Tag Archives: Engonos

First the giggles, then the howls

Yup, it all started late last night when I was alerted to an article (at https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2024/01/how-china-winning-middle-east/393483/) where we see ‘How China is winning the Middle East’. It is here that we are given “China is working to present itself as a responsible alternative to the U.S. in the Middle East, just as many are questioning Washington’s long-term commitment to the region”, the article was originally from January 19th 2024. Now consider that on September 9th 2021 I wrote ‘Lemon of the Century’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/09/09/lemon-of-the-century/), so I mentioned that danger over 2 years ago and it started happening a year later (alas, not my involvement) I initially wrote “I made a case to sell (as a corporate individual) to sell the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia either the British BAE Typhoon, or the somewhat better match the Chinese Chengdu J-20. Now, this is not on principles, but the US making Saudi embargo after embargo, all whilst it is mere puppet play and there was no direct need to stop the sales, especially as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was under direct attack by Houthi forces directly sponsored from Iran and the people were eager to ignore that fact. So there I was taking a stab at a 3.75% sales commission, and in light of a $11,000,000,000 sales ticket could bank me $412,500,000 over a few years. Now, I know, am I greed driven? Nope! But I am not walking away from such a massive mealticket!” As such it took defense one well over two years to see the dangers I saw clearly coming then. How laughable is that? What are these American three letter organisations doing? This wasn’t a surprise, this was clearly in view. 

So now we see “China’s narrative in this effort is one of not just opportunity for Middle Eastern states, but constant subtle or overt comparison between U.S. and Chinese goals in the region.” Say what? This was in clear view and I made several mentions in the last two years alone. So whilst you giggle on that consider that I am now calling the match Me (myself and I) versus DARPA a win with the final score being 6-0. I just realised that around three years ago I designed a stealth solution to sink the Iranian fleet (cost around $750K per vessel) yet I suddenly remembered that solution (I keep on designing other stuff) and the principles of Archimedes apply globally, as such they should have no problem with Russian vessels either. Not bad for a person that some see as a loser (well they do), but in the end it is creativity that wins innovation, it wins IP on a much larger scale and in support of that it could win a war too. If you doubt that, consider that “the basic idea of radar had its origins in the classical experiments on electromagnetic radiation conducted by German physicist Heinrich Hertz during the late 1880s.” So the Germans did not see the applications and they could have had an entire war advantage half a century long. In the end it was Watson Watt, Wilkins, and Bowen that turned it into something functional and that gave them the edge somewhere between 1930 and 1940. The application of my solutions are reimagined solutions of something that was out in the field. OK, my idea to melt down nuclear reactors came from a snow globe, so that is one that is all mine. 

When you consider that and the fact that I am calling a 6 point sore on DARPA you might howl with laughter and that is fine. But consider that I kept a lot on my blog. There is a timeline and DARPA has nothing to put against that and now we see that Defense One makes mention of a ‘danger’ all whilst I made clear mention of that well over two years ago. That is what it means to be asleep at the wheel. And I am not innocent of that either. You see I made mention of an idea some time ago and I just realised that it could be applied to the series Engonos (season 2 or 3) but I forgot about the idea (another reason to keep a blog). Now as it resurfaced in my mind I also realise that as I am concentrating on another script (How to assassinate a politician for Al Saudiya) that I am new to that. As such all writers (not just me) seem to think in active terms. There are four parts in any script (no technical reference), they are active, reactive and both can be endotherm or exotherm. Implying that from within or from outside sources. That was the part that as a storywriter you take notice on, but in writing a script that setting goes different. As such I suddenly remembered Ate, daughter of Eris and suddenly other ideas come flowing in, OK, some based on ideas my mind had created, but I never considered it as the entire setting of Engonos was not on my mind. That came well over a year later. 

You might wonder what one has to do with the other. Well, creativity goes in several directions and it was creativity in data that gave me the view of China becoming a much larger provider of Middle Eastern defence structures. It seems that Defense One only caught on a week ago. Now, that doesn’t make me ‘more’ correct, but when you see the settings how it was THEN, most people with BI insights would get similar conclusions. I did my ships engineering in the 70’s. Those principles gave me the idea for the stealth solution I designed decades later. Education matters, it might not matter now, but it allows the creative mind to see additional solutions, solutions that do not even exist when the thoughts were created. That is true innovation and that leads to larger advantages in any field. That is what some fat cats forgot about and as the stations are brought to bear they will all cry that it was unfair, but the reality was that they slept on. Only 20 hours ago the Business Standard treated us to ‘The online ad cookie is crumbling as Google Chrome secures privacy’ whilst another source gives us “Advertisers aren’t willing to pay as much for random internet users, so every time the page loads for a cookie-less Chrome user, it’s bringing in less money than it might have before.” The problem with these trains of thoughts was that I saw the announcement AT Google well before the first Covid shutdown, so it has been a while, so these people never prepared. How silly is that? Howlingly laughing silly. And that is where we see the stage. We giggle on some news, we howl at news and clams and we lose our shit laughing when we see that the non prepared mind should have known better and they all connect. Because change forces us to become creative, in two cases that wasn’t done. So whilst some may sneer and laugh at my claims, I put my claims out in the open on a blog and I did it 2 years earlier. The snow globe solution is there too, not sure how much I put online on the stealth vessel sinking solution (oh, SVSS sounds cool) but there you have it, we cannot anticipate everything. But I do like the idea that my idea could be applied to Russian vessels as well, as such, DARPA eat your heart out.

Have a lovely Monday. Tuesday started just now here.

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A busy day

This is not how it started. It started with an easy setting, the setting I am bout to explain. From there I got to a second station, which is the story that comes after this story and last there was a setting towards Engonos (my new TV series), in light of season 2. I came up with an additional ploy. A ploy not unlike the movie the league of extraordinary gentlemen gave us. But I am spinning it into another direction. I am actually using the setting that TV gave u in the past to create a setting towards a new spin, when people are confronted with TV series and their colloquialism is perhaps the best explanation I can give for now, but I will get back to that soon enough. The reason for telling you this is that these events happened almost at the same time, so in my head they are connected, my other brain (the wakey wakey part) hasn’t figured that out yet. Yet being the operative word.

Stage one
It started with a message on LinkedIn. A message by Simon Robinson, about who killed his reporters. The problem is that this is all emotions, lacking too many facts, as I personally see it. You see, the IDF doesn’t just casually shoot reporters with a tank, I am not willing to accept that. Yet in the same setting, I do rely on EVIDENCE. That is important to me. You see, Simon is emotional, his little bunny is dead, I get it. But the NY Post gives us “The alleged strike occurred shortly after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed retaliatory artillery fire over the Israel-Lebanon border in response to shooting from Lebanese territory.” So was it a tank, or artillery? There is a difference, did Simon think of that? 

Al Jazeera gives us ‘Journalist killed in Lebanon was in ‘active combat zone’’ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/8/israeli-army-says-journalist-killed-in-lebanon-was-in-active-combat-zone) in addition we are given “Appearing to dismiss calls for a war crime investigation into the death of a Reuters journalist and injury of six others under fire from its tanks in October, the Israeli army said on Friday that the incident is under review, but noted that the reporters had placed themselves in a “dangerous” area.”  So, Reuters got the tank part correct. But never mentioned that they were in an active combat zone, a part we never got. It was what I speculated on from the very beginning, the bunny was collateral damage. If you take offence, that is fine. I get it. But lets be clear, the press has no credibility left and partial news to give the line “who hit him, who killed him” is a bloody joke. There is a cost to being in an active combat zone. The question becomes did Issam Abdallah know that he was in an active combat zone? I do not know, and I am not speculating. The part problem is that the press has no credibility left and they already lied to all of us. So what happened? In all this that remains the question and it is going to need several sources, sources that are independent and can be used as verifiable sources that could solve this issue.

As I said, it was a busy day. Tomorrow it is Optus to be exposed and I have something going back to 2019. Should be fun, enjoy Saturday. I have less than 3 hours left of that day.

Cheerio.

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Two makes a fourth

Yup, that didn’t make sense did it? You see, two pieces of information hit me at the same time. The first is ‘Johnny Depp advises filmmakers from Saudi Arabia to ‘go against the grain of Hollywood’’ (at https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/2023/12/02/johnny-depp-advises-filmmakers-from-saudi-arabia-to-go-against-the-grain-of-hollywood/). It is here where we are given “What I believe, in regard to the opportunities of the Saudi film industry, is to build facilities and go against the grain of everything that Hollywood is putting out,” Johny Depp makes sense. I see it differently, not against Depp, because I agree with him. The Saudi Film industry needs a different path. It is basically what drove me to design ‘How to assassinate a politician’ yet the larger station is not merely a different design, because that story is all but done (two parts are incomplete). You see at this point I am watching season 3 of NCIS: New Orleans and a thought took hold of me. It took me back to when I read Hesiod (a very long time ago) and this reflects on Season 2 of Engonos. There were two parts that required tinkering and now as a red line I saw the option to add a third line. You see, there was a reference to Tartarus that was a larger station, a side that has not been touched (read: does not exist). It reminds me of an old story that relates to the Hellraiser comic books. A salesperson is left off the hook providing he increases his tally of souls 15% annually. The demon lets him off the hook because in the end that salesperson will fail. You see in year one he only needs 1500 souls, but in the subsequent years it will be 2070, 2380, 2737, 3148, 3620. So in 5 years he will need to hand over 301 souls each month. That is 3 times the souls he needed in year one. That setting gave me the idea to take a page from these books and give them a twist. Consider the souls pushed into Tartarus, what would any soul do after one day to avoid the rest of eternity in Tartarus? 

As such Hesiod gave me the idea to take it to a new level. He ones stated “The man who does evil to another does evil to himself, and the evil counsel is most evil for him who counsels it.” So, what happens when we take someone like Major Hamilton and let him face the wrath of a damned soul from Tartarus? That was the setting I started with and now we have a new station in Engonos. When we take the greed driven and set the take against themselves. Not a bad day. One article, one setting and a whole new station opened it doors. Not a bad day at all.

Enjoy your Sunday, it’s Monday here.

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Closing season one

That was the setting I was considering. I had been brooding over the end of season one and the story seems fine in my mind, but towards the end of season one we get to the palace of Hades. It stands close to the centre of Tartarus and is home to Lord Hades of Tartarus. The palace is not a mere thing, it is a structure of refinement and absolute power. Heaphestus did most of the design and it shows. Apart from some small cracks it has been standing there for thousands of years. Even the pyramids show decay, a mortal design, not the House of Hades. It stands almost immaculate, almost that is. You see, there is something wrong with the place, but any visitor in Tartarus could easily overlook it. There are micro fractures in the foundations of that house.

It is made from some kind of dolomite, harder than marble, stronger than granite or basalt and has withstood time for thousands of years. When we see that palace, we see hordes being turned back by the damned Myrmidons. These damned troops showed cowardice, perhaps hesitation and perhaps nothing at all. The Myrmidons were all destined for Tartarus to become the personal guards of the House of Hades. Stronger then pretorians, faster then any cheetah and with the precision eye that would make any eagle jealous. These troops never stopped fighting and they are weirdly enough happy. They get the women, the good food and they serve Lord Hades without reservation for all eternity. But when you look with a critical eye you would see that something was missing. The fountains of Tartarus are there, the initial 44 and several more in a larger area. 4 quadrants. It starts with one, then two and then four. These are the foundational 28 and around that place are the other 16. These fountains are there, but empty and like the ancient fountains we now see in Greece and on Crete, these fountains are not working, but that is also the riddle. They were a personal design by Heaphestus and he doesn’t make anything shoddy. It is there that we consider the one failing of Tartarus. You see, from the beginning of time until now massive chunk of 108,000,000,000 souls and bodies have entered Tartarus and none of them were ever allowed to leave. The number is so big that the old gods might never have comprehended that number, but what am I saying?  You see almost 75% of that is merely the last 1200 years. And at some point the fountains stopped working. But the damned souls fear something more. You see Tartarus became grounds for the Mesopotamian Molossus. The fearful cowards who came here feared everything and at some point some of them became Molossus, the dog from the old days they feared the most. They became one and as these dogs fed on the damned they grew. There were two packs in Tartarus, they were on opposite sides of one another and they fed on whatever they could. At some point the two pack leaders grew to such an extent that they would even make the Myrmidon nervous, but the hounds feared the fountains and they were always weary that these fountains would work one day. So as there was enough food in Tartarus they would never approach the House of Hades. 

It is there that I approached the Palace. It was relatively easy to avoid the damned. My ring brought fear into the masses and they went in an all out panic at the sight of my trusty bident Psychofagos. As I approached the gates the Myrmidon opened it, seeing my ring they bend their knee and dropped their heads. I walked in and saw the initial stage, the palace was truly immaculate in many ways. I did notice some micro fractures, but not in the palace that had not seen violence for thousands of years. I saw books, ledgers of some kind and I saw workspaces. It seems that Lord Hades kept clerics. I wondered why my grandfather kept notes and on what. I looked around and saw nothing of note, the servants kept their distance and some of the female servants were massively underdressed, almost naked. On the plus side, they were gorgeous but it was almost 40 degrees in this place, so I did not have any desire for sex at the moment. I sat down and I brooded on what to do next. The palace was well over 400% of the United States Capitol. You could get lost in this place and that was not a good thing, not at present. I decided to go up and up and up. It was there that I saw the statue of Lord Hades, nearly at the top. The statue was around 12 metres or 40 feet high, it was some kind of marble, but not one I had ever seen before. It was some kind of white marble with red veins in the marble. I had never seen it before, but that didn’t mean anything. I was never a mason or stone cutter. I looked around and the chair the statue was on was the same dolomite the building was made of. On the back I saw some kind of cut out grooves, almost like they served a purpose. I followed the lines and they went to the wall and went into the walls. I looked at where the were sunk in and walked around to see a balcony, from the balcony I could see some kind of half disc, like it was meant to capture something. Up the wall on the roof was some kind of statue of what I reckon was a slave girl holding an amphora. The amphora was seemingly empty. I climbed to the roof which took almost an hour and walked to the statue. There the grooves were larger and went into the base of the amphora. I followed the grooves as far as I could and they went into the roof. I saw a balcony nearby, almost 4 metres below. I cautiously climbed down, only to see that the room was empty. Yet where the grooves needed to be, there was some kind of glass. They were cylindrical and the two pipes were going down. From that room there was a staircase and that took me almost to where I started. The pipes were there and went into the wall almost 100 centimetres above the floor. It was behind the statue of a Myrmidon. I followed the marble grates only to end up outside and these grates went directly to the first fountain. 

And that is how far I got looking into some of the specifics towards the end of season one of Engonos. 

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How I got there

That is at times the question, even to myself. You see, it all started with something resembling a nightmare. In my dream I was in some kind of mansion. The mansion seems not too original. It is like something from Stephen King, but it is not that source. The mansion was loaded with spirits and all kinds of supernatural things. It was placed by the original inhabitants of the mansion. I was merely trying to stay alive. I went from room to room trying to survive and phrases were caught in my brain. It was at that point that I saw part of the power of that place. I was drawn to the basement (never a good place to run to). There I saw some kind of mini-train, the train was really small, but built to support a complete person. I saw that the train was almost designed in two parts, the upper part and the lower part. The lower parts had gears that were running at full speed. They were driven by some kind of poltergeist. It was contained in some kind of glass/metal bottle, through it were wheel axes. The moment I sat on the train the upper side got pushed onto the lower part and the train started to move. The train was going in one direction, activating switches and ignoring others. It was the poltergeist that was in control and the passenger was along for the ride. After several minutes and after one long corridor I arrived in a room, some storage room but one with a difference. The glass roof gave me the clear indication that I was under a lake, there was a lake next to the mansion, but I never expected to be under it. There were more spirits there, almost like they escaped and in the middle was a dollhouse, much larger than normal and it looked like a replica of the mansion. The dollhouse seemed to be identical and then I noticed the small tags, all saying the same thing ‘In case of emergency’ The room had similar tags, but much larger and I saw a weird stick with a handle, almost like ancient sticks to activate gas lights. Then I saw the light receptacle on the wall, the stick would reach it, I raced to that place and pressed the stick. It was like some kind of press handle connected to some kind of dynamo. The sparks hit the receptacle and sparks flew. A second later all the lights went on, but a really bright white. Almost like there was magnesium in the mix. The spirits vanished immediately. I now had time to look at the dollhouse. I looked at the tags and saw where they were. I had seen the same connections in the mansion, but I never examined them. I saw the cords and I smelled one of them. They smelled a little oil like. I took a chance, grabbed my lighter and set one off. The impact was immense. Over seconds the lights in the dollhouse started to light up in some kind of green, what was equally astonishing was the fact that what happened there happened in the mansion as well. A voodoo dollhouse that is actually working. This was some next level issues in real life.

That was what I saw and it mattered that it gave me the inkling of what could transpire in season 2 of Engonos. I suddenly realised what would scare people to death. It isn’t death itself, it is a realisation and the dream got me there. It fits the stage as the main character is the son of Makaria, the step we get to in season 1 where he ends up in Tartarus could also unlock more. I had part of this in play, but not entirely and now the unlocking opens up a new edge to skate against. Skating against the edge is nothing new, but in this case I never contemplated several settings, mainly because they seem unnatural. It is almost like the adult industry relying on all girls having a case of Elektra complex, no Jennifer Garner required. The setting to use supernatural beings for other means is equally not entirely new, but to use them as some kind of army is not used that often and several sides were shown to me in this (sort of) nightmare. 

In other news, I just saw TechNote (by Homeland Security), the September 2012 version, a year after I created my solution, which has a side they do not seem to have. Now, I do not know all the inn’s and out’s and there is a chance that their 07ED-01-LASR is superior, but is seemingly missing a part. If that is true (currently untested and unverified) then the score is Yours Truly versus DARPA 4 – 0. Some people go through life being immensely happy merely one goal or two goals ahead. As such I feel happy I cleaned their clocks (we all have delusional sides). 

Not the worst case of Saturday in action. 

Enjoy your day.

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Tradecraft 301

This is not speculation, it is not presumption, it is a story. The beginning or one side to a story and it just jumped at me. I cannot use it in any of the other stories, as such I put it here. Enjoy and feel free to use this. 

It was early morning. The man was walking on the street. He was merely walking and enjoying the sounds of the city. Yet behind the facade that we all see there was something more, but unless you have been part of it, you will not pick up on it. He was looking to the stores in a mall and he was considering issues that were left open to him. He stopped, he smelled something and it was overwhelming him. On his left was an Italian shop making fresh wood fired oven baked flat bread. The sense of oregano was almost making him faint. He was suddenly so hungry. He saw the small breads, there was a version with Sopressa and parmesan. It was a special 2 for $5 and he bought two. He asked where he could get some coffee so he could sit down and eat them. The cook pointed at an empty table. He nodded and asked for a macchiato. He started to slowly eat the first loaf. A loaf was an exaggeration as the break was hardly more than a mini baguette but the smell and the taste were amazing. Before he had munched down on his first bread the macchiato was delivered. 

He starting to consider how greed has left tradecraft at a massive disadvantage all over the world, especially in London, most metropolitan American cities and Sydney. These franchise settings, setting an unrealistic stage of zero hours and non-manageable forced choices had opened up these places to tradecraft. Places like the IRGC were sending people to acquire these franchises, set 2-4 people as staff, letting them get trained in local customs and solidifying their new identities. And for years each place would gain 100-350 identities and credit card information. A trickle down solution that was not fast, but it was certain. Every shop would gain personal details from whomever paid with a credit card and it was fuelling the data coffers of UANI. And every day that no action was taken more details would flow to Tehran. The setting was almost unmanageable. It was even worse that the holders of these franchise solutions were holding onto their shops with an iron fist and their legal teams were shielding their revenue streams and not shielding the locations where the were. 

He considered that as far as he could tell already 28 shops were in play, three in Sydney, eight in London and the other 18 were set over San Francisco, New York and Chicago. And every 6 months these places would upgrade 36-72 agents to a new level finding new jobs with their old ‘employer’ vouching for it all and no one could tell how long it had been going on for. He was aware of at least 2 years of issues, as such Iran had close to 150 agents all over the globe and the options for chaos were enormous. So how to deal with them?

Detection was the largest problem. Several of them would enter some international student program and could fall under the net swim ming freely in an academic pond of knowledge and that was beside all the local knowledge they were acquiring by merely being silent and misinforming on their enemies through third party sources whenever possible. 

The options for some slaughterfest were also not possible. Before there were enough solutions, the media jumps in label it racism and they would make matters worse. Moreover these players had made connections with local organised crime overpaying for services and these people would be keeping an eye out whilst selling every now and then something with a huge margin, these people were not stupid, they were driven and the people who needed to be aware were not, or they just didn’t care.

Whatever this was it was a mere story. Will it grace your writings? Good luck with it and whilst I am looking at the additional settings for Residuam Vitam and Engonos I see more options for both, the question becomes how can I smooth things over? You see adding cogs tend to create levels of chaos and at some point I need to revisit the entire story and see if the story is smooth enough. Fr what it is worth, I see no point adding levels of tradecraft to either story. Well, Residuam Vitam has some tradecraft, but it was for different reasons and with a different mindset in play. The distinction makes sense when that story is complete and the additional parts are about to evolve, but that is on me and that is my challenge. 

We all evolve and every storyteller knows that if he or she does not evolve. Whatever comes after is merely repetitive and a simple twist on the originalist of the first story. A setting I will desperately avoid, but that is me. 

Enjoy the day.

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Considerations

We all have them and in this I am no different. As I was mulling things over, my mind saw the end of season 3 of Kenos Diastima. Things were falling into place and even as I was going in that general direction, my mind set in place the specifics of that setting. As these cogs turn and turn I was seeing the setting that got the story to there, and I have forever in the stage to end that series at season 3, a story with an open ending. Like the famous director Terry Gilliam I love open endings. A stage where the viewer gets to mull over what comes next. It leaves me with a sense of accomplishment. In that same way I also considered additions to the last two episodes of Engonos. On that note, I thought I had put the story here already. However I did not find the image.

My mind saw an additional cog, an additional layer to add to the story to the conclusion of season You see, what if we add a pinch, a setting for more and it is all linked to the fountains of Tartarus. These fountains were the ingenuity of Heaphestus and they are surrounding the palace of 

Hades. As I recall there are 32 of them in three styles. The image you see merely represents (to some degree) one of the styles, but they are important and they aren’t nice and they are also a form of defence for the palace. The inner layer being eternally protected by the damned Myrmidon. They are not nice and they never will be. They are kept in place as they ignored the orders given to them and grandpa was always a stickler for rules. Those who weren’t oath breakers but slide the rules of the ‘game’ off the beat end up in eternal service of Hades and he does not waste. Myrmidons were trained better than any other soldier in that time and they were ‘rewarded’ with eternal protection of the palace. It is all they know and they do not play nice. As such his lair is plenty protected, not that anyone would want to attack it. One does not attack the lair of a god, not even in Tartarus.

So as my mind started to make sense of the developing story I saw that I had already opened the link with Heaphestus, so that part is good, I merely have to add a few tiny bits and that part is clear. As I was going over all that the story I handed out yesterday on a Final Draft project management starts making more sense, becomes more clear and more defined. Locations, people, objects optionally a graphical representation of all the elements. In that stream of data the story is disassembled into elements and as such anything missing or unconnected becomes clear, shows up clearly and that allows for a better story a more robust narration and it all improves the quality of the story. As FX had as a slogan ‘the story is everything’ especially to a story teller. But everyone, including me needs the right tools. With Pages a writer writes the story, but we all get it that for a script Final Draft is the better tool. I reckon that as you have more projects, managing any project becomes the top need. 

So as my mind is tinkering with Onganos and Kenos Diastima I also see that the season 2 midpoint will need work and it all makes sense. Not everything should be in a cliffhanger. I have nothing against them, but at times a mid season conundrum fuels the soul of the watcher, making it a more defined experience. All this and soon there is more on other matters too, but that will be for later today.

Enjoy the upcoming mid-week. 

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When the pool is too deep

Twi days ago I wrote Brain switch, it was me on a joyride through my brain as I was reengineering  IP over and over and it went faster and faster. I got a handle on it by playing Hogwart Legacy. You see gaming is more than an escape for me. It is a passion that allows me to take my mind away from things and that is at times a good thing. It allowed my subconscious to work on Engonos, the story of the grandson of Hades. Weirdly enough I was inspired by Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. Or better stated, he gave me the idea to take a trip to the right. In part I was already doing s in another way, but I suddenly realised that I could enhance one character to get a lot more out of the whole. It is in part a little bit of a drag. You see, I can go memento on that character to keep the story in line and not give away too much, but that too has its advantages and drawbacks. The advantage is that two characters are drawn into the story, one makes sense already, the other one does not on the surface of things, but in Olympian lore it does. As such I tend towards that part of the solution, even though one of them already has a larger role to play and I set that in motion. Now that these roles are staged and partially set, I need to build the background stories for all involved. As such the memento approach, the other one is a historic jump, it seems cleaner, but it opens up too much mesh. A combination has benefits, but at that point I need to be cautious how I approach the matter and I need to script some elements, but that is not a problem. One lesson I learned a long time ago, when a problem is too big, chip it into smaller manageable pieces. That was all good and fine, but that suddenly gave me a few more ideas towards some RPG designs I was entertaining, to be made freely available for exclusive Amazon Luna materials.

I get that this does not make sense, but the reason is simple. Microsoft made valid steps in gaming, we might not like them, but they did what any corporation did, set yourself apart. Yet they did so by buying Bethesda and making parts exclusive to the Xbox. This is a valid, but unappealing approach. This setting changed when Avalanche launched Hogwarts legacy and they set the bar way higher than Skyrim ever was, making it a problem for Microsoft. You see if Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 are on par with Hogwart Legacy, Microsoft loses a lot more than they bargained for. Now if I can add to that pain by giving Amazon Luna developers a sight to more software that is close to on par with Microsoft (not an easy task) they will feel even more pain and that is what I had been after. I expected this to be a lot harder, but Avalanche gave me a trump card, they surpassed Bethesda (what they had up to now), this is not unexpected because Skyrim is 11 years old. Yet it makes my work a little easier. The RPG has storylines, it has a balanced economic system and it has evolution, I only need to set a new stage that has a new kind of nemesis system. Not some copy of Shadow of Mordor, but something new, something we haven’t seen before. I want to counter grinding to some extent. I have one side which is a much larger map, the other side is a new kind of adversarial system and I want to add to that. But it needs to enhance what is, not replace what could be. This is hard to explain for now, but it is in the works, in the meantime, those thoughts are helping me to give larger rise to Engonos, which was what I had in mind all along. Cogs within cogs, not the most elegant of explanations, but it will do for now.

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Restoration and scheming – Engonos

As I had returned to Crete, the look was similar. I merely arrived differently. As I glided to the empty street I walked down the street and turned right as I came to a main road. There was the appeal to go back to Rethimno directly, but I decided against that. Nothing wrong where I stayed, but when you come as a returning guest too many people will start to play 20 questions and that I was eager to avoid that part in any trip. I found a hotel and booked in. From that I looked around for a bike rental and saw two close by. There was one upside, the trip this time around would be at least half an hour less, so there was that. I decided to go to my room and mull things over. It was the next morning that I got an early start. Breakfast was not for me today, I got the rental which was the same model as the previous one, but a different colour. This one was olive green. I put on the helmet and drove off. It was a little over an hour later when I returned to the destination of the church. I walked in and investigated for trespass, it all looked good and I portalled my lamp in. I then set the watch to the time it was last time and started to shine the light on the walls ever so slowly. I saw how the stones rejuvenated, the windows repaired themselves and the walls became whole and clean. It took about half an hour and the inside of the church looked the way it did when it was build and it looked pretty nice. I saw the sun was up and my view saw no one in the neighbourhood. It was a good time to restore the outside to some degree and I was able to restore parts of the outside wall as well. I put out the lamp and I decided to walk in. The church was completely restored. I used my mobile to talk to the office, I needed tradesman and builders. The office took all the details and went to work with the people they knew to trust. It was time to build a wall around the church, it would be 4 meters high and it would keep space round the church. I might need space and that would give me the added room I might need. I had no idea if it was required, but I decided to add a fake graveyard to the back of the church. I would let the builders create a place to enter a larger room deeper below the church with one of the graves being the entry. It would take a few months, but that would give me time to plan for the next step. And in the time that gave me, there would now be time to plan the events as they should unfold, yet I needed to be aware of all the elements. This was one hell of a plan and there was no way to tell if this would work out correctly. Yet the main plan had two locations and 7 places where the required items were. They had all forgotten about these places and that would start a whole new era of mankind, but there was time for that. I had to make sure that nothing was forgotten. And that finally got me to the missing part, where on earth was Asclepius? 

I put the lamp away in its safe place and went back to the rental to hand in the bike and after that decided to walk the streets of Iraklion. As I left one coffee house, enjoying the sunshine and coffee I was confronted by two rather annoying German tourists. These man decided that they were the rulers of the world. In reality they were over horny, over eager admirers of raki, but that didn’t matter. I saw the three old man two tables down and I asked them “αυτοί οι Γερμανοί θέλουν να συναντήσουν τον Άδη, να τους βοηθήσουμε” (these Germans want to meet Hades, shall we help them?) The expression was met with sniggering from the old men and one started to sharpen his blade on a stone. As the tourists saw the sniggering and the sharpening of the blade, they sobered up quite a bit and got out fast. I smiled, sometimes being a scoundrel had its benefits and there was no need to hide. I gestured the waiter for 4 raki, I pointed to the men for the other three, I paid the waiter, raised the glass and spoke ‘scholeío’ and down the hatch the raki went, the men raised their glasses and I thought they said ‘Yamas’ and drunk it too. It filled my throat and stomach with a warm sensation. It felt good, I was not sure how my new setting would react to alcohol, I had not had any reason to drink anything but a beer, so this was good, but I was not sure if I could get drunk, but there was no need to find out at present. I got up nodded at the men and walked away. I checked out and went towards the museum. All seemed to be the same, so I waited for darkness to set in, and I went back the same way I came. 

As Tartarus remained the same, I decided to rest on the marble slab which was affeI had the items and I would be able to harvest what I needed, but I needed to plan for a few elements in all this and there would be time to consider a second step. It is not enough for the settings to evolve, there is a need for governments to be banking on the wrong steps and that required another cog. There was a danger here. It needed to be very different or they would all suspect to be under attack and that could make things a lot worse soon there after. There were a few ideas, yet evolving one that suited my needs and suited the structure of the plan would not be easy. There was always one more complication and that was true of almost everything. The more you plan for a perfect stage, the more likely was that this perfection would upset the stage and falter the plan. So there was the idea of letting go of the second run and it made sense to bank on this one stab. I needed a medical research centre to prepare the goods and prepare the elements needed. 

I had decided to set the stages there was preparation, fabrication, implementation and activation. Each part contained and unconnected to the previous or the next part, in addition, if timelines shifted it would not upset the plan as long as each step could be completed. The first two were almost easy enough. It was the latter two that needed focus, because the location was set and as I was contemplating the acts, the second cog came back. If the second cog is more visible there would be a stage of governmental worry, but if that happened after the first part was implemented it would be too late, the second cog would alert everyone, but with the wrong items required, it merely added to the chaos that followed, enhanced it so to speak. A setting that would work well for all concerned, not the mortal population though, but that was on them, they had become too much of a burden to the world they inhabited and there was a price for everything. 

I close my eyes and contemplated and contemplated, it is the one downside if immortality, sleep is lost, dreams fell away and I found out that this loss is a little more profound than I was happy about.

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Mirror mirror on the wall

This continues from ‘Me, myself and I make 4’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/01/12/me-myself-and-i-make-4/) a week ago. In the mean time. I decided on a name for this. The series is called ‘Engonos’ which is Greek for grandson. Last week it all ended with a meeting in Athens with Lord Zeus himself and the crazy notion that I left with him. It is time to mull that over. 

Over the next few days I travelled back to France, then to America to the mansion. I had to take these trips to gather my thoughts and moving with a starting point from a place where no one watches you is always better then from a place where everyone seems to notice most of your moves. I still had not teleported for two reasons. One this is something that requires skill and energy and that is easily restored in Tartarus, the second part is that Lord Hades needed an update of all that I had started. It is not something that was done lightly and there were still pawn on the board, or better stated there were pieces that were on the board and I made them pawns because their value were still undetermined. It is not the sam, it is not the best thing to do but it was how my mind worked. There were still a few things to sort out and Asclepius was not the first thing to sort out. There were issues and it was time to take another look at the Lamp of Helios, it was an idea, but I would have to master it a lot better and I know just the place where to test it a bit better. The first thing I did was return to Crete, to the place that could take me to Lord Hades, or grandad for short. I was about to start the arrangements when I noticed a small in the house. It was not a normal smell and it seemed stronger upstairs. I saw the staff looking disinterested, working on whatever they were doing and they were doing it well, the house was spotless. I followed the smell only to see that there was a new door in my room, the door was always there, and this door looked the same, but was not the same. I slowly touched the door with my fingers. The door looked like wood, but had the feel of ironwood. The hinges also looked a lot stronger and heavier. I opened the door, the bathroom was the same with one difference. The mirror on the right wall was new, It was some brass like frame with a slightly larger body sized mirror. It was a little over two meters high, it was around 120 centimetres wide and started about to inches of the floor. The mirror had a brass type shine. It was pretty but nothing I would ever want in a bathroom.  The smell was a little stronger here. I shifted focus and the mirror was not entirely what it seemed. It phased and I saw the makings of a marble room. I fitted my hand into the mirror and let the rest of me follow. I was suddenly in a marble room, I looked out and I recognised the place immediately. It was a room in the palace of Lord Hades. I walked in and summoned my bident. I walked around and soon found the stairs down and into the reception area. A shade bowed to me and gestured towards the left. I gestured Psychofagos away and went there. Lord Hades looked at me. You found the mirror? Yes, thank you lord. I bowed  to him with respect and every fibre of my being bowed in respect to him. I just met with Lord Zeus in Athens. I gave him the entire rundown on the meeting. Lord Hades looked at me. Why would I forgo my biggest source of energy? Because soon there is nothing left and then we end up being in a place that is dead, no life, nothing reborn and nothing restored. Even now we will end with less because so much life is now extinct. Restoring ill not bring them back, but we can return to a better place. Over time Lord Zeus will return most of his powers as his powers is the clean sky. Lord Poseidon will lose the most as so much life is gone from there and much of it cannot be saved. It is too late for that. But you my lord you will gain the most. Even as much of life will be removed, their life source will be yours. And we will return to healthier times and they will also feed you, but we need to act and we need to act larger than before. Can we replicate the machines without Heaphestus? Hades looked at me. Yes, they will be smaller, but they can be made. How many do you need? How many can you make? We need at least 999 more, especially if they are smaller and they need to be added to the system, we have a good engine, but we need a massive tank, the energy of almost 8 billion souls will be added. Even then we need to use a large part to reinvigorate you. You are being recharged, now we need to focus on restoring your younger self my lord.

Hades looked and nodded. You have done well Hades said. There is one more thing. Lord Zeus gave me the power of teleportation, it has been added to my bident. Hades held his hand up and I instantly knew what he meant. I summoned psychofagos and handed it to Hades. He stared at it. You need to practise this thing and be aware, whenever you teleport Zeus will instantly know where you came from and where you go to. I nodded, I was certain that there was a snag and this was it. Anything else? Hades seemed in thought, it seems that your state of mind will be visible to him for a moment. He does not accept duplicity, the mirror will help but if you teleport right after that, whatever you had in mind will be visible to him. I nodded. It changed a few things not too much, but I had to be careful. It also meant that I needed another way to get to Crete. Hades picked up on that. There is another mirror, one in Iraklion in the museum. They hung it as a mirror for the people. It is easy to get in and out of the museum. The other part of that mirror is over there and he pointed to a far wall. The passing is easy and anyone seeing you will instantly forget it, in the sphere of the mirror you are invisible for a short time as you move between realms. It is no more than 5 seconds, so doing this in the evening is the best. There is no camera there and you can go through the small window, you are on the 3rd floor, next to a window, but it is the roof access you need, you can easily get to anywhere from there. 

I bowed and was about to walk away. Engonos, be weary of Asclepius. He will not accept your actions, he will try to stop you or make sure that you fail. I nodded. I had expected this. Asclepius reverence of life was almost legendary millennia ago, even now as people cause the death of so much, he would not act against them, not sure why but I had an alternative to consider. One that wasn’t the easiest, that was until the present of Lord Zeus came by. 

I moved towards my room but then thought against it. It was morning in California, meaning it was  early to mid evening in Greece. I walked to the mirror and stared at it. The museum came into view, it was empty and the window showed a streetlight, implying that the streets were already dark. I walked through the mirror, listening sharply for sounds. I heard clinging of keys, about 15 metres away. I looked around and saw the window, then I looked up and saw nothing. I slowly silently moved into the next room, there was a hatch there but it seemed locked. I moved back and stared, suddenly like the cave in Gladesville an open hatch appeared I jumped through and the ceiling turned back to solid ceiling. I walked silently over the roof, seeing the camera’s. They were all pointing towards the street, the building next to it also had camera’s, but I was out of their view at the moment. I saw a clean path out of their view and I jumped up the attached building. From there I could go anywhere and I slowly glided to the street that was empty and from there I went to the nearest decent Hotel I could find and booked a room. Tomorrow I would o more, now I would lay down on a bed and think things over I needed to make sure that I had all the elements clean and at hand, this was a one way trip and missing too many elements would cause too many other problems. The idea was still shaping, but I suddenly realised that mankind had a delete function, one that I was about to use for my own purpose. I merely had to push the right sanctimonious religious nut and this world had plenty of those, they were almost everywhere.

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