It is time for my calling. I can hear and see the Archdemon in every shadow, a wraith that stalks my dreams and my waking hours. I leave my sword to my apprentice with a letter, words only for her. I do not face her myself. To give one last embrace before my time comes is to invite the temptation to wait out a slow death. I walk through the halls of Orzammar to the city gate. The Legion greets me with a salute of steel fists upon their breastplates. They know all too well of our sacrifice. The Smith caste presents me with a weapon designed for their cause, good dwarven steel with a silverite edge. Flexible, and as sharp as a drake fang. I shake my head and laugh, to think that I would be presented with a blade such as this only moments before I march to my death.
The drums begin to beat and the gate begins to rise. There is a hush in the darkness and the shadows seem to retreat from my presence as I draw my blade. Purpose burns in me, hotter and brighter than the whispers of the Archdemon. In this moment, I am no longer the teacher. I am only the Warden.
“Isha. I have no lessons left to teach you. My greatest hope is that you surpass me, in every way, so that in the coming Blight, your name will forever outshine mine in the pages of history.”
The great cities stand, headstones made from polished steel and grey concrete, streaked and slashed with neon lights and loud corporate ads–the latest lies from those in power. They rise high into the heavens, and cast a long shadow across the blackened earth. The higher they build, the longer, and darker the shadows run. You call those shadows home now, whether by choice or circumstance, you run in the dark. You are a Shadowrunner, but, that name and your demeanor belie a certain brightness to you. Like a coin tarnished with rust, you conceal a brilliance within, a flame in the wind that refuses to die.
Let’s give an honest critique of this game in 2018 now that the Fallout series is basically on life support and depending on what Bethesda does at this year’s E3, probably about to have the plug pulled. New Vegas is a competant Role Playing experience and an enjoyable one. It’s aged about as well as dry pondscum but with ENB and graphical modding available for free on the PC, that’s a moot point. It does however commit the cardinal RPG sin of “railroading” players whether by invisible walls, or by placing super sonic murder wasps just a few miles north of the starting area to force you to take a circuitous route to your destination.
But this game, unlike fallout, 4 has a soul. It has a tortured soul that is at once terrible and beautiful like watching glass shatter in slow motion. Your actions have consequences, your past is a mystery, the future is yours to claim, and in this fleeting moment we call the present, all you can do is take the path that lies before you.
Our path–The player’s path, as well as that of the fanbase does not lie at Bethesda’s back, following mindlessly where they would have us go. Our path is for us to choose. We, the players, will choose whether or not Fallout survives into the next era of gaming by weighing the actions of hubristic companies making what will sell instead of what is worthy of being called art.
For all it’s jank, gameplay issues, bugs and flaws, New Vegas is the truest Fallout experience. Don’t be railroaded into giving Bethesda money it doesn’t deserve for a series it has squandered.
It comes for her, as it came for her husband, so many years ago. It comes for her, as it came for her Headmaster, the price of his ambition. It comes for her, as it came for far too many of her friends and students, in one war then another.
Death comes for her.
Minerva McGonagall Looks at Death, and raises an eyebrow.
Death pauses, then nods and backs away. “We’ll call this number three then, shall we?”
She smiles as she turns back to her paperwork. There is a reason her animagus form is a cat.
Single best thing ever in my life have I ever read about my one true babe Minnie.
This makes my blood boil..They really do not gaf about poor people..
Rest in peace Yeweinisht Mesfin. You won’t be forgotten.
Jesus Christ
How… how does someone deserve to live in her damn car because she doesn’t sit behind a desk?
If you don’t think a job is worth a living wage, do without the job. Don’t hire anyone to do it, let that work go undone. If it’s really that worthless, you won’t miss having someone do it.
What? Can’t do that, because you’ll end up with trash all over the place and shit plugging up all the toilets from your customers and guests?
Whoops, looks like that job’s more valuable than you thought.
Look, I don’t believe in God, but I will not disrespect the Good Gentlemen of the Hills. That’s just common sense.
Between this and the Icelanders with their elves I do not understand what is going on above the 50th parallel.
My general rule of thumb: you don’t have to believe in everything, but don’t fuck with it, just in case.
^^^ that part
This is truer than true. Especially the Irish part.
Let me tell you what I know about this after living here for nearly thirty years.
This is a modern European country, the home of hot net startups, of Internet giants and (in some places, some very few places) the fastest broadband on Earth. People here live in this century, HARD.
Yet they get nervous about walking up that one hill close to their home after dark, because, you know… stuff happens there.
I know this because Peter and I live next to One Of Those Hills. There are people in our locality who wouldn’t go up our tiny country road on a dark night for love or money. What they make of us being so close to it for so long without harm coming to us, I have no idea. For all I know, it’s ascribed to us being writers (i.e. sort of bards) or mad folk (also in some kind of positive relationship with the Dangerous Side: don’t forget that the root word of “silly”, which used to be English for “crazy”, is the Old English _saelig_, “holy”…) or otherwise somehow weirdly exempt.
And you know what? I’m never going to ask. Because one does not discuss such things. Lest people from outside get the wrong idea about us, about normal modern Irish people living in normal modern Ireland.
You hear about this in whispers, though, in the pub, late at night, when all the tourists have gone to bed or gone away and no one but the locals are around. That hill. That curve in the road. That cold feeling you get in that one place. There is a deep understanding that there is something here older than us, that doesn’t care about us particularly, that (when we obtrude on it) is as willing to kick us in the slats as to let us pass by unmolested.
So you greet the magpies, singly or otherwise. You let stones in the middle of fields be. You apologize to the hawthorn bush when you’re pruning it. If you see something peculiar that cannot be otherwise explained, you are polite to it and pass onward about your business without further comment. And you don’t go on about it afterwards. Because it’s… unwise. Not that you personally know any examples of people who’ve screwed it up, of course. But you don’t meddle, and you learn when to look the other way, not to see, not to hear. Some things have just been here (for various values of “here” and various values of “been”) a lot longer than you have, and will be here still after you’re gone. That’s the way of it. When you hear the story about the idiots who for a prank chainsawed the centuries-old fairy tree a couple of counties over, you say – if asked by a neighbor – exactly what they’re probably thinking: “Poor fuckers. They’re doomed.” And if asked by anybody else you shake your head and say something anodyne about Kids These Days. (While thinking DOOMED all over again, because there are some particularly self-destructive ways to increase entropy.)
Meanwhile, in Iceland: the county council that carelessly knocked a known elf rock off a hillside when repairing a road has had to go dig the rock up from where it got buried during construction, because that road has had the most impossible damn stuff happen to it since that you ever heard of. Doubtless some nice person (maybe they’ll send out for the Priest of Thor or some such) will come along and do a little propitiatory sacrifice of some kind to the alfar, belatedly begging their pardon for the inconvenience.
They’re building the alfar a new temple, too.
Atlantic islands. Faerie: we haz it.
The Southwest is like this in some ways. You don’t go traveling along the highways at night with an empty car seat. Because an empty car seat is an invitation. You stick your luggage, your laptop bag, whatever you got in that seat. Else something best left undiscussed and unnamed (because to discuss it by name is to go ‘AY WE’RE TALKING BOUT YA WE’RE HERE AND ALSO IGNORANT OF WHAT YOU’RE CAPABLE OF’ at the top of your damn lungs at them) will jump in to the car, after which you’re gonna have a bad time.
If you’re out in the woods, you keep constant, consistent count of your party and make sure you know everyone well enough that you can ID them by face alone, lest something imitating a person get at you. They like to insert themselves in the party and just observe before they strike. It’s a game to them. In general you don’t fuck with the weird, you ignore the lights in the sky (no, this isn’t a god damn night vale reference, yes I’m serious) and the woods, you lock up at night and you don’t answer the door for love or money. Whatever or whoever’s knocking ain’t your buddy.
^ So much good advice in this post right here
I live in the south and… you just… don’t go into the woods or fields at night.
Don’t go near big trees in the night
If you live on a farm, don’t look outside the windows at night
I have broken all these rules.
I’ve seen some shit.
If it sounds like your mom, but you didn’t realize your mom is home…. it’s not your mom. Promise.
One walked onto the porch once. Wasn’t fun. But they’re not super keen on guns. Typically bolt when they see one.
You think it’s the neighbor kids.
It’s not the neighbor kids.
Might sound like coyotes but you never really /see/ the coyotes but then wow that one cow was reaaaaaally fucked up this morning. The next night when you hear another one screaming you just turn the tv up a little more. Maybe fire a gun in the air but you don’t go after it. If it is coyotes then it’s probably a pack and you seriously don’t want to fuck with that and if it’s the other thing you seriously REALLY don’t want to fuck with that.
So in the south, especially near the mountains, you just go straight from your car to inside your house, draw your curtains and watch tv.
If you see lights in the fields just fucking leave it alone.
Eyes forward. Don’t be fucking stupid. Mind your own business. Call your neighbors and tell them to bring the cats in. There’s coyotes out. Some of them know. Most of them don’t.
Other than that everything’s a ghost and they died in the civil war. Literally all of everything else is just the civil war. We used to smell old perfume and pipe tobacco in the weeks leading up to the battle anniversaries.
Shit’s wild and I sound fucking crazy but I swear to god it’s true.
I live out in a forest in Texas, can confirm. Don’t go out at night especially during a full moon, I have seen some fucked up otherworldly looking shit during the full moon.
Try not to think too hard about why that one specific little spot currently smells like sulfur.
Try to keep calm when you look through your window and see that the glowing orb of pale red light is floating by a house outside.
Be thankful that the dog is so vigilant with his hobby of bolting through the forest and barking at “nothing”. You know damn well that just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there, but don’t you dare speak the name of it.
After more than a dozen of them, Garrus knows how vehemently Shepard insists she doesn’t care about the day he stubbornly refers to as the human love day with all the hearts.
He also knows she’s lying.
Oh, she doesn’t care about the chocolate (she prefers lemon, which he had to–in a moment of utterly worth it embarrassment–learn from Vega). She and flowers–especially the ones most prevalent on human love day–have an uncomfortable history. He’s never been as good at picking out lingerie for her as she is for herself (he’s never been able to live down the year he bought her a collarbone-revealing nightgown that, she said through giggles, reminded her of something someone’s great-great-great-grandmother might’ve worn).
For all the difficulties it presents to get it just right, Garrus loves human love day.
Every year, he finagles some reason for the Council to avoid meeting on the equivalent of Earth’s February 14th. Early on, once or twice, opposition was raised. On both occasions, the staunchest support for Garrus’ requested leave came not from the human councilor, but from the Prothean one. Javik, as it happened, could be very convincing. Even a dozen years later, most delegates haven’t realized Javik’s muttering about airlocks never becomes reality.
Every year, he hacks Shepard’s omni-tool so the usual endless parade of requests for her help, her presence, her opinion, her sartorial advice (Garrus is perturbed by how often it’s the latter) is silenced for twenty-four hours. It’s become something of a game. She knows he does it. Her unspoken human love day gift to him is the increasingly difficult code she sets up to block him.
She’s always known him so damned well.
Every year, the children spend a few days with whichever of their many aunts and uncles swoops in to collect them first.
Usually, it’s Jack. Garrus knows better than to even think about teasing her about it.
Every year, he lets Shepard sleep in. That she doesn’t immediately wake the moment he stirs is a more potent gift even than the tricky omni-tool defenses she devises. In the kitchen, he toasts more bread than any one human should be able to eat. He makes coffee and pours a mug roughly the size of Shepard’s head, doctoring it with the extra cream she prefers. He puts a slice of lemon cake (extra lemon, do not skimp on the lemon) on one of the pretty dishes she’s collected over the years.
When the bedroom door slides open to admit him, she stirs. He is the only one who gets to see this soft Shepard, with drowsy eyes and hair a lush, red fall around her, wearing decidedly non-grandmotherly lingerie. He is the only one who gets to see the particular smile she smiles when she’s sleepy and satiated and no one has asked her for anything in twelve whole hours.
She always takes the coffee first. He never expects words before coffee. After the first sip, her smile broadens and he thanks every deity he’s even heard mentioned that he’s the one sitting next to her on the bed, watching her eat toast and drink coffee and smile like he’s the present she always wanted but didn’t know to ask for.
“I’m impressed,” she says.
“Same coffee as every other day.”
She shakes her head. He runs the pads of his fingers through her soft hair. “I worked really hard on my defenses this year. Thought for sure you’d be stumped.”
“It’s like you don’t know me at all, Shepard,” he scoffs. “Since when has a little code ever defeated me?”
She leans against his side, resting her cheek against his arm. He nuzzles the top of her head. A moment later, he whispers, “I needed Tali’s help.”
Her peal of laughter is bright, unfettered. He’d walk into the hells of every deity he’s ever heard mentioned to hear that laughter.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” she says.
“Human love day,” he corrects. “With all the hearts. Turians would never do anything this sentimental.”
“You know you don’t have to, Garrus. It’s just a day.”
“Mmm,” he says. “Let’s make the most of it, then.”
If they’re lucky (Spirits, he hopes they’re lucky), they’ll live to see a hundred more.
