Girl, you are so young- too young to be living such a miserable life.

Get all your ducks in a row and LEAVE HIM.

USS Preble firing a HELIOS laser weapon. pic.twitter.com/z7iLk0uylt

— Ashton Forbes (@JustXAshton) February 3, 2025

https://armyrecognition.com/news/navy-news/2025/us-navy-transforms-naval-protection-with-helios-lasers-power-on-uss-preble-at-sea

The US Navy released a new photo of USS Preble (DDG-88) firing her HELIOS laser weapon. pic.twitter.com/oL4rMsA4Xu

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) February 3, 2025

Source (page 399)- https://t.co/wHOW2JHGcr pic.twitter.com/gVHzdkgEQa

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) February 3, 2025

Darklands Series

1 - Darklands LP Part I

2 - Darklands LP Part II: Charles Bronson Edition

3 - Darklands LP III: Nuns and Coins

4 - Darklands LP Ep IV: Introduction to Equipment & Combat

5 - Darklands LP Part V: We finally briefly go out into the dark lands

6 - Darklands LP VI: We actually start a quest!

7 - Darklands LP VII: We reach our destination

8 - Darklands LP VIII: Raubritter confrontation & learning how combat works

9 - Darklands LP IX: I'm not giving you my goddarn alchemical materials

10 - Darklands LP X: We actually do some alchemy!

11 - Darklands LP XI: The Main Plot

12 - Darklands LP XII: Halloween Edition

Episode XIII

Welcome back. I know it's been a while. I apologize. Last time we slaughtered the Satanists at their sabbat (at least the ones we couldn't save) and found out where their base is. We now have a clearly defined mission: Assault the Fortress Monastery in Denmark and break the next seal. (Or Schleswig-Holstein or something, I'm not opening up that can of worms.)

That means hiking across the entire Empire from Teschen nearly at the border of Hungary all the way to Denmark. No doubt we'll run into a few adventures along the way.

At least that was the plan until we had to make a detour.

Long story short, I had written a whole episode but I was wondering why my guys were suddenly getting hurt so bad in fights. It turns out their armor had burned up. For most of them, it was down to very low quality. Poor Nathan was completely naked. This has got to be from the potions that the witches threw at us at the sabbat. They didn't do much immediate damage but they've derailed our plans for months. Now we've got to make enough money to replace that armor. Which means I have to grind.

All the stuff I've showed you about how the game works, I gotta go back and do more of that. Kill bad guys, make potions, travel around, learn about new saints and alchemical formulas, trade. I'm not complaining. I love doing this. But in this episode we won't be following the main plot and hitting the Fortress Monastery yet. So instead I'll focus on the random encounters.

Did I ever mention that about half of the game is random encounters? These pop up when you're traveling on the world map. There's, I dunno, at least a hundred of them. You never know which one will hit next which is what keeps you on your toes. That's why "grinding" never gets boring. I haven't mentioned many of them yet because each episode was designed to teach about specific gameplay mechanics and it would be distracting. So I guess this is going to be the episode about random encounters and the smaller less important places you run into on the map. I'm still cutting a lot out and just including the more interesting ones.

Our new goal: Go wander around and do Darklands stuff until we've got a lot of money and then go back to Dresden and buy high-quality armor for everyone.

Let's Go!

Uh oh. Looks like we pissed off the wrong people. The Wild Hunt isn't a DLC for some game about a dour gray man collecting s*x cards, it's what the witches send to hunt you down when they identify you as a threat. Those b-words are pissed off about what we did at the sabbat. I guess we'll have to deal with them eventually.

Well I'm not gonna let this sod hut just sit there looking sinister at me. Let's have Yuna ask St. Dorothy of Montau for some insight. She lived in this region, dying just recently in 1394 as an anchoress in the land of the Teutonic Order. She'll know what to do.

Well that's pretty bad. I don't consider even Yorkies and Cavaliers to be "slavering hounds from heck" but they can come pretty close when they want attention. Time to kick down this door.

She has some potions, so she might be some threat. But as we've seen before, wolf teeth can't penetrate chainmail. Sure enough, her alchemy degrades our abilities a lot but the wolves aren't able to take advantage and she goes down fast.

What would Satan not want us to do? What would really piss him off? We're going to forgive her.

Let's hope this works out better than every time I've ever tried to save a woman from herself IRL amirite.

We come across a cave. This is one of those sites where somebody sent us on a fetch quest long ago. Nathan uses his agility to climb up a cliff and throw the rope down to bring the rest of the party up. Now we've got to deal with the dwarf who has the item. I got 16 gold florins, which is a lot more than we'll get paid for the quest, but who cares? It will give me a little bit of fame which is worth more to me now. If I need money I've got a bunch of dead guys' armor and surplus alchemical potions.

Redactor is making some serious fricking money at this point. He can reliably make potions and sell them at a profit. The only problem is that the materials required are scattered all over the country so I've got to keep traveling to keep him supplied.

Ugh, one of these guys. He seems pretty sketchy to me. In the past we had to pay these guys off because they really will curse you if you don't and you can't just kill a friar because you think he's bullpooping you. But not this time, pal. You're a Dominican? Let's see what St. Dominic has to say about this.

We get out of paying him a little bit. More importantly we may have saved his soul. This guy has been led pretty far astray but hopefully they can get his shit sorted out down in Rome. (You can also pray to saints who specialize in calling out liars with the same effect except the text is completely different. In that he admits that his curses are from the power of Satan, not God.)

Against the Wild Hunt we all gotta stick together. My party is pretty weak at Woodwise and especially Stealth, so I have no confidence in our ability to use subterfuge here. We are really good at fighting though. I'll just take them on head-on.

Bigfoot is from Oregon, so this is just my ordinary day to day life. We defeat the hellhounds and rescue him of course.

I've got a hunch that this fruit will permanently increase someone's strength by a few points. Who to give it to? Both of the girls are at 32 strength (we already upgraded Sasha this way) and I'm at a mere 31. This is an intolerable situation. Girls can't be stronger than me. Redactor gets the apple and a bump up to 35 strength.

I go to Prag and ask if the King of Bohemia needs me to do any quests for him. This is Wenceslsaus (Vaclvav) IV, a really important guy. Prague had a golden age when his father and him were ruling. Both were also the Holy Roman Emperor and made it their capital. This is when the famous Charles University was founded for example. But soon the situation will spin out of control. He was deposed as Emperor a few years ago. Disputes about religion, nationality, and plain old factionalism are debstabilizing the kingdom and he is barely holding on to power. His death in 1419 will be the start of the Hussite Wars.

A Hussite wagenburg. Wagons were lashed together into a defensive wall and defended by guys with crossbows and guns. Apparently it was a pretty effective tactic because they repeatedly defeated the combined forces of all of Europe.

(One part of the game that never ended up getting implemented but still has vestigial traces of it in the data files is the Hussites. They're suspicious of you because you're German, but if you can talk them down from violence they'll warn you about the Knights Templar. I guess we're all on the same side after all. The game's designer told me that there was supposed to be a lot more regional content like this but they didn't have enough time to include much of it, so the whole game world is pretty much based on the mythology of western Germany between the Rhine and the Elbe. It's too bad. There's so much more you could do with this setting.)

Anyway, the Emperor's aides at least consider giving me an audience before telling me to frick off. I guess at 123 fame ("slight reputation") it's hard to get a face to face meeting with one of the most important people in the world.

After a lot of grinding I get, I dunno, maybe 100 florins from quests and selling dead people's armor. Back to Dresden. It's enough to finally get everyone fully fitted with 34-quality chainmail. Nathan is even strong enough (barely) to wear partial plate armor without encumbrance penalties, at least if he's not wounded. I've got some backup armor in case ours gets burned up again.

We can carry that around because while Darklands has harsh penalties for weighing down your people with equipment too heavy for them in battle, outside of combat you can carry as much as you want. I routinely end up carrying around 30 sets of armor after a jaunt through the countryside killing a few people as I go along. It might seem surprising that this is allowed given the extreme attention to detail and realism in other parts of the game, down to measuring the time of day using medieval units instead of hours. But I'm not complaining.

Compare it to Bethesda games. In Bethesda games I spend probably 1/3 of my time either hauling loot back to the store to sell or deciding which loot is worth picking up. And of course you can't just go directly to the store. You go to the city and then walk down the same goddarn street you have a million times before to go to the store. Why? What in God's name would justify wasting my time like that? Why can't I just walk up to a city and immediately access the trading screen? This isn't cutting edge technology. Betrayal at Krondor came out a year after this. In that when you reach a city it switches from 3D mode to a picture of the city and you just click on the shop and bam, you're there. Why can't that evil little leprechaun Todd Howard do the same for us 30 years later?

Meta

Anyway, I think we're ready for the Fortress Monastery now. TBQH it's been many years since I actually played the game to this point. (It's taken me something like 50 hours to get this far.) So I can't remember how tough the Monastery is, but I believe it's supposed to be mid-game content.

There's a couple big mid-game quests that I wanted to show you first, but they only spawned in distant places like Aachen, so if I tried to go there it would probably have disappeared by the time I got there. I guess I'll do those after the Monastery.

BTW I am playing pretty much optimally here using every trick I know. I'm trying to go into everything way overpowered because if I lose it means I have to savescum and that wastes a lot of time. There's a lot of stuff that I'm skipping over because the game has so much content and so many features that I'm afraid I'd die of old age before I got to the end. My plan is that after I win I'll go back and show you this stuff, at least if @kaamrev badgers me enough.

I trust everyone understands the seismic impact of what's occurring here with Trump effectively letting the water that's been long diverted into the ocean, to flow down into California.

Imagine the visible impact this will cause as the state greens quickly and the water flows… pic.twitter.com/rDy3AEYmvi

— AwakenedOutlaw⚒️ (@AwakenedOutlaw) January 28, 2025

Oh nevermind all he did was turn on a few federal pumps that had been down for maintenance for three days

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trumps-claims-military-entered-california-release-water-flow-state-says-did-not-happen

Most Based Comments

Basedness: 🔥🔘🔘🔘🔘

A big sorry to you from the U.S.Just know that at least half of us want nothing to do with these tariffs. (-37)

Basedness: 🔥🔘🔘🔘🔘

As a red blooded 'merican. I'd flip it off with you. (-11)

Basedness: 🔥🔘🔘🔘🔘

And a flappy head. (199)

Can confirm. We all look exactly like South Park portrayed us.  (31)

Angriest Comments

Angriness: 😡😡😡😡😡

He even has Canadian hands (927)

Bro I'm so glad this was the first thing I saw 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 (4)

Angriness: 😡😡😡😡😡

Just because a president is dumbo, and 30% of voters elected him along with his team, doesn't mean you should hate an entire country for it. This is the problem with people today—you don't realize that hatred starts from small things. Then one day, you wake up wondering, why do they hate us back? and suddenly, there's a war. Hate me or disagree with me all you want, but today it's this guy, tomorrow it will be another, and so on. This is how hatred toward an entire nation grows—because of a single person who comes to power. One leader's actions shouldn't define an entire people. (1)

Angriness: 😡😡😡😡😡

There are a lot jokes… but in reality this post is sad.The orange frick, his administration and the policies they are enacting has made an average citizen in arguably our closest ally nation feel it necessary to give us the finger.Instead of "making America great again," these pieces of shit are destroying our standing on the world stage (which was already shaky to begin with). (1)

Biggest Lolcow: /u/CaBBaGe_isLaND

Score: 🐮🔘🔘🔘🔘

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Most Based Comments

Basedness: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

JB is that you? (-91)

Basedness: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔘

The people who think & talk about Trump the most are his haters. And that makes his supporters very, very happy. Nothing you do matters or will change anything (-56)

Basedness: 🔥🔥🔥🔘🔘

Jesus Christ are you kidding me? Get an actually life and stop being a child (-57)

Angriest Comments

Angriness: 😡😡😡😡😡

You're equating slavery to supporting a political candidate which is pretty disgusting.Btw many people supported the candidate because of terrible leadership failures on the left. Trump is a byproduct of bad policies all around. Nobody would have considered him if the left hadn't failed so epically. Don't get me wrong, Trump is a narcissistic idiot but the left failed us in more ways than one. (-8)

Actually, just no.Trump is not the result of failings on "the left". Trump is the natural end of the trend in the Republican party that has been happening since Reagan. The pattern has been consistent. Reagan, Bush, Bush, and Trump have made terrible domestic and foreign policy decisions that have royally screwed us over. Each worst than the last. Democratic presidents have not been perfect, but they have been doing their best to pick up the pieces of inherited disasters, and then they get blamed for the fallout of decisions their Republican predecessors made that were not easily fixable. Clinton was the only President in the past four decades to balance the budget and start to decrease the nation debt which skyrocketed under Reagan. Obama was left with remnants of a phony war that W started. People like to blame Obama for increasing debt, but a lot of the increase in his years in office was consequence of things he couldn't control. People blame Biden for inflation that is a direct... (20)

Angriness: 😡😡😡😡😡

Mmm sounds like you're uneducated on Donald Trump being a racist. Let me educate you….Trump invited leaders of the HBCUs to the White House in his first term, proceeded to help get them more funding. The Platinum plan was drawn up to create safer urban neighborhoods with the highest policing standards. Introduced new criminal justice reform most of which greatly affected the black community….all of this comes at a time when the Left is telling you he's racist, but Americans that have interacted with Trump tell you he is one of the most genuine humans in the world. Which is shown by his Numerous Humanitarian awards/nominations. (0)

Assuming he isn't racist, who cares? What I can't stand about the man is that he is weak as a human and he misuses his power for stupid stuff. I am a Republican but I walked away from Trump when I heard him badmouth John McCain's POW status…this tough talk from the coward who failed to serve in the same war. Taking away security details for his enemies is petty and immature (MAGA morons wont care to admit it but Biden reauthorized those security details…that is how a real man behaves…you rise above the petty crap).Like Trump MAGA losers are all tough at the keyboard but everyone I have met IRL can't even look me in the eye when I ask challenging questions, like the McCain scenario…one guy, a vet, denied it happened then when I showed him the clip he made some lame claim about editing or whatever.I heard the quote as it aired in real time. Trump is a coward.Character counts. (1)

Angriness: 😡😡😡😡😡

Yeah, frick freedom of speech!! (-12)

"oh no, I have to care about other people to be accepted by society"!!!!!!!!!!!! If you sit there and spew hatred and then people genuinely don't like you as a person, then people DONT want to hear you, be around you, or spend time with you dude. That's just reality and basic human relationships. If you cannot reconcile that concept, consider thinking that if you are not capable of considering the other person when you interact with them, you're probably stuck on caveman shit. Genuinely - if you are an unkind butthole in this current society - people don't want to spend time with you. That's the end of it. They don't want to hear from you because you think LESS of real human beings. Because you think that poor people don't deserve the same respect and dignity as other human beings. Because you are willing to condemn innocent people to death because of their religion, race, sexuality, or otherwise. That is NOT the human connection or intended experience. "Do no harm" commit no evils, ... (3)

Biggest Lolcow: /u/JokeMaster420

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I love her my special lil gal. She has begun giving more nose-kisses daily than Socks ever has the whole time I've rehabilitated that brown piece of flabby tabby they are going to fight so stupidly over sleeping with me once Sheila's fixed. We are close to the savings mark for her spay

!animalposters !cats

!chuds !trump2024 !trump2028

Malayan leaf frog pic.twitter.com/Y1jSBN0IyL

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) February 1, 2025

So peep this. I wake up one day with a smile on my face. I ready to GOON hard and hustle COOMpacks to my homies off the street. Gay, straight, all genders and nationalities, I don't discriminate when it comes to selling legal and illegal COOM to those in need.

I was try to watch a LIVE CAMGIRL SQUIRTING HARD PULSATING CLITORIS and the stream went off! Shit sucks yo, but I was EDGING like mofo and I held in my COOM. I tried to browse pornhub and all my favourite videos were GONE! I researched and found out that FEDs are trying to shut this shit down.

Nah fam PornHub don't die that's Town Square for gooners. We use VPNs round here AND we got our shit downloaded fam.

I dug deeper into this shit and I discovered that the Latter Day Gooner Cult is behind some of this shit. They claim to be about that GOON life but it's clear they're trying to restrict GOONING talmbout "holy GOON sacraments". Nah I GOON when I want. Which set you rep?

Sheeit, I was reading up and it turns out this schism in the GOONING community has been going on for eons. All throughout the years, there has been tension between the younger GOONERS who are trying to GOON fast and hard, and the older gooners striving for a subtler, but longer-lasting goon experience. Me? I stay with them young bucks. I goon too wild to be shackled by coom calendars and shit. I believe my set GOONs the hardest.

So yeah, the gang war has begun and we goon on cultists all day every day on site. A lot of GOONERS are gonna CATCH CASES, SSDs CONFISCATED, and INTERNET ACCESS RESTRICTED by FEDs while on probation.

Headed to Florida to go frick @R-slur-kong

PMC_GENEI_RYODAN STANDS WITH ISRAEL

Lmao, she must just either guess-timate her calories or not include drinks lol

Everyne in the thread talks about how they are totally the 0.01% of the population that doesn't follow thermodynamics

https://www.yahoo.com/news/dem-state-lawmaker-says-she-023054007.html

A generation of performative activists that never achieved anything worth of historic note, forever remembered as the r-slurs that saddled society with the burden of the end results of their lazy iPad parenting: all grown up. Bleak.

I knew deep down, when he would never give me a response when I have tried engaging him in discussions about women's rights and everything else Trump and his cult have done, that he felt this way. How can he think this, after everything I've talked to him about with abortion bans (we have young girls), Trump's stance on climate change, Project 2025, etc.

I wish I were financially independent. I made the idiotic mistake of taking a break on my career. I work part-time and can work more next year.

I really want out. I just don't know how

From the comments:

I made a similar post yesterday and just spent an hour in my therapist's office crying because it's finally hitting me that my husband, my partner, would rather support Nazis than put his pride aside for one fricking second and admit he was wrong. And now I have to draw a line in the sand, because NAZIS, and he has forced me into this position where I either have to divorce him, or knowingly stay married to a Nazi sympathizer. And quite frankly I hate him for it

"I don't know, Trump really doesn't seem that bad"

"My therapist that I spend your money on agrees with me! You're literally at Nazi!"

I'm sorry for you and your girls. They will know their father stood by while their rights were decimated and he will have to live with that. Not that any of these men are capable of self reflection.

Most sane BreakingMom poster.

This election proved just how much men hate women. I'm not surprised at all, but I'm still a bit disappointed

i'm so sorry. men are so stubborn and entitled. they'd rather be a fascist than be proved wrong. i hope that in time he comes to his own conclusion that trump is absolutely evil and equally i hope that you find financial freedom soon. ❤️

"ur a fascist if you don't agree with me"

Solidarity. I can't leave right now either. I've really had my eyes opened by his viewpoint the last few days. I can't even talk to him about politics without it becoming a screaming match. He constant asks for sources and "where did you see that at? You're only seeing one side and well at my work women this and women that...

Trump is a Nazi!

: Source!? Do you have a SOURCE for that?!?

You're all about women's rights but what actually have they taken away from you that changes your day to day life" oh he also is a freakin racist. He 100% proved that on MLK day by saying "oh it's (person who assassinated MLK day)" and I was like WHAT? He goes, "what you never heard it called that before? Everyone I know calls it that" I was dumbfounded. I was like why because you're a racist who is surrounded by other racists??? What the heckkkkk.

We have a daughter. I just can't do this for the next 4 years and who only knows how long after. I start therapy soon. I feel like the world is going to heck and I don't know what to do about it. I'm so scared for my child.