#assuming we go back to the pattern of post patch to .3 and building the next expansion in 4 and 5

[maeljade]

Talking about the "a show of good faith might go a long way toward earning their trust" I feel very confident in saying that this good faith will be the curing of the thunderblight that is quite literally paralyzing parts of the citizenship. It sounds like good old overaspected aether and she has the inventors and world experts in curing worse cases of this in her friendgroup and as advisors.

Unlike Ala Mhigo, Doma and especially Garlemald Alexandria is in the unique position of still having a mostly functioning government and bureaucracy. Sure, its missing its royal family but with the exception of Zoraal Ja leading the military they felt mostly as figure head instead of actual part of the political machine. And since the governmental district didn't suddenly get abandoned it seems like most of the day to day business is still ongoing and functional.

One point of conflict I can see happening is that the contacts of Tuliyolal and the Scions is the resistance group. In fact they are the de facto only named NPCs left in town that we interacted with during the MSQ. So Wuk working with a group that had been fighting against regulators might add oil to the perceived fire of a foreign government trying to take over Alexandria.

I'll be interested to see what further developments happen in the patches with Alexandria, but so far I think Wuk Lamat is handling the situation very delicately, and very smartly.

Alexandria is, undeniably, an invading force in Xak Tural. It's a foreign nation that has moved onto Turali land and claimed that land and its people under its own sovereignty, with the intent to harvest a resource from it at the direct expense of its people. This is, obviously, wrong, and needs an answer.

Wuk Lamat as the Vow of Resolve has, with the help of her allies, already achieved something pretty significant and challenging here: she has defeated the invading government (Sphene and Zoraal Ja) without directly declaring war on Alexandria's people (most of whom probably had little to no say in the invasion). Her diplomacy during her initial introduction to Alexandria has probably gone a long way here; she has not given the people any more reason than absolutely necessary to believe she is a threat to them.

Declaring the very young Gulool Ja Alexandria's new king feels undeniably weird in more ways than one, but I think that politically it's probably the smartest thing Wuk Lamat could have done.

Her goal, as it's always been, is to maintain peace for her people. A good number of her people are now directly entangled with Alexandria. A rebellion against Tuliyollal rule by the Alexandrians is a direct threat to her people, particularly the ones living in Heritage Found. Even with Sphene gone, Alexandria is still possessed of substantial military power and weapons technology that could conceivably be commandeered either by existing military personnel (because even an army of robots requires some level of manpower to maintain) or by a civilian militia were one to arise. Bottom line: even with the head cut off, Alexandria still poses a threat to the safety and sovereignty of Tuliyollal. And even if the Dawnservants could be reasonably certain their own forces could overpower the Alexandrians--which they conceivably could based on sheer numbers--there would still be a bunch of their own people caught in the crossfire.

Furthermore, the defeat of Sphene and the shutting down of Living Memory means that the end of regulators and spare souls is coming. (The new raid series suggests too that the Warrior of Light may have a hand in ending the use of souls.) This is going to be highly disruptive to the Alexandrian way of life, and probably really fucking scary to a people who have become reliant on this technology. There are bound to be objections. While it's unclear to me at this time how many people knew what Sphene was actually doing, it's not inconceivable that more could find out, and that someone might seek to put her plans in motion once again in order to preserve the soul economy.

This is, in short, a pretty precarious situation politically, and a lesser Dawnservant would already be looking at a city teetering on the edge of revolt.

So, how do we convince the Alexandrians we aren't a threat to them in the short term, while we figure out how we're going to handle this in the long term?

Well, a good first step is probably to give them their king. Alexandria is, at least in name, a monarchy. By the rules of that system, Gulool Ja is a rightful heir to the throne. By allowing him to claim that birthright, you make a show of respecting Alexandrian "sovereignty." You also declare him family--he's your nephew, after all. Now you have a familial connection, the stuff of which royal alliances are made. And of course, the new king is just a child. He's going to need advisors, a regent, and a lot of guidance. You can have a hand in that.

Sure, the Alexandrians are going to notice your influence over their ruler and might still have feelings about that. It's not a perfect solution. But by the same token, snatching their one living heir away from them and openly declaring them under your rule now is probably going to go over a lot worse.

Like I think the game kind of downplays this being a calculated choice, especially since Wuk Lamat doesn't come across as a calculating person. But if we were to observe this scenario in any other fantasy setting... that's how you install a puppet king. I don't especially like to use that term in this case, because I think Wuk Lamat genuinely cares about her nephew and isn't simply using him to maintain power. Nonetheless, it is an undeniably political move, and one that benefits Tuliyollal.

It's likely the Alexandrian people are here to stay--thanks to the dimensional compression, they're in the unique situation where the land they live on is both theirs and not theirs, and that is a problem, but forced relocation also isn't a great solution.

Judging by Wuk Lamat's goals, ethos and the example of her father, I think her hope is probably to bring Alexandria under the banner of Tuliyollal without having to shed blood for it, not least the blood of her own people who would be caught in the crossfire. She understands now that sometimes there's no more room for diplomacy and you have to fight your enemies head on, but if there's a chance she can do this peacefully, through diplomacy, then she's going to try, because that's who she is. She also probably understands that most Alexandrians had no choice in this, and a show of good faith might go a long way toward earning their trust as they adapt to the loss of their queen and the changes that will inevitably follow.

It's a bad situation without a doubt, and one that's already been very destructive to the people of Xak Tural. Gulool Ja Ja sought to unite rather than to conquer. I think Wuk Lamat's hope is to do the same, for the practical purpose of limiting further damage as much as possible.

[thecoroutfitters]

Written by Guest Contributor on The Prepper Journal.

Editors Note: Another guest post from valknut79 to The Prepper Journal. A subject close to my constant mantra, and one where political correctness has NOT been factored in to be “fair” or spare any groups feelings. The absence of disclaimers is intentional. As always, if you have information for Preppers that you would like to share and possibly receive a $25 cash award as well as be entered into the next Prepper Writing Contest with a chance to win one of three Amazon Gift Cards  with the top prize being a $300 card to purchase your own prepping supplies, enter today!

“On a warm spring night, after eating dinner with friends and deciding to do a little late-night dancing, a young lady walks across the top floor of a well-lit parking garage.  She’s tired, worn out from the night of dancing and to help combat her fatigue, one hand is carrying a latte from the local late-night coffee joint down the road while her other hand fumbles in her purse.

Since it’s the top floor of the garage, there are few really good places to mount a security camera, so the ones that do exist are not able to capture much outside of the fact that behind her, a black-clad man with his hood up approaches her from behind as she unlocks her car door, and attacks.  Within seconds, he slams the back of her head, knocking her unconscious with his blow, if not with the ricochet of her head against the roof of the car.  Picking up her keys off the ground, throwing her inside the car bodily, he��s driving off through the garage, and is out of camera range very quickly to do…well, just about anything he wants.”

While this is a fictional situation, it’s the kind of thing that I’m starting to think about now that my daughter is going to be attending college in the big city.  She has basic skills in martial arts, an interest based on an activity that I required of her when she was a young teen, but doesn’t have a firearm and doesn’t carry any weapons in her purse.  What can she do to prevent this kind of attack?

3 Ways to Discourage Street Attacks

#1 – Situational Awareness & Mindfulness

Millennials often get a bad rap for being too tied into their phone, but it’s not only them. People of every age do it and they need to beware of the risks of making their way through life oblivious to those around them.  In a world where any kind of media is immediately available through so many channels, it’s easy to put your headphones in and enjoy a little entertainment on those lonely walks down the streets.  I love podcasts myself, and I know how easy it is to get lost in what the hosts are discussing and become engrossed to the point of making secondary the thoughts about where you are, where you’re going, what you planned on doing, and how you’re getting there.

Situational Awareness is simply the act of being constantly aware of what is happening around you.  It is essential in any kind of potentially dangerous situation to be mindful of what is happening around you, keeping a clear head, focusing on the present situation and your present environment.  Use as many of your senses as you can – listen to the ambient sounds, notice the smells of your environment, put your eyes and your head on a swivel, looking behind you every thirty seconds or so, and more often if entering a new environment.

I used the word “mindful” in the last paragraph, because Mindfulness is becoming a part of the zeitgeist of modern life as well.  This age-old concept is very simply a set of techniques designed to help you focus on the present moment, and what is happening around you – very similar to situational awareness.  Looking up some simple mindfulness exercises like “leaves on a stream” or even practicing basic meditation is a good way to help build your tolerance for long periods of being in the moment.

In the above situation, the young lady who was attacked likely had no idea that there was someone else on the roof of the parking garage, much less that he was following her, even as closely as he would have had to in order to attack so quickly.  Having no situational awareness, and likely being lost in a world of her own thoughts or in cell phone music or audio programs was her first big mistake.  Had she been looking around, aware of her situation, and perhaps even made eye contact with the attacker on her way towards her car, she may have done enough to encourage him to choose a different target.

#2 – Providing Disinformation

If you were an attacker who wanted to prey on someone, would you choose a man or a woman to attack?  Young or middle aged?

Almost everyone would choose a young female. The reasons are simple – she’s less likely to have any interest in martial arts or combat sports, she’s probably smaller and less muscular than her male counterparts, she likely carries more cash or valuable jewelry, and is stereotyped as being more naïve by the media and society at large.  Whether any specific female fits those categories is unimportant, its true that the simple act of being a female makes you a bigger target.

Being a young female isn’t something you can control.  Or is it?

No transgender stuff here.  But it’s possible, highly likely even, that the attacker in the above situation has done at least a small amount of research on this car he found on the top floor of a parking garage late at night, and it’s surprising what you can figure out about someone based on their car.

Does she have custom vanity license plates?  If so, those are generally a strong indicator that this is a female, unless the plates say something decidedly masculine like “GUNDUDE8” or “PREP MAN”.  If he peeks inside and sees custom leopard print seat covers, a steering wheel cover, or fuzzy dice on the rearview mirror, then assumptions can easily be made.   Other information can be gleanes as well.  If he sees a Victoria’s Secrets bag in your passenger seat, then what’s he going to assume?  The contents of your backseat can tell a lot about a person.  Makeup bags, the presence of an infant car seat or a booster, bumper stickers – all of these things say something about you, and help attackers decide if you’re a good target. While they don’t all “scream” female, they do all scream “unfocused” or having their concentration distracted by errands, a child, whatever. We are all guilty of this, especially in places we have frequented where “nothing has ever happened.” Reality is it only has to happen once to be life altering.

The worst offenders of the car customization market are the stick figures that populate the back windows of far too many cars.  Sure, they’re kind of cute, but they give way too much information about who you are, who is in your family, their ages and their interests.  If you have a single woman with two children on there, chances are that you’re coming out to your car either alone, or with two little ankle biters who are occupying all of your attention.

The best tip I’ve heard for single young women who are at risk for being attacked near their car is to give would-be attackers plenty of disinformation designed to encourage them to choose a different target.  A big, well-worn pair of men’s athletic shoes in the back seat, or a duffel bag covered in visible weight-lifting patches and karate logos will go a long way towards indicating to any smart criminals that the person who owns this vehicle is not to be trifled with.

Bumper stickers are also a good way to dissuade people.  Pro-gun bumper stickers, particularly if they endorse concealed carry, are a good place to start, as are indicators that you’re interested in things like MMA, wrestling, martial arts, or bodybuilding, whether you are or not. I have heard the counter-argument, that people “looking for guns to steal” look for cars with an NRA sticker (USMC emblem, etc.) The normal pattern of such a person is to follow you home to see what house to target for a robbery, when they observe you have left the premises. Yes, most people like this have gun safes – do you put your bedside go-to weapon in your gun safe every time you leave your house?

Spiked dog collars are also a simple thing to throw in the backseat.  While that might not be something that will dissuade an attacker in the aforementioned situation, it will work wonders for dissuading attackers spying on your car in a park, forest preserve or who might be looking at your home as a potential target.

Use your normal routine and patterns to decide what kinds of things you want to decorate with, or stash in your car. Understanding the places where you’re likely to be attacked will provide the best understanding of what will work best for you.

#3 – Just do it

People who prey on others are often quite a bit smarter than you might think.  Most have done their homework, and having looked inside your car to find evidence that you may be a very strong male or have a very large dog, might be smart enough to avoid you as a potential attackee.  Despite this, an often cited fact about criminals shows that most crimes that are committed in the US are crimes not borne from passion or careful thinking, but simply crimes of opportunity.

The attacker in the situation above may have been in line behind her in the coffee shop and noticed a $100 bill in her wallet, and taken the chance to follow her.  He may have just been a normal guy walking to his own car when he had a desperate feeling that he could get something from her.  Sometimes, the criminals will ignore any evidence of misinformation you provide, or maybe they’ve cased your car before and seen through your deception.

Sometimes, you just have to fight.  Or at least look like you’re ready for a fight.

Many will advise keeping some kind of weapon in the purse, and it’s hard to deny that this would be a good idea, but I would adovcate that, if not well trained in the use of a knife, pepper spray, a pistol, or whatver weapon might make sense for a young lady to carry, that weapon will be useless.  It might also function as a distraction – it’s mere existance forcing the attacked person to spend valuable reaction time digging around for the weapon instead of running, adopting a defensive posture, striking back, finding some other form of help, or doing almost anything else that may be more productive in helping the situation.

Instead, the simple act of looking ready for a fight is good enough.  Stand up straighter when you walk, turn your head when you look, not just your eyes.  Proactively say hi to people on the street to indicate that you notice them, as this can unnerve criminals who are doing their best to avoid notice.

Remember that if the need arises to defend yourself, it is nearly impossible to do so without a free hand.  If you carry a purse, consider keeping your hand inside it as you walk, not fishing for anything, but as if you’re holding onto something.  The fear of the unknown weapon in your hand may do enough to scare someone off.

Anyone, female or not, would also do well to consider what kinds of objects that you keep on your person and how they may be used as a weapon.  Pocket knives are an obvious choice, but making a fist around your car keys creates a deadly combination of striking and slashing weapons that can do serious damage.  Aerosol deodorant or hair spray is not a great choice, but it can certainly burn the eyes of an attacker if you get lucky.  Using the small, rounded edge of a hairbrush as a striking tool can be helpful to those who don’t have a lot of experience using their fists to punch, and it will likely cause more damage if you don’t already have any martial arts training.

Before exiting the stairwell or elevator, this young women should have had her keys ready in her dominant hand, with the key poking out through her middle and index finger, her hand in a fist.  Even with an improper strike, this will cause damage to any attacker.  That’s a nice easy weapon to carry that will do the damage, doesn’t require specific training, and will help you stay safe out there in the big bad city. And for those of us with “electronic key bobs”, consider investing in some sharp jewelry/bottle-opener thingy’s to add to the key ring. Also, never forget your extended thumb forward when making a fist as this can be devastating to an eye, a throat, even a kidney. Then again, there is this.

  The post Never Be Situation Unaware appeared first on The Prepper Journal.

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[astraldragons]

You wrote tiny summoner story for Fire Emblem Heroes?! That sounds great! Can I see? Will you post it please?

1. Oh yes I did

2. Thank~

3. Here you go!

“Hello? Are you okay?”

“…Oh dear. Did I perform the ritual wrong…? I was sure that I had it right, according to those old tomes…”

“Ggh, please wake up-!”

“Ah!”

–

You blink groggily, squinting in confusion. You feel as though you had just been hit by a truck, and, to make matters worse, everything around you is dark.Disoriented, you uncertainly shift and force yourself to sit up. The hood covering your face- ah, that’s why everything had been so dark- falls back. The sudden bright light of the outdoors assaults your face, causing you to groan in dismay as you cover your face.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re awake-! You had me worried there!”

You frown in confusion, still unable to process exactly where you are, or why you have on some kind of hooded cloak, before squinting and glancing towards the sound of the unfamiliar voice.

Your eyes rest on a massive… Boot?With a barely-audible gulp, your wide-eyed gaze slowly travels up, and up, and up…Peering at you with bright, amber eyes- amber?- is…No.No, no. That can’t be right.

But it looks very much like a giant, twenty-ish year old girl.

Huh. I don’t remember today being wisdom tooth extraction day, but the gas must’ve done a number on me.

She’s quite pretty, really. Her hair is red like an autumn leaf, and her- seemingly very concerned- eyes are the color of liquid amber. She’s dressed in a cloak, white as the new-fallen snow, and also appears to be wearing shining, golden armor.And she is very, very tall. She’s crouching down, her leather gloves resting on her knees, and yet she still towers over you.Judging from her gloves… You’re likely only as tall as her index finger.

Yup. Gotta be the laughing gas. They probably gave me too much…

“U-um,” you stammer, scooting backwards a bit. “…Hhhhiiii?”The girl pauses, blinking in surprise.And then she clears her throat, still looking to be rather confused. “A-ahem! Oh, Great Hero from another world! Thou hast come so far to fulfill your role in our legend!”Taken aback by her sudden speech, you can only watch in sheer, confused fascination as she plunges into what appears to be a very well-rehearsed monologue.“For our kingdom stands on the very brink of ruin,” she continues, although her tone is wavering. “And thou… Um. And thou…”You jerk in surprise as she lets out a loud noise of frustration. Her brows are furrowed as she peers down at you, clearly aggravated.“Agh… Are… Are you really our Great Hero…? You, erm. You don’t exactly look like the thee-and-thou type. Or, um. Very heroic. No offense.”You can feel a frown forming on your face. Of course you didn’t look like the heroic or majestic type! What does this lady even want from you, anyways?However, instead of chewing her out, you pause. No, you had other questions, far more pressing ones, on your mind.“E-excuse me,” you pipe up uncertainly. “I… Where am I? How did I even get here?”Her brows furrow even further, tilting her head to the side a bit. “U-um. Well, fair enough. You’re in-”“FOUND YOU!”The girl makes a rather undignified ‘eep’ at the deep, rather loud voice, her head jerking to glance behind her, out of your range of sight.“Ah-! Drat, how did one of these Emblians get here already?!” Her head turns quickly back to you, her amber eyes burning fiercely. “You stay put! I’ll take care of him, somehow!”You’re left to gape in confusion as the girl bolts to her feet and runs, her footsteps shaking the earth beneath you. Now that she’s no longer taking up most of your vision, you can see your surroundings a little better.You appear to be sitting on some kind of stone- marble, perhaps?- path, surrounded by grass. In the distance looms an enormous structure. It reminds you of those old pictures of Grecian architecture in your history textbook, but in person, it seems so much more… Grand. Intimidating.

Well, it might just be more intimidating since you’re currently about only three inches tall, but still.

And. Um. Are those clouds wrapped around the building? And covering patches of the ground?

You are very high on laughing gas, apparently.

Out in front of the huge building, the girl from earlier stands tall, her back to you. An axe is clutched in her hands, the handle easily as long as her arm. The blade is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. It’s beautiful, just like its wielder; shining white- is that pure platinum?- and gilded with gold swirls. And now you can see the source of the scary-villain-from-a-Disney-movie voice. His face is almost completely masked by his brown-and-gold helmet, and he’s covered with armor. A gold-scaled chestplate, feathered shoulderpads, metal-tipped boots, a forest-green cloak…And, in his gloved hands, is a green-hilted axe. It’s not as long as the girl’s axe, but it definitely looks heavier and. Well. More capable of doing severe damage.

The two square up, the smaller girl circling the bigger man warily.Your breath catches in your throat as she suddenly darts forward- good god, she’s fast- and strikes him square in the chest with her axe’s blade.You’re almost tempted to cheer… and then the mystery man strikes back. A blow from his heavy axe sends the girl flying backwards, a pained cry escaping her lips.

You’re not sure exactly when the scream leaves your throat. But you’re screaming, and you’re yelling for her to get up, that you can do it! Go get him!At first, you’re not sure she can even hear you. The man is approaching her quickly, his axe raised high to finish the job.

And then you see her face, half-tilted towards you.

There’s a fiery glint in the eye that you can see.

With a shocking display of speed, the girl lunges forward, her axe firmly in her grasp once more.

SMACK!

The girl stumbles.The man crumples.

And then, with a simple ‘poof!’, the man is gone in a puff of smoke.

You can only stare in startled fascination as the girl, swaying unsteadily on her feet, hesitantly makes her way over to you.And then she plunks down, nearly knocking you over as the impact of her knees hitting the path causes the ground to shake.She peers down at you incredulously. And then she weakly smiles, her breaths coming out as shallow pants.“…Whew. That takes care of him!”And then she pauses.“…I never did properly introduce myself, did I? My name’s Anna. I’m the commander of the Order of Heroes!”She pauses again before hesitantly moving her hand towards you. You flinch, but then realize that she’s extending her index finger, an expectant look on her face.…Does she want me to shake it?Assuming that, yes, that’s probably what she’s going for, you grasp her leather-gloved finger in your hands- since when did I have plum-colored gloves?- and use your arms to give it a firm shake. “And I’m Sam.” You pause. “Commander of… um. Nothing?”Her eyes go wide before she bursts out laughing, clearly not expecting your comment. Once she finishes, she clears her throat. “We, the Order, believe that Heroes should live free,” she explains. “Our enemies, however, enslave them- the fiends. This realm has gateways to the worlds where Heroes come from. The Emblian Empire, you see, invades these worlds and binds their Heroes to service. We fight for their freedom!” She pauses, her smile slowly turning into a frown. “That soldier was from the Emblian Empire, which will soon invade our neighboring kingdom, Askr. I was desperate for help, so I performed a summoning ceremony. And… you just appeared out of nowhere.”The girl, Anna, bites her lip uncertainly. “I summoned you here with the divine Breidablik. That’s the name of this relic I’ve brought.” She hesitates before pulling out a strange-looking device, one that looks almost like a white… gun? Gilded with intricate, golden patterns. For some odd reason, it occurs to you that, if a gun… blaster, thing, and a book could have a love-child, this would probably be it. “It fires something out of it, according to legend,” she continues. “But Breidablik doesn’t look like any bow I’ve ever seen.”For a second, you almost consider telling her your gun-and-book theory, but you refrain, opting to let her finish speaking.“The legend also calls it ‘the true key’, which, if raised high, will summon the Great Hero who can fire it. And… Well, that’s what I did. And now you’re here. Um. I don’t… I don’t think I messed up the ritual? I’m almost certain that I got it right, but you’re a little… Er. On the small side.”You frown and cross your arms, still rather confused.This is. Kind of feeling less and less like a drug-induced hallucination.“I, um,” she stammers quickly. “I was going to say that this is all yours? It’s a little big, but maybe-”As she shifts the Breidablik closer to you, it suddenly begins to glow an ethereal white. Anna lets out a startled noise as the relic is yanked from her hands by an unseen force, and the white light around the contraption begins to glow even brighter, surrounded by an orb of light.The orb flickers before quickly shrinking down, not stopping until it’s proportionate to your size, and floating down to rest in front of you.

Your heart nearly stops.With a quiet exhale, your fingers brush against the Breidablik…And you pick it up.It fits right in your hands, as though it were made just for you. A chill runs down your spine.You tilt your head back to look up at Anna for confirmation of what just happened- and, judging from the way her jaw is dropped and her mouth is gaping in shock, yes, yes the Breidablik had just shrunken down to accommodate your height.“Well,” she starts slowly, making a popping noise with her lip. “…I suppose that’s that! It’s. Well. All yours, now. And hopefully you can figure out how to-”“THERE SHE IS! GET HER!”“Oh hell,” Anna hisses, turning her head sharply to glance behind herself once more. “More of those Emblian soldiers…! I can’t beat them all by myself, especially not in this condition… And… Well. You’re not exactly equipped to help me.”A conflicted look crosses her face. “I’m… not sure if… Erm. We have to run, Sam. We can’t let them get their hands on you, or the Breidablik!”

‘I’m not sure if’ what?

If she can outrun them?

If she can’t outrun them, we’re both as good as dead. As much as I joke about longing for the sweet embrace of death, I’m not ready to go down. Not like this. And Anna doesn’t deserve to die.Biting your lip in concern, you almost don’t notice the sensation of the Breidablik growing warmer in your hands until Anna lets out a sharp gasp.“What- What’s that?!”Your eyes widen, quickly looking down at the Breidablik. It’s glowing once more, but this time, it’s glowing… silver?

The light grows brighter and brighter, until you can’t even bear to look at it anymore.

SHING!You gasp as the Breidablik launches out a glorious, blazing light into the air. And as the ball of light dips back towards the ground, you can see it taking shape into the form of a person.

Softly, the pointed tips of his boots meet the earth, and then his knees. Everything about the kneeling man just screams elegance.And then his eyelids flutter open, chocolate-brown eyes looking around uncertainly before locking onto you.“Ah-! You… You summoned me…?”Anna starts in surprise, quickly getting to her feet. “H-how’d you do that?! You summoned a Hero, Sam!”The man kneeling before you blinks, glancing up at Anna curiously before rising to a stand. Now both of them are looming around you, but, from what you can tell, the man is quite a bit taller than Anna. The man hesitates before returning his gaze to you. A wry smile tugs at the corner of his lips.“Well… You’re a bit small for a summoner, but I shall follow you, regardless. I am Virion, the finest archer of the fairest of realms. Delighted to be of service, my liege.”With that, Virion dips into a bow before straightening back up.

For probably the millionth time today, you find yourself rather stunned.“I-I’m Sam,” you stammer, gulping and tilting your head back even further just to try and look up at the two giants’ faces.Did he seriously just call me his liege.Anna still looks blown away at what had just happened, so at least you’re not alone.“You… You just picked up Breidablik and you’re already able to use it!” Anna exclaims. She pauses, mouth still gaping, before her eyes slowly drift to the side. She closes her mouth and frowns. “A-ah… But there’s no time to chat now. This… ‘Virion’ and I need to get to fighting.”

–

When the two Heroes march back over to you, Anna looks even more drained than before, but a smile tugs at her lips. “Those two are taken care of… And it’s all thanks to you, Sam.”You blink in surprise at her words before speaking up, still a little startled as the two kneel to the ground to hear you better. “W-well, it was you guys who did all the fighting, while I just, um. Sat here.”Anna quickly shakes her head. “If you hadn’t summoned Virion here, you and I would both have been done for. Why, none of us in the Order of Heroes can actually summon Heroes ourselves. But now we have you!” Her smile grows into a grin. “Ha! I should’ve never doubted for a second that you were the Great Hero. And with your help, we can save our kingdom!”She pauses before straightening a little, her eyes gleaming with that familiar fire once more. “Our order is small, dear summoner, but welcome to our ranks. Please, help us find more Heroes to assist us. I understand that it is a daunting task, especially with your current, er, stature, but… Now that you’re here, we have a chance. And with that small chance, we can win our fight against the Empire. I just know it, Sam.”Virion eyes Anna, nodding along with her speech, before smiling and looking down at you warmly.“I just arrived, so I haven’t much of a clue as to what’s going on… But you can count me in. I shall fight under your command, Sam. And Anna, I have seen your prowess on the battlefield firsthand. It shall be an honor to serve alongside you.”As you look up at the two smiling warriors, a part of you wants to shrink away even further, out of sight. You’re just an average person, not some kind of military tactician or ‘Great Hero’ or whatnot. You don’t know if you can help to fight a war.

But another part of you feels something… blossoming.The desire to help Anna and the Order is a strong one, even if you don’t know what’s going on. But you figure that, if the magical relic chose you, then heck, why not fulfill your destiny? You can be just like a bunch of other awesome movie protagonists, like the kids from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Or like Eragon, from Eragon. Bilbo Baggins from The Hobbit. The list goes on and on.And now… maybe that list of cool, destiny-driven heroes now includes you, small as you are.

After all… it can’t hurt to try.

“Count me in.”

[smoothshift]

My Junkyard Mustang Project: A Story of Regret and Fun via /r/cars

My Junkyard Mustang Project: A Story of Regret and Fun

I've seen people post pictures of their new projects, so I figured I'd post pictures of mine along with it's ridiculous story about terrible luck and people from the car community coming together.

TLDR at the end for those who (understandably) don't wanna read a super long story.

In May of this year, I made a terrible/amazing decision. I bought a '99 Mustang GT automatic convertible that (barely) ran from a Pick N Pull for $1,000. It ran and drove from the yard, however not quite as well as I thought. http://ift.tt/2Epnx67 (picture from the lot)

I thought she was beautiful, except that the convertible top's plastic vinyl window was so dirty that it was impossible to see out of, even after washing it dozens of times.

Being an enthusiast who hadn't had a project before, I was super excited to start doing mods immediately and getting the car into better shape. Then, about two days in, a rod came a-knocking on the engine. I realized I would have to put in a new one, and the next day found that a shift solenoid in the auto transmission had blown out and that there was metal in the pan.

I figured that since I had wanted to at some point, there would be no better time to swap the car's transmission to a manual than when the transmission would have to be removed anyways.

$1,200 later, a fresh 4.6 and TR3650 were sitting in my (parents) driveway, and my car was thrown on jack stands to start this project. http://ift.tt/2FhnDOl

I had a family friend/mechanic help me with the project, and although he was charging me next to nothing and I was paying him what I could, he had to work 7 days a week to support his household and I ran out of money once the old engine and trans were both out. At this point, the car begins to sit for a few weeks, as I had nowhere near enough knowledge or skill to reinstall an engine and transmission.

At this same point, during this limbo, I rode with my friend to a car meet. He decided to meet up with some friends in a little group on the way so that they can all drive together to the meet. One of those friends, some guy named Frank, also had a sn95 mustang, so I introduced myself and followed him on instagram. He had a really cool car he called the "stealth mare" and I loved what he had done with it. Anyways, moving on.

A couple weeks later, I was not sure what to do to keep this build moving. I couldn't afford a "real" mechanic or a shop, and I couldn't do the project myself even though I had basically all the tools. Out of sheer desperation, I sent this Frank guy a DM hoping he could help me. He was super open to giving me a hand on the project (more accurately me giving him a hand since he actually knew what he was doing, but I digress) and a day or two later we got to work. Even when I offered to pay him when I could, he was super nice and refused to take some money for helping me.

Here's a snazzy little timelapse of us once we finally got to the point of mounting the engine/trans into the car. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da_QlJqPoYg

After around a month's worth of weekends, we finally got everything done. However, I had gotten some misinformation and Ford is evil. I thought that the car would be completely unable to start with the auto trans' computer, and had bought an ECU from Pick N Pull which I had installed. Thus, the car wouldn't start. I loaded the car up on a tow truck and sent it to a dealership to reset the evil PATS anti-theft system (because I didn't know most locksmiths could do it).

After 4 days of waiting, they said the car still wouldn't start even though the PATS was reset. There was also a decent exhaust leak from a missing nut, you'll understand why I'm saying that soon enough. I got the car towed back to my house in defeat. They told me the car would crank but not start. I was heartbroken, being so close yet so far. After around a day of it sitting on my driveway once again, I dejectedly got into the car because at that point I at least wanted to hear the car crank after all the work I had put in.

However, everything in the car just sounded off. Electronics weren't quite right, and the car didn't do squat when I turned the key. It seemed to me that after sitting for 2-3 months, the battery was out of wack. I took it over to my auto parts store (where it had a warranty, thank God) to get it tested. They gave it back to me and said it tested fine and charged right up. I threw it back into the car, still no dice. I thought something was still wrong, so I took the battery out of my Grandma's Mercury Sable (Basically a rebadged Ford Taurus) and shoved it under the hood. After so much work, I was just desperate to hear the car crank. However, I got a lot more than a crank when I turned the key. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCxWh017G4Q

I remember literally shedding a few tears of joy. I texted Frank about our little victory, and he came right by to see our project finally roar to life. To be honest, I wish I could have kept the exhaust leak a little bit because the sound was fantastic.

Unfortunately, it wasn't all that easy after that. Time for less pictures and more problems.

I took the car for a test drive, and it drove great. Except that shifting into reverse was a nightmare. Grinding non-stop and sometimes it just refused to let me shift into reverse. After driving it around for a couple days, fixing the exhaust leak, and getting the required paperwork for move permits (bought the car with absolutely no title) to drive it on the road, I had 2 days to decide whether or not the car would be ready for me to drive it to University, as I would be moving to Riverside from the San Francisco area to start classes.

Sadly, the next day it refused to go into any gear without a battle, and I realized the car wasn't in the mechanical shape to drive 400 miles to school, or to survive in its current state after that. I had to make the super tough decision to leave my newly running car at home to be checked out in my absence by, dun dun dun....a shop.

Sure enough, the transmission that I had gotten from the wrecking yard was trash, the clutch I ordered for it was all messed up, and the valve covers were leaking oil from a crack. I let them go ahead and change out the transmission (family friends, gave me incredibly good rates and did a perfectly fine job), and try to put everything back together.

Then came the issue of timing. After being at school for around a month, the car was almost back together (it took them a while because they were doing it after hours for insanely cheap for me). I wanted to bring the car to Riverside, to finally drive my baby. I was flying home on a Friday, and on the Monday before they found that after trying to patch one of the cracks that was leaking oil, the entire valve cover needed to be replaced. I ordered one from a dealership in my area that could be picked up Wednesday, and I was hoping it would come in in time. Sure enough, it came Wednesday....and was the wrong bolt pattern. Damnit Ford.

I decided then to instead order aftermarket valve covers from Trickflow (10/10 would recommend BTW), as they were the correct pattern, and were a pair of aluminum covers instead of ugly plastic. These looked way nicer and cost the same as a single cover straight from Ford. I ordered them on whatever the fastest shipping method was for an extra $50, and they were set to arrive the same Friday I flew in.

My goal, if everything went perfectly, was to get the new valve covers and get them installed Friday, use Saturday and Sunday to stress test the living hell out out of the car to make sure it would survive the drive down to SoCal, and then Monday to take it to my school in Riverside.

Somehow, everything almost went perfectly according to plan. Friday night, I picked up the car in perfect running condition, and proceeded to put ~300 miles on it over the weekend before I was to drive it 400 more to school.

I did mention that I got the car with no title. This meant that to get plates/a title, the car needed to pass a brake/light inspection and a smog test. The Brake and Light was done, but the o2 sensors didn't seem to have all their information dialed in before leaving Monday. However, my 60 day failed smog pass (needed to drive the car on the roads) was about to expire at that point, since I got it before the first manual transmission gave up on life. I thus decided to get the car smogged on the trip back to school, approximately an hour's drive away.

A side note, the car's air conditioning wasn't running at the time due to electrical adaptation issues with the new computer. The day climbed to over 100 degrees, and after my stop for my smog check (which I passed) I began to head towards my school.

This was also my first manual car, so I wasn't used to operating a clutch. This meant not only that I was bad at it, but that my leg was not used to the workout that is an SN95 clutch over long drives. I got on the freeway to sit in agonizing, blisteringly hot LA traffic for about 15 minutes before I realized that I wouldn't survive if I tried to do this all the way home. Thus, I got off the freeway and tried to used main roads to make my way to school. I knew it would turn an hour into probably two, but there was little traffic (all based on stop lights, so tolerable for a new clutch operator) and it was much less hot/stressful as the car was actually moving.

Then things went wrong yet again. About 45 minutes (in that traffic) from my school, I was driving through a city called Azusa, when I heard a super loud hissing sound and saw yellowish smoke billowing into the car's cabin. I assumed my car was overheating and that it was coolant, and I thus pulled over and called trusty AAA to come take my car. I wanted to check the cooling system and all, but I had no tools/method at school and thus had a shop pressure test the system to find that everything was alright. In reality, I had melted a piece of a rubber air conditioning line, shooting Freon everywhere. Thankfully, no big issues, got the car back on the road.

Then, after a lot of time and money spent on some mods and cleanup, the car began to take shape into what it is today. I'm super happy with it, and even though it was more painful and expensive than I ever could have imagined, I wouldn't have had it any other way. I met so many new friends from the car, learned so much about how to work on cars, and now have a project I'm proud of.

Here's the car as it sits now:

http://ift.tt/2EsmdPX http://ift.tt/2FmdT5k http://ift.tt/2Eqx6BH http://ift.tt/2Fn1wWH

TLDR: Bought a junkyard mustang for a grand, the engine and trans died immediately after, swapped it to a manual and put in a new engine with help from the car community in my area, and now have a dope project that's accumulated around 5K miles in the past 3 months with no issues.

[lbcybersecurity]

toolsmith #129 – DFIR Redefined: Deeper Functionality for Investigators with R – Part 2

You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data. ~Daniel Keys Moran

Here we resume our discussion of DFIR Redefined: Deeper Functionality for Investigators with R as begun in Part 1. First, now that my presentation season has wrapped up, I've posted the related material on the Github for this content. I've specifically posted the most recent version as presented at SecureWorld Seattle, which included Eric Kapfhammer's contributions and a bit of his forward thinking for next steps in this approach. When we left off last month I parted company with you in the middle of an explanation of analysis of emotional valence, or the "the intrinsic attractiveness (positive valence) or averseness (negative valence) of an event, object, or situation", using R and the Twitter API. It's probably worth your time to go back and refresh with the end of Part 1. Our last discussion point was specific to the popularity of negative tweets versus positive tweets with a cluster of emotionally neutral retweets, two positive retweets, and a load of negative retweets. This type of analysis can quickly give us better understanding of an attacker collective's sentiment, particularly where the collective is vocal via social media. Teeing off the popularity of negative versus positive sentiment, we can assess the actual words fueling such sentiment analysis. It doesn't take us much R code to achieve our goal using the apply family of functions. The likes of apply, lapply, and sapply allow you to manipulate slices of data from matrices, arrays, lists and data frames in a repetitive way without having to use loops. We use code here directly from Michael Levy, Social Scientist, and his Playing with Twitter Data post.

polWordTables =    sapply(pol, function(p) {     words = c(positiveWords = paste(p[[1]]$pos.words[[1]], collapse = ' '),                negativeWords = paste(p[[1]]$neg.words[[1]], collapse = ' '))     gsub('-', '', words)  # Get rid of nothing found's "-"   }) %>%   apply(1, paste, collapse = ' ') %>%    stripWhitespace() %>%    strsplit(' ') %>%   sapply(table) par(mfrow = c(1, 2)) invisible(   lapply(1:2, function(i) {     dotchart(sort(polWordTables[[i]]), cex = .5)     mtext(names(polWordTables)[i])   }))

The result is a tidy visual representation of exactly what we learned at the end of Part 1, results as noted in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Positive vs negative words

Content including words such as killed, dangerous, infected, and attacks are definitely more interesting to readers than words such as good and clean. Sentiment like this could definitely be used to assess potential attacker outcomes and behaviors just prior, or in the midst of an attack, particularly in DDoS scenarios. Couple sentiment analysis with the ability to visualize networks of retweets and mentions, and you could zoom in on potential leaders or organizers. The larger the network node, the more retweets, as seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Who is retweeting who?

Remember our initial premise, as described in Part 1, was that attacker groups often use associated hashtags and handles, and the minions that want to be "part of" often retweet and use the hashtag(s). Individual attackers either freely give themselves away, or often become easily identifiable or associated, via Twitter. Note that our dominant retweets are for @joe4security, @HackRead,  @defendmalware (not actual attackers, but bloggers talking about attacks, used here for example's sake). Figure 3 shows us who is mentioning who.

Figure 3: Who is mentioning who?

Note that @defendmalware mentions @HackRead. If these were actual attackers it would not be unreasonable to imagine a possible relationship between Twitter accounts that are actively retweeting and mentioning each other before or during an attack. Now let's assume @HackRead might be a possible suspect and you'd like to learn a bit more about possible additional suspects. In reality @HackRead HQ is in Milan, Italy. Perhaps Milan then might be a location for other attackers. I can feed  in Twittter handles from my retweet and mentions network above, query the Twitter API with very specific geocode, and lock it within five miles of the center of Milan. The results are immediate per Figure 4.

Figure 4: GeoLocation code and results

Obviously, as these Twitter accounts aren't actual attackers, their retweets aren't actually pertinent to our presumed attack scenario, but they definitely retweeted @computerweekly (seen in retweets and mentions) from within five miles of the center of Milan. If @HackRead were the leader of an organization, and we believed that associates were assumed to be within geographical proximity, geolocation via the Twitter API could be quite useful. Again, these are all used as thematic examples, no actual attacks should be related to any of these accounts in any way.

With the abundance of data, and often subjective or biased analysis, there are occasions where a quick, authoritative decision can be quite beneficial. Fast-and-frugal trees (FFTs) to the rescue. FFTs are simple algorithms that facilitate efficient and accurate decisions based on limited information. Nathaniel D. Phillips, PhD created FFTrees for R to allow anyone to easily create, visualize and evaluate FFTs. Malcolm Gladwell has said that "we are suspicious of rapid cognition. We live in a world that assumes that the quality of a decision is directly related to the time and effort that went into making it.” FFTs, and decision trees at large, counter that premise and aid in the timely, efficient processing of data with the intent of a quick but sound decision. As with so much of information security, there is often a direct correlation with medical, psychological, and social sciences, and the use of FFTs is no different. Often, predictive analysis is conducted with logistic regression, used to "describe data and to explain the relationship between one dependent binary variable and one or more nominal, ordinal, interval or ratio-level independent variables." Would you prefer logistic regression or FFTs?

Figure 5: Thanks, I'll take FFTs

Here's a text book information security scenario, often rife with subjectivity and bias. After a breach, and subsequent third party risk assessment that generated a ton of CVSS data, make a fast decision about what treatments to apply first. Because everyone loves CVSS.

Figure 6: CVSS meh

Nothing like a massive table, scored by base, impact, exploitability, temporal, environmental, modified impact, and overall scores, all assessed by a third party assessor who may not fully understand the complexities or nuances of your environment. Let's say our esteemed assessor has decided that there are 683 total findings, of which 444 are non-critical and 239 are critical. Will FFTrees agree? Nay! First, a wee bit of R code.

library("FFTrees") cvss cvss.fft plot(cvss.fft, what = "cues") plot(cvss.fft,      main = "CVSS FFT",      decision.names = c("Non-Critical", "Critical"))

Guess what, the model landed right on impact and exploitability as the most important inputs, and not just because it's logically so, but because of their position when assessed for where they fall in the area under the curve (AUC), where the specific curve is the receiver operating characteristic (ROC). The ROC is a "graphical plot that illustrates the diagnostic ability of a binary classifier system as its discrimination threshold is varied." As for the AUC, accuracy is measured by the area under the ROC curve where an area of 1 represents a perfect test and an area of .5 represents a worthless test. Simply, the closer to 1, the better. For this model and data, impact and exploitability are the most accurate as seen in Figure 7.

Figure 7: Cue rankings prefer impact and exploitability

The fast and frugal tree made its decision where impact and exploitability with scores equal or less than 2 were non-critical and exploitability greater than 2 was labeled critical, as seen in Figure 8.

Figure 8: The FFT decides

Ah hah! Our FFT sees things differently than our assessor. With a 93% average for performance fitting (this is good), our tree, making decisions on impact and exploitability, decides that there are 444 non-critical findings and 222 critical findings, a 17 point differential from our assessor. Can we all agree that mitigating and remediating critical findings can be an expensive proposition? If you, with just a modicum of data science, can make an authoritative decision that saves you time and money without adversely impacting your security posture, would you count it as a win? Yes, that was rhetorical. ->->

Note that the FFTrees function automatically builds several versions of the same general tree that make different error trade-offs with variations in performance fitting and false positives. This gives you the option to test variables and make potentially even more informed decisions within the construct of one model. Ultimately, fast frugal trees make very fast decisions on 1 to 5 pieces of information and ignore all other information. In other words, "FFTrees are noncompensatory, once they make a decision based on a few pieces of information, no additional information changes the decision."

Finally, let's take a look at monitoring user logon anomalies in high volume environments with Time Series Regression (TSR). Much of this work comes courtesy of Eric Kapfhammer, our lead data scientist on our Microsoft Windows and Devices Group Blue Team. The ideal Windows Event ID for such activity is clearly 4624: an account was successfully logged on. This event is typically one of the top 5 events in terms of volume in most environments, and has multiple type codes including Network, Service, and RemoteInteractive.

User accounts will begin to show patterns over time, in aggregate, including:

Seasonality: day of week, patch cycles, 

Trend: volume of logons increasing/decreasing over time

Noise: randomness

You could look at 4624 with a Z-score model, which sets a threshold based on the number of standard deviations away from an average count over a given period of time, but this is a fairly simple model. The higher the value, the greater the degree of “anomalousness”.

Preferably, via Time Series Regression (TSR), your feature set is more rich:

Statistical method for predicting a future response based on the response history (known as autoregressive dynamics) and the transfer of dynamics from relevant predictors

Understand and predict the behavior of dynamic systems from experimental or observational data

Commonly used for modeling and forecasting of economic, financial and biological systems

How to spot the anomaly in a sea of logon data?

“Triple Exponential Smoothing (Holt-Winters method) is one of many algorithms used to forecast data points in a series, provided that the series is “seasonal”, i.e. repetitive over some period.”

Winters improved on Holts double exponential smoothing by adding seasonality in 1960 and published Forecasting sales by exponentially weighted moving averages 

Let's imagine our user, DARPA-549521, in the SUPERSECURE domain, with 90 days of aggregate 4624 Type 10 events by day.

Figure 9: User logon data

With 210 line of R, including comments, log read, file output, and graphing we can visualize and alert on DARPA-549521's data as seen in Figure 10. 

Figure 10: User behavior outside the confidence interval

We can detect when a user’s account exhibits  changes in their seasonality as it relates to a confidence interval established (learned) over time. In this case, on 27 AUG 2017, the user topped her threshold of 19 logons thus triggering an exception. Now imagine using this model to spot anomalous user behavior across all users and you get a good feel for the model's power. Eric points out that there are, of course, additional options for modeling including:

Seasonal and Trend Decomposition using Loess (STL)

Handles any type of seasonality ~ can change over time

Smoothness of the trend-cycle can also be controlled by the user

Robust to outliers

Classification and Regression Trees (CART)

Supervised learning approach: teach trees to classify anomaly / non-anomaly

Unsupervised learning approach: focus on top-day hold-out and error check

Neural Networks

LSTM / Multiple time series in combination

These are powerful next steps in your capabilities, I want you to be brave, be creative, go forth and add elements of data science and visualization to your practice. R and Python are well supported and broadly used for this mission and can definitely help you detect attackers faster, contain incidents more rapidly, and enhance your in-house detection and remediation mechanisms. All the code as I can share is here; sorry, I can only share the TSR example without the source. All the best in your endeavors! Cheers...until next time.

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