mdk

Yup, name change.

We can't be friends anymore.

Star Wars: Revanchism [Knights of the Old Republic/Mandalorian Wars]

Valsil didn't sense the danger at the top of the cliff until it was already on top of Zhiss. A bother. His focus had been on the troopers below -- tired after the battle, and having suffered losses across the full spectrum of their regiment, they would -- he expected -- no doubt experience low morale and broken moods. He policed their minds, watching for despair. If he had found it, he would have attempted to lift the soldier back, or at least isolate him from the others so that the emotion could not spread. But no such necessity had yet arisen. And while that might have said much for the preparation of the Republic army, it also meant that Valsil's silent vigil had distracted him from the task ahead, and left him unprepared to help Zhiss. With Leto on his back, climbing was slow -- he'd nearly reached the half-way point, but no further. The Padawan was in poor condition from his fall, and the team could ill afford to lose another Jedi to such a wound. That meant that helping Zhiss was the top priority. The Padawan would have to wait. With deft hands, Valsil made a knot in the climbing rope and, with a feat of balance, swung Leto off his back, and lashed him onto the cliff using his own harness. Leto dangled there helplessly, but it seemed the lesser of two bad options -- to carry him further would slow Valsil down, and to risk another Jedi was to risk the mission, and many more lives. "Someone will get you," he said in flat monotone, nodding to Leto with barely a pause. He barely paused before continuing the climb. Leto was limp on his knot, looking almost lifeless, but secure. Now severed from his safety restraints, Valsil was free to pick an alternative climbing route. He selected a series of branching handholds that terminated at the lip of the cliff, roughly thirty meters from the grapple point. It would be a riskier climb even with a rope, but success meant reaching the top at a safe distance from the beast. He hurried. More than once in his haste, he nearly missed his grip, sometimes dangling by a single hand, but usually just settling back into his previous position and trying again. He moved fast, but it was a long climb. Fortunately Valsil seemed to pick up speed as he climbed, as the force's guidance and his own limitations came closer in line. A hundred more feet. Sixty. Twenty. Ten. The fighting had already begun, and it was some distance away. Valsil crossed the threshold onto solid ground, drenched in sweat but unphased. He barely paused. Some part of his mind warned him that he might begin to tire soon, but there were more immediate threats. His saber flew into his hands, and he lit both ends, hoping to look as large as possible. He tried to attract the monster's attentions with a force-assisted roar, with marginal success -- then he ran into the fray. His only goal was to create room for the others to reach the top, so he fought for position right at the top of the rope, pushing the creature back with glancing blows. Once, the beast attacked a little too earnestly, and Valsil could only brace for the impact of claws and flesh -- but the swipe curved away at the last second, and the only impact Valsil felt was from severed fingers and hot, black blood. It howled, enraged but disabled for the moment. He'd bought a few seconds, and he used them to offer hands to anyone still on the ropes. "Hurry," was all he said.

Star Wars: Revanchism [Knights of the Old Republic/Mandalorian Wars]

My attentions are super-split up right now.... I need to bring this back to the front. Look for a post tomorrow sometime.

When you think Winter's rough

average winter in upstate new york average winter in new mexico In some ways I think I upgraded.

Guess you have to post now, Toellner

COUNT

Occult Thread

So I recently had my leg cut off. One of the things that can happen after that is called 'Phantom Pain,' which means your leg that isn't there anymore is still hurting your brain. Luckily I never had too much of that -- a spot here and there but it went away, and it wasn't that bad anyway, so awesome. But besides phantom PAIN, there's something else called Phantom Sensation -- which happens when your brain expects to feel something, so it does, even though there's no leg there to feel it with. Now this can be expressed differently in different people, because we're not all wired the same. I think in some ways, we do our own wiring, and then the environment does some, and of course your parents and your genetics get to work some of it out too -- anyway brains are unique. Whatever. So in my case, what I felt was like I could bend and move this 'phantom limb,' but it was like trying to squeeze a fist around a lump of silly putty -- really hard to move, really sluggish, but sooner or later, there's your fist. Well, I didn't really want that feeling -- because with phantom sensations, you never know if maybe you're opening up a wire panel in your brain and short-circuiting your way right into phantom pain, and once you've got that, there's no telling how long it could last. Hours, days, even YEARS. So I tried not to mess with it much, but it's hard to resist, you know? Not many people even get a chance to HAVE phantom sensation, let alone play with it, and so eventually curiosity overtook me (I was on some pretty heavy painkillers) and I started fooling around. I'd curl up my toes, point my foot up and down, bend that knee. Of course there wasn't any toe, or foot, or knee, but that's not important -- your brain feels it, and your body tries to do it. I could run a hand up and down the remainder of my thigh and feel the muscles squirming away at nothing. It felt like a ball in my quads, bouncing up and down as I wiggled the imaginary limb. Soon I started getting better at it -- where before I could just vaguely tell 'Uh, I'm squeezing my toes, I guess,' now I could bend each one individually, or at least I was aware that they were individual entities. Or would have been, if they were there -- it's a novel sensation, what can I say? But I thought, why stop there? If it's imaginary, then my imagination is limitless. I tried to picture myself with six toes. Then with an oppose-able thumb. I sort of expected it to hurt -- and I guess it did, a little, just trying to make sense of the signals. Usually your nerves talk to your brain, but with phantom sensations, your brain is stuck in a loop, telling itself what it should feel and then feeling it -- I was just hijacking that loop and making it behave in impossible ways. And on some level, my brain must have known that it was impossible -- but on another level, it didn't care. I was in charge, and for a few hours I let myself 'run' wild. At some point -- it was pretty late, and I was in bed anyway -- I finally got tired of the game. I let the dogs in for the night and lay back down to go to sleep. I marveled that, when I pulled on the covers, it seemed like I could still feel them rubbing over my toes -- but they were indistinct again, a vague cluster of 'normal' that was fading back into nothingness again, and I welcomed that. One of my dogs likes to sleep with his head resting on my shoulder, and the other one sleeps at the foot of the bed -- we share, it's cute, shut up about it. Anyway I drift off to sleep. I can't remember what I was dreaming -- only that it was very vivid, and somehow distressing. I woke up slowly -- it was the middle of the night still, and dark. I sat up a little -- sometimes I put on some TV to help fall asleep, and I guess I thought I'd hop over to the computer and start up a fresh hour's worth of white noise. When I looked down, I noticed that Kaiser -- that's the foot-of-the-bed dog -- was sleeping in the gap where my leg should've been. It was weird! But kind of.... touching, I guess, touching is a good word. I didn't want to wake him up, but he's a light sleeper, so there wasn't much I could do about it. As I started to right myself, he stretched out his back and yawned. I got this twinge of sensation, like he was brushing up against my toes -- phantom sensations. Cool stuff. I had the urge to twitch, like it tickled or something, and I wasn't sure if I knew how -- I mean, how do you twitch with something that isn't there? But I gave it a shot. Kaiser shot up, howling in pain. He tumbled over the edge of the bed and curled into a quivering ball. What did I do? There was blood on his fur. My god, what did I just do?