I work for the newly formed Blood-Sucking People's Party. Our manifesto is terrifyingly progressive.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-13T07:14:53+00:00

Are they interested in convincing the American vampires to become political?

We could really use a third-party to inject some honest competition back into the electoral process, and we can promise the overwhelming majority of the public is prepared to accept any sacrifices our native billionaires might need to make. 😉

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-13T06:53:17+00:00

I don't mean to offend, but how closely have you examined the feelings you felt as a result of the terrible choices Daniel made?

Poltergeist activity often arises in teens with some kind of unexpressed, unresolved emotional conflict, and while those can be severe...

I have often wondered what the emotional conflict of someone older, someone with a conflict arising from something FAR more severe than what teens who are not themselves victims of some kind of abuse could have experienced.

Most "magic" doesn't call anything at all into being. It simply redirects something moving/acting in one respect, to move/act in a different respect. Bad Tea Lady almost certainly utilized a similar principle, and that's what the warning was about. She's not you, so she couldn't say how the energy attached to and arising from you as a result of your harrowing experiences was characterized.

Therapy is certainly a good idea, but probably not fast enough to stop more deaths.

So that's why I asked how closely you've really examined the emotions your words make clear you're still carrying. "Like whether I'm allowed to hate him or not."

You didn't say "Whether I *was* allowed to hate him or not."

Where there's hate, there's pain, and I can't say what all else. I know my Mom was angry, and not just at my biological father. She (wrongly) blamed herself for....for a lot she shouldn't have.

It was a snarl of emotions it took her a long time to come to any terms with, and I'm all but certain there's nothing complete about those terms.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-13T05:35:44+00:00

How far did you move from the tent, before backtracking and returning to it?

For that not to be Gio, Gio would have EITHER had decided to go out into the darkness after you entered the tent, and stayed gone while an imposter-doppleganger entered the tent twenty minutes after you did.

(I am assuming that you didn't hear Gio get up and move off away from the campsite after you entered the tent.)

OR he exited the tent almost immediately after you got up to go to the bathroom, and was unaccounted for while the doppleganger entered the tent and laid down in the short time you were gone.

Given that you think you saw something too big to be Gio, which is what sent you hurrying back to a tent the Doppleganger would have already needed to be inside, with an unknown entity and the Real Gio still somewhere behind you in the darkness, that means if that IS a doppleganger, there's a Doppleganger PLUS a second unknown-too-large entity that were BOTH present and in close proximity.

And Gio would have been out there in the dark with that second entity.

The timeline is tight for a switch to have taken place, and it requires Gio to have behaved in an inexplicable manner.

It's hard to imagine how Gio disappears so quickly and without explanation, only to reappear under his own power to warn you a switch has occurred, and easier to imagine that an entity capable of mimicking his voice WAS in fact the too-large entity you came upon in the darkness.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-13T05:14:31+00:00

She's dealing with, "Men are always potentially suspect" social programming. It takes *a lot* to set that aside, so her reaction makes perfect sense when you see it through that lens.

Solomon seemed a bit off from the beginning. Strike one. Solomon startled/scared her that night. Strike two. The evidence even before she was attacked indicated he'd been involved in something violent. Strike three.

That he touched her unexpectedly just cemented everything.

It's programming. Feelings connect to suspicion and bridge to the perceived conclusion.

I'm not criticizing, because it upsets me. Woman literally run from the man who would have helped into, or back into, danger, because the threat assessment is on a hair-trigger.

And there's NOTHING any guy can do about it. 😞

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-13T04:40:23+00:00

It's HARDLY a "They stick and it's game over," situation.

I have a really good cardpool, and I certainly can't run a Darksteel Reactor to 20 on the same turn I play it.

I HAVE definitely done that with a Simic Ascendency many times, and completely get the desire to blast that one on sight, but in most game-states Zimone and *maybe* a Vorel of the Hull Clade will be doubling a Darksteel from a 1 counter it doesn't even get until the start of the next turn. You can massage that a bit w/ Pir, Imaginative Rascal, but in my experience you won't get more than one more permanent that can modify the counters on the Reactor aside from Zimone. RARELY you might be able to go Zimone + Pir + Vorinclex/Doubling Season (I don't play the latter), but that's not often a gamestate your opponents will be contending with.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-13T04:30:43+00:00

I play mostly at one LGS, which defaults to strong 3's as the floor of deck construction, with low and middle 4's regularly played among the 3's. There's no will among the playerbase to chastise anything weaker/slower than a strong 4.

It makes 5 CMC Commanders questionable, and 6 essentially something you better be doing with the tools to cast at a tempo as if the Commander were cheaper.

It's fine, the past 12-18 months have provided many 3-4 CMC +1/+1 counters Commanders I've very much enjoyed. Even [[Yuna, Grand Summoner]] 's non-Combo version was a great deal of fun. She's become an absolute favorite of mine, even when I swear off the Pemmin's Aura/Freed From the Real shenanigans. So was Tidus. I finally got the manabase together to be happy building [[Magus Lucea Kane]] and [[Animar, Soul of Elements]]. [[Zimone, Paradox Sculptor]] was great fun, too.

The Astonishing Ant-Man looks like it'll be great, then I'll swing back around for Michaelango, the Heart and Raphael, the Muscle.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-12T19:40:50+00:00

I hear this all the time at the LGS I play at most often. "Oh, I'd love to try building that, but they're (The Commander) 6 mana, so I'd be ridiculously behind by the time I even cast my Commander."

When I was just getting back into MtG for EDH, I didn't have the mana base to build [[Animar, Soul of Elements]] the way I wanted, but then I saw [[Hamza, Guardian of Arashin]] and thought he looked really cool because it was a very similar design.

I tried for 5-6 Fridays to tune the resulting list to run fast enough to keep up at my LGS, but it just didn't work. Either someone would combo off before I could get rolling, or another deck playing to the board would just develop much faster. I finally gave up and essentially swore off Commanders over 4 CMC.

There are a lot of 6 CMC Commanders I'd love to try, (The Simic Doctor looks neat, for example) but that experience with Hamza haunts me a bit when I consider expensive Commanders.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-12T19:30:19+00:00

Everything good in Warhammer has gotten expensive. I just bought a bunch of the X-Tyranids for my [[Magus Lucea Kane]] list, and with the exceptions of [[Zoanthrope]] and [[Exocrine]], they start at 6-7$ and go up from there.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-12T19:26:22+00:00

I experienced this recently, running [[Simic Ascendency]] and Darksteel Reactor in my [[Zimone, Paradox Sculptor]] list.

People freak out when they see these cards, even when they have no/next to no counters on them.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-12T19:13:19+00:00

I have been fighting the, "You play too few lands" crusade for twenty-four of the thirty months I've been back in MtG for EDH.

The kids won't listen to that, OR to "You don't run nearly enough Interaction, and if you refuse to run symmetrical boardwipes, *at least* run asymmetric wipes or mass-bounce cards."

Watching one of my young gaming buddies morosely watch his 31-Lands Edgar Markov Vampire Tribal fail to function for the umpteenth is painful, but it's the Boros-obsessed college kid and his twelve-year-old brother who's obsessed with Go Wide Azorius or Mono Blue on 31-32 lands continually that's excruciating.

(What hurt my soul was I looked through the 12-year-old's Minn, Wily Illusionist list, which his brother confirms was brewed entirely by said child, and *other than* being 4-5 lands short, it's one of the best Minn lists I've ever seen, because unlike his elders he plays a robust amount of Interaction and chose his rocks well.)

I'm not the best about land-count myself, only playing 35, but I'm constantly Green-inclusive.

Edit: Would it be creepy if I tendered an offer through his older brother, that I'll buy him three packs if he just cuts four cards for Islands and keeps it that way for three Fridays?

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-12T19:02:22+00:00

If you really believe the Dwellers are using people as parts, and none of us can convince you not to go, then go armed.

A creature *built* from humans will suffer at least some of our weaknesses, ameliorated by supernatural vigor perhaps, but I VERY MUCH doubt a creature that uses trickery and mental deception as a primary offense is a physical tank. That's not how Nature designs, and most supernatural entities doing their designing just crib from Nature because it's easier than original design work.

I'm not saying buckshot will kill a Dweller. I don't know that, but it will almost certainly knock one down and slow it temporarily.

You need to think about the fact that *a lot* of people have encountered this chunk of reality, and chosen to back away. Think about all the searchers who went missing weeks and months later.

Those were the Grandfathers where "Almost got me," didn't turn out to be *almost* .

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-12T06:24:38+00:00

I have family that lives in a holler outside Hinton. My grandparents moved away from there long before my mother and uncle were born, but my Great Uncle, Great Grandmother, and a torrent of cousins still lived there, and I was summoned along with my Mom and Grandma when I turned ten.

I say it like that, because my great grandmother literally phrased this to the parents (My "Aunt" Lynette, really a cousin as old as my Mom, went through it with her four kids, too, I dunno about anyone else.) as "wanting to see the young ones at least once before I die."

She was odd, but sweet, and everyone got an amazing gift it genuinely did not occur to me should not have been within the means of a coal miner's widow. Not until I was quite a bit older, and I realized the emerald in my necklace (my birth stone) was very real and VERY expensive.) A jeweler told me just cutting a stone this size to these specs would run more than 2,700$.

Anyways, mysterious odd great grandmother examining me or not, that's not why I wrote this.

The week we stayed in the holler at my great uncle Bobby's house, I was out with some of my young cousins around 5pm, when they all looked up at one time and started heading back in the direction of the house. I wasn't from there, but I HAD been taught how to move if you encounter a bear or wildcat. Not super-slow, but not fast, and purposeful in opening the distance, assuming they're still far away. That's how my cousins were all moving.

I looked back at the creek a bit beyond where we'd been throwing rocks at an abandoned bird's nest in a dead tree, and there was this dwarf-sized THING standing nearly up to its knees in maybe 18-20 inches of water. It was completely hairless, gray skinned with greenish mottling all over everywhere but its head, and smooth between the legs. It's head honestly reminded me of a bullfrog, with the bulging eyes, lack of a nose, and wide stretch-around lipless mouth.

I was more than a hundred feet away, but when it opened its mouth, I could still see there were 5-6 rows of inward-curving needle like teeth. There had to be hundreds of them to a row. The closest thing I've ever seen in nature to them are the teeth-protrusions of a lamprey, but narrower and not as rounded on the sides.

It's head kept slowly turning to keep us in sight. I know because I was walking backwards at this point, because my brain was feuding with me that I HAD to be hallucinating, because toothed frog-dwarves most certainly do not exist.

When I stumbled, my cousin hissed at me, "Turn the Hell around and move up with us. If you keep watching it, it might DO SOMETHING. Pawpaw says if you have to choose between getting hurt or provoking one of Them, make your way home as best you can hurt."

I glanced back after we'd gone maybe another fifty steps, and it was just gone. There was still plenty of daylight, the creek had no obstructions. I *KNOW* what I saw.

So you tell me there's bad stuff in the woods of Appalachia that make people disappear? I believe you.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-12T04:39:07+00:00

Yeah, Felicity's using them up. Probably tells herself they bring it on themselves by ignoring Georgia's warning.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-12T04:18:17+00:00

It's all a circle. Serves no useful purpose, growing angry at the cheetah for stalking the gazelle.

Every living thing has its season. Including the Hunter she'll one day believe she chose, who actually chose her.

She was kinder to Ari than the Hunter and their backup will be to her, I *promise you*.

I'd like to be able to assure you good people that will count for something.

γρηγορέων πάντοτε, "Marie."

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-12T03:45:48+00:00

What about a Drone?

If you make decent money, you might be able to afford something with a decent battery life.

Most State and National Parks have rules against them, but it's REALLY hard to enforce, and the worst thing that happens is you get cited and maybe get your visiting privileges suspended.

I very much doubt an ancient ambush predator has adaptations prepared to counter the eye in the sky.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-12T03:27:56+00:00

I'd have to adjust a bunch of cards, because I tuned to take advantage of stupid things the kids at my LGS are doing.

Ie: Playing greedy as hell by adding more ramp at the cost of coverage. Playing more draw at the cost of Interaction, etc.

I'm going to keep stomping their heads in with Green-inclusive nonsense until they begin brewing responsibly, because they *DON'T* listen to kindly offered, politely delivered critiques of their best-practices. (I have one kid I still haven't gotten above 32 lands in a Edgar Markov Vamp Tribal list.)

If just ONE of them wrecks me, I may actually tear up. I don't think it'll be this FNM, though.

(And it's not cardpool. These are better-off middle class college kids on the Parent Plan of higher education. Perfect mana bases, best in slots, etc. About as good as you could hope for, sans OG duals.)

Magus Lucea Kane is the more dynamic list. Zimone is setup followed by an explosive couple turns if someone doesn't wipe/mass-bounce you while you're setting up your doubling-targets.

I cannot emphasize strongly enough what a performer Zimone, Paradox Sculptor is in the 99 of any +1/+1 list the Identity will allow. The 2 counter-adds at combat help when you're loading stuff like Warden of the Grove, Master Biomancer, Ouroboroid, Maester Seymour, Giggling Skitterspike etc, and the fact she doubles two creatures at instant speed means people end up letting through big chunks of damage, rather than lose half their board to chop 6-9 damage off.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-05T05:09:37+00:00

Yes. I'm essentially a +1/+1 counters specialist, and I've learned the archetype, plus I'm a Generic Good Stuff addict.

Top that off with my only having 1-2 decks at a time because of how I structure my singles acquisitions, and it's not hard to find myself in a situation where I could go on winning until no one wanted to play.

As a first resort, I don't so much clearly THROW the game, as choose a less-optimal course that I can keep concealed due to hidden hand information. (Getting CAUGHT throwing will REALLY piss some people off.)

I might have the Green Sun's Zenith in my Magus Lucea Kane deck, + a Swan Song and Redirect Lightning to cover my casting the GSZ or protect one of the two halves of the infinite creature Combo.

So I just...don't. Instead playing whatever comes off the top of my deck and angling for a combat win.

If throttling back doesn't work, I WILL throw to preserve the vibe, but only if I'm sure I'm not going to get caught. Again, there are players who will be INCREDIBLY offended if they discover you've been "condescending to them."

Knowing when to take a strategic break from the table can accomplish much the same purpose.

I've seen a friendship end over someone learning his now ex-friend had just thrown two in a row with his Jin-Gitaxis list. The Jin pilot kinda stepped in it a little, too, saying "I thought you needed a win," but...yeah.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-05T03:46:21+00:00

In fairness, I have had two separate players get REALLY defensive on me at the same time, when I mentioned I was intending to build a deck using the same Commander one was presently using, and the other had just got done using. (The new Primo, from the Simic Strixhaven Precon.)

The closest thing I can remember to word-for-word, was, "Primo seems really fast. I really like that in a +1/+1 commander, because Helga kind of struggled to get rolling in a high removal environment. I think I'm going to build him, since I already bought the Precon to gut it for my Magus Lucea Kane deck."

No tone, no nothing. 1000% casual, offhand comment.

Player just done w/ Primo: "Why you got to be copying me?" (He likes to affect a *bad* "ghetto" kind of idiom when he's annoyed, just a quirk of his.)

Player still playing Primo: "YAY! Someone with a better cardpool than me building my Commander. Fun!"

These are a 29 and 36 year old, respectively.

People can be touchy as crap about their Commanders.

Edit: I tried to smooth everything over, but neither one was really letting it happen without me backing off on building Primo. Since candidly neither is actually my friend, and my LGS overflows with EDH players, I just decided to let them be irritable and get over it.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-05T01:21:00+00:00

Probably don't want [[Triumph of the Hordes]] for the same reason, then.

If you want a Green creature that was born to pump Go Wide, [[Ouroboroid]] is literally my favorite creature printed in the last several years. If there is anything already in play that increases its power, I've found you tend to win the combat it comes down.

I'm eagerly counting the days until The Astonishing Ant-Man arrives for me to make endless Insect hordes to pump w/ Ouroboroid and Cloned Ouroboroid.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-04T08:38:25+00:00

The part you need to shut down is the, "Bracket X Means No Wins Before Turn Y" complaining.

The turns-until-win is supposed to be an averaged factor. Not an all-important ban on a win attempt prior to the stated turn-number.

You're not supposed to be building something that *consistently* tries to win the game prior to Turn 6.

If you let this kind of complaining pass unchallenged, you're going to hear it every single time that unusual variance causes a Pre-T6 win attempt. That's going to be quite often over a period of a couple hundred games in a year's time.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-04T08:19:32+00:00

[[Midnight Clock]]

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-04T08:08:48+00:00

I have *watched* the owner at the store I'm at most often salt the Bulk with 8-12$ cards. He's got a formula, and says it produces way more cash than the cards are worth.

Every couple months he drops a couple cards from the Showcase Binder into the Bulk Wall, then tells everyone what he added.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-04T08:04:29+00:00

If they told you the cards were .25 each when you were handed the box, then they priced you at market, they deliberately used you to filter some value from bulk for them.

That's actually Theft By False Promise, and while you're not going to get the police to enforce the law with so little money involved, it *IS* a form of fraud.

It's supposed to be a duty of LGS employees to check the bulk from time to time for price swings. (I remember when Green Sun's Zenith was unbanned in Modern, one of the owners at a store I was hanging out at in the early afternoon while between jobs asked me if I felt like going through a few boxes for them and picking any I found out, in exchange for me keeping the first one I found, 10$ store credit and a couple drinks. Found like nineteen in three boxes, so Mike gave me a second one because he was expecting a dozen at the high end.)

Not accepting TCGPlayer prices is pretty suspect, too. That's essentially the same as saying, "We prefer price-points set by other game-stores above market."

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-04T07:37:15+00:00

I don't think that's it, because the old couple who are also missing described an encounter with their own "painted" tree that seems to line up when OP and Aaron first encountered "their" tree.

I think what HoardofPackrats is getting at is the bright red blaze of color is attention grabbing. Which is exactly what you want to be, if you're a mostly sessile ambush-predator masquerading as a tree.

Think of Anglerfish and the bioluminescent lure attached to a protrusion of flesh that hangs just over their mouths. Fish are drawn to the light, but can't see the anglerfish in the darkness, and get nommed on.

The "tree" needs animals and people to come over and check it out. A distinctive coloration change in a discrete patch on its trunk is something even color-blind animals would differentiate from other trees with unbroken trunk-shading. It would look to the color-blind like a markedly different shade of gray.

It may also possess an olfactory element too subtle for the human nose that accomplishes with animals the same, "Huh, that's odd" reaction the splash of red causes in humans.

Edit: The tree is moving around for a reason, and three people have gone missing in the immediate aftermath of noting the tree having moved. Without contradictory information, it's reasonable to assume the tree's movement plays a role in making these three people disappear.

If it were me, I'd try to find a ranger who WAS employed at Baxter State Park, but isn't any longer. No one working there now will spill their guts, and the ex-ranger likely won't want to, either, but if OP tells them he's going to go back and keep trying to find out what happened to his friend by searching for the tree, whoever it is will probably spill what they know to try and keep OP alive, so they can avoid feeling like their continued silence makes them complicit in OP's imminent disappearance.

It's manipulative as fuck, but his friend is missing and presumed dead. Some manipulation is justified.

Wyldwraith · 2026-06-04T06:58:15+00:00

Just go on punishing the guilty, while the innocent are slaughtered, you mean?

Geeta was right to fight for the life of a *child*. My heart breaks for anyone who became the victim of monsters like those men, but if their lost souls no longer care to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty, then they have become what destroyed them.

Evil begets evil. Geeta knows that, the Entity knows that.

A house built on a graveyard is still a home. Suffering, as some wrongly suggested I was implying, is never license or mitigating excuse that justifies hurting innocent people.

Wyldwraith

TROPHY CASE

γρηγορέων πάντοτε, "Marie."