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She's already thinking about tabula recta and autokey ciphers and other such fun, the card is nothing more than a passing fancy- but she flips it up and over and glances at the underside as she puts her glass down on the table.

It has a C worked into the back. Do you pick it up?

"Meet us there when you're ready. At this point, we might have half the party in on the fun." He half turned, and vanished, appearing elsewhere.

"I'm Pads.". He stuck out a hand, looking for a handshake.

"Well, it's good to see someone here knows what they're dealing with. But if nobody bothers to step out of the first room, well, most of the party has gone to waste!" She tipped her head forward, her voice lowering in pitch as it did when she spoke seriously. "And I so hate for my efforts to be wasted, darling."

Well. If she wanted to deliver veiled threats, she was doing rather well.

Their sleeves did not stop rustling. "I beg your pardon, and yours as well, whoever you are, but the fact that you're the one offering reinforcements isn't exactly inspiring trust."

An intervention was clearly called for here. That, of course, meant walking up to him and booping his nose. Or, well, his beak.

"I noticed you looking for companions - something about not wanting to walk out without an army, I believe? - and thought you might like a tick of assistance." Her smile was in no way comforting.

Their sleeves seemed to ruffle slightly, and they shifted back a few steps. "Uh, hello," they said, wondering what the Hostess was planning.

But they nodded, despite that. "Yeah... yeah, sure. I'll join you guys for your... um... exploring. Lead the way."

Oh, that was precious. She ambled over and poked Mister Turkey in the arm.

Springs stood near the refreshments table, crème brûlée in his hand, deep in thought.

He wondered how was it that he ended up eating desserts at an absolutely ungogly hour in this life. What did he do to have the right to enjoy such a rich treat at this time? It was all too overwhelming for him. He needed to find a place to sit down, to figure out what else he could do at this party, other than eating all the food in sight.

((Alright, I'm back. I was occupied for a bit. Time to see what else this party offers!))

Thank you to everyone who attended. We all had a great time, and it was... well, I admit I had been terrified out of my mind the night before. I don't go out as myself all that much, and I had horrendous nightmares about being shunned for coming in clothing that reflected my real gender rather than the one I had been assigned at birth. Those fears were totally irrational, but the feeling I got when I realised they were totally unfounded, that I could be me around the people I care about?

It means a lot.

I lack the words to express how much.

Thank you. =]

The only error I could see was "wistful thinking" - I've always heard it as wishful, but I could be wrong. Legitimately every other thing was beautiful.

1. Nope, the only editor of her userpage has been her. I just checked the edit history.
   
   2. Randomly stumbling across images seems a flimsy basis for declaring that Hitler is god-worshiped by some corners of the Internet, IMO. It only takes a few trolls to make disturbing images; it takes a group to form a culture, and it takes observing said group for a period of time to correctly observe its culture. Either you're overgeneralizing your observations or you're understating your involvement. In either case, see 3. (And, good! Someone has to be a responsible adult around here.)
   
   2b. Nope, I said "stuff" for a reason. You're fine; Hitler-cultishness is not.
   
   3. Yes, leaving things out is okay. You can in fact choose what you allow to shape your subjective experience of the Internet. We're all living in weird times, and fact-checking is good, but there's such a thing as delving too deep in the rabbit hole. There's also such a thing as over-sharing.
   
   4. "Fixed" is not an attainable goal. "Better," on the other hand, is a choice we all have the chance to make every day. You seem to have some awareness of your issues, which is a good first step. Use that awareness to make better choices next time, and the time after that, and so forth. Also, this may or may not relate to you, but I'll put it out there anyway: if you need professional and/or chemical assistance to make better choices, that's okay! Lots of us do. Getting the help you need is a great choice. {= )
   
   ~Neshomeh

I can't really comment on how easy it'd be to make work, since my knowledge of the Tolkienverse is rather rusty.

- Tomash

I barely even know what half of this stuff is that you're talking about. But I want to learn. The techiest I am at this current moment is being an amateur ratio operator. Which isn't quite as techy as your techiness. Or at least, you seem to have quite an interest in making your posts secure, and the fact that you know what pretty much everything is doing to make them secure has led me to declare you "techy."

Since you are so techy, my newbie gift to you is a replica of Dr. Quarkblitz's robot from the Spear of Destiny mission packs. This replica functions similar to the replica Portal turret that the crew at Valve built, in that it looks extremely similar to the original, but just makes sounds and does not fire bullets as the original does. It is also programmable via an Arduino board! :D

Now for the less techy part. What fandoms and stuff are you in? What types of things do you like to write? Got any characters you think you want to make into agents? I'm curious to know.

Well, either way, it's nice to meet you, Your Royal Techiness! It's evident that you're going to be a great help to the PPC, even if you don't write a single mission.

-Twistey
----------
"Huh? What's this robot you're talking about?" Glad you asked! http://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/Robot

The Musician looked around, and then back at her companions.

"I've seen ciphers like this before," she said, "but I could use some space to spread out papers for the decipherment. Could I get you to accompany me? I'd... rather not be sitting alone and distracted in a quiet corner."

She nodded towards a well-lit but only sparsely occupied corner of the room, and the tables therein.

1. Actually, on her user page, somebody wrote down a history of Bram's activity that seems to definitely not have been written from her perspective.
   
   2. Believe me, it's not really a matter of "hanging out" there, I just often stumble into weird stuff while searching on Google Images, and it's so bad that the memories stick with me. (You seriously sound like my parents... XD)
   2b. Hang on, are you calling me "weird and/or messed-up"? Because that's what it sounds like.
   
   3. Very specific lens, ah? As in it's actually okay to leave out a few things? Ah. I've always been a fan of world-building and making my fantasy realms very complete, which explains the overload on fandoms. But as for the rest of it, it's mainly just a matter of, well, I've also always had a bit of a thing for trying to know everything about a subject before forming opinions, and then trying to be as honest and factual about it as possible. Perhaps it's because I live in an age of extreme opinions and constant battles over political correctness in the media, or perhaps it's because I'm trying to get control over my emotions and stop freaking out over everything. Either way, it's becoming obvious to me that I have a slight obsession with research and kind of idealize a lack of bias that probably isn't humanly attainable. Or something. Probably just trying to convince myself that my problem is something other than what it actually is. Which is- oh never mind. This paragraph is getting too long and train-of-thought-y. Let's just say I bring evil wherever I go. Hah ;P
   
   4. The question is, though, if your patience truly is long enough for you to eventually see me fixed. It's going to take a long time unless I get a pretty extreme wakeup call, and a pretty extreme wakeup call would probably be a bad idea, as it might fail and provoke me to do stupid stuff instead. But that's alright.
   
   -Twistey

"Considering the fact that she could resurrect us just as easily--who knows?" Once again, she sipped her cider by reflex and, once again, began coughing violently. "I'm the Crimson Woman, by the way," she croaked after her coughing fit was over.

To the Musician, he said, "I don't know! It's addressed to you."

Rod turned to look at the Crimson Woman as she spoke. "Gee, I hope not . . . You have a frighteningly good point. But the Hostess wouldn't do something like that, would she?"

"Wait, it this a murder mystery masquerade?" she interrupted. She glanced around the room, shifting from foot to foot. "Because considering the setting and the, er," she coughed, "authorial resources, shall we say, that we have at our disposal, utter realism isn't quite out of the question, if you know what I mean."

Well, that was... completely ludicrous. On the plus side, Spider!Shelob is pretty scary. She has a nice angular shape which looks much more intrinsically menacing than the standard bulbous one.

On the minus side... everything else.

... I have to preemptively correct myself here. I was all ready to say that Ungoliant absolutely couldn't change hershape, but then I went to the source text in the Silm. Here's the introduction of the Unlight herself:

The Eldar knew not whence she came; but some have said that in ages long before she descended from the darkness that lies about Arda, when Melkor first looked down in envy upon the Kingdom of Manwë, and that in the beginning she was one of those that he corrupted to his service. But she had disowned her Master, desiring to be mistress of her own lust, taking all things to herself to feed her emptiness; and she fled to the south, escaping the assaults of the Valar and the hunters of Oromë, for their vigilance had ever been to the north, and the south was long unheeded. Thence she had crept towards the light of the Blessed Realm; for she hungered for light and hated it.

In a ravine she lived, and took shape as a spider of monstrous form, weaving her black webs in a cleft of the mountains. There she sucked up all light that she could find, and spun it forth again in dark nets of strangling gloom, until no light more could come to her abode; and she was famished.

So. Ungoliant isn't a Maia - she's said (by Tolkien, here, so we have to take it as canon) to have come down before Melkor - which means before any of the Valar. That places her in a special category with Tom 'before the Dark Lord came from outside' Bombadil, so very select company.

But... yes, it seems that Ungoliant could explicitly and canonically change shape. Can that be inherited? The mearas seem to have gotten some traits from their potential forefather Nahar, steed of Orome; Huan is clearly more than just a big dog, despite being born as a puppy; and Luthien the Nightingale had enough power to bind Melkor himself in sleep, which must(?) have come from her mother, who once lived in the gardens of Irmo Lorien. So tentatively, yes, it's possible for 'divine' traits to be passed down to children, and that could include shapeshifting.

I really don't like saying that. >(

Fortunately, I get to agree with Nesh on the other part: there is absolutely no way Ungoliant or her spawn were gifted with Sight of any kind. Ungoliant got whipped by Balrogs for lack of it; Shelob got stabbed by a midget. Forward planning was never their thing. And, yes, it goes directly against their whole theme: even Manwe's Sight couldn't see through the Unlight of Ungoliant, and that sort of thing always goes both ways (witness Frodo's troubles with being spotted by Sauron in the Mirror of Galadriel, or with Amon Hen - and the bi-directionality of the palantiri).

Nesh is right that Ungoliant and Shelob are Tolkien's embodiments of Hunger. They may help others, but only for direct personal gain. Since Shelob clearly doesn't have her mother's light-eating abilities (Ungoliant lusted for the Silmarils, while Shelob runs from the trapped essence of the distant light of one of them), that means food. Of course, Talion and Celebrimbor don't look especially edible...

There's a couple of other things in the trailer that make me even more :O (in a bad way). It seems that Minas Ithil is a Gondorian fortress at this point - you know, the one that's been the Tower of Sorcery for thousands of years? Yeah, that one. Timeline hypercompression is in full swing. But let's ignore that! We have something else to attend to:




This is either Celebrimbor (from his appearance) or Sauron (from the fact that he shows up over the line 'The Great Deceiver will pay for his betrayal'). Of course, Shelob claims the two of them 'are one', so depending on how literal she's being, that might not even be a sensible question.

Either way, whoever it was hung out with Shelob... and is certainly implied to be offering her that three-stoned Ring. Which... could be anything. It's not one of the Movieverse Three or Seven, and obviously isn't the One or Brim's Other One, but after that...

My best guess is that it's either one of the Nine, or a lesser ring. Whether it's being offered to Shelob as a bribe in the present or the past, I don't know.

Oh, and speaking of Rings... guess what Shelob got hold of:



That's Brim's Ring on her finger. We get a few good looks at it throughout the trailer, and I remember that it's inscribed in English using a Tengwar font (not English in Tengwar, you understand, but English keymappings with Tengwar letters)... I wonder if I can get more of the inscription off.

I thought I couldn't. 'r-e-j', it read, and I slumped. Then a couple of letters letter I had a capital I, so clearly it was just gibberish now. Nevertheless, I persevered to the end of the word, flicked the font from Tengwar to English, and saw:

'rejoice.'

... okay then! Let's do this.

Here's what I've been able to read. Unlike the first trailer, we get a good look at both the inner and outer inscription, so:



Which you can type into your preferred Tengwar font and read as:

Outer: You [...] light undiminished, All shall fear me and rejoice.

Inner: I renounce the Blessed Realm. To redeem the Land of Shadow.

Things to note:

-Yes, that's a misquote/inversion of Galadriel there on the outside.
-This is a seriously messed-up message, with Celebrimbor basically refusing to go to Heaven in order to... mind-control some orcs or something.
-I filled in parts of the latter half of the inner message from the previous trailer (this version shows 'to red... adow', so I'm preeetty confident). Which means...
-They've reversed the Ring from last time! You can't see the image any more (PHOTOBUCKET! [Shakes fist]), but you can watch the original trailer yourself and see portions of that 'inner' text on the outside of the One More Ring. That's... I don't even know why you'd do that.

The tagline at the end of the trailer is 'Nothing will be forgotten'. Between Shelob, Minas Ithil, and now getting their own Ring inside out... I tend to doubt that. ;)

hS

PS: Is it bad that I kiiiiiind of want to write the story of Bombadil and Ungoliant fighting it out on Arda before the Valar arrive? She's the Dark Before the Stars, he's the Song of the Earth... it could work!

The sequence was what I was worried about the most. Some guy on Reddit already commented on other matters. Such as getting into the mind of the characters, overdescribing the world, and others. I intend to let the complaints come in first before rewriting.