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xendiyatrix · 1 month ago

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Nexus Dalek lore(so far)

Lore for my nexus dalek so far

In the year circa 450 AD, on a small planet far off in the Muller galaxy existed the planet Skaro, where the Thal and Kaled people were now locked in a 1000 year war. During this war, Davros, a genius of the Kaled people and their chief scientist was mortally wounded leading to him losing his ability to see as well as both his legs and his left arm. The rest of the Kaled scientist division would not allow Davros’s genius to die and built him a life support chair which would keep him alive. Despite being alive Davros was still in a constant state of pain, but with his new found anger and more devoted than ever to wipe the Thal menace from the face of Skaro, he would start work on a new developmental program that would finally win them the war, the Dalek program. By the year 1450 AD the development of the Daleks was in full swing with the war at its end, Davros had seized power and had created the ultimate killing machine. But the dalek, now independant creatures who believed only in their supremacy betrayed Davros and executed him as well as the rest of the Kaled people, but what they did not anticipate was that a time traveller, The Doctor, would work with the remaining thals to seal the daleks in their underground bunker, long enough to keep them trapped for 1000 years. The first dalek who had exterminated Davros and now had a stronger resolve than ever, declared himself as emperor and dubbed himself as ‘Xendiyatrix’, this name being inspired from an ancient kaled ruler known as Xanzathrix. Now with complete control over the daleks he set them to work on digging them out of their bunker and starting work on what would become the capital of Kaalann. There was one thing that the Emperor had no knowledge of however, being that Doctor during his arrival had drawn the attention of a nearby spaceship from a large mega corporation who landed on Skaro and threatened Davros for the genes and plans for his new war machines, giving him no other choice but to sell them. While Xendiyatrix developed his empire on Skaro, there were more daleks out there in the universe, waiting to be found.

Lacking this knowledge Xen continued to progress his empire, having fought the last great war against the thals and believing them to be extinct, the daleks on skaro set their sights to the stars and started developing space flight. In the year 2150 AD, the daleks started their first invasion of earth in a plan dubbed ‘project de-gravitate’, which would be overseen by the Supreme Controller and his second in command. The idea behind this invasion was to test the capability of turning the earth into a mobile base they could pilot through the galaxy. The invasion would start by the orbital bombardment of the planet, which afterwards invasion saucers would start landing and establishing bases on earth. They also enslaved and robotised the population to use to dig a large fissure in Bedfordshire, england. During this event a lot of valuable resources were sent back to skaro to aid in expansion, but the daleks knowledge of other alien lifeforms was also increased as they learnt about a supposed twin planet dubbed ‘Mondas’ that invaded earth in 1988, as well as uncovering a tomb full of silurians. On another note, the Daleks found information regarding Skaros destruction in the year 1963 which conflicted with their understanding of their timeline. Before this plan could reach its conclusion another incarnation of the doctor foiled this plan and saw the destruction of the Dalek force on earth with the supreme controller and his subordinate narrowly escaping.

Instead of continuing to pursue outwards towards earth the dalek empire started expanding more closer to skaro, conquering nearby planets and setting up a wider border of space that they had claimed. During these years however Xen wanted to run an experiment to compare the human factor to the dalek factor to determine their own superiority over humanity. During the start of this operation dalek operatives set up base in the earth's victorian times through use of very rough time travel technology and held the human known as victoria prisoner to force her father edward waterfield and his accomplice Maxtiable to work for them in a plan to capture the doctor. Waterfield being transported to the future to sell Victorian antiques was used as bait to lure the doctor in, and once successful his accomplice Jamie was subjugated to a test where his positive human traits would be taken and implemented into 3 test daleks. This created Dalek Alpha, Beta and Omega. The doctor and the other humans would be taken back to skaro by a leading Red dalek, with the doctor being taken to meet the dalek emperor, Xendiyatrix, who now dawned a large imobile casing which was wired into the dalek city itself as he had the belief that he was too important to carry out any tasks physically. Xendiyatrix explained that the human factor was merely a means to show the daleks their own superiority and believed even more strongly than ever that the daleks' way of life was the most superior. The emperor had the dalek factor applied on Maxtible and the doctor, but lacking the knowledge of the doctor's different genes to humans allowed him to be unphased. With the three human factor daleks now rogue on skaro and questioning orders, The Emperor had all daleks go through archway doors in the sector around his throne room to ensure that they would all be impregnated with the dalek factor, but un unbeknownst to him the doctor switched them with the daleks there gaining the human factor. With the doctors help, the human factor daleks led by Alpha rose up against Xen and the first civil war occured, the Emperor's throne room was stormed and a major section of the dalek capital city was heavily damaged with Xen being trapped in his throne room and heavily crippled. The remaining human factor daleks started to flee the scene and leave skaro on hijacked saucers as they knew aid would soon arrive.

The black Dalek called the dalek supreme and the dalek supreme lord to skaro to assess the damage and have immediate repairs be made. The debris blocking the throne room was cleared and a still barely alive Xendiyatrix was recovered. His mutant was extracted from his casing and was placed into a glass casing while a new more mobile one was constructed for him. Now more revenge driven than ever, the Daleks were determined to destroy the doctor with him being labelled as their sworn enemy, The Ka Faraq Gatri.

In 2020 AD a capsule from beyond the stars crash landed on the planet Vulcan, falling from a cargo ship that fell under attack in transport. This was recovered from the swaps and taken into the science labs of the Vulcan's science labs. Here the scientist Lester would start re activating the 4 daleks one by one and using them as service ‘robots’ to aid the colony. During this time there was a power struggle on Vulcan in which a rebel group wanted to seize control by using the daleks as a weapon of war. Seeing the humans fighting each other and having utilised their resources to start a production line, their designated ‘Supreme commander’ who labelled himself as dalek ‘Sphinxx’ took command and ordered his daleks to turn on their human masters. With the colony fully under Dalek control, their supreme commander set Vulcan as their capital and started formulating plans on a new capital city and turning their sights towards the stars.

In the year 4000 the Dalek faction from Vulcan would establish an alliance with nearby galactic powers to use political means to secure peace with the neighbouring galaxy and destroy the earth alliance who at the time had achieved a lot of power in the wider galaxy. However the idea of peace for the daleks was loose, a plot which was overseen by Sphinxx;s black dalek supreme and a red dalek. When the time was right the Daleks would take the galactic powers hostage and threaten to use theri new weapon, the time destructor, as a ransom. But once more this plan was foiled by an earlier incarnation of the doctor who stopped their plan and used the time destructor against them to destroy their forces left. The red dalek was destroyed but the black dalek was able to return to Vulcann to report the failure of the mission to Sphinxx.

During the 26th century the now much larger earth empire had crossed paths with the draconian empire, both being on uneasy terms with each other and having clashing borders. There were claims from both sides that the other was destroying cargo ships and this was waging them closer to war. Little did they know that another faction of daleks, known as ‘The Dalek Supremacy And ruled by a council of daleks, were pulling the strings and making it seem like both sides were being attacked by the other, using Ogrons to board and attack the ships with the aid of a rogue time lord known as ‘The Master’. Having nearly achieved this goal they were stopped by the doctor once more who had convinced both sides that there was a third party involved. They found out the Master and his ogrons base of operations were the daleks stationed there were forced to retreat back to their planet. Now having to resort to the Spiridon plan, the supreme council ordered the scientist task force there to start re awakening the army of 10,000 daleks they had. Later in the operation a member of the Dalek council, being Dalek Nova, was sent to oversee the operation. This plan was once again stopped by the doctor and a group of Thals who were able to get the upper hand and freeze their invasion force. With their army immobilised and their ship stolen Nova was left stranded and awaiting rescue from their remaining forces. Once a rescue ship arrived Nova was saved and taken back to their mothership with spiridon being abandoned. A combined human and Thal force pushed the remaining daleks out of this space as they were forced to retreat.

It was in this retreat that Novas dalek empire fell into Xen’s dalek empire spaces with the two empires now encountering each other. A group of dalek saucers escorted Nova’s ship to the capital of Skaro were he was taken into a meeting room deep beneath the large capital city of Kaalann. There he encountered Xendiyatrix and a numerous amount of other dalek faction leaders, including Dalek Sphinxx, The Shadow Dalek, Dalek Nebula, Dalek Aurion, Dalek Vortanexx, Dalek Xenophon and Dalek Trimuon. With each member taking a spot around the large meeting table, Xendiyatrix spoke. “The growing Human, Thal and Draconian empires in this sector of space has caused considerable disruptions to all Dalek operations throughout the galaxy. Many of our brethren have been destroyed by these inferior creatures, and from the aid of the Timelord, the Doctor!” A visual screen flashed behind Xen as all daleks attending turned their eyestalks to focus on the many recorded faces of the doctor. Xen turned back to face the other daleks and addressed them. “I propose a unified Dalek empire under my rule as Emperor, together, we shall-!” “WAIT!”

Xen was cut off mid speech as the elusive Shadow dalek gilded forwards and out of his shadowed corner of the room. “We are all leaders of our own empires, we are all Daleks, what makes you worthy to lead all of us?”

“All of the other existing dalek groups are based on my design from Skaro, my empire is the most prosperous. Amongst all of you MY empire is the most powerful, united under me the Daleks can once more thrive!”

Silence filmed the room with the consensus being split. A lot of Daleks were willing to side with Xendiyatrix as they agreed with his view of prosperity and already had a clear image of how organised his empire was in comparison to most. Dalek Nova, Xenophon, Nebula and sphinxx all sided with Xen as they believed his military might and vision for the future of the dalek empire would lead them to great places, where as Xenophon saw the possibility in Xen’s empire to further their scientific advancements in technology and weapon development. Aurion, Vortanexx and Trimuon didn’t entirely agree with Xen’s views but were not entirely loyal to the Shadow daleks cause, they agreed with his stance against Xen but his views conflicted with their own.

The meeting was concluded and all Dalek leaders were allowed to leave and return to their respective homeworlds with communications being left open until a consensus had been reached. The Shadow dalek aiming to have a much more long term plan when to meet with the current head of Xen’s supreme council Dalek Alcatraz, already plotting against Xen to gain his own power he convinced him to side with him and act as an insider, and when the time was right to usurp power for himself.

Xendiyatrix gathered the daleks loyal to him and the members of his council, instead of handling the current political climate diplomatically, he instead wanted to stage a full scale war and force the other dalek leaders to bend to his will through any means. Hearing word of this, Alcatraz reported the information back to the shadow dalek, and within the next few days he was the one to instigate the war with his fleets starting to attack dalek occupied planets and destroying ships, thus starting the next great dalek civil war. In an attempt to gain an upper hand Xen put two different plans into action. Having heard of a great library being built on Karr-Charrat the daleks tried to force their way into and make demands about gaining access, but due to the help of the timelords a barrier was placed around the library protecting them. Xen ordered Dalek Nova to leave a scout unit there for a more long term plan as the library could still prove useful in future. His next plan was to use Davros to help reprogram their battle computers and aid with improvements to the daleks themselves to help them gain an upper hand over the rebel daleks. This started a very convoluted plan where the original Kaled bunker would be completely extracted from under Kaalann and moved to a decoy planet called Antalin which would be terraformed to look like Skaro. Davros would be reawakened and convinced that the Daleks were caught in a war against a race of robots called the Movellans and that they were at a stalemate due to their battle computers thinking the same, when in actuality the Movellans were a construct of Dalek technology. However, the Movellans still having their own thoughts to make the war seem convincing worked with the doctor and the operation failed as Davros was taken prisoner and handed over to the human empire.

In the late 26th century of cira 2600, another ploy was used again to try and recover Davros. A group of Daleks led by a Dalek supreme was sent out to recover Davros from his prison aboard a human space station, however Xens long term plan had now started to falter as Davros had different plans. The daleks tried to use the Movellan ploy again and explained that a virus had been created to specifically kill daleks and that he had to help find a cure and leave immediately, but Davros refused and said he needed to work on the station. This led to Davros subtly converting dalek troopers and a few daleks to his side starting a mini civil war, resulting in the destruction of the prison station and Davros once more being lost. The supreme dalek returned to Skaro and had to report utter failure to the Emperor. Despite being utterly infuriated by his plan going wrong. Xen had a backup idea. Turning to his now supreme scientist Xenophon, he ordered that a cure to the virus they made need to be made immediately and that the virus itself could be deployed as a weapon against the rebel daleks. A cure was made and the loyalists were all made immune, with the virus being heavily weaponized against all those who opposed Xen’s rule. Seeing the major destruction being caused to their forces and the pure power that Xen held, Aurion and Vortanexx both surrendered and agreed to Xen’s rule as Emperor. Trimuon not wanting to admit defeat persisted fighting, but was exterminated by his second in command who wanted to save his people and admit surrender. With the majority of daleks now completely loyal to him and his power growing, Xen’s remaining forces stormed the capital world of The Cult Of The Shadow dalek, with all those who rebelled being exterminated. A red command dalek was found and ultimately killed, but no traces to the shadow dalek's whereabouts could be found. Now with full control over the future of the daleks, Xen held a coronation in the main courtroom of Kaalan where each of the faction leaders, now being integrated and becoming regional governors, forged and welded Xen new extension pieces to his dome to form a new helmet that would represent his absolute control and dominance over the daleks. A majority of daleks in the empire were now completely loyal to Xen.

The next few years were spent entirely on development and restructuring of the empire and establishing themselves as an actual force to be feared in the galaxy. During their expansion and conquering of planets outside of the human empire's control and reach, a planet called Noravellak was colonised and turned into a research post due to its current anomalies. Building an outpost and establishing a small city a weak point in time was discovered in a cave. The chief scientist and engineer in charge of this operation could faintly hear voices emanating from this space, and came up with the theory that this point could be used as a portal to access other dimensions, a rip in space time. An immediate construction started on building a portal around this weak point and trying to gain access through it, but this wasn’t the only use the rip had. Due to its emanating temporal energy, they fused it with a dalek to the first dalek time controller, a dalek with the powers to see and use the time vortex to see into the future and assure dalek victories. Due to the creation of this dalek though it affected the current timeline and due to its nature with time heralded itself from the future and past, so history was rewritten so that he had been present since earlier in the empire's history. Eventually the portal was finished and with earlier communication to the wider empire the emperor Xendiyatrix arrived at Noravellak, leaving the start of project death wheel and nominating himself and an elite group of daleks to be the first to cross the portal, a portal which lead to a planet called Armaradus, in an alternative dalek universe.

Relations between the new daleks were going excellently, however unexpectedly the portal to Armaradus closed with the last received transmission from the other side being that of panicked cries. Connection with the emperor had been lost and the empire was trying to recover as there was now a power imbalance. The Daleks at Noravellak were immediately ordered to try and re-activate the portal and make it a top priority. Little did they know the excess energy produced by the rip had been secretly used to re-power the vast cyber tomb on the planet that had been hidden away for centuries beneath the ice. The daleks were driven off the planet and the rip in time’s cave had completely collapsed. The Daleks were now without a direct leader with a loss of commands and power struggle. Alcatraz was then ordered to take his chance from a shadow dalek that had been in hiding, and announced that he would take over the role of Emperor. This was met with a lot of contest and questions from the regional governors and Xen loyalists. However, now being a more dominant force in the empire Aurion and Vortexx sided with Alcatraz and started a revolt against the other dalek higher ups, Alcatraz ended up taking Skaro and forcing the xen loyalist to leave the daleks current conquered territory. Alcatraz enacted his own coronation with a helmet being forged out of supposed bones of a great leviathan he destroyed, symbolism of his own personal strength and power. The New Dalek Empire started to continue its expansion, with Alcatraz picking up on the death wheel that the Daleks under Xen’s command started. Planet killing tech was not something most species had so for the daleks to be constructing one was a big display of their power. However this plan was foiled by the doctor who helped the hellikans on the planet of hell to overthrow the daleks and have dalek killer Abslok Daak destroy the wheel, losing an essential piece of developmental technology for them.

Eventually the dalek empire would receive a transmission from the planet of Necros that Davros, having survived the destruction of the space station during his imprisonment, was housing himself on that planet and building new daleks. The now Skaro daleks landed on Necros and were able to recover Davros with a few of his daleks being able to be recovered. However once more Davros would be able to evade his creations as his ship crashed on the planet Lithie when caught in a meteor. Davros would create the disguise of professor Yatto and would start building a new creature called the juggernauts, constructed from repurposing Mechanoid parts. This plan was thwarted however and the new black dalek, having replaced the one loyal to Xen, was able to take Davros back for trial in front of the new emperor dalek. During Davros’s stay on Skaro on the days up to the trial a small rebellion started in opposition of Davros’s treatment, with the daleks that started this being reconditioned Necros daleks but soon regular daleks joined in. This rebellion was swiftly crushed and the day of Davros’s trial commenced.

“I AM YOUR CREATOR, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO JUDGE ME!” “YOU WILL BE SILENT, DAVROS!” The Dalek emperor, Alcatraz, dawned in his new golden casing boomed as he hovered above Davros with his eye focussing on him. “YOU ARE CHARGED WITH PERVERTING THE DESTINY OF THE DALEKS, I AM THEIR EMPEROR, I WILL JUDGE YOU!” Davros and the emperor continued to bicker back and forth, meanwhile some daleks amongst the crowd turned to each other and started to question who was really the emperor. “Can what Davros says be true?” One Dalek in the crowd turned to face his peer “Many Dalek scientists believe that now Davros is on Skaro we should learn from him”.

Before Davros' sentence could be carried out, alarms blared in the dalek courtroom as an oncoming meteor hurtled towards Skaro. The Dalek at the control panel immediately used the city's defence guns to destroy the meteor with debris fragments crashing into the city.

“METEOR DESTROYED!” The Dalek at the controls turned back to face its emperor. The emperor, satisfied with this, turned his attention back to Davros, “ON MY COMMAND, CARRY OUT THE EXTERMINATION!” “NO, I CREATED YOU, I-” Davros’s cries were cut off by the dalek executioners preparing to carry out there sentence, however by sheer luck an unknown virus in the daleks system resulted in the whole courtroom being disabled and a group of dalek technobots came to Davros’s rescue. The doctor owing himself a debt to the future had saved Davros and taken him from Kaalann to somewhere safe. The emperor, infuriated by this, started planning on his immediate recapture of Davros and used the Dalek Killer Daak to locate him. Once he had captured the doctor and his companions, The Emperor forced the whereabouts of Davros’s location out of The Doctor. The coordinates to Davros’s location were at an old Dalek outpost on a planet known as ‘Spiridon’. With the dalek task force having left the emperor enacted a back up safety plan, due to the time difference between when they had last seen Davros Alcatraz had a backup city made on Antalin and placed a fake emperor there just incase anything went wrong while he could remain safe on Skaro. During this a group of daleks who were initially loyal to Alcatraz started to deviate and started believing that Xen was the better leader and that they needed to aid his loyalists still out there in the universe. The leader of this rebel group of daleks had a new casing made to resemble that of the original black dalek out of respect for one of Xen’s most loyal daleks, this daleks followers aided him and started an internal assault in Skaro where they would capture the dalek time controller and use him to traverse into the year of 1963.

The Dalek task force sent after Davros landed on spiridon, led by the new black dalek who had a psyche dalek accompanying him and holding the doctor's companions hostage. Upon arriving at where Davros was located, he revealed himself and a new army of 4 million imperial daleks completely loyal to him. Psyche dalek three and the black dalek were both destroyed and Davros took the doctor captive and headed back to the fake Skaro, Antalin. Using a virus supplied to him by the doctor Davros killed the fake emperor and all the daleks stationed there, claiming fake skaro as his. Davros was briefly disabled by Daak with the doctor and everyone else escaping as the capital self destructed, however Davros’s new daleks were able to save him and he was declared the new emperor of the daleks. With the doctor having left a tip for Davros earlier about the hand of Omega, the future was set in stone.

In the past year of 1963, the new renegade dalek faction lead by a black dalek and the dalek time controller set up a secret base and co operated with a neo nazi group called the association to locate and retrieve the hand of Omega, however the imperial daleks were in pursuit. With the mothership in orbit, the imperial daleks slowly started to infiltrate and establish themselves as they started to go on the offensive. With the Renegade daleks having the hand of omega under their control and preparing to leave, the imperial daleks stormed their hideout with a newly made piece of dalek weaponry, the special weapons dalek. The daleks supreme retreated and the renegade daleks were blown to bits, the dalek time controller was damaged but used its powers to retreat back into the time vortex. With the imperial daleks having won the civil war, Davros was going to use the hand of omega on Skaros sun for himself to use as an energy source like Omega had to give individual dalek units the ability to time travel. However this horrendously backfired and ended up destroying fake skaro and the imperial dalek mothership. Davros used an escape pod last minute to flee and was sent hurtling through space. All remaining imperial daleks fell under attack from Alcatraz’s remaining forces and were sent to the edge of the universe to hide.

Having completed his part in the end of the dalek civil war the dalek time controller travelled far back into the future where he re contacted the New Dalek Paradigm, due to his temporal nature and with how the dalek time controller acts with time the daleks of this era believed they had created him, which on some accounts they had. While in his time in this era the Dalek time controller would meet the doctor face to face for the first time in his 11th incarnation. He had joined the paradigm in a scheme to turn the 400 sunlight worlds into copies of Skaro and would manipulate the doctor by posing as the Dalek Litigator and prosecuted the doctor for hate crimes against the daleks. The daleks here were seen as beneficial for setting up the sunlight worlds, but this plan was foiled when a dalek puppet known as Jenibeth Blakley, turned on the time controller. The dalek time controller was minorly damaged but was able to land a killing shot before retreating back into the time vortex. While in the vortex the dalek time controller contemplated its next actions and what it had to do to fit its timeline, and by luck was able to use a significant amount of power to open a crack to another universe and was able to pull Xendiyatrix into the vortex mere seconds before his death, from here he was returned back to the current time in his timeline and reunited with his dalek loyalists. Having survived near death and now more confident than ever, Xen rallied all his renaming loyalists and the forces they had built up and led a direct assault on Skaro to reclaim it from Alctraz. Their fleet easily ripped through the defense fleet and Xen’s flagship destroyed Alcatraz’s flagship in orbit of the planet. His forces swiftly landed and there was all out war on Skaro, but after days of fighting Skaro now once more belonged to the true emperor. A lot of daleks from Alcatraz’s empire had turned on him during the conflict as trust in his leadership had already been swaying. Dalek Nova captured Alcatraz before he could escape and had him stand trial before Xendiyatrix. Instead of exterminating him, he and his loyalists were mentally tortured and then transported to the dalek asylum where they would spend the rest of their lives, Alcatraz was stripped of his golden casing and returned to his original one, with the gold of his emperor casing being smelted and reforged into dalek Nova’s casing as he was announced the new head of the supreme council. The bones of the great lethivan supposedly defeated by Alcatraz were cut from his helmet and forged into Xen’s. With that Skaro was now once more united and the dalek empire was whole, the capital of Kaalann was rebuilt and dalek conquests could now continue as useful. Xen assembled his council and started planning for a long term goal, for too long had the doctor and the timelords been interfering with them, even during their genesis, Xen saw it time to start preparing long term for what the daleks termed the Pa-Jass Vortan.

Reports soon came from the planet Karr-Charrat from the scout that had been left there for a millenia that a timelord, the doctor, had finally landed on the planet. A duplicate of his companion was made and a dalek force headed over the planet once the library was infiltrated. Led by a supreme dalek, they aimed to use the new wetworks facility to install all knowledge from the library into a single dalek unit. This plan was thwarted, but enough knowledge was gained from the library that would be useful for the daleks in future conquests.

The dalek time controller, now having achieved its goals of saving Xen and securing the dalek's future timeline, set its sights to other plans. Having traced viruses to the Amethyst Viral Containment Station the Dalek Time Controller led a force to take the station through time. However they met opposition from the Sixth Doctor. The Dalek time controller was able to deduce that this was a time loop and an explosion occurred that would result in the loss of the viruses and the start of the time loop that would trace the Daleks back to the station. The dalek time controller allowed the explosion to occur and let the doctor believed he was destroyed. Because of the explosion the dalek time controller was sent hurling back to the 22nd century, where he would crash and be recovered by the daleks who had invaded earth in that timezone.

#doctor who #dalek #daleks #daleks are supreme #dalek oc #my lore #lore

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nekrops-shaped · 8 months ago

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sts time! what's everyone's favourite animal?

oh man i have to do this without projecting.... aughhhh

Agnes: probably raptors, big birds of prey. thinks they're majestic and strong

Ryan: canids! definetely a dog person :] he had a few during his childhood so he's got a soft spot for them

Lisabel: butcherbirds i feel like she's the kind of person to like and maybe keep big spiders or other dangerous venomous bugs (general term), probably handle them too. don't worry, she can concoct any antidotes she could possibly need by herself :}

Eric: big dog breeds :] german shepherd, bloodhound, great pyrenee, St Bernard, most sheepdogs

Léan: extinct animals! their special interest :3 she changes favorite animal every time he discovers a new one. he's full of love for every single creature!!!

Rask'r: shalks! they're crunchy and their fiery powers leave a nice spicy aftertaste in the mouth 😋 snacks aside, it's guars. he used to work as a guar herd when he was a kid

Raz: his lycanthropy is like a magnet to animals but with the same poles, animals get very defensive when he's around bc they sense danger from him. not a lot to choose from. he'd go with wolves just for the kinship

Donovan: doesn't have a favorite animal. he hates seagulls tho

Lee: anything small enough is prey, anything big enough is predator. i guess humans would fall right in the middle of that scale... 🤔

Vreytus: songbirds. he likes the melodies

Bug: bugs

Voirdity: birds, obviously! otherwise voirds wouldn't be shaped after birds lol. not sure if it has a favorite one, tho

Chad: what's the biggest, baddest, most threatening animal he can think of on the spot? bald eagle? pitbull? wolf? lion? he doesn't really care about the answer as long as it makes him look cool

Lewis: as a xenobiologist, he has lots of love for tiny creatures and would kill (metaphorically) to go to Xen or other worlds to study their fauna. back in Black Mesa, he could spend hours without end observing the alien enclosures, getting so caught up in their wonder that he usually forgot to take notes on their behavior lol. he has a special fondness and fascination for metamorphosis or lifeforms that undergo big changes through their life cycle, so his fave would probably be the spore launcher, the larval form of shock troopers

Storyteller Saturday is ON throughout the weekend!! Come send an ask!

#chatter #the Nexverse #STS

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rainydawgradioblog · 1 year ago

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Rainy Dawg Radio's Favorite Albums of 2014

The Blawg Team got together and compiled their top five albums of 2014, ten years later.

Emi

Chuuwee, Trizz - Amerikka’s Most Blunted

One of my favorite rap albums ever, Chuuwee never got his limelight. Fun vocal interludes in between brilliant sampling and blunt, catchy verses.

Twin Peaks - Wild Onion

Good indie music from my middle school days.

Ariel Pink - Pom pom

I don’t care that he stormed the capitol.

(Editors note: Rainy Dawg Radio does not endorse the January 6th insurrection.)

Nicki Minaj - Pinkprint

Iconic, formative album. My sister had it on CD and put the foldout poster from the case on our wall.

Mac Demarco - Salad Days

Nobody can’t not like this one.

Sean

Lana Del Rey - Ultraviolence

Lana Del Rey embodies “the woman on the side” on her gothic Ultraviolence. Sex, money, and infidelity circulate the project as Lana channels a “mistress” persona on swirling Americana instrumentals.

FKA Twigs - LP1

On her debut LP1, FKA Twigs’ voice effortlessly glides across delicate, porcelain beats that sound like they could shatter at any given moment. Exploring themes of sexuality and devotion, Twig’s invites the listener to step into her world.

Aphex Twin - Syro

Richard D. James’ most intimate digital experiments come to life on Syro. Skittering breaks layered with acidic bass lines ricochet across the tracklist, creating a delightfully unpredictable listening experience. The project is peacefully brought to an end with the astounding closing track aisatsana [102].

Arca - Xen

Arca’s iconic debut Xen combines hazy synths and drum samples with dissonant acoustics. Through the harshness, Xen’s haunting beauty never ceases to shine through.

Tinariwen - Emmaar

The nomadic Taureg rock group made their triumphant return in 2014 with Emmaar after being displaced from Mali. Despite being recorded outside their homeland, Tinariwen makes no compromises on Emmaar; their smoldering lead guitars and resilient lyrics are as strong as ever.

k-murph

mitski - bury me at makeout creek

although the competition is steep, i believe bury me at makeout creek is mitski’s best. although i adore every mistki album, only this one has “last words of a shooting star”. and “francis forever”. and “i will”. and every song on the album. i rest my case.

hozier -hozier

hozier’s debut album will forever stand to me as one of the most enchanting projects of all time. his lyrical genius, beautiful vocals, and sheer force of mystical magical forest man-ness propel this album to the status of a forever classic. i love you hozier. i’m sorry i passed out in the pit of your seattle show four times.

TV girl- french exit

french exit has some of the most enjoyable production out of any album i’ve ever heard. every time i play “lovers rock” at the function, the crowd goes wild. guaranteed! also, apparently, this album was released on my 10th birthday! cool!

adrienne lenker, buck meek - a-sides

i love adrienne lenker more than maybe any other person on earth. the haunting beauty of this album is incredible. also b-sides. this kind of includes both, because i’m famously indecisive. i’ve always said i think adrienne lenker is the perfect artist for some good old-fashioned washington clouds and rain.

taylor swift - 1989

sue me. i simply cannot resist a little bit of sparkle and glitter and corny pop—plus, 1989 undoubtedly marked a cosmic shift in our universe. the impact of “blank space”, let alone this album, is undeniable.

Ben

Mitski - Bury Me At Makeout Creek

Had “Texas Reznikoff” not opened this album, it would still be my favorite album of 2014, but it does, so Bury Me At Makeout Creek is also one of my favorite albums of all time.

Pinata - Madlib/Freddie Gibbs

At fourteen or fifteen years old, you (I) discover an album that not only contains strictly songs you enjoy, but also makes you want to discover more music that sounds just like it. That was Pinata for me… also the production on “Knicks” is ridiculous. And “Shame.” “Robes” too. I’m constantly asking myself “how did he do that” in regards to Madlib’s work on this, but he’s not really reinventing the wheel or anything, it’s just like he woke up and decided to make the best beat you’ve ever heard seventeen times.

Black Kray - 700 Dagreez

I was very late to the Black Kray party but I’ve come to understand 700 Degreez as one of the best cloud rap projects ever released. No album released since has mingled lyrics about crying your eyes out and putting 28-inch rims on a NASCAR Chevy so seamlessly.

Black Messiah - D’Angelo

“Really Love” alone justifies this album at #4 to me…

How To Leave Town - Car Seat Headrest

Confession: I listened to How To Leave Town for the first time two weeks ago. However I’ve listened to “I Want You To Know That I'm Awake / I Hope That You're Asleep" enough since then to last me a lifetime, so I feel entitled to putting it on my list.

Parks

Ten years ago, American/UK album releases were a mess. Two albums stood out to me as being worthwhile… see below

Spoon- They Want My Soul

They Want My Soul is exactly what is to be expected from Spoon. It’s a solid record. “Rainy Taxi" and title track, "They Want My Soul" are standouts.

Les Claypool - Primus and The Chocolate Factory With the Fungi Ensemble

In a dark year for music, Les Claypool blessed us with his presence, if only for a moment. Primus and the Chocolate Factory with the Fungi Ensemble has exceptional instrumentation and is delightfully creepy.

Honorable Mentions:

The War on Drugs- Lost in the Dream: Great album, just not too familiar with it.

Tom Petty- Hypnotic Dream: Its a 2014 Tom Petty album.

Dishonorable Mention:

Pitbull- Globalization : Thank you dear Pitbull for defining my middle school experience.

Zola

Taylor Swift - 1989

Pop perfection. Perfectly emulates the vibes of the mid 2010’s. One of the first times I remember an album being everywhere. Had 6 singles, all of which achieved massive success, proving that Taylor swift was a crossover mastermind. Unfortunately she desecrated “Style” when rerecording it. Thank you mom for buying this on cd.

Lana Del Ray - Ultraviolence

A perfect follow up to 2012’s Born to die. Helped her usher in a new sound while still staying familiar to her roots. Almost featured Lou Reed.

Lorde - Pure heroine

While technically not released in 2014, nothing encapsulates the 2014 tumblr vibes than Pure Heroine. Lorde ran tumblr, she ran south park, and she ran the radio. It gets a spot on my 2014 list because I was genuinely obsessed with this album in 2014.

TV girl - French Exit.

TV girl’s debut album, which unfortunately did not catch on until tik tok got a hold of it. Featuring the ultra classic “lover’s rock”. The impact this album had on teenage girls in 2021 cannot be understated.

Tove lo - Queen of the clouds.

Stunning debut from Tove Lo. The album is a concept album split into three parts, “The Sex”, “The Love”, and “The Pain''. Overall a 2014 sleeper hit with some memorable bangers. One time “talking body” came on my sixth grade social studies pandora during class time, and I remember some random kid in my class singing along. On the plus side he's now a kicker on the Oregon State football team so maybe he was onto something. (#31)

tide2004

Flowers Taped to Pens - s/t

San Diego screamo. Very unique and influential sound. This album is one of the first screamo releases that I really got into a couple of years ago.

Machine Girl - WLFGRL

Electronic/digital hardcore from Long Island. My best friend Maddie and I listened to this album constantly the summer before I went to college (favorite tracks: “Krystle”, “Ghost”, and “Mg1”).

Alex G - DSU

My favorite Alex G album. I bought the CD last year and I have the lyric booklet up on my wall. When I saw him live he only played one song off it :/

OFF! - Wasted Years

Los Angeles hardcore punk. Ex Black Flag/Circle Jerks

Cuckoo - Magpie e.p.

Math rock from Hakodate, Japan. I love the guitar on this album so much. Really good staring out the window music, reminds me of taking the train down through California for the first time.

Pal

This took some research, because the music that I was listening to in 2014 consisted of “Fireflies” by Owl City, 1989 by Taylor Swift, the Weezer Christmas album, and that one U2 album that got downloaded onto everyone’s iPod. but looking back, there were some really great albums that year.

First and foremost, we have to talk about Mitski’s Bury Me at Makeout Creek. That album dosen’t have a bad song on it, and I can’t count how many times I’ve played it all the way through. “I Don’t Smok”e actually shatters my ribcage every time and so does “I Wil”l, and “Drunk Walk Home”, and “Townie”, and like every other song also. It’s incredible.

You’re Gonna Miss it All by Modern Baseball was a staple of my sophomore year of high school. It was written when the band was in college and realizing that they were going to be graduating soon and moving on with their lives. Coping with that feeling is a lot, and “Fine, Great” as well as “Your Graduation” will probably resonate with most people who feel like they’re losers in a small town.

Syro by Aphex Twin isn’t my favorite Aphex Twin album, but sometimes I put it on just to feel like I’m hanging out in one of those star nurseries the James Webb telescope keeps taking pictures of.

Alvvay’s self titled is the perfect thing to throw on to get some good old fashioned pining in. It’s indie/dream pop sound is light enough to not make you too sad, but also not peppy enough to get your hopes up too high. Also, it just sounds amazing. I’d eat it and it would taste like caramel and strawberries maybe.

How to Leave Town by Carseat Headrest is one of CSH’s best albums in my opinion. It’s more electronic and the themes of teenage romance in their earlier stuff fade more into adult uncertainty.

Too Bright by Perfume Genius is what I think of when I think 2014. I remember my dad playing Queen in the car on the way back from summer camp. Looking back on it, the album's emotional explosion of empowerment, queerness, drag, and radical self-acceptance is incredibly powerful, and I will definitely be playing it more.

Steven Neff

La Dispute - Rooms of the House

One of my favorite albums ever. I revisit this album so regularly so I can practice my cold hard scowl while walking home from class in pouring rain. Woman (In mirror) is genuinely a perfect song.

Adrianne Lenker + Buck Meek - B-Sides

The pinnacle of absolutely crushing acoustic singer-songwriter projects. It is incredible to think that this project is now ten years old considering Big Thief’s increase in cultural relevance. This was before Big Thief was formed as a band and a year before the two got married as well which you can just feel that emotion in this project. I weirdly like the B-Sides far more than I like A-Sides.

Car Seat Headrest - How To Leave Town

Will Toledo. Man. I believe that he claims that How to Leave Town is just a compilation album of stuff that he was working on around the time but you would never tell. “The Ending of Dramamine” and “Hey, Space Cadet” are in the running for my favorite opener and closer to an album genuinely ever.

Modern Baseball - You’re Going To Miss It All

Nostalgia packed up into thirty mins of angst. The quintessential midwest emo album. Timeless. I can sing the entire album from front to back without missing a single word.

Freddie Gibbs, Madlib -Pinata

Not a single skip all the way through. Madlib masterclass as always making it real easy for Freddie Gibbs to do what he does best. “Deeper” is such a good song and easily my favorite Gibbs song ever.

Sofia

Dean Blunt - Black Metal

Mix of alternative/indie and Americana, among other things, that really works when you’re trying to pass time. I first got into this album over the summer when I heard “100” for the first time on vacation – big fan of “HUSH” because of the jazz kind of thing it’s got going on. I also like the way Dean Blunt uses samples in this album; he samples “Over Your Shoulder” by the Pastels in “100” and “For You” by Big Star in “LUSH”, both of which work really well.

Whirr, Nothing - Whirr & Nothing (Split Version)

Noisy and heavy shoegaze/rock split EP. Listened to this EP a lot over the summer lying in bed and counting down the days until I could leave town and come back to school… My favorite song is “Chloroform” by Nothing because it does a quiet-loud-quiet thing that I love.

Brian Jonestown Massacre - Revelation

Dense, long shoegazey psychedelic rock album. The title track (“Vad Hände Med Dem?”) is sung in Swedish. I listened to this album on the ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge Island on a stormy day, which is exactly what it calls for, I think. When I put this album on I skip “Duck and Cover” because it scares the fuck out of me.

Alex G - DSU

Another album that’s great for summer listening. Alex G’s high-pitched voice works really well with the twangy guitar and piano. The lyrics to the tracks on this album are enigmatic as ever, with a bunch of sentimental/emotional lines (“I love you, Harvey, I don’t care” in “Harvey”, for example). Seeing “Sorry" live during his acoustic Seattle show changed my life fall quarter freshman year.

Mac DeMarco - Salad Days

This album is mostly on my list for nostalgia – I did a decent amount of listening to this sophomore year of high school, and I feel like this is the type of music, that lazy-day mix between melancholia and indie guitar. Even though “Chamber of Reflection” got beat to death a few years ago, I still think it holds up, although I’d say my favorites are the first three tracks (so “Salad Days,” “Blue Boy,” and “Brother”). Recorded in Mac DeMarco’s Brooklyn apartment!

Dawson

Aphex Twin - Syro

Slightly less game changing compared to 30 years ago, Aphex Twin’s Syro shows the continuation of his sound. While hits like “180db” grow popular on social media, ambient songs like “aisaitsana”appeal even to audiences not interested in electronic music as a whole.

Machine Girl - Wlfgrl

While in my opinion Wlfgrl is significantly overrated by fans compared to the rest of Machine Girl’s discography, it still shines through as a beautiful album. Their debut on streaming services, this album continues to draw in new fans more than recent works, and esoteric sampling introduces fans to various other niche works such as “The Machine Girl” and “Ginger Claps.”

Joy Again - Forever

No longer named Forever Lesbians, the debut album by Joy Again remains an homage to their former name. A mix of intriguing instrumental tracks and melancholy hits, Forever’s 30 song, 1 hour 17 minute runtime makes current Joy Again fans jealous with its length. The combined length of Joy Agains entire discography since 2014 is less than the length of Forever.

PUP - Self Titled

PUP’s self titled album still hits hard today, despite its 10 year age. Hits like “Reservoir” and “Factories” are a clear demonstration of the talent the band has - vocalist Stefan Babcock’s grandmother’s comment about a “pathetic use of potential” (resulting in the name of the band) are easily proven wrong on this record.

Death’s Dynamic Shroud - NEON GENESIS EVANGELIS

A precursor to their 2015 hit I’ll Try Living Like This, NEON GENESIS EVANGELIS is a must listen for fans of the band. The song “CD Player” is an earlier version of the much more popular song “CD Player, Pt. III”, my personal favorite, “Strange Scenery” creates beautiful soundscapes that almost evoke imagery of the aforementioned strange scenery.

Skyler

(In no particular order)

Kagayaki - Masakatsu Takagi One of my favorite albums of all time. Pure joy for the entire runtime, Masakatsu Takagi’s ear for contemporary classical composing on top of sonically effervescent soundscapes is genuinely so beautiful. I’ve cried to this album –I wanna say, like– 10 times over. His ongoing Marginalia series continues the grounded, blissful tones that Kagayaki started and I couldn’t be happier.

N****s On The Moon: The Powers That B Disc 1 - Death Grips

Conversely, the first half of what would be a completed The Powers That B is composed in what’s nearly an opposite direction to Kagayaki. Compared to their other works, it’s easily overlooked (and while I can absolutely understand why), N****s On The Moon’s dynamic, Björk-fuelled brutalist production and harsh lyricism is such a good time.

You’re Dead! - Flying Lotus

Really incredible hip-hop/jazz-fusion record by Flying Lotus. I remember being given a hand-me-down of this record on vinyl (along top of a fresh copy of his 2010 LP Cosmogramma around 2016, thank you Nolan) and just gawking at the interior artwork while listening to “Tesla.” Really incredible stuff.

Three Love Songs - Ricky Eat Acid

BANGER AFTER BANGER AFTER BANGER. Ricky Eat Acid’s Three Love Songs is in a similar breadth to that of Takagi’s Kagayaki in its minimalist, earthy tones with tracks like “Big Man’s Last Trip Outside” to the grand orchestral airy vocalizations on “I Can Hear Breaking As One,” all accompanied by rounding Moog synths. Sounds like the word “honeycrisp.”

Gray Data - Five Star Hotel

Bombastic harsh noise with gripping discordant beats, Gray Data’s expansion on hardcore EDM means so, so much to me. Incredibly funny and inventive use of sampling (thinking of the siren on “Outside Solaris”). Hypnotic and migraine inducing in the best way possible.

Honorable Mentions: Swans - To Be Kind; Sun Kill Moon - Mom, Benji

Willow Goetting

BLAWG 2014 top albums

Machine Girl - WOLFGRL (2014) (Electronic/breakcore)

Machine Girl is one of the most iconic alternative electronic artists to come out of the 2010s, and has had a large influence on the rise of ‘hyperpop’ and similar genres. WOLFGRL is a favorite of mine not only because of its impeccable tracklist, but also because it heavily features samples from Ginger Snaps (2000). Top tracks: “Frenesi (Machine Girl GabberTrap Mix)”, “Mg1”, and “Out by 16, Dead on the Scene”.

Waveless - Waveless EP (originally released 2014 on BandCamp–says 2017 on Spotify but IDC) (Shoegaze)

The first song on this album is one of my favorite shoegaze songs of all time, and the whole EP is an incredible release. I am pretty sure the band is long gone and broken up now, but it's been a favorite of mine this winter. Top tracks: “Nausea (song for Proski)”, “UPCLOSE/UNCLEAR.”

Alex G - DSU (2014) (Indie rock)

DSU still goes down as one of Alex G’s best albums to date–a perfect follow up to the 2012 release TRICK. It also features a re-recording of the demo “After Ur Gone”, which definitely still recirculates on Spotify as a favorite pick of the rampant ‘alex g archive’ accounts. Top Tracks: “Serpent is Lord”, “Axesteel” and “Harvey”.

Mac Demarco - Salad Days(2014) (Indie/synthpop)

Salad Days planted the seed for the explosion of indie artists from 2014 onwards, with his style still inspiring so many acts coming out today. I still hear “Chamber of Reflection” playing in coffee shops to this very day. Top track: “Treat Her Better.”

Jessica Lea Mayfield - Make My Head Sing…(2014) (Singer-songwriter)

Very sweet and lovely springtime music for when I need some easy listening. I listened to it a lot when I was about to roadtrip to Montana last May, so it holds a very special place in my heart. Top tracks: “Seein* Starz” and “Standing in the Sun.”

Thanks for reading! Be on the lookout for the next joint Blawg Team post, which will see our writers put together some of their favorite lines in music history...

#spotify #2014

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corpulent-guardians · 2 years ago

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Hello one and all, welcome to this humble little blog about making big Guardians even bigger!

Here is a list of all of the characters on the blog. Please note: the weight of all this characters is bound to shift and change with each ask. Anywho, here is the character list:

Jules: Human hunter. Bottom heavy. Tends to spend most of her time in ramen shops in the City when not spending time working on some of Anna's projects.

Val: Awoken Titan. Very much belly heavy. Surprisingly gets quite a bit of attention, leading to her getting plenty of gifts. Now practically a celebrity, she tries not to let it get to her head.

Anna-2: Exo Warlock and scientist. Tried to find scientific artifacts from Old Earth to assist the City, only to sometimes have that backfire on her and her friends

Xen: Fallen captain. Rival of Val, Jules, and Anna, usually trying to beat them to whatever their goals are and take ancient artifacts for herself.

Vyvrisk: First mate and feeder of Xen. Infamous for happily expanding her fellow crew mates as well~

Givran: Fallen Archon. Advisor of Xen and her crew, but while the crew's leaderhsip has begun to put on weight, Givran has tried to avoid putting on as much weight as the others aboard the vessel, to varying results.

Dolves: Fallen Vandal and cook aboard Xen's ship, using her post to experiment with various different recipes, much to the harm to the figures of the ship's crew~

Nu’uon: Cabal Phalanx commander. Strongfat, for now. Also tends to be unaware of any attempts to make her fatter, do with that knowledge what you will~

Mist-13: Exo Titan. More laidback than her friend Ash, though is certainly more of a glutton than most guardians

Ash-20: Exo Hunter and friend of Mist. Not as much of a troublemaker, mostly focused on keeping her friend Mist out of trouble.

IRIS: an artificial intelligence existing within a small research station orbiting the solar system. Originally built for the purpose of caring and ensuring the safety of her company’s clients, something has corrupted her system, leading her to the conclusion that the only way to ensure an individual’s safety is by making sure they could never get into trouble. Whether that’s by expansion or not, well, you know how this blog is~

“Royal” Anna-2: After encountering a Cabal artifact on Mars, Anna’s figure rapidly ballooned in weight, making her larger than even the most rotund Cabal aristocrat. She was quickly captured by a group of Cabal from the Blind Legion, she is now kept as a living artifact, having her new, gluttonous desires tended to, while also keeping her close to other mind altering artifacts.

Sariha: An attempt by the Vex on Mars to design their own guardian after the loss of the Black Heart, Sariha ended up being exposed to the energy of the Traveler’s Light, causing her to break off from the hive mind and search for its source. Now she lives in the City, spending her time in libraries and wandering around when she’s not helping the Guardians on missions.

#corpulent-guardians #body expansion #body inflation

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the-xen-project · 4 years ago

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[ no update this week but you can have this special Forxen ]

#TheXenProjectAU #Xen Project Other Notes #HLVRAI #Forxen [Forzen]

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pangolin-404 · 4 years ago

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pokemon rejuvenation liveblog pt. 2: electric boogaloo

(spoilers up to 2nd gym badge)

Someone from the previous post suggested I trade my Rockruff for another Rockruff that would evolve into Dusk Form Lycanroc so I did that! And he ended up being very powerful! Thank u

I end up staying at route 2 and putting off Shinx acquisition because I don’t want to spend 300 dollars for one trip. Some guy ran into me and stole 2000 off me and I’m prepared to commit a war crime

At some point I do go back to East Gearen and finish all the side quests and get the Shinx (replacing the Nidorina). Including the jerk who sicked circus lions on me. I also get the Zygarde Cube and start collecting them which is cool

Some others and MC go into Amethyst Cave looking for another person who went missing, and some Team Xen grunts tell us they pushed her off a bridge and she’s definitely dead. One of the higher ups even shows one of her items to prove it. At this point I’m doubtful she’s dead because we’ve all heard the trope of someone-dies-but-surprise!-they-just-lost-that-item

Once we get out I end up talking to the village sensei and he asks me to get this Soul Stone. He tries contacting her spirit with it but fails so he says she’s definitely moved on (I am still suspicious)

I eventually go do some of the side quests for THIS town and explore this ancient library. I get swarmed by 500 million Unown. The woman who speared a boat through, killed someone, and possible enslaved some others was there and stole a mega ring, which was interesting. I feel like she projected some childhood trauma while mocking me

I collect some books and awkwardly sidestep what I thought was the ghost of some lost victorian era child to put the books back in the shelf. apparently that was in fact the overworld sprite of an Elgyem, which got so hyped I filled a bookshelf they threw themself at me so now I have one of those now. i exit the library and don’t give the guy who hired me a book that translates an ancient language. I note this because I’m not sure if that’ll be relevant later

I completed a quest but when I went to tell the woman her boyfriend is safe, she proceeded to reveal her true form as a Ditto, as the real person walked in (very confused). The Ditto transforms to mimic a Jirachi plush and runs off. i feel like i’ll see them again some day

The Sherian gym leader, who is also the sensei who suffers from lots of family issues and depression, confirms

I lost 2 too many times to the Sheridan gym leader so I go to the clown tent thing and set game mode to casual. I gently ignore the mess that is the family drama of this town and beat the gym leader

but i do not get the badge. i am sitting there with my maxed out team looking for the badge where is it i want to see more numbers go up

I forgot when but at some point MC finds out the Sensei ripped his own emotions out, and his emotion-soul-thing is just kinda lurking in this cave oasis like that’s not eerie at all

There’s a funny little AI named SEC who gets very angry and I just think he’s neat. he keeps blowing himself up. There’s another AI named CLARA and she’s cool too

While running around I find a Mime. Jr and get flashbacks to a Tumblr post like “I found this guy and of course I saved him! Apparently he’s MISSABLE because this place BLOWS UP” and I go “OH” and snatch the baby

I also see a couple of grunts from earlier. They bickered but they seemed chill. One of them was in a test tube alongside Pokemon and I’m just like “oh no im sure that won’t hurt my heart later” and awkwardly leave the other grunt to her scheming

I’m not entirely sure what series of events went down but the Sensei was underneath a mountain perhaps working for Team Xen, after giving them ownership of the village in his younger years which is?? something dude you need help

MEWTWO WWOWOWO

Keta (the Sensei) Actually Dies by Mewtwo’s hand to buy MC and a couple others time to Not Die and shut off the generator

The Rift Pokemon is a Volcanion infant fused to machinery to function as a power generator that I have to destroy (read: kill) so it can be set free. I am canonically a child I feel like MC will not go through this without some trauma

Mewtwo and Evil Person Who Made Him appear and Mewtwo goes rogue and strangles her and everything starts going downhill

So we’re teleported away by this lady and her Gothitelle and the facility has a meltdown. I’m not sure what Crescent’s deal is but she seems to know what’s going on and other folks seem scared of her?

(Note I’m not sure if the grunt and her friend-in-a-test-tube-being-tortured are alive but if they are I can’t wait to see what tragedy that turns out to be)

Apparently MC was missing for a week before falling from the sky

The village Eldest shows me a place where I can purify shadow Pokemon which is neat

I take two steps and the emotion-soul-Keta from earlier appears and demands to battle me so I can put his soul to rest. Finally, after I win, he hands over the 2nd badge and dissolves like a bath bomb

His statue explodes into existence and I realize I’m probably going to face off 4 more ghosts because why else would there be 4 more pedestals exactly like the one Keta’s on

FINALLY I CAN HIT LEVEL 30 but nobody on my team will evolve until then unless I find a leaf stone for Wigglethorn the Weepinbell BUT I’M GETTING THERE

+The Lads

#thoughts #pokemon rejuvenation #pokemon rejuvenation liveblog #pokemon #pokemon posting

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lakesandquarries · 5 years ago

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Baby Shoes - Chapter 1

Bubby has been a doctor at Black Mesa for 20 years, living there for 50. He's been bouncing around from project to project, working on whatever needs most help. He doesn't have any opinions on his work or his coworkers or anything like that, preferring to keep to himself.

Then he meets Black Mesa's newest project.

AKA: Bubby is Benrey's dad au.

SOME NOTES, PLEASE READ: this fic contains graphic violence and child abuse and temporary character death of a minor. To skip that scene stop reading after “I had no idea about any loose subjects.” I’ll write a summary underneath.

other notes: title from “Baby Shoes” by Bad Books. I’m posting this as a birthday present to myself and i hope you enjoy!

AO3 Link

He’s never been down this hall before, not in 20 years of working at Black Mesa or the 30 years living here before that. The biological research labs were always off limits, the risk of him running into a prototype too high for anyone’s comfort.

But the prototypes are all gone now, finally. Bubby doesn’t understand why they kept them around for so long, but apparently they were all killed, or died, or whatever. He hadn’t paid much attention to what the scientist was telling him, more focused on the idea of an entire new wing being available to him.

It’s - well. It’s Black Mesa. Regardless of the department, everything looks about the same. Grey walls, grey ceilings, grey floors. Generic looking people in lab coats with various stains and tears walking around. They seem a little more frazzled here than in the robotics department, where he’s currently stationed, but it’s not surprising that living specimens might be a bit more stressful to deal with.

No one questions him as he wanders through the halls, quickly getting lost in the maze of identical corridors. There’s all sorts of containers with all sorts of creatures, and the sight is not a pleasant one. A few are even kept in tubes much too similar to his own for his comfort, and he hurries away from them quickly.

There’s so much. One cage contains a creature that looks like a mix between a raccoon and a giant orange cat. A glass box holds small creatures resembling butterflies with scorpion-like tails ready to strike. In another corner is a tank with some kind of glowing fish.

Perhaps it’s a good thing he’s never been assigned to this area.

He passes a small cage that looks completely empty, the bars in the back distended, and it’s not until he sees a dark shape scuttle down the hall that he realizes something has escaped.

Bubby’s not sure why he follows after it, rather than finding someone and letting them know. Perhaps it’s his memory of his own escape attempts, or some kind of reckless bravery. Regardless, he chases after it, speeding down the hall. There’s a closet at the end, the door slightly ajar. He makes his way over and swings the door open without a second thought.. “Hello?” he calls, flipping on the light. It’s full of cleaning supplies, shelves on the verge of collapse, and a shape hiding behind the mop bucket.

The shape doesn’t seem to be able to settle on what it is, a dark mass that keeps shifting as Bubby crouches down. It solidifies as he watches it, deciding on a vaguely humanoid shape, with pale desaturated skin and black hair covering its face. It’s dressed in a hospital gown, covered in dark oily stains. When it brushes its hair back it reveals large yellow eyes and some kind of dark smudge covering the upper half of its face.

“I’m not going back, you can’t make me,” it says, baring its teeth, tiny fists balled up, and Bubby blinks.

“I - I’m not here to take you back,” he says. “I don’t even work here. To be perfectly honest, I’m not even supposed to be in this area.”

The creature tilts its head, curling in on itself. Its teeth are still barred, but it’s hard to feel threatened.

“I wouldn’t even know where to take you.” He thinks back to his own tube, the few times in his childhood that he’d been allowed to leave, and shudders. “You - I take it you’re one of the, er, experiments here?”

The creature - the child? - nods. Bubby crouches down, pulling back the sleeve of his lab coat, revealing the marking on the inside of his wrist. There’s text reading 88U and a barcode in black ink. The child’s eyes go wide as they look up at Bubby. “You - you’re not -” They reach out and gently touch Bubby’s wrist before pulling their hand away again. “Not a doctor? You - you’re like me?” Holding out their wrist, the code 'XEN-3' with a similar barcode was stamped on their flesh. The raised text and fresh ink confirming the branding was still new. Bubby's chest clenches at the sight.

“A bit, yes. I’m not required to stay in my tube anymore, though.”

“They let you out?”

Bubby nods. “I’m an employee here now. Have my own dorm room and everything.” He’s also technically still Black Mesa property, but it's good to give the child a bit of hope. “My name is Bubby. And yours is...?”

The child hunches their shoulders, looking to the side. “I - I don’t have one.”

“Well, that won’t do. Would - may I give you a name?”

They look up at him again, humming a sharp, high note, and some strange peach and blue bubbles fall out of their mouth. Bubby reaches forward, touching one with his finger, and it dissolves into a cloud of mist. A feeling of - gratitude? Yes, gratitude, and excitement, and joy washes over him.

“Sorry!” the child squeaks, covering their mouth with their hands. “I - I didn’t mean to -”

“Is that...is this how you express yourself?” Bubby asks, watching the other bubbles fade. The child nods.

“They called it the, uh, Black Mesa Sweet Voice.”

“Interesting name.”

“I didn’t - I didn’t mean to do it, I’m sorry, I -”

Bubby reaches a slow, tentative hand forward. When the child doesn’t recoil, he places it on their head, patting gently. “It’s quite alright. Nothing wrong with it. Now, we were talking about a name?”

The child raises their head to butt against Bubby’s hand, so he continues to pat them as he thinks. Xen, obviously, is not a name. There was a scientist named Ben though, wasn’t there? Benjamin something or other. It’s not a bad name, but it’s a bit plain for the child in front of him. Benny could work - but it feels a bit too close to Bubby’s own name, following the same basic formula. He needs another letter to differentiate it.

“Benrey,” he says out loud.

The child makes a trilling noise. “Benrey?”

“As a name. Do you like it?”

“Benrey,” they repeat. “Beeenreeey. Benrey.” Their face splits into a smile, revealing far too many sharp teeth. “Benrey!”

“I’ll take that as a yes, then.”

“That’s me,” Benrey says, tapping their hand on the ground. “I’m Benrey!”

“It’s nice to meet you, Benrey,” Bubby says, smiling back at them. They launch themself forward, barreling into Bubby’s chest in some approximation of a hug.

“Thank you,” they mumble, and he can only assume there’s more of the Sweet Voice because that same wave of delighted gratitude washes over him.

It’s at that moment that someone steps up from behind, shoes clicking on the ground. Benrey pulls away before Bubby can blink, shifting back into nothing but a mass of shadow. They slip back into their previous hiding spot. Bubby turns to see an older woman, brown hair pulled into a tight bun and a myriad of red stains covering her lab coat.

“You,” she says sharply.

“Me?” Bubby asks, touching a finger to his chest.

“Yes, you. We’ve been looking all over for you! There’s a highly dangerous subject on the loose, we can’t risk it injuring you. What are you doing in here?”

Are they talking about Benrey? The tiny little child? “I’m just exploring,” Bubby says, standing up and brushing his lab coat off. “I had no idea about any loose subjects.”

The woman squints at him, and then her head darts to the side. She pulls out a gun from her holster. “Get out of the way,” she says, shoving him to the side and completely knocking him over, and shoots before Bubby can react. The gun shot is loud, but the pained noise that Benrey makes feels even louder. He scrambles to get up, biting back on a scream, but the woman has already grabbed Benrey by the back of the neck. They’ve taken that humanoid shape again, only now there’s a gunshot wound in the middle of their chest. Benrey blinks at him, once, and then their eyes fall shut and their head droops forward.

“I - Did you just kill them?!” His hands tense, holding back the urge to reach forward and strangle this woman. “They - it looked like a child.”

The woman huffs. “It’s only temporary. It always comes back, it’ll be fine.”

“Why - why not just use tranquilizers? This seems...unnecessary.” It’s cruel, is what it is. Bubby can’t stop staring at Benrey’s limp form.

“Tranqs don’t work. Gun’s easier.” She sighs, stepping past Bubby and holding the door open for him. “You should head back to Robotics.”

“I - I suppose.” Is this what shock feels like? His head is spinning and his legs feel unsteady.

“Don’t wander around here like that again. This could’ve gone a lot worse.” She finally holsters her gun, keeping an eye on Bubby as she does so. The wound in Benrey’s chest is seeping blood, thick and dark.

“Yes. Okay.” He squeezes past her, reaching out to give Benrey one last pat on the head, and leaves.

SCENE SUMMARY: female scientist shoots benrey to incapacitate/kill him, stating tranquilizers don't work and it's easier and that benrey will be fine.(spoiler he is). bubby heads back to robotics department.

#hlvrai #half life vr but the ai is self aware #bubby #bubby (hlvrai)#benrey #benry #baby shoes au #cora writes

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abbyfreemansmind · 5 years ago

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A while back, I started working on a VX Ace version of Half-Life, but it quickly fell to the backburner as a burnout project (aka: a project I work on when my commercial projects get dull for me and I get burnt out on them). I wanted to recreate Half-Life, but also make something unique to the engine, much like how Black Mesa made things new for their version (see: On A Rail, Apprehension and the entirety of the Xen levels), as well as keeping in some of the HL2 retcons (Isaac, Eli, everything going on with the Vortigaunts). However, aside from turning it from an FPS game into an RPG-style game, throwing in some references to the Half-Life Youtube fans series (plural) and adding some extra puzzles, I wasn’t sure what else to do.

That is, until I got an idea. What if I messed around with some of the things in RPG Maker and the freeware options for it to make it more interesting? I know for sure I’m not going to be remaking HL2 (too much would have to change for it to be able to even be made in RMVXA, afaik), so why not add my own little optional storyline after the end of the game?

My idea is this: Instead of putting Gordon in stasis, the G-Man decides to use him as entertainment. The more you replay on a New Game+ save, the further along this story goes. The further along you get in this story, the more things begin to change. NPCs begin to deliver lines implying that everything isn’t as it seems, that they’ve done this before and doesn’t this feel familiar? New doors are available to open. The ending dialogue with the G-Man remarks how entertaining you are. He makes note of all the fun little things you did in your run. Eventually, Gordon himself gets sick of this. He’s aware of how many times he’s been put through the Resonance Cascade. The game, otherwise, continues as normal (as it has been, anyway), but with four major changes. - Every time the G-Man is on screen, Gordon (without player input) walks towards him until he leaves. - The ambush room in Apprehension no longer has the ambush. Entering it results in a combat. - Once the player reaches Xen, there will be a portal directly at the beginning, leading the player and Gordon through a brand new set of levels with a different final boss - the G-Man himself. - Gordon gets three allies once on Xen to help him with redone Xen levels. Barney Calhoun, Adrian Shepherd and a helpful Vortigaunt.

There’d be some surprises in the new Xen levels, including the corpse of Dr. Breen.

Anyway, if there are any other ideas you’d find interesting, let me know!

#half life #half-life #rpg maker #vx ace #rpg maker vx ace #rmvxa

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enby-freeman · 5 years ago

Note

Alien Gordon Alien Gordon Alien Gordon Alien Gordon Alien Gordon

I'll give you some info on this bad boy. Want to note first that this is for a "What if Gordon was also alien" concept and not Xen Project.

- He was raised in Black Mesa

- His void eyes, if looked directly into by anything that isnt alien, can kill

- His void eyes can see in his human form, but they're still dangerous. Thus a special type of glasses was made so he can still see without others seeing his eyes

- His mouth glows. So do his eyes.

- He can shape shift, obviously

- Everything is extremely overwhelming in his human form. By this I mean because he naturally has four ears as an alien he hears a lot more than the average person would. Thanks to this hes very sensitive to sound as a human and is super prone to migraines.

- Gordon will try everything he can to convince everyone and himself that hes human

- This Gordon's sweet voice is absolutely like wing au Gordon's sweet-voice in that it doesn't have to rhyme. The colors could just have flower meanings and the others just arent thinking of them as flower colors.

For example: Tommy can look at a blue sweetvoice and say "Oh that means calm down" and Gordon will look at his and say "Blue hyacinth means self confidence."

- Gordon literally knows nothing about himself or Xen. He knows hes alien but he doesn't understand where hes from. Hes basically been raised in Black Mesa his entire life

- He has five arms as an alien, could have more

This is all Ive gotten thus far.

#another alien gordon au #crow chitter chatter #hlvrai

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knowledge-and-learning · 3 years ago

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What's the Qubes OS?

The Qubes OS is a free and open-source operating system that focuses on security. It's designed to provide security by isolating applications from each other, so that even if one of them is compromised, the others remain safe. The Qubes OS has been praised for its security features, and it's used by organizations and individuals who want to protect their data and privacy. However, it's important to note that the Qubes OS is not perfect, and there are some trade-offs that you should be aware of before using it. In this article, we'll take a look at what the Qubes OS is, how it works, and some of its pros and cons.

Qubes is based on Xen Project hypervisor, a type-1 hypervisor that allows multiple operating systems to run on the same computer. Qubes uses a security by isolation approach, meaning that each application runs in its own "qube." This way, if one qube is compromised, the others remain isolated and safe.

Qubes comes with a number of pre-installed applications, including a web browser, email client, word processor, and spreadsheet program. It also has support for running Windows apps in their own qubes.

One of the benefits of using Qubes is that it's possible to run different levels of security in different qubes. For example, you could have a qube for your banking apps that is more secure than your general-purpose web browsing qube. This way, even if your web browsing qube is compromised, your banking information would remain safe.

Another benefit of Qubes is that it's possible to "airgap" certain qubes from the internet. This means that you can use them for sensitive tasks, such as accessing your email or financial accounts, without having to worry about them being hacked.

However, there are some trade-offs that you should be aware of before using Qubes. First, because each qube is isolated from the others, it's not possible to easily share data between them. For example, if you wanted to copy a file from your web browsing qube to your banking qube, you would have to do it manually.

Second, Qubes is a resource-intensive operating system, and it requires a powerful computer to run well. If you're using an older or less powerful computer, you may find thatQubes is slow and sluggish.

Third, because of its security focus, Qubes is not as user-friendly as other operating systems. It can be challenging to set up and use, and it's not suitable for beginners.

Overall, Qubes is a great option for people who want a secure operating system that offers good privacy protection. However, it's important to be aware of the trade-offs before you decide to use it.

Links:

https://www.privacytools.io/operating-systems/qubes-os/

#qubes #qubes os #opsec #internet safety #privacy #online privacy

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tri-report · 4 years ago

Text

Car Seat Travel Pillow Market Outlook and Opportunities in Grooming Regions : Edition 2020-2025

The Global Car Seat Travel Pillow Market Research Report 2020-2025 is a valuable source of insightful data for business strategists. It provides the industry overview with growth analysis and historical & futuristic cost, revenue, demand, and supply data (as applicable). The research analysts provide an elaborate description of the value chain and its distributor analysis. This Market study provides comprehensive data that enhances the understanding, scope, and application of this report.

Top Companies in the Global Car Seat Travel Pillow Market: Tempur, Samsonite, NapUp, Cabeau, Kuhi Comfort, Core Products, Wolf Manufacturing, SleepMax, Lewis N. Clark, Original Bones, US Jaclean, TravelRest, Sleep Innovations, Therapeutica, Cushions Xpress, Comfy Commuter, Dreamtime, Xen Pillow AndOther

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This report segments the Car Seat Travel PillowMarket on the basis of by Type are:

Memory Foam Pillow Bamboo Fiber Pillow Others

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For a comprehensive understanding of market dynamics, the Car Seat Travel Pillow Market is analyzed across key geographies namely: United States, China, Europe, Japan, South-east Asia, India, and others. Each of these regions is analyzed on basis of market findings across major countries in these regions for a macro-level understanding of the market.

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The points that are talked over within the report are the major Car Seat Travel Pillow Market players that influence the market such as raw material suppliers, manufacturers, equipment suppliers, end users, traders, distributors etc.

The all-inclusive profile of the companies is specified. The production, price, capacity, revenue, cost, gross, gross margin, sales volume, sales revenue, consumption, growth rate, import, export, future strategies, supply, and the technological developments that they are creating are also incorporated within the report. Besides the historical data from 2014 to 2019 and forecast data from 2019 to 2025.

The growth factors of the Car Seat Travel Pillow Market are deeply discussed while the different end users of the market are underlined.

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What are the market factors that are explained in the report

Further in the Car Seat Travel Pillow Market research reports, following points are included along with in-depth study of each point:-

Production Analysis – Production of the Car Seat Travel Pillow Market is analyzed with respect to different regions, types and applications. Here, price analysis of various Car Seat Travel Pillow Market key players are also covered.

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Supply and Consumption – In continuation with sales, this section studies supply and consumption for theCar Seat Travel PillowMarket. This part also sheds light on the gap between supple and consumption. Import and export figures are also given in this part.

Competitors – In this section, various Car Seat Travel Pillow Market leading players are studied with respect to their company profile, product portfolio, capacity, price, cost and revenue.

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a-man-adrift · 7 years ago

Text

Notes on an AU I may or may not get ’round to ’riting

OK, so, how about this:

Saren is capable, charismatic and respected, but above all frustrated with what he thinks of as the Asari Model of galactic government: i.e. the Citadel Council as a fairly toothless debating society keeping the peace between species that are willing to play nice, while outside Council space the batarians, krogan, quarians etc. are off being Disorderly and Making Trouble and nobody is doing anything about it. He dreams of a more orderly galactic society, and isn’t afraid to build it himself if he has to.

While performing his duties as a Spectre, investigating humanity, the new kids on the galactic block, Saren stumbles upon a Prothean artefact on the human colony of Eden Prime, which beams a piece of the Prothean psi time capsule known as the Cipher into his head. From it, he learns that the Prothean Empire built the Mass Relay network and ruled over the galaxy in what seems to him like exactly the benign and orderly fashion he’s had in mind all along, until they got hit by the one-two punch of making first contact with the rachni and the pre-uplift krogan at the same time. In the ensuing war, the Protheans eventually extirpated the rachni (or so they thought) and confined the krogan to Tuchanka, but not before losing several planetary populations outright, and having their own populations reduced below minimum viable numbers. Knowing they were doomed, they created the beacons, scattering pieces of the Cipher throughout the galaxy to keep their legacy alive.

Slowly, Saren is able to discover more beacons, until finally he has downloaded the entire Cipher into his brain, and he learns two things: firstly, he now knows more about how the Citadel works than anyone alive; with the right access he could potentially drop a small population of Keepers on an uninhabited planet, and “program” them to build almost any structure, and keep it maintained indefinitely; and further, he has learned that the Citadel’s systems can remotely lock or unlock Mass Relays anywhere in the galactic network. Secondly, he knows of an advanced Prothean research project on Ilos called the Conduit, a miniaturised Mass Relay that could revolutionise space travel. In the nearer term, the Conduit represents a route onto the Citadel that so far nobody else in the galaxy knows about.

Seeing the possibilities of this knowledge, Saren recruits allies: in secret from both the Council and the Migrant Fleet, he provides Admiral Daro’Xen with samples of modern geth, and promises her that she will be the one to lead her people home to Rannoch, and recognised by him as Viceroy of the Quarians when the revolution comes; in return, Daro’Xen gives him a virus that can infect populations of geth and turn them over to Saren’s control. Similarly, through his commercial research interests on Noveria, he arranges to fund a research effort by the krogan Doctor Droyas to breed krogan without the genophage, in exchange for their service as soldiers of his empire.

Saren’s most important ally, however, is Matriarch Benezia of the asari, the acknowledged leader of the Galactic Anti-Slavery League. Benezia is inclined to support Saren’s cause because he has promised to bring the batarians to heel, and stamp out the practice of slavery throughout his new empire. Needless to say, there are things Benezia doesn’t know: for instance, that Saren has effectively turned some of the geth into an army of slaves, or that Saren thinks the research into the Protheans being conducted by Benezia’s only daughter is a threat to his monopoly on the knowledge imparted by the Cipher…

Although she lends a considerable degree of political influence and respectability to Saren’s ambitions, Lady Benezia’s direct military contribution to the cause is slight compared to Admiral Xen and Doctor Droyas: she is able to ante up small teams of asari commandos, who make a formidable special operations force, but because she is not aware of Saren’s influence over the geth, and Dr. Droyas’ plans for the krogan will potentially take years to come to fruition, she agrees to take over direction of two more commercial research projects using her mental capabilities: investigating the potential of the Thorian on Feros, and fixing the balls-up researchers on Noveria have made of attempts to harness the power of the one surviving rachni queen.

Meanwhile, the Systems Alliance has succeeded in putting forward Commander Shepard as a candidate for service as a Council Spectre: unbeknownst to Saren, Shepard’s first assignment is to investigate the beacon on Eden Prime in the company of Saren’s best friend, Nihlus Kryik, just as Saren has decided that the beacons must be destroyed for the security of his plan…

In following Saren’s back-trail to try and piece together everything I’ve just described, Shepard has to balance multiple interests: the missions the Normandy’s crew takes on are evaluated separately by the Council and the Alliance, with more or less favourable impact to Shepard’s reputation depending on their consequences: if the player’s standing with the Council deteriorates sufficiently, Shepard will be approached by Miranda Lawson or Jacob Taylor (depending whose booty Shepard’s decisions have shown them to be more interested in!), who will offer to supply a new crew for the Normandy, which from then on will operate on behalf of Cerberus, a terrorist organisation backed by a consortium of Citadel-skeptic businessmen headed by Henry Lawson, Miranda’s father (because The Illusive Man smells).

If the player falls out of the good graces of both the Council and the Alliance/Cerberus, Shepard’s only option will be to head for the prison ship Purgatory, and assemble potentially yet another new crew of pirates by orchestrating a jailbreak. The player will then have to deal with Jack, who rises to the top of the new gang and appoints herself first mate (in one sense or another…), and potentially protect those of Shepard’s original crew who’ve stayed on, if they’re the more Paragon-y sorts, and in any case protect Shepard’s interests in the pursuit of Saren and his developing galactic coup.

In the final confrontation on the Citadel, as Saren sends his geth fleet to draw the Citadel’s mobile defenses out of position, then transports himself directly onto the station using the Conduit to lock the Citadel Fleet on the wrong side of the nearest Mass Relay, Saren and Shepard will each have the chance to try and talk the other down: Saren will do the “I’m impressed with you, Shepard. Want to be Viceroy of the Humans?” shtick, and Shep will be able to do a “This won’t bring peace, yew fewl!” or “Viceroy hell, I wanna be in charge!” or “Where’s the chaos?” Denis-Leary-in-Demolition-Man rant as appropriate.

This combination of ME1 and ME2 redux can end with a bunch of different variable settings:

Saren’s dead vs. Saren escapes

The Council is dead vs. the Council is rescued

Shepard is loyal to the Council and the Alliance vs. Shepard has joined Cerberus vs. Shepard has gone pirate vs. Shepard has thrown in with Saren (assuming he survives).

In any case, the stage is set for a big honkin’ galactic war in this AU’s answer to ME3!

I go back and forth over whether this is part of the AU where TAAW is set. I just keep it vague and talk about “the War” so hopefully it’s compatible either with this or (mostly) with canon. What I really want to do is write all this as a choose-your-own-adventure/visual novel/RenPy-ish thing.

Anyway, just wanted to write some of this down for a change!

#If you take only one lesson away from this #let it be that #The Illusive Man smells

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anarcki · 4 years ago

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First off i just wanna say THANK YOU SO MUCH for asking about my and @gayberooni headcanons . They are really simple but i was dying to share them. Also thats so weird i didnt know i had the submission option enable ?? but anyway here some of my head canons for this AU.

Hlvrai Swap AU Headcanons

Benrey doesn't like honorofics and they never told anyone their last name so the other scientist can't say "Dr. [his last name]" so everyone just calls them benrey

Benrys is like really humble and chill so they like to hang out with the guards instead of the scientist that can be pretty pretentious and that's how he and Gordon got along

Gordon is still very intelligent and knows a lot about physics but didn't have enough money to pay his career so instead he ended up being a security guard. His dream was to work for an important scientist institution and I guess he did end up accomplishing that

Gordon believes in aliens and he talks about that with Benrey. But Benrey is always teasing Gordon saying stuff like "Nah dude I'm astrophysist I would know" so they act like they don't believe in aliens but they do.

On that note , When Benrey started of he believed in aliens so he join the Xen project where he got to know that they actually exist and thats also how he got to know Tommy.

By the way Tommy is an alien from Xen on this Au and Benrey is the only one who's aware of that. He keeps the secret and help him pass as a scientist (which is not that hard since tommy is pretty intelligent)

AIso I like the idea of Dr coomer being a guard in this au and being gordon sort of mentor in this job.

And lastly Benreys been flirting with Gordon since the first time they meet like he comes up with shitty pick up lines and space and scientist puns/jokes, but Gordon thinks they are just teasing and annoying him, even is he does develops romantic feelings for them along the way. Benrey of course looked at Gordon on his first day at work and was like dammmn I'm in love and has been crushing since the beggining .

Okay so you dont have asks so uh. You get a submit-- i'm actually interestes about this swap au of yours and would like to hear more about it if you want to ramble!

#hlvrai #swap au #frenrey #gordon freeman #benrey #scientist benrey #im so sorry this took me so long to ive been busy with my portfolio #tommy coolatta #dr coomer

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itbeatsbookmarks · 5 years ago

Link

(Via: Lobsters)

“BootHole” vulnerability in the GRUB2 bootloader opens up Windows and Linux devices using Secure Boot to attack. All operating systems using GRUB2 with Secure Boot must release new installers and bootloaders.

Join Eclypsium for a webinar “Managing The Hole In Secure Boot” on August 5th, where CEO Yuriy Bulygin and VP R&D John Loucaides will provide advice on mitigating this vulnerability.

Download the PDF >

Introduction

Eclypsium researchers have discovered a vulnerability — dubbed “BootHole” — in the GRUB2 bootloader utilized by most Linux systems that can be used to gain arbitrary code execution during the boot process, even when Secure Boot is enabled. Attackers exploiting this vulnerability can install persistent and stealthy bootkits or malicious bootloaders that could give them near-total control over the victim device.

The vulnerability affects systems using Secure Boot, even if they are not using GRUB2. Almost all signed versions of GRUB2 are vulnerable, meaning virtually every Linux distribution is affected. In addition, GRUB2 supports other operating systems, kernels and hypervisors such as Xen. The problem also extends to any Windows device that uses Secure Boot with the standard Microsoft Third Party UEFI Certificate Authority. Thus the majority of laptops, desktops, servers and workstations are affected, as well as network appliances and other special purpose equipment used in industrial, healthcare, financial and other industries. This vulnerability makes these devices susceptible to attackers such as the threat actors recently discovered using malicious UEFI bootloaders.

Eclypsium has coordinated the responsible disclosure of this vulnerability with a variety of industry entities, including OS vendors, computer manufacturers, and CERTs. Mitigation will require new bootloaders to be signed and deployed, and vulnerable bootloaders should be revoked to prevent adversaries from using older, vulnerable versions in an attack. This will likely be a long process and take considerable time for organizations to complete patching.

Table of Contents

Background: Secure Boot, GRUB2, and CAs

Secure Boot can be a fairly deep and technical topic. Our goal here is to give a high-level introduction to the key concepts relevant to this research without going into all the granular details. We have included a variety of external links to provide additional information for those interested. Alternatively, you can go straight to the description of the vulnerability itself.

Threats to the Boot Process

The boot process is one of the most fundamentally important aspects of security for any device. It relies on a variety of firmware that controls how a device’s various components and peripherals are initialized and ultimately coordinates the loading of the operating system itself. In general, the earlier code is loaded, the more privileged it is. If this process is compromised, attackers can control how the operating system is loaded and subvert all higher-layer security controls. Recent research has identified ransomware in the wild using malicious EFI bootloaders as a way to take control of machines at the time of boot. Previously threat actors used malware tampering with legacy OS bootloaders including APT41 Rockboot, LockBit, FIN1 Nemesis, MBR-ONI, Petya/NotPetya, and Rovnix.

Additional information on threats to the modern PC boot process is available in the “Bootkits and UEFI Secure Boot” section of the System Firmware training.

UEFI Secure Boot

UEFI Secure Boot was originally developed by the UEFI Forum as a way to protect the boot process from these types of attacks. There are other implementations of secure boot designed for different environments, but UEFI Secure Boot is the standard for PCs and servers. The goal is to prevent malicious code from being introduced into the boot process by cryptographically checking each piece of firmware and software before it is run. Any code not recognized as valid is not executed in the boot process.

Secure Boot uses cryptographic signatures to verify the integrity of each piece of code as it is needed during the boot process. There are two critical databases involved in this process: the Allow DB (db) of approved components and the Disallow DB (dbx) of vulnerable or malicious components, including firmware, drivers, and bootloaders. Access to modify these databases is protected by a Key Exchange Key (KEK), which in turn is verified by a Platform Key (PK). Although the PK is used as a root of trust for updates to the platform, it’s not expressly part of the boot process (but is shown below for reference). It is dbx, db, and KEK that are used to verify the signatures for loaded executables at boot time.

Additional details on the Secure Boot process can be found in this PDF.

Chains of Trust and GRUB2

Next, OEMs must manage a list of who is permitted to sign code trusted by the Secure Boot Database. Instead of having every OEM manage certificates from every possible firmware, driver, or OS provider, Secure Boot allows for the use of a centralized Certificate Authority (CA). Microsoft’s 3rd Party UEFI CA provides the industry standard signing service for Secure Boot. In short, third parties can submit their code to Microsoft, and Microsoft will validate and sign the code with the Microsoft CA. This establishes a chain of trust that only requires OEMs to enroll the Microsoft 3rd Party UEFI CA to their platforms to enable them to boot third-party installation media and operating systems by default when Secure Boot is enabled.

This includes the ability to sign bootloaders from non-Microsoft operating systems such as Linux. In almost every modern Linux distribution, GRUB (the Grand Unified Bootloader) is the bootloader that loads and transfers control to the operating system. In this document, all references to GRUB are intended to refer to GRUB2, which was a complete rewrite from the previous version commonly referred to as “GRUB Legacy.” Starting in 2009, all widely used Linux distributions have transitioned to using GRUB2. GRUB Legacy has been deprecated and is generally only found in older releases.

Due to legal issues arising from license incompatibilities, open-source projects and other third parties build a small application called a “shim,” which contains the vendor’s certificate and code that verifies and runs the bootloader (GRUB2). The vendor’s shim is verified using the Microsoft 3rd Party UEFI CA and then the shim loads and verifies the GRUB2 bootloader using the vendor certificate embedded inside itself.

Additional detail on the role of the Microsoft UEFI CA in the boot process is available here.

Challenges of Secure Boot

As with any technical process, Secure Boot is not without its potential problems. The process involves many pieces of code, and a vulnerability in any one of them presents a single point of failure that could allow an attacker to bypass Secure Boot. Additionally, although UEFI Secure Boot attempts to provide certain integrity guarantees to the boot process, other misconfigurations of the hardware or missing protection features can undermine boot security. One such example is a DMA attack using tools such as PCIe Microblaze. Additionally, as we will show in this blog post, a vulnerability in the boot process that enables arbitrary code execution can allow attackers to control the boot process and operating system, even when secure boot signatures are verified.

Attackers can also use a vulnerable bootloader against the system. For example, if a valid bootloader was found to have a vulnerability, a piece of malware could replace the device’s existing bootloader with the vulnerable version. The bootloader would be allowed by Secure Boot and give the malware complete control over the system and OS. Mitigating this requires very active management of the dbx database used to identify malicious or vulnerable code.

Additionally, updates and fixes to the Secure Boot process can be particularly complex and run the risk of inadvertently breaking machines. The boot process naturally involves a variety of players and components including device OEMs, operating system vendors, and administrators. Given the fundamental nature of the boot process, any sort of problems run a high risk of rendering a device unusable. As a result, updates to Secure Boot are typically slow and require extensive industry testing.

Breaking Secure Boot Through GRUB2

In the course of Eclypsium’s analysis, we have identified a buffer overflow vulnerability in the way that GRUB2 parses content from the GRUB2 config file (grub.cfg). Of note: The GRUB2 config file is a text file and typically is not signed like other files and executables. This vulnerability enables arbitrary code execution within GRUB2 and thus control over the booting of the operating system. As a result, an attacker could modify the contents of the GRUB2 configuration file to ensure that attack code is run before the operating system is loaded. In this way, attackers gain persistence on the device.

Such an attack would require an attacker to have elevated privileges. However, it would provide the attacker with a powerful additional escalation of privilege and persistence on the device, even with Secure Boot enabled and properly performing signature verification on all loaded executables. One of the explicit design goals of Secure Boot is to prevent unauthorized code, even running with administrator privileges, from gaining additional privileges and pre-OS persistence by disabling Secure Boot or otherwise modifying the boot chain.

With the sole exception of one bootable tool vendor who added custom code to perform a signature verification of the grub.cfg config file in addition to the signature verification performed on the GRUB2 executable, all versions of GRUB2 that load commands from an external grub.cfg configuration file are vulnerable. As such, this will require the release of new installers and bootloaders for all versions of Linux. Vendors will need to release new versions of their bootloader shims to be signed by the Microsoft 3rd Party UEFI CA. It is important to note that until all affected versions are added to the dbx revocation list, an attacker would be able to use a vulnerable version of shim and GRUB2 to attack the system. This means that every device that trusts the Microsoft 3rd Party UEFI CA will be vulnerable for that period of time.

In addition to vendors using shims signed by the Microsoft 3rd Party UEFI CA, some OEMs that control both the hardware and the software stack in their devices use their own key that is provisioned into the hardware at the factory to sign GRUB2 directly. They will need to provide updates and revocation of previous vulnerable versions of GRUB2 for these systems as well.

This vulnerability was assigned CVE-2020-10713 “GRUB2: crafted grub.cfg file can lead to arbitrary code execution during boot process” with a CVSS rating of 8.2 (High) / CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H.

Follow these links to go directly to the Impact and Mitigations sections.

Vulnerability Analysis

The vulnerability is a buffer overflow that occurs in GRUB2 when parsing the grub.cfg file. This configuration file is an external file commonly located in the EFI System Partition and can therefore be modified by an attacker with administrator privileges without altering the integrity of the signed vendor shim and GRUB2 bootloader executables. The buffer overflow allows the attacker to gain arbitrary code execution within the UEFI execution environment, which could be used to run malware, alter the boot process, directly patch the OS kernel, or execute any number of other malicious actions.

To dig a little deeper into the vulnerability itself, we’ll take a closer look at how the code works internally. In order to process commands from the external configuration file, GRUB2 uses flex and bison to generate a parsing engine for a domain-specific language (DSL) from language description files and helper functions.

This is generally considered to be a better approach than manually writing a custom parser for each DSL. However, GRUB2, flex, and bison are all complex software packages with their own design assumptions that can be easy to overlook. And those mismatched design assumptions can result in vulnerable code.

The parser engine generated by flex includes this define as part of the token processing code:

#define YY_DO_BEFORE_ACTION \ yyg->yytext_ptr = yy_bp; \ yyleng = (int) (yy_cp - yy_bp); \ yyg->yy_hold_char = *yy_cp; \ *yy_cp = '\0'; \ if ( yyleng >= YYLMAX ) \ YY_FATAL_ERROR( "token too large, exceeds YYLMAX" ); \ yy_flex_strncpy( yytext, yyg->yytext_ptr, yyleng + 1 , yyscanner); \ yyg->yy_c_buf_p = yy_cp;

In this macro, the generated code detects that it has encountered a token that is too large to fit into flex’s internal parse buffer and calls YY_FATAL_ERROR(), which is a helper function provided by the software that is using the flex-generated parser.

However, the YY_FATAL_ERROR() implementation provided in the GRUB2 software package is:

#define YY_FATAL_ERROR(msg) \ do { \ grub_printf (_("fatal error: %s\n"), _(msg)); \ } while (0)

Rather than halting execution or exiting, it just prints an error to the console and returns to the calling function. Unfortunately, the flex code has been written with the expectation that any calls to YY_FATAL_ERROR() will never return. This results in yy_flex_strncpy() being called and copying the source string from the configuration file into a buffer that is too small to contain it.

Beyond just this specific path, a number of additional places throughout the flex-generated code also expect that any calls to YY_FATAL_ERROR() never return and perform unsafe operations when that expectation is broken. Mismatched assumptions between producers and consumers of an API are a very common source of vulnerabilities.

Ultimately, by providing a configuration file with input tokens that are too long to be handled by the parser, this buffer overflow overwrites critical structures in the heap. These overwritten fields include internal parser structure elements, which can be used as an arbitrary write-what-where primitive to gain arbitrary code execution and hijack the boot process.

Of further note, the UEFI execution environment does not have Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) or Data Execution Prevention (DEP/NX) or other exploit mitigation technologies typically found in modern operating systems, so creating exploits for this kind of vulnerability is significantly easier. The heap is fully executable without the need to build ROP chains.

Finally, rather than being architecture-specific, this vulnerability is in a common code path and was also confirmed using a signed ARM64 version of GRUB2.

Additional Vulnerabilities

There have been a couple of examples of previous vulnerabilities found in GRUB2 that result in arbitrary code execution, but with a much smaller scope.

In April 2019, a vulnerability in how GRUB2 was used by the Kaspersky Rescue Disk was publicly disclosed. In February 2020, more than six months after a fixed version had been released, Microsoft pushed an update to revoke the vulnerable bootloader across all Windows systems by updating the UEFI revocation list (dbx) to block the known-vulnerable Kaspersky bootloader. Unfortunately, this resulted in systems from multiple vendors encountering unexpected errors, including bricked devices, and the update was removed from the update servers.

Additionally, in May 2020, Dmytro Oleksiuk disclosed that certain HPE ProLiant servers contained a version of GRUB2 signed by a HP CA that allows the use of the “insmod” command to load unsigned code. This issue was assigned CVE-2020-7205 and is also embargoed until July 29th.

In response to our initial vulnerability report, additional scrutiny was applied to the GRUB2 code and a number of additional vulnerabilities were discovered by the Canonical security team:

CVE-2020-14308 GRUB2: grub_malloc does not validate allocation size allowing for arithmetic overflow and subsequent heap-based buffer overflow

6.4 (Medium) / CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVE-2020-14309 GRUB2: Integer overflow in grub_squash_read_symlink may lead to heap based overflow

5.7 (Medium) / CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H

CVE-2020-14310 GRUB2: Integer overflow read_section_from_string may lead to heap based overflow

5.7 (Medium) / CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H

CVE-2020-14311 GRUB2: Integer overflow in grub_ext2_read_link leads to heap based buffer overflow,

5.7 (Medium) / CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H

CVE-2020-15705 GRUB2: avoid loading unsigned kernels when grub is booted directly under secure boot without shim

6.4 (Medium) /CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVE-2020-15706 GRUB2 script: Avoid a use-after-free when redefining a function during execution

6.4 (Medium) /CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVE-2020-15707 GRUB2: Integer overflow in initrd size handling.

5.7 (Medium) /CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H

Given the difficulty of this kind of ecosystem-wide update/revocation, there is a strong desire to avoid having to do it again six months later. To that end, a large effort — spanning multiple security teams at Oracle, Red Hat, Canonical, VMware, and Debian — using static analysis tools and manual review helped identify and fix dozens of further vulnerabilities and dangerous operations throughout the codebase that do not yet have individual CVEs assigned.

Impact

Due to a weakness in the way GRUB2 parses its configuration file, an attacker can execute arbitrary code that bypasses signature verification. The Boot Hole vulnerability discovered by Eclypsium can be used to install persistent and stealthy bootkits or malicious bootloaders that operate even when Secure Boot is enabled and functioning correctly. This can ensure attacker code runs before the operating system and can allow the attacker to control how the operating system is loaded, directly patch the operating system, or even direct the bootloader to alternate OS images. It gives the attacker virtually unlimited control over the victim device. Malicious bootloaders have recently been observed in the wild, and this vulnerability would make devices susceptible to these types of threats.

All signed versions of GRUB2 that read commands from an external grub.cfg file are vulnerable, affecting every Linux distribution. To date, more than 80 shims are known to be affected. In addition to Linux systems, any system that uses Secure Boot with the standard Microsoft UEFI CA is vulnerable to this issue. As a result, we believe that the majority of modern systems in use today, including servers and workstations, laptops and desktops, and a large number of Linux-based OT and IoT systems, are potentially affected by these vulnerabilities.

Additionally, any hardware root of trust mechanisms that rely on UEFI Secure Boot could be bypassed as well.

Mitigation

Full mitigation of this issue will require coordinated efforts from a variety of entities: affected open-source projects, Microsoft, and the owners of affected systems, among others. This will include:

Updates to GRUB2 to address the vulnerability.

Linux distributions and other vendors using GRUB2 will need to update their installers, bootloaders, and shims.

New shims will need to be signed by the Microsoft 3rd Party UEFI CA.

Administrators of affected devices will need to update installed versions of operating systems in the field as well as installer images, including disaster recovery media.

Eventually the UEFI revocation list (dbx) needs to be updated in the firmware of each affected system to prevent running this vulnerable code during boot.

On the Coordinated Release Date (CRD) of July 29, we expect to see advisories and/or updates from the following affected parties:

Microsoft

UEFI Security Response Team (USRT)

Oracle

Red Hat (Fedora and RHEL)

Canonical (Ubuntu)

SuSE (SLES and openSUSE)

Debian

Citrix

VMware

Various OEMs

Software vendors, including security software, are also impacted by this vulnerability and will be updating their bootloaders.

… more to be added once we have a full list …

However, full deployment of this revocation process will likely be very slow. UEFI-related updates have had a history of making devices unusable, and vendors will need to be very cautious. If the revocation list (dbx) is updated before a given Linux bootloader and shim are updated, then the operating system will not load. As a result, updates to the revocation list will take place over time to prevent breaking systems that have yet to be updated. There are also edge cases where updating the dbx can be difficult, such as with dual-boot or deprovisioned machines. When any OS is installed or launched, the bootloader and OS need to be updated before the revocation is applied to the system.

Further complicating matters, enterprise disaster recovery processes can run into issues where approved recovery media no longer boots on a system if dbx updates have been applied. In addition when a device swap is needed due to failing hardware, new systems of the same model may have already had dbx updates applied and will fail when attempting to boot previously-installed operating systems. Before dbx updates are pushed out to enterprise fleet systems, recovery and installation media must be updated and verified as well.

Microsoft will be releasing a set of signed dbx updates, which can be applied to systems to block shims that can be used to load the vulnerable versions of GRUB2. Due to the risk of bricking systems or otherwise breaking operational or recovery workflows, these dbx updates will initially be made available for interested parties to manually apply to their systems rather than pushing the revocation entries and applying them automatically. This will allow IT professionals, enthusiasts, and others the opportunity to test the revocation updates on their individual systems and identify any issues before making the revocations mandatory.

Organizations should additionally ensure they have appropriate capabilities for monitoring UEFI bootloaders and firmware and verifying UEFI configurations, including revocation lists, in their systems. Organizations should also test recovery capabilities as updates become available, including the “reset to factory defaults” functionality in the UEFI setup. This will ensure that they can recover devices if a device is negatively impacted by an update. Finally, organizations should be monitoring their systems for threats and ransomware that use vulnerable bootloaders to infect or damage systems.

Recommendations

Right away, start monitoring the contents of the bootloader partition (EFI system partition). This will buy time for the rest of the process and help identify affected systems in your environment. For those who have deployed the Eclypsium solution, you can see this monitoring under the “MBR/Bootloader” component of a device.

Continue to install OS updates as usual across desktops, laptops, servers, and appliances. Attackers can leverage privilege escalation flaws in the OS and applications to take advantage of this vulnerability so preventing them from gaining administrative level access to your systems is critical. Systems are still vulnerable after this, but it is a necessary first step. Once the revocation update is installed later, the old bootloader should stop working. This includes rescue disks, installers, enterprise gold images, virtual machines, or other bootable media.

Test the revocation list update. Be sure to specifically test the same firmware versions and models that are used in the field. It may help to update to the latest firmware first in order to reduce the number of test cases.

To close this vulnerability, you need to deploy the revocation update. Make sure that all bootable media has received OS updates first, roll it out slowly to only a small number of devices at a time, and incorporate lessons learned from testing as part of this process.

Engage with your third-party vendors to validate they are aware of, and are addressing, this issue. They should provide you a response as to its applicability to the services/solutions they provide you as well as their plans for remediation of this high rated vulnerability.

Eclypsium has powershell and bash scripts available which can be used to detect bootloaders that are being revoked by this dbxupdate.

Conclusions

While Secure Boot is easily taken for granted by most users, it is the foundation of security within most devices. Once compromised, attackers can gain virtually complete control over the device, its operating system, and its applications and data. And as this research shows, when problems are found in the boot process, they can have far-reaching effects across many types of devices.

We will update this blog post as more information becomes available, and we encourage users and administrators to closely monitor alerts and notifications from their hardware vendors, the Microsoft MSRC, and any relevant open-source projects. Please join us for a webinar “Managing the Hole in Secure Boot” on August 5th.

References:

Microsoft

UEFI Forum

Debian

Canonical:

Security advisory

KnowledgeBase article

Red Hat

SUSE

Security advisory:

Knowledge Base article:

#IFTTT #Feedly

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