He saw the birds circling days before he reached the body. The hundred-foot-tall corpse was leaned up against the mesa as though it were a rock, pinned in place by its own sword. It had been left to the vultures and the sun to dispose of. When they came West, they found a harsh land protected by harsher gods. They hadn’t been welcome. That hadn’t stopped them. They told themselves they were heroes. They were bringing Civilization and taming a wild place. He sheltered in the shadow of the giant’s blade and tried to make himself believe it was true.
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The Dragon Knight looked down from her tower. Below her, she could see the peasants working desperately in the fields, building sand walls and digging for water. Her heart ached, but what could she do? Drought couldn’t be beaten with a sword. And she’d paid her own price. A dragon’s life force is puissant and eternal. She was constantly surrounded by blue and silver wraiths. She’d had to isolate herself to protect the kingdom. She didn’t mind, it was part of the duty. She went back inside, never considering the link between the dragons and the land that spawned them.
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The door seemed rather ordinary, if out of place. It was solid, heavy oak, and it stood in a stone arch frame in the middle of the forest. The magic was in the keys. They hung from every bare branch of the dead trees, and each was guarded by a raven that stared down at her with fearsome intelligence. She just needed to find the right key, and appease its keeper. Then she could unlock the door, and it would take her she needed to be. She finally understood what the old man had meant. Not all labyrinths were mazes.
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The Runner is the ghost of Machine City. Everyone has a second-hand story of a friend or a cousin meeting the one spanner in The Corp’s mighty works. He hacks a bioterminal to distribute free medicine here and diverts trucks full of SecForce thugs away from a housing protest there. He’s an urban legend, both everywhere and nowhere. The Chief Policing Officer appears regularly on the feeds insisting that The Runner doesn’t exist. But the work continues. High above, the boy jumps from catwalk to catwalk, knowing the value of being born without tackers in a city of electronic eyes.
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The robots roll out of the factory and onto the waiting ships. The assembled troops salute each passing unit. The grunts have never seen them unfinished or met one of the legendary elite pilots inside, but they’ve all heard the stories. They’ve seen what the Walkers can do. They will bring honor and glory to Luna. Inside the unit, the child beats its hands against the metal walls. They try and pull out the tubes and wires that connect them to the machine. They scream the ancient words until they are hoarse. “Alexa, stop!” But the units keep on rolling.
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The Death’s Head Moths were attracted to the faeries’ light, and thus the fragile creatures became endangered. There was no malice in the insects’ attacks. They merely sensed light and magic and were drawn in. Initially, the mages built the lanterns as refuges, places the faeries could safely hide when the swarms were on the wing. It was a kindness, and the faeries gratefully accepted their hospitality. But once the mages had them, they couldn’t help but notice the faeries’ beauty, and how plentiful and useful their magics were. It does not take long for refuge to become a cage.
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He sold masks in the little trade towns along the river that cut its way through the kingdom. Instead of the usual raft, he traveled on the back of a huge boar that didn’t like strangers. He slept rough in the hollows along the riverbank. Each night, he would carve the next day’s wares by the light of hidden fires. He was smart, and he was careful. They found him anyway. He still kept his magic sword in his bag, and it awoke in blue fire at his call. He mounted the boar and rode into battle, one last time.
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Wordle Created by Josh Wardle https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/
⬜🟨🟨⬜🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
The Skinny: You probably already played it today.
By this point, Wordle is a game that needs no introduction. But I am still coming across friends and relations puzzled by the towers of green and yellow blocks on their feeds. So I will make a brief introduction. Wordle began in 2019 as a sort of gift by Josh Wardle for his partner. Wardle, the designer of The Button and Place for Reddit, is known for his parasocial games. But Wordle is almost paradoxically enticing in its simplicity. There are no loot boxes to grind for. Nothing to subscribe to, no gatcha mechanic. Just a new five-letter word every day, and six guesses. The game didn’t even allow sharing until the feature was implemented towards the end of last year. But perhaps it is its simplicity that draws attention in 2022. It’s an echo of a simpler electronic age when the idea of meeting people in faraway places through a screen seemed like magic. In its way, Wordle is punk rock. It doesn’t need to be downloaded from an app store (although certainly, clones have popped up on all of them in the past few weeks.) It doesn’t have microtransactions and ads for the game don’t play 24/7 on YouTube. It’s just a quick little word game you can play every day and share your results. Wordle is a shared experience, and I think that’s key to its success. Having only one word a day, and knowing that everybody else posting their score had the same word, creates a feeling of connection, communication, and competition. That word took you six tries? You had that many correct letters on the first guess? The content is sharable and gets people talking. I like to look at people’s posted patterns and try and guess what words they use. Other users place a great value in getting the word in as few guesses as possible. Wordle is as much a game of deduction as wordplay. With the New York Times’ Announcement that they have purchased Wordle in a seven-figure deal, the future of this little-game-that-could is uncertain. For now, the game is still hosted at the same site and is still free to play. But only time will tell if the paper’s acquisition will mark an end to the fad or elevate Wordle to the same level of cultural cachet as the crossword.
The City expanded in all directions like a crystal. Glass, chrome, and circuitry expanded in every direction. In most parts of The City, you couldn’t see the sun. In some places, you could barely tell which way was up. She’d been born there, and it was all she had ever known. It was a billion-limbed organism that consumed and screamed and polluted: The Infant of the Beast, chewing up people. But it was not all there was. As she rose into the sky, she felt a thrill of anticipation. She would crack The City’s shell, and show them the truth.
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Welcome to Nostalgia Pilots! This week, Hugh, Jason, Jurd, and Spence consider Mobile Fighter G Gundam episode 14: Shocking! Shinning Finger Defeated! Crunchy Roll YouTube
NP77 – Optimus Prime Vibes
This week, Rain saves everyone, the Shuffle Alliance looks silly, and Black Joker has no time for Domon’s feelings. Plus, Lasers can do anything and Master Asia reveals himself.
Hugh J. O'Donnell 