#modify nerf

[befuddled-calico-whump]

Joy reacting Arabella to build a tiny gun is so cute but also concerning

(several days later)

[krayt-girl-tail]

I was thinking of repainting one of my old nerf blasters a little bit to look more like the death trooper blaster because the cooked front end is cool, when I noticed the absolute dumbest shit going on here. This line of blasters already feature that fold-under shoulder stock, so why in the name of Jizz music does this one have an extra stock. What in the Bethesda gun design is going on here? Am I having the stronk?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Are the means of computation even seizable?

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PITTSBURGH in TOMORROW (May 15) at WHITE WHALE BOOKS, and in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE with BUNNIE HUANG. More tour dates (London, Manchester) here.

Something's very different in tech. Once upon a time, every bad choice by tech companies – taking away features, locking out mods or plugins, nerfing the API – was countered, nearly instantaneously, by someone writing a program that overrode that choice.

Bad clients would be muscled aside by third-party clients. Locked bootloaders would be hacked and replaced. Code that confirmed you were using OEM parts, consumables or adapters would be found and nuked from orbit. Weak APIs would be replaced with muscular, unofficial APIs built out of unstoppable scrapers running on headless machines in some data-center. Every time some tech company erected a 10-foot enshittifying fence, someone would show up with an 11-foot disenshittifying ladder.

Those 11-foot ladders represented the power of interoperability, the inescapable bounty of the Turing-complete, universal von Neumann machine, which, by definition, is capable of running every valid program. Specifically, they represented the power of adversarial interoperability – when someone modifies a technology against its manufacturer's wishes. Adversarial interoperability is the origin story of today's tech giants, from Microsoft to Apple to Google:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

But adversarial interop has been in steady decline for the past quarter-century. These big companies moved fast and broke things, but no one is returning the favor. If you ask the companies what changed, they'll just smirk and say that they're better at security than the incumbents they disrupted. The reason no one's hacked up a third-party iOS App Store is that Apple's security team is just so fucking 1337 that no one can break their shit.

I think this is nonsense. I think that what's really going on is that we've made it possible for companies to design their technologies in such a way that any attempt at adversarial interop is illegal.

"Anticircumvention" laws like Section 1201 of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act make bypassing any kind of digital lock (AKA "Digital Rights Management" or "DRM") very illegal. Under DMCA, just talking about how to remove a digital lock can land you in prison for 5 years. I tell the story of this law's passage in "Understood: Who Broke the Internet," my new podcast series for the CBC:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/08/who-broke-the-internet/#bruce-lehman

For a quarter century, tech companies have aggressively lobbied and litigated to expand the scope of anticircumvention laws. At the same time, companies have come up with a million ways to wrap their products in digital locks that are a crime to break.

Digital locks let Chamberlain, a garage-door opener monopolist block all third-party garage-door apps. Then, Chamberlain stuck ads in its app, so you have to watch an ad to open your garage-door:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Digital locks let John Deere block third-party repair of its tractors:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

And they let Apple block third-party repair of iPhones:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/22/apples-cement-overshoes/

These companies built 11-foot ladders to get over their competitors' 10-foot walls, and then they kicked the ladder away. Once they were secure atop their walls, they committed enshittifying sins their fallen adversaries could only dream of.

I've been campaigning to abolish anticircumvention laws for the past quarter-century, and I've noticed a curious pattern. Whenever these companies stand to lose their legal protections, they freak out and spend vast fortunes to keep those protections intact. That's weird, because it strongly implies that their locks don't work. A lock that works works, whether or not it's illegal to break that lock. The reason Signal encryption works is that it's working encryption. The legal status of breaking Signal's encryption has nothing to do with whether it works. If Signal's encryption was full of technical flaws but it was illegal to point those flaws out, you'd be crazy to trust Signal.

Signal does get involved in legal fights, of course, but the fights it gets into are ones that require Signal to introduce defects in its encryption – not fights over whether it is legal to disclose flaws in Signal or exploit them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/05/theyre-still-trying-to-ban-cryptography/

But tech companies that rely on digital locks manifestly act like their locks don't work and they know it. When the tech and content giants bullied the W3C into building DRM into 2 billion users' browsers, they categorically rejected any proposal to limit their ability to destroy the lives of people who broke that DRM, even if it was only to add accessibility or privacy to video:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

The thing is, if the lock works, you don't need the legal right to destroy the lives of people who find its flaws, because it works.

Do digital locks work? Can they work? I think the answer to both questions is a resounding no. The design theory of a digital lock is that I can provide you with an encrypted file that your computer has the keys to. Your computer will access those keys to decrypt or sign a file, but only under the circumstances that I have specified. Like, you can install an app when it comes from my app store, but not when it comes from a third party. Or you can play back a video in one kind of browser window, but not in another one. For this to work, your computer has to hide a cryptographic key from you, inside a device you own and control. As I pointed out more than a decade ago, this is a fool's errand:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

After all, you or I might not have the knowledge and resources to uncover the keys' hiding place, but someone does. Maybe that someone is a person looking to go into business selling your customers the disenshittifying plugin that unfucks the thing you deliberately broke. Maybe it's a hacker-tinkerer, pursuing an intellectual challenge. Maybe it's a bored grad student with a free weekend, an electron-tunneling microscope, and a seminar full of undergrads looking for a project.

The point is that hiding secrets in devices that belong to your adversaries is very bad security practice. No matter how good a bank safe is, the bank keeps it in its vault – not in the bank-robber's basement workshop.

For a hiding-secrets-in-your-adversaries'-device plan to work, the manufacturer has to make zero mistakes. The adversary – a competitor, a tinkerer, a grad student – only has to find one mistake and exploit it. This is a bedrock of security theory: attackers have an inescapable advantage.

So I think that DRM doesn't work. I think DRM is a legal construct, not a technical one. I think DRM is a kind of magic Saran Wrap that manufacturers can wrap around their products, and, in so doing, make it a literal jailable offense to use those products in otherwise legal ways that their shareholders don't like. As Jay Freeman put it, using DRM creates a new law called "Felony Contempt of Business Model." It's a law that has never been passed by any legislature, but is nevertheless enforceable.

In the 25 years I've been fighting anticircumvention laws, I've spoken to many government officials from all over the world about the opportunity that repealing their anticircumvention laws represents. After all, Apple makes $100b/year by gouging app makers for 30 cents on ever dollar. Allow your domestic tech sector to sell the tools to jailbreak iPhones and install third party app stores, and you can convert Apple's $100b/year to a $100m/year business for one of your own companies, and the other $999,900,000,000 will be returned to the world's iPhone owners as a consumer surplus.

But every time I pitched this, I got the same answer: "The US Trade Representative forced us to pass this law, and threatened us with tariffs if we didn't pass it." Happy Liberation Day, people – every country in the world is now liberated from the only reason to keep this stupid-ass law on their books:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/beauty-eh/#its-the-only-war-the-yankees-lost-except-for-vietnam-and-also-the-alamo-and-the-bay-of-ham

In light of the Trump tariffs, I've been making the global rounds again, making the case for an anticircumvention repeal:

https://www.ft.com/content/b882f3a7-f8c9-4247-9662-3494eb37c30b

One of the questions I've been getting repeatedly from policy wonks, activists and officials is, "Is it even possible to jailbreak modern devices?" They want to know if companies like Apple, Tesla, Google, Microsoft, and John Deere have created unbreakable digital locks. Obviously, this is an important question, because if these locks are impregnable, then getting rid of the law won't deliver the promised benefits.

It's true that there aren't as many jailbreaks as we used to see. When a big project like Nextcloud – which is staffed up with extremely accomplished and skilled engineers – gets screwed over by Google's app store, they issue a press-release, not a patch:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/nextcloud-accuses-google-of-big-tech-gatekeeping-over-android-app-permissions/

Perhaps that's because the tech staff at Nextcloud are no match for Google, not even with the attacker's advantage on their side.

But I don't think so. Here's why: we do still get jailbreaks and mods, but these almost exclusively come from anonymous tinkerers and hobbyists:

https://consumerrights.wiki/Mazda_DMCA_takedown_of_Open_Source_Home_Assistant_App

Or from pissed off teenagers:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/29/23378541/the-og-app-instagram-clone-pulled-from-app-store

These hacks are incredibly ambitious! How ambitious? How about a class break for every version of iOS as well as an unpatchable hardware attack on 8 years' worth of Apple bootloaders?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/25/mafia-logic/#sosumi

Now, maybe it's the case at all the world's best hackers are posting free code under pseudonyms. Maybe all the code wizards working for venture backed tech companies that stand to make millions through clever reverse engineering are just not as mad skilled as teenagers who want an ad-free Insta and that's why they've never replicated the feat.

Or maybe it's because teenagers and anonymous hackers are just about the only people willing to risk a $500,000 fine and 5-year prison sentence. In other words, maybe the thing that protects DRM is law, not code. After all, when Polish security researchers revealed the existence of secret digital locks that the train manufacturer Newag used to rip off train operators for millions of euros, Newag dragged them into court:

https://fsfe.org/news/2025/news-20250407-01.en.html

Tech companies are the most self-mythologizing industry on the planet, beating out even the pharma sector in boasting about their prowess and good corporate citizenship. They swear that they've made a functional digital lock…but they sure act like the only thing those locks do is let them sue people who reveal their workings.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/14/pregnable/#checkm8

[sharkwidow]

Nerf War | Avengers x Teenage reader!

✮⋆˙Summary: War broke out, and you were the culprit.

✮⋆˙Content Warning: Chaos, affection, and lots of foam darts.

✮⋆˙Word Count: 785

✮⋆˙Notes: The Avengers adore you... even if they don't easily admit it.

────୨ৎ────────୨ৎ────────୨ৎ───

Fury left you with them like you were a fragile box.

"Take care of her, she's useful. She's a spy. And yes, she's a teenager, but don't underestimate her."

He said it dryly, but the Avengers understood the subtext. You weren't just useful. You were important. You'd been through things no one should have to go through, and Fury, that grumpy old man with a hidden heart, trusted them to give you something you never had: a family.

And at first... it was weird. Tony called you "ninja girl," Natasha analyzed you like a mirror, Steve offered you food every five minutes, and Clint gave you training arrows. Even Wanda calmly taught you how to use your abilities, as if she wasn't worried about you accidentally melting a cup.

But today... today you weren't a spy. Today you were a bored teenager in a giant tower with superheroes too busy.

So you decided to unleash hell.

Colorful. Foam. Totally harmless.

The best hell.

You snuck through the halls, sliding as only you knew how, until you left a modified Nerf gun in the kitchen. On the table. It was pointed directly at Tony Stark.

"What the...?" he said when he saw it.

A note taped to the side read: "First to shoot wins. Begin!"

Tony looked up just as a foam dart hit him in the forehead.

"Was that you?!" he yelled, running after you.

And so the war began.

Steve showed up five minutes later with a shield converted into a barricade. Natasha had two Nerf guns and terrifying accuracy. Wanda levitated darts with her magic. Clint fired from the rooftop, and Peter Parker came swinging through the window with a backpack full of ammo.

Bruce refused to participate... until a dart hit him in the back. Then, the controlled version of the Hulk launched cushions like grenades.

You were laughing so hard you almost fell down the hallway as you dodged Tony's attacks and hid behind the couch.

"She started it!" Tony yelled, pointing at you.

"And she's going to win!" you screamed, launching a barrage of darts with lethal accuracy.

At some point, Steve tripped over a poorly placed shield, Natasha got caught in a net you'd set up as a trap, and Clint was left hanging from the ceiling light, laughing like a madman.

When Thor returned to the tower from another mission and saw the mess, he simply asked, "Is this a battle? Where's my Nerf hammer?"

And that's when the chaos doubled.

Darts were flying everywhere. Peter was screaming like it was a real war, you were using your training to disappear and attack from the shadows, and Tony was already planning to build an automatic turret to shoot him.

The chaos lasted almost two hours.

Two hours of laughter, screams, pillow fights, and hearts healing without saying a word.

When it was all over, you were on the floor, laughing, with Tony lying next to you, his hair covered in darts, and Wanda using her magic to remove the ones Clint had stuck in his face.

"You're dangerous, kid," Natasha said, sitting next to you.

"Thanks," you replied with a smirk.

Steve tossed you a water bottle.

"Good strategy, agent."

And for a moment, you felt... loved. Not for what you could do. Not for your training or your skills. But simply for being you.

An orphaned teenager who had started a Nerf war so she wouldn't feel alone.

And it had worked.

"Rematch tomorrow?" Peter asked hopefully.

"Get ready, I have better plans," you replied, and everyone laughed. Even Thor.

The Avengers—your Avengers—looked at you as if you were one of them. Because you already were. From the first foam dart.

[missmonstermel]

Some wild gear for Fati Boom!Boom! character for @neotropolisevent The captain of the feared, lovee and loathed band of space pirates the SPACE SHARKS! Thank you to @munkmarvelous for the bandolier/ suspender harness guidance. Light up skull is a casting from @skullerygram , I imagine that skull unit as a semi sentient creature that is so evil that it is fissile and has been harnessed as a power source for Fati's custom scorcher pistol. The pistol is a painted/ modified @nerf gun. The white skirt is made of cut plastic with shapes based on shark denticles. Fati Boom!Boom! got her name because of her love for explosives and you can see she carries a couple of mines on her belt. The large clawed weapon is a piece I made using @sendcutsend from aluminum, the claws can swivel open. Can't wait to wear everything together 👀👀👀👀

[shikai-the-storyteller]

Realm SMP - The nitty gritty

I listened to Tubbo's rundown of Realm's features in the hour before the server opened, so here's some quotes + timestamps for folks who want to know the nitty gritty details about Realm's functions, tools, weapons, features, and more.

7m - Tubbo says he does have a team he assembled now, and it's costing him "Quite a bit of money."

Tubbo: To put all this together, to assemble the team – 'cuz I have assembled a team for this now – it's costing me a bit of money out the bank. [...] I'm going VERY out of pocket on this project."

10m - He reached out to a lot of his connections from working on Tubnet and got a custom rendered poster commissioned to announce Realm's first event.

Because of his show starting in December, Tubbo was worried he might not be able to give Realm SMP his full time, which is what prompted him to get a team.

13m 20s - The first event, Factions, is a long-form event, so even if a streamer isn't there on the event day (December 8) they can still play in the coming days. The factions won't be like more factions, MMO factions are different from Minecraft factions.

15m 30s - He has 3 events already planned - 2 for December, 1 in the new year

18m - Logs onto the Dev server

Tubbo: The Realm SMP is 100% vanilla, and while that is true in the sense that you can join the server using a vanilla client and it doesn't require any mods to play, there is some slight modifications within the vanilla game. Every single feature I've added to the server is to add to to vanilla features that already exist. It's not to take them away, it's not to make a different way of doing them, it's just to add more to the base game without destroying any already default Minecraft functionality.

20m - Shows off some weapons and tools

20m 50s - Tubbo says there's fancy leather which can be used to craft elytra.

Tubbo: Shoutout Philza! He's been on enough SMPs where he hasn't been able to get an elytra because the End is disabled. So there actually is a crafting recipe based on the elytra, but you have to unlock it based on skills.

21m 20s - Tool recap. Tool quality breakdown: terrible, shoddy, decent, good, great, flawless, masterful, fabled, and legendary. A terrible diamond sword would be worse than a masterful wooden sword.

23m - Skills recap. "Modifiers to my default player."

24m 30s - Skill point every time you level up a power level

32m - Going over custom things added to the server.

36m 30s - Mobs and hostile creatures will get stronger as players get stronger. Power scaling. Takes the highest level of the people in a group.

PVP and combat damage reduced to 10% when attacking with strong weapon.

38m 45s - No classes, wants everyone coming onto the server to be treated like an "average Joe" that can choose their own specifications.

Tubbo: I want them to kind of tailor their own custom class to themselves based on the types of specializations they pick in [different categories.

43m - Lives system clarification. Talks about death saving throws in DND. "If you die, it's equal to you failing a saving throw." If you lose all 3 lives, you'll be banned off the server for 24 hours, your stats are reset. "You are a new character, you are dead."

46m - Tubbo says he's cooking some lore for himself, but he's leaving thing open-ended so players on the server can tell the stories they want to make.

48m 30s - He scrapped the revive system in favor of the 24 hour ban

49m 30s - He encourages streamers to use Aypierre's translation thing for their streams and he's going to see if he can make a custom cheap version of a translator, but it might be a bit shoddy. "Obviously I'll speak and ask Quackity about stuff 'cuz he's the goat when it comes to stuff like that."

50m 30s - Banned items: mending books and mending enchants because it makes all the qualities of the crafts obsolete

51m 20s - Mob farms and other methods of automatically farming combat EXP are massively nerfed and do not work. "You cannot farm XP with farms." Mob farms are allowed, but they won't help much.

52m 30s - Trial chambers are enabled.

52m 50s - AFK farming skill XP is banned – not able to AFK fish or mine cobble gens (?).

54m 20s - He hasn't decided about Totems of Undying yet, but they may be necessary for custom boss fights and events. Totems of Undying don't work like people expect.

55m 20s - He just told members of the server not to be dicks.

55m 45s - Tubbo reiterates that he'll keep working on Realms as long as people want to play on it.

56m 45s - They started development for this server literally 5 days ago, and Tubbo reiterates his appreciation for Tangofrags.

57m 30s - He wants Realms to have a vanilla feeling with a specialized twist.

58m - He wants to add more people in the future, and tells creators "If I didn't respond to your message it's because I forgot! Not because I hate you! Thank you!"

58m 30s - Tubbo says he's hoping to add more people during the second December event

59m 30s - Tubbo says they're a four man army, technically five counting the person who made the event poster.

[sigkinhater]

rushed bcz i have to go to my next class soon is this a good dogtreat

"i get too shy to follow people back sometimes. throw a rock at me if you want to be mutuals it'll probably work" i am too shy to ask someone if they want to be mutuals directly so i just interact with them a lot and pray they like talking to me enough to follow back... all my rocks r false rocks made of shockingly hard sand

unfortunately this does not work with me. the only time ill follow back without being held at gunpoint is if my friends start jokingly bothering someone who follows me and i feel bad about it AND i already consider them to pretty much be my mutual AND theyre niceys to me AND they give me a dogtreat (OR if i havent noticed that the person i just followed for mo4 art was already following me. this happens a lot)

[trudemaethien]

Kyrimorut

I’ve just done another reread/skim of the repcomm books for details of Kyrimorut for @ossidae-passeridae, who encouraged me to do a write up for reference. Some of these facts are explicitly stated, scattered throughout the series, and some are my own surmises. (My main conclusion is that KT considered architecture just about as carefully as the TCW creators did the GAR ranking system. lolsob)

So. In this essay I will

Kyrimorut, Kal Skirata’s refuge for his clone sons, was called a bastion, and frequently described in siege terms. It was also referred to as a homestead and a farmhouse.

“It was yaim—part barracks, part hotel, part married quarters, part farmhouse, the archetypal Mandalorian clan home.”

This stronghold was located in the heavily forested northern hemisphere of the planet Mandalore, a few hours flight north of Keldabe City, within 100 kilometers of a small town called Enceri, and just south of a lake. It boasted a main house and numerous outbuildings, including at least one medical laboratory, animal pens, and a hangar large enough for multiple craft.

Rav Bralor, another of the Cuy’val Dar, rebuilt it at Kal’s request during the war, and it was finished enough by a year in, to house some members of their group temporarily, but was still undergoing renovations up to the last moment before they moved in. She used droids to aid in the construction. The building was composed of brick, wood, stone, and rammed earth, and the (probably local, veshok) planks were joined with interlocking joints. The interior walls were plastered and painted, likely with naturally derived mineral paints; one room was mentioned to be “honey-colored.” The windows were narrow, described as arrow-slits, and the doors were unpowered hinged wooden slabs. The whole thing was large, and the rooms were characterized as airy and roomy at various points.

The layout seems to have been vaguely circular, or a circle of chained hubs, with a central karyai. The lobby was another hub, and there were both surface and underground passages connecting the hubs, radiating out like “the spokes of an eccentric wheel.” For this reason I think there were two floors in the main house with one above, the other underground. There was also a sheltered circular atrium off the main hub, with a roof that slid back, where they roasted meat.

The house had gutters and down-pipes to deal with snowmelt and rain, and given the nearby lake, they would have to have a good vapor barrier for the underground portion. Since the place was rural rather than urban, it was largely quiet, and the homestead's acoustics were such that sound carried well. This indicates to me that likely only the exterior walls were fortified of heavy stone and rammed earth; interior walls were more likely built of wood and plaster and easier to modify if they had some need. Power was unreliable in such a remote setting, so they used wood fires for heating and cooking; everything smelled of wood-smoke. The entire structure was designed to be unnoticeable from the air, and the clearing was not visible until the last moment upon aerial approach.

The karyai was the main living room. In one scene, Kad played on the floor with toy animals (nerf, bantha, shatual, nuna, jackrab, vhe’viin) Atin had carved from veshok wood, Wade Tay’haai played a purple-painted bes’bev (sharp flute), and Rav Bralor brought throat-searing tihaar for everyone. She lived on her own clan’s farm a few kilometers away, and had brought Yayax squad, who mostly stayed there, to visit Kyrimorut. They were learning carpentry from manuals, as one does.

People had their own rooms for sleeping, with couples sharing, along the corridors. Arla and Uthan’s rooms both had exterior windows. Quarters were pleasant, plain but comfortable, with generous mattresses on the beds and a table for personal use.

Then there was a room Etain thought of as the interrogation room, so that’s uhhh lovely.

It’s unclear whether the large table where they gathered for communal meals was in the karyai, the kitchen (which was separated from other areas by a door), or some other room. Wherever it was located, it was possible for someone seated at the table to lean back without getting up and fetch a bottle of tihaar from where it was stored. The table was made of a single large slab of veshok wood, and was big and sturdy enough to use for surgical operation, dismantling engines, or seating a whole clan of armored Mandalorians. They sat in chairs around this table, and Kad sat in a highchair. They used porceplast plates, and mugs for ne’tra gal, a sweet black beer. The head of the household summoned everyone to the table for meals.

The kitchen contained a fireplace and hearth, a chair (where Kal slept), ovens and stovetops, a conservator, enough workspace for at least four people at once, and an adjoining storage area. The kitchen could be a busy, noisy, bustling place, but it was separate from other living areas; people sometimes went there to avoid others.

The 20-30 occupants ate constantly and prodigiously, and never seemed to be lacking. The food was described as filling but not elegant, and was heavy on the protein. They consumed a lot of game; Lord Mirdalan the strill was an animal native to Mandalore and a hunter. Roast shatual, nerf, and roba were mentioned, and they would leave a joint of meat on the table to be eaten all day down to the bone (I shuddered in food hygiene). Fish from the lake were fried in a pan, and they made broth from gihaal, dried smoked fish with a pungent aroma stored in metal containers, one of the staples of Mandalorian ration packs because it kept for years without refrigeration. Also what Kal called Kaminoans, but that’s another story!

We were worried they only ate meat for a while until we came across some vegetables. Kad had pureed kaneta at one point, and for breakfast boiled grain porridge and shirred eggs were on offer. Jilka diced amber root for some dish. Mealbread rolls were also plentiful, and there was a vat of stew at one point. Listed imports via Ny Vollen included flour, grassgrain, pickles, powdered milk, sacks of denta beans, soap, dried fruit, and a bantha bone which was hard to get on Mandalore. The roba they raised themselves.

The roba pen had multiple animals witht at least one boar and one sow with a litter, and despite having veshok posts and walls, the gate was left open. I’m extrapolating that these animals were semi-domesticated and allowed to forage for food but came home to their pen for safety at night. There were rail fences, crop fields, and plans for raising nerf on the property as well. Outbuildings were mentioned frequently, but this was one of the few actually described.

Notable native species mentioned were the large, ancient veshok trees, which were evergreen, hardwood, and straight enough that the table slab was cut out of one large piece. They were ice-glazed and dripping in the spring thaw, so presumably had some defenses against freezing and exploding, or breaking under the weight of the ice, and they populated all the way up to the the polar cap. There was underbrush and bushes, and groundthorn weed, which was very stubborn and difficult to remove entirely. The roba would have helped with uprooting this as they foraged. Vhe’viine were small rodents with white winter coats that lived in burrows in the fields.

The medical laboratory behind the main house (it was necessary to walk around the bastion after exiting to approach it) was a mobile genetics lab/agricultural trailer of the sort usually used for breeding livestock and at racetracks. It was occupied first by Ko Sai and later by Ovolot Qail Uthan. Mereel acquired it, and Mij Gilamar stocked it with stolen/black market medical equipment. When Uthan took over, they built her more lab space. There were rural veterinarians in the community as well; Etain mentioned getting a cryocontainer for a sample from a neighboring farm.

The hangar was situated in a shallow slope to the north of the main house, half-buried in the soil and disguised with netting. It was large enough to house several craft at a time, including Ny Vollen’s ship, Mereel’s speeder, and the Aay’han, among others. Swabbing down the compartments of the Aay’han, replenishing stores, and prepping the ship for the next flight managed to occupy most of an afternoon for four men.

The lake was also to the north, and I believe it was a very large lake, functioning as a heat-sink. It had not fully frozen despite the bitter winter, described as minus eight and thirty degrees colder than tropical (although the temperature scale is not mentioned, it’s likely celsius because of the author’s background). There was ice extending from the shore like a pier, but also mist rising above it in the early morning and frost on the shore, even though layers of snow deep enough for feet to crunch through the surface were mentioned elsewhere at various times. This led my friend to speculate that there could be geothermal activity in/under that lake. Kal and Walon Vau were planning to build a memorial on the near lake shore featuring the armor tallies of fallen clone soldiers.

There was granite in the area, which also gave support to the concept of historical volcanic activity. Their yard sported four chunks, each large enough for at least two people to climb up and perch upon, which had erupted from the surface long ago and been worn down to a weathered polish. Winds came in off a nearby plain. A clear (muddy) area large enough to play mesh’geroya was also near the house.

Enceri had at least one cantina, there was a landmark grain silo at the edge of town, and it was big enough to host a bustling market square, despite being described as more of a trading post than a town. There they could buy, among other things, preserved vegetables, engine parts, and local triple-distilled tihaar, which could double as degreaser for said engine parts.

If they needed more than Enceri had to offer, they could go south to Keldabe. Landmarks of note there included the River Kelita and the Oyu’baat tavern. The Imperial garrison was located near Keldabe.

“But then Mandalore itself was one big contradiction, with heavy industry and shipbuilding sitting cheek-by-jowl with farms that hadn't changed in centuries, sophisticated electronics and ancient metalworking skills side-by-side in the same suit of armor.”

Established clan homes seem to be the usual way of things despite Mandalorians supposedly being nomadic. Their “temporary” structures being wattle and daub also indicates the nomad thing to be a bit of a fallacy. Even so, they had planned a possible relocation for Kyrimorut in the worst case, a bolt-hole on Cheravh. Jaing had taken to calling it offsite hot standby.

So that’s Kyrimorut, which means Final Haven, where Kal Skirata and his chosen family hunkered down in the aftermath of Order 66. My friend says it’s basically Aberdeen, down to the detail of players getting plastered mid footie limmie game. I gathered these details from four books (Hard Contact does not mention Kyrimorut) and compiled them for anyone who’d like to make use of the rundown. Oya!

[dartagnantt]

Feats: Resoled | More 5e feats adjusted to make more sense or to be useful

PDFs of this and more can be found over on at my Patreon here! I release everything for free, so your support makes this possible. I've also started making a new system based off of 5e, 6th Dawn! Become a patron and join the playtest.

Oh, hey! Feats. Didn't I do this one already? There are more that could use adjustment? Fine, I'll do these. Especially since there's room for some interesting improvement. Some like dungeon delver are perfect, so while I'll need a version of those eventually, I can't make an excuse to put them here. I also wanted to adjust Alert, but damn is it hard to not take from Observant (which I already modified)

Athlete

It's strange that athlete had nothing to do with athletics. In the previous one of these, I gave mobile the quick ups, which didn't seem particularly athletic. Shorter jumps is just good, so that stays

Meanwhile, why do you bypass climbing slowness but not swimming slowness? What do you have against swimming wotsy?!

And then this is one I borrowed from tales of the valiant from its far traveller feat, which seems well suited to a a lot of movementy exhausting difficult moving stuff feat.

Dual Wielder

The +1 ac while dual wielding was nice to make up for the fact that you aren't holding a shield was nice, but my thing against random +1 bonuses kind of got in the way here, so that got the axe. Nerfed the holding two non light weapons a tad, because dual wielding longswords, while amazing, is kind of silly. Drawing two weapons instead of one should be default for light weapons, but here we are, so it stays. And since I moved one part of polearm master into sentinel before, I decided to take the other one to give this some interesting appeal. Also, I like the double weapon property as a concept so woo

Elemental Adept

This feat was pretty good, I suppose. Treating 1s as 2s is… nice, I guess, but quite frankly, I think ToV had a better idea by giving you a limited version of the Transmuted spell metamagic, which is the best reason to get metamagic adept (until you remember that 2 sorcery points a day is really limiting).

Bypassing resistances? Oh boy, is this great if you're fighting primarily demons. I also, generally like the idea of downscaling immunity to resistance along with getting rid of resistance as an ability (I've done it a few times) and this may be because of the irritation I felt when I relearned that ice devils are still immune to fire the hard way.

Grappler

I took part of this feat and put it into tavern brawler. So I needed to give some stuff back. Free restrain was nice, but having it also affect you kind of sucked, so instead advantage to grabbing someone and yelling 'stop hitting yourself' repeatedly. That may or may not be why you deal free damage. YMMV

Linguist

This one has a few odd choices that don't make 100% in base 5e. The prerequisite is because I treat the History skill as a Society skill. Also, I don't think investigation should fit ciphers, that's too broad. And lastly, I'm going to make some changes to languages at some point based on how rare they are, which will affect spells like tongues and comprehend language

Martial Adept

So, this was an interesting one. Suffice it to say, the weapon and armor proficiency feats were kind of shit. And you could just multiclass into fighter to get them easier. So, I went with the philosophy behind the metamagic, eldrtich, and other martial adept feats. And made something you got from multiclassing a feat. In this sense, you get martial and simple weapons, light, medium armor and shields, but if you have those already, you get bonuses. IE the non +1 bonuses of medium armor master+ heavy armor proficiency for armor, and a fighting style for weapons. Make it more generally useful, regardless of class.

Skilled

My favourite feat. I chose to combine it with my other favourite feat: skill expert and make them repeatable. I don't have a problem, I can stop taking feats whenever I want.

Double Weapon Property

As I mentioned earlier, I like the double property, and the dual-bladed scimitar from eberron and the effects of the polearm master feat tell me I'm not alone. So I codified it, simple, but good, methinks

And now to plug my stuff. I release homebrews weekly over on my Patreon. Anyone who pledges $1 or more per post don't have to wait a month to see them, and also help fund my being alive habit.

At the moment, they have exclusive access to the following:

Assassin: Rehired

Scout Roguishj Archetype

Poisons: Reapplied

Finding the Trail

I also have four classes, and two splatbooks over on DriveThruRPG to check out:

The Rift Binder. A class specialising in summoning monsters and controlling the battlefield.

The Witch Knight. A class that combines swords and sorcery in the most literal way.

The Werebeast. A class that turns you into a half beast to destroy your foes.

The Beguiler. A spellcaster dedicated to illusions, enchantments, and general fuckery.

d'Artagnan's Adventurer Almanac. A compendium of races, subclasses, feats, spells, monsters and more!

d'Artagnan's Lycanthrope Survival Guide. A book of lore, stats, and werebeast subclasses for lycanthropes.

[lizajane2]

Mary is not a racist cop, demons are Middle-Eastern people, Dante is not an airhead. This show is a vile creation of Adi Shankar, a Trump supporter. This show is evil.

I have my misgivings about Trump, but I had no idea about that he was supporter. That makes sense given how Baines was written and acted.

I did try to care about Mary in this series but it was so hard to. I hated the way she talked to and about Dante. Drove me nuts. And damn, I curse a lot but not the way she does. And no one talks like that either! If you’re gonna write a character with a fucking potty mouth, use the words correctly. Make them roll off the tongue easily. Especially fuck. It can be used in many different ways such as an adverb, a verb, an adjective, a noun, a modifier and to intensify your sentences.

As for Dante being an airhead, I didn’t get that vibe. In fact, he was nerfed in my opinion, which I can deal with because in this series he didn’t know he had a devil trigger and was in denial about it. Still love him regardless.

Evil? I mean I enjoyed it despite the few issues I had with it. Sucks that the creator is a Trump supporter, and there were a lot of anti-american undertones in the series, so I’m a little surprised by that tiny bit of information.

[dravidious]

You're more amazing than three thrones

Made a cycle of duos for the creature type pairs that don't share a color (also an extra one for bats+frogs that I made before I settled on a color pattern)

[tgirlwithreverb]

new mac attack version, list of changes I noticed:

plasmacell renamed to prism

au armor nerfed

for booster you rotate at the begining, presumably you must move straight ahead like normal moves now

insulant renamed to catalyst

conductor and disruptor nerfed to 3" (brutal)

since booster calls move now maybe you get to use rotor with it

added emitter (conductor for rad) (I feel like this solidifies that you have to round 1 rad down to 0)

ecm changed to a motion modifier in move phase(brutal)

guardian changed to 50% to ignore rad/heat/jolt

added tether (conductor for jolt)(insane)

suspension removed

[td1sims]

Occult Hybrid Mod Issues

Hi all, with the latest version of the game, it seems that any CAS customisation will delete all secondary form of hybrids except for the occult that was used to go into CAS.

This means that Hybrid CAS Customisation is severely nerfed, thanks to the Occult Selector introduced in the recent update.

I am not sure what has been changed, as CAS Code on Python seems relatively unchanged (might be UI? or something else). Currently I cannot find any workarounds for this issue (MC CAS, DevAccessPanel Modify in CAS, changing CAS command params).

You can try to do edits with an older version of the game, but the save or sim may encounter issues (if porting over save or relationships , traits etc for sims)

Please note that there is no ETA for getting this issue fixed. The issue is rather complex and will definitely need some time to have the issue fixed.

Also Motive Orb decide to change and show Fury for Spellcaster-Werewolf Hybrids, I'll be fixing that very soon.

[peopleholdingnerfguns]

Summer Glau and friend. The plasma rifle she's holding is a modified Longshot CS-6, a Nerf blaster that frequently turned up as a prop in movies and TV shows. I'm unsure if Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was one of them, however.

[britt-kageryuu]

Does anyone have headcanons for the Rise Turtles on like, 'Modified Biology' kind of headcanons.

Not just accelerated healing, and high resistance to poisoning/medicine. Though they are still applicable.

I've seen the whole Leo was engineered to need less sleep headcanon, which was not realized and just thought to be insomnia.

Maybe Raph, Donnie, and Leo have a kind of internal filter system that helps with swimming in contaminated water.

Okay, Mikey is a bit hard to figure what to add that would work, but maybe the Psychologist thing was kinda implanted to make it easier to get others to listen to him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Like I have an out there one for my AU Turtles, where when they ingest a poison, it secretes out into their saliva, so their bite is way more dangerous. Though it also acts as a roundabout way of injecting 'medicine' into the other turtles.

Though it does have the weirdness of them needing to essentially take medicine twice before their body realizes that it needs the medicine for itself. Aka they have to swallow their medicine filled saliva so that it will take effect. They're still basically immune to poison.

Yes, I made a pretty gross trait, but I wanted to find a way to nerf a character in a way that fits.

[host-hubliminal]

>>START_LOG: HostLog_5: Subject: Host 2.3 Name: Mephone 4 Species: Mephone 4/Meeple Product | Objectmade; Nonbiological Lifeform Source: Inanimate Insanity Gender: Male Pronouns: he/him Description: Mephone 4 is an average sized touchscreen cellphone of Steve Cobs’ creation. His home screen appears as a gradient from near-cyan blue to cornflower blue. His limbs are completely robotic (Addendum/ We have no way of knowing this. We have not cut him open yet.). The pads on his digits and palms allow him to interact with his own screen and other screens. Mephone 4 has no tail. Mephone 4 is reported by Mr. Cobs to be extremely outdated, bringing him here is a risk of our own safety (Addendum/ It is unlikely Mr. Cobs cares about Mephone 4 at this time due to the extremely long period between seasons of Mephone 4’s show. That and we doubt Mr. Cobs has interdimensional tracking built into Mephone 4.). Mephone is lazy, but opportunistic, and will often bite off more than he can chew, both literally and figuratively. It is possible Mephone weighs the second most out of all the Hosts on file, with Host 2.2 weighing the most. Mephone 4 isn’t an outwardly violent individual, but it is possible he can do heavy damage if he really wanted. Known Abilities: Item generation, Respawn abilities, and Teleportation via Portals. In tandem to this, he is a functional cellular phone. Procedures to take: We have had to very legally acquire (Addendum/ The program was stolen. This information is unimportant.) and modify Meeple Hinderance Technology to suit the nerfing of Mephone 4’s abilities to prevent escape and otherwise. Whether or not this programming works in practice is unknown, and will not be known until entry of Host 2.3. It is also possible this technology is completely incompatible and will not have a chance of working, if so, we will give up on researching Host 2.3 unless we can somehow convince Mr. Cobs to give us the tech to do so (Addendum/ Who is writing these logs? And can they cut the flowery, passive aggressive shit? This is a Research Log, not a private diary.). All in all, the nerfing of Mephone 4 will probably be extremely unstable, so it is best to convince him NOT to use his powers.

END_LOG.