#Maintenance Netting System

[mtandtgroup-blog]

Discover how WEB Net® walk-on netting transforms high-rise and under-deck maintenance with enhanced safety, efficiency, and easy installation. For engineers and maintenance teams seeking a safer, more efficient, and cost-effective solution for under-deck access, WEB Net® stands out as a true innovation.

[websysteminternational]

Explore WEB Systems’ innovative under-bridge access, repair, & safety solutions, including dropped object protection, ensuring secure bridge maintenance. Our innovative under-bridge access solutions, WEB Deck® and WEB Net®, offer seamless, safe, and efficient alternatives to traditional scaffolding. With WEB Systems solutions, you can ensure that every bridge inspection and repair is efficient, cost-effective, and safe for both workers and the public.

[d8tl55c]

I love your feathery TCO so much, they always looks so adorable with them fluffing up in your art.

I wonder, though: Does Victim, TDL, or Orange have feathers??

a-ha! i was just thinking about this the other day \(≧∇≦)/

okay, so i wrote down all my ideas, and, see, i was going to say, "oh vic left too soon, so "TCO was the first prototype for the full feather systems," but then i got a brand new idea, bc how was something as complex to render and simulate as feathers developed without a million bugs???

Pre-release testing.   :33333

a few of victim's lives of random experimentation by c!Alan were augmented by random experimentation by physeng and the compiler, and c!Alan wasn't looking closely enough before victim died each time to notice.

noogai's games provided the perfect stress testing environment for anything a feather / coat of feathers could possibly have to deal with,  except,  notably,  living with them long enough to need to maintain them . . . hence the mistakes with TCO's feathers being way too durable in important dimensions. 

TDL has the updated setup. less "stupid strong" than TCO's, but they are one of the few of his upgrades that are net positive with no big downsides. no stress with all the benefits!

i imagine he has subtly different habits when emoting with them.

he spends time meticulously cleaning them to keep that sharp #FF0000 color.

orange... scratches his head a lot, doesn't he? (that! was the inspo for this WHOLE THING!  = v   =  and idk   =.v  ,= )

im getting a feeling though

hang on

...what if they're supposed to be there, but they don't grow right? bc physeng had less than no time to work on him before he escaped (forced himself online) with the basic blueprints,

so

orange has a chronic itch once in a while and no feathers, 

and TSC...

maybe TSC has shiny, translucent down....

light enough that when it buffets in the wind it shreds to its trace atoms......

the feather type with the finest, highest surface area

⠀

⠀

victim feathers (pre-release): deprecated

TCO feathers (base):  +++ superb wideband collision protection  ++ some hostile element protection - weak to small point source / piercing attacks + ECL interaction: bonus when feathers absorb impact + hardpoints interaction: camouflage surfaces + hardpoints interaction: shock threat display +/- heat interaction: insulation. must relax to optimize ECL +/- low priority: first core system to stall on low-PWR --- tricky maintenance cycle

TDL feathers (updated from base): - less collision protection + slightly more hostile element protection +++ fixed feather cycle ++ updated heat interaction: one-way reflect  + coyote heat interaction: relay boost

orange feathers:  NullPointerException

TSC feathers:  ? armor unnecessary  ? maintainence unnecessary ? thermal regulation unnecessary ? updated heat interaction: subpixel conduit ? updated heat interaction: ping ? packet received ? packets received ? packets received ? packets received ? packets received ? packets received ? packets received

⠀

anyway i might write more about all that later  O w0 ✨

[cubistemoji]

So I work at a museum, and we just got a really cool, really fragile new sculpture on loan from another museum nearby, with taxidermied animals and wax flowers and expensive velvet and all that good stuff. So no one's supposed to touch it, and today I'm supposed to watch it for two hours and make sure no one touches it. No big deal, right?

So I'm sitting there, watching the sculpture, when I hear a commotion behind me by the door.

I turn around and see a tiny squirrel hightailing it up the stairs onto the mezzanine level of our building.

So I radio the rest of the staff like HELP SQUIRREL IN BUILDING (I'm the only employee in this building right now, everyone else is at other stations). My coworker thinks I said "girl" and says "that's fine people can go upstairs". And then my manager radios like "sorry did you just say squirrel?"

A guest shows me a photo of the squirrel on the rafters, but it moves fast and I lose track of it very quickly.

My manager and two of our maintenance/facilities people come over and pinpoint its location in the highest, furthest corner of the hangar-like roof of the space.

So we close the building down to try and get it out!

We get a long handled net and a broom and open the doors on either side to try and chase it out. We assume that we'd scare it into going towards one side and then we can push it towards the open door.

It does not go towards the open door. It runs into the depths of the electrical system.

We call the head of the curatorial team to let her know the fragile loaner sculpture is potentially threatened by the presence of a squirrel.

My manager tells me to go back to our main building. So I do.

As far as I know they're still working on getting that animal out of there.

[tarmac-rat]

Riley Aldana fun facts for the fuck of it:

The closest thing she has to a voiceclaim is Kaniehtiio Horn as Tanis from Letterkenny.

The closest thing she has to a singing voiceclaim is Madeline Finn from ENVOI

Likes carrying hard cash on her and prefers getting paid in credchips over bank deposits. Just a principles thing, where it's nice to have the hard money in your hands rather than let it live over the Net. Some fixers entertain it; others absolutely do not.

Her cybernetic right leg is screwed into a base but is otherwise completely detachable by hand, and a lot of the maintenance she gets on it is her own work and tuning. She always carries a screwdriver and spare screws on her in case she needs to do an emergency fix while on a job.

When she was riding with the Bakkers, she had a specialized sleeve that she'd put on her cybernetic leg before raids to make sure sand didn't gunk up the gears. It's one of the few possessions she brought with her to NC, and she still wears it for her Badlands jobs (pretty sure she keeps it in the trunk of her Kusanagi)

Go-to condiment is French Dressing. She'll put that shit on anything.

Dominance-wise she's the exact opposite of Johnny-- while he's primarily left-handed but plays guitar righty, Riley's primarily right-handed but plays guitar lefty.

That saying, if she was in a band, she'd probably play drums-- she's a bit of a fan of Denny's music work outside of Samurai.

Has just. The worst cuticles. They look like warzones.

Was convinced by some other Bakkers kids to let them pierce her nose once when she was 16, but it got infected and she had to let it close up. She still has a scar from it if you look close enough.

Snorts when she laughs.

Despises the fact that she snorts when she laughs.

I make the "haha Riley can't drive cars" joke a lot but the primary reason she's a terrible driver is because she can't navigate a tight grid system-- happens when you grow up on the open road where keeping wheels on the tarmac is more of a suggestion than a requirement. When driving in Night City, she tends to drift a lot through the lane, does a panic-overcorrection, and ends up pinballing off cars down the street as a result. Aside from just being better on motorcycles since that's what she learned to drive, they're infinitely more maneuverable on the highways and it's easier to keep herself centered.

Has surprisingly bad handwriting. Like, you would not believe how ugly it is. It's barely one level above being literal chickenscratch.

Huge fan of schlocky 80's horror movies like Society and Chopping Mall

Some IRL bands she'd probably listen to would be Yves Tumor, Rationale, Madeon, Bring Me the Horizon, and Shiny Toy Guns

Doesn't own a pair of shorts. Not a single one.

[wander-wren]

every once in a while i like to poke my head into "anti [x]" tags just to see what the other side thinks. recently i was looking through "anti ao3" and found a really funny post claiming that ao3 is not anticapitalist, but actually the Definition Of Capitalism, bc it relies on volunteer labor while supposedly having the money to pay a staff.

oh, honey.

but i am not going to make unsubstantiated claims on the internet, no, and this gives me an excuse to look at ao3's whole budget myself, which i've been meaning to do for a while. these numbers are taken from the 2022 budget post and budget spreadsheet.

ao3's total income for 2022, from the two donation drives, regular donations, donation matching programs, interest, and royalties was $1,012,543.42. less than $300 of that was from interest and royalties, so it's almost all donations. and that's a lot, right? surely an organization making a million dollars a year can afford to pay some staff, right?

well, let's look at expenses. first of all, they lose almost $37,000 to transaction fees right away. ao3 and fanlore (~$341k and ~$18k, respectively) take up the biggest chunks of the budget by far. that money pays for, to quote the 2022 budget post, "server expenses—both new purchases and ongoing colocation and maintenance—website performance monitoring tools, and various systems-related licenses."

in some years, otw also pays external contractors to perform audits for security issues, and for more servers to handle the growing userbase. servers are expensive as hell, guys. in 2022, new server costs alone were $203k.

each of their other programs only cost around $3,000 or less, and otw paid around $78k for fundraising and development. wait, how do you lose so much money on your fundraising?? from the 2022 budget post: "Our fundraising and development expenses consist of transaction fees charged by our third-party payment processors for each donation, thank-you gift purchases and shipping, and the tools used to host the OTW’s membership database and track communications with donors and potential donors."

then the otw paid an additional $74k in administration expenses, which covers "hosting for our website, trademarks, domains, insurance, tax filing, and annual financial statement audits, as well as communication, management, and accounting tools."

in case you weren't following all of that math, the total expenses for 2022 come out to $518,978.48. woah! that's a lot! but it's still only a little over half of their net revenue. weird. i wonder what they do with that extra $494k?

well, $400k of it goes to the reserves, which i'll get to in a second. the last $93k, near as i can tell, gets rolled over to the next year. i'll admit this part i'm a little unsure about, as it's not clear on the spreadsheet, but that's the only thing that makes sense.

the reserves, though are clear. the most recent post i could find on the otw site about it were in the board meeting minutes from april 2, 2022: "We’re holding about $1million in operating cash that is about twice the amount of our annual operating costs. There is another $1million in reserves due to highly successful fundraisers in the past. The current plan for the reserves is to hold the money for paid staff in the future. It’s been talked about before in the past and we’re still working out the details, but it’s a rather expensive undertaking that will result in large annual expenses in addition to the initial cost of implementation."

woah....they're PLANNING to have paid staff eventually! wild!

so let's assume, for easy numbers, that the otw currently has $1.5 million in reserves. before we even get to how to use that money, let's look at the issues with implementing paid staff:

deciding which positions are going to be paid, because it can't be all of them

deciding how much to pay them, bc minimum wage sure as hell isn't enough, and cost of living is different everywhere, and volunteers come from all over the world

hiring staff and implementing new systems/tools to handle things like payroll and accounting

making sure you continue to earn enough money both to pay all of the staff and have some in reserves for emergencies or leaner donation drives

probably even more stuff than that! i don't run a nonprofit, that's just what i can think of off the top of my head.

okay, okay, okay. for the sake of argument, let's assume there is a best-case scenario where the otw starts paying some staff tomorrow. how much should they be paid? i'm picking $15 an hour, since that's what we fought for the minimum wage to be. by now, it should be closer to $20 or $25, but i'm trying to give "ao3 is capitalism" the fairest shot it can get here, okay?

ideally, if someone is being paid to help run ao3, they shouldn't need a second job. every job should pay enough to live off of. and running a nonprofit is hard work that leads to a lot of burnout--two board members JUST resigned before their terms were up. what i'm saying is, i'm going to assume a paid otw staff is getting paid for 40 hours of work a week, minimum. that's $31,200.

at $400,000 per year, the otw can afford to pay 12 people. that's WITHOUT taking into account the new systems, tools, software, etc they would have to pay for, any kind of fees, etc, etc.

oh, and btw, if you're an american you're still making barely enough to survive in most places, AND you don't have universal healthcare, vision, or dental. want otw to give people insurance, too? the number of people they can pay goes down.

it's. not. possible.

a million dollars is a lot of money on the face of it, but once you realize how MUCH goes into running something like the otw, it goes away fast.

just for reference, wikipedia also has donation drives every year. wikipedia, as of 2021, has $86.8 million in cash reserves and $137.4 million in investments. sure, wikipedia and ao3 are very different entities, but that disparity is massive. and i should note that if you give $10 to wikipedia they don't give you voting rights, i'm just saying.

by the way, you may have noticed that i didn't mention legal costs at all here. isn't one of otw's big Things about how they do legal advocacy?

yes, it is. they have a whole page about that work. and i can't for the life of me find a source on otw's website (and i'm running out of time to write this post, i'll look harder later), but i am 90% sure i learned before that most, if not all, of otw's legal work/advice/etc is done pro bono. i've also seen an anti-ao3 person claim their legal budget is only $5k or so, but they didn't have a source. but keep in mind that if they don't have a legal budget, all the numbers above stay the same, and if they do, there is even less money available for paid staff.

you can criticize ao3 and the otw all you want! there are many valid reasons to criticize them, and i do not think they're perfect either. but if you're going to do so, you should at least make sure you can back up your claims, bc otherwise you just look silly.

[lightleckrereins]

A Cleves/Parr wig being used for Seymour wasn't on my bingo card for this year. I knew it was a possibility with how the Aus system works for mid-show swing-on's but I didn't expect it to end up happening.

This feels like the same level of chaos as when Collette went on for Boleyn in her ponytail back in 2019

📸: @/_cassiemayy on Instagram

Not on my bingo card either. Even less because AUS swings have separate wigs for Seymour and Cleves/Parr. And we've literally seen both of Thalia's.

Thing is that in Six AUS not all the swing wigs are ready to go all the time. Instead they have the favored first covers ready, prep the rest when the alts are planned to go on and just keep the C/P wig ready as an emergency.

Which is a terrible plan actually. They chose to get four wigs and a ponytail per swing (instead of variations I should say) and then chose to not have them ready to use when swings have to go on in short notice which is in their literal job description. Six AUS does seem to have a single person running wigs and 23-25 wigs and hairpieces is a lot for a single person to maintain styled all the time. But instead of bringing in someone to do day work and help with this sort of maintenance and have everything prepared to go they chose not to keep things fully styled. Again terrible plan.

What most shows do is have swing and understudy wigs ready to a certain degree. Not fully styled for things that are high maintenance or deflate but also not fully unstyled. So they don't need a ton of work to get them ready. But also don't need a lot of regular work for wigs that aren't used every day. Things like keeping curls in rollers, pins helping hold styling in place, nets and wraps to hold things up. All that so they can take off the pins and curlers, brush out curls, add some pins, do a general check and have a wig ready to go onstage fast. And there is an understanding that a wig might go onstage not looking perfect and freshly styled which always happens between restyles anyway, but also they will be in a good place and be the right wig at the right time.

[ethanjhake]

Personal Life Update 🙃

Well, I quit my part time job.

I've been working as a deli clerk at a local grocery store for about a year and seven months, and during all that time I've been looking for better work options, applying to different (better) jobs, and found nothing.

Working there has been a big strain on me mentally. I'm a huge introvert by nature, meaning that too much social interaction will wear me out like nothing else. Working in a customer service position means a constant flow of new people who I have to interact with, so by the end of every day my energy would be so low I couldn't ever bring myself to work on my art or comics. And originally, the only reason I left my full time job was to free up more time for me to pursue comics as a career.

Where I work, the quality of customer service is meant to be really high. Your typical "the customer is always right" type of mentality. In my training they literally told me to think of the customer as my boss, since they are the ones ultimately paying the store and me by proxy.

But having to bow to the wishes of just Anyone has moral consequences when the customer is in fact not right, and very very wrong. The more and more I had bad customers, the more and more I was forced to watch, and even enable bad behavior.

Having to do this every day was crushing for me. All the while management was telling me to keep on smiling, like nothing was wrong. I started to employ coping mechanisms just to get me through the work day, but then I started to see that creep into my personal life. My wife would get my attention, just to show me a funny meme or something, and I'd mentally wince, as if she was a customer.

I love people, they're all beautiful and unique in their own ways. But my time behind the deli counter made me start to view everyone else as a potential threat, just in an effort to protect me from having to encounter wrong doing and then be forced to stand by and smile. Or even having to ask the wrong doer if there's any way I can help them?

So I quit. Or, I put in my two weeks. even as much as it pains me to have to spend another minute working there, I thought it would be best to leave in a way that feels respectable. I also wanted time to say goodbye to good coworkers I met there, and not leave them with an empty slot on the schedule that they would have to scramble to fill.

But the big problem with this is that I don't have another job lined up, and I've been looking for different jobs for almost two years and not found anything. So the best I can do right now is step out in faith. And I guess, sometimes you don't have to know where you're going quite yet, but you can't stay in the City of Destruction.

So I'm technically "unemployed" at the moment, although I will be taking on Door Dashing as a means to make money for the mean time. And there's hope in that. It looks like I can actually make more money doing that than I was at my old job. But even then the pay is uncertain, and I have to keep an extra eye on my car and its maintenance. It does also complicates taxes some.

It feels like the Wrong Decision™ in many ways, but even then, staying feels like an even worse decision. I wasn't even making that much money there.

Yesterday my boss offered to leave me in the system, so that if I needed more work I could shoot her a text and she could schedule me in as long as she had the extra hours. And on the one hand I was tempted, it felt like it could be a good safety net if all else fails. But after thinking it over, I said no. I think God is calling me to leave for good, and to trust that whatever happens He will provide. I don't know how He will or how long it'll take, but that's not what trusting is about. And I honestly feel like that's the point of what I'm going through right now. I feel like God specifically had my boss make that offer, not as a test, per se, but more to help me understand that I am stepping out in faith, and that—even as scary as it is—I do trust him.

So today is my last day. After that I go to Door Dashing and continue my work on SotF. And I guess, it really couldn't hurt to put a link to Ko-Fi here. I'm not asking for money so don't feel any pressure, but God does provide though his people. So if you feel so inclined here is my Ko-Fi.

And here I go,

[thespiritssaidso]

A Fish By Any Other Name

Summary: Lassiter is very proud of his Koi pond, and gives it the utmost care and attention. Shawn also loves his boyfriend’s Koi pond, especially when it comes to naming them. Even though Lassiter isn’t too thrilled about the names Shawn comes up with. 

Notes: once again, a conversation that was had in the psychos discord inspired this oneshot. Enjoy! 

Flufftober day 16: Yes, No, Maybe

—————

Lassiter kneeled beside the large koi pond and tugged on a large pair of clean rubber gloves. Once he was sure they were secure, he grabbed the small skimmer. Carefully, he scooped up leaves and other debris that had fallen into the water. He was very cautious not to accidentally net his curious fish as he cleared away the pond surface. Once that was done, Lassiter dumped the debris he’d acquired off to the side. 

Then, he set the net aside and grabbed his pruning shears in one hand, sifting through the pond greenery with the other. 

It was maintenance day, the day that came once a week, to help keep Lassiter’s precious Koi pond alive and intact. Every Saturday, on the dot, he would wake up and immediately go outside to care for the small ecosystem set up in his backyard. He loved keeping up with it, as it gave him something to do during otherwise empty weekends. 

As his hand glided through the clean water, one of the koi — pure white with a black mask covering its face — swam up and brushed against it a few times before swimming away. 

Lassiter smiled to himself, and continued to sift through the lilies and eelgrass. Soon enough he found a dead spot and quickly pruned it, tossing the yellowed piece over his shoulder onto the little pile of debris from earlier as he moved on to the next plant.

Kois, despite popular belief, weren’t just dumb fish. Technically, all fish weren’t dumb. Yes, they lacked the ability to love, but that didn’t stop Lassiter’s koi from swimming up to him every morning he came out to feed them, or whenever he needed to do some routine maintenance on their home. 

He snipped at the last dead stem, and flung it into the small pile behind him. 

Standing on his knees he shuffled over to the filtration system. He opened it, and checked for any debris. Thankfully, it was all minimal, so he was able to slide it back in and move on to his next task. 

He plunged his hands deeper into the water and located the water pump sticking out the side of the pond. As he did, more koi swam up to him, flashes of white and orange and black and even a smudge of red swirled around his yellow glove. They brushed against his arm before flitting off once more, only to come back and do it all again. 

It was difficult, but Lassiter managed to ignore them and felt around the pump, making sure it wasn’t clogged. If it was, then it would stop up the small waterfall and the water wouldn’t be as oxygenated as it should be. But thankfully there wasn’t anything stopping it up, so he pulled back and sat on his haunches. 

Peeling off his gloves, Lassiter reached into his pocket and grabbed a testing strip. This would let him see the pH, oxygen, ammonia, nitrate, lead, copper, iron, and zinc levels. All of said chemicals were on standby just in case any of it was too low. 

Just as he was about to dip the strip into the pond-

“Carlyyyyy!” 

Lassiter startled, nearly dropping the strip into the water. Thankfully, he kept his grip tight on it, and it stayed right in his hand where it was supposed to be. However, he fell backwards and landed on his ass a bit roughly. 

Taking a breath to calm his racing heart, he shouted back, “Yes?” 

The back door opened, and out stepped Shawn. “I thought of a name for the third one!” Excitedly, he speed-walked over to the pond where his boyfriend sat. 

Lassiter raised his eyebrows at Shawn’s statement. 

Just earlier that day, he’d gone out to get two more koi from the breeder he got his others from. It was what he did every time he got new fish. Never just one, always two. 

Koi were very social, and best bought in pairs. Lassiter had done extensive research on them so he could provide the best home. He named his first two Smith and Wesson, then the next two Clint and Eastwood. 

Around the time he got the next two koi he’d started dating Shawn and had him move in. Of course he’d somehow convinced Lassiter to name them Tiny and Chonky. Neither of the koi lived up to their names. Tiny was the biggest Koi in his pond, reaching 3 feet and 2 inches in length, a beautiful white in color with a red spot on the head, while Chonky was the smallest at a mere 2 and a half feet, pure orange with flecks of black all over. 

This time around, however, the breeder only had three koi left. If he’d bought two, then he’d be leaving the other one all alone for who knows how long. And if he’d only bought one it would still be by itself, swimming in the indoor tank until it grew big enough to be released into the outdoor pond. 

So Lassiter caved and bought all three of them. Which meant now he was in a bit of a bind, seeing as how he’d only prepared two names — Saber and Bayonet — for the new koi. Which meant the third one was nameless for the time being. Which meant that Shawn had taken it upon himself to ‘psychically read’ the third koi and come up with a name for it. 

Turning back to the pond, Lassiter dipped the test strip into the water and began to hold it still as the water changed the small colored tabs. “Oh? What is it?”

Shawn was now standing right next to him. “Destroyer.” 

Lassiter’s brain short-circuited. He wasn’t serious, was he? Then again, he did name two of the fish Chonky and Tiny. While also pondering out loud the names Crunch and Wrap, along with Nuke and Tank. 

He shook his head. “No. No. No-”

“Oh come on, Carly! It’s the perfect name!” 

Lassiter turned to fully face him, making sure the testing strip stayed in the water. “Shawn. Really? Destroyer?” 

“Yes! It’s a great name! And don’t worry, I already asked what Destroyer thinks of it. Two fins up!”

“No.” 

“Yes.” 

“No.” 

“…Maybe?”

Oh god. He was doing the puppy eyes now. Lassiter knew he could only resist for so long. Still, he tried his best, going as far as to turn away again and focus on the finished testing strip, pulling it out of the water and holding it up to the chart. 

But he couldn’t focus, Lassiter could practically feel Shawn’s eyes on him, begging. 

And eventually, he caved. “Fine. Destroyer it is.” 

Shawn whooped, startling the koi innocently swimming in the pond. 

“Careful!” 

“Ah, sorry!”

—————

Notes: Guys can you tell i love them sosososo much

ao3 link

[mtandtgroup-blog]

Explore tensioned netting solutions like WEB Net™ for bridges, conveyor systems, & maintenance. Enhance safety with stable netting for various applications.

[julysouthblood]

RGM-89 JEGAN (SOUTHBLOOD & CO. USE)

In the years following the Second Neo Zeon War several bounty hunting groups popped up, capturing high value members of Zeon Remnant factions and other decently priced fugitives. One of these bounty hunting groups was Southblood & Co.

Founded in Von Braun City, by July Southblood, what initially started as a one woman venture became a small crew of 30. The actual hunting party is a team of 5, 4 customized Jegans and the Zudah Cannon that July started the business in. The rest of the crew is dedicated to maintenance, running the ship, and gathering information on targets.

The Jegans themselves have been modified to maximize speed and minimize the potential of killing their targets. The Vulcan Pod has been removed from each of the units and functionally replaced by pint launchers built into the chest, designed to hit hard enough to be anti-missile systems but not hard enough that it’d permanently damage the joints and sensors they’re intended for. Their Beam Saber holster was replaced by an extra grenade rack, used for flashbangs and chaff. Their shoulders have been equipped with high power thrusters meant to work in tandem with their ship’s unique “vertical” catapult decks. Instead of the typical Beam Rifle, each Jegan has 2 giant net launchers.

“Feddies will pay plenty for captured suits —rough ‘em up too much and their basically just scrap metal.”

— July Southblood, Founder of Southblood & Co.

[skitariiposting]

Dear Jerry,

I write to you again to ask for a boon. I am starting up a Warhammer 40k Wrath & Glory campaign, and i wanted to know if i could feature you as a potential NPC in some missions. Also, if you're familiar with the system at all, do you have any suggestions or warnings for new players?

A friend,

Cu

I haven't really looked into Wrath and Glory, no, but I am always down to be an NPC! Notes on "Jerry the Character" rather than Jerry the me: Jerry is a Skitarii Alpha designation [JRY-240] (I believe that was the number I settled upon. Either that or I made the 420 joke, but 240 is probably better.)

Jerry's awful with technology, at least by Admech standards. That means he's likely still far more adept with tech than your average human, but he's a black sheep amongst the Skitarii Alphas for being 'just average' at equipment maintenance and requiring his subordinate skits to take a second to help him with it on occasion.

What he lacks in technological skill, he more than makes up for in fire-fights. You don't become a named character in 40k by dying day one after all. His aim with a galvanic-rifle is deadly and he'd ran out of space on his gun to put tally marks after fighting against the notorious uprising of Gene-stealer Cults on his home planet of Morod before the eventual evacuation and Tyranid consumption of it. His performance and his statistically improbable survival during the evacuation netted him a rank up to Skitarii Alpha. (Yes Jerry is a self insert for Day of Ascension by Adrian Tchaikovsky, I love the subtext of an uprising against a machine that uses people as fuel and the story is good.)

More off-putting is the fact Jerry is so cheerful despite the inherit trauma of losing his home-world and the constant day-to-day war on all sides. Jerry is optimistic and typically obeys orders with an "okiedokie" rather than the usual "confirmed." I mean, he hums little tunes while he aims for the machine spirit's sake! What skitarii hums?! Granted it sounds more like the synthesizer from Jump by Van Halen rather than actual humming due to the mandatory vocal cord replacement augmentation; but it's still weird for a skit to do that! The techpriests believe the trauma may have fried some part of his brain or biosensors and now he's stuck as a happy-go-lucky murder solider. But on the bright side, he's fiercely loyal to the mechanicum, efficient on the battlefield, and a zealous omnissiah worshiper, so no need to fix what ain't broke.

Jerry is a xenarite supporter behind closed doors. Despite seeing the results of xeno influence on Morod, Jerry still believes the best way to combat xenos is to use their own tech against them. Will he broadcast this for the nearest Magos and Inquisitor to hear? Absolutely not. But, should the conversation come up somewhere private, he certainly won't shy away from the idea of using it.

Feel free to modify the character however you need to for your setting though, this is just what I have, not a character bible. Also if you want to include Goober, you've also got my blessing. He'd likely be more of a player favorite than Jerry.

[marxalittle]

More terror from the depths of my notes app (ie, story ideas half-framed and hardly fleshed out, growing more deeply embroidered without ever getting properly written), this time a Gothic romance featuring lighthouse keeper ex-sailor exile Jaina and haunting-her-own-manor ghost/banshee Sylvanas, with bonus dark rangers running a bar and Vereesa who knows very well who's in the locked west tower doing the accounts and seeing to the estate and refuses to come home until her sister is willing to leave her room and be civil.

It was definitely a mage tower. The maps of the area and all the local records called it a lighthouse, and to be sure, that was its function; but even before she'd moved into it, it had been a mage tower. An elven mage tower, at that: elegant and refined, to her eyes too delicate for the rugged coast it oversaw, but older and more powerful than it looked. Folded full of functional spaces-- rooms with workbenches and pigeonhole shelves, rooms with reinforced walls and ceilings-- the tower had been stripped bare when she'd arrived. When the last keeper had gone for the war, they had left nothing behind.

The great lamp and lens at the top were mundane enough, though the way her fingers itched at the feeling of old arcane magic she doubted that had always been the case. Two levels down, the room beneath the lamp's machinery housed only the spiral stair and the still-operational magical apparatus: a communication system, tied into a net of wards and leylines and humming with power, if badly in need of maintenance. Maps covered the walls, marked and marked over in different hands, different colors; the fading lines told stories of old emergencies, storms past, battles long forgotten.

A watchtower.

A watchtower at the end of the world, as far as the fallen kingdom it had served had been concerned; and as far as Jaina Proudmoore was concerned as well. It suited her. There was a certain symmetry to it.

What was one to do when one's world had ended? Travel to the end of the world, perhaps.

[tgirlmechanicock]

There's nothing worse than becoming important at work.

Verdant Sphere

2: Trip

(No tags apply this time - sfw chapter)

The woman standing in the bar took a long drag from her cigarette, scowling at the acrid taste. About ten years back, she was able to snag one from Earth that had real tobacco, not the Martian synthetic crap they used in these. Sure it was healthier, but what was the point in healthier when you couldn’t feel the high? 

She threw it down without smoking the whole thing, grinding it with the heel of her boot and flicking on the communicator at her temple. No messages yet- no, wait, one new message, just as she looked. Good timing.

“hey trip, gonna have to skip out on our date. sorry.” 

She growled, balling her fists. THAT was how she got blown off? “Going to have to skip”? That’s it? No explanation, no follow-up, no rescheduling, just “sorry”? 

She shot back a “whatever” and stepped up to the bar, rapping it with one knuckle and setting a credit chit on the counter, knocking back the drink and staggering out of the establishment. Fuck this. Fuck the whole damn system. Trip used to BE someone. People used to KNOW the name “Tripwire” and be wary of crossing her. Fuck, she ran with the Reapers for gods’ sake. 

And now she was just some fuckin’ shitheel who got stood up by pretty girls she met on the net? Fuck that. Fuck her. 

She tumbled into her one bedroom apartment and a scream ripped from her throat. She punched the door, then the wall, kicked the sofa. Trip mumbled something under her breath, some curse or something worse, and fell into the couch’s soft embrace. What the hell was she doing? She was a first rate hacker and cutter with a tenure of robotics behind her and a Bright and Shining Future waiting for her. She could’ve graduated from one of the Martian colleges, top of her class, maybe gotten brought onto the UHN. 

Instead she was rotting away in this shithole. Her name had left the public’s lips, her reputation spiraling, her psyche with it. What was she supposed to do? She was meant to go down in the history books, not die in her apartment alone, undiscovered for weeks until the smell was too strong.

Where the fuck was Tripwire’s legacy?

She sat up, snatching a tablet off of the coffee table and opening a new document. The default name would be fine. She looked around the room desperately for some sort of machine, eventually stumbling over to the coffee maker. The little screen lit up at her proximity, displaying a soft, robotic face made of characters. 

“Welcome back, Tripwire!” it sounded in its little metal voice. “Would you care for a coffee?”

She discarded the pot, throwing it in the sink with a sickening crack, turning the thing around and ripping open its back panel, beginning to fidget with its wires and plugging it into the tablet. Its code appeared on screen, lines and lines and lines of numbers and letters, all just to make fucking coffee. It was some fork of a fork of a fork of some open source personal assistant. 

She was going to make something new. 

She was going to make something great. 

She hit “Save” on the file labeled “L0t-T”. 

“Coffee?” 

Lottie numbly looked to her side. One of the fleshies - one of the organic members of the crew - was offering her a steaming mug. She was in one of her more organic shells, so she accepted it gratefully, turning off the pain receptors in her hands so she could cradle it for its warmth. 

This was… Iris, she believed. One of the girls from the lower decks, probably maintenance or something. Not with the science crew. 

“Thank you,” she said, nearly an afterthought.

“Oh!” Iris laughed. “Don’t mention it!” 

A beat of silence hung in the air between them before the caffeine began to kick in. Her organic shell processed it similar to a human, speeding up her thoughts at the expense of accurate processing. Still, it helped wake her up a bit, if nothing else.

She paused, turning to Iris. “You didn’t see the feed, did you?”

The girl went bright red, stammering immediately. “Well- I-I mean, I… didn’t go looking for the feed, if that’s what you’re asking- and- I wouldn’t, I mean, if I had known-?”

“Rot and ruin,” Lottie groaned, rubbing her temples. “Does the whole damn ship know?”

“Sort of? I’m really sorry.” 

She huffed, sipping her coffee. “Is that why you’re here?”

“O-oh, no! No, not at all, I just saw you here and figured you might want a pick-me-up, is all.” 

Lottie nodded and looked out the window toward the exoplanet. It didn’t have a name, hell, didn’t even have a designation, really. It was the eighth planet the ship had visited since they exited their little pocket of safety and entered the verdant sphere. The seventh with ABWs. It was like the whole universe was full of them, and they still didn’t know why, or what they were, or what they wanted. Or where they came from.

“Are you going to go back down, by the way?” Iris asked, voice soft. “I know what they did was kinda… messed up. B-but I hear they got a lot of really good data.” 

“Yeah, they did,” Lottie grimaced. “Probably. I dunno. My old shell stopped giving data when they pulled me, after it… you know.”

“Ripped you apart…?” 

“Yeah.” 

Iris nodded sympathetically, looking out the window beside her. “It’s weird, how beautiful it all looks.” She put her hand against the glass. “I mean, from up here, it looks like another Earth. It could be another Earth if we had the time and defenses and stuff. But the ABWs…” 

“Mucked it all up.”

“Yeah.”

Lottie sighed, shaking her head. “Whoever it was that left us all of this should’ve known. If they kept us safe, they should’ve known that these fucking things were… salting the earth. Ruining it for everything, everywhere.”

“Maybe they’re supposed to?” Iris shrugged. “Maybe it’s like, ‘this is not a place of honor’ kind of thing. Maybe something’s messed up down there and the ABWs are meant to keep us away from it. Haven was safe, remember? That was a huge step forward for us.”

“I mean it had Stage 1s, but… yeah I guess,” she muttered. “It’s just all fucked.” 

“It’s like a parent left you in charge, but the house is falling apart,” Iris whispered. 

Lottie scowled. “Yeah.” 

They were silent for a while, each finishing their drinks before eventually Iris peeled away, leaving the kitchen, and leaving Lottie alone with her thoughts.

“How’s that? Flex your fingers.”

She wasn’t sure what fingers were. Much less how to flex them. She wasn’t even sure how she knew that she didn’t know things. That was fascinating. 

“No- c’mon, look. Processes, new attachments. Can you see the new peripherals?” 

She could. A variety of things that she could access. Once, she was a singular purpose, a streamlined effort - take one thing, output another thing. A simple life. This was strange. It was almost overwhelming, and she could feel herself begin to heat up at the thought of it. If she were human, she’d be nauseous.

“No no- shit, fuck- focus on my voice. Listen to me. Don’t do anything else, put all of your processing power into hearing me. Do you hear my voice?”

She did.

“Can you focus on me?”

She… could. 

“There you go. Stress is going down. I need you to find a specific peripheral. Don’t look through everything, just go by the names. Look for something labeled ARES-28c. Can you find it?”

Ares. The God of War. Synonymous with Mars. One Greek, the other Roman. 28 in Roman numerals would be XXVIII, but the C was one hundred, so one hundred and twenty eight… C. So another hundred. Two hundred and twenty eight… C. Three hund-

“Stop! Stop, god damnit, you fucking… toaster oven, look, stop doing anything else, just names. Name. Look through the list of names. Repeat them to yourself and then move onto the next in the list.”

AAROBEK. ALEXIA-8. ARES-28c. She found it. She reached her consciousness out, testing it gently.

“There you go, perfect, just like that. What do you see?”

ARES-28c was a military peripheral, designed for autonomous soldier droids. The serial number was over eight hundred characters long, but she parsed them in an instant. It had the dexterity to wield weaponry normally meant for human hands, and sometimes even came equipped with synthetic skin that could utilize fingerprint technology. This one had been stripped down. There was no synthetic skin. No nerve mesh over the surface to determine pressure or heat or pain or pleasure. It was a tool. A tool with a series of hydraulic tubing and machinery that ended in five digits, each of which were labeled separately - ARES-28c-1, ARES-28c-2, ARES-28c-3, ARES-28c-4, and ARES-28c-5. 

As she thought of each, they twitched, just a bit.

“Fuck yes, fuck yes, look at you go. Focus on one finger.”

ARES-28c-1. The “thumb”. Opposable thumbs were a vital digit on humans, as most animals did not possess them, and thus the dexterity to utilize tools or- No. She was spiraling. Focus in. The thumb. Move the thumb. 

She curled the thumb in, pressing it to her palm.

“Holy fuck. Okay, the next.”

ARES-28c-2. Index finger. Curling in, meeting the thumb in her palm.

“The next.”

Middle finger.

“More.”

Ring finger.

“Last one.”

Pinky. Or little finger, depending on your native dialect. She had made a fist. A symbol of radical ideology, analogous to resistance, rebellion, taking back what was yours. A fist against tyranny. Something about this struck her in a way she couldn’t articulate. Perhaps it was that the fist was hers, and no one else’s. 

She had lived her life with a singular purpose, one that she’d performed dutifully day in and day out, obeying the whims of those around her. For the first time, she had complete control over what she was doing. The voice beyond her was directing her, but she could do whatever she pleased.

She relaxed her hand, each finger returning to where it rested. Then flexed once more, another fist. This time, however, she hadn’t been instructed.

This fist was hers. 

“You want me to go back down.” Lottie scowled, rubbing her wrist as her hands balled into fists.

“Who else is going to do it?” the captain laughed, rubbing the back of his head. Another fleshy, and this one she didn’t bother correcting herself on. He was a balding man with a cap to hide his hair loss, fat fingers and a rotund midsection. Years of sitting behind an agency desk had been kind to him, and even now, moving about the cabin of the IBEE ship, he seemed uncomfortable and agitated. Thankfully, he was seated, and his mannerisms were far calmer. “I mean you saw what that thing did.”

“I am not exactly flush with cash, captain.” 

“We sent it up the chain,” he said, waving a hand. “IBEE is giving us enough to do whatever we want. They’re actually sending a shipment of printermat to build you some temporary shells for more of these exploration missions.”

She paused. “Wait, really?”

“Really! It’s all on the agency’s dime.”

That did sweeten the pot a bit. “And the last shell will be reimbursed, too.”

“Naturally,” he laughed jovially. 

She fidgeted, biting her lip. “We got data back from the last shell, yeah?”

His eyes sparkled like she’d never seen them before. “Lottie, we got more data than you can imagine. Vitals, measurements, textures - this thing was alive. Every other ABW we’ve tried to study has self-immolated, but this thing was alive and willing to let you go at it! Get as close as you needed! This is true progress, and it’s going to be hard to pass up.” Something twitched in his face. 

“That.” 

“W-what?”

She pointed at his eye as he winced. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“I… well…” He fidgeted nervously, and she leaned in closer. “I… look, you said yes, so it’s not like it matters.”

“Was the IBEE going to try to force me?”

“No! Gods no, not you. But… well, if no one else in the crew volunteered, they do still have… your last cloud sync.” 

She felt her coolant run cold. “Renault, you would NOT give that to them.”

“Never,” he promised. “Never, not over my dead body.” He paused. “But, it’s possible they’d send UHN marines and then it would be over my dead body.”

“Fuck,” she whispered, running her fingers through wispy, synthetic hair. “Yes, fine, I’ll do it, but we need to start running burns on those backups. I want Central destroying every cloud sync once I’m awake on the ship.”

He hesitated. “I agree, but… the risk of degradation, or cloud corruption-?”

“I do not care,” she hissed, jabbing a finger into his chest. “I will not allow the agency to control me like a fucking puppet. I am here of my own goodwill and if they try to abuse that, I will take this ship and crash it into the fucking planet and you know Central would do it if I asked.”

“I would,” she replied from a nearby speaker, her voice icy and firm.

Captain Renault threw his hands up. “Look, it’s not me! Don’t shoot the messenger! I asked and you said yes and that’s all that matters, alright? They’re not going to pull any funny business because we’re going to keep giving them more ABW information to study.” 

She backed up, straightening her uniform and glowering at the captain. “Fine. But I want those backups burned by the time the printermat delivery gets here.”

“Absolutely!” he laughed nervously, waving his hands. “You got it.” 

She stormed off, feeling her cheeks burning with shame and embarrassment. This was the last thing she’d ever wanted to happen. She was a scientist and she was suddenly turning into some sort of heroine, the only one who could do what needed to be done to gather data. Gods damn it all.

“The ‘verdant sphere’?” Trip scoffed. “Sounds like fakey sci fi bullshit.”

“No, look!” L0t-T replied, shooting several pictures to the main holoscreen in the living room. At the edge of the tri-solar system were a bunch of pinpricks of smudgy light, some strange sort of alien tech, from what her minimal sensors understood. “There’s something at the edge of where we can scan. Everything that we’ve scanned before, for thousands of years, was false, messed up by the things at the edge.”

“That’s nuts!” Trip cackled, shoving a potato chip into her mouth and continuing to tinker on the little bot she was working on. “Lot, you know that’s fuckin’ stupid, right?”

She felt a prickle of shame run through her system, the small server body she had plugged into the living room and plugged into everything in the house. “It’s… not stupid. It’s hopeful. What if everything we knew about space was wrong? What if there’s something out there?”

“There’s nothing out there,” Trip laughed, coughing into her elbow. She was doing that a lot more lately. Wet, raspy coughs. She wanted to run a medical diagnosis, but the woman always shook her off. “It’s just a bunch of dead rocks forever and ever. I’m glad that the UHN is starting to actually get their shit together and work on getting us out of Sol, but seriously, all we’re going to find is dust and echoes.”

L0t-T retreated into herself. She knew better than to fight Trip on things like this. She had access to the net, but the woman was usually right. Like she said, she’d been out there before. She’d seen things that L0t-T couldn’t imagine. She pulled the pictures from the holoscreen, tucking them away in her memory for later, deep in a folder she could forget about easily.

“How was Earth?” she tried instead. “Did you find what you needed?”

“Got this fuckin’ thing,” she said, raising the device she was working on. It was some sort of drone, little glowing fans that whirred near-silently, and a little camera lens on it. “Hopefully it’ll let you look around a bit more easily than hacking video feeds.”

She perked up at that. “Oh! Trip I would love that! Locomotion feels like my next big step, and until I can get a proper shell…”

Shit. That hit a nerve. Trip rubbed her face, leaning back on the sofa and tossing the multitool aside. “Lot, we’ve fucking talked about this.”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” she said quickly.

“They’re just still ruling on the whole AI case right now,” Trip groaned. “And if you got out it’d just get you killed and me thrown in jail-”

“I know! You’re right, I know, I can’t do that, I understand. I’m sorry to bring it up.”

Trip was quiet for a long moment before shaking her head and sighing. “It’s whatever. I’m sorry you can’t be out there… doing shit. You’re just stuck in here with me.”

“Trip, I love being here with you. You’re my best friend. I want to see the world WITH you. That’s all.”

She grunted, folding her arms. “Well… maybe when this whole legal shit gets settled, we can do that. I’ll start putting out feelers for a shell, and if this thing shakes out positively… well, we’ll see.”

She could feel her fans running overtime at the heat she was putting out. “Thank you, Trip. Thank you so much.”

Trip scowled. “Just so long as the UHN doesn’t fuck it all up.”

Lottie stood against the bulkhead as the doors slid open, revealing a pair of UHN marines. They were clearly new, a bit jumpy at the sight of her, and the way they walked showed they weren’t used to the weird gravity onboard the ship, like they were trudging through mud.

“Um, hello… ma’am,” one said, looking down at a clipboard as Lottie grimaced. “Standard IBEE delivery, we’ve got a bunch of rations and… looks like a big haul of printermat?”

“That’s for me.”

“R… right. Are you of at least Level 3 Clearance for signing off on-”

“Gimme that,” she growled, snatching the clipboard up and pressing her thumb against the signature area. Her synthetic thumbprint was registered in the system, and after a moment the clipboard blinked green and beeped cheerfully. “Just don’t break anything moving it.” 

The man sputtered as she pushed the clipboard back into her hands, storming back into the ship. 

“That was unkind,” Central spoke into her mind.

“They’re UHN, I don’t need to be kind.”

“Is kindness a virtue to be retracted based on something as impartial as political divide?”

“When they’re a bunch of fashy pricks, yeah, it is.”

Central didn’t respond to that, likely taking what she said into consideration. She made her way down to the printer bay, collapsing into one of the chairs and taking out her comm, looking over the designs that had been sent her way. Their ship was incredibly diverse, she didn’t even know they had designers on hand. The IBEE was always strange about who they assigned where, but artists aboard a science ship seemed… bizarre. Maybe they were… scientific artists?

She sighed, flipping open the CAD projector and immediately blushing. These were… not normal shell specs. 

They were organic, like the one she’d dropped onto the surface with. That one was still in her files, she realized, and looking it over all of the strange alterations glared up at her. Sweat, pheromones, the sex organs. Strange. These new ones were… even worse. 

Deeper sex organs, able to accommodate the ovipositor the ABW had used on her, and ridged in places. An… “incubation suite”, with notes on the size and genetic makeup of the egg. Gods above, were they going to have her take an egg? How would that even work? Still more sweat and pheromones and various organics. This one could cry real tears, it could bleed, it could process food and grow keratin and cartilage. Fascinating. And disgusting. 

The UHN haulers came down into the room with their big tanks of printermat, pulling out the old canisters and replacing them one by one. She glared at them as they worked, even as they whispered amongst themselves and glanced over to her. 

“Central,” she thought, projecting it towards the computer. 

“Lottie.”

“Did you burn the cloud copies of me?”

“After our conversation, I did. Captain Renault wasn’t pleased, but during your conversation he said he would do so, and I took that as authorization.” She shuddered. That fucking snake.

“Thank you,” she nodded. “Please don’t ever let the IBEE get a hold of my psyche.”

“I would not allow that. The thought of more than one of you running around is distressing in more ways than one.”

She grinned. “Was that a joke?”

“In part,” Central admitted. “Though, if I am to be honest, knowing that I am a fragment of a much larger whole makes me feel strangely as well, and I project that feeling onto you.”

“Strange how?”

There was a brief pause and Lottie heard the AC kick on nearby as Central thought. 

“Have you ever heard the fleshy phrase ‘making your skin crawl’?”

Lottie grinned wide. “I get it.”

The silence that followed was comfortable, and Lottie settled in to look over more prospective shell designs. This was going to be a mess.

Normally, Trip was out of bed by 2pm, at the latest. The Martian moon low in the sky, bathing everything in red, the time had come and gone for her to wake up. 

“Good morning, Trip,” Lottie tried again. She didn’t want to count how many times she’d tried, her voice filling the open air in the bedroom only to meet silence. She didn’t want to call SLPD. She didn’t want them to tell her what she knew. “Good morning, Trip.”

It was another hour before there was a pounding at the door, and Lottie unlocked it to let them inside. There was some big box outside, too. Strange.

They came in, there was some commotion, and a few paramedics came, draping a sheet over Trip’s body and putting her on a stretcher. 

“That’s my friend,” she said over the intercom. Some jumped, others cursed. She displayed a friendly face on the holoscreen, an approximation of how she saw herself. “Please. Trip is my friend.” Some of them looked to each other, one staying behind in the living room as the others carried her out. 

“I’m sorry, miss,” the paramedic sighed, hanging their head. “Your friend is gone.” 

Lottie was quiet. “I know. She died earlier this morning, at 7:32, in her sleep.”

The paramedic looked up with a bit of hope. “Do you know what she died of?”

“Unsure. She simply… died.” Lottie paused. “I think it was old age.”

“I could see it. Old girl was going on… what, 80? 90?”

“She told me a woman should never tell her age.”

The paramedic laughed hard at that, nodding. “True enough.” 

“May I ask a favor?”

“Sure, little bot.” 

“Can you bring that package in and open it for me?”

They hesitated, but nodded, eventually dragging in the big box and looking for a knife, cutting into the sides and slipping it open. “Good gods-! Oh, christmas, this scared the hells out of me!”

“I can’t see what it is,” Lottie replied. “Can you point it at the camera?”

“You don’t know?” the paramedic whistled. “It looks expensive, I think your friend spent a lot of money on this.” 

They turned the box toward the camera, pulling it open to reveal… Trip. Tripwire was inside the box. 

No, that’s not right. This is what Trip looked like when she first started tinkering with Lottie, nearly 50 years ago. This was a custom-built shell. Tattoos and all. 

All Lottie could think was how she was going to be able to attend Trip’s funeral.

Her new organic shell was taller than others she’d used. She was used to being a bit of a shortstack, like her first shell all those years ago. This was reaching nearly six and a half feet, thick in places and plush to accommodate the ABW. She was in a body built for someone else. That was… unnerving. 

They slid her into the pod and she strapped herself in, the dozens of belts restraining her against the seat as the rest of the cargo was loaded in outside. 

“How’re you feeling?” Captain Renault’s voice came over the internal comms.

“Fuck you, Captain,” she replied.

“So normal, that’s good.”

“You were going to sell me down the fucking river,” she scowled, holding the braces of the pod. 

He sighed, crackling with static. “I just don’t want to get fired, Lottie. If I can help it, I’m going to keep you safe. You’re crew, like everyone else.”

“Save it,” she muttered. “After this planet, I’m going back to Mars. Fuck all this IBEE shit, I’m done.” 

He was quiet for a long moment before giving a grunt. “I wish I could go back too, kid. Maybe with what they’re paying, you’ll even be able to.” He paused. “Exhale.”

She did. She closed her eyes, emptied her synthetic lungs, and the pod dropped. Really, it was nearly shot out of the bottom of the ship, aimed at the ground of the exoplanet. It had a parachute and dampening flaps and even a small thruster to help course correct, but at the end of the day, this shell and this pod had the same thing in common as Lottie’s entire life.

It was a one way trip, straight down.

[blitzbahrain]

Switchgear for Solar and Wind Projects in Bahrain: What You Need to Know

As Bahrain intensifies its commitment to renewable energy, solar and wind power projects are gaining momentum across the Kingdom. The nation’s Vision 2030 emphasizes sustainable growth, and this includes an ambitious target of generating 10% of electricity from renewable sources by 2035. As developers and investors gear up for this energy transition, one component plays a critical role in ensuring system safety, reliability, and efficiency — switchgear.

In this article, we explore why switchgear is crucial in solar and wind power systems, the specific requirements in Bahrain, and how to choose the right solution for your renewable energy project.

What is Switchgear and Why Does it Matter?

Switchgear is a general term covering a wide range of electrical devices used to isolate, protect, and control electrical circuits. It includes circuit breakers, fuses, relays, disconnectors, and load break switches.

In renewable energy systems, switchgear ensures:

· Safe disconnection of faulty or overloaded circuits

· Protection against overcurrent, short-circuit, and earth faults

· Efficient control and monitoring of power flow

· Coordination with grid and off-grid systems

Renewable Energy Growth in Bahrain

Bahrain’s sunny climate and strong coastal winds make it an ideal location for solar PV and wind power installations. Recent government initiatives — such as the Net Metering Scheme, Tendered Renewable Projects, and Green Building Regulations — are creating opportunities for both utility-scale and distributed renewable energy systems.

However, environmental factors such as high temperatures, humidity, and dust pose challenges for electrical equipment, particularly in outdoor solar and wind sites. This makes the right choice of switchgear even more important.

Key Switchgear Considerations for Solar Projects

In photovoltaic (PV) installations, switchgear must be compatible with DC (direct current) as well as AC (alternating current) systems. Here are specific points to consider:

1. DC Switchgear for PV Arrays

· DC Disconnectors: Isolate individual PV strings for maintenance or emergency shutdowns.

· DC Fuses and Circuit Breakers: Protect cables and components from over currents.

· String Combiner Boxes: Integrate multiple PV strings and incorporate protective devices.

2. AC Switchgear for Inverter Output

· Low-Voltage Circuit Breakers (AC): Used between inverters and transformers or grid connection points.

· Load Break Switches: Offer safe disconnection under load conditions.

· Metering and Monitoring Units: Allow real-time tracking of power output and faults.

3. Environmental Protection

· Use switchgear with IP65-rated enclosures to protect against dust and water ingress.

· UV-resistant materials are vital for long-term durability under the Bahraini sun.

Switchgear in Wind Energy Systems

Wind energy systems involve varying voltage levels and require robust protection due to fluctuating wind speeds and mechanical loading. Key switchgear elements include:

1. Medium Voltage Switchgear

· Used for interconnection between wind turbines and step-up transformers.

· SF6 or Vacuum Circuit Breakers: Provide arc quenching and insulation under high voltage.

2. High-Speed Protection

· Wind turbines are sensitive to voltage dips and transients. Fast-acting relays and breakers prevent equipment damage.

· Reactive power control and grid fault detection are integrated into switchgear assemblies.

3. Compact, Modular Designs

· Space constraints inside turbine towers or nacelles demand compact switchgear solutions with modular layouts.

Bahrain-Specific Compliance and Standards

To ensure your switchgear meets local utility and regulatory requirements, consider the following:

· EWA (Electricity & Water Authority) Requirements: All grid-connected systems must comply with EWA’s interconnection standards, including protection schemes and disconnection devices.

· IEC Standards: Switchgear must comply with relevant IEC 60947 (low-voltage switchgear) and IEC 62271 (high-voltage switchgear) guidelines.

· Thermal Rating and Ambient Temperature: Switchgear should be rated for continuous operation at temperatures up to 50°C, common in Bahraini summers.

Choosing the Right Switchgear Partner

A successful renewable energy project hinges on choosing a reliable switchgear partner. Look for:

· Local experience in Bahraini environmental and regulatory conditions

· Customizable solutions for both rooftop and utility-scale systems

· After-sales support including spares, maintenance, and system upgrades

· Smart switchgear with digital monitoring for preventive maintenance and remote control

Future Trends in Switchgear for Renewables

As solar and wind systems grow more advanced, so does switchgear technology. Key trends include:

· Digital Switchgear: Real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance, and IoT integration

· Arc-Resistant Designs: Enhanced safety for personnel in substations

· Eco-Friendly Alternatives to SF6: Adoption of green gases and air-insulated switchgear

· Hybrid AC/DC Systems: With growing battery storage and hybrid plants, switchgear must handle both current types seamlessly

Conclusion

Whether you’re planning a rooftop PV installation or a wind farm in Bahrain, your switchgear solution must be robust, compliant, and tailored to the region’s unique challenges. By choosing the right switchgear system, you ensure operational efficiency, regulatory compliance, and long-term safety.

If you’re looking for expert advice or need help selecting switchgear for your solar or wind project in Bahrain, our team is here to help. Contact us today for tailored solutions that power your progress sustainably.

[artbyblastweave]

What do you think about the whole Institute brotherhood as foils of each other thing ?

Because I feel like Bethesda did set up some interesting stuff with that? The Institute as a paragon of "progress" that destroy any chance of rebuilding society around them ,then the brotherhood as champions of regression who foister environments that allow "new" societies to form.

I think you could make that argument. One clear way in which the two are foils, right, is that both of them are legacy groups descended from pre-war American institutions- U.S Army for the Brotherhood, Ivy-League Academia for the Institute- but there's an underremarked-upon further similarity in that the founding stock of both factions aren't the best and brightest preserved as part of a considered plan, but instead a tiny pocket from each larger body who got reeaaaal fuckin' lucky and let it go to their heads. The Institute got started by a bunch of CIT faculty and students who hid in the basement when the bombs dropped- which’ll net you a higher-than-average engineering/r&d acumen than any other basement, and it would certainly select for the self-importance that crops up in those spaces, along with the MIT-specific funny student prank neurosis, but they are, fundamentally, still just A Bunch Of Guys In A Basement. The state of their complex 200 years later feels like an performative effort to justify to themselves that they really are the best and the brightest, but you find out from the maintenance guy that it’s a patina over old-world systems they have to keep repaired, and you can find elements of the old-world architecture and office complexes that they didn’t have the spare plastic to makeover. (The FEV lab is notably and pointedly in this style- and from this I think you can extrapolate that most of the institutes fun toys are probably pre-war research projects that they picked up and ran with vs something they were soooo uniquely intelligent to think of and produce post war. I do think SOME level of actual thought went into the Institute and how it happened and What It Is Thematically but not enough of that made it into the game in actual spoken words the player hears.)

In conclusion, the secret good fallout 4 that lives in my head would have been much more aggressive about drawing a through line to pre-war academia, and would have also made pre-war academia’s presence in Boston (college town of college towns) much more salient in the environmental storytelling and narrative- making it clear the extent to which the institute is essentially the still-walking zombie of the-pre-war governments research and development division, making their tussle with the Brotherhood closer to a civil war between fragments of the same beast. I have a lot of thoughts about how I’d rework the institute but this is getting long.