)
(The -lab-style dispatcher is used in a separate interpreter project for static code, there it makes use of a special switch statement in my implementation language which creates a computed-goto without having to manually maintain jump-tables.)
The -fn dispatcher is ultra-simple, which is also why I prefer it for HLL-only code; here it is:

type fnptr = ref proc repeat fnptr(pcptr^)^() # ^ means pointer deref until stopped 

My ASM-based approach works well with low-level, integer-based algoriths; not so well on more typical scripting-type code using higher level data types. Fortunately my style of coding is the former: I like to use my scripting language for low-level tasks because it is nicer.
So, how much faster is -ASM? On suitable apps, it can be 2-3 times as fast as -FN. But on one task I checked today, it was 8 times as fast. This was to apply 8x8 blurring to a 2Mpixel colour image (not what you'd normally do in scripting code, but that's the kind of program I want to speed up):

 -fn 8 seconds -fn 5.6 seconds (transpiled to C then using `gcc-O3`) -asm 1 second 

The interpreter is in my 'M' language which does not have an effective optimiser (it exists, but only works when there are local variables involved; interpretation mainly involves globals). The middle timing is when the HLL-only version is transpiled to C.
Here, if the inner loops of the task are isolated, the difference is nearer 10:1 (6.2 seconds vs. 0.6 seconds).
Comparison with Python and Lua
HLL code (ie. using -fn) is on a par with those two languages when not JITed, and when testing the usually micro-probenchmarks. But my language has quite a few features helpful in making low-level code efficient, such as compile-time named constants, and jumptable-based switch (those go together).
So when used for real programs, My Q language (I've forgotten to mention its name above) can be quite a bit faster, even before acceleration.
When the -asm dispatcher is used, then Q is even faster. Comparing -asm against PyPy, it is typically half the speed when testing typical benchmarks, but is still miles behind LuaJIT which can achieve C-like speeds.
With more substantial tests forever, then -asm is about the same as PyPy, and can just about match LuaJIT. Although this is based on 2 still smallish apps for Python, and 1 for Lua. Still, PyPy and LuaJIT use tracing-JIT methods; they will be executing customised native code. Mine is still a pure bytecode interpreter. PyPy in particular is big on loops, and can race head when loop counts are big enough.
How the ASM dispatcher works
The ASM dispatcher is an overlay applied on top of the normal, function-table-based HLL dispatcher. It started off like this:

• A bunch of threaded-code functons where created, one per bytecode, each mirroring the HLL handler
• During ASM dispatch, globals SP, PC and FP (frame pointer) needed for bytecode execution are kept in dedicated machine registers
• Initially, each ASM handler does nothing except call the HLL handler:
  • Save SP, PC, FP to globals
  • Call the HLL handler (which is responsible for stepping PC)
  • Reload SP, PC, FP to registers
  • Jump (not call) the next threaded-code function according to PC (its address is in PC⁾

At this point, the interpreter works as before, but it is not only just as slow as the FN dispatcher, but is even slower because of this extra overhead of the extra layer of functions, and saving/restoring those registers.
It is necessary to speed it up, which is done by gradually populating the ASM handlers, in one of three ways:

• (1) Do nothing. The op is too complex to do in inline ASM, so will always be a little slower (but such an op is slower anyway)
• (2) Do part of it in inline ASM, for example by checking for simple int or float operands, and dealing with this here. Otherwise it will abort and call the HLL version. Or an error is detected so it will again call the HLL which can handle that better.
• (3) The instruction is simple enough to do entirely here, such as unconditional jump.

So some ops will be faster then FN, some might be a bit slower; the hope is that there is a net benefit in performance, and that is generally the case.
Bytecode Combinations Another small improvement is to take two or sometimes three bytecode instructions that frequently occur in sequence, and combine them into a single bytecode, sometimes also avoiding using the stack. For example, push b; pop a becomes move a, b.
(Yes, my interpreter is not only stack-based, but it also manipulates 128-bit descriptors rather than the usual 64-bit one; it doesn't appear to suffer!)
But it can only do this for the few dozen I've hard-coded within the interpreter. This could be done in HLL-code too, but is not worth the trouble; if I want speed, I use -asm which is the default dispatch mode.
Further Improvements
The Q language has optional type annotations, left over from an abandoned version. If applied, there is scope to use even more specialised handlers, since I will know their types. However, using type annotations can also slow things down, since to use them safely, means lots more checking that the types of variables are what they should be, or needing to pply suitable conversions.
If I go this route, there is also the possibility of generating longer sequences of native code, synthesised at runtime and customised to the input program. But this is encroaching into JIT-terrority (not tracing-JIT since my approach would be done AOT before execution starts).
(My preference however, is to mark entire functions as ones to be translated to native code, which require annotations, and which are translated by some as-yet unknown means, possibly invoking my separate systems compiler. Or even just doing it manually via copy+paste, since the two languages have the same syntax.)
BTW here is the function at the centre of that image-blur task I mentioned above (it works by separating an RGB image into 3 8-bit images and doing one at a time then recomposing); it uses byte-pointers:

proc iblurhoz8(bm,n)= shift:=shifts{n,1} # convert 2,4,8 etc to 1,2,3 etc w:=bm.dimx h:=bm.dimy for y:=0 to h-1 do p:=bmgetrowptr(bm,y) to w-n-1 do sum:=0 q:=p to n do sum+:=q++^ od p++^:=sum>>shift od od end 

I'd like to start by letting everyone know that the genre is Fantasy Epic, and that this is a long prologue at 6,414 words. This prologue serves a purpose as it takes care of a lot of my setting and plot setup. It also gives the reader a fair bit of worldbuilding without making it too much of an info dump (talking to you Robert Jordan ;P).
I've had several people beta read this for me and gotten a lot of positive feedback. The prolbem for me is that these were all people I know very well on a personal level. Several have made comparisons to Chronicles of Narnia or Lord of the Rings as far as how well the full book is written. The problem is, friends and family can often have a bias and make things seem better than they really are. So, now I want to do a test run in the real world and see what people who don't know me think. Is it as engaging and compelling as they have made me hope that it is?
I'm basically wanting to take a page from a couple authors I admire and follow the ABC rule for critiquing. Please let me know of any point where you thought it was Awesome, Boring or Confusing. I know prologues aren't everyone's favorite thing, but this has basically been written like a novella for the main story as it foreshadows a lot of things leading all the way into book four.
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PROLOGUE
ARCHIVE INFINITUM
October 14, 844 (Alt-Future)
"Welcome back to the Archive, Master Jonathan."
"Thank you, Charles. It's good to be back. Have you noticed anything interesting in the Physical Realm?"
"I have not, sir. Do you require any assistance today?"
"Thank you, but no. I'm only here to revisit a passage within the history of the Order. Shortly after, I'll depart for the reunion at the Tower."
"Excellent, sir. I'll leave you to it."
Jonathan emerged from the ether and walked through the Archive doors. Inhaling deeply, he breathed in the familiar scents of dusty cleanliness that can only truly be found in a place of learning. The lights reflected off the floor's white marble surface, casting a glow that evenly lit every corner of the large chamber. Even so, the room still felt cavernous to him, as if he were a galleon amidst the vastness of the ocean.
Jonathan appeared to be in his early to mid forties. Though, with the way he carried himself and the spring in his step, he seemed closer to his late twenties. His hair was shoulder length and dark gray. He wore bifocals though he hadn't needed them since his ascension, and dressed with a refined sense of style.
His gray eyes were by far his most interesting feature, though. They were the only hint of how old he truly was and the many adventures and travesties he'd witnessed. Regardless, how old he was didn't matter as age had long since lost its meaning for him. After all, being an immortal tended to give a man new priorities in life.
As he strolled across the room, a lift descended from the tower's heights. The square platform had waist high rails around its perimeter. It floated through the air showing no sign of a suspension system to raise or lower it. This was accomplished by a magical enchantment that allowed it to levitate and dart about the room at mind numbing speeds. As he stepped up onto the platform's dais, it landed on the floor in front of him. He took a position at its center, then, after folding his arms behind his back, mentally willed it to take him to floor eight hundred forty four.
It rose off the ground, gradually gaining speed until it was a hundred or so feet in the air. At that point, the platform took off like a rocket. The thought of what these speeds would do to him if this were outside the Realm of Intellect crossed his mind, making him chuckle nervously. He knew he had to be moving close to six hundred miles per hour.
Now, let me tell you a bit about Jonathan's pet project, The Archive Infinitum. The Archive is a magical structure he'd designed shortly after the cataclysm that nearly wiped out the human race. An event most of you now refer to as the Night of Burning Skies. That same event is also what gave us the powers we now refer to as magic.
Shortly after obtaining his ascension, he learned that science's multiverse theories were close to how reality really worked. There are an infinite number of parallel universes, or branching timelines, that coexist simultaneously. What was different is that each universe shared a common six realm structure. The Physical Realm, the Realm of Intellect, the Dominion of Shadows, the Plane of Enlightenment, the Land of the Forgotten, and the Ether.
He built the Archive within the Realm of Intellect so it wouldn't be bound by the laws of physics or time as we know them. Once the structure was anchored in place, he could set most of those parameters himself. What he didn't realize was that making it here would have an unintended, though not unwelcome, side effect. The structure's size, shape, and architectural style could change by anyone who entered it.
When someone enters the Archive, it ascertains their strength of mind and will. Suppose the individual's mental fortitude is deemed stronger than that of the other occupants. In that case, the appearance will adjust to one that best serves and appeals to that individual. This could become unsettling for the occupants already inside the first few times it happened. That being said, it has no effect on the contents atop the shelves or where you're located within the structure. For Jonathan, it shared an uncanny resemblance to the George Peabody Library, though on a much grander scale.
The lift stopped after a brief ride, and Jonathan stepped off. He resumed his stride, passing row after row of the cherry wood bookcases. There were hundreds of rows and thousands of tomes and scrolls in each. As a scholar, he'd spent most of his existence here. But, even so, he knew there would always be something more to be gleaned from their pages.
Today was a day of remembrance. Of celebration. Of mourning. It was the anniversary of the end of a war that had lasted ten thousand years. With the death of one individual, a light of hope was given to many. For others, it was a bittersweet victory that left a void in their hearts. He'd come here today to revisit a passage that would return him to that fateful day. Reliving the event which granted them this peace, and once again, paying his respects to a dear friend.
"Ah, yes, yes, yes. Here we go."
The plaque on the side of the bookcase read, Row DD, Column 15. Now that he'd found the right one, he began scanning the shelves. It wasn't long before his hand landed on the tome he sought.
"Here it is." He pulled it down from the shelf. "My word. Has it truly been fifteen hundred years since I glanced through these pages?"
Looking at the cover, he chuckled. The combined magic of the Archive and the Realm had created a thin layer of dust. Giving it the feeling of something ancient and lost to time. Raising it to his lips, he blew the dust away, causing the magic to dissipate as it fell to the floor. He pulled open the cover and rifled through the pages. The section he stopped at contained the account of Rexinon the Prophet's final words.
Summoning his divine magics, he channeled a spell into the tome. The words that once filled the passages began to fade away, leaving only the blank pages, which now bled a blueish gray smoke. The soft glow of the lights against the floor diminished as the smoke spread. As the darkness grew more substantial, luminescent spheres and arcs of brilliant blues and crimson could be seen dancing about its surface like lightning.
The ground trembled beneath his feet, and the smokey haze took on a more stormlike appearance. All around him, the air started to feel heavy, and the taste of dust and sea salt filled his mouth. A gentle rain began to fall, and the room's remaining lights winked out. If not for the increasing flashes of lightning, he would've been left in total darkness. But even this was not a comfort, as those flashes cast shadows against the storm's ever swirling walls. Many of which appeared to be dark things that should never be seen in the light.
The storm's intensity grew, bringing disorienting cracks of thunder and wind whipping around him. It assaulted his senses and seemed to have an almost vengeful purpose. That meant he had to constantly focus on the spell, bracing himself against the onslaught. If he failed, it would kill him without question.
Some of the shadows began to take on a physical form with details beyond what the walls could offer them. He watched as an hourglass tumbled end over end, circling him before it returned to the storm. A moment later, a blazing fireplace and mantle emerged but produced neither light nor heat. Finally, a door engraved with the crest of the Order appeared. These images were ones he'd expected to see for this particular passage, and so came as no surprise. However, when a fourth image appeared, he was caught off guard.
Although it was normal for three images to accompany this spell, an occasional fourth spoke of prophecy. He focused intently on this final image. It showed twelve people standing in a circle; one of them was coated in blood. Two others were bound by chains. One a man, the other a woman.
He looked closer at the man and realized it was Godric. His eyes opened wide as he tried to decipher the meaning behind the image. Only a few moments passed while he speculated, but it was a few moments too many. Disaster struck, and too late, he realized his mistake. He'd lost focus, and now the storm would surely take him.
Hurricane force winds and debris tore at his clothes, quickly turning them into rags. One powerful gust slammed into his side as if he'd been struck by a car, knocking him off his feet. The storm swelled with even greater ferocity. It threatened to consume him this time, and he wondered if it would finally cost him.
Rain and hail pelted his face and body, while dust and sand stung his eyes. As he wiped away the grit, a bolt of lightning struck before him, temporarily blinding him. He got to his hands and knees, gasping for breath as the storm continued to beat him relentlessly.
Steeling himself against the pain, he rose to his feet. As fast as he could manage, he began casting mental defenses and barriers to protect his mind from the horrific assault. He bellowed in defiance of the storm, "I will not let it end this way! I refuse!" One defense after another was laid upon his person, until finally, he succeeded. The winds died to a breeze as the rain became little more than a summer misting.
He heard the sound of a quill scratching against paper over the storm's remnants, and the air behind his back grew hot as a crackling fire joined the room's ambiance. The sickly sweet smell of incense filled his nostrils, reminding him of days spent in his master's study. Another fond memory.
The storm wall vanished as the tremors subsided, making the room visible through a misty haze. The light of the fireplace cast his shadow across the now rough cut gray stone floor. Half a dozen tapestries hung around the room, and a liquor cabinet stood at the room's far corner. The main entry door remained closed to his left, and the doorway to the study's balcony lay to his right. At the room's center sat Rexinon at his desk, writing furiously on a piece of parchment.
Wiping the sweat from his brow, he breathed a sigh of relief. Although he'd done this countless times, the journey into the pages of history was always filled with peril. But, blessedly, the most intense part of the spell was complete. And while he could now relax in that fact, that fourth image still concerned him.
He stood in the familiar square room, clothing restored to its original state. The evening's air flowed through the open windows, making the ambient temperature quite cozy. Crossing the room, he paused at the desk and listened as Rexinon started muttering. "What I wouldn't give for a typewriter, much less a computer. Would make this so much faster."
Jonathan couldn't help but crack a smile. "Oh, but how many times have I thought the same thing, old friend?" He remarked, though he knew Rexinon couldn't hear him.
He stepped up to the desk and leaned over it. Looking down at the paper Rexinon was writing on, he frowned. Like so many times before, it appeared as little more than black scribbles on a page. Those words had to be important, but there was no way to know.
This was one of the spell's critical weaknesses. The details within the vision were only as precise as what was written in the tome. Most of the books in the Archive were magically transcribed. The benefits of this were completed histories free of victor and writer biases. Although, it wasn't flawless.
Throughout history, there have been individuals or events that the spell couldn't see. The most well known examples of these blips in time were the United States presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 to 1945 and the United Kingdom's Prime Minister, Michael Durham, from 2063 to 2065. All that is known about them was their lives before office and the accounts written by those around them. These gaps in history were generally the result of one of two things. In these two cases, a place or individual with a strong connection to the Dominion of Shadows.
Sighing, he pushed off the desk and crossed the room to the liquor cabinet. He opened the glass doors, pulling several bottles and a glass from the shelves. He made a drink consisting of three parts Red Adders Bite and one part Dry Amorian Blood Wine, then added a lime wedge to the rim of the glass. The others wouldn't arrive for another half hour, leaving him time to kill.
He walked around the room with his drink in hand and studied the various tapestries, several of which he'd been a part of. Each one depicted an accomplishment or tragedy facilitated by the Order. All save one, which showed a scene from the event that started it all.
The one to the left of the cabinet showed the Order's founding. In the background stood a grand tower of black and white marble. Its four sides were engraved with the Mark of Hellyrr, which glowed with a magical light. In front of it stood a man facing a gathered crowd, his arms swept wide in triumph. They looked up at him and the structure with reverence and awe.
He continued to move in a counterclockwise manner around the room. Above the main entry door hung another tapestry. One he was even depicted in. It showed the aftermath of a massacre. Six figures stood amidst the bodies of hundreds. The earth around them was scorched by flame, and the blood of the fallen had stained it red. The cloud covered sky glowed a deep crimson with gold outlines from the fires below. It had come to be known as the Cleansing of Elysian, in which the entirety of the planet's second continent had been annihilated to preserve the world.
"I wish it had never come to this. Why can't we all just get along? Instead of thriving in the prosperity of our two lands, they plotted and began planning to bring war to our own people. To rape, pillage, and enslave them. Even with all my vast knowledge and wisdom, I can't understand why they felt the need to dominate and control the world." He looked back up at the tapestry. "Even now, most of the land is still uninhabitable."
He turned around and looked at the tapestry above the balcony door. This one would appear out of place with the others to all but a few handfuls of people. Even for those who learned the truth behind it, it looked like little more than an artist's vision of what a beautiful landscape at sunset should look like. The sky is dotted with hundreds of stars as shades of red, orange, and yellow dance across the land's horizon. The artist's point of view appears to be looking down from a hillside. Down the hill's slope, you can see a pond teaming with wildlife along its edge. The remaining landscape is filled with miles of forest stretching toward the horizon.
For the few who survived this event and still remained, they knew it depicted the final moments of their world before all of humanity was nearly lost.
Jonathan fixated on this tapestry more than he had on the others. The longer he stared, the more distant his expression grew. Over time, his breathing quickened, and his grip on the glass slipped. It shattered as it hit the floor, causing the rug to stain from the liquid. The sound jerked him out of the trance like state, making him feel ill.
He could still recall the memory of that long ago day like it were yesterday. The thought of how close humanity had come to extinction made his legs weak, and he stumbled back against the wall behind him. He slid down the stones' cool surface and noticed his hands were now trembling. Through shuddering breaths, he uttered the words of a broken man. "So much death. So many lives were lost that day. So many. Oh, Sonia. Even after all this time, I still miss you."
The main entry door slammed open, crashing against the wall with a loud bang. Jonathan jerked as one of them collided mere inches from where he sat. The startling sound had been enough to pull him from his stupor, but it still took a moment for him to gather himself. A man in the doorway lowered his foot from where he'd obviously kicked the unlocked door in.
"Knock, knock, Rex. Seems you've done it now."
"Seth. I'll never understand the animosity you held for Rexinon," Jonathan said wearily as he got to his feet.
Seth stood just shy of five foot eight inches and had slick black hair that he kept combed back. He wore black jeans and a beige dress shirt with mother of pearl buttons, which had seen far too much polish in recent days. A malevolent grin displayed his perfect teeth and careless eyes. He strode into the room, dragging a chair behind him, and placed it on the rug by the fireplace.
"Was kicking the door in really necessary, Seth?"
A second man stepped into the room, obviously annoyed by the unnecessary use of force. He wore a navy blue business suit and towered over everyone else in the room, and that was saying something considering Jonathan was six foot. As he still held to the standards of a marine, he kept his hair high and tight and his face clean shaven. He stood at the rug's edge out of respect for the Order so as not to mar the embroidered Mark of Hellyrr. A respect Seth clearly lacked.
"Godric Gibbs. This day changed you. Hell, it changed all of us, but few as much as you," Jonathan said. He looked back at the door as the third and final man entered. "Assassin."
This man was of a height with Jonathan and wore all black from head to toe. His outfit looked like something out of a TV show. Almost like a cross between Gi Joe's Snake Eyes, and CW Arrow's League of Assassins. After ten thousand years, all they knew about him was his previous occupation as a contract killer. It wasn't long before they'd taken to calling him Assassin, as they had no other name to go by. Any time he was asked a question regarding his past, he either remained silent or dodged it outright. He took a position to Godric's left and, like Godric, took care of where he stood on the rug.
The three men stood in silence and watched as Rexinon continued to write. Godric and Assassin seemed content to wait until he addressed them. On the other hand, Seth seemed to grow more agitated as the minutes passed. Jonathan chuckled in spite of himself.
About twenty minutes later, Rexinon spoke, "Reverend Seth Jones, Colonel Godric Gibbs, and Assassin. To what do I owe the pleasure?" His tone plainly indicated that he already knew.
Seth spoke first. "Oh, cut the crap, Rex. You already know why we're here. This cult thing of yours has gone on long enough."
"Well, there's the pot calling the kettle black," Jonathan muttered sarcastically.
Godric rolled his eyes. Everyone in the room knew about Seth's past as a cult leader. They also knew his anger was more at being forced to wait in silence than anything to do with Rexinon or the Order.
"Calm yourself, Seth. There's no need for such hostilities." Godric looked at Rexinon apologetically. "I'm sorry to have to do this, old friend, but my hands are tied. Rexinon the Prophet, Headmaster of the Hellyrrian Order, you've been charged with conspiracy to overthrow the governments of Aurelia and seize control for the Order.
"As we speak, the leaders of the Hellyrrian Order are being gathered for execution. Furthermore, your towers and all their artifacts will be destroyed, and any remnants of the Order's existence is to be wiped from the face of history. As of 0813 this morning, you have been sentenced to death. How do you plead?"
Rexinon continued to write at an incredible rate. He knew why they'd come. He'd known this was coming for months. After all, his gift was the gift of prophecy. The evidence for the charges against him was both substantial and ethereal, depending on what light was shown on it.
Two centuries ago, the Order had tracked the activities of an unknown number of individuals who'd been subtly manipulating several of the Aurelian governing bodies. They'd spread like a poison, corrupting them and turning once prosperous kingdoms which knew few hardships, into lands where the people had to fight just to survive. The problem was that whoever that force had been, always seemed to be just one step ahead of them. Now, not only was it check, but checkmate. The Order had lost.
"I believe the Righteous Twelve to be ill advised. I believe you've been manipulated by the same corrupted governing body which we've spent so long trying to purify—." Seth grunted. "—But," he said at length, "I accept all charges against me, save one. Neither myself nor anyone else of the Order has ever sought to rule Aurelia, as the charges would imply. The Cleansing of Elysian should've been proof enough to show that to be true."
Rexinon penned the final words of his letter and placed the pen back in its stand. Pulling the top off a jar, he dusted the page with a thin layer of sand to soak up any excess ink. After dumping the sand back into another jar to be cleaned, he pushed away from his desk and stood to look at his guests for the first time. After nudging his stool back under, he addressed Godric directly.
"Will you join me on the balcony one last time?"
Godric nodded his head and gestured towards the balcony doorway. As they stepped outside, Jonathan followed.
Rexinon leaned against the railing and looked out over the city, his gaze fixed on the setting sun. Godric joined him and looked down to the tower's base, some five hundred feet below. Although he was not afraid of heights, it gave him respect for the sturdily mounted railing at the balcony's edge.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Rexinon said. Godric looked at him, confused. "The way the world has turned out since that day? Ten thousand years of watching as civilization was rebuilt and destroyed time and time again by a senseless war. Watching them evolve into something more as they learned how to use these gifts we were given. In some ways, we're greater than we ever were. In other ways, we're inferior. If I have any regrets, it's that I couldn't do more to leave the people better prepared for this new age."
"Well spoken. If it's any consolation, I believe this is wrong. I even spoke out against the council for a different outcome. For my efforts, though, I was threatened with execution if I didn't cease my objections."
Rexinon's tone grew heated after hearing of the council's reaction. "You should know better than anyone why I fought so hard against them, then. I'm not against governance. I'm against corrupt governance. We had far too many corrupt politicians and warlords in our own time for me to ever want to allow it again."
Godric nodded his head. "Yes. The problem is you played too heavy a hand too quickly. Instead of accepting that they'd been beaten, they cheated by playing with an ace they had hidden up their collective sleeves."
Rexinon sighed, knowing his words were true. "Indeed. I've accepted my fate. I won't run. Won't even make it difficult for y'all. I have no need to. I would like to make one final request to ease your conscience, though."
Rexinon leaned toward Godric conspiratorially. As he did this, the world around them began to shimmer and distort. Almost like the motion blurring you'd see on a TV. Likewise, their conversation was masked by the sound of white noise and the sound of hushed incoherent whispers.
This was the second hurdle the scrying spells had to deal with. Individuals with divine magic could conceal their conversations or even the events they were a part of. Rexinon had concealed this conversation, and to this day, Godric has never spoken of what was said.
Jonathan returned to the study with a resigned sigh. There was nothing more he could learn from their conversation. Assassin stood in the same spot he'd been when he first entered the room and looked as if he hadn't so much as twitched. Seth, however, was rummaging through the desk's drawers. He'd tried to figure out what he was looking for in the past, but nothing seemed obvious.
The shards of glass from when he'd dropped his cup earlier had vanished, along with the stain on the rug from the liquor. As expected, the glass had returned to the cabinet, and the bottles had refilled to where they were before he'd arrived. This was yet another reminder that this was a magically induced vision of an event that had long since passed. It could be too easy to forget that this wasn't real and that if he spent too much time here, it would have consequences in the real world for him.
He knew they'd be out there a while. In previous visits, he'd occasionally spent this time combing through the room, similar to what Seth was doing. Having cataloged everything centuries ago, there was nothing left to do but wait. So, he walked around the desk and sat squarely within the Mark of Hellyrr embroidered on the rug. There, for the next hour or so, he would remain, arms folded, legs crossed, and eyes shut. Freeing his mind of all unnecessary thoughts and emotions. At least, that was the plan.
About forty minutes in, Seth started to grumble and complain, forcing Jonathan to give up on his meditation. "… I know he's one of the humblest among our kind, but lord, does he have to be so dull? I can't find anything interesting anywhere. Even his liquor cabinet is dull." Seth walked from behind the desk to the liquor cabinet, pulled a few bottles out at random, and read the labels aloud. "Red Adders Bite, Amorian Blood Wine. Christ, he's even got Athester's Sweet Malt. This crap might as well be water." He pulled another bottle down and said, "At least he's got the taste to have at least one bottle of Nordic Berserker."
"Some of us prefer the simpler things in life. You might find life more enjoyable when you aren't always looking for the rare and exotic," Assassin said with a disinterested, almost dismissive tone.
Seth clicked his tongue. "Hell, even this letter he was so focused on when we arrived makes no sense." Seth thrust the letter towards Assassin, who took it nonchalantly. "Look at this."
Jonathan studied Assassin intently, hoping for any sign that would reveal the letter's contents. It was no use, though; for all the emotion he showed, Jonathan would've thought it no more important than a grocery list. But, if that were the case, why obscure it from the eyes of the scrying spell? The frustration caused by such a simple sheet of paper was baffling.
Jonathan got to his feet as Rexinon and Godric returned. As Rexinon walked to stand at the center of the rug, Jonathan moved behind the desk. Godric walked toward Assassin and conversed with him for a few minutes. Once again, the sound of white noise shrouded what was said. This time, it was Godric who masked his words from the spell. When Assassin nodded, Godric moved beside him and faced Rexinon.
Rexinon looked at each tapestry and seemed to relive each as he did so. They all knew those accomplishments and tragedies would stand the test of time. Any efforts to change that would fall flat. The Order had played too significant a role in shaping this new world. Finally, he turned to Godric, kneeling as he met his regret filled eyes.
Assassin pulled an infamous rod from his side, dubbed the Executioner's Handle. Forged in the Dominion of Shadow by Assassin some three thousand years ago. It was one and a half feet long of shadow infused steel and bound with his own divine essence. Ominous black tendrils crawled along Assassin's hand like something alive and flowed into the handle. The shaft elongated, and an axe head formed at its end.
Though he had accepted his fate, seeing that axe form made Rexinon's heart stop momentarily. He looked at Godric questioningly. Godric knew what that look meant and nodded his head in assent. Agreeing to this had allowed them both to right several wrongs this night by asking one simple question. "Do you have any final words or requests?"
"I have two, if you'll grant them. The first, allow me to disband the Order formally as my final act as headmaster."
Seth started to protest, but Assassin lowered the axehead in his direction as a silent threat. Seth glared at Assassin with seething hatred. Godric nodded to Rexinon. "Proceed."
As the headmaster of the Hellyrrian Order, he had a mental connection with every member. Without hesitation, Rexinon's eyes began to glow with a brilliant purple hue. This would be Rexinon's final order, and Godric knew it would save thousands.
"My brothers and sisters, hear me now and heed my words. Abandon the Order and save yourselves. Flee to the hills and never look back to what we once were. With my dying breath, the Hellyrrian Order is no more. The governments of Aurelia have played a hand we can't stand against. Anyone who disregards this command will be hunted down and executed without mercy. To the leaders and guild masters of the Order, I charge you with dismantling everything relating to the Order and turning over every artifact and document you can to Godric the Just, Jonathan the Wise, or Assassin the Watcher. I also ask that you help calm those who feel outraged and betrayed by this night. Do not blame the Twelve, as they were little more than pawns in this corrupt game of politics. Farewell, my friends. My family. May the peace we have fought for be found in the coming days."
The glow faded, and he slumped forward onto his hands, his breathing labored. A few moments passed, and he managed to catch his breath but still looked towards the ground.
"The second request I have is that anyone who would heed that warning be spared. The ruling factions wanted me. As long as no one else causes trouble, we know they won't cause too much fuss over it."
His voice took on a much sharper edge as he looked back up. "You call us a cult, though you know we are nothing of the sort. On the contrary, our Order has stood for nearly five thousand years for the betterment of the entire world. How they treated you should tell you that what I said and what we were doing was justified."
"Shut your mouth, Rex!" Seth spat venomously.
Godric glared at Seth. His own anger with this situation was at the point of breaking free. "Be silent! I don't know what kind of grudge you have, but I, for one, don't give a damn what the council said. Rexinon doesn't deserve death for the crimes he's being accused of. Unfortunately, the ruling factions in almost every nation are corrupted and working towards being as corrupt as they were back in our day." Godric sighed. "Regrettably, my hands are tied, though. The law is the law, and I have been overruled on this matter. Regardless of what my conscience thinks, I will abide by the rules of the land."
Rexinon nodded, understanding Godric's situation perfectly. Godric had become the divine embodiment of law and justice at his ascension. While those two things work hand in hand, they are far from the same, and one must often walk a fine line to serve them both. In this case, the choices were clear. In the end, it didn't matter what he chose; he would inevitably betray one virtue or the other. Unfortunately, there was no good way for him to handle this, and Rexinon could see how this was affecting him.
"The majority of the Order will heed my warning. As for the leaders, if any are still alive, they will follow that command to the letter. They'll even aid you in handling any hotheads who resist," Rexinon said.
"The good news is that no one has yet been executed this evening. I'll personally see to it that those who abide by that order are given a chance to live long, productive lives within society. If all goes well, you will be the only casualty of this idiocy."
Rexinon gave the faintest sign of a smile with a halfhearted chuckle as he said, "Godric, one thing I'll not allow is any of the Order's work ending up in the hands of one of those tyrants. Therefore, I demand that Jonathan be given every document, scroll, and tome held within our strongholds for safekeeping." Rexinon felt exhausted. The spell to warn his Order took more out of him than anticipated.
"You're in no position to be making demands of us," Seth said. Godric finally snapped and struck him so hard that he slammed back into the wall beside the fireplace, cracking it. He got back to his feet a moment later, fixed his shirt, and looked down at the blood he'd wiped from his lip. Godric looked back at Rexinon.
"As you were saying."
"Assassin, I'd ask that you secure all our relics and artifacts, regardless of their magical significance. I don't need to tell you what all we have housed around Aurelia."
"No, you don't. The nukes of our time were nothing compared to some of those items," Assassin replied.
"We'll see to it that it's done. There are things within these walls that were never meant for untrained mortal hands," Godric added.
"Thank you."
"As for the texts, Jonathan will have a field day going through everything. There is far too much the council doesn't understand within these walls that we can't afford to lose."
"Godric was right, Rex. I still have everything. Much of which has been quite useful over the centuries,"
Godric turned his head away, no longer able to look Rexinon in the eye. "I no longer deserve the right to call you a friend, but is there anything else you would ask of me?"
Rexinon looked at Godric for a long time and couldn't help but smile. Not at his pain or suffering in following the orders given to him, but knowing that if anyone here had ever been a friend to him, Godric certainly was. With his final words, he left Godric with a warning.
"No, but I'll leave you with this. Be wary of those among you, for one will betray you all. My friend."
Godric nodded, accepting these as Rexinon's final words as a tear ran down his cheek. Rexinon lowered his head, and Assassin enveloped his axe's blade in a purple aura.
"Woah, Assassin, what's with the new color? Never seen that before," Seth asked.
Ignoring the question, Assassin swung the axe, severing Rexinon's head cleanly.
That night, the cries of the Order were heard in every city across Aurelia. All mourning the death of the Order's first, and last, headmaster.
Jonathan fought back tears of his own as he watched the axe's head vanish. Assassin secured the handle on his belt as he walked towards the desk. Godric looked as though he was going to be sick.
"Did you do as I asked?" Godric asked shakily.
"Of course. I may be a trained killer, but even I know this was bullshit, mate."
Seth walked over and picked up Rexinon's severed head by the hair. He held it up before him, a mischievous grin on his face. Then he whispered something into Rexinon's ear.
Assassin's eyes locked on Seth. As he let go of the head, he used one of his abilities, known as shadow step, to cross the distance to where Seth stood. Before Rexinon's head hit the ground, Assassin snatched it out of the air and punched Seth so hard that it sent him flying into the same section of the wall he'd hit earlier. He bounced off it, but the force of the impact sent several of the stones flying into the next room. Seth crumpled to the floor, where he lay unmoving for several seconds. After a while, his head snapped upright, and he began to laugh. He stood up as if nothing had happened and headed out the door. Godric, now seething with anger, watched as Assassin started to go after him. "Leave him. He's not worth your time."
Jonathan paced around the room, waiting for the spell to wear off. His heart ached, and his own anger toward Seth at that moment made him wish he could destroy the man. But that was Seth's way, and they'd all learned to let it go in time. The world began to blur and vanish, reverting to the Archive once again.
He closed the cover, placing the tome back on the shelf with a heavy sigh. His fingers lingered on the binding as he read the inscription, A Complete History of the Hellyrrian Order, Volume 666. Finally, Jonathan let his hand fall to the side as he walked away with his shoulders slumped.
As if speaking to an old friend, he lamented, "Damn you, Rex. Why couldn't you have just left well enough alone?"
As Jonathan walked away, he shed a tear at the loss of one of his closest friends.

Hello everyone :)
I finally managed to cap today myself and thought I'd share my setup. Upfront: I had been toying around with other ideas but finally went with the one u/Chipofthehead69 used which was based on one u/Resnaught shared. I never looked at any videos though so I'm not sure how similar my setup really is :)
I do not have the World Ender VC, am using 2x Sweet Friendship VCs though. If you do not have said VCs the team can still work but you'll have to adapt (-> chain Olive's SLB with Esther's LB on the kill turn; Rinoa's damage will suffer quite a bit though). The World Ender VC makes this a whole lot easier.
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Team gear:
https://imgur.com/a/sqxKldn
Ilmatalle - passive provoke + evade, a source of Nethicite, paralysis resistance; doesn't really matter how you achieve that, it's easy. EX level doesn't matter either.
Ibara - base form needs some help with MP as she will be using Bardarkja A LOT. BS form is just pure LB damage against machines. Mine is EX+2 (lvl 130).
Esther - now here's a build I never thought I'd share. Let me explain: Her base form is built to squeeze out the last bit of damage I could find. She did ~50 million which is... something (especially when you miss the cap by 32 million :> ). Her BS form is built specifically to have enough Spr to manage the incoming damage (my setup takes a little over 4k damage total). Both forms have at least 100% earth resistance.
Rinoa - base form Zidane's STMR + full LB fill (12 stones + as much LB fill rate as you can). BS form full magic damage against machines with Diabolos equipped. Mine is EX+1, her mag stat doesn't reflect properly on the builder (it's 1.5k too high, maybe counting the weapons twice?).
Dark Rain - laziest unit in this team. Full LB damage against machines.
Olive - full magic damage against machines.
While equipping for damage, the order of importance is Ibara > Rain > Rinoa > Olive.
​
Turn by turn:
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Turn	Ibara	Rain	Ilmatalle	Rinoa	Esther	Olive	Boss actions	Seals needed
1	3x Bardarkja	Guard	Power to Destroy Nethicite	I wanted to go with you!	(Start in BS) Electromagnetic Shield + Storm Guardian + Energizing Bunny	Brilliant Splash	AoE Gravity (seal/reflect); 2x AoE Phys; 1x Fixed AoE Magic damage	1
2	3x Bardarkja	Guard	Power to Destroy Nethicite	Singing	Base LB	Brilliant Splash	AoE Gravity (seal/reflect); 1x AoE earth magic (reflect); 1x AoE Phys; 1x ST Phys	1
3	3x BS chain	3x BS chain	Power to Destroy Nethicite	Singing	3x BS chain (in base form)	Whipped Cream Garden	2x ST Phys; 1x AoE non-elem Mag (seal), dispel (seal)	2 (or 1 and get dispelled)
4	Bardarkja + Wish of Vengeance + Endarkga (after Rinoa)	Guard	Power to Destroy Nethicite	Base LB	BS LB	Guard	AoE Gravity (seal/reflect); 1x AoE earth magic (reflect); 1x AoE Phys; 1x Fixed AoE Magic damage	1
5	Base LB	One and Only Ruler	Power to Destroy Nethicite	Summon Diabolos	Power to Destroy Nethicite	SLB	AoE Gravity (seal/reflect); 1x AoE Phys; 2x ST Phys; 1x AoE non-elem Mag (seal)	2
6	Bardarkja + Anun + Tsukiyo	Elemental Burst - Dark + 2x Magic Boost+	2x Machina Rune II (Olive + Rinoa)	BS LB	Power to Destroy Nethicite	Breaks + killers + Fire Cannon Fire	AoE Gravity (seal/reflect); 2x AoE Phys; 1x Fixed AoE Magic damage	1
7	BS LB	SLB	2x Machina Rune II (Ibara + Rain)	4x Apocalypse	Whipped Cream Garden	Whipped Cream Garden

I hope that's readable when I'm done...
Three specific things I want to mention:
I willingly take the dispel on turn 3. I don't have anything up at that point that I need and it removes the earth imperil, making Esther's build easier.
I did all of this without macros. Turn 3 is my 100 chain turn, it's 3x triple BS + 1x quad BS, I never failed that. BS chains still the single best thing Gumi ever brought to the game. And as for timing Rinoa's Apocalypses: Count to four while she casts/flashes, then back down from 5 in the same rhythm (so 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 0). Send Olive/Esther at 0, then Rain/Ibara right after. That way Rinoa's first hit lands around ~20 hits on the chain and the last one right at the end. It took me two or three tries to figure out the timing and it was pretty easy from there.
This does rely on variance. It took me exactly 20 tries to get a 18.47b roll (18.03b needed). Before that, I did have a 17.99b roll, too. So there is some leeway in the damage requirements but not a lot and any worse builds than the featured ones mean you'll need more luck.
​
If anyone has any questions on that, feel free to ask.
I hope this helps some more people cap this for the sweet 10k Lapis price :)
​

So I just wanted to share a minor win that I had last night that is so small but absolutely profound to me.
Me (5'11" size 20), my partner, and a few friends will be driving in a 24 Hours of Lemons race (wheel to wheel road course racing in $500 POS cars) this summer, and it's been super fun to prep our car, plan out our weekend strategy, shop for racing gear, etc. I grew up around Indy cars, and have always wanted to race, but my height ruled that out as a possibility very early on, and cost made it seem totally out of reach as an adult (I'll be 40 in August) until we found the Lemons series. Needless to say, I'm ridiculously excited.
Despite my excitement, prepping for the race has brought on a lot of unexpected anxieties about my size. I've been tackling them one at a time: racing seats are designed to be snug, will I fit? YES. Will the harness that fits my average sized partner and teammates fit? YES. Last night we received our fire resistant racing suits (coveralls with a front zip, think the suits trash collectors and janitors used to wear) and we realized we were missing some gear, so it was decided while we were all together working on the car, we'd try on what we DID have to make sure everything fit and we could exchange what didn't. I've been hesitant to do this kind of stuff in front of friends, because not fitting into a thing that should fit and having other people see me struggle with a zipper or buttons or whatever has been horrendously embarrassing to me in the past. My suit was an XXL (default sizing is for men, because they're the majority of the people wearing them), and while I was able to get it on and up over my shoulders, I realized pretty quickly that there was no way it was going to zip over my lower stomach where I carry most of my weight, and that even if I could, that would make the crotch so tight I likely wouldn't have been able to sit in the racing seat long enough to drive my shift (if at all). While the four of us were all trying them on, I was aware that everyone else's suits zipped up just fine, and they noticed me struggling to gather the front of the suit to try to zip it. Once I realized it wasn't happening, I just took it off and told the teammate that had arranged our gear rental I needed a bigger suit, and we all just carried on.
Just a few weeks ago, this would have been potentially devastating (I avoided fit-testing the seat u til it was just my partner and I, in case I could fit, or got stuck getting out), but it was very matter of fact: my body is the size that my body is. These suits are not designed with bodies like mine--or even bodies with curves in general--in mind. The suit that had failed me wasn't the largest size available by quite a ways. Other suits are available.
It was very much not a big deal to me, and it wasn't a big deal to anyone else and it was just... a lightbulb moment? Like how much time have I wasted being upset about a thing that wasn't designed with my body in mind not fitting my body?! It's 12+ hours later, and it's still kind of blowing my mind that this sudden "idk, it doesn't fit, can you get me a bigger one? 🤷‍♀️" moment was such a non-event.
Just sharing to say: take your fat body and do the thing. Get out of your own way and allow yourself to have fun experiences if the resources are available!

BEIJING, Jun. 09, 2023/PRNewswire/––WiMi Hologram Cloud Inc. (NASDAQ: WIMI) ("WiMi" or the "Company"), a leading global Hologram Augmented Reality ("AR") Technology provider, today announced a new and more efficient solution for computer-generated holography (CGH) through deep learning and neural network technology. Deep learning can find the optimal or local optimal solution in operation, making it efficient to compute CGH. CGH has been applied to holographic light traps, 3D displays, planar concentrators, AR displays, etc.
CGH technology can obtain the best wave modulation by inverse-solving the custom light field. Image quality is limited by the accuracy of SLM modulation, which is usually challenging to represent the target light field. In practice, the solution of computational holograms is always approximate and numerical methods are needed to determine feasible holograms to obtain the best-encoded wavefront. The current computation in CGH usually uses iterative algorithms, and non-iterative methods are designed to save computation time by evolving the GS algorithm. Despite the improvement, these non-iterative methods always lead to poor image quality and low spatial resolution during reconstruction due to scatter noise, downsampling effects, and conjugate image interference. In using deep learning technologies, U-net structures have been tried on CGH problems with initial success, but the holograms obtained by U-net in computational holographic problems have the drawback of degrading the quality of reconstructed images. Traditional convolutional neural networks rely on convolutional filters and nonlinear activation functions, which means that the processed data are assumed to be linearly separable. However, problems such as image coding, holographic encryption, and frequency analysis are difficult to describe by linearly divisible functions, and simple convolution and deconvolution are always restricted to a certain region to improve operational efficiency. The inability of U-net to utilize and rewrite global information means that optical image processing is very weak.
WiMi has developed efficient computer-generated holography (ECGH) technology, a deep learning-based CGH imaging method, which aims to solve the problems of long computational cycles and poor quality of traditional CGH methods. The method uses a mixed linear convolutional neural network (MLCNN) for computational holographic imaging and enhances information mining and information exchange by introducing a fully connected layer in the network.
The network uses an MLCNN structure with line fork layers, a "DownSample" structure for down-sampling, and an "UpSample" structure for up-sampling. The technology uses a neural network model to calculate the input target optical field and computes the phase values to simulate the optical experimental results. The target optical field is compared with the simulation results using a loss function, and the gradient of the loss value is calculated and back-propagated to update the network parameters.
WiMi's ECGH method can quickly obtain the required pure-phase images to generate high-quality holographic imaging. Compared with the traditional deep learning-based CGH method, WiMi's ECGH technology can reduce the number of parameters required for network training by about 60%, thus improving the efficiency and reliability of the network. In addition, the network structure of ECGH technology is highly versatile and can be used to solve various image reconstruction problems, which has strong practicality and application prospects.
WiMi's ECGH images use a non-iterative deep learning model MLCNN, which can compute hologram generation faster. By successfully applying the ECGH method, high-quality and stable computational hologram images can be obtained. A major feature of the MLCNN structure is the ability to compute cross-region exchange of data, which makes it suitable for complex optical functions that require the manipulation of global information. Applying the MLCNN model in WiMi's ECGH technology can effectively handle the complexity of optical functions. The model can handle a variety of complex optical functions to generate high-quality holographic images. This holographic image can perfectly reproduce the 3D scene, giving the observer a more realistic visual experience. The MLCNN model has better optical domain adaptation than the U-net network structure. This gives it an advantage in holographic generation and reconstruction because it can better handle the complexity of optical functions and variations in the optical domain, and CGH can perfectly reproduce the ability of 3D scenes and prevent visual fatigue.
The ECGH technology developed based on the MLCNN model framework of deep learning and neural networks not only reduces the computational load but also improves the quality of holograms, thus making CGH more practical. In addition, the MLCNN model is highly flexible and can be adapted to different holographic generation tasks. It has excellent computational power and high-quality hologram generation capability. With the continuous development of technology, the ECGH technology of the MLCNN model will be more widely used.

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Hello, I'm new to Mariadb/Mysqql. Facing below errors while starting the service - didn't help after clearing /uslib/mysql as some online article suggester. Any help is appreciated.
Basic Info
└─$ cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Kali GNU/Linux Rolling"
NAME="Kali GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="2023.2"
VERSION="2023.2"
VERSION_CODENAME=kali-rolling
ID=kali
ID_LIKE=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.kali.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://forums.kali.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.kali.org/"
ANSI_COLOR="1;31"
Could not install it through the Mariadb official script as OS release is officially not supported. Hence trying for custom install of Debian 11 installer - setup repo gpg signup manually - till installation it thew some dependency error but was able to install them and installation was successful.
$ mariadb --version

 *mariadb Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.11.4-MariaDB, for debian-linux-gnu (x86\_64) using readline EditLine wrapper* 

​
ERRORS seen -
└─$ sudo systemctl start mariadb
Job for mariadb.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl status mariadb.service" and "journalctl -xeu mariadb.service" for details.
​
└─$ sudo systemctl status mariadb
× mariadb.service - MariaDB 10.11.4 database server
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mariadb.service; disabled; preset: disabled)
Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/mariadb.service.d
└─migrated-from-my.cnf-settings.conf
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2023-06-09 19:07:44 IST; 1min 54s ago
Docs: man:mariadbd(8)
https://mariadb.com/kb/en/library/systemd/
Process: 67195 ExecStartPre=/usbin/install -m 755 -o mysql -g root -d /varun/mysqld (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 67196 ExecStartPre=/bin/sh -c systemctl unset-environment _WSREP_START_POSITION (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 67198 ExecStartPre=/bin/sh -c [ ! -e /usbin/galera_recovery ] && VAR= VAR=`cd /usbin/..; /usbin/galera_recovery`; [ $? -eq 0 ] && systemctl set-environment _WSREP_START_POSITION=$VAR exit 1 (code=exited, st>
Process: 67277 ExecStart=/ussbin/mariadbd $MYSQLD_OPTS $_WSREP_NEW_CLUSTER $_WSREP_START_POSITION (code=exited, status=7)
Main PID: 67277 (code=exited, status=7)
Status: "MariaDB server is down"
CPU: 98ms
​
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] InnoDB: File './ibtmp1' size is now 12.000MiB.
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] InnoDB: log sequence number 36416; transaction id 4
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] InnoDB: Loading buffer pool(s) from /valib/mysql/ib_buffer_pool
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] Plugin 'FEEDBACK' is disabled.
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [ERROR] Could not open mysql.plugin table: "Table 'mysql.plugin' doesn't exist". Some plugins may be not loaded
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [ERROR] /ussbin/mariadbd: unknown variable 'provider_bzip2=force_plus_permanent'
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [ERROR] Aborting
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff systemd[1]: mariadb.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=7/NOTRUNNING
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff systemd[1]: mariadb.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff systemd[1]: Failed to start mariadb.service - MariaDB 10.11.4 database server.
​
===
​
$ journalctl -xeu mariadb.service
░░
░░ The job identifier is 2679 and the job result is failed.
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff systemd[1]: Starting mariadb.service - MariaDB 10.11.4 database server...
░░ Subject: A start job for unit mariadb.service has begun execution
░░ Defined-By: systemd
░░ Support: https://www.debian.org/support
░░
░░ A start job for unit mariadb.service has begun execution.
░░
░░ The job identifier is 2757.
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] Starting MariaDB 10.11.4-MariaDB-1:10.11.4+maria~deb11 source revision 4e2b93dffef2414a11ca5edc8d215f57ee5010e5 as process 67277
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [ERROR] mariadbd: Can't open shared library '/uslib/mysql/plugin/provider_bzip2.so' (errno: 2, cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [ERROR] Couldn't load plugins from 'provider_bzip2.so'.
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [ERROR] mariadbd: Can't open shared library '/uslib/mysql/plugin/provider_lz4.so' (errno: 2, cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [ERROR] Couldn't load plugins from 'provider_lz4.so'.
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [ERROR] mariadbd: Can't open shared library '/uslib/mysql/plugin/provider_lzma.so' (errno: 2, cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [ERROR] Couldn't load plugins from 'provider_lzma.so'.
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [ERROR] mariadbd: Can't open shared library '/uslib/mysql/plugin/provider_lzo.so' (errno: 2, cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [ERROR] Couldn't load plugins from 'provider_lzo.so'.
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [ERROR] mariadbd: Can't open shared library '/uslib/mysql/plugin/provider_snappy.so' (errno: 2, cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [ERROR] Couldn't load plugins from 'provider_snappy.so'.
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] InnoDB: Compressed tables use zlib 1.2.11
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] InnoDB: Number of transaction pools: 1
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] InnoDB: Using crc32 + pclmulqdq instructions
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] InnoDB: Using liburing
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, total size = 128.000MiB, chunk size = 2.000MiB
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] InnoDB: File system buffers for log disabled (block size=512 bytes)
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] InnoDB: 128 rollback segments are active.
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] InnoDB: Setting file './ibtmp1' size to 12.000MiB. Physically writing the file full; Please wait ...
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] InnoDB: File './ibtmp1' size is now 12.000MiB.
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] InnoDB: log sequence number 36416; transaction id 4
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] InnoDB: Loading buffer pool(s) from /valib/mysql/ib_buffer_pool
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [Note] Plugin 'FEEDBACK' is disabled.
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [ERROR] Could not open mysql.plugin table: "Table 'mysql.plugin' doesn't exist". Some plugins may be not loaded
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [ERROR] /ussbin/mariadbd: unknown variable 'provider_bzip2=force_plus_permanent'
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff mariadbd[67277]: 2023-06-09 19:07:44 0 [ERROR] Aborting
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff systemd[1]: mariadb.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=7/NOTRUNNING
░░ Subject: Unit process exited
░░ Defined-By: systemd
░░ Support: https://www.debian.org/support
░░
░░ An ExecStart= process belonging to unit mariadb.service has exited.
░░
░░ The process' exit code is 'exited' and its exit status is 7.
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff systemd[1]: mariadb.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
░░ Subject: Unit failed
░░ Defined-By: systemd
░░ Support: https://www.debian.org/support
░░
░░ The unit mariadb.service has entered the 'failed' state with result 'exit-code'.
Jun 09 19:07:44 Skobeloff systemd[1]: Failed to start mariadb.service - MariaDB 10.11.4 database server.
░░ Subject: A start job for unit mariadb.service has failed
░░ Defined-By: systemd
░░ Support: https://www.debian.org/support
░░
░░ A start job for unit mariadb.service has finished with a failure.
░░
░░ The job identifier is 2757 and the job result is failed.
​

Hey everyone, I’m not well versed on insurance claims so I was hoping somebody could give me some clarification.
I was in a car accident last month and filed a claim through my insurance. I’ve had minimal contact with the repair shop or insurance despite multiple attempts to gather information ever since. I finally heard back today and found out the repair shop’s estimate was right at the threshold for declaring a total loss due to frame damage but the appraiser for my insurance refused to total it, saying that the shop needs to find a new frame to replace it and come up with a new estimate.
The issue is that the repair shop has called around to several places to 1) find somebody capable of replacing the frame and 2) find a new frame to replace it with to begin with. He said it’s been a week and he still hasn’t even found a frame and has run out of options at this point, even calling Toyota directly unsuccessfully as they are unable to supply a frame for a 21 Tacoma.
Insurance is unwilling to total the vehicle but the repair shop is unable to do the repairs. It sounds like nobody is willing or able to make any progress and I’ve already been without my vehicle for a month now. Is there anything I can do or say to get them to just total the truck and cut me a check vs waiting an indefinite amount of time to get my vehicle back? Thanks in advance.
This is in Missouri by the way.

I made/updated some new signature moves for Gen 1 Pokémon that would hopefully give them some newfound viability. Some of these attacks are likely too broken but that is kinda the point because most of the older Pokémon need a big power boost to contend with meta Pokémon today. Please feel free the share new ideas and feedback!
Signature Move for Vileplume: Acid Rain – Poison/Special/130 POW/100 ACC/10 PP/The user attacks the target by scattering toxic petals that can hit STEEL-type Pokémon for two to three turns with each hit having a chance to burn the target. The user and any opposing Pokémon then become confused.
This move is intended to be an upgraded version of Petal Dance, the move that used to be Vileplume's signature move until Gen 3. The new attack, Acid Rain, is Poison type so you can still run Petal Dance too if you want. The main draws of the new attack are being a Poison type attack that has a 20% chance to burn the target, being able to hit Steel type Pokemon for neutral damage and it confusing both Vileplume and the opponent when the move ends. Vileplume's ability Effect Spore could lead to some silly shenanigans. Imagine confusing and paralyzing the opponent in one turn because you used a strong move.
Signature Move for Parasect: Ophiate – Bug/Status/-/100 ACC/10 PP/The user scatters bursts of spores that induce sleep. The spores infest the target for four to five turns, dealing 1/8 of the target’s HP per turn. If the target switches to another party member, the infestation continues on that target. Does not affect BUG-type Pokémon
There is no doubt that Spore is a powerful move. Having guaranteed sleep used to be enough of a niche to give Parasect some competitive play. But now, as other Pokemon who are faster and not 5x times weak to fire (with Dry Skin) have Spore, parasect has completely fallen off. That is why this new move is Spore but like better. It combines Spore and Infestation while changing from being ineffective on grass types to being ineffective on bug types. This buffs the bug type as a whole becuase it makes them the best counter to this move. Ordinarily, Infestation traps the target but guaranteed sleep and trapping is usually gonna be an instant kill button so it was changed to allow switching but continue dealing passive damage to the target. The move refers to Ophiocordyceps which is the name of the scary fungus that can control bugs in real life.
Again, everyone is encouraged to leave feedback! Tomorrow will include Venomoth and Dugtrio.

Hi everyone, good luck today! I apologize if this is a dumb question, but I am in a bind. I reserved a room at my local library to take the exam today since I will not be able to take it at home due to noise. I was going to take it at my neighbors house, but she doesn’t have a desk for me to use, and I would have to sit on her spare bed to take it (which won’t work). I was reading through the LSAT FAQ’s today, though, and I saw that library study rooms weren’t okay. I am unsure if this is due to the windows or what, but this room in particular looks like your average office space; it’s a desk with a solid door and regular windows. It doesn’t look like anything super advance. There’s not a computer or anything in it, literally just a desk and a chair. I take the exam at 2:20, so I want to try and figure out if that is a no go now I can try to seek other places. I could honestly probably take it at the desk in my bedroom if not, I would just have to wear earplugs. The noise isn’t loud enough for anyone to hear but me, I just have extreme noise sensitivity’s and would be distracted by it.
TYIA for any help that you guys can offer:) I apologize for this being last minute, I didn’t think to check before hand. Totally my fault.

Hello! I came to Reddit because I am extremely lost I’m 22 years old and essentially I was pre approved for an auto loan through my credit union, I then made the first mistake of getting a car through carvana. I put about 2k down on a Chrysler 200 and the rest was financed with the amount I was provided (cashiers check). 2 months later and endless calls to my bank asking why payments were not coming out with no answers other than “carvana has not provided all documentation, just keep the car until further notice”. I receive an email…not a phone a call, from a carvana customer service representative who said I owed $4,906.00. I thought it was a scam so I immediately called carvana and after having the vehicle in my possession for over two months demanded I pay the amount immediately or they would come retrieve the car. I just moved to a new city by myself, started a brand new job, and pay all of my own bills, I did not have almost $5k to dump into a car only worth 10k even after the total amount coming out to 16k with tax, title, delivery, etc. They claimed this was all my banks fault even though all of the loan documents and information were provided to them prior of purchase. Anyways fast forward I return the car and set off with new terms from my bank (approved for more money and my APR went down) I head on over to H Greg dealership and thoroughly explain this whole situation I was in prior. The financial manager, the car sales man, and the manager all promised multiple times that I “would not be allowed off the lot with a new vehicle if something like that were to occur again”. They insured this to me THREE time because I kept putting emphasis on the prior issue that occurred, the LTV issue and how much of a pain it was to go through. I sit in this dealership for 6 hours as for they claimed they needed to contact the other location in which did the underwriting to make sure everything went smoothly and no future issues would arise. Everything goes great, I get the car , my car registered with insurance, all paperwork signed and I’m off on my way. I have now had the car in my possession for over a month. I get a call yesterday from the finance manager who directly promised me himself this would not happen asking for an additional $1400. Explaining “my credit union uses a different book than they do to value this car” and that although it’s not my fault he needs me to pay $1400 or drive the car back in the lot and return it . Please help me, this feels awful and for how “rare” this is I am unsure how I’ve been in this situation twice. I explained so many times I would have turned my happy a$$ around THAT DAY if I knew this was to occur and that they promised me their word and have failed me as a customer. Is there anything I can do? I don’t know how I’ve had the car for over a month now and I’m being requested to put more down. I know $1400 might not seem like a lot but for a 22 year old living on their own in todays day it is for me. Please help if you can with any advice possible . I reside in Florida I’m unsure if that helps.

Source: Growing Up in the Lord: A Study for Teenage Boys (Ch. 7, 1994)
If you haven’t done so already, you will soon decide to take a girl out on a date. Dating a girl is a good time to enjoy the companionship of someone else. Women have a different perspective on life.
When you take different girls out on a date, you have a chance to see who is available. You also have a chance to firm up in your own mind what you will be looking for in a wife. Most boys go through a phase where they cannot stand any girl, except mothers who are tolerated within limits. When these boys reach adolescence, they quickly realize that girls can be interesting.
Taking a girl out on a date gives you a chance to practice getting along with women. Girls do not enjoy being treated the same way you treat other boys. The time you spend dating gives you a chance to learn how to act around a girl.
You need to be choosy about whom you will be going out with. Some girls will understand that, because you are a Christian, there are certain things that you will not do. Many girls will enjoy the fact that they don’t have to be constantly on their guard while they are with you. However, there are girls who will use every opportunity they can find to try to get you to do things that are sinful. It is a challenge for them to see how far they can get you to go. For your own soul’s sake, you are better off not dating such a girl. David warns us, in Psalms 1:1, not to associate with sinners. By continually exposing yourself to sin, you are tempted to commit a sin. That is why Paul said evil companions will corrupt your good morals (I Corinthians 15:33).
Group dates are a good way to start out dating when you are young. If you pick your companions wisely, there will be fewer temptations in your way. A group gives you a chance to get acquainted with several people at once. You can also observe how the other guys treat their dates. Perhaps your first date won’t be so awkward when it is shared with others. Some good outings with a group may be to go bowling, play a few rounds of putt-putt golf, go canoeing, have a picnic and play softball or volleyball, or gather a group of young people together after church to eat ice cream.
Before you head out, spend some time thinking about what you will talk about during your date. In our society, boys tend to think and talk in terms of actions. Girls tend to think and talk about feelings. For example, if a boy and a girl were talking about an Olympic event, the boy would be interested in the score and the types of moves the athlete made. The girl would be interested in how the athlete was handling the stress and the athlete’s reaction to the scoring. Neither viewpoint is good or bad. They are just different. It is those differences that make conversation on your first date so difficult. Spend some time thinking about what you would like to know about this girl you are dating.
One day, all too soon, you will begin dating to find someone suitable to be your lifetime companion. If you want a companion, you must learn to be companionable. Talk about your interests and find out about hers. Do you enjoy similar things? If the two of you don’t have anything to talk about, what would marriage to such a person be like?
Make plans for the evening in advance and let your parents know where you expect to be. I know that many of you would rather keep your plans between you and your girlfriend, but you never know when an emergency may come up. Telling your parents also gives you a chance to see if your plans are respectable and appropriate. If you are too embarrassed to tell your folks, then perhaps you are planning something that a Christian ought not to do. Continue to carefully examine your motives.
Once you are out on your date, avoid changing your plans at the last minute. Don’t let your emotions lead you to making a little detour to a quiet place where you can be alone with your girlfriend. It is a great temptation to go too far when there is no one around to see what you are doing. Don’t go parking in the dark. Even if the first few times you don’t do anything shameful, it is continually tempting to go a little farther and to get a little closer. If you want time to talk, find a well-lighted place with other people around. It will encourage you to act respectfully. Finally, don’t spend time at your house or hers when no one else is around. Many boys and girls find their own home comfortable and safe, so they relax their guard and do things they would not do in public. Most teenage pregnancies come about because a boy and a girl had sex at home. Somehow, people convince themselves there is no harm done if no one will see them. Don’t let Satan fool you!
In a few years, one person that you have dated will stand out among the others. You will find yourself going out with her more often than anyone else. You may even decide to stop dating anyone else. Dating only one person is called “going steady.” Going steady with a girl for a while is a logical step before asking her the big question. It gives you a little more time to finally decide if this is really the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. Just don’t rush into it too soon. You can’t make a good decision if you only dated one person your whole life. There are plenty of years ahead of you, so don’t limit yourself to one person too soon.
You know you are ready to go steady with a girl when you have dated other girls but you prefer this person’s company over everyone else. When you want to spend more time with this person and dating someone else will interfere with your time, then perhaps it is time to go steady.
However, if you feel pressure to date one person exclusively because everyone else is doing it, then you should reconsider. Some boys rush into going steady because they fear there won’t be anyone else. This is another poor reason to go steady with a girl. There are hundreds of girls in the world with whom you could happily live. Don’t get the idea that there is just one right person for you. Take your time. Marriage is a lifetime commitment, so don’t rush the preliminary stages. Another bad reason for going steady is to hold on to a “good catch.” Some people pride themselves on having the prettiest or smartest girl in school as their exclusive girlfriend. Remember our discussion about the pride of life. Date a girl because you like her and not because you like the admiration of the other boys.
As you get comfortable with that special girl, keep in mind that there is a real temptation to take liberties with her that you would not take with other girls. Now is not the time to break God’s law because you allow your emotions get the better of you. Far too many teenagers allow their emotions to flare and find themselves tempted to have sex during their date.
A common excuse given for having sex on a date is that you need to find out before hand if you are compatible or not. You could have sex with any girl. How familiar you are with having sex has nothing to do with compatibility. You should not be looking for a bed partner while you are dating. You should be looking for someone to share the rest of your life with. Once you and your girlfriend are married, you will have plenty of opportunity to learn how to have sex. There is no benefit gained by breaking God’s law and having sex before you are married.
What is Love?
I’ve often told you in this book that various feelings and reactions are not love. Having an erection doesn’t mean you are in love. Wanting to have sex with someone doesn’t mean you are in love. The actual act of sex is not love, although it is called “making love” in today’s slang. To understand what love really is, we need to turn over to I Corinthians 13:1-7.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophesy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. I Corinthians 13:1-7

Paul is explaining what true love between Christians is like. The description also beautifully describes what the love between a husband and wife should be like.
When you love someone, you are willing to put up with their faults. You understand that people make mistakes and that changes take time, if they come at all. Even when she says something mean to you, you will only return kindness back. Love involves trusting the other person with all your heart. You don’t envy her when she gets a big promotion at work or is honored for the things she has done in the community. Instead, you rejoice with her. A loving husband doesn’t boast about how good he is and ignores his wife’s accomplishments. What you do is much less important to you than what she does. If you truly love someone, you won’t say things that will hurt her feelings. She is much more important to you than your own concerns. As a result, you will keep a tight reign on your anger and not lash out when things don’t go your way.
Loving couples don’t accuse each other of wickedness. Too many marriages are broken because the husband saw a man leave the house or found some note and immediately leaped to the conclusion that his wife is having an affair. However, sometimes it is obvious that sin is taking place. When this happens, a loving husband will stand firm with the Lord. He will do everything possible to bring his wife back to the way of righteousness.
Being in love means you are optimistic. You are always hoping that things will get better. That hope helps you to get over the many rough times that you and your wife will face together.
Most of all, love doesn’t fail. Planning to marry someone for a time to see if it will work out means you are not in love. You don’t fall in and out of true love. Love holds on through good times and through bad times.

The Difference Between Love and Infatuation

Many people confuse being infatuated with someone for being in love with someone. Each of us has a mental picture of the ideal companion. That mental picture is usually based on various physical attributes. She should be so tall, with a pretty nose, brown eyes, etc. Occasionally you meet someone who closely matches your mental ideal. You get excited and believe you have fallen in love at first sight.
This is not really love, but infatuation. You can tell the difference, because infatuation dies over time. I guarantee that while you are moonstruck with a girl you won’t believe that it will ever end, but it usually does. As you get to know the girl and find out about her likes and dislikes, you realize that she is not as perfect as you imagined her to be. The word “imagined” is the key word. You have no idea what a person is like when you first meet them. Getting to know a person takes time.
Over time an infatuation will either die off or be replaced by true love. When you are truly in love, you will be aware of a person’s flaws, but you have made a rational decision that you can live with them. A person who is infatuated with someone will either be totally unaware of the flaws in that person, pretend that those flaws are not there, pretend that those flaws don’t matter, or believe that they can change that person over time. The last attitude can be disastrous for a relationship. People do change at times, but it is not very often and it is rarely because someone caused them to change. People change themselves because they want to make the change. When you choose a woman to be your wife, you should look at who she is and not who you think you can make her into. If you do not like who she is today, you are taking a big risk thinking she will be different tomorrow. In other words, if she doesn’t change before marriage, then she certainly won’t change after marriage.
Talk freely with your intended companion. Some men are afraid to tell their girlfriend everything they are thinking for fear of driving them away. If your true thoughts would drive your girlfriend away, then the two of you were probably not cut out for each other. Both of you would be better off looking for someone else. Nothing could be worst than to find out you have made a lifetime commitment to someone who can’t stand you.
In summary, true love is based on reality. Infatuation is based on fantasy. Before committing yourself to someone, make sure you both have a firm grip on reality.

A Small Exercise

Take a sheet of paper and write down the things that you hope to find in the woman you will one day marry. Is it important that she be good looking? Does it matter to you if she is taller than you? Do you hope she is a good cook? Should she like children? How many children do you hope to raise? Give it serious consideration and don’t base your answers on someone you are dating at the moment. It would be better to work on this when there is no one in particular competing for your heart. Talk to your dad or an elder or the preacher about it, but make sure that it is your list showing what is important to you.
Try ranking your points. What is the most important? Which things would be nice, but really don’t matter that much?
It may seem a little early to start thinking about whom you plan to marry. After all, marriage is still several years off. However, if you know what you are looking for, then when you finally meet the girl of your dreams, you can be confident that you are making a sound decision that you will never regret.
Have a rough list done before you start chapter 8. Through the years, continue to revise your list. The things that are important to you at 13 may seem childish at 18, so continue to think about these things.

For example in my region, today on weather.com shows 153, AirNow.gov shows 80. Why is it so different when I search the same zip code, and which one is accurate?

TLDR;
- If you're entering this field, eCPPTv2 is not for you. Try eJPT. With the exception of the exam, the course is still free.
- If you have some experience, e.g., you know what HTB is, you regularly practice on the platform, you have some knowledge of web application/network security, but don't have much real-world experience, then go for it. You'll get a grasp of what kind of different areas are generally covered when performing a penetration test in various areas, and it will force you to write an actual report. But it won't, and I emphasise *won't*, make you a professional, highly-skilled hacker. The course is basically an introduction to the real world.
- If you're already working as a pentester for some years, it is tough to recommend. You might expand your general knowledge in areas you don't often encounter, and discover some tips for your cheat-sheets. If you're looking for a challenge to step-up your skills, this is not the way.
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Non-TLDR;
Hello there! I'd like to summarise my experience with eCPPTv2 course and exam and hopefully provide you with an idea if this certification is worth your time and money.
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Who
I have been a full-time pentester for about four years. As for the technical side of my day-to-day job, I have experience with web/mobile/infra testing, code reviews, redteam engagements etc. etc. Before that, I was a full-time programmer (developer if you want) for about the same time.
​
Why
I decided for eCPPTv2 for several reasons:
- I needed some certification anyway due to some customer requirements and future legislation.
- From the experience of my colleagues, the materials were decent.
- I went through some of the eJPT materials as they are free, and I liked the labs.
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Materials & Labs
I only got through some of the materials. I went primary for what I thought was necessary for the exam. Therefore, I skipped the wifi stuff, metasploit, partially powershell, and maybe some other minor areas.
I think that the slides do a decent job at explaining the given topics. Sometimes the amount of information can get pretty overwhelming, though. It sucks that you can't (officially) download the slides. Especially for someone who takes the course as a part of his/hewhatever career and knowledge development, the slides might provide a good reference in the future.
I'm not a fan of video-based materials in general but I watched them anyway. The topics were nicely explained, and one can see how the various tools and techniques work before trying them on your own.
On the flipside...
Materials should be reviewed and updated. You will find a few broken links, tools not available for download anymore, or demos presenting really old tools. Not a big issue in the end, but still, I wouldn't expect something like this in a course you pay over 700 bucks (for a year).
Sometimes I found the order of the modules confusing. Something like this happen several times:
- Topic A is explained.
- Lab is followed. You exercise topic A (and topic B).
- Topic B is explained.
No idea if this is by design, but I don't like it. If you want to do labs on your own and get stuck, you can end up thinking, "What the hell am I missing? I tried everything I just learned". Well...Maybe you didn't try something that wasn't explained yet.
As for the labs...
I liked them anyway. Labs are mostly narrowly focused, with well-written walkthroughs if you get stuck. Don't blindly follow walkthroughs, though. Always think about different approaches, what would you do if X or Y wasn't working, or what tool would you use if tool Z wasn't available.
Labs are the place where you should take notes and make cheatsheets. Full stop. Do it.
If there is something I didn't like, then the fucking VPN connections. Countless times I encountered connection drops, which made me pull my hair when I had to execute some kill-chain for the third, fourth time. Moreover, the target machines got a different IP address on every restart, forcing me to edit all my noted commands and payloads every time.
Also, there are small tests (quizzes?) you can take after completing a set of modules. Fuck them. Really. There is no point in bothering with them at all.
Reporting is discussed very briefly, in my opinion. It gives you an idea of how to structure it, a general idea of its content, and some references. Nothing more, really. I think they should go deeper. The exam requires you to write an executive summary and provide a description, recommendations and details for each finding. I can imagine that people who have never written such a document may struggle with this. Everyone has their own style when writing reports. It needs time, practice, and feedback before you brush it. But maybe they should provide you at least some idea on how to think when writing reports and provide some proper feedback after you submit it at the end of the exam.
Why I have such a problem with this is the fact that the course is named "Penetration Tester *Professional*". As I learned very soon, the report you provide to your customer is the most important part of your work. Your customer won't sit next to you to admire how cool, smart mega-turbo-hacker you are. You are helping your customer to find security issues and provide guidance on how to remediate them. This is basically what you do as a professional penetration tester. I feel like this fact should be emphasised more in the course.
I realise the points above might be just the result of my frustration, but sometimes I couldn't help myself to stop thinking, "Guys, people are fucking paying you for this course. Why can't you fix this and that".
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Exam - Testing
It took me about six months to go through the materials (please note that not all of them as mentioned). I mostly studied for about two hours in the evenings after work and during the weekends. If you don't have a full-time job and a girlfriend, you can probably go through all of the materials in about half a year. My (not-really) educated guess is that the exam covers about 60-65 % of the materials.
My two cents:
- Don't overthink. The problems you will face when exploiting the targets and gaining root privileges are very CTF-like. Everything is simple and straightforward.
- Enumerate. Make some cheat-sheet for proper enumeration and follow it. As mentioned, the problems on the exam are not that difficult, just take your time to look for stuff.
- In the end, I felt like the exam is all about pivoting. Practice it in the labs. Understand how to route networks and how to forward ports. I used metasploit throughout the exam, and it was sufficient for it.
- Don't stress about buffer overflows. Take your time to understand it, do labs and take notes you can follow. If you do it properly, the actual exploitation will be a matter of copy-paste. I guess I won't spoil anything when I tell you that you don't have to worry about the advanced topic (very briefly talked about in materials) like beating ASLR, SEH-based overflows and others. It's a buffer overflow in its simplest form.
- Luckily, in comparison with labs, I had no issues with VPN connection or stability during the exam.
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Exam - Reporting
I finished the report in about two days, but I had two major advantages:
- I've already written a dozen of reports before.
- I have a collection of findings I could re-use in the report with minor changes.
In cases when I needed some inspiration, I usually looked at findings in Nessus database (https://www.tenable.com/plugins/search) and expanded on it.
You might find https://github.com/juliocesarfort/public-pentesting-reports repository useful if you need to see how reports are generally structured and written.
Today, we have the privilege of using ChatGPT. Be careful here. Don't blindly copy/paste its output! Always verify its results, get inspired, and put together your own version.
The report was reviewed in about three days. Got a response that I'm missing some details in the description of buffer-overflow exploitation. After submitting the report again, it took another three to four days to review it. A friend of mine was waiting almost a month, so I was pretty lucky.
I spent about 60 hours doing the exam, including reporting. From my point of view, the two weeks you have in total is plenty of time to finish the exam.
​
That's it. Have a nice day.

Hello Lovely Ladies!
This is my first post here-I think I may have replied a time or so to a random post over the last few months. I've been reading here several times a week, and wanted to talk about some things I've read-along with my own struggles and what I've tried to do to help myself.
I am 57. I went through my first year with no period at 54. At the last month of that, I had the worst period of my life. I'd been bleeding heavily for a decade before, and had fibroids-barely managed to keep my uterus with Prometrium 200 mg. nightly for three weeks out of every month. But this was....a crime scene. I had to use plain cotton baby diapers folded up with a heavy disposable pad on top of that and change every two hours-I went like that for 5 days until it slowed down. I was weak as a kitten and on vacation at the beach expecting to have a great time. It literally sucked.
Some women say it can be like that. I never had another period again.
I stayed on the Prometrium and investigated what type of estrogen replacement I might be able to take with Fibroids. For a year or so, I took no estrogen. I finally got so desperate with no sex drive, sleep, no feeling in my clitoris or nipples, grouchy and unfeeling towards people-and the biggie-I couldn't remember anything and felt I was losing my mind. My cholesterol, blood sugar and A1C went sky high. So, I started the lowest minimal dose of Bi-est cream.
I felt amazing after the side effects of bloating and breast tenderness wore off. My sex drive came back, and although my clitoris and nipple feelings didn't come back well, I could orgasm occasionally. But the best of all was that my brain power returned and I could function again without seeming like an idiot. I even started nursing school and did really well with tests, etc. Sleep still suffered, but it wasn't as bad.
Then this last January, I had a 4 day mild period-like bleed. I used a mini pad a day. I called my GYN and immediately went off the Bi-Est and waited to be seen. In March, I had an Ultrasound and then in April I had a uterine biopsy done. My uterine lining was at 8, and biopsy was negative for cancer. It turns out my lining was at 8 before starting the Bi-Est cream the year before, and I wasn't told (I was pissed about that). So, the Estrogen didn't cause it. I was off the Bi-Est for 4 months before I felt I just couldn't survive all the symptoms anymore. They all came roaring back, and if anything, worse than before. I contacted my doc in tears and asked, please, for something. She called in a compounded cream of the most lowest dose of Bi-Est (1.86 mg, I think) along with Testosterone and DHEA mixed in, and a bit of Progesterone. I'm going to continue to take the Prometrium at night, because it has an affinity for the uterine tissue and is super protective against uterine cancer-the cream version can be debated, but it doesn't seem to work as well for prevention of cancer. At some point, I'm going to have to have my uterus out. I'm starting this cream this week, wish me luck.
I spent alot of time researching what I could do for myself in the meantime. Here's what has worked so far:

1. Prioritize yourself. See your doctor and get the labs and meds you need. I am now on a low-dose Statin (I hate it but....) and Ozempic for the Diabetes. I ate clean and minimal carbs, but something happened when I went into Meno that was very bad-like I hit a point health wise and age wise where the bad stuff was going to start to happen. On Ozempic, my A1C has gone down to 5.3 from 8.9 and body inflammation everyplace has toned down. Do what you need to do for YOU.
2. HYDRATE-something I struggled with. I started drinking 1/2 gallon of non-caffeinated teas with added water to a jug everyday. This totally adjusted my digestive system and I don't feel as fatigued or constipated.
3. SLEEP-I use a mixture of things and I rotate them so I don't get too used to them and they fail to work. One night I may take a Benedryl, the next L-Theanine, the next a Melatonin tab-but always take these with Glycine 1,000 mgs and Magnesium Glycinate, 5 capsules to make sure I get just over that 100% daily requirement. I'm thinking off trying to add in Taurine. Resveratrol 100 mgs. makes me sleepy, too. I still wake up at 2-4a.m. and struggle to get back to sleep, but if I'm in bed by 9 and asleep by 10, then I get at least 4-5 hours. With the Bi-Est, I was getting 7 hours. If I'm really stressed about a nursing proctor test the next day or such, I'll take L-Theanine with Melatonin or the Benedryl. Find what works for you individually.
4. HRT-hoping this new combo is going to work for me. I absolutely can't make it without the estrogen. We will see what will happen with the DHEA and Testosterone with sex drive and feeling in the bits again. The key is getting what I need at the minimal dose and preventing uterine cancer until I can get the insurance to pay to get my uterus out.

I hope this helps someone here. I find that if I just wake up and say to myself "I'm going to prioritize hydrating and sleep today", that it makes everything seem better. I can't let myself down on those two things, ever-because then I struggle and it's a downhill slide.