What a difference a turn makes. By giving up on crushing Scythia in a single turn, I've ended up with something I always consider my favorite part of every playthrough:
Crushing Egypt.

Now, I'm disappointed in the sudden lack of manpower against Carthage (although I was close to driving them out of Africa anyway), and also how the Persians have lost their only real competition with the war against them effectively over, but at the same time, I'll take any excuse to war against Egypt, because the civilization controlling Pelusium is able to, through land instead of sea, connect the entirety of the map for their units.

​Byzantium gives a similar point, but can technically be bypassed by traversing around the Black Sea (which for some reason, NPC-Persia is quite fond of doing rather than just directly attacking Byzantium or using galleys in the black sea).

Scythia signed a mutual protection pact and trade embargo with Egypt against me, and it auto-triggered at the end of my transitionary turn thanks to me already having units in Scythian territory. (A bit weird, since I thought it'd require actual aggression, but oh well.)

​Not the type of war normally declared against me, but hey, I'll take it. I'm never signing a peace treaty with Scythia and the only way Egypt has out of this is for that to happen, so now I'm gonna wipe them out. Gradually. I'm playing as I'm writing this blog, but currently losing some RNG battles despite an advantage in both HP and attack. (I have Legionary IIIs with +3 HP and 7 attack losing to 5 defense 3 HP Numidian Mercenaries.)

So by the time I actually post this blog, a lot of the info I'll have to share on the Egyptian front will likely have changed. I'm actively in the process of taking Pelusium (which will eat up the majority of my available manpower and might be a struggle to hold when Egypt inevitably mounts a counter-attack), and there's just enough Legionaries available for me to take Asyut as well. Which won't rob the Egyptians of Ivory (they actually have 3 sources), but it'll link one of my cities cut off and will help to cut their cities off.

Now, as is the case for all of these wars so far...my cities are inadequately prepared for the war. I don't have the manpower in galleys for cities that have plenty of units, I don't have Legionaries in the cities with galleys to send them off for aquatic assaults, I'm very much lacking in Cataphracts to launch attacks against their Numidian Mercenaries, and I don't have an adequate supply of pillagers to really overwhelm their defenses.

And Egypt is no push-over. They've got numerous sources of horses I can't decapitate their usage from, multiple sources of ivory, and at least one source of gold. The saving grace is that, unless they're importing Iron from the Greeks, they have none, which means no more War Chariots, what they have is what they have and they can't get more. The problem is in how many they have, and how they're about to be a horde with their pillager production.

Basically every city of theirs is going to produce a pillager, unless it works differently for NPC cities compared to the human player. The human player can produce a unit in a city if the city loses access to the resources. So if the Egyptian cities are the same...that's a lot of pillagers. Now, in theory, as far as I can tell, they only have one source of gold, and no source of silver. (I don't know how they are producing the pillagers tbh, this iteration of pillagers requires gold, silver, and ivory. I've tweaked it for my next playthrough but as-is they shouldn't be able to make them so I don't know how they are.)

So I'll be cutting them off.

​But if the production goes through...that's a lot of ouch times.

Now, the upside to this is, outside of those pillagers being produced...Egypt has very limited ability to counter-attack, outside of their limited supply of War Chariots. What my cities DO have plenty of, nearly universally, is lots and lots of Praetorian Guards. Egypt has a lot of War Chariots, and Alexandria poses a serious threat of retaking Pelusium thanks to them, but otherwise their War Chariots are fairly scattered, outside of one area of concern where they have a lot and I don't yet have the defenses to defend confidently. I'm pretty sure List and Abydos can weather an attack, but they might genuinely suffer losses there and be left vulnerable, especially if the pillagers are produced and gain momentum.

When I took those screenshots, I was losing the RNG battle to Egypt's only Galley, which has since been destroyed, and I've also already taken Pelusium with my current assault being on Asyut. (Which I'm currently one unit away from capturing, but I just lost the RNG war despite a 2:1 advantage against their final Heavy Cavalry.)

But here's a fairly good breakdown of their army.

Not shown is the two pillagers they already have, one in Alexandria and the second I don't remember the location of. (The Pelusium pillager was the final defender I destroyed when taking it.)

​Egypt is in a very similar situation to Scythia; literally all of their cities have at least one Numidian Mercenary, with most having multiple. And while they have some cities in key areas heavily defended, the vast majority of their cities are actually rather vulnerable, all things considered.

If not for the unfortunate fact the two cities I needed Galleys in this turn don't have galleys yet, I could have captured Hierancopolis, Avaris, and threatened either Pi-Ramses or Heliopolis (alas, sadly not both). Alas, they'll be given a turn to bolster their forces, but I'll pull off the invasion of Egypt next turn. I'll probably leave them with Giza, because it's their most pathetic least-valuable city and is easily invaded by Persia, so that if I do end up making peace with them, they can be kept technically alive or wiped out by Persia.

But this will take a few turns. Alexandria is heavily defended, I've gotta get all of their African cities, and while I can move to annihilate them within a few turns, I can't decapitate their forces fully this turn or next. But I am currently wiping out their excess war chariots and hopefully can leapfrog the pillagers responsible into being a veritable menace this turn and leave Egypt with less resources even if they produce their pillager army.

This is what I had to show off before I took Pelusium for their two main cities beyond Pelusium and Alexandria though to give you an idea of where their forces are focused.

So these screenshots were taken at the beginning of the turn pretty much, and since then, the war chariots near Memphis and that advanced infantry near Khmun are both already wiped out. Pelusium and Asyut have been captured in the process of writing this blog, and the war chariot army I wrote about earlier is being dealt with by a pillager who I need to spawn another pillager or two in order to complete the eradication.

I can kill their single warrior and a couple of war chariots, the remnants of their Carthaginian spearhead, and then near Avaris a few more. An advanced infantry, one heavy cavalry, and a couple war chariots are all easily dispatched this turn, which will reduce their numbers significantly. Life allowing, I'll probably make a follow-through end-of-turn report on the amount of devastation I was able to inflict on the Egyptian army.

Granted, this is only half of the turn.

​All of this work in Egypt?

Mostly just a distraction from the grind of obliterating Scythia. Ulsky has been captured, Massagetai I'm deliberately waiting until Persia's army has softened their defenses so I can sweep in and steal it next turn with my forces fresh and Persia's weakened, Scythia is down to about 14 Scythian Riders, and a few cities might be capturable albeit with a grind involved. I've already done my round of Carthage conflict for the turn, but I do need to do a lot of work to deal with Persia.

Still, Egypt has become my main focus for now. I want to capture Alexandria and Bubastis because those two cities are two of the largest in the game, but to get there will take time.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now. Hopefully, fingers crossed, life allows me to give a follow-through, but if not, then just know, I hope you have enjoyed and thank you for going on this journey with me and indulging my hyperfixation of modded Civilization III. As a reminder, my life might be on the verge of falling apart and things could go to the worst timeline at any moment pretty much, so nothing is certain. But regardless of what the future holds, I still did this and if you're reading this then I hope it brings you some amount of pleasure, because it happened and gave joy. <3

Now, part of that is because all I have left to do is to grind out the bits remaining. Once I've save-scummed my way to defeating the RNG gods (so far, I've been reloading bad luck I ought to have won, but I'm about to enter into the zone of luck I have no right winning so any time I do is actually good luck), then there won't really be much left to report on. I might give a final after screen and show off Persia and the Egyptian pillager to show the next challenges, but the main challenge of effectively taking out all of the barbarian civilizations who betrayed me will be completed.

And the other part of it is because life is going to get busy regardless of whether it's in a bad way, a good way, or as is usually the case a mixture of both. I'm in this weird zone where I actually have a lot of hope of things improving, of being able to negotiate for the things I am most concerned about, of working things out, of getting the small bits of help, and of life improving. I completed a training that increases my value in my field of employment by a considerable amount. I've applied for four positions that are higher up in the chain of command, positions that are considerably rare to land but which I feel I actually for the first time in my life have a reasonable chance of landing them.

My current boss actually recommended I apply. Promising sign. I got an email from HR which mirrored the email I first got when I first applied for my current job. Promising sign number two. I have updated my resume, gotten a stronger cover letter, and improved my voice in my workplace, and I have a lot of people who have seen this change in me where I am performing exceptionally.

Plus on a sidenote, my bosses have actually had to work the current shift they assign me to work regularly in the last two weeks, and their struggle to actually work the shift they expect me to do every day? Presumably gives them a lot of perspective on just what I have been capable of in terms of what I accomplish. In short, I feel like they've, through actually experiencing what I go through, gained an amount of appreciation and respect for my workload previously not found. Which I feel will translate into them realizing I've been doing a lot more than they realized, been keeping things running in ways they didn't know, and that I am more valuable than they were giving me credit for, all of which translates into...presumably, advocating for me.

My medical health has improved significantly since getting physical therapy, and while it doesn't solve all of my health issues, it's making me less in pain and less sore in my back, neck, shoulders, and right side, so I'm slowly healing and improving.

Regardless of whether we end up moving or not, I feel like I've got a good chance of getting things to work, and I feel if we did end up moving, we have the resources available to make it work.

All of that is where I have the hope of things continuing to improve.

But at the same time, I'm also in a zone where I also have lost hope of things going well, and am just waiting for a death blow to be dealt to my life, to my dreams, to my chance of getting going. It could be anything. Something happening to my car which can't be covered, something happening to my income, being unable to get severely out of debt, being evicted from our new place because of an inability to pay on a reasonable timeframe, losing health insurance...again...being unable to go to the food bank...again...not getting access to food stamps...the list goes on and on.

In order for life to improve it takes nothing going wrong and at least one or two things to go right and continue to go right;

In order for life to collapse and go beyond shambles into actually being ended, it takes only a single thing going wrong with no ability to find a way out, to pivot, to fight, to recover. There's been so many close calls. Every month since December or so has had at least one if not multiple and we're probably a day or two away from another. I'm not sure what will happen but it can't be good things.

Soyeah. If things go well I'll be really busy. Either with a new job or with efforts to move, hopefully.
And if things go poorly...I'll...be...unavailable, to say the least.

And if it's a mixture of both, doubly so.

But in the unlikely event even all of those don't remove my free time, I'm not sure what's left to show. After Scythia falls, and after I clean up in the Iberian peninsula, there won't be much left to share and victory will be around the corner, likely only requiring one final war to wage against whoever first pulls the trigger on peace with Carthage. Then it's on to the next, playing as Carthage, to see if they're as viable to play as and have the playstyle I'm aiming for. (This'll be the first time on either version of this mod I'll be playing as Carthage since I've only gotten far enough to play as Persia and Rome on either version of the mod.)

​With all of that said, here's the current Scythian city army distribution.

Now, this doesn't give the full picture of the units, but you can at least get at least some idea of where their unit strongholds are. Ereen and Melitopol are going to be their last bastions, Ereen because I don't want the swamp until I can clear it (so I need to pre-load a bunch of units there to have available for that), and Melitopol because it's possibly where I limit the Scythians to, one of three cities I'm considering with Ereen as one of the other two. (Iazygia is the third.)

Now to give you an idea of what those icons are, lemme show you (the majority of) their unit breakdown.

The Scythians don't have their tier three horseman units yet, limited to their Scythian Riders. The three Scythian Scouts you see there are all in Ulksy, because Ulksy produces a Scythian Scout and Scythian Spearman every turn (which is also why Ulsky has like ten Horde Walls in it, because the Scythians gained access to the resources to upgrade said spearmen produced every turn).

Not all of their Scythian Riders are in cities, but they've still got an uncomfortably large amount. I'll be trimming the amount they have by reducing Melitopol and Ereen, but that'll still leave 30ish around their cities, all hiding behind Horde Walls and Numidian Mercenaries.

Not shown; they have a lot of Horde Warriors (the tier 1 swordsmen) and a few normal Warriors, as well as like 20 regular spearmen, too. All of those are annoyances, but not really concerns. The concerns are their warlords which are their 5/3 tier two swordsmen that treat all terrain as roads (meaning 5 movement for each of them). The horde raiders are their all-terrain-as-roads swordsmen, 3/2, but they're not much of a concern.

The advanced infantry, generic 5/3 units, aren't a threat because they can only kill units inside of Scythian territory or on the edge of my boarders, not able to penetrate deep.

The area of greatest concern is actually the Horde Walls being used offensively. They're 3/5, with the same treat-all-terrain-as-roads buff of the other Scythian units, and while Scythia can't make anymore as long as I hold onto the territories on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, they also have a large amount. Now, I'm relatively confident the Scythians are always going to keep at least one in each of their cities with one. That keeps 27 of them out of concern. And despite the save scumming required, I intend to breach Ulsky this turn or get it in breach range for next turn, taking an additional 10 of them out of concern. (Make no mistake, that's gonna be the majority of save scumming because it will require my pillagers who have only 4 attack not only winning against the horde wall but producing enough pillagers to keep the assault going. It's the area I'm most likely to be forced to give up in.) But that's only about 37/57 horde walls guaranteed to be locked down. The rest are at risk of being used offensively, and might kill units and are gonna be pains to take down.

And that brings me to my next show--of how all the easy work has been done pretty much, leaving only the hard parts left.

Every. single. city. is protected by a minimum of one Horde Wall (with the points of greatest pain being 2 - 3), with a couple having a Warlord as well. (Warlords, despite technically having one less defense than my pillager army, are still a pain and often take me 3 - 6 times to kill.) My pillagers have 4 attack and can sometimes retreat at 1 HP without killing the target, and in order to take these cities I need to not only kill the horde walls but also enslave at least once to create a pillager capable of mopping up the leftovers underneath of the horde walls. And the Scythian cities also have catapults making the attacking pillagers often start with 1 less HP, against an opponent they already have the disadvantage against.

Like I said. This is the section of the game that is going to take the longest and require the most save scumming. Gaimonov is more lightly defended and I have two pillagers there whereas I only have one pillager at the other cities, but none of them are going to be easy to take. All of them are going to take RNJesus rolls for me to actually have a chance of taking, so my hope is to get really lucky, and/or do enough damage that even if I get burned out/frustrated and give up, I cripple them enough to prevent any counter-offensive.

Sarsae is going to be difficult. Phasis might be impossible. I can't reach Oblia this turn with any of my units so Oblia is gonna stay under Scythian control for one more turn regardless, which really sucks because Oblia is one of their sources of horses. Shibe will also be very hard to take. And it doesn't get any easier on the northeastern front.

Here I'm running into the issue of just not having the manpower to advance, and unless I can capture Great Bulgar this turn (which will require snowballing one pillager into three against multiple Horde Walls and a Warlord), my cities in the corner are cut off from all resources except horses, meaning they can't actually produce my advanced units. No Praetorian Guards, Legionaries, Cataphracts, or Pillagers. (I forgot to swap them over before the declaration of war, whoops!)

​Now, Ulliastay has one Pillager, which can be used to easily attack Paratae or potentially the other border cities here.

And Kelermes has one pillager that can be used to kill the horde raider and Scythian Rider near Asiopolis and potentially attack it and/or Chersonesus, and as you can see, I do have a pillager poised to assault Saka and assuming said pillager can kill the Horde wall I can probably capture Saka, too. But at the same time, I don't have the manpower to actually plow through these cities. I can devastate them enough where they won't be able to effectively mount a counterattack, or so I hope, but I can't actually stop them.

​I do need to capture Asiopolis though. If I capture Asiopolis, that means the Scythians lose access to iron, which cuts them off from producing Kheshiks (the name I opted for their tier three horsemen), swordsmen, and horde raiders. (They already lack the means to produce warlords since those require gold and silver in addition to iron, but losing iron also guarantees no more warlords, too.)

I can probably reinforce my weakly-defended cities and I can probably prevent them from reclaiming dangerous territory, but while I might be able to capture Kimmeria with sufficient save scumming, you can see how vulnerable a lot of my defenses are, here. The best defense I can think of is convincing the Scythians they don't have the manpower to mount an offensive and providing shinies to distract them from higher-profile targets. I'll temporarily lose a few workers if the tradeoff is not losing any cities.

Which brings me to the area of greatest annoyance.

Tanais has three horde walls plus a fourth 3/5 in the form of a numidian mercenary, aided by a catapult, and I don't have any units with 5+ attack in the area. All my legionaries and cataphracts got deployed to cut Scythia's ivory supply off on the other side of the Caspian Sea. So I don't really have the manpower except by brute forcing to potentially get through, and my terrain is not properly defended. My hope is that the Persians focus on Tanais and the Scythians focus on the Persians, but without that it's going to be very, very rough.

And then you can also see Ulsky. I've got two or three Cataphracts there, but I've also only got about three pillagers available--meaning in order to breach into Ulsky, said three pillagers need to multiply into one or two each for a total of six to nine that each have enough HP to attack twice.

That's...ah...not very likely to happen, so I might be forced to give up on my aspirations of capturing Ulsky this turn. I do have enough Legionaries in the area to easily capture it next turn tho, so here's to hoping. (Also you can see one of Persia's Immortals II armies in Khazar, courtesy of the Scythian-Persian conflict prior to the Scythians declaring war against me.)

Now, it should be noted; a lot of the poorly-defended areas can have their defenses bolstered, I haven't put in the time to move all of my units to where they need to be and set up my logistics to protect my units and cities appropriately.

But at the same time, you can see why I tend to not like warring with the Scythians. I have the first strike, with a unit capable of theoretically snowballing and creating momentum, but they have such a strong defense, such a strong attack, an overwhelming horde of units, and they're rich enough in resources to use them. And their units can all pierce deep into enemy territory, my territory, to attack at will. (There's a reason that the first barbarian civilization I'm going to play as is the Scythians, because I think in my hands I could genuinely take over the world using them, the easiest of the barbarian civilizations to do so.)

It'll take a LOT of work to neuter them effectively, and I'm 2 - 4 turns from wiping them out. We've got a lot of save scumming to do, and then the pain of after. But once they're gone, I'm pretty much left just dealing with Persia, who I'm hoping will be my next foe. Both because it guarantees my conquest victory, I don't want them to expand further, they're the greatest threat, and they stole a wonder from me so I want to steal all of their cities. But obviously that will also be the hardest foe to fight, so not looking forward to it.

The challenges of being a conqueror, I suppose.

Anyway, that's it. Gotta go to bed and tackle the challenges of being an impoverished married disabled neurodivergent queer witch trying to start a lesbian family in a capitalistic society designed to prevent people like that from ever succeeding.

I don't wanna pretend that life is in any way okay, because things are quite bad and likely to get worse. Any blog could be my last at this point because I'm not sure I'm going to be able to keep blogging if things get worse. But at the same time--if things do get worse, I want to have what amounts to a last hurrah of having a good time.

So if any update could be my last, I want to leave a lil bit of fun to remind folks that I did a lot of really nifty things and was genuinely enjoying life. So without further ado, let's return to my second playthrough of the broken-modded-to-all-hell Rise of Rome scenario in Civ 3. The laptop busted overexaggerated over the top version, where I'm playing as Rome.

When last I checked in, it was 250 BC, one of the longest turns ever.

Since then, we've advanced to 205 BC, which...might prove to be the longest turn ever.

The Goths are gone--the Scythians wiped them out, after I captured most of their cities and destroyed their army leaving it easy for the Scythians to mop up the leftovers.

The Celts have been reduced to two cities, completely surrounded by my units, with me having killed all of their military units, leaving them effectively dead. Burdigala is their one mainland city and they have one single-tile city in Ireland, too.

Carthage, as of this turn, has lost the majority of their African territory, with me taking Tingis and Mersa Madakh, although there's 2.5 cities I want and one city I don't care for left to capture yet. The Iberian front is slower, as while I did get Cadiz, they still effectively have the entirety of Portugal and Spain. They've mostly ran out of steam, and my defenses are almost impenetrable for when they do mount an offensive, but I've not advanced much. I've sent an Army (as in, four-units combined into one) of Cataphracts (my name for the Roman equivalent to Heavy Cavalry) to take their city of Asido, their furthest northeast city, but it'll take time to actually capture. Meanwhile the Greeks and Persians are probably also gonna attack Carthage's remaining territory, so that's not a big concern of mine.

The Egyptians were convinced to declare war against the Persians, and then they roped the Scythians into it as well, leaving Scythia at war with Carthage, the Celts, and Persia, which they still are. I was content to let Persia fight the Scythians and Egyptians as a mostly neutral observer, with my pillagers picking random workers up as they could, but I knew I needed to do two things:

Strengthen my defense against the civilizations who would eventually deploy pillagers,
And to strengthen my defense against Scythia because the Goths and Celts declared war, the Scythians would sure to soon follow.

Much to my disappointment, I've been too slow on both sides. Egypt has their first Pillager (I probably need to up their cost again), and Persia produced five, in Antioch, Jordan, Babylon, Ctesiphon, and Persepolis. I don't have the means to shut their pillagers down yet, so that's gonna be a point of pain.

And Scythia...is war-ready with me. I got them to remove their forces from my territory at the beginning of my turn, but when I ended my turn and they told me to remove my forces (this was also how I discovered pillagers were on the loose), I told them to do the same and they declared war, so I closed and reloaded my end of turn save, and here we are, in 205 BC...with me deciding to ask them before ending the turn (despite having done so at the beginning of the turn), and sure enough...they declared war on me.

Now, I hate warring against the Scythians because they're arguably the most OP. They produce a large horde of units that can treat all terrain including enemy terrain as if friendly roads, meaning their units go 5 moves for foot units and 10 moves for their horse units. Scythia also has a lot of tier two spearmen, meaning that they're well-defended and have good offense, making them a terrifying opponent to face and the question usually isn't if I lose stuff, but rather how much I lose.

I think I'll maybe lose a few units, particularly captured workers, but mostly...I think if I play everything out, I'll be fine and Scythia, while not destroyed, will be crippled. But it's gonna be a slog. I've made a lot of progress already, even since taking screenshots, but there's a whole bunch I'll need to do or want to do.

So this is a city I might be able to capture, because I do have a pillager there already and more nearby. The question isn't if I can but whether I should, due to the amount of swampy terrain. Maybe I'll put a Praetorian Guard, Legionary, and Cataphract in each spot, then take the city, then clear the jungle in one single turn. Still gonna be a pain to get through that amount tho.

And this is one of the easiest spots.

Pazyryk here is gonna be a pain because their Horde Walls are...well, a wall. And they've got an army there. I may or may not be able to capture it this turn. I'm working on clearing out the units in Belgorod below.

Belgorod will be relatively easy to get, because there's only the two high-defense units, but it's still gonna be a slugfest to get there and also clear out the units slightly to the west (my current angle of attack).

Slightly to the east we have the city which was the Goth's last city, and that's why I already have so many units deployed in the area. It's gonna be painful to get through five high-defense units, but I'll be able to pull that off and then get through them all after that.

I already took Solokha, so the other main area of focus here to neuter is a nearly-invisible territory not a threat in terms of size, but menacing in terms of size of units.

Six horde walls, and an army of units, in a size-two city with one single tile. Because every time I told them to remove their units from my territory, they got sent to Melitopol. Not gonna be fun dealing with that, but even if I end up unable to kill them all, I'm cautiously optimistic I'll be able to contain them.

The majority of Scythian cities are actually pretty lightly defended, so I'm not too worried about most.

Parnii is the heaviest-defended city with the most units in it, but all the others in the area including Shibe are actually barely defended at all. I don't need to capture them, I just need to cripple them and defend my own.

Again, Great Bulgar is the heaviest city for its area, with the rest all pretty much not defended at all. They've got a single Horde Wall, and then maybe another defensive unit, and then that's it. Barely a Scythian Rider to be found, and basically nothing.

You can see here on the eastern side of the Caspian Sea that they have a single Rider to their name and then nothing else. I've run out of momentum this turn, but they can't go on the offensive, so it'll be me crushing them within the next few turns.

Not shown: Tanais, down south of Khazar, which also has a veritable army of units of all kinds and which I definitely can't capture this turn.

This is the area of greatest grind. Massagetai is relatively capturable, the problem is that I have a higher-priority target in Ulsky. Which is capturable, but to get it...will require a huge grind.

Jinjan was just captured by the Scythians, because much to surprise, they were actually winning the war against Persia. Persia has an Army unit in Khazar, and a lot of units in the area, but Scythia burned one Persian city and captured Jinjan. I wanted to watch Persia and Scythia fight further, to see if Persia could mount a counter-offensive and potentially take Ulsky, but alas. Scythia declared war against me before I could get the chance. So I've got this entire area to clear out.

And like...by the end of it all, I'll do to Scythia what I did to both the Goths and the Celts, and probably have enough territory to be at or near a Conquest victory, allowing me to finally play a third time as Carthage with the fixes and tweaks I've made from playing this round. But getting there is a grind.

These days I tend to only share the ones I probably will never actually make--not because I don't think they're good enough, not because I don't want to, but purely because I don't really have the time to make everything in my lifetime that I want to make. There's too many ideas and an increasingly short amount of time to make them.

Like, yeah, I'm only in my 30s. That's potentially two-thirds of my life left to make things, still.

But since my current state in life isn't going to advance things to where I'm likely to be able to actually make anything I think of for the next couple years minimum...that means that much time before the first could POSSIBLY be made. Which pushes all the others back behind it. And pushes the ones further back to be even further back. You get the idea. Missing a day of creativity doesn't matter. Or a week. Or a month. But when you miss a year of making things...it might not matter much, but it begins to be notable in terms of scale of missing out.

A year is greater than 1% of my life, so every year I go by without making my ideas real means I've got less of that percentage left. And like...yeah, even if it takes me an additional 30 years to get things made...that's still gonna be things I get to make. It's just that the maximum possible amount to make does dwindle as I get older and my amount of time left decreases gradually. If I get things created when I'm in my 60s, that's generously a maximum of 30 things I get to make if I complete one a year. (I'd likely make a lot less, given many would take multiple years.)

I have a whole lot more than that I'd love to make. Even if I were to pump out one project a year starting this year, that'd be 60 in my lifetime. I have hundreds, even thousands, I would like to make. So while in my lifetime I can probably manage to make a few dozen, I will never be able to make the thousands upon thousands of ideas I have be realized. Not unless the technology to make me immortal magically is invented and applied to me within my lifetime, or there's breakthroughs spiritually which would allow me as a ghost to create all of them in perpetuity.

Since both of those seem rather dubious to say the least, realistically speaking my ideas will die with me. That's motivation to make as many as I can, yes, but it is also reason to write down all of the ones I can't make. Not because I don't have the skills or talents, but because there's other things I just want to make more.

And this is one of the ideas to get the short end of the stick despite its explosive growth. I literally came up with the idea yesterday and it has already become a full-fledged series of epic proportions in my mind with multiple seasons, characters, villains, etc.

The genre for this would be Magical Girl Superheroes, and the best way to describe it I can think of is "Power Rangers meets Miraculous Ladybug meets Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt".

The name for this series would be "Fire Fist and Lightning Kicks".

It revolves around the titular heroines, the superhero magical girl martial artist Fire Fist (ironically, despite the name, most of her martial arts techniques involve an open-palm with her using an Uncle Iroh style of redirection, with her only closed-fist techniques being rapid-fire ranged attacks) and the superhero magical girl martial artist Lightning Kicks (who does more dance moves than kicks since she's a dance battle girlie and gymnast although she is still a martial artist just not as much as she is a dancer and gymnast).

Together, the titular duo are known as the "Sol Strikers", and they are a lesbian duo in a relationship with each other. (Mostly out of costume but there's times they do let it slip in-costume they're an item.)

They're the main guardians of their city (this could really be any city, I didn't choose any specific setting for the setting yet), and they mostly fight supernaturally-empowered temporary supervillains (a la Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir), as well as numerous supernaturally-created minions loaned to said supervillains (a la Power Rangers), but they also fight a bunch of beasts, monsters, etc., which appear, as well as occasionally other supers, because they're not the only permanent supers in the setting.

Their main nemesis is Lilith, The Queen of The Dark, The Empress of the Night, etc. She is the one who feeds off of the negative emotions of people and offers them a deal, where she empowers them to act on their impulses and become supernaturally empowered, in exchange for having their powers limited in range to be (with a few exceptions) within a 150 square mile radius of the duo, with the promise the powers would become permanent if they actually delivered a permanent defeat to the Sol Strikers and robbed them of their powers permanently.

She not only creates these temporary supervillains, but also provides said supervillains with her army of darkspawn minions, creatures she, as well as those she empowers, can mold into various forms and create a small, infinitely-replenishable, invasion force to wreck havoc at the whims of her empowered supervillain commanders.

The Sol Strikers are actually the latest incarnations of an always-female duo, with one half having the power of the heat of the sun, and the other half having the power of the power/energy of the sun. That's because they are, together, the two halves of the mortal incarnation of the Sun Goddess Solarie, the maiden warrioress of the sun, both a protector and fierce aggressor. (Think kinda like the Eye of Ra, mixed with Helia and Solarii, in that her traditional weapons were maces and morningstars.)

In a twist, it turns out that their archnemesis, Lilith?

...Was actually originally the mortal lesbian lover to Solarie. She usurped the original god of the moon, Abep the Moon Lord (think Lunord and Adepts mixed with Apophis). Abep was, originally, neither malevolent nor benevolent, being one of the most neutral forces in the world, but eventually, isolation drove him insane. He couldn't find companionship and people were scared of him so he eventually lost his mind. Lilith was both ambitious, seeking a way to become immortal to match her immortal goddess lover, but also altruistic, in seeking a way to stop Abep from overwhelming her lover, because Abep was gaining power and risked killing Solarie if nothing was done.

So what was thought to be a usurpation was actually her doing what she thought she needed to do--but it had a horrific cost. Her stealing godhood from Abep carried such a wave of chaotic destructive energy it shook the pantheon of deities to the core, negatively impacting all of them in some way. In the case of Solarie, it split her into two, mortal, woman, who have perpetually been reincarnating ever since.

And this is genuinely the first iteration of the two where neither is using her traditional weapons, and the first iteration of the two where they are lovers with each other, who know each other both inside and outside of their hero identities.

This, as it turns out, is why they are extra-strong targets of Lilith. The reason why Lilith is targeting the duo is because her ambition is just to bring Solarie back, by having a Sol Striker duo that's strong enough and bonded enough to actually have circumstances which enable them to merge into Solarie. The Sol Strikers duo is frequently known to have the ability to merge their powers to become the light of the sun, being a magical duo associated with paladins because they're embodiments of the light, but that's only half of their potential, and Lilith's goal is to bring them to their full potential.

And the only way she can do that is--by having them fight her. And her minions. And her empowered supervillains. So she's not targeting the duo to try and crush them and take over the world (the assumption she deliberately creates and has fostered ever since the first Sol Strikers duo), she's literally just trying to make them stronger and more in unison to the point where they'll actually be able to be so attuned they accidentally just become Solarie again, allowing Lilith to see, meet, and talk to her long-lost lover.

About 3/4ths of the way through the series, and/or around season 5 or so, this would be revealed...by Lilith succeeding. All of the above would be revealed, and Solarie would get to talk to Lilith. She would mention how she can see through the eyes of an observer, as if watching a movie, the actions of all her incarnations, and would never forgive Lilith if she actually killed anyone, including Solarie's mortal incarnations. Solarie points out that her mortal incarnations, especially Fire Fist and Lightning Kicks, have the right to live their lives, and her life isn't worth sacrificing theirs.

As such, Solarie's presence is only temporary, with her eventually splitting back into Fire Fist and Lightning Kicks, who remember everything the same as Solarie, a la a third person perspective who were watching a movie of the entire conversation. In a twist, the duo actually decide to, in a sense, conspire with Lilith. They point out how Lilith's empowering of supervillains is--mostly--harmless. The supervillains don't cause long-lasting harm due to the Sol Strikers' ability to partially reverse damage (again, Miraculous influence is pretty strong here), and it actually allows the temporary supervillains to work through their traumas and issues.

​In short, these dark transformations are literally therapy for the transformed temporary-supervillains. It gives them outlets (albeit technically not healthy ones) to work through their issues. In many ways, this Lilith (like her actual goddess) is a mistress of shadow-work but in a more literal sense than usual with the people who are transformed able to become stronger, permanently, and undergo real growth without her help after having gone through the ordeal. It also serves as a way where the superheroine duo gains a mortal supporting cast of characters to become their friends and allies in these adventures.

​Because the goal is a noble, understandable one they empathize with, and they know the rampages are relatively harmless, the duo encourages Lilith to keep attacking them, and they vow to try and find a way where Solarie can be brought back while they can continue to live--even if it means in the aftermath they would end up permanently depowered by it.

But wait, there's more!

An occasional ally, occasional foe, of the duo is the mortal avatar and current mortal incarnation of the Nature God, Nanoc. He was originally one of humanity's greatest allies, but in the current day and age, he is largely in opposition to humanity due to humanity's continued destruction of his realm of nature. Nanoc, thanks to Lilith's actions, is forced to continuously reincarnate as a mortal avatar, lacking a divine presence, and as such, his creatures often are set loose on rampages. These beasts target primarily the humans most endangering nature, not out of malice but also not altruistically, purely as an animal would to defend itself from a perceived threat.

Nanoc's divinity wasn't actually taken by Lilith (who was a scapegoat), but rather, by his three sons, who were immortal but lacked divinity initially until they were given the opportunity to usurp their father's powers for themselves and gained divinity to go alongside their natural immortality. Nanoc's mortal avatar thus tends to avoid conflict with the gods' chosen, but also his creatures tend to be extra hostile towards any except Nanoc's divinity.

This is partially because Nanoc's mistress (not wife, they never married and were never more than a fling), Chlia, the goddess of the unnatural, of the artificial, of the premature end, of the artificial endless, was complicit. She supported her sons' efforts because she loves her sons unconditionally, her fling with Nanoc was fading, and it felt like it would empower her nature even further. Chlia tends to mass-spawn monsters, sending them out into the world, but leaves those monsters as blank slates capable of being anything. She also empowers individuals, and she's the main source of permanent superpowers because her power has grown to the point where she's the strongest deity in existence. She has no endgoal other than to just exist eternally and support her sons in the same eternal existence.

​So, basically all of the superheroes and supervillains outside of the temporary ones made by Lilith, outside of Nanoc, and outside of the mortal duo incarnations of Solarie known as the Sol Strikers? She's responsible for, both the bad and the good. Chlia, being the goddess of the unnatural, is in many ways the goddess of chaos, because what's considered unnatural is always going to change. If mortality were natural then immortality becomes unnatural (thus how she empowered her sons before godhood); if immortality were ever to become the norm, then she would be a source of fear for inducing mortality; with superpowers not being the norm, she provides them; if superpowers were the norm, then suddenly she would become a source of depowering.

There's also her three sons as additional agents in the story, albeit indirectly.

Knom, the God of Justice and the hard rock of the earth itself, has often empowered his champions to disguise themselves as angels, because they're agents of the divine (not a lie), who serve a deity (not a lie), but are using the existing beliefs of the people to establish Knom and allow him to empower more people because the more people who pray to him, the more people he is able to empower. So by trying to hijack existing religions, he essentially is making it so that he can create more demi-divine agents, including multiple superheroes who cross paths with our superheroines sometimes as allies but also sometimes as villains with good publicity, because while they are advocates for Justice, their Justice doesn't leave any room for forgiveness.

Corda, the God of flora (plant-life) and freedom, randomly selects agents who advocate for this freedom. He's more laid-back than Knom, but despite this, arguably meddles more often. Knom might be tricking the masses for what he sees as a greater good but otherwise isn't intervening much directly. Corda on the other hand, he is always looking to create as much freedom as possible, no matter the means, even when freedom isn't a good thing.

Agrea, the God/dess of fauna and of the Soul, is a genderfluid deity (usually using bigender pronouns). He identifies as a son of Chlia and Nanoc, but she's fluid in how she presents. Sometimes he's a guy, sometimes she's a girl. Since souls are technically genderless, technically this is just him being a perfect representation of her domain, in that she is both a he and a her, and will be whatever he needs to be for the moment.

As the mistress of animals, he's basically the creator of countless beasts and is their greatest defender, but because she is also a mother of fauna that technically includes humans, he's also a defender of humanity, empowering humans with defenses against the more destructive aspects of her domain.

In general, if you haven't noticed the theme, none of these gods are good nor are any of them evil. They're all essentially personified forces of the universe, as it were. (In the case of the three sons, literal forces of nature.) The closest the deities have to a goddess of good is Solarie herself, although even she is arguably too intense and smothering in her love if left to her own devices for too long. It can safely be assumed if not for having Lilith to theoretically balance her out and for her not currently existing permanently, that she, too, would have more negative aspects. But since she has those, she is widely considered by myth and lore to be the goddess of goodness itself.

​The series would introduce these agents of various deities throughout the story, with the monsters and beasts being faced from even the earliest of episodes. While Lilith would be the source of the majority of the conflicts, any of the deities could be a potential source of the Foe of the Week, or an Ally of the Week.

After the big reveal of Lilith's true origins and motives, these deities would have a vastly increased role and presence, so while Lilith would still provide conflict, these would mostly be increasingly in the background. Instead of entire episodes, being openers and closers for episodes, or a mid-point conflict, rather than the entirety of the conflict start to finish.

So that's the idea behind Fire Fist and Lightning Kicks (which is the name of the series).

I'll never get to make it, as much as I'd love to, but I'll all too gladly share it. Hope you enjoyed.

So 250 BC has proven to be the longest turn I've ever played in any game (okay so I've had a couple of other long turns but this one is pretty darn long), but it's finally reached the end, so I'm gonna show the main points of conflict I have on the map. (Zoomed out, so I might need to describe for people to see and understand.) Let's start with the Iberian front.

So a couple turns ago or so I captured Malaca, and Carthage has been harassing me ever since, sending War Elephants into the spaces you can now see Praetorian Guards occupying. (Praetorian Guards are what I named the second-tier Spearman, Rome's equivalent to the generic Numidian Mercenary, the upgrade to Garrisons which are the first-tier Spearman equivalent native to the scenario.)

I like to take my time in my conquests, so despite having the manpower to advance, I'm waiting until the road to directly invade Cadiz is repaired so the Legionary IIIs can attack instantly. From there it'll be Carmona and then Corduba.

You can also see further north Carthage started with about six War Elephants near Nora, and I drove them mostly out. This back-and-forth has been going on for multiple turns now, and will likely go until Carthage is either unable to spam War Elephants or I have enough momentum from my units to brute force their removal from the peninsula. 

​There is a bit of an annoyance though.

So up until a couple turns ago, the Celts were allies against Carthage. They betrayed me by signing a peace treaty, but I make it mandatory most of the time that if you're gonna have a war against my enemy, your Right of Passage is tied to that war; betray me by ending the war and signing a peace treaty? You lose the Right of Passage, so those Celtic units have been stuck there, unable to get hime, because I'm not letting them through.

And you may recall, the Celts declared war against me this turn, so I've got them as a potential nuisance in the area.

I'm not too worried about this though, because I have a, relatively expensive, secret weapon.

Now, the Scythians also betrayed me in my war against Carthage. They abandoned me in my moment of need. They were supposed to use this veritable horde to wipe out the war elephants who have been harassing me in the northern parts of Iberia. But when I most needed their cannon fodder, they signed a peace treaty with Carthage and lost their right of passage, and got on my "I'm going to end you" list.

At this point only Macedon and Persia have kept their word, but that's likely because they both have forces in galleys headed to invade Carthage combined with them needing the right of passage to war against each other. (I'm not screenshotting their battle, but you can see the red there means they're not accessing each other without my say, by and large.)

But I'm pragmatic--whereas the Celts and Goths declared war against me, the Scythians didn't, and because I needed their manpower in a couple of spots, I was willing to bribe both them and Persia. (Which you'll see why later for why Persia.)

So I'm not too worried about the Celtic nuisance there, because the Scythians should have them sufficiently distracted and the Celts don't have any of their T2 spearmen or T3 swordsmen there, making them easily dealt with.

​So let's talk about the other Carthage front.

So that mid-health Praetorian Guard you see near Theveste? Just killed Hannibal. As in, the army the Carthaginians start with was near Saldae, poised to invade, but was at mid-HP. I sacced a Praetorian Guard to get the army low and then sent a second to finish it off. The one north of that was also dispatching a War Elephant. Timbuktu is currently undefended, but I'm not too concerned about it since Carthage can't take it this turn and even if that War Elephant kills my Praetorian Guard, I've got a replacement next turn. Ditto for the Sulcis area. Could I send a praetorian guard to kill that war elephant? Sure! But I don't feel a need to.

As for Carthage itself (renamed from Carthago because I was feeling petty and wanted to spite the Carthaginians), they've been sending 3 - 6 War Elephants per turn to try and retake their capital. I'm slowly building up my forces there to where I'll be able to take Utica and Tunis (artistic liberties were taken, I wanted cities in those locations), but this is going to take some time. You can also spot the Persian and Macedonian galleys bound towards the pillars of hercules I imagine since if they're not carrying armies to try and take Carthaginian territory they're probably trying to explore the sea.

Carthage isn't my main priority though. That'd be wiping the Goths out, or putting them as close to as is possible without pulling the trigger. (Ideally, either the Scythians or Persians take their final city for me.)

So the goths basically controlled nearly the entirety of the northern corner of the map at the beginning of this turn. I don't have a screenshot of what they had at the beginning of the turn, but every city without an obvious Roman name aside from Ubii? All of those were controlled by the Goths. If I had taken a screenshot over to the left, it'd be more obvious, but while the Goths might retake some of their workers and kill a lot of the low-HP pillagers, I've still got enough to be poised to wipe them out next turn, which will reduce their presence down to one spot.

So this is the area of greatest concern to me. The goths shouldn't have any 2-movement units left, except in that tile between Melitopol and Kriyvyy Rih (which are all 1-HP). The main concern is they do have a lot of swordsman-tier second-level teutonic warriors, a lot of swordsmen, and a lot of teutonic warriors. This was also a lot of why I asked the Scythians for help, and also bribed the Persians. The Celts and Goths both have a presence where the Persians and Scythians are, so by having their help, I should have a lot of assistance in handling their hordes. which will protect my cities. I'm actually thinking of not trying to take the two Gothic cities, despite how well Kuczkowo is positioned, because I don't really have the manpower in the area, all of my units are Praetorian Guards and I don't really have the ability to make many more offensive units. (Although spotting it now, I can swap Sevastopol and Kul Oba and such to units, so good thing I haven't hit 'end turn' yet.)

You can also spot a Celtic horde near Bampur and Kriyvyy Rih. It's all defensive units, but it's a lot of them, plus a bunch of settlers and workers. I don't really have the manpower to get through the horde, but it won't threaten me more than maybe a road or two destroyed, so the Scythians are probably gonna have fun there capturing that army of workers. If the opportunity arises I'll nab them, but I'm not planning on it.

The front which is newest, and of greatest concern, would be that of the Celts. Now, the British Isles area isn't too bad.

I captured and destroyed Noviodunum, which was between New Confinium, New Pompeii, and York. That Praetorian Guard you see on the cattle? Rebuilt the road from the ruins of Noviodunum, because I saw it as unnecessary to keep. I did keep all the other cities though--Bibactre, Dyfedd, and Decetia all got captured, but while I reduced the power of Gwynedd and Strathclyde, I lacked the manpower to capture them this turn. It'll probably take me a few turns to really build up the momentum for actually capturing all of northern England, and even longer to actually get to Ireland.

I'm not sure what city to let the Celts keep. I don't want to wipe them out, but I do want to leave them with only one city with no resources in a location which won't inconvenience me. It needn't be on the British Isles though because there's another front to fight them on, which is also an area that terrifies me.

The Celts have a veritable army in La Tene, including a couple Woad Raiders, their T3 swordsman unit. As a reminder, Celtic units universally have +1 movement compared to generic counterparts and ignore the movement costs of hills, mountains, and forests. Which means Naissus (well, theoretically; the units there are likely too weak to zerg rush my defenses), Verona, Grenoble, Luna, Caesarea, Lugdunum, Basel, Antium, Mediolanum, and Benevetum are all in striking range in theory.

Now, mind you, the Celts only have 6 Woad Raiders left across all their cities, so that's only six units that are 5/3/2, but they do have a lot of their T2 spearmen (how did they even get Ivory, I don't know, but they have 20 of their 3/5/2 defensive unit), 120 of their 1/2/2 spearmen, 7 2/1/2 of their archers (mostly near Naissus), 27 of their 1/2/2 warriors, and an alarming 70 3/2/2 Gallic Swordsmen.

Some of that horde is in the Scythian territory, there's a small amount near the rim of Gothic territory guarding settlers and workers, a fair amount is in the British Isles, but La Tene has about 80 different units of all kinds and all of those cities are stacked.

I do have leftover pillagers near Alesia due to capturing the Gothic cities, but that means I have to wait until next turn to mount an offensive.

Unlike the Goths, who I had to preemptively strike against, the Celts I'm actually mostly better off being defensive about because my units have better defense than their units have attack, butstill...it's gonna be scary hitting that 'next turn' button and scanning the area for the damage to result next turn.

Here's to hoping it's minimal!

Butyeah, that's my report for 250 BC. It was a long slog to get this far, but it's finally time to brace for impact and hope I did enough.

I know, I'm trying to do more than just waste my time playing video games, but at the same time, I did progress my modded Rise scenario.

The update is, the Goths are gonna be mostly gone very shortly, although I've mostly run out of Pillagers and made most of the progress I wanted to, so I'm not going to aim for a one-turn wipeout.

Then I noticed something.

I had pillagers too far away from the Goths...but in range of the Celts. So I sent a couple to capture a worker and kill a couple of their units, then told the Celts who had already removed their forces from my territory at the beginning of my turn to do it again...

...And they declared war.

On the one hand, yessssss, when I'm limited in cities this extra war allows me to make progress I otherwise couldn't.

On the other hand...the Celts have a lot of units in striking range of cities I was still building the defensive forces of. Mostly not a problem, they're still gonna burn through unit movement and my units have better defense, but...

Most of this is manageable, at least I hope. But La Tene has about 50 - 80+ units with two movements, including multiple Gallic Swordsmen not visible in the above.

It's gonna be a challenge, but at the same time, not my current issue. I'm fighting three different fronts now, the Goths and the Celts and I've still gotta fight Carthage. But I'm invoking a helping hand; I decided to pay Persia and Scythia close to 100 gold between the two of them to declare war against both the Goths and the Celts, so that should help prune their forces that I don't cull.

So hey, getting to where I want to be, but gonna be a long, long, longgggg turn to get it all done.

To be fair, it's not often I blog these days at all, but in the few times I do, it's mostly talking about political ideals which I think we can and should all get behind as a universal common ground, religious and spiritual beliefs, million-dollar ideas I think should be made, stories that I come up with but know I'll never be able to make, rambling about my works namely my novels, art, etc., or talking about life, mostly the bad but on occasion the good.

And...that's not likely to change any time soon. Infrequent blogs, talking about quite serious stuff when they do, because life isn't improving. It's getting worse. I'm probably a month away from losing everything and I don't know how to find the path to not. I've burned so many bridges, so many resources, and it's only extended the deadline to disaster, not actually provided a path to avert it. There is very likely going to be a time where you see me blog for one final time, and then never again, and that time is likely to be soon, very soon, because I am losing hope in fixing my life.

But I do owe both others and myself a reprieve. Despite how there's the impending doom of the disaster to end everything for me personally...I do have my moments of enjoying life. This Valentine's weekend in particular, for instance. And I have my vices, which are the things that I do that couldn't possibly lead to improving my life in any way shape or form but I do them for fun despite the loss in time because they're not draining energy or money.

Now, on a spiritual and psychological level, said vices wouldn't even be considered a bad thing. They'd be called rest, relaxation, recharge time, to replenish myself by fulfilling my desires, providing me happiness, joy, etc. But despite how the body, mind, spirit, soul, arguably requires this downtime of enjoying myself and having fun, it's hard to call it anything other than vice considering just how much of my free time I've been pouring into it.

In this case the big timewaster right now is going back to an old favorite of mine, modding Civ 3 Conquests. I have over 1100 hours just on steam, have modded it on my laptop, did so extensively on my old desktop at home, and was really into refining and honing a modified scenario on my desktop, my personal favorite scenario of Rise of Rome. There's multiple reasons that scenario is my favorite, namely how it provides the best balance of conquering existing cities and expanding into new cities. Every civilization starts with cities (making it better than Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, or Japan), there's the ability to build settlers (making it better than Napoleon), the map doesn't feel too crowded, there's not too many civilizations, and each existing civilization has strengths that can be built upon to give them unique traits and make them each provide a different experience.

So what I do, from the start, is decouple all civ units from the generic ones and tweak them and add in a generic swordsman upgrade. The generic "advanced infantry" (taking a cue from Mesopotamia) is a 5/3 upgrade and aquatic assault, and I buff the generic Numidian Mercenary to be 3/5 to match, in exchange for being more expensive and later in the tech tree. The highest level of spearman/swordsman/cavalry all have zone of control, with their civ specific versions also having it.

Then with the generic units almost-universally available, I build upon the strengths of all eight civilizations as I envision them and make all eight playable.

Persia gains a warrior-replacement of the Enkidu Warrior, with a +1 HP bar carried over into both Immortals and a new Immortals II (who are a 6/4 unit). They also gain an Archer upgrade of the Babylonian Archer, usually kept to be a 4/1 offense unit. Archers have been buffed to have a passive bombard, unable to bombard like catapults but bombarding units attacking, providing defense; the Babylonian Archer is there to be an upgrade over just the Archer, albeit requiring Gold and Silver (which, taking a cue from Fall, are both strategic resources--I also add an eighth luxury resource, with my current go-to being "salt").

Persia also has their Heavy Cavalry equivalent, Mobile Immortals, be 6/3 instead of 5/2, and have the +1 hp of immortals. The identity of Persia, as I see it, is to have the de facto victory by having the most starting territory of any civilization--if no civilization gains control of the map through war or aggressive settling, the victory will go to Persia simply by Persia not losing territory to the Greeks. And the second identity is to have the widest array of unique units to bring to the front, so they have some unique ones not given elsewhere. Their Immortals units are designed to be one stronger in offense than the Hoplite but one weaker in defense, rewarding them for striking on the offense.

The Macedonian Greeks gain a Hoplite II upgrade, with Hoplites and Hoplites II both having an extra HP bar like Immortals. They also gain zone of control and aquatic assault. The Macedonians essentially are a bit of an inverse, in that while they can technically build any unit, the one and only unit they need to build is the Hoplite. They are in many ways identical to the Persians, in that they have victory by default simply by conquering all existing Persian territory.

Carthage I give the advantage of being able to build cheaper units which cost extra resources. They have unique warriors, swordsmen, spearmen, and upgrades thereto, which cost half the shields of their generic counterpart, in exchange for requiring gold, silver, or ivory. Golden warriors/swordsmen/spearmen/mercenaries, silver warriors/swordsmen/spearmen/mercenaries, and ivory warriors/swordsmen/spearment, requiring gold plus any generic resource, silver plus any generic resource, and ivory plus any generic resource. In short, as long as Carthage has access to gold, silver, and ivory, they are able to churn out massive armies at a rate faster than any other civilization, in theory.

War Elephants are buffed to be a +1 HP unit requiring no resources and being 6/2, with an upgrade of War Elephants II with +2 HP, blitz, aquatic assault, and being 8/4 or thereabouts. They also get the Tyrian Guard, which is 3/6, a cheap defensive unit that is good on the attack as well.

Rome I build on the upgrading units and road-building by giving all of their basic units--Hastatus (the warrior-equivalent), Garrison, and "Civic Defense" (horseman equivalent), road-building capabilities at minimum, upgrading as the units do to be faster and have more actions, with their highest level being able to do every worker action and Legionary IIIs being able to form cities. Imperial Workers are an upgrade to Workers, so I give Rome an upgrade to Imperial Workers called Roman Workers.

Rome's strongest units, Legionary III (buffed to be in the range of 7/4 or so with +3 HP), Praetorian Guard (4/7 or so with +2 HP), and the Cataphract (6/4), are designed to be the strongest in the game, albeit by a slim enough margin where other civilizations CAN war with lategame Rome, it's just a pain to try and overcome their power. As I see Rome, they are both the ones building roads and terraforming the map, and the ones who have the strongest threat to expand and take over the world.

So that's the warring 4 civilizations as I tend to call them.

What do I do for the others?

Well for Egypt, I make War Chariots a 5/3 unit requiring Iron (effectively making them the Egyptian equivalent to Heavy Cavalry), but in the hills that often spawn iron randomly in playthoughs anyway, I give them a permanent source of iron they can easily settle and access. I give Egypt one of the easiest access to almost every luxury and strategic resource, and I make their land ridiculously fertile. By buffing the land of the nile area to be super-rich in terms of shields, food in particular, commerce, and resources, I give Egypt the ability to build megacities with ease, and to easily expand into some of the least-populated areas of the map.

Now, Egypt is still designed to be one of the harder civilizations to play (the game is still meant to be easiest playing as one of the warring 4 and conquering the civ you're warring with to have a nearly de-facto victory even given the expanded time to 250 turns and needed map control to 80% land/90% population), but can theoretically win passively by focusing on settlers or win aggressively by warring with Persia and/or Carthage, and I speak from experience in their War Chariots being able to fare well against both.

The Celts, similarly, are one of the harder civilizations to play, but I give their units +1 movement across the board and the ability to ignore the movement cost of hills, mountains, and forests. Celtic Workers, Migrants(settlers), Warriors, Spearmen, etc., all have 2 movement, with their chariots, horsemen, and heavy cavalry equivalents all having 3 movement. The way I envision them is that their units are just as strong as the generic equivalents, but have higher movement, able to go further (helped by me often increasing roads to 5).

This makes them a bit harder to play than the Scythians, who I basically combine with the Huns and Mongols in making them a horde with horseman focus. These workers, migrants(settlers), warriors, spearmen, etc., have the normal movement, but treat all terrain as roads. By having hordes of horsemen with this terrain-as-roads buff, this allows the Scythians to peacefully expand across the entirety of the unoccupied territory, and/or overrun the likes of the Greeks and/or Persians by penetrating deep into their territory and potentially wiping out the Goths, too. Of the non-warring civilizations, they're probably the easiest to play just because of how strong this ability is, although it is technically weaker than the Celts in mobility if the Celts are all moving along roads. (A 5-movement foot unit is outpaced by a 10-movement foot unit, and a 10-movement cavalry is outpaced by a 15-movement cavalry, but the Scythians don't need roads for their movement whereas the Celts do.)

The Goths, I lean into their Teutonic Warriors being raw offense with no defense, by making them instead of spearmen equivalent...warrior equivalent. As in, a 4/1 unit at 10 shields requiring no research, with the upgraded version being 6/1, and the third tier being 12/2. They get horsemen which are 7/1/2, and upgrade into the range of 10/1/2, or thereabouts. The way I envision them, the Goths have the best offensive units, even more than Rome or Carthage, but lack in anything resembling defense. I did give them access to spearmen, but because they lack a nearby source of ivory, they're not going to really be pumping out defensive units and require sheer raw aggression.

I do give the Goths a generic buff to industry though, by having their cities have a unique improvement provided by a wonder they start with which means they can produce anything faster in theory.

On my desktop, I intended for this to be as subtle and as balanced as possible.

Problem is, my desktop is currently not powering on. Suspected/hoped for problem is the PSU unit being fried, because it's the cheapest easiest thing to replace, but who knows? Too broke to really try to fix it, and that's not likely to change any time soon, so I'm basically without my desktop and left with only my old, ancient, archaic laptop.

Did that stop me? For a time, yes. But then I decided to just...go make the modded scenario again, from scrap, on the laptop. This time I didn't care to really balance things carefully. The values are exaggerated, terrain modified more, etc. A lot of the changes were made not as a matter of quality of life or balance, but really just to make things faster and take less time. It's vastly inferior to the desktop version, but at the same time, its over the top nature means that it can still serve as a sandbox for the real version of the mod, a testing ground for ideas I have but wouldn't know if I should implement or not.

And this modded scenario is...pretty fun.

I was in the middle of my v3 Roman playthrough on the desktop. As in, 3 full Persia playthroughs, 2 full Roman playthroughs, and midway through a third Roman playthrough. I use Persia and Rome as the tests because playing as Persia lets me observe the NPC balance between Carthage and Rome (they should loosely stalemate with Carthage having an initial edge and Rome clawing back some later), and playing as Persia lets me observe the NPC balance between Persia and Macedon (they should loosely stalemate with Macedon having an initial edge but then running into their units being too few to match Persia's with Persia unable to recapture territory but also not bleeding it).

Now, I'm playing on my laptop. I completed my first playthrough on Persia, then modded the scenario more, and am on my first playthrough as Rome. I've already adjusted things (Persia is dominating Macedon, I'm happy with Persia's strength and don't want to nerf Persia so Macedonia needed to be buffed), but wanna see this Rome playthrough conclude.

I ran into an issue I've never hit before in Rise; the 512 city limit. Turns out that with the Celts, Goths, and Scythians all expanding, plus Persia also doing a lot of it, and Rome expanding aggressively as well...despite the small map size? You do in fact hit that limit pretty quickly. Like, I'm not even sure I'll be able to get the landmass number due to how much is unoccupied land, limit hit.

But I did decide that this playthrough would have a unit to menace civilizations. When playing as Persia, I was annoyed Carthage stole a city from me, and no matter my efforts, I couldn't steal it back. So in response, I made a Pillager unit, a 4/1/2 unit with lethal bombardment that treats all terrain as roads, has blitz, and is anonymous, with enslave of making more pillagers. I made it ridiculously expensive both in terms of resources and shields because I didn't want it spammed against me, but I wanted it to be something I could use to harass other civilizations.

This has turned out to be a lifesaver. Because I ended up having the Goths just declare war against me--and they had a veritable HORDE of units with massive attack, poised to overwhelm me. We're talking, one tile had at least 50 units, all of which have their lowest attack match the defense of my highest defense. They're meant to be an overpowering force of sheer offense, and they were about to overwhelm me--until I noticed...

..."Hey wait a second...I have two pillagers in their territory." (The very thing which ticked the Goths enough to where they declared war, mind you, as I was using those pillagers to capture workers.)

Those two pillagers have multiplied to have captured one of the Goths main cities, half of their territory, have destroyed their main horde, and are beginning to get poised to wipe the Goths off the map, albeit requiring a lot of save scumming to produce the necessary pillagers. Right now, the save scumming is pretty annoying, especially since civ 3 has this issue where if you're repeatedly loading you risk corrupting the save files and/or crashing the game. (The game was never optimized for modern computers, and was arguably always this level of broken anyway.)

The process is taking a ludicrous amount of time...but ultimately, the results are going to be a huge amount of serotonin. Because once I pull it off...a complete wipe of a civilization on the turn they declared war on me, having begun with only two units and multiplied into a force that completely destroys them? That's gonna be hugely satisfying. I'm already thinking ahead to what to do with this massive excess of units (it's gonna be absolutely harassing the Celts who ticked me off by signing a peace treaty with Carthage when I most needed their firepower to make advances into Iberia), and I will feel so good once I get there.

​Just...gotta get the right rand enough times.​

In the case of this screenshot, managing to actually get another pillager spawn when attacking the swordsman in the city, so I have the manpower needed to reach the areas I need more help in.

​Almost there...just gotta keep at it.

Is fun, but time-consuming.

Thank you for listening to my for-fun moment of time-wasting.

Here's the full google doc.
And in raw link form: ​https://docs.google.com/document/d/17PaBV_42y3S5WL_h7gbHiE0HpBNAqgNoib-g3EdMHf8/ 

I’m writing this to show people a bit of who I am, and to explain my current circumstances. This might end up as my final call for help. 

Because…I’ve reached the point where either this call gets me what I need and I hopefully never need to ask again,

…Or this message never reaches the right people in time, and it becomes too late to ever help me. 

In either case, it’s certainly the end of my 2025 cycle of continuously being in need of help. So I either get the help I’ve needed for a long time, or I am left so badly off there’s no help left to give.

So with that, a little about me.

My name is Brianna Danielle Lewis, albeit not yet legally. I prefer Bree Lewis. (Although in circles understanding plurality, I also go by The Range of Bree System.)

I’m a lifelong Washingtonian, born and raised here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest my entire life. Currently, I’m renting a place for my wife in Everett.

I’m 6’2”, a Leo (although I don’t know my full birth chart), born in the year of the Rooster, type A+ blood, and an INFP, if such things are of interest to you.

The elevator pitch I have for myself is I’m a queer neurodivergent disabled witch with plurality in my young 30s coming from an upbringing ignorant to all of those communities. (The knowledge about plural, queer, neurodivergent, disabled, and witchy folks was not as abundant and readily available during my childhood as it is now.)

To go into more specifics,
I’m a transwoman lesbian, married to a nonbinary bi demisexual witchy wife, who is equally as disabled as me.

My wife has severe levels of ADHD and likely related conditions, and is currently unmedicated. 

They also deal with severe back pain, among other issues, and describe themself as blind without their glasses. Even without the dysphoria they suffer from, their breasts are largely enough to cause agonizing pain and are in a desperate need of a reduction for an increase in quality of life.

Additionally, they suffer from endometriosis and/or a similar condition which makes seven days a month absolute misery beyond the normal for those who undergo a time of the month. They have also been suffering, rather consistently, from extreme migraines as of late, which persist throughout most days.

On my end, I have equally as severe ADHD, I definitely have Cognitive Disengagement Syndrome, I’ve been clinically diagnosed as having Bipolar Disorder, I suffer from severe anxieties, and I have autism under its old outdated archaic name listed on my medical chart because I am very obviously, notably autistic.

Many of these were inherited from one or both of my parents.

That, aside from how I am a polyfragmented median system, a form of plurality. (I use ‘I’ for convenience, but it’s more accurate to say I am a ‘we’.) Who is around to front vastly impacts my ability to function.

But beyond those conditions, I have numerous physical ones as well.

I have pectus excavatum, a caved-in chest. It’s very obvious to anyone who has seen me bare-chested, and is on my medical history.

I have inherited thyroid issues, inherited from my mom’s side of the family. 

I have sleep apnea.

I have minor dyslexia. 

I have GERDS, inherited from my mom’s family. Namely some acid reflux which is incredibly present after most meals.

I have some pretty notable astigmatism, and presumably other vision deformities, presumably inherited mostly from my dad’s side of the family. I’ve dodged wearing glasses my whole life mostly because I am good at pattern recognition, so I could pass every eye exam by guessing correctly things I actually couldn’t see clearly.

I have relatively severe POTS, which has gotten worse every time I have caught covid. And in recent times, it keeps getting worse no matter what. The risk of passing out keeps escalating higher and higher. I lose vision when standing up, and balance, and get dizzy, and suffer from severe lightheadedness which doesn’t go away for at least five minutes. 

And I have extremely high levels of lower back pain when standing. I can sit, I can lie down, I can walk, I can run, but if I stand still, I get increasingly debilitating painful back pain, some of the worst pain I’ve the displeasure of living with daily.

My family has poor circulation, which I inherited.

I have pretty extreme IBS flareups.

From a lifetime of use, I have some form of tendinitis or carpal tunnel syndrome or similar in my wrists, especially my right one on the pinkie side, and I was told I had “skater’s back” as well. 

I also have some form of chemical imbalance causing a hyperactive metabolism. If I’m not eating around 4,000 calories per day, I end up sluggish with a brain fog, feeling unable to think fully. I feel sleepy and tired, more than usual, and have zero energy. I was told my hyperactive metabolism would go away when I got older, but it’s still there, and it’s really bad because eating that much per day is nearly impossible, and I am left constantly at risk of losing weight if I overexert myself.

A lot of this laundry list of conditions is shown both through my family medical history on both sides of my family (with most of these conditions diagnosed in at least one half-sibling, aunt, uncle, niece, or nephew, and often in multiple members of the family), and through very easy observation. 

It’s obvious I have a caved-in chest. All it takes to know I have chronic acid reflux is to watch me eat meals. My family history of snoring myself included just requires we fall asleep and be observed. My difficulties socializing and picking up on cues are apparent just from trying to talk to me. And so on and so forth.

A lot of these aren’t as extreme as the most extreme cases, but are still bad, crippling and debilitating me on a daily basis. And while some of them are minor enough to be mere nuisances, they add up. Five minor inconveniences can collectively form a greater problem. 

For instance, a bad flareup of IBS and POTS at the same time has a genuine risk of being one of the most embarrassing and humiliating ways I could die, yet the risk of that combo killing me is very much real.

These conditions both have worsened with age and from catching long-covid repeatedly, and the current stress, frustrations, and anxieties I’m dealing with are likely worsening them.

My body feels like it’s falling apart, just like my life, but it’s important for people to believe that I have these conditions.

I’m a ridiculously tough gal, I’m a natural at masking. I pretended to be normal for 20 years, and a lot of conditions I lived with daily, I just thought everyone had to deal with those.

“Everyone sees long pillars of light from light sources at night, right?” (Those pillars are called halos.)
“Everyone deals with debilitating back pain when standing still, right?”
“Everyone has a chest like this if they suck in enough, right?”
“Everyone loses vision when standing up, right?”
“Everyone deals with dizziness, lightheadedness, etc., after standing up, right?”
“Everyone deals with needing to clear their throat repeatedly after eating a meal, right?”
“Everyone goes days between going number two then deals with backups, right?”
“Everyone snores a lot, right?”
“Everyone has multiple thoughts in their head at once, right?”

And so on and so forth. A lot of the things I took for granted as universally part of life as a human, are in fact Not Normal.

I don’t want to give my whole life story though. I mostly just want those conditions established and understood as what I suffer through daily. I’ve gotten good at masking, I’ve gotten good at hiding them, I’ve gotten good at powering through my limitations temporarily, even though doing so tends to backfire longterm and cause burnout and me shutting down. 

So a lot of the time, it’s easy to ignore them, it’s easy to somewhat pretend I’m “normal”.

Yet they’re a large factor in my current limit, so I need to describe some of the history just a little bit more. 

As a kid, I was considered a prodigy. I was grades ahead in math, and I also had a strong interest and investment in multiple other subjects. I loved literature, history, and science in particular. I had a fascination with the stars, with rocks, with nature, and sought out bonus credit assignments for those subjects because I was bored when not focused on the areas I had hyperfixated on.

For media, from books to films, there were a lot of things I didn’t understand, but I faked knowing what they meant and used them anyway because they were considered funny. I was slow on the uptake for understanding jokes, but once I got it, I would be the one repeating the joke fifty times. 

Eventually, this would lead to a focus on wordplay, among other interests, where I would seek out connections to words, dissecting them, their multiple pronunciations, and tying those different pronunciations together. 

I would understand quickly for instance that ‘the’ and ‘The’ are pronounced differently and technically can mean ever so slightly subtly different things, but are considered to mean the same thing.

I would do this for every word I could, for instance insisting that there’s plenty of words which rhyme with ‘orange’ if you focus on the ‘enj’ pronunciation of orange rather than the ‘rahnj’ one. (First to come to mind, syringe.)

I became a poet and a writer by the age of 13.

And I felt like I could become anything which I applied myself to. 

I could have made an excellent astronomer.

I would have been a great environmental scientist. 

I would’ve been a good geologist. 

I would have been an amazing historian. 

People have told me my whole life I would make an excellent politician because despite how lousy a liar I am (I can’t lie, I really can’t tell a believable lie and freeze when I feel compelled to with the lie being very obvious), because I am a master of half-truths, technically correct information, of deflecting, of redirecting, and in general have had a lifelong talent for words.

If you’ve read this far, chances are something I wrote drew you in, and even if you’ve only skimmed, something made you look enough to see this much. I have always had a way with words.

Anything I became passionate about, I became an expert at for my age, and even several grades above. I could handle middle school and sometimes even high school material while still in elementary school.

…But I felt like even then, there was something different about me. I knew I wasn’t normal, but I also knew I couldn’t be everything I was dreaming of being, and to really become the best, I would need to devote myself to a craft, dedicated to it and forsake the rest.

I felt a divide between living a “normal” life of partially pursuing everything I wanted and excelling at nothing, or abandoning most of my fascinations and interests in favor of a profession in one.

As this continued, this feeling eventually became a sense there was something “wrong” with me, or wrong with the world, or both. I went from super talkative about everything especially my interests to silent. I went from having fun with dozens of friends to drifting apart from all of them.

To me, it felt like everyone else was growing up, but I was still just a kid. And because I was feeling like I was still just a kid, I ended up never really learning most of the skills “adults” should know. 

I went from a child prodigy skilled at anything I really committed to, to the exact opposite, struggling with everything no matter my commitment. The divide, the tear, between wanting to embrace being different, being talented, being skilled, being ‘special’, versus just wanting to blend in, wanting to be ‘normal’, suffering because I could tell my experiences weren’t a match to those of my peers and I wanted to not be alone. That rift in direction with mutually exclusive at the time desires left me burnt out and crashed out, and my development suffered significantly. 

I certainly managed enough, getting a driver license, getting a job, getting through college, getting a passport, and getting some diagnoses, but…
…It took me until I met the love of my life for things to really start turning around. 

So let’s talk about the last two years, and the better part of who I am now.

I confessed to the love of my life, my wife, on August 16th, 2023. At the time, we were long-distance, but we spent every waking moment together. We fixed our sleep schedules and synchronized them perfectly, and we got to meet at the end of September 2023 going into October.

After one meeting, we knew that we couldn’t remain apart. So later into October, I went again, and this time, we returned together, beginning a life in one room together on November 3rd, 2023.

My wife inspired me and drove me to embrace parts of me I had forgotten, or never really thought about as talents. 

After the flashdrive which had my current passion project novel broke without a backup somewhere in the 2017 - 2020 range, I had fallen into a depression where I gave up on ever being a writer. Having lost effectively everything, I was crushed. However, my wife gave me inspiration to keep going, to work on my new passion project, which I continue to work on to this day. I’ve made 2,000+ pages of notes for my current novel project and am actively working on writing it!

I got back into poetry and songwriting. I had fallen into a slump where I couldn’t complete any rhyming project I set out to make, but my wife gave me the light, the life, I needed to write and perform multiple songs!

I’m no musician, but I have a long list of songs I’ve performed despite my lack of skills, emboldened and encouraged by my wife. Dozens of poems and songs, written and performed. 

I’ve realized I have a mental map of a significant portion of Washington State. From Marysville to Renton, from I-5 to Stevens Pass, I have a map which functions better than Google Maps, with both a mental street view and an overhead view, where I can perfectly place where two locations are in relation to each other.

I know just about every road, so I don’t know just one route. Any given point A to point B, I know at least three, often up to six or more possible routes. I know how to navigate detours, delays, and traffic.

From Mount Vernon down to about Exit 130 or so, it’s also ridiculously accurate, albeit not quite as quick and accurate, with smaller gaps.

Heck, pretty much from northern California to British Columbia along I-5, I have things mostly memorized, albeit more hazy the longer it has been since I last visited. 

I’ve repeatedly out-navigated my GPS. When it recommended routes with tolls, I found ways without, which just so happened to be faster an eta anyway!

When it wanted me to take the HOV lane exits when I had no passenger, I found the route without and still arrived at the same time I would have via the GPS suggestion.

Inversely, when it recommends a route and I have a passenger, I can take a diamond lane route which is faster than the recommended route.

I’ve shown on numerous occasions an understanding of traffic patterns superior to the GPS, where I anticipated traffic the GPS didn’t, and I know backroads the GPS doesn’t. 

It’s not even a uniquely Pacific Northwest talent! One time visiting the upper middle mitten of Michigan, and I memorized the routes everywhere from Detroit to Traverse City, mostly able to navigate from Point A to Point B by memory, even a full year after last being there. Roads in areas I spend so much as a single week driving, become muscle memory to me.

I not only remember the route, but also common traffic patterns for the route. I understand the flow of traffic, where there’s buildups, where there’s gaps, where things slow down and speed up.

Just once driving to Michigan from Washington let me memorize the route, including which areas to stop at for gas and rest stops. I memorized a 2200 mile road map from driving it only once!

I’m basically a human GPS. I almost always can go to a place only once, then retrace my steps perfectly, and be able to navigate there again. And it took being with my wife to realize this.

I’m not a trained singer the way my sisters are, but when I’m not letting my anxieties and insecurities mute my voice, I’m a better singer than I ever gave myself credit for, and can belt out bars with ease when in the presence of my wife.

I’m pretty good at dancing, better than most, able to identify the rhythm and beat, then adapt to the song and create a pattern of movement which harmonizes with the music.

I’m a ridiculously good worldbuilder, and I am a genius for coming up with ideas. Not just in developing an endless supply of stories, but also in many other creative endeavors, where I can point to something and go, “shoulda done this instead”, or “they should do this next”, and encouraging others.

I can inspire the creativity and passions of others, by not only giving them ideas they wouldn’t have thought of, but also encouraging them to follow through and actually go for it. 

I’ve embraced speaking up again and being less mute, even joining in on banter at times. I’ve gotten really good at wordplay and jokes and memes, throughout it all entertaining my friends, my wife, and the communities we’re parts of.

I’m actually a ridiculously good driver, all things considered, despite my reputation. I got an enhanced drivers license, and I even obtained a passport! And I’ve picked up a lot of the skills for independence I hadn’t mastered in my 20s.

I know how to hand-wash dishes now, and do so often. Somewhat frequently, I both load and unload the dishwasher, and can even run it! I’ve often become the one putting clean laundry away. I’ve almost always become the one who takes care of the garbage.

I frequently clean up my home, putting things away, where they should be, or if not, in a place where they’re at least not in the way.

I’ve a higher investment in hygiene, in bodily upkeep.

I can move things into the dirty laundry, and from the washer into the dryer, and from the dryer to appropriately stored. In theory, I can theoretically start the washer and dryer, too! (Although of my skills, this is the one I still need the most work in.)

I’ve gone from having zero knowledge in areas such as spirituality, the queer community, plurality, and neurodivergencies, to being the one teaching others about those subjects! In my youth I had no information about any of those things, and was confused and lost because I couldn’t find anything which matched what I felt was my experience. 

And then in my 20s I began to get teachers in subjects such as queer culture, different forms of plurality, spirituality divorced from religion particularly in the form of witchcraft, different forms of neurodivergencies and how they can and frequently do overlap, and various disabilities which I hadn’t heard of before. 

Once I met my wife in my 30s, I encountered folks younger than me, in their young 20s primarily, who were reflections of my younger self, in lacking the knowledge I had since gained. Despite still feeling like I have a lot to learn, I gradually have transitioned from a student ignorant to all of these things, into a teacher who can impart my learned experience to those who need the guidance from me.

I’ve gone from “baby neurodivergent queer witch” to “elder neurodivergent queer witch” without really realizing it, helping people accept the past, attune to the present, and start building a better future with my lived experiences, learned lessons, and random trivia I’ve picked up.
 
I’ve embraced a role in communities I’m a part of as being a healer and a teacher. I help people find a path towards forgiving themselves for their past, providing reminders they were doing the best they could with what they knew and had, and they have become better since.

I’m a source of joy, making people laugh, making the days of others better just by being a part of their lives. I give my support, my wisdom, my time, my energy, to those who need it, and do my best to be there for them. I give perspective, providing alternative more favorable views, giving hope, and introducing humor.

Whether it’s eyerolls or groans or sighs or genuine laughter, I have a way of finding what to say which provides people with a smile, because they enjoyed it no matter how much they might facepalm at the wordplay I provide them with.

I know exactly the right thing to say at the right moment to make the day better than it was before, more often than not. And even when I can’t, I can still help and support just by my presence, by choosing to give my time and energy to just listen, and be there for those in need. 

I’m good at giving advice, at being a pillar of non-toxic positivity, a beacon of light, spreading joy and helping heal through learning perspectives previously not provided.

I have given over 300 affirmations in what I call my “daily check-ins”, where I give little boosts at the beginning of the day. I constantly try to check in on people and encourage them to do the same, to focus on what’s truly the most important parts of life it’s sometimes easy to forget are what matter most.

I have also come to accept that I’m really good at my job. I’m only outranked in seniority by my Aquatics Coordinator, who has been at my facility for twice as long as I have (me, over five years; her, over ten), and my experience shows. I have over ten years of experience at working my job, and I am quite possibly the best employee other than my Aquatics Coordinator. 

I know how to fairly effortlessly do most tasks with a high level of efficiency, and am competent in demonstrating these skills and knowledge and tasks to new hires. I have perhaps the best track record for showing up to the monthly in-services, because I’m pretty sure I’ve actually attended more than either my Aquatics Coordinator or Aquatics Director have. (Each of them typically has an excused absence an average of 2 - 3 per year each, whereas I tend to average missing only one a year or less.) And I almost never miss a shift, communicate actively, advocate for the employees, and rotate efficiently, and perform my duties to a textbook degree.

I have found my vibe when I choose to create content as a content creator, with some competence in short-form content, longer videos, and livestreaming. I can educate, I can entertain, effectively, and I provide a space to just vibe.

And I am sitting on what I genuinely believe is a potentially billion-dollar franchise. Not that I would ever want to make that much. I don’t even want to make a million dollars, yet alone a thousand times that amount, but I think that my idea is able to generate that level of revenue in total.

I have the plan for how to create it, how to market it, the merchandise, how to repackage it as deluxe, as remix, as containing commentary, and so on and so forth, not just selling new material but also continuously updating and refreshing the old so that people can keep rediscovering the material from different angles while also exploring the new material, too.

I didn’t develop 2,000+ pages of notes for nothing. That’s enough material to last a lifetime, and yet, this is just my first series I want to make of many!

I am a creator, an artist, a writer. I technically am a musician and a dancer and a choreographer too. I can plan how to turn a franchise into the next big thing, with a start to finish plan on how to pull it off. And I do all of this not because I want to profit off of my work, but because I want to share it with the world and give everyone the ability to experience the same level of fulfillment, of joy, of enthrallment, which I do for this world. 

I want it to become a world others want to continue, to make fanfiction of, to create works within, to want more of, to show their love of it, to make fanart, to create works of it. I want what started as my own fantasy world to become a world our entire world is welcome to visit, in one form or another. 

And I genuinely believe I can pull it off, too! My wife has given me the confidence to believe in the dream of my work being shared across the world and seen by all.

And all of this and more began snowballing from November 2023 onwards.

On December 3rd, 2023, exactly one month after we started living together, my wife proposed to me. 

On December 4th, 2023, the very next day, we got approved for our first apartment.

Around November 7th 2024 or so, we decided we wanted to get legally wed immediately, so that no matter what tribulations 2025 would bring, we would at least know for the time we could, we were legally married. 

On November 15th, 2024, we got our legal marriage, becoming legally Wed, and became a married couple, collectively called by all of our friends “the wives”.

At the end of January 2025, the beginning of this year, we decided to pull the trigger on adopting a puppy, a White German Shepherd mix, believed to be with Husky, named Parker.

He has been iconic, being a very pretty dog, beautiful, and funny. Smart, full of energy, and ridiculously funny. Talkative, but also incredibly loyal and loving. 

And together, we have talked about the potential of having human children. We’ve started a life together and have the beginnings of a family together. 

We have ambitions. Dreams of a future. 

My wife wants to become a baker and eventually open a bakery to sell baked goods for a living. They love cooking, they love baking, they pour their magic into their food, made with love, care, and spirit. They put their soul into it and they want to share this food with the world.

They already enjoy handing it out to family, to my coworkers, to our apartment management, to any friends we can have over, and so on and so forth. They want to elevate this passionate hobby to a full career, sharing their delicious creations with all they can.

I want the worlds I’ve had the pleasure of viewing and building to be shared with the world. I have all of these wonderful ideas, these wondrous, rich, diverse worlds, and I want others to see and view them as I do.

And I want to give back to the communities I’m a part of. I want to contribute, to help, to strengthen them and support them. I want to help the spaces I dwell within thrive. Part of why I pursued working and volunteering at the YMCA was because I knew what they do for communities, but I have always wanted to take a more active, a more proactive, role in this communal support.

I want to more directly be making an impact. Reaching out to people, directly providing my aid, giving time and energy towards uplifting others. My job has been a small way to contribute, but I want to more actively be involved in serving my community and helping people live better lives.

We both want a life together, a family, to have a home we call our own and to raise the next generation. One or two children, if we can, and presumably a full household of pets.

But we’ve run into our troubles, too.

And those troubles have reached a point where we might be broken, our lives might shatter, before we have the chance to see them through. We’re on the verge of losing everything, potentially even each other in the worst of worst case scenarios.

And that brings me to why we need help.

Since 2023, we have run into a large number of difficulties, starting primarily in 2024.

In 2024, the apartment complex my wife and I signed a ten-month lease for on December 4th 2023 ended up pulling a bunch of sketchy, and we would later learn actually illegal, maneuvers on us.

They failed to provide advanced notice that our rent would be increasing by $100/month, an increase we couldn’t afford because my pay at my job remains mostly stagnant year to year. We only learned about the increase when we got the papers to sign for the lease renewal.

The increase in price was never mailed or emailed to us, so we were never properly informed about an increase in monthly rent.

When we renewed our lease, we were also given a $100 lease renewal fee, equal to the increase in rent. This was not disclosed anywhere in the paperwork and we weren’t informed of it in advance. 

The increase in price was definitely near the maximum allowed increase in rent, and depending on the math involved, may have potentially exceeded the legally allowed rent increase percentage. We would need to track down the paperwork involved to confirm, which we couldn’t manage at the time. 

Then there was the hidden additional monthly cost.

For our initial lease, the only utility we paid for was the power. We received all other utilities for free. Sewage, trash, and so on and so forth, all were included in our rent initially for no additional monthly charge.

Nowhere in our renewed lease was any change to this disclosed. 

However, on our first bill for the renewed lease, in November 2024, we got the nasty surprise of the hidden additional $200 in utility fees. Again, this was never disclosed to us, anywhere in our renewed lease, but it effectively meant instead of a $100 increase in our monthly rent, we were given about a $300 increase in rent.

Our rent went from in the range of ~$1750 per month including all expenses (carport + PUD + processing),
To $2000+ per month, sometimes $2100.

It got worse, because the utilities were mandatory to be paid at the same time as rent, or face an ever-increasing late fee.

Even when we paid the rent itself with the only unpaid expenses being the utilities, Breckenridge Apartments (owned by Weidner Apartments) would tack on the same late fee they would as if rent hadn’t been paid at all.

We were told when we signed the initial lease all the utilities except power were covered in our rent, but the new lease had nothing covered by the increased rent.

This added monthly cost put an ever-increasing burden on us. We could maybe have handled the $100 increase in monthly rent. We definitely couldn’t handle the effective $300 increase in monthly rent, with no information on why the utilities weren’t included anymore and no leeway in late fees regarding the utilities. 

This eventually reached a point where we couldn’t pay the full month’s rent all at once in July 2025. We asked for a payment plan. This is required to be an option provided by Washington State law.

When we brought this up with management, we were told, verbatim, “that might be how other apartment complexes do it, but our company policy is different”. That was their EXACT wording. 

We reiterated this wasn’t a company policy issue, it was State Law, but Breckenridge Apartments management reiterated their company policy was not to provide us with the option of a payment plan. They clung to policy, which was that we needed to pay the full month’s rent, all at once, or they would begin eviction proceedings against us. 

They repeatedly threatened these eviction proceedings if we didn’t pay the full month of rent plus late fees all at once, and promised to put us on a “Do Not Rent” list. They repeatedly tried to intimidate, harass, and bully us, and were unwilling to accept a partial payment of our rent or offer any form of payment plan.

Since we knew the eviction process involved taking us to court, and we knew they were breaking the law by not offering us a payment plan, we intended to fight them in court by bringing all of this up.

However, presumably because they knew that they would lose, and because we were just wanting to move on with our lives, we came to an arrangement with Breckenridge Apartments. 

We would have moved out by August 18th, and turn our keys in the first thing on August 19th, 2025. In exchange, they would not charge us anything. 

When August 18th rolled around, we had managed to move out our belongings, but the apartment was still messy. We offered Breckenridge Apartments the opportunity to save themselves the money of cleaning it by cleaning it ourselves, it would just take us one day to go the extra mile and clean the unit for them.

Breckenridge Apartments declined our offer, sticking to the original arrangement; we were to be gone from the apartment unit and turn the keys in once the office opened on the 19th.

Since I knew there would be cleaning needed and they declined our offer of letting us clean, I made sure to get their word they would not charge us in excess of our security department. This arrangement was noted on our file, an email was sent so we have it in writing somewhere, and it was repeatedly verbally stated, including once when my younger sister was assisting us.

Breckenridge Apartments agreed to not charge us in excess of our security deposit in exchange for us leaving after turning the keys in on the 19th of August. 

We kept our end of the agreement; when the cleanup cost ended up as $3600 and our security deposit was only $1000, Breckenridge Apartments broke their end of the agreement by charging us the $2600 cleaning costs.

Since we have refused to pay because we have it in writing somewhere that they wouldn’t charge us, they have sent us to Collections. And this won’t go away on its own.

We haven’t had the time or energy to sort through all of the paperwork, all of the emails, all of the letters, and to contact legal help. We got close, once, by going to a lawyer’s office, but they were closed on the day/time we went, and we haven’t had the chance to find a lawyer who will advocate for us when we can’t pay them.

We know they exist, and we know that we have a good case especially if we can find the smoking guns in terms of mail and email which prove everything I am writing here. But, again, we have just been tired, overwhelmed, exhausted, and attacked from every angle. 

The most I’ve managed to do is partially report Breckenridge to the state, including how I suspect they had a sewage leak onto the grounds between buildings left untreated for the duration of our lease, but my ability to file a report was limited, I’m currently the only one reporting them, and the government can’t assist me legally; I need a non-government lawyer.

I know that, ultimately, if I can get legal help, I will need to be the one sitting down and talking to a lawyer, but getting to the talking to a lawyer has been an impossible struggle for me. The amount of struggling has left me unable to navigate to this stage of help.

Another area of grief has been medical. At the end of December 2024, Premera, or as it was known to me, Lifewise, increased my monthly insurance bill by $400, going from $160 / month (an amount I could afford to pay) to charging me $560 / month, an absurd increase in monthly cost I very much could not.

This increased amount per month had no explanation. I didn’t add my wife to my plan, nor did my wife get automatically added to my coverage, nor did I do anything to modify my yearly plan.

I had been on Lifewise as my insurance plan ever since I was no longer legally allowed to be a dependent of my parents. I had done nothing to change any of my information or my plan. Automatically every year, my plan would renew with no issue, and require no action from me.

I tried to contact Lifewise about this, asking about why there was a $400 increase in monthly cost for no additional coverage. I tried to contact Lifewise and ask if this was a mistake. I received automated replies, but no answers and no contact with a human.

Especially since I was already struggling with the $300 increase in monthly rent from Breckenridge Apartments at this time, I couldn’t pay. I couldn’t even contact Lifewise to ask for a cancellation with them.

When the $550 bill for January came in, and I had $1100 unpaid to them, they mentioned my coverage would be terminated on January 31st 2025 if I didn’t pay. They warned that the health insurance marketplace for the year had already closed, so if my plan with them was terminated, I wouldn’t be able to find a new plan until Fall of 2025. I would later learn this isn’t true in Washington State for low-income households like my own, but at the time I took them at their word.

I went to the doctor in January, before the 31st, because I knew I was still covered until the end of the month. I paid my copay, and my health insurance provider paid the rest.

Then from February 2025 until September 2025, I was under the assumption I was uninsured. The cost of my medication certainly seemed to suggest it, going from $30 copay for all to me paying $70 and then $200 for all of them. Because of the cost increase in medication, I assumed I lacked health insurance coverage.

This meant I avoided going to the doctor from February 2025 onwards, despite a desperate need of medical intervention at times.

Around June or July 2025, I was informed that I was misled about the health insurance marketplace being closed until Fall 2025, and that low-income households in Washington State can apply for coverage year-round.

Thanks to all of the events happening, I was too exhausted to apply at the time, but by September 2025, I was able to apply for Apple Health Insurance, and get approved. Me and my wife collectively are low-income enough where we qualified for free health insurance, and I signed us up for the first plan we had the options for. 

Shortly after I did, Lifewise took back their payment of my doctor visit in January, leaving Optum(previously The Everett Clinic) charging me the $250 which Lifewise had previously paid.

I reached out to Optum, asking them why I was being charged for what Lifewise had already paid. Optum informed me Lifewise claimed my health insurance coverage hadn’t begun at the time of my January visit, but it was the exact opposite; my coverage under Lifewise had not yet ended.

That $250 bill was due mid-December 2025, and my failure to pay it carries late fees. I haven’t been able to initiate the process of talking to Lifewise because that’s a level of struggle to even get in touch with a human, and I don’t know what to say, and I have had larger issues which have been a higher priority. 

But it’s not going to go away and is only going to get worse. Unlike with Breckenridge Apartments, I have no idea if there was any violation of the law, but it’s a bill which I don’t even have the ability to pay off on a payment plan, and it feels like something had to have gone wrong, but I don’t know what to do. 

The main problem all of this caused is my disabilities have been getting worse all year long, and I have had no treatment, no medication, no therapy, for anything.

Even after getting on Apple Health Insurance, there’s been a difficulty in managing to schedule a doctor appointment. I’ve been trying to find the time/energy to schedule an appointment at a location we’re covered at, for three months by now, and have yet to succeed.

I know that ultimately, I need to be the one actually meeting a doctor, but I have struggled so badly with even getting to the point where I can schedule one.

Another large struggle me and my wife have faced is food insecurity. We go to the foid bank nearly every week, but it’s never enough. It keeps me from starving to death, but it can’t provide enough food to prevent hunger from setting in, and we don’t have the funds to buy more food to augment the food bank food.

That often leads to me having a hunger-induced brain fog. I’m slow to think, I’m slow to process, I forget things, I struggle to mentally function, and I become more lightheaded and dizzy than normal. I often feel an increased risk of passing out, just trying to function on an empty stomach while working and trying to handle everything. 

The inability to have energy thanks to not getting enough food, adds up. My wife and I easily would qualify for SNAP benefits, if we could actually navigate through the process of applying and getting approved. 

Half a dozen times, I’ve gotten half of the way through. I’ve filled out the online application, and the online portion was passed to proceed to the phone interview. 

Yet that’s where I have been unable to get through. They have very narrow hours where you can call, and I am often working those exact times. On non-work days, I usually am so exhausted from work I end up waking up too late to hop onto the phone and get in queue for the application, and the queue is far too long on work days for me to handle it in 20 - 30 minutes. 

The typical wait period for the phone portion of the application is 2 hours. Since their hours are so narrow, closing at 2 pm, that means to get to them before they close, I would need to call at 11:30 then hope and pray my phone doesn’t disconnect, because any disconnection resets my position in line.

And I have had exactly that happen to me multiple times. Almost like clockwork, my phone will drop after 30 minutes on the line, waiting. They don’t offer the option to call back when it’s my turn in queue, so I have tried, and tried, and every time, despite how I should easily qualify if I could just get through…I can’t actually get through.

The last couple of weeks I have been blessed by bountiful family meals and holiday food bank hauls, but because I couldn’t get a food bank appointment for December 31st and the holiday food is running out…I am about to be really hungry. Again. We’re already burning through all of our food surplus. We’re about to have nothing left, and no ability to buy more.

And this is just for baseline SNAP benefits, not including disability benefits. I have had a free consultation on if I would qualify for being legally disabled, and I was informed that if I could demonstrate I was receiving treatment currently and provide documentation from my primary physician demonstrating the treatment I receive isn’t enough, I would very easily legally meet the definition for disabled and be eligible for all the disability benefits coming with that legal definition.

Ironically, I easily could have done so in 2024 or before. But because I was under the belief I had no health insurance and no ability to see a doctor for over half of 2025, I haven’t been able to pursue it. It’s not lost on me the irony of how navigating the barriers of bureaucracy to receive the relief of disability aid, requires resources often denied to the disabled like easy access to Healthcare.

And I want to pursue it, but it requires a level of effort beyond what I have been able to. It again starts with needing to see a doctor, but has the additional barrier of navigating bureaucracy. The government frequently denies disability claims, and the best chance to get a disability claim approved is to hire a lawyer for it–a lawyer who then takes a cut of the benefits as the fee for securing them.

That’s more for me to navigate, when I am exhausted, tired, and overwhelmed by everything. I know that, at the end of the day, I will need to be the one visiting the doctor, receiving the confirmation from the doctor, and likely the one to talk to a disability advocate lawyer who can help navigate the process for getting approved. But I haven’t been able to do any of that on my own.

Me and my wife have had to pick and choose our battles the last two years to the point where we have given up on pursuing things we wanted to press on. 

As one example, when we boarded our puppy at the Woodinville PetSmart back in June 2025, we were promised they didn’t use punishment for the dogs. Yet when we went to pick our dog up, we saw a handler carrying a spray bottle.

Our puppy went in filled out, yet left visibly more skinny. Personality-wise, he was muted. He was silent, and his anxiety worsened significantly. He picked up the habit of begging which he previously hadn’t had. And this was after we had provided them with a food supply for him, including some excess.

Ultimately, we had to abandon pursuing any actions against them, because this was the same timeframe where we began to be dealing with the much larger issue of Breckenridge Apartments. 

A lot of these things are legal and/or financial and/or health-related, but my problems aren’t exclusively in that domain. My desktop shut off and won’t power back on as of December 27th. If I’m lucky, it’s “just” the power block having failed. It’s not a cheap thing to replace, especially if I need one specific type, but it’s relatively cheap and harmless compared to other potential problems. 

I’ve tried everything I can think of on my own, so in order to get a better diagnostic, I’ll need to take it to someone more technologically savvy than I am. In more worse-case scenarios, this is the situation with my flashdrive containing my story all over again, where the contents are lost forever with no backups.

The irony being that the very day it broke was the day I was about to use my Christmas gift to back things up. It literally shut off and broke the day I was going to make sure it doing so wouldn’t be a bad loss. But because I was one day too slow, it is a big loss, if I can’t get it working again with the files still there.

My wife needs their legal address changed from the old apartment to be at our new place. We meant to do this back in August, because we wanted them to be receiving any mail they ought to be receiving, but we haven’t found the time to. 

But there’s still higher priority issues.

Despite my reputation, I am a very safe driver. I have a natural feel for the road and my car. I can tell when things are good or things are wrong, and I am very good at reading traffic patterns. I deliberately drive with more distance than needed between cars. I make sure to avoid going too fast. I make sure intersections are clear. And so on and so forth. I have gotten really good at driving good, and safe, and sane, and slow overall. But despite my precautions, I’m apparently not good enough. 

At the end of June 2025, I got pulled over for going 47 mph in a zone with a speed limit which was either 35 mph or 40 mph. I was shaken, because on that day, I had left for work early, so I repeatedly told myself, “I have the time to drive extra carefully and to not exceed the speed limit at all”.

I thought I was going the speed limit. I was absolutely sure I was. But I also don’t doubt the officer accurately clocked my speed. I don’t know how I thought I was going the speed limit while being either 12 or 7 over. I only have a couple of theories. 

The only two things I can think of happening;
I might have misread the speedometer. I have dyslexia, it was dark, and I was driving. As all good drivers do, I keep my eye mostly on the road. I only take brief glimpses down to read the speed, and when I do it’s in my peripheral vision. I might have seen my speedometer with it as actually just under 50, and believed I was seeing it as being just under 40.

Or,
My drinking a coke caused me to accidentally accelerate after I had correctly read the gauge. If this is what happened, then I was going under 40 mph, but in the process of taking a drink from my coke bottle, I accidentally accelerated an additional 10 mph while not realizing I had increased my speed. Since I didn’t know how to use cruise control and had to manually adjust my speed to account for hills, and that area does have small elevation changes, it’s possible. 

But ultimately, I don’t know how I got to that speed. All I know is that I genuinely thought I was being extra careful, I legitimately believed I was going the speed limit, but no matter how it happened, I ultimately wasn’t, because I don’t doubt the accuracy of the reading from the radar of the officer.

I opted for a mitigation hearing on September 23rd, because I couldn’t pay for the $220 ticket. There, I was given the option to take a class for driver safety to have the ticket be removed from my record, and to pay for it with 10 hours of recognized community service. I would have three months to complete this.

It should have been easy. It hasn’t been. Between the worsening conditions at work, my chronic illnesses getting worse and all of my disabilities getting worse, the struggle to find food, the grief Breckenridge Apartments has been giving, the struggle to handle my health, and to get in contact with recognized community service options and get approved and scheduling the volunteer work…I haven’t been able to. 

Three months passed on December 23rd, and the community service hasn’t been done, nor the required driver safety class. And this is for something I actually really wanted to do!

I’ve wanted to give back to my community in a more active way. Having community service should have been the perfect opportunity to open the door to me doing exactly that. I could continue volunteering even after the hours mandated. It’s everything I wanted.

And I haven’t been able to do it, despite being given ample time, because of everything. I have sent an email, asking if I could get an extension, but doing that has caused me to not read my emails for two weeks, because I am just…so scared, afraid, overwhelmed. I failed, I don’t know if I’m going to have a life.

I’m trying, but I am scared, overwhelmed, tired, and feeling the full weight of depression and anxiety. I don’t know if I have a future. 

My job has been getting worse and worse on draining the life from me, and my efforts to find a job beyond my current one have not been fruitful so far, despite my efforts.

I became a lifeguard back in 2014 at my hometown Y. I chose that career both because I knew I was good at the job and had gotten certified, and because I was aware of all the community work the YMCA does.

I was mostly happy, with my only issues being the low pay, lack of pay increase even when I was among the five most senior staff in all of my branch in Aquatics, a lack of opportunities for job advancement at the Y where despite working there for over five years I was still just a lifeguard nothing more, and the long 2 hour solo guarding shifts where I was expected to solo-open in less than 15 minutes while also helping membership. 

When covid hit, the Y let the majority of their employees go, so they could qualify for covid unemployment benefits, but promised they would rehire us once covid restrictions were lifted.

My faith in the organization was broken when that promise turned out to be a lie. The Monroe YMCA initially told me my point of contact was the then-Aquatics-Director, but never informed us said Aquatics Director no longer was one, leaving me with no point of contact. I repeatedly tried to get in touch with them to resume working once restrictions were lifted, and was met largely with radio silence.

One source told me to apply via a website, where I filled out a form. I did this for the better part of six months, applying on that website over a dozen times, to all Snohomish County YMCAs, to all positions. I received a call only once, where I had a phone interview, and was promised follow-through within 3 business days.

Two weeks of continued silence later, and I reached out to who I talked to, and was informed that they had selected another candidate.

I felt betrayed and misled by the Snohomish County YMCA organization, because I was their third-most-senior Aquatics employee, had been working there longer than either the Aquatics Director or Coordinator, was an incredibly loyal reliable and consistent employee with a stellar track record of attending more in-services than any other employee. 

And despite wanting to work there again after covid, despite trying to reach out nearly two dozen times, I got nothing. For an organization whose core values include Caring, Honesty, and Respect, I felt uncared for, lied to, and disrespected.

But while my faith in the Snohomish County YMCA remains dubious, I had my faith restored in less than 48 hours once I applied for a Lead Lifeguard, later renamed Aquatics Lead, position at a Greater Seattle YMCA.

They instantly accepted me as a girl, rather than it being something I had to fight for. They instantly were willing to give me a second chance, even after I accidentally botched my first because I mistakenly believed an in-person interview was a phone interview. 

I got hired at the rate of $20/hour, at the time higher than King County’s minimum wage, so I was making a rate reflective of my position and Aquatics experience.

The work environment was immediately better. Instead of 2 hours on the stand solo, I learned the maximum allowed before a forced break was one hour of continuous lifeguarding. Instead of having rotations every 15 minutes or 60 minutes, the standard was 30 minutes, which hit the magical balance of rest time to time lifeguarding. 

Down guards were, instead of being sent into the locker rooms and expected to use all of their downtime working, mostly allowed to spend their downtime resting, recharging, and relaxing, provided they were rescue-ready and a minimum threshold of work was being done.

Staffing was such that any time we were busy enough to require two lifeguards guarding simultaneously, we had at least three scheduled at minimum, sometimes even four, to account for one down guard wristbanding children and the other resting and recharging. 

The mindset for the downguard was, first and foremost, to be as ready as possible to respond to anything and to take over lifeguarding. For them to take whatever actions would be needed to retain alertness once on the stand.

Workouts, food outside of lunch breaks, hydration, and frequent restroom breaks weren’t just tolerated; they were encouraged. And using phones to remain mentally sharp was something that was encouraged, because there was an understanding that in this day and age, phones are an essential tool in the lives of employees and could help reduce stress and improve focus. 

Instead of being distracted while lifeguarding due to my anxieties mixed with overstimulation and depression, I could ease my mind by using my downtime to let out my worries, allowing an increase in my vigilance. 

The approval of roving also opened up the door to increased mental acuity while lifeguarding, because moving while lifeguarding provides a higher level of alertness than remaining on the chair does.

Seeing how much better the work environment and culture was, I felt truly appreciated and cared for. I regained my faith in the YMCA, because I felt they actually cared about me as an employee, that I was more than a replaceable asset, that I was a part of their team, an investment. 

During all of my YMCA trainings, the same things kept being emphasized. The Y was meant to empower their employees, to give them confidence, to give them a career path, to give them the opportunity for growth and improvement, to set them up for their better future, and to invest in them.

We got told our opinions mattered, our feedback was valuable, our input made a difference. We weren’t just employees, but leaders. I believed it, and felt like the Y was living up to its core values. They were honest, they valued the community, they respected me and other employees, they seemed to truly care.

I’ve had my opinion sour in the last year, where my opinion has become that while certain staff who I have nothing but praise for live up to all of what a YMCA employee should be to fellow staff, the organization itself is still exactly the same one which I had grown disillusioned with due to covid.

It started with a realization about my pay. When I was hired, minimum wage in King County was below $20. By 2023, however, minimum wage for a large business, the YMCA included, had increased to $20.29 per hour. That was the amount I was making after two years of merit-based increases.

I am pretty sure there was one or two years I didn’t receive a merit-based increase despite being eligible for one, and even with my merit-based increase, my wage as a Lead Lifeguard (which now as of 2024 is renamed Aquatic Lead) was identical to the wage of a freshly hired brand new lifeguard. 

Despite having over eight years of experience working in the YMCA, and two years as a Lead Lifeguard at my branch, I was making minimum wage in 2023, and this didn’t change until the rebrand of Lead Lifeguard to Aquatics Lead in mid-2024. While I received a merit-based increase to the rate of something like $20.69 per hour in the first half of 2024, it was still a rate just barely above the minimum wage after nearly three years of employment as a job with increased responsibilities compared to my peers. I was doing more work yet receiving no additional compensation for my extra jobs.

When the rebranding of Aquatics Lead happened around July 2024, I was ecstatic, because I felt like the YMCA was recognizing the problems with having higher positions and not receiving higher compensation. 

The increase to a base pay of $24 per hour was disappointing, though, because I felt the rate didn’t account for any of my past merit-based increases. It felt like I was being hired at the rate a brand-new Aquatics Lead would be hired at, rather than the rate of an Aquatics Lead who had multiple years of merit-based increases.

I was on board with the new job responsibilities, involving Aquatics Leads being first and foremost, Pool Deck Supervisors. Where our role as an Aquatics Lead would be to be a leader on duty for the Aquatics staff scheduled.

I was promised that instead of being scheduled as if a swim instructor or a lifeguard, the Aquatics Lead would be scheduled as that pool deck supervisor. We would be the ones calling if any staff didn’t show up, able to sub for them. We would be able to make calls like approving employees leave early and entering the rotation if it was viable.

We would have an increase in Lead tasks, but our focus would be on Lead tasks, rather than on lifeguard or swim instructor tasks. We would be primarily responsible for communication with patrons and employees, able to make sure things on the pool deck were working as they should.

There would still be certain shifts where, thanks to a shortage in employees willing to work the shifts, I would be working as if a lifeguard, namely at opening, but after 8 am or so, additional staff would come in and I would be taken out of the lifeguard rotation and into the role of deck supervisor.

That didn’t end up being what actually has been happening, especially from around February 2025 and onward. Instead of being an Aquatics Lead dedicated to being a deck supervisor handling Lead tasks, I was given two or three jobs and expected to do all of them at the same time. 

I was expected to be a swim instructor, at times with it seeming like there were no efforts to fill the gaps in the schedule with it just assumed I would be getting in the water. I was also expected, after teaching lessons, to immediately get into the lifeguard rotation, acting as a lifeguard. But then on top of those duties, I was still expected to be doing additional Aquatics Lead tasks, beyond the tasks of a lifeguard I was responsible for, and beyond the tasks of a swim instructor I was still responsible for. 

Despite this increased workload, there was no increase in compensation. When I did eventually get a merit-based increase, it was to (if I remember correctly) $24.60/hour, where it remains. The increase in my monthly rate wasn’t even a fraction of the increase in living expenses. 

More work for, in all effect, less pay, a problem which has only gotten worse and worse over this year due to all the reckless corner cutting. And as part of the changes made over time, it has felt like there’s an unrealistic standard being applied to me which isn’t applied to others.

For the last couple of years, I have felt like my current Aquatics Director is not a good boss for me. I don’t think she’s a bad boss, but I don’t think she’s equipped to handle being my direct supervisor, given her experiences and background are radically different from my own.

I am the second-most-senior employee in Aquatics for my facility, with only the Aquatics Coordinator having worked at our facility longer than me. That entire time, I have first and foremost been working primarily from the background of a lifeguard. 

In contrast, my Aquatics Director wasn’t even hired for the position of Aquatics Director. She was initially hired as an Aquatics Coordinator meant to specifically oversee swim lessons. Her background is as a promoted swim instructor, and as an Aquatics Coordinator, she was promoted to the position to handle swim lessons. In that role, she was incredibly competent. 

However, when she was thrust into the role of Aquatics Director, she got the position without any experience dealing with the day to day operations from the perspective of a lifeguard. She also presumably received the promotion without having already completed the extra trainings an Aquatics Director receives about the increased role in handling their employees. 

I feel this negatively impacted my work experience because my direct boss was now someone who didn’t understand my own job as well as I do. I believe I received some unfair treatment, no matter how unintentionally, due to this conflict in background. This treatment only seemed to improve after three things happened. 

The first, I talked to the current head of our facility albeit before he received a promotion to that position. He has been my greatest advocate and ally for the entire time I have been an employee at this YMCA.

The second, I underwent the training to become certified as a swim instructor. I felt my Aquatics Director treated me notably better after I was a swim instructor myself. 

The third, my Aquatics Director actually had to work my shift once. She was shocked at how exhausting and tiring it was from just a single day of doing that shift. Yet that was what she was asking me to do every single day. She had me there to help, which meant she got the assistance of the person who best knows the shift, but I work every day with lifeguards who often don’t. 

Despite this, while I feel the treatment of me as an employee has improved, I still feel like she’s not a good match for being my boss. There have been numerous challenges in communication, largely born from my neurodivergence, in particular, a lack of understanding of my autism and the clarity sometimes required.

I often have been dealing with seemingly contradictory instructions from her, and certainly have had conflicting instructions from her compared to our Aquatics Coordinator. They have often told me two different things, and left me needing to say something along the lines of “perhaps you should communicate with each other on this and then get back to me”.

There’s often been a feeling that I am given different treatment. When other employees give advanced notice they can’t make a shift, to my knowledge, they aren’t threatened with corrective actions. But my Aquatics Director has done exactly that for me. 

When other people are unable to show up on the day, with good reasons, then it’s something we basically just have to deal with. But when I am unable to show up on the day, no matter the reasons, then I get a barrage of questions, often chastised for doing things wrong in contradictory ways (sometimes being told to do one thing and then being asked why I did it that way), and the threats of corrective actions remain. 

This would eventually culminate in the events which resulted in me needing to buy a new car because of trying to not lose my job. 

My car was experiencing issues with the oil which made it unsafe to drive. I needed 48 hours to fix the problem. Because I was scheduled, the only subs I could get were fellow Aquatics Leads, and I couldn’t get either of them to sub for me, my boss threatened corrective action if I wouldn’t show up. My car was undriveable.

On the way to work, my car stalled no less than four different times (maybe more), experiencing stuttering and kickback dozens of times more. The experience of driving the car in this state caused damage to the cooling system, and required me to attempt an immediate emergency oil change at work. 

In the process of this emergency oil change, I succeeded technically, but because I wasn’t prepared for this and was in an environment where I didn’t have access to the proper tools (which I had at home), oil spilled from my car onto the Y parking lot. Again, this was a journey to work I didn’t want to make. I knew the state my car was in. I knew that driving it there would require emergency maintenance if I managed to arrive. I had explained all of this to my Aquatics Director, but she still threatened me with corrective action if I didn’t go to work.

This was my only means of transportation at the time, since I had absolutely zero money in my bank account at the time. I had already spent the last bit of money on the needed things for maintenance for my car, and I had explained that as well. I explained my only means of transportation was the car, and that I needed time to repair it, and couldn’t safely travel to work.

Then, when the consequences of forcing me to drive to work in a broken car resulted in the oil spill, my boss threatened me again. She said that if the oil from my car were to go into the drain, then the city could fine our YMCA, and I would be involved and be seen as at fault. I would be required to clean up the spill.

Because I had no money (this was around June 2025, so Breckenridge Apartments was bleeding me dry by that point), my Aquatics Coordinator had to purchase the supplies for cleaning up, with me promising to pay her back (which I did). I then had to, with no help, spend the next two days after my shift, cleaning the oil spill. 

All because I was forced to drive my broken car to work, despite knowing that it couldn’t make the journey safely. The threat of corrective action if I didn’t show up meant I felt I couldn’t not drive.

This would have long-term consequences for the car. No less than three times, I had to take my car in to get repairs. Initially, these were for an oil leak. Then, the problems with the cooling system began, with my car frequently experiencing overheating problems.

My car being in need of maintenance happened during a time I had scheduled a vacation to Michigan, so without my car, I was forced to rent a car for the trip which cost $2000 by the time I returned it.

And eventually, the heating issues got bad enough to damage the engine, requiring the entire engine to be rebuilt. This proved to be something that I couldn’t afford, so ultimately, I had to give my car to my family, and buy on a payment plan a new car, which is a monthly bill that adds to other costly monthly bills.

The entire time, I would even be showing my boss videos and photos of the damaged state of my car. Of how it had overheated, of how steam was coming from the engine, of how the coolant was literally boiling because of the damage, and yet, despite it all, I was continuously pressured to further damage my car, or risk corrective action, because I couldn’t stop my car from being damaged after the damage was done. 

And that doesn’t even go into the last six months, from June 2025 onwards in particular from the policy changes made by higher ups who have never worked the job at our branch. They don’t know the culture of the facility they are enacting policy changes for, and how detrimental they have been to the employees, and my faith in the organization. 

The full list of changes is basically a removal of most of what I listed above as the very things which caused me to love working there in the first place. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that nearly our entire staff quit over the summer, and even after a job market, our facility has struggled to recover the work force we had, leaving us constantly short-staffed. I believe that the policy changes made were directly detrimental to retention of staff by violating the culture we previously had, and each change has placed additional burdens upon the employees to the point where most just quit.

Aquatics Leads are now in the rotation by default, again permanently expected to do 2 - 3 different jobs worth of work. The number of Lead tasks has increased as well, placing an additional burden on all Aquatics Leads, as we’re meant to be taking a more active role in managing the staff while having our feedback largely written off and ignored when we report staff are dissatisfied. 

The higher ups have placed such a focus on patron satisfaction and retention and risk management for something happening to patrons, they have completely neglected employee satisfaction and retention and ignored how their policies are now beginning to work their staff to exhaustion and frustration. 

I’ve given my feedback, but this feedback saw no changes being made, and nobody ever got back to me about my concerns about these changes and the direction these policies were taking the organization and how I strongly felt they were diverging from the values and promises that the YMCA has given for years.

Changes include having removed for six months our ability to rove (when most employees myself included had roving as our preferred method of lifeguarding), threatening to confiscate our phones if we weren’t doing enough work during downtime, preventing us from doing workouts during our downtime, vastly cutting corners on staffing to make less people work at assigned times, a rather confusing-to-most-employees change in rules involving permitted music, the removal of allowing 30 minute rotations, and now the expectation of the down guard about to rotate to be on the pool deck at nearly all times.

Down time has been cut back from being anything restful to being additional mandatory work which is often extra exhausting. By implementing these changes, they’re asking employees to work themselves to exhaustion and I genuinely believe that if they haven’t already, they’re setting themselves up for an employee to have the very emergency these changes are meant to increase vigilance in for patrons. 

There is going to be a lifeguard, and there’s an incredibly high risk said lifeguard is me, who ends up passing out or similar from being worked too hard with no period of rest provided. There’s a mandatory 30 minute unpaid lunch break every 5 hours, but my work has effectively removed the ability to take even ten minutes of break time in any given hour, when our staff has been used to, for years, effectively having 30 minutes of rest time where, as long as they weren’t needed to do a task, they could do effectively whatever they wanted. 

There was a change where policy became to not allow napping in the break room, and all of this is adding up to additional stress and frustration for the lifeguards. This, for a job which is minimum wage, and yet carries a bunch of mandatory trainings which makes us have a level of medical knowledge and need to put constant practice into maintaining those rescue skills.

I, as the coworker to these employees, got to talk to them. The feelings were all negative towards these changes, and the sentiment was universally in opposition to the changes. Many said they would quit the moment a better opportunity came for them. Most of them followed through, and some didn’t even wait for another opportunity to quit. Many without notice, a lot on short notice.

The level of staff turnover for our Aquatics department was record-high this summer, and it wasn’t the normal “high school kids graduating” that is the standard. We typically have around 3 - 6 employees leave, and about 8 - 16 stay. This summer saw the inverse. Approximately three lifeguards, myself, one other Aquatics Lead, our Coordinator, and our Director, are all the staff which remain from June; the rest, about 8 - 16 lifeguards and swim instructors, have all left.

And I have talked to at least one former Aquatics employee who has said that these changes mean they could never work in Aquatics again. They could handle one or two of these, but being bombarded by all of them, largely all at once, was too grueling, too soul-crushing.

Even my bosses are not fond of these changes. The actual people working at my branch, know how these changes are bad for our branch specifically. Even if they work as a generic mold, our branch has always been different from the standard mold in culture. The atmosphere and the environment at my Aquatics facility has always been one of a more lighthearted fun nature. Employees understood that we were still working a job, a very important life-saving one, but there was a large sense of connection and a bond beyond simply competently working together.

My Aquatics Coordinator has been in opposition to most of these changes, and to her credit, even my Aquatics Director has been quite unhappy with what these changes have done to the workload of employees. I will give them that credit, although I feel like my Aquatics Coordinator doesn’t feel like she has the sway to implement the policies she knows would be best, and my Aquatics Director has taken a kind of silent “okay, they’re going to FAFO” approach where she will express her opinion of how these changes will negatively impact her staff, and then be ignored, overruled, and silenced, and rather than continue to fight for her employees and advocate for them, she just silently withdraws and washes her hands of the consequences, because she knows when something ends up going down with our staff, she can rightfully go “I did warn you” and point out how her feedback was ignored.

At least I want to give her that credit. Obviously, I haven’t been invited to attend any of these meetings, so I only hear about the aftermath by and large, and I felt like I could sense the displeasure and the dissatisfaction and the attitude of “well, we can’t stop them from finding out the hard way” from my leadership. 

The head of my branch, my greatest advocate, I know has also left many of these meetings absolutely fuming, upset about how things are going for us. I know that he cares, and that there are people who care, and who advocate for us. But I also know said advocacy hasn’t translated into any tangible results of an improved work environment in line with the long-standing culture of our facility. 

Our identity, what made us special and unique among Greater Seattle Aquatics facilities, has been slowly stripped from us, and replaced with corporate policies in line with that of any other conglomerate. Instead of empowering employees to be leaders who have the authority to make judgement calls, we are being forced to do things in very specific ways which accomplish the exact opposite of the intended goals.

Instead of promoting innovation and encouraging diversity, these blanket policies with increasingly rigid enforcement shut down the creative spark and kill any desires to actually give to the organization more than the bare minimum. 

And I have let them know exactly this, and received radio silence. I was always taught, as an employee at the YMCA, that we were community leaders, that working at the Y would provide an opportunity for career advancement, I literally have gone to an orientation which said effectively verbatim, “this doesn’t have to be a starter job”. Where employees would be that investment, where each employee was valued for their ability to uniquely contribute in ways embracing their unique talents. 

And until these policies, I had genuinely believed, mostly, that this remained true. Except it isn’t. The Y has been cutting every corner it can, including falling into the same corporate pattern of treating their employees as expendable. Instead of being alarmed at the number of employees to walk out and quit, they instead have taken an attitude of “if we just replace the lost labor, nothing else needs to be done”.

They have ignored employee feedback, they have disregarded the unique culture at the facility, they have removed agency from their staff, they have put extra work on staff by scheduling the absolute bare minimum and often not even that amount, and pile on more and more work for everyone, with higher expectations of work performed for no higher level of compensation. 

That, aside from how the company swap to a new timekeeping system has been messy. I requested and got approved for over two weeks of PTO at the end of October 2025 going into November 2025. This PTO was removed from my balance, but not reflected in my October or November paychecks. I thought the PTO had just been refunded, where my scheduled time off was removed in exchange for me having the PTO hours returned. But no, the PTO time simply vanished, neither applied to my balance or reflected in my pay.

To my organization’s credit, if I were to bring this issue up to HR and/or tech support and bring the receipts, I am confident they would in fact fix the issue and give me that lost PTO time. They certainly would be legally required to, but even if they weren’t, they likely would regardless. 

My main hiccup has been, as always, a lack of time and energy to actually provide the receipts. I need to gather the emails where I initially submitted the PTO, then demonstrate this submitted PTO was approved, then demonstrate it didn’t show on my paychecks, then point to my PTO balance, to show that I did in fact have two weeks of PTO vanish from the system, eaten by some form of technical glitch because of how new the system is. 

And because this has taken me five days longer to write than intended, I can share a brand new development of how that same system didn’t show me as working on Friday when I checked on all of Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. 

It should be noted, I was given the resources to apply for disability accommodations, but in order to get those disability accommodations approved, I require a doctor, my primary care physician, to sign off on some paperwork. 

I was informed about this at the end of July 2025, meaning at the time, I believed that I had no insurance and no ability to actually visit a doctor without accruing a medical bill in the hundreds of dollars range, a cost I couldn’t afford. So because I thought I couldn’t afford to see a doctor, and because I currently haven’t been able to find the time or energy to schedule a doctor appointment, I haven’t been able to actually go forward with these disability accommodations. 

The process is both highly bureaucratic and incredibly obscure. I had to send two or three emails and get in contact with the leave of absence department to even learn there was a form that I could fill out. The form also requires a lot of conditions to submit, and the confirmation from a doctor is also required. 

For an organization allegedly valuing Caring and Honesty, they sure don’t seem to have a lot of trust and faith in their employees. Especially given how ludicrously hard it was to actually obtain the form and then print it out and the steps to submit it, they’re not going to have anyone who goes through that entire process lie about their need for accommodation. It feels like it’s deliberately designed to technically be there so the Y can’t be sued for not having it, but so out of the way and hidden and bureaucratic as to intentionally never be actually used. It felt like the requirements being so stringent were the Y deliberately discouraging the already-obscure application process from ever being used.

And, again, I shouldn’t have even needed to do any of this, yet alone fail at actually getting it due to the red tape I couldn’t cut through. I shouldn’t have needed to apply for the accommodations of essentially just returning the work environment to where it was from 2021 - 2024; the work environment shouldn’t have been changed without the employees actually working the job providing direct feedback and being listened to. 

I shouldn’t have needed to send multiple emails in order to actually find the ability to request a work accommodation; the information should be readily and easily accessible and reinforced yearly in trainings, with all employees made aware of how to access it, especially higher ups.

And I shouldn’t have had to suffer for six months and counting because I couldn’t successfully navigate the final steps in this bureaucracy. 

I’m currently dealing with a back injury, either sustained at or around the December in-service or agitated by it. Yet while I have noted that I have it to my bosses, I dare not ask for any accommodations for it because I have lost all my faith in them actually caring to help me recover. 

I have felt failed and betrayed by the Y for a second time, because I genuinely believe in their cause. I genuinely believe they do a lot of good in communities, especially in acceptance of everyone no matter their background and in promoting diversity. They accepted me as a transwoman, consistently defend me from bigotry, and hired me with my autism fully on file and other disabilities well-known. They are amazing at promoting empathy and services for everyone. 

Yet they have seemingly forgotten that their employees are their most important patrons. By prioritizing patron needs above employee needs and making decisions to maximize patron retention at the cost of employee retention, they have failed their core values.

The Y is meant to nurture body, mind, and spirit, but in the last year in particular, my spirit has been sapped, my body has been drained, and my mind has been broken. 

I’ve tried to pursue higher positions, but none of them got me to even be emailed back anything other than a near-automatic rejection. There’s no job advancement past Aquatics Lead, nor are there many opportunities to even become an Aquatics Lead. 

The Y left one Aquatics Lead position vacant for nearly six months because instead of promoting existing staff, they hired new staff who needed more training and vouchers to work. (Which left two leads doing the workload for three.)

I would love to continue working at the Y, but it’s not paying my bills, while consistently adding extra to my workload in an environment I feel is increasingly hostile because every time I try to advocate for the staff, every time I try to stick up and point things out, instead of feeling rewarded for having expressed my concerns and confusion, I feel punished. 

The Y, especially in tandem with all of the other stressors in my life right now, is genuinely working me to death. Every day, I feel like I am closer to collapsing in the middle of my shift. I’ve twice fallen asleep already when not meaning to, and countless dozens of times beyond I have gotten close to. 

And it would all be worth it, if I was making a livable wage. Despite all the difficulties and all of my issues, I love my job enough where if I could survive off of it, I wouldn’t be pursuing anything else, despite my misery thanks to the increased stress and anxiety and frustration and overstimulation and exhaustion and how easily I am getting overwhelmed.

But it’s not paying the bills. $24.69/hour at a capped maximum average of 32 hours per week (usually closer to 20) adds up to about $2000 - $2200 / month after the withheld pay. Each paycheck is $800 - $1100 bi-weekly.

The monthly cost of living, between rent, internet bills, phone bills, insurance bills, gas, and groceries, among others? Adds up to about $3600 - $4000 / month.

And that’s after already cutting costs and corners as much as I can realistically pull off. So I’ve been trying to apply for other jobs. Part-time secondary jobs, or higher-paying full time jobs.

I would work myself to death if it meant providing for my family (namely my wife+dog rn), but the sad part is, I already am, and it’s still not enough to provide for them.

I keep burning more and more resources and am left with less and less. I’ve run out of time, money, and energy.

I don’t even know if we’re paying January rent, and if we somehow do, then I don’t know how we survive the inevitable bout in the red with all the overdraft fees that entails.

My dad always told me a story about two men. It went something like this.
One kept making good decision after good decision, and the more good decisions he made, the more options, the more decisions, he had available to him.

The other kept on making bad decision after bad decision. And by the end, he had his decisions reduced to only two. Death by hanging, or death by lethal injection.

I feel like my dad probably told that story to me more than my three siblings, because somehow, even when I was young, he knew of his four children, I would be the one most likely to fail, the one most likely to make bad decisions one after another. I always have kept that story in mind, trying to not prove it right. But it’s hard to believe I’ve done anything except prove I am exactly the failure predicted from a young age.

Both my sisters are actually trained musicians and singers, whereas I have only fleeting dreams of both. My older sister is a better artist and writer than I am, studied classical history and arts more than I did and even got a degree, a linguist I could never pull off, a great fencer, and is actually a teacher, which I still consider to be a dream job, despite how I have utterly failed to obtain a job as one.

My brother has a masters degree in programming, and has a high-paying job to match.

My younger sister is highly social to a degree I could never manage yet always desired, has a great job, is married, has a house, and is in the beginning talks of potentially starting a family beyond just their three pets.

And I have…effectively none of what they do–what little I do, I could lose any day now. I know I have accomplished things they never could, but when those accomplishments don’t actually support living a life, it’s hard to feel like I have done anything remotely successful, because I am on the verge of having nothing to show for all of my struggles. 

My apartment is a mess of my making through negligence. It’s my job to put laundry away; I haven’t in months. It’s my job to put trash littered throughout the apartment in the trash; I’m weeks behind. Taking the trash out is my responsibility, but I often am taking days or even weeks longer to do so than I should. Hand-washing dishes is something I was frequently doing, but I’ve mostly stopped. Loading and unloading the dishwasher was my responsibility, and I have mostly stopped. Organization and cleaning up the apartment was largely my task, and I haven’t been able to stay on top of it. Or anything. Everything is falling further and further behind. 

I’m on the verge of losing everything, my job, my car, my apartment, my life, and I am fighting every angle against it. I keep on trying and trying, and by now I think I just need to try something else. 

So that brings me to this request. 

I’ve asked for temporary financial support for over a year now, under the increasingly obviously false hopes that “I just need help for this month, if I get help financially, then I can focus my efforts towards getting my life together”.

But even after having received the financial help, a combination of my disabilities and sheer exhaustion and being overwhelmed has stopped me from actually “getting my life together”.

So what can I actually get help at which I haven’t gotten help in already?

That’s what I’m here to outline as my final call for help. 

I’m basically asking for the ultimate network campaign. There’s eight billion people on this planet, and among them are those who can give me the help I need. The problem is accessing them.

I’ve used the emergency helpline to get the resources available for free, and the resources I was given through the Y. I’ve even been given some resources through friends. But all of them have had the same barrier to entry thusfar:

They all require my time.

They all require my energy.

And I have run out of both.

So what I need is for people to do the things I previously have said only I can do.

Maybe ultimately at the end of the day, only I can talk to a lawyer for a final consultation, but that doesn’t mean I need to track down a lawyer and schedule the appointment for talking. 

I want people to send this letter, in its entirety, to lawyers, to see if they can help, or to have those lawyers forward it to lawyers who can. Somewhere out there, there’s a lawyer who can help and would be willing to. But I have run out of ability to be the one to initiate contact. I need help to get there.

I want people to send this letter, in its entirety, to every aid organization they can think of. Somewhere out there, there’s programs to help. Heck, Goodwill from my understanding allegedly funds local job training, and I am wanting to get a different job.

Loans, investments, something, somewhere. There’s going to be someone who knows how to give me a more direct line to help. 

I want people to send this letter, in its entirety, to doctors, to clinics, to see if there’s any who are able to help us more. 

I want people to send this letter, in its entirety, to any news outlet that they can. Spread the word by any means which will help.

I want people to send this letter to anyone who has a job open, and to all businesses which might potentially meet our needs, and to ask them to reach out to me. 

I want people to send this letter to any church that they feel will help. I might not be a follower of their faith, but I am very much trying to live by the lessons of love, generosity, and community among other things and would happily partake.

I want people to send this letter to anyone who is a life manager of some kind, if such people exist. Someone who specializes in turning failing lives around especially neurodivergent messes and can provide a reliable structure we can’t get on our own.

And I want people who don’t have the ability to do any of this to spread it to everyone they know. Everyone has a network, even if they don’t realize it. Even if you yourself can do nothing. 

Maybe your friend has a business or a profession which can help.

Maybe you don’t think you know anyone, but you actually know someone who can give things like coffee powder, lactaid milk, Gatorade, and Ramen, as examples of things we could use.

And if you pass it on, and they pass it on, maybe a friend of a friend of a friend would have what you yourself don’t. 

Spread the word everywhere. 

Because I’m desperate, and well and truly out of time, energy, money, and really, options in general. 

I know I’m asking for a lot. But I also know I can give back a lot. I might not be an instant master of a task on my first try, but by my tenth I’ll be competent and by my hundredth I’ll be a top performer. If given the freedom to experiment, I will innovate and create new ways of achieving things, just because I casually like to. I’m incredibly loyal, arguably to a fault, and if I feel like I am getting positive experiences, I will do just about anything to keep going on them.

I would happily work myself to death if need be, despite how I basically already am and it’s not enough. 

I need a New Years miracle, because at this point, hundreds of dollars in debt by the time I actually finished writing this six days after starting it…if something doesn’t immediately change for the better, I probably won’t have a 2026.

I’ve tried. I really, really have. I’m tired, exhausted, overwhelmed, lost, scared, defeated, battered, broken, and ashamed. 

I know how beautiful and wonderful life can be. I know how many wonders this world has. I believe in the innate good of humanity, I believe in our collective future being better despite how much bad exists every day. I love life, humans, this world in general. Despite everything I’ve lived through, despite all of what I am going through, I am so in awe of all we humans can and have done. 

But the sad reality is, despite all of my inner strength, despite my hope for a better future, despite my idealism, my optimism, despite seeing all of the good in all of humanity and all of the people…I am at my limit. I’m at my wits end.

So please. Help. Reach out to me. I need it, to survive. Because me and my wife aren’t going to on our own. 

I've got oh so many things I should update people on but blogging isn't a priority in my life.

Still, tonight I decided to kinda just...express a few ideas and I figured, hey, these ideas might be stupid, but I still wanted to share them with my audience.

So, without further adieu; 

Stupid political ideas I personally would love to see tried, despite the flaws:
-Cap rent at 30* the minimum wage per month for Studio apartments, 40* the minimum wage per month for one-bedroom apartments, 60* the minimum wage per month for two-bedroom apartments, and 90* the minimum wage per month for anything larger.

My idea here is that if you assume someone is working 30 hours at minimum wage, they should pay no more than 1/3rd of their monthly wage for a one-bedroom apartment. So, if they're working 30 hours a week then that's 120 a month. 120* the minimum wage would be their entire monthly paycheck, so 1/3rd of that would be 40* the minimum wage.

If the minimum wage is $10/hour, then that would mean monthly rent is capped at $300/month for a Studio, $400/month for 1-bedroom, $600 for 2-bedroom, $900/month for larger.

The law could be worked to offer incentives for landlords to make rent cheaper than these amounts, too.

-Make it illegal for phantom job offerings to be posted. If businesses advertise they are hiring, they must fill the position listed after they have candidates apply within 30 days of the posting. They may not take the posting down and then re-post it. Require every business listing a job to actually hire for the job they are listing.

-Make it illegal for businesses to throw away products that are still good. Require they go through a process of offering them at a discount and if they still can't sell the product of giving it away. Potentially provide incentives to businesses to donate these products.

One particular area to target for this would be food products and similar living products that come with expiration dates. Make it so that half-way through their shelf life they're discounted and offer incentives for them to be given away before the end of the shelf life, so that places like food banks are receiving food that isn't already past its expiration date. (I admit I don't know how to handle the particulars of this or the logistics involved, but the idea is to increase the amount donated and decrease the amount wasted and to make sure the donated products are still usable.)

-Make it illegal for businesses to hire externally before offering internal promotions. We were raised on the false pretense that anyone could work their way up the capitalism chain to the very top, but these days instead of promoting employees to higher positions companies vastly prefer hiring externally to fill vacant higher positions. Force them to work the way we were promised they would, and make it so they can't hire externally until internal options have all been expended.

This would pair really well with the phantom job offering being illegal, too.

-Make it encoded in law minimum wage increases by the expected amount inflation will. This wouldn't work perfectly, but would prevent minimum wage from remaining stagnant for decades/generations while inflation and the cost of living continue to increase.

-Make it illegal for anything to be resold unchanged for higher than 200% (double) the price it was originally bought for. This one would likely need fine-tuning to account for items that are of extreme historical significance, things deliberately designed to be limited in number, etc. But for every-day goods, make it illegal to price gouge past a certain point. Vendors need to turn a profit but they shouldn't be able to make that profit 500-1000% the amount they spent to get the product.

-Make it illegal for anything to be sold for higher than 500% or so the combined price of its components. This would similarly need fine-tuning to not stifle hand-crafted artisans' products, it would need to be targeted towards big businesses and corporations and industrial mass-produced items, with the aim being the same, to prevent them from large markups in a way bypassing the above.

(I do have more ideas for tackling inflation, shrinkflation, etc., but I don't have the words for them tonight.)

-To handle internet safety, instead of requiring IDs (coughcoughUK) in a way which is universally despised and leads to authoritarianism, make the law instead require companies/websites/games/etc. to recognize devices/internet connections/etc. which are in "family mode"/kid mode/have parental guidance controls turned on. We have the technology to do this already, they already collect that data, this would just require them to regulate off of it rather than allowing them to collect data on everyone. (I might not be wording this well but I hope you get what I'm going for.)

This would also pair well with education reform in making it mandatory for kids to learn internet history in an age-appropriate manner similarly to how sex ed is done in age-appropriate stages. Stick to really basics at younger age, scale it up to more details for tweenagers, as kids become young teens give them more info, etc. (Again, not worded well but I think you can catch the drift.)

Make it mandatory for places to also give this information and make it available to the adults/parents. Meetings, as public service announcements, etc.

Are these ideas pragmatic? Probably not! Good? Who knows? Unrealistic? Very likely! Incredibly naive and overly simplistic? Undoubtedly! I called them "stupid ideas" for a good reason! I'm not a lawmaker!

But I'd still love to see things like this tried, because I personally like the ideas.

Now granted. These don't touch on a lot of other areas which probably should be.

How to help local communities, particularly farmers. (I have ideas for that, too!)

How to help disabled folks who can't work a minimum wage job for 30 hours / week.

How to make sure media is preserved.

I've got a lot more stupid ideas for those and many more, too.

But I figure, hey, what harm is there in expressing these ideas? They've been sitting in my head for years now, I figured I might as well voice them as things I would love to see tried. Despite how stupid they probably are.

​So I've been wanting to talk about this for a long while now, but I decided to pull the trigger on outlining one of the most important pieces of background lore in my current novel, Records of Farn.

Specifically, revolving around the eighteen Demon God-Lords, also known as the Abundant ARGON. Each of them is the demon of one sin, and yes, there's eighteen sins because seven is wholly uncreative.

They are the eighteen most powerful demons in existence, and by virtue of being gods, their existence is literally written into the code of the universe.

I've hundreds of pages of notes on the Abundant ARGON alone, both because I used them to figure out how divine beings work on farn and because I found them to be interesting characters.

I don’t want to spend too much time summarizing the mechanics of demons, demon gods, and the Demon God-Lords, and how each differ from the others, but I will Breefly mention that each of the Abundant Argon could desperately use therapy, but by virtue of all demons being prideful and stubborn and masking their weaknesses, none of them are likely to ever seek therapy from The Immortal Therapist (who I should also talk about at some point, just...not today).

So instead, I wanted to give a rundown on each of the eighteen.

Loosely speaking, the first demon is Belreach, The First Damned, Demon of the sin Creation, and the father of all demons. He wasn’t created as a demon, but some unknown force tasked him with creating the concept of a demon and the limits on them. He achieved this, but in his own desires, made himself the first of such beings.

He was the original King of the demon realm, ruling over all demonkind as an initially uncontested ruler.

There’s a deliberate lack of detail to him, because this is a time period predating most deities even existing, so a lot of the details to him are deliberately left undefined. However, I will say, he's not currently master of all demonkind, despite being their Progenitor, and only commands a fraction of them.

The next two demon god-lords, who technically became demons before Belreach, are the sibling-spouse duo of Bemoheth and Athaneva. And yes, sibling spouse in the Zeus Hera sense, invoking all of the pantheons which have a male and female sibling duo who are married. It’s one of the main reasons they became demons.

If you were to add an L and i to Athaneva, I think the anagrams would be clear, they're basically Behemoth and Leviathan.

They were originally proto-spirits, the form of being that would eventually coalesce to become Great Spirits, and were SUPPOSED to be the top two in the pantheon of Great Spirits. However, when Belreach began defining demons, these divine beings decided effectively "sure, why not?" And just became Demon God-Lords. Because they could.

Athaneva, The First Chaos, is the Demon God-Lord of the sin Chaos, as she is quite literally primordial chaos. She defied what she was meant to be and lives to cause as much as possible.

Bemoheth, The First Beast, is the Demon God-Lord of the sin Existence, as his very existence as a demon is blasphemous to the very universe, again because he was meant to be the top God of the Great Spirits, but as a proto-spirit opted to not become the first Great Spirit and instead exist as a demon.

Together the duo are considered the Progenitors of all monsters, because they are what birthed monsters across the land of farn.

There’s not really much to their characters, because they are self-explanatory. Their essence is simple, and their power as primordial gods unrivaled except by other primordial gods.

The fourth Demon God-Lord is Luden, the First Fallen. He is the Demon God-Lord of the sin Pride.

He is the ruler of the citadel, the central fortress in the middle of the demon realm. By virtue of the Abundant Argon meeting in his realm, he is the de facto leader of Demon Conferences.

He is considered the King of Demons, and if you couldn’t guess, he's the reason Belreach isn’t King of demonkind. He was a bit of an upstart, but gathered an army which waged a demon war, conquering land after land, built the citadel, and then resisted Belreach's siege of it.

The two, with Mastemo’s help, eventually reached a truce, which would ultimately end up dividing the demon realm into sixteen parts, controlled by the eighteen Abundant Argon.

Sixteen, because Athaneva and Bemoheth share a territory, and one of the Abundant Argon has her realm as a small portal half outside the demon realm.

You might ask who Mastemo is. I'll cover him later, because he's one of the younger Demon God-Lords. So, if he's one of the younger Abundant Argon, how was he there for the first Demon Conference? Because all eighteen were. I don’t wanna ramble too much on it, but basically, the Demon God-Lords by virtue of being written into the code of the universe have always existed and their presence can be felt throughout all of time, despite them having tangible timeframes they manifested on farn. So while only four Demon God-Lords had manifested, all eighteen were still present.

But I digress. Luden is loosely based on the concept of Lucifer as a fallen angel, who becomes the ruler of hell as the father of sin, and so on and so forth, Christian lore insert here, you get the idea. He has a rather Darwin approach to demons, survival of the strongest. If a demon isn’t strong enough to figure out how to survive, then they don’t deserve to live.

His backstory is something he deems only his equals of knowing. What's known is that he was originally a member of a different pantheon, which by the nature of the pantheons around at the time could only have been either Ellun’s Pantheon or him being among The Archangels.

He was originally genderless, and part of his sin of Pride was him becoming exclusively male, abandoning any genderless, genderfluid, or feminine forms or parts and fully embracing the identity of male.

I know the details of what his backstory is, but I don’t want to share them. I'll say he's really complicated, in a way I think is really cool, but I don’t want to reveal what the convoluted circumstances were.

I'll say he was the first Demon God-Lord whose presence had tangible consequences of ripple effects on farn though. He was the cause of one Archangel suffering a brief episode of diverging from the intended path of Archangels, which then set off a chain reaction across every pantheon including influencing the other two Archangels to suffer a temporary divergence from the intended path, which in turn would create circumstances leading to the birth of over half of the Abundant Argon.

In short, what he did was so egregious, it shaped the majority of all misfortune on farn. He might not have invented demons or been the first, but he is effectively the indirect architect of every misfortune on farn to follow. Including the fifth Abundant Argon!

And that would be Lilith, The First Succubus. She’s the Demon God-Lord of the sin Lust. Now, Lilith is a main character in Records, so unlike the rest of the Abundant Argon, she actually gets a chance to tell her backstory. I'll say she was the first mortal to ever ascend to Godhood though.

One of her secondary titles is "The Last Primordial", because she is the last, the youngest, of the Primordial Gods, the Old Gods, the gods predating the landscape of farn as it is currently known.

And the reason she is the last of them is because of her being the first mortal to become a god. She put an end to an era of various pantheons waging a divine cold war against each other, because they all had to pause and collectively go, "Oh shit. Our actions can have consequences birthing Gods equal to us in power."

Now, obviously, all of the younger Abundant ARGON still formed! So obviously, there was still divine beings intervening with consequences. But her ascension to Demon God-Lordhood represented a cosmic shift in the effects of the divine on farn, with their influence scaling back from daily and nearly omnipresent to more passive and only on occasion.

Because she showed mortals could become gods equal in power to all prior gods, there was a sudden need for caution in actions taken, because rival gods born from mortals would be likely to hold grudges against those who had led to circumstances of such extreme suffering necessary to birth a God.

The next Demon God-Lords don’t have a strict order, but formed less than 200,000 years ago but over 70,000 years ago.

Sanatas, The Destroyer, is the Demon God-Lord of the sin Wrath. He's effectively Poseidon, Krampus, and Satan rolled into one. He was a proto-Beastkin, a tribal leader, who was very angry at the oppression his people were facing at the hands of Mountain Humans (read: Caucasian Humans).

The result of this was him becoming one of the four Abundant Argon associated with The Apocalypse, as in, his presence on farn is a sign an apocalyptic event is likely to occur on a grand landscape-altering scale. Bemoheth and Athaneva are two of the other three.

Trisairo, The Exiled Fae, is the Demon God-Lord of the sin Order. She became a tyrant, ruling the fae realm with absolute order and strictness.

Now, fae on farn are pretty much exactly what you would expect them to be; inherently agents of pure chaos. Their only rule is that rules are more like suggestions. So imagine the scope of beings like that exposed to what Trisairo did. She subjugated divine beings of chaos to the very antithesis of their nature. She introduced gender to previously genderless fae, and her control over what shouldn’t be controlled had devastating effects on the fae.

It led to the creation of The Fae Arbiter, a creature which is simultaneously fae, and yet, not fae. Simultaneously has power over all fae, yet is entirely powerless. Simultaneously exists only to resolve issues of cosmic scale, while also existing to provide the best for all fae. Both mortal, yet immortal. The ultimate contradictory fae, who is everything and nothing simultaneously. (Think Schroedinger's Cat.)

Milodee, The Dragon Reject, is the Demon God-Lord of the sin Blind Obedience. To understand her, I would have to explain the nature of dragons, but I don’t wanna go into a tangent on an entire different pantheon of gods. Loosely though, Dragons--similarly to Fae and Spirits--are inherently divine beings. Milodee was the youngest of the first generation of dragons to inhabit farn.

Dragons inherently seek having a hoard. They are inherently greedy and selfish and arrogant and seek power and to assert their dominance over lesser creatures, usually by ravaging lands.

Milodee rejected her dragon nature and fought for the people. However, this rejection of her nature took a toll on her, and left her vulnerable and weak. She sought a solution, and someone promised her an answer, if she followed his will without question. And she did. But he both literally and figuratively backstabbed her, and was just using her.

The turmoil of her inner conflict, the betrayal, the loss, and the toll the horrific tribulations she suffered because of her betrayal led her to go on a Lilith-scale rampage, ascending to demonhood despite already being divine. From the ashes of what she burned down, she used the lessons of her tormentors to build her own empire.

She went from always smiling and having a wide grin to permanently wearing a stoic look, because she was just that broken. But, part of her original protector nature remained, as she now serves as the enforcer of a divine treaty whereby all of the gods of every pantheon are to keep their influence to the old world, not the new.

So that's eight so far.
The next SEVEN can all directly or indirectly trace their origins to the same place. Only three of the remaining ten formed without any direct tie to the following.

Seidonia, the farn equivalent to Atlantis, was a continent midway between the new world and the old world. Topla, the main city on the continent, was the capitol of the Toplan Empire. The Toplans (read: Atlanteans) had magical advancements loosely equal to or slightly superior to modern day farn. In earth terms, they had technology rivaling 2025 level of technology potentially slightly better than what we have now.

The Toplan Empire spanned both the new world and the old world, over 70,000 years ago. In their minds, they brought enlightenment to the primitive cultures around the world. Those who they were colonizing and conquering had a different opinion of their actions.

Eventually, zealotry, arrogance, corruption, and apathy led to the circumstances where Dabadon, The Commander, would undergo his demonic Ascension around 70,000 years before the modern day. Dabadon is the Demon God-Lord of the sin Slothfulness. He, along with Sanatas, Bemoheth, and Athaneva, form the four Abundant Argon signaling apocalyptic events, because they all together were responsible for sinking the entire continent of Seidonia, with all one billion inhabitants. The consequences of an entire continent sinking to the bottom of the ocean also sent tidal waves across the world, wiping out nearly every coastal city overnight.

However, this catastrophe still left what would be deemed The Toplan Legacy, a mythical claim to being the true heirs of the greatness which was the Toplan Empire. In short, the backing behind every colonial and imperial mindset to follow, all aiming to reclaim the lost glory of Seidonia.

It starts with Toran. Toran was the easternmost outpost of the Toplan Empire, a trade colony established to easily connect with the farn equivalent to Asia. Toran can be thought of as the farn equivalent to Troy.

Toran was, by some method, displaced in time by approximately 60,000 years. Potentially 66,666, if we wanna be extra dramatic. I haven’t canonized the METHOD of time displacement. It would either be a magical glacier of sorts locking them in place a la Dylan Hunt Andromeda style, or it would be them literally being flung forward in time, where they just were one minute an outpost of Topla, and the next find out Topla has been gone for over 60,000 years.

Regardless of the method of displacement, them being time displaced by 60,000 years or so is canonical. (Only the method hasn’t been established by me.)

Toran would go on to form the Toran Empire, spanning the farn equivalent of the Mediterranean Sea, forming their own outposts. They would expand into areas the Toplan Empire hadn’t, both further east and south, colonizing effectively the farn equivalent to Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, spanning upwards to India.

Their adventuring culture was structured largely like Danganronpa, with adventurers highly specialized to ultimate extremes, hyper-competent to Godlike extents in their chosen fields, and using those fields to accomplish great feats.

The cousin people to the Torens, the Tinians, are the farn equivalent to one iteration of Greece. Tinia was another Toplan outpost, but unlike Toran, Tinia had to take The Slow Path forward. They were ethnically and culturally identical to Toplan at the time of the sinking of Seidonia, and stories of their Toplan heritage and the displacement of Toran survived the 60,000 year gap.

When Toran reappeared, the two cousin people were happy to see each other, and established good relations with each other. Toran freely shared their Toplan technology, culture, and history with their cousins.

The Tinians, however, eventually felt betrayed by the Torens. Toran had an easy path to expand their Empire to match and in many ways exceed that of the Toplan Empire. Yet Tinia could only expand into the bitter hash northern regions, inhabited by people who were adept at pushing the Tinians back.

The inability to freely expand into the Norkan regions left Tinians feeling like the Torens were deliberately stifling their growth. The Torens in contrast felt it was best to let their cousins strike out on their own. After all, they did make progress in colonizing part of the Norkan region.

Which is very important, because the Norkan descendants will cling to that loose thread. Norkans are loosely the farn equivalent to ancient Germanic, Celtic, and Norse people all rolled into one, and Norkan raiders would through their descendants form one of the modern superpowers of farn. But that's lore for a different day.

The important part is that the Tinians idea of striking out on their own was declaring war on the Torens. The two were evenly matched in a long stalemate.

Eventually, there was a call for a truce, to be signed within the impenetrable walls of Toran. The Tinians expected the Torens to be so arrogant they wouldn’t expect it was a trap, with them planning to Red Wedding the Torens within their own walls.

The Torens, however, weren’t that stupid. They suspected shenanigans, and thought they had sufficiently prepared.

They both ended up surprised by the other, and instead of the desired decisive blow, it was closer to a mutual kill. Technically, it was a Tinian Phyrric Victory, because they actually achieved their goal and had off-shore survivors who would retreat from the scene of the disaster.

However, this was because of the birth of a new member of the Abundant Argon, Deumos, The Deceiver. As an adventurer, he was considered the Ultimate Analyst, and yes, those who know their Danganropa lore can guess that means he became the Demon God-Lord of the sin Despair. He predicted everything about what the Tinians would do, and was ignored. The Torens lost the battle because their impenetrable walls were their main advantage, and lacking it, he was their last survivor, and he massacred the Tinians who survived the bloody battle.

Tinia lost all of its military, the majority of its leadership, and most of its navy, so was left vulnerable to invasion on all sides. The Toran colonies of Ranmoa and Thyrrga briefly united in vengeance to strike out against Tinia from the south and west.

Meanwhile, the Norkans reclaimed their territory from the north.

And completing the pressure on Tinia was raiders from the east, led by Belchevore, The Consumer. Since this is one of the two dark ages in farn history, loosely akin in time and effect to the Bronze Age Collapse, not much is known about Belchevore, other than he was likely an Insectoid race of some kind whose conquests led to his demonic Ascension. He became the Demon God-Lord of the sin Gluttony.

After Tinia inevitably collapsed, the unifying force between Ranmoa and Thyrrga collapsed, and the two both laid claim to the title of Toplan Legacy, leading into The Legacy Wars. If you couldn’t guess, Thyrrga is the farn equivalent to Carthage and Ranmoa the equivalent to Rome, with this the Punic Wars. Like on earth, Ranmoa would ultimately win, establishing the Ranmoan Empire, spanning the geography you would expect a Roman Empire to.

The downfall of the Ranmoan Empire was the same factors of most empires: greed, corruption, and apathy. They wanted to continue expanding, but lacked the resources to. So, they forcefully drafted the peaceful scholar Mastemo and enlisted his help in perverting his knowledge into weapons of war. Mastemo was not amused. You may remember that I mentioned a Mastemo, The Forsaken Scholar, who is a member of the Abundant Argon? Sure enough, this is him. He destroyed the Ranmoan Empire and demonically ascended to become the Demon God-Lord of the sin Knowledge.

The fall of the Ranmoan Empire left numerous splinters, who were united by King Arnos, or King Arneros, who is basically a combination of King Arthur, Jason of the Argonauts, and King Charlemagne the Great. He was a nautical adventurer turned great King, who united these fractured people to form the Federation of Ranmoan Children. Tragically, his early death led to the Federation of Ranmoan Children having a conflict which led to private businesses effectively seizing control of the Ferachen Empire as it was now called. These private corporations effectively ran everything, including adventuring, as a for-profit venture, breaking thousands of years of traditional regarding adventurers largely working closer to socialism and/or communism in structure.

Suffice to say, this latestage capitalistic hellscape did not end well, and eventually, Zeboel, The Striker, the next member of the Abundant Argon, would destroy the Ferachen Empire in a rebellion which led to their demonic Ascension. (Zeboel being the only explicitly enby member of the Abundant Argon.) They became the Demon God-Lord of the sin Envy.

This led to the farn equivalent to the dark ages, because while the Ferachen Empire had a valid claim to the Toplan Empire Legacy, its collapse left only the distant memory of greatness, with fractured nations forming in its wake.

This led to the landscape you would expect for the middle ages through the Renaissance in Ycasia, the farn equivalent to western Europe. Nations eventually began to form mostly finalized boarders, gain stronger independent cultures, warred with each other, had kings and nobles and so on and so forth.

Eventually, this would lead to two more of the Abundant Argon manifesting as a consequence, in different parts of the world.

Bothai, The False Chosen, was a prodigy adventurer and great leader, who represented a threat to the elites of society. One of them sent Lilith to assassinate him, and much to her chagrin, she was forced to execute this, impaling him through the chest from behind.

His dying corpse landed in the ruins of a temple to Deumos. Deumos had, by this time, run afoul of Milodee and been effectively banished from farn. He tried to claim that because he was a descendant of the Toplans and there were descendants of Toplans in the new world, he could lay claim to it. His Loophole was considered insufficient, and he paid the price of having his entire following, history, and very existence erased. But Bothai, dying, bleeding out, on his temple, allowed him to connect with Bothai, and make a deal with a demon. Deumos would save Bothai’s life, in exchange for possessing Bothai and Bothai becoming an agent of restoring Deumos's presence on farn.

Bothai, already in the mindset of seeking vengeance against those conspirators who killed him, agreed. I want to turn this story into a webcomic, but the end result was Bothai becoming Deumos's equal, becoming the Demon God-Lord of the sin Ambition.

In a different corner of the world in a similar timeframe, the various nations of Ycasia were colonizing the continent of Angea, displacing the locals, enslaving them, etc. Rarma, The Ensnarer, a child of a white father and black mother, could pass as a tanned white person, but was very much a child of both worlds, with all the trauma that entailed. I also am planning to tell her story, but the short form of it is, she met a guy who became her one true love. They became warlords together and effectively declared war against all other warlords and every nation colonizing Angea. Eventually, Rarma ended up mortally wounded. Her husband kept her in stasis, fought off all enemies, and healed her enough to revive her, but in the process, he himself got mortally wounded, and a just-revived Rarma was too weak to reciprocate the stasis. The two had saved each other countless times, but she wasn’t able to save him so immediately after he saved her.

She took this quite poorly. She embraced the worst traits of both herself and her husband, expanding their plans, following through with them, and didn’t just fend off the opposition. She brutally CRUSHED them, conquering the entire continent.

She was driven to demonic Ascension by the maddening irony of how she could have everything she ever could ask for--except the one and only thing she wanted. Because not even the Abundant Argon can revive the truly dead, her lover was gone for good. So she became the Demon God-Lord of the sin Greed.

All seven of those trace back indirectly to Luden, because Luden’s actions drove the actions which created the Toplan Empire, and through the sinking of Seidonia, the resulting chain of events.

To chronologically backtrack a bit, Phaimyustazael became the Demon God-Lord of the sin Fear(also Deceit) a few thousand years before modern times. Less than six thousand, but over two thousand. You might wonder why his name is so convoluted, and it's by his design. He is the Demon God-Lord of contracts. Whenever you think "deal with the devil", it'd be him you’re making a deal with.

As the demon of contracts, he's an expert at making people who arrogantly think they have bested him painfully realize they have been tricked by Phaimyustazael, The Trickster. To understand why, you have to know how demon true names work.

The true names of demons are well-known. So a contractor or summoner knowing a demon's true name offers them no power over that demon.

UNLESS the demon ACKNOWLEDGES their true name in the presence of their summoner or contractor. If they explicitly say, "yes, this is me", then they are bound to the one who brought them to farn. This is why demons have hundreds of aliases and titles. They use those to avoid acknowledging who they are to their summoner.

Phaimyustazael, by virtue of his name and the spelling thereof being ridiculously hard to get right, weaponizes this. He will acknowledge misspoken versions of his name and typos thereof, to let contractors THINK they have been given full control.

But because they didn’t perfectly pronounce his true name, it doesn’t count as being his true name, meaning they actually hold no extra power over him, and they find this out the hard way.

The youngest of the Abundant Argon in manifesting, even though she’s been around for all of eternity, is Rothasta. I originally had her title as "The First Inquisitor", but I am realizing that all five of the Primordial Demon God-Lords have 'first' and none of the other 15 do except Rothasta, so I am looking for a new ?adverb? between 'the' and 'Inquisitor'. Currently I am going for 'Sullen', but that may change later if I think of a better replacement for 'first'.

Rothasta is the Demon God-Lord of the sin Sacrifice. She was sent by a now-long-gone nation to prevent demons from crossing through a portal connecting the demon realm with farn. While guarding this portal, she would never age, and so, she was an eternal guardian of preventing mass demonic incursion onto farn.

She did this as a mortal for at least a thousand years. She was informed nothing remained of her nation. Everyone she knew had their lineage die out, and all records of her kingdom were lost, erased, etc. In short, nothing about her mortal life remained, and she had no reason to keep fighting. But she did.

Until about a hundred years ago, when she just...snapped. She had known she had consumed the essence of enough demons where she could become a demon god for over a thousand years. She chose not to. Until one day, she just...didn’t. She just succumbed. And became the seventeenth of the Abundant Argon.

As for the eighteenth Abundant Argon, they have yet to manifest on farn. Their effect on the world has already been felt, with them a member of every Demon Conference, but they haven’t yet actually manifested on farn, so their identity is unknown because the events leading to their birth as a Demon God-Lord haven’t yet transpired.

Because of this, the eighteenth Demon God-Lord could be anyone, and be the Demon God-Lord of any sin.

Of course, I know who the five possible eighteenth members of the Abundant Argon would be, each representing a different possible eighteenth sin. While anyone COULD be the eighteenth, only five people have the circumstances where they MIGHT become the eighteenth.

The eighteenth Demon God-Lord could be the sin of Insanity, Clarity, Regret, Conflict, or Pacifism.

And you might wonder. "Why is there only 18, and not 24?"

Well that's because the circumstances surrounding these people mean that any one of them becoming a Demon God-Lord would change the landscape of farn in a way which would prevent the circumstances for the other four.

In short, it’s not that there must be eighteen Demon God-Lords, never more and never less.

It’s that it’s only possible for eighteen individuals to become Demon God-Lords. Seventeen already have. Five people could be the eighteenth, but any one of them becoming the eighteenth changes the other four in ways making it impossible for them to become one anymore.

The best way I can think to explain this spoiler-free is to ask you to imagine a hypothetical.
Say all five candidates for the 18th were friends, and the only trigger condition for becoming the eighteenth Demon God-Lord was a tragedy where the other four died.

Sure, if there were multiple trigger conditions, then it would be possible to have nineteen to 24. But because the one and ONLY trigger condition for this hypothetical is the other four possible people being killed, there can always only be one final demonic Ascension to Demon God-Lordhood.

While any of them COULD be the final Abundant Argon, only one trigger condition can ever trigger, because that trigger condition prevents the other four triggers from being possible.

Since all eighteen of the Abundant Argon have been at every major Demon Conference starting with the first, they have always known they would have eighteen in total, thus why Mastemo proposed calling the Demon God-Lords The Abundant Argon.

They knew that no matter what, circumstances would play out to have that number eventually. Not because it was set to be eighteen, but rather because it just happened the circumstances behind the formation of the eighteenth would prevent any future possibility of more Demon God-Lords.

I hope that clarifier helps explain the concept. Where it's not a rule of "there must be 18 exactly", and instead it's just "well, 18 of us form at some point".

The only other thing I want to clarify is that about half of the Abundant Argon have kingdoms on farn and permanently reside there, and the other half only dwell on farn when summoned.

The five primordials, Sanatas, Dabadon, Zeboel, Phaimyustazael, and Rothasta all have no kingdoms on farn, and exist on farn exclusively through summons and contracts. They mainly dwell in the demon realm.

Milodee, Trisairo, Deumos, Belchevore, Mastemo, Bothai, Rarma, and the eighteenth Abundant Argon, all possess kingdoms on farn. (Or in the case of the 18th, WILL possess a kingdom.) Effectively, their subjects are a form of permanently summoning and contracting them.

There’s a lot more to demons, Demon Lords, Demon Gods, and Demon God-Lords, and how each is different from each other, and how demons work, because I only touched on the bare minimum of the mechanics involved.

And most of the Abundant Argon have a lot more to their stories and characters. I didn’t cover any of their secondary domains, which is what they are usually actually worshipped for. People pray to the Demon God-Lords to provide them something, and while it CAN be their primary domain of their sin, it's usually actually their secondary traits they get worshipped for.

For instance, Lilith’s primary worshippers are slaves praying for freedom, as Lilith’s secondary domain is freedom from slavery, loosely speaking.

Each of them, including the eighteenth, have secondary aspects to them. At least one pro-something and a correlating anti-something. But I think describing all of them is best saved for a different ramble.

I hope you enjoyed this one!