from Blog of Sand

Starcraft Co 25- The Temple of Light, Part II: Ascent

The expedition crossed into the Temple's disruption field on the third day after landing, though nobody could identify the exact moment when ordinary flight became impossible. At first the changes were minor enough to be dismissed as atmospheric interference: navigation systems drifted by fractions of a degree, stabilizers corrected phantom motion, engines briefly lost thrust and then recovered without explanation. The deeper the transports went, however, the less predictable the failures became. One dropship, lingering to unload a damaged Goliath, rolled so violently during ascent that it lost nearly two hundred meters before its pilot recovered, and after that the commander prohibited further flights beyond the forward landing zone. Battlecruisers remained in orbit, Wraiths and Valkyries withdrew to the edge of the field, and the Ara carriers and Scouts were reduced to distant guardians of a campaign they could no longer directly influence. From that point forward, everything needed to reach the Temple would have to move on tracks, legs, or the shoulders of soldiers.

Sanctuary's jungle made the problem worse almost immediately. The canopy was so dense that daylight often reached the ground only as a diffuse green glow, while rain turned every exposed slope into mud and roots thick as industrial piping crossed the routes selected by the engineers. There were no roads in any meaningful sense, only game trails, ancient stone fragments and occasional clearings swallowed long ago by vegetation. SCVs moved at the head of the column with cutting tools, dozer blades and improvised bridge sections, while tanks and Goliaths followed behind in a procession so slow that an army accustomed to crossing continents by dropship measured progress in kilometers per day. Behind the combat vehicles came fuel, ammunition, medical equipment, spare parts, prefabricated bunkers and more SCVs whose only purpose was to repair the damage caused by hauling a mechanized army through terrain never intended to carry one.

The Renegades had spent months preparing for exactly this. They did not waste strength opposing the expedition at the perimeter of the field, where StarCraft Co. still possessed room to maneuver. They allowed the coalition to commit itself to the jungle and then began attacking the machinery of movement. The first major ambush came at a narrow stretch between a flooded basin and a steep wooded ridge, where spider mines erupted beneath the engineering vehicles just as Hydralisks opened fire from concealed positions higher up the slope. Zerglings struck the flanks almost immediately, not in enough numbers to destroy the column but in sufficient strength to pull infantry away from the road, and before the Terrans could identify the firing lanes, Renegade siege tanks began dropping shells from positions beyond visual range. Eleven vehicles were lost before StarCraft Co. located the battery, and by the time commandos reached the ridge on foot, the guns were already gone, leaving behind empty emplacements, discarded ammunition cases and another minefield laid across the pursuit route.

That pattern repeated with variations for weeks. Lurkers buried themselves beside roads cleared hours earlier and waited for medical or ammunition convoys. Vultures swept around the flanks and seeded minefields into terrain the rear echelons had not yet crossed. Photon cannons appeared on ridges that required infantry to climb for hours through wet vegetation before they could be reached, while Renegade marines occupied bunkers only long enough to force the column to deploy. Rebel zealots attacked at night, cutting into work parties and SCV camps before disappearing into the trees, and Zerglings became less a tactical threat than a constant tax on attention and ammunition. None of these attacks was designed to win the campaign outright. Their purpose was to convert distance into attrition, to force StarCraft Co. to spend shells, blood and time merely to move another kilometer.

The Renegades understood something important about the expedition: they did not need to destroy a siege tank if they could make it fire thirty rounds at an empty hillside, and they did not need to overrun a company if they could force that company to spend six hours clearing a ridge that would be abandoned by nightfall. Every bridge could be destroyed after the column crossed it. Every cleared road could be mined again. Every wounded soldier consumed supplies that could no longer arrive by air. The battlefield was not a single defensive line but three hundred and fifty kilometers of ground across which the Renegades intended to grind the coalition down by refusing it the luxury of a decisive engagement.

The Ara suffered under the same restrictions, and the campaign forced them into a form of warfare quite different from the one in which their restored fleet had excelled. Reavers, formidable in prepared battles, proved nearly useless without shuttles and were largely left behind. Dragoons could move with the armored column but required the same roads as Goliaths, while High Templar traveled under heavy protection until called forward. Zealots increasingly operated among Terran infantry, where their speed and close-combat ability compensated for the jungle's short lines of sight. The arrangement developed less through doctrine than through repeated necessity, and over time the two armies began to function with a kind of grim mechanical efficiency: Terran sensors and firepower identified threats at range, Ara warriors intercepted whatever broke through, and High Templar waited for the moment when the Renegades tried to turn harassment into mass.

By the second week, the attacks grew more sophisticated. A line of sunken colonies would force the expedition onto a narrow approach where spider mines had been laid beneath the vegetation; clearing the mines exposed engineers to Hydralisk fire, and when infantry moved forward to suppress the Hydralisks, rebel zealots struck from another direction. Renegade artillery fired from prepared positions and withdrew before counterbattery fire could settle on them. Marines and dragoons advanced behind Zerglings, using the biological mass as cover, while Vultures circled the edges and attacked the supply vehicles. The Renegades rarely stayed long enough to be destroyed. They struck, forced the column to deploy, inflicted whatever damage they could, and vanished before StarCraft Co. could bring its full weight against them.

For the first several days, StarCraft Co. answered these attacks conventionally. Patrol zones expanded, engineers cleared wider security corridors, commandos pursued withdrawing forces, and tanks fired whenever artillery could be located. Tactically, the responses were effective; operationally, they were disastrous. Every success created another patch of ground that had to be searched, secured and then abandoned. Every pursuit carried soldiers farther from the vehicles they were supposed to protect. After seventeen days of fighting, the expedition had covered barely half the distance to the Temple, and the Renegades had succeeded in turning a march into a succession of small battles on terrain of their choosing.

The commander changed the doctrine at that point, and the shift revealed how much StarCraft Co. had changed since the early years of the war. The column stopped trying to make the jungle safe. Minefields that could be bypassed were marked and left in place. Bunkers that did not control necessary ground were ignored. Renegade units withdrawing into the trees were allowed to go unless they were protecting something of strategic value. Tanks stopped answering artillery that fired only a few rounds before disappearing. Damaged vehicles were stripped for parts and abandoned rather than holding the column in place for repairs. Small Zerg concentrations were contained, not exterminated. The mission ceased to be clearing territory and returned to its actual purpose: reaching the mountain with enough combat power intact to take it.

That doctrine would have been impossible with inexperienced troops. It required soldiers who could watch Zerglings moving along a flank and trust another unit to deal with them, crews who could leave a burning vehicle behind without halting the formation, and officers who understood that an enemy firing at them did not automatically become the most important thing on the battlefield. Many of these veterans had fought on Niflheim, Aiur and Aurelia; some had survived the Western Redoubt, where Renegade Ghosts and Wraiths had made predictability lethal. They no longer reacted to every threat with equal urgency. Marines held their assigned arcs even while fighting erupted elsewhere. Goliath crews ignored distractions and concentrated on whatever threatened the column's movement. Medics triaged under fire without waiting for detailed instructions, and SCV operators repaired engines while nearby infantry exchanged fire because everyone understood that a disabled vehicle blocking the road might be more dangerous than the squad shooting from the tree line.

The Renegades escalated, and StarCraft Co. became colder in response. At one river crossing, several hundred Zerglings struck the rear of the column just as Hydralisks and marines opened fire from fortified positions on the far bank. Earlier in the campaign, StarCraft Co. would have divided its forces to preserve both sides of the crossing. Instead, the bridge was demolished after the main body passed, temporarily isolating the rear guard on the wrong side. The stranded troops had been warned in advance and fell back into prepared positions while the main force destroyed the Renegate defenses ahead; twelve hours later, engineers rebuilt the crossing and the rear guard came over through a field of Zerg corpses. At another position, Renegade tanks repeatedly shelled the column from a ridge but disappeared before counterbattery fire could settle on them. StarCraft Co. simply stopped answering. Commandos spent the night moving through the jungle instead, and when the Renegade battery opened fire the next morning, the commandos were already among the gun crews.

High Templar became invaluable as the expedition adapted. The Renegades relied on biological mass to turn small attacks into dangerous ones, and Psionic Storm punished that concentration with appalling efficiency. Zerglings moving by the hundreds could vanish in seconds beneath overlapping storms, while Hydralisk formations that gathered long enough to fire effectively often ceased to exist before they could withdraw. Renegade marines learned to scatter when they saw Templar approaching the front, which made them easier targets for Terran artillery. Ara Archons served as moving bulwarks in narrow ground where armor could not deploy properly, absorbing charges that would otherwise have reached the tanks. Over time, the coalition began to operate with a precision that made the mixed Renegade armies less adaptable than they appeared: Terran tanks broke concentrations, Templar punished mass, commandos removed positions too difficult for ordinary troops, and zealots or Archons killed whatever survived close enough to matter.

The commandos were the clearest expression of StarCraft Co.'s veterancy. They were not wasted against every obstacle. The commander had learned too much about the cost of replacing them for that. Instead, they were reserved for whatever actually stopped the expedition: an artillery position that could not be bypassed, a fortified ridge controlling the only usable approach, a minefield covered by overlapping fire, a bunker complex whose destruction would reopen the route. They crossed ground ordinary infantry could not survive, moved faster than engineers could clear, and hit positions before local commanders had time to reorganize. Renegade zealots could still kill them if they closed the distance, lurkers remained deadly, and siege fire could destroy even the best armor, but by now the Renegades needed highly coordinated defenses merely to slow them.

By the fourth week, the campaign began to turn. The Renegades still ambushed the column, but their attacks increasingly met formations that had already anticipated the likely sequence. A minefield detonated and the army flowed around the wreckage without stopping. Zerglings attacked ammunition carriers and found firebats already assigned to ride with them. Lurkers emerged beneath a medical convoy only to discover redundant ground detection traveling in overlapping groups. Renegate artillery fired and found that commandos had spent the previous night mapping not the guns themselves but the routes from which their crews were likely to withdraw. The enemy could still kill soldiers and destroy vehicles, but it was becoming harder to buy time with those losses.

The jungle behind the expedition became a long trail of abandoned equipment, temporary fortifications and roads that vanished back beneath foliage almost as soon as the rear elements passed. StarCraft Co. no longer cared. Once the ammunition and medical columns crossed a piece of ground, holding it had little value. The army carried enough SCVs to rebuild roads and enough engineering equipment to recreate its own logistics as it advanced. Renegade units occasionally reoccupied abandoned territory and announced that they had severed the Terran line of supply, only to discover that the principal depots had already moved forward and that the column no longer depended on the route they had captured.

The mountain first appeared on the thirty-sixth day, a dark wall rising above the jungle with its summit hidden behind cloud. The Temple itself remained invisible, but its presence could be inferred from the empty sky. No aircraft moved anywhere near the horizon. Even the Renegades' Overlords had been forced to the ground or left outside the field. Fifty kilometers from the mountain's base, StarCraft Co. halted on a broad shelf of elevated terrain between two rivers and began constructing the position that would decide the campaign.

The forward base took shape with the speed of something practiced too many times to require discussion. SCVs cut firing lanes through the jungle, laid foundations for bunkers and built ammunition revetments while tanks rolled directly into preassigned sectors. Within a day, the perimeter possessed overlapping artillery coverage; within three, repair facilities and medical stations were operating behind hardened positions. Roads radiated from the base toward water sources, observation posts and the planned approach to the mountain. For more than a month the expedition had been fighting while moving, always accepting engagements on imperfect ground because the objective remained ahead. Now, for the first time since entering the disruption field, StarCraft Co. had enough room, ammunition and armor concentrated in one place to fight the way it preferred.

The Renegades understood the danger immediately and attacked before the perimeter was fully mature. Their first assault came at night, with Zerglings striking from three directions while Vultures raced along the unfinished southern approach laying mines behind the outer defenses. Hydralisks followed the biological wave, marines fired through the gaps, dragoons engaged bunkers from farther back, and rebel zealots entered from the eastern jungle badly enough to reach the SCV lines before Ara warriors stopped them. The second attack came before the wounded from the first had cleared the medical stations, this time supported by siege tanks. The third brought more than a thousand Zerglings. The fourth began with lurkers already burrowed inside ground StarCraft Co. had believed secure.

For five days the Renegades tried to destroy the base before it became permanent, and for five days StarCraft Co. refused to be hurried. SCVs continued building while shells landed around them. Tanks were repaired under fire. High Templar rotated between sectors so that no part of the perimeter exhausted its psionic support. Bunkers destroyed at night reappeared before dawn, often several dozen meters from their original positions. Commandos counterattacked only when a Renegade concentration threatened construction or ammunition storage, and the rest of the time the company let the enemy come.

On the sixth day, they came again, and this time the base was ready.

The Zerglings reached the outer approaches and disappeared beneath overlapping siege fire. Hydralisks spreading through the jungle encountered firing lanes that had not existed the day before. High Templar waited until the biological formations reached their densest point and then dropped storms across them, while Terran tanks fired into the units still advancing behind. Vultures hit minefields placed specifically along routes used in earlier attacks. Rebel zealots broke through on the west and found Ara Archons positioned behind the bunkers. Renegade artillery opened from three ridges, only to discover that StarCraft Co. had spent the previous five days calculating their likely battery positions and moving its own guns accordingly. Commandos came out of concealed routes beyond the perimeter and struck one battery from the rear before the crews realized they had been flanked.

The entire assault lasted less than half an hour. When the Renegades withdrew, most of the force they had committed remained on the ground around the base.

From that point forward, the war changed direction.

StarCraft Co. had spent more than a month accepting unfavorable engagements because movement mattered more than destruction. Now the Renegades were being forced to attack a prepared position occupied by soldiers who had already fought every species and weapon system represented in their coalition. The veterans inside the perimeter had survived Aurelia's planetary battles and the Western Redoubt's ambushes; some had fought Zerg since the company had been small enough to transport its entire army in a handful of ships. Every bunker had overlapping support, every tank position had alternates, every likely approach had been mapped, and every mixed-unit assault the Renegades could conceive resembled something StarCraft Co. had already survived somewhere else.

The counteroffensive began the following morning.

Its first targets were not the mountain defenses but the production systems feeding them. Intelligence accumulated during the march had identified spawning pools, Hydralisk dens, Terran barracks and factories, and Protoss gateways scattered throughout the last fifty kilometers. During the jungle campaign these positions had been obstacles too costly to attack while moving. From a fortified base with repaired armor and deep ammunition stocks, they became entries on a schedule.

StarCraft Co. dismantled them methodically. Sunken colonies were shelled until they ceased firing rather than stormed by infantry. Photon cannons disappeared beneath concentrated artillery. Spider minefields were triggered with remote vehicles or simply bypassed. Suspected lurker positions received saturation fire before anyone crossed them. Commandos moved only after the artillery had done everything artillery could do, and High Templar waited behind the assault formations for the inevitable biological counterattack. When Renegade units withdrew toward another defensive complex, StarCraft Co. rarely chased them immediately. The tanks shelled the destination instead.

The Renegades attempted to return to the tactics that had made the jungle march so costly, but the nature of the battlefield had changed. Their defenses were now tied to infrastructure they could not abandon indefinitely. A spawning complex meant replacement Zerg. A factory meant tanks and Vultures. A gateway represented warriors who could not be replaced once the structure was gone. StarCraft Co. deliberately attacked those points and forced the Renegades to choose between preserving their mobility and defending the systems that made continued resistance possible. Every time they chose to defend, they concentrated; every time they concentrated, siege fire and Psionic Storm made them pay for it.

One major complex north of the base demonstrated the new arithmetic. Several spawning pools, Hydralisk dens, Terran factories and Protoss gateways had been built into a wide jungle basin under the protection of tanks and photon cannons, with several thousand defenders available. StarCraft Co. surrounded only three sides and deliberately left the northern road open. Artillery began before dawn and continued for hours, grinding down fixed defenses while commandos prevented counterbattery teams from approaching the guns. When the assault finally began, Ara zealots and Archons moved ahead of Terran infantry while High Templar waited behind them. The Renegades committed reserves to stop the breakthrough, and the Templar dropped storms across the reinforcement routes. Then, without warning, StarCraft Co. stopped advancing.

The defenders took the northern road.

Six kilometers away, another line of siege tanks was already deployed.

By sunset the complex was burning, and the force that had defended it had ceased to exist.

There was nothing theatrical about the operations that followed. StarCraft Co. no longer needed spectacle. A Zerg production cluster was isolated from its mineral supply and reduced over two days. A Renegade armored position was encouraged to expend ammunition against repeated feints before commandos destroyed its storage bunkers. One Protoss fortress occupied such strong high ground that a direct attack would have cost hundreds of lives, so engineers cut a road around the opposite ridge and the army passed it entirely; when its defenders finally emerged to attack the rear of the column, waiting tanks destroyed them in open ground. The commander measured progress in production capacity eliminated, usable roads gained and hostile formations removed. Ground had no emotional value.

Within twelve days the principal Renegade production network below the mountain had collapsed, and the ascent began before the defenders had time to reorganize.

The lower slopes still carried jungle, but the vegetation thinned rapidly with altitude and exposed the fortifications constructed above. Photon cannons occupied stone terraces. Sunken colonies grew into narrow passes. Hydralisks fired from caves and prepared trenches, while Zerglings waited behind the defensive lines to counterattack whenever infantry moved too far ahead of armor. Renegade tanks were positioned higher on the mountain where shells could descend onto the climbing force while the guns themselves remained difficult to reach.

StarCraft Co. advanced in bounds. One group of tanks deployed while another moved, and the Goliaths stayed close enough to protect the column from ground assaults even though there was nothing left in the sky for them to shoot. Commandos climbed routes ordinary infantry could not use and struck cannon positions from unexpected directions. Ara zealots became increasingly important as the roads narrowed, while dragoons provided direct fire against hardened points that tanks could not address cleanly. High Templar remained near the center of every assault group, waiting for the inevitable moment when Renegate commanders attempted to solve a tactical problem by throwing more bodies into it.

The closer the coalition came to the summit, the more the Renegades began feeding troops downhill from the army they had accumulated around the Temple. Hundreds of Zerglings became thousands. Hydralisk groups expanded into massed formations. Marines and firebats reinforced positions that had previously relied on static defenses, and more rebel zealots appeared among the trenches. What the local commanders saw as reinforcement, StarCraft Co. saw as depletion. The army on the plateau existed for one purpose: to overwhelm the Ancient Ones through numbers. Every unit sent downhill made the battle above easier.

The commander began encouraging the process. Several attacks were deliberately halted after making contact, inviting the Renegades to reinforce threatened positions. Once the additional troops arrived, the tanks resumed bombardment and High Templar waited until the approaches were packed before casting storms. Commandos abandoned defensible ground so the Renegades would reoccupy it, and artillery destroyed the position with its new occupants inside. The expedition had entered the jungle allowing the enemy to control when and where contact occurred. By the time it reached the mountain, StarCraft Co. controlled the rhythm of the fighting almost completely.

The summit finally came into view near the end of the second month. The Temple of Light rose from the center of an immense plateau, its upper structure so large and geometrically severe that it looked less constructed than imposed upon the mountain. Pale stone and crystalline surfaces reflected the sun through gaps in the cloud, and above it there was only empty sky. No Overlords drifted over the Renegate lines. No Scouts circled the plateau. Nothing flew.

The ground below the Temple, by contrast, was almost completely covered by soldiers.

Thousands of Hydralisks stood in dense formations around the outer approaches, with Zerglings gathered in enormous holding areas behind them. Terran marines and firebats filled trenches and prepared positions between rows of Goliaths and siege tanks, while rebel Protoss zealots stood in ordered ranks and dragoons occupied the higher terraces. Production structures crowded the rear of the plateau, many unfinished or underfed now that the network below had been destroyed. The army was so large that even officers who had fought at Aurelia stopped speaking when the first observation images arrived.

The significance of the formation was immediately apparent. The Renegades had not built that army to defend the Temple. They had built it to attack the Temple, and whatever waited beneath the mountain had frightened an enemy accustomed to sacrificing Zerg by the million. They had spent months accumulating enough bodies to overwhelm the Ancient Ones by arithmetic alone, only for StarCraft Co. to arrive before that number had been reached. Now the army intended for the Temple turned toward the coalition climbing onto the plateau.

The commander studied the images, asked how much ammunition remained, and received the answer he needed. There was enough.

The attack began before dawn.

StarCraft Co.'s tanks opened from below the plateau, their first salvos falling into the Hydralisk formations while Renegate artillery answered almost immediately. For several minutes the mountain shook beneath counterbattery fire as guns on both sides shifted between volleys and commandos moved against exposed positions along the flanks. Photon cannons fired down the approaches until concentrated artillery silenced them, and then the Renegades released the Zerg.

Thousands of Zerglings poured over the plateau and down the mountain roads, followed by Hydralisks, marines and zealots in a mass intended not to delay the coalition but to crush it outright. The High Templar moved forward under infantry protection and waited until the first waves compressed against the narrow approaches. Psionic storms tore across the slopes, ripping entire sections out of the advance before the survivors reached Terran lines occupied by firebats, zealots and Archons. Siege tanks continued firing over them into the formations behind, while commandos attacked wherever the pressure threatened to become unmanageable, withdrawing behind conventional infantry long enough for medics to restore them before returning somewhere else.

After three hours, the commander ordered the coalition forward.

StarCraft Co. and Ara climbed directly into the army coming down.

The battle spread across the southern half of the plateau and became the kind of fighting in which veterancy mattered more than numbers. Goliaths engaged dragoons at ranges measured in dozens of meters while firebats burned corridors through Zerglings and Ara zealots moved into the openings. Hydralisks tore through marine formations until tank fire shattered their concentrations. Renegate firebats held trenches long enough to slow the advance and were overrun by Archons. Commandos became the spearhead wherever the coalition stalled, striking a position at full speed, falling back behind ordinary infantry while medics worked on them, and then appearing again at another point before local commanders could adjust.

The Renegades still possessed more soldiers, but StarCraft Co. possessed an army that already understood what every one of those soldiers was capable of doing. Marines meant suppressive fire and fortified ground. Vultures meant mines and movement. Hydralisks meant concentrated ranged pressure. Zerglings meant mass and speed. Zealots meant close combat. Dragoons meant heavy direct fire. Siege tanks meant zones that could not be crossed casually. None of it was novel anymore. Officers did not need to discover counters while soldiers died because the answers had been learned years earlier, often at terrible cost.

By afternoon, the Renegade line began to fail in pieces. A Hydralisk formation collapsed under artillery and exposed the Terran infantry beside it. Commandos entered the gap and destroyed an ammunition position. Ara zealots followed them through. Dragoons turned to contain the breach and exposed themselves to Goliath fire, while Zerglings committed to seal the same opening ran directly into Psionic Storm. Every attempt to repair one sector weakened another because the army possessed no untouched reserve outside the battle. The force meant to be spent against the Ancient Ones was being consumed instead by StarCraft Co.

The commander never allowed the Renegades the time required to recover. When one sector broke, tank fire shifted immediately toward the next. Units attempting to withdraw around the Temple encountered commandos cutting across the plateau. Ara Archons advanced through positions too damaged to remain defensible but still dangerous enough to slow ordinary infantry, while dragoons fired continuously into formations trying to reorganize farther back. The contest for the summit gradually ceased to be a battle over terrain and became the deliberate destruction of the force occupying it.

By sunset, the plateau belonged to the coalition.

The cost was substantial. Hundreds of StarCraft Co. personnel were dead or wounded. Ara formations had suffered badly in the close fighting, several commando companies required consolidation, and tanks burned along the mountain approaches. The summit itself was covered with wreckage and bodies from all three species. Yet the Renegate concentration that had taken months to assemble was gone, the production system supporting it had been destroyed, and the surviving enemy forces were scattered back into jungle the coalition no longer needed to cross.

The Temple remained untouched at the center of the plateau.

SCVs began building fortifications around it before the battlefield had fully cooled, establishing ammunition dumps, bunkers and medical stations among the wreckage of Renegate defenses. Tanks were positioned facing outward. Ara warriors formed a second perimeter closer to the Temple while Talandar's specialists examined the entrances the Renegades had already opened. At the largest of those entrances, the commander and Talandar found Renegate bodies scattered along the descending corridor, some killed by weapons the Ara recognized and others by something less obvious. The upper levels had been penetrated, but the advance had stopped long before reaching whatever lay beneath.

The army on the plateau had not merely been waiting for enough troops.

It had been waiting because the survivors who came back out had told the others what was inside.

For two days StarCraft Co. repaired equipment, reorganized shattered companies and hauled supplies onto the summit. The Ara performed rites for their dead and for the guardians they expected soon to kill. Engineers mapped the upper passages already explored by the Renegades, while medical officers established casualty stations close to the entrance and the surviving commando companies were ordered to rest. Behind them lay three hundred and fifty kilometers of jungle, broken roads and burned positions; around them lay the remains of the army that had intended to storm the Temple.

Ahead lay the reason that army had hesitated.

StarCraft Co. had reached the mountain, broken the Renegades around it, and secured the entrance. Now, with the surface war finished and the coalition gathered beneath a silent structure older than Protoss history, they prepared to descend.

 
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from The happy place

Hey I almost forgot to write that I saw the moon the other day, not full but with a warm, almost orange glow, and the sky was deep blue with stars?

But I’m smitten by a terrible illness (a cold) and have been bedridden inside, while the sun is shining down the last summer days

Or the moon, as I described.

It’s a comforting thought, the indifference of nature or the world, but it’s unsettling nonetheless

I am the centre only of my own world, just like everyone else, including the frogs

 
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from Nightjar

~for Lisa Couturier

Why do we gaze at stars? Birds used to swim, before they could fly. The longer we swim, the more likely we'll grow wings.

The sailors, then, is that why they watch you? Yes, otherwise they’ll never be free.

So, sailors are like fish caterpillars, waiting to emerge? Yes, like an unborn star.

How are stars born? Light, balance, and force.

Just those things? Maybe some fairy dust.

What happens when you fall? A million wishes are made.

Who do you fall for? The purest of hearts.

Do their wishes come true? Look for yourself.

#poetry

 
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from Blog of Sand

Starcraft Co 25- The Temple of Light, Part I: Negotiation

The penultimate mission in Starcraft Co. will also be broken into three chapters, like Mission 23. For the first time, one of the chapters will just be story-building and dialogue, no combat. Narratively it makes sense due to the complexity of this sequence. Enjoy!

For nearly a year after Aurelia, the war became easier. Not easy, and never cheap, but predictable in a way it had not been since the Renegades first demonstrated that they could breed and control the Zerg. StarCraft Co. no longer needed spectacular victories. The spectacular victory had already happened. Aurelia had destroyed the largest concentration of Renegade military power, eliminated much of their Zerg-production establishment and forced the surviving factions to defend an increasingly fragmented network of worlds. StarCraft Co. spent the following year converting that victory into strategic exhaustion. Shipyards disappeared under Yamato fire. Mineral worlds changed hands. Brood-control installations were raided before they could mature. Convoys were intercepted and industrial systems sabotaged. Worlds too expensive to occupy permanently were stripped of military infrastructure and abandoned after anything useful was removed or destroyed. The Renegades could still fight and occasionally win, but their victories increasingly accomplished nothing except delaying the next attack.

The most important change was economic. Moria continued pouring minerals into the Terran war economy while captured industrial systems returned to production. Regional governments that once guarded their remaining battlecruisers as irreplaceable assets were commissioning new hulls. StarCraft Co. standardized ammunition, communications equipment and replacement parts across forces that had once belonged to dozens of separate UIC commands. The Renegades moved in the opposite direction. Every lost refinery reduced the number of Wraith sorties they could sustain. Every destroyed shipyard made the next capital-ship loss permanent. Every captured technical complex deprived them of personnel who could not be bred like Zerglings. StarCraft Co. intelligence no longer asked whether the Renegades could be defeated. The question increasingly discussed at headquarters was how quickly they could be hollowed out before the remaining factions fragmented or retreated beyond the practical limits of pursuit.

The Ara were conspicuously absent from most of that campaign. They had returned to their own territory after Aurelia, carrying with them a golden armada diminished by the Western Redoubt and an internal war that had never stopped merely because they had fought alongside Terrans. Communications remained open but sparse. Talandar sent occasional strategic reports and received StarCraft Co. intelligence in return, yet months passed without a request for joint operations. Nobody at headquarters considered the silence unusual. The Ara had their own renegades to destroy, and the alliance had never required either side to subordinate every other interest to the Terran war.

The message that eventually arrived was therefore notable before anyone knew what it contained. It carried Talandar's personal authentication and requested an immediate conference with the commander under the highest level of secure communications available to both governments. No staff summary preceded it. No operational attachment accompanied it. Talandar appeared alone when the connection opened, without the military advisers who normally surrounded him. His manner was formal even by Ara standards. “There is a world whose location my people have withheld from yours,” he began. “We withheld it from the UIC before you, and from every Terran authority that preceded it. Few among the Protoss possess its coordinates. What I tell you now has been guarded since before the oldest histories of my tribe.”

The world had no Terran name. Ara records translated its ancient designation imperfectly as something close to Sanctuary, though Talandar warned that the word carried religious meanings the Terran translation lost. It was a dense jungle world orbiting an unremarkable star, valuable neither for conventional minerals nor for settlement. Its importance lay on a mountain near the center of the largest continent. At its summit stood a Xel'Naga structure known among the Ara as the Temple of Light. Nobody knew when it had been built. Protoss records treated the Temple as ancient when their earliest surviving accounts first mentioned it. The visible structure was enormous, but according to tradition it represented only the uppermost portion of a complex descending through the mountain beneath it.

The Temple possessed two properties that made the command staff stop treating the briefing as religious history. The first was an apparently inexhaustible source of vespene. The Ancient Ones who inhabited the mountain had drawn upon it for millennia without measurable depletion. Ara scholars had long suspected that the Temple did not contain a conventional deposit at all, but some Xel'Naga mechanism capable of producing or concentrating vespene continuously. The second property extended far beyond the mountain. For hundreds of kilometers around the Temple, sustained flight became impossible. Engines functioned. Reactors remained stable. Aircraft could sometimes enter the outer edge of the affected region for short periods. As they approached the mountain, however, lift systems, guidance equipment and propulsion behaved unpredictably until remaining airborne became suicidal. Protoss craft were no more immune than Terran ones. Even organisms such as Mutalisks and Overlords lost the ability to maintain flight once sufficiently close to the Temple.

That explained why nobody had simply seized it from orbit. The remainder of Talandar's explanation made the problem larger. An ancient Protoss tribe lived beneath the Temple and had apparently done so for longer than the Ara possessed reliable historical records. Their true name had been lost outside their own society; modern Protoss referred to them simply as the Ancient Ones. They neither expanded nor participated in Protoss politics. They protected the Temple. Earlier tribes had challenged them over the centuries, usually during periods of upheaval when possession of an inexhaustible vespene source appeared worth the risk. Those expeditions had stopped. The Ancient Ones had grown stronger through prolonged exposure to whatever energies existed beneath the mountain, and eventually the rest of Protoss society accepted the simplest solution: leave the Temple alone.

The commander listened until Talandar finished and then asked the question the Executor had conspicuously avoided. “Why are you telling us now?” Talandar's expression hardened. “Because the Renegades have found it.” The discovery appeared to have occurred months earlier through captured Protoss records. A Renegade expedition had established itself outside the Temple's flight-disruption zone and begun moving ground forces inward. It was not a raid. Reconnaissance suggested an army of extraordinary size, including Terran, Zerg and rebel Protoss elements. They had already established production infrastructure on the surface and were accumulating additional troops rather than attacking immediately. Talandar believed they understood at least part of what waited beneath the mountain. “They do not hesitate because they have abandoned their purpose,” he said. “They hesitate because they have learned fear. They intend to place so many bodies before the guardians that courage will no longer be required.”

The commander asked how long before the attack. Talandar could not say. Weeks, perhaps. A few months at most. The Renegades were still building. The Ara could attack them, but the flight-disruption field removed much of the advantage provided by their restored fleet. Carriers, Scouts, Corsairs, arbiters and shuttles could bring forces only to the outer limits of the affected region. From there, an army would have to cross hundreds of kilometers of jungle and broken terrain against an enemy that had spent months preparing ground defenses. Talandar had concluded that the Ara alone could not guarantee success before the Renegades reached the Temple. “Therefore I invoke the bond between our peoples,” he said. “You came to us when Aiur stood beneath rebellion. We came when Aurelia threatened to consume your armies. Now I ask that you stand beside us once more. The Temple must not fall.”

The commander agreed immediately that the Renegades could not be allowed to possess it. He did not agree to the mission. “What happens after we win?” Talandar understood the question. “The Renegades will be destroyed. The Temple will remain beneath the protection granted to it since antiquity.” The commander asked whether StarCraft Co. would be permitted to examine the Xel'Naga mechanisms. “No.” Would Ara? “No.” Would the Ancient Ones permit either side to remove vespene? “They permit no intrusion.” The commander leaned back. “Then you are asking us to move an army three hundred and fifty kilometers overland, without air support, through prepared Renegade defenses, save a strategic resource capable of changing the war, and then walk away from it.” Talandar answered that he was asking StarCraft Co. to prevent its desecration. “You're asking us to preserve it for people who won't use it,” the commander replied.

The temperature of the conference changed almost immediately. Talandar replied that the Temple was not an abandoned mineral field to be divided under a wartime extraction agreement. It was a Xel'Naga sanctuary older than either civilization's recorded history, protected by a people whose entire existence had been devoted to that duty. Terran need did not create Terran ownership. The commander answered that sacred status did not make the Temple strategically irrelevant. If Talandar's description was accurate, the Renegades were willing to sacrifice an enormous army to reach it because they believed whatever lay beneath the mountain could alter the war. StarCraft Co. would be asked to sacrifice its own people preventing that outcome while deliberately refusing to determine whether the Renegades were correct.

Talandar's response came with considerably less diplomatic distance than usual. “There are boundaries your power does not erase, Commander. You have grown accustomed to taking possession of what your enemies cannot hold. This is not Moria. This is not a captured shipyard. You speak of entering a place before which generations of my people have bowed their heads and choosing what shall be removed because your calculations declare it useful.” The commander did not retreat from the comparison. “Moria bought the fleet that saved us on Aurelia. The fleet that your people took home afterward to fight your war. We used what we had because the alternative was losing. If there's something under that mountain that can end this war sooner, I'm not going to bury Terrans because everyone is afraid to touch it.”

For several seconds neither spoke. Talandar finally answered that the commander fundamentally misunderstood the danger. Even if the Ara agreed to such an intrusion, the Ancient Ones would not. They did not recognize Ara authority over the Temple and would certainly not recognize Terran claims. “They have broken Protoss armies that sought what you now propose to take. Their warriors have stood beneath that mountain longer than your species has crossed the void. You speak as though defeating the Renegades outside will place the Temple in your hands. It will not. If your soldiers descend beneath it, the guardians will kill them.” The commander met the warning without hesitation. “Let us worry about the defenders.” Talandar stared at him, and the commander continued. “You called us because you don't have enough ground force to guarantee this. You called us because our commandos can break positions your fleet can't reach, because our tanks can move through that jungle, and because when the Renegades put twenty times our numbers in front of us on Aurelia, we destroyed them. So don't tell me we're necessary all the way to the front door and then suddenly incapable of making decisions once we get through it. If those defenders can stop us, we'll find that out. If they can't, then the Temple has been sitting on something that could help end an existential war because nobody wanted to offend the dead.” The last phrase produced the first visible flash of anger from Talandar. “They are not dead.” The commander answered, “Then they can tell us no themselves.” The conference ended without agreement.

The dispute that followed was far more severe on the Ara side than StarCraft Co. initially understood. Talandar's report ignited an argument that cut through military, political and religious divisions simultaneously. To many among the Ara, StarCraft Co.'s demand was not merely aggressive diplomacy. It was sacrilege expressed as contract negotiation. The Ancient Ones had never betrayed the Protoss, attacked the Ara or aided the Renegades. They had maintained a charge older than the tribes themselves. The idea that Ara warriors might fight beside Terrans to break their defenses and carry Xel'Naga artifacts out of the mountain was abhorrent. Several senior voices argued that the alliance should be allowed to fracture before the Ara consented to such an act. If StarCraft Co. insisted upon desecrating the Temple, they argued, then the Ara should deny them its location and confront the Renegades themselves.

Another faction reached almost the opposite conclusion. The Temple's sanctity had always rested partly on the assumption that nobody could take it. The Ancient Ones had made themselves so formidable that every tribe which coveted their power eventually abandoned the attempt. But the Renegades had broken that equilibrium. They possessed Zerg in numbers no ancient Protoss challenger could have imagined, and they were already accumulating the bodies required to overwhelm the defenders. If the Temple truly contained a means of producing vespene without depletion and Xel'Naga technologies beyond modern understanding, allowing those resources to remain untouched while both Protoss and Terrans fought for survival began to look less like reverence and more like self-destruction. Some Ara military leaders were reluctant to admit another truth: they wanted the Temple's power. Their own rebellion continued. Their fleet had been diminished at Aurelia. If the ancient prohibition was going to be broken regardless, they preferred that the Ara stand on the side that emerged holding half of what lay beneath the mountain.

The two positions appeared irreconcilable. Meetings stretched for hours while Talandar's council argued over whether possession could justify desecration, whether existential danger could suspend ancient obligations, whether cooperation with StarCraft Co. made the Ara participants in sacrilege or merely prevented a greater one. Some demanded that Talandar withdraw the request for Terran aid immediately. Others warned that doing so could condemn both civilizations. At one point the argument moved beyond policy into theology, with one elder insisting that a people who violated their oldest sanctuaries merely because circumstances became difficult would eventually discover they possessed nothing sacred at all.

It was an elderly Judicator who finally ended the argument, not by resolving any of those questions but by declaring them irrelevant. He had spoken little during the preceding sessions and had shown no enthusiasm for entering the Temple. When Talandar finally invited his judgment, the old Protoss regarded the assembled council for a long moment before answering. “We speak as though the choice remains ours. It does not. If the Renegades gain access to the Temple, we are doomed. If StarCraft Co. seizes it without us, we either permit them the entire bounty or make war upon an ally whose strength has been tested beside our own. Neither course preserves what we claim to protect. The decision was made for us before these negotiations began. We must simply play out our role.”

The statement quieted the chamber because nobody could identify the missing alternative. Denying StarCraft Co. the coordinates accomplished nothing; the Renegades already possessed them, and if the Ara failed to stop the assault, StarCraft Co. would eventually learn where the Temple was from captured records or the consequences of Renegade victory. Fighting StarCraft Co. afterward was theoretically possible and strategically absurd. The Terrans had just broken the greatest Renegade army ever assembled, survived a planetary insurgency designed specifically to destroy them and spent the following year growing stronger. Even victory over them would cripple the Ara while their own renegades remained undefeated. Allowing StarCraft Co. to take the Temple alone was scarcely more acceptable. It would preserve Ara innocence only by surrendering every Xel'Naga discovery to a foreign power.

The humiliation was not that StarCraft Co. had defeated the Ara in negotiation. It was that the Ara suddenly understood there had never been much negotiation to begin with. Events had already narrowed the future to outcomes they disliked. StarCraft Co. merely possessed the power to say so without ceremony. Talandar later described the realization to one of his advisers with unusual bitterness: “We came to them believing we possessed something they required our permission to touch. We discovered instead that we possessed knowledge of where it was.” The distinction was difficult for a proud civilization to accept.

For StarCraft Co., the calculation remained considerably simpler. The commander offered to recognize permanent Ara custodianship over the sanctuary world and made clear that StarCraft Co. had no interest in territorial sovereignty over the Temple. What it required was access. If the coalition reached the Temple, StarCraft Co. would lead any operation beneath it. Terran and Ara specialists would jointly examine whatever was found. Portable technology, resources and usable knowledge would be divided according to terms established before the expedition. Neither side would conceal discoveries from the other, and neither would independently claim Xel'Naga technology recovered during the operation. Talandar asked what share StarCraft Co. expected. The commander answered, “Half,” and the negotiation nearly collapsed again.

Ara representatives argued that equal division ignored the fact that the Temple belonged to Protoss history, existed on a Protoss sanctuary world and had been protected by Protoss lives for millennia. StarCraft Co. replied that historical association was not military contribution. Terran forces would provide the majority of the heavy ground equipment, much of the expedition's logistics and the commandos expected to break the Renegade defenses. The Ara countered that their High Templar and Archons would be indispensable without air support. StarCraft Co. agreed and returned to the same number. Fifty percent. The argument became sufficiently heated that Voss privately described it as the strangest procurement negotiation of his career: two civilizations were discussing the division of artifacts neither owned, inside a Temple neither had entered, protected by an army neither had defeated.

Talandar finally asked what else the commander wanted, because by then everyone understood that the Temple was only part of the negotiation. “A commitment,” the commander answered. Talandar reminded him that one already existed. “Not the kind I mean.” The commander placed the strategic map of Renegade territory between them. It contained far fewer hostile systems than it had a year earlier. “We help you take this world. We help you secure the Temple. We go inside together, and whatever we find, we divide. In return, Ara doesn't go home afterward. Not this time. Your internal war matters. I understand that. Ours matters too. You commit forces to the Renegade campaign until their capacity to wage organized war is destroyed. Not until the next crisis on Aiur. Not until your council decides the debt from Aurelia is paid. Until this is finished.”

The demand produced a longer silence than the argument over the Temple. For the Ara, it meant converting an alliance of reciprocal interventions into a strategic commitment to Terran victory. For StarCraft Co., it meant something equally significant. The company was offering to help violate one of the oldest Protoss sanctuaries in existence and share the consequences with the Ara rather than simply seizing whatever it could. Neither side could pretend afterward that the relationship remained a convenient wartime partnership. The Judicator who had ended the Ara debate was present this time. He did not intervene. He merely watched Talandar, and the Executor understood the same arithmetic applied here as before. If the Temple's power was as great as their oldest records suggested, then allowing the Renegades to survive afterward would be an absurdity. They were already crossing the line. They might as well ensure that crossing it accomplished something permanent.

Talandar spoke at last. “You ask my people to bind their strength to yours until your enemy is broken. You ask us to enter a sanctuary our ancestors would not profane, to raise our weapons against guardians who have committed no betrayal, and to divide with you what they have protected since before either of us drew breath.” The commander answered simply, “Yes.” Talandar continued, “And if what waits beneath the Temple is greater than either of us imagines?” The commander looked toward the map between them. “Then it's better that we find it before the Renegades do.”

When Talandar answered, his voice carried none of the anger of their first conference. The Ara had argued through outrage, ambition, fear and theology and arrived at the place strategy had put them from the beginning. “Then hear the covenant I offer. The Temple shall remain beneath Ara custodianship. Neither your people nor mine shall claim sovereignty over the sanctuary through conquest. We shall approach its depths together. What knowledge and resources may be removed shall be divided equally, and neither people shall conceal from the other what is discovered there. The Ara shall commit forces to the destruction of the Renegade war power until that purpose is accomplished. In return, StarCraft Co. shall lead the campaign to reclaim the Temple and shall bear with us the consequences of what follows.” The commander extended his hand across the table. “Agreed.” Talandar regarded the gesture for a moment before taking it. “There is one matter your confidence has not altered, Commander. The Ancient Ones will not recognize this agreement.” The commander released his hand. “Then we'd better reach them before the Renegades do.”

Preparations began within the hour. The strategic problem immediately became apparent in the force manifests. StarCraft Co. could move an army to Sanctuary, but it could not fight the campaign the way it had learned to fight almost every major operation since Niflheim. Battlecruisers could secure orbit but not approach the Temple. Wraiths and Valkyries could protect the landing zone and no farther. Science vessels could operate only around the margins of the disruption field. Ara carriers and Scouts faced the same restriction. Shuttles and dropships could carry troops to the edge of the affected region, but once the expedition crossed it, everything required for the campaign would have to move overland.

The commander selected a landing zone approximately three hundred and fifty kilometers from the Temple, beyond the point where flight became unreliable but close enough to minimize the march. Heavy transports began assembling tanks, Goliaths, SCVs, ammunition, prefabricated fortifications and supplies sufficient to sustain a ground army without aerial resupply. Several companies of the newest commandos were assigned to the expedition. Ara manifests emphasized zealots, dragoons, High Templar and Archons while reavers were largely excluded; without shuttles, their mobility would be hopeless across hundreds of kilometers of jungle and mountain terrain. Engineers studied maps of a world for which no useful modern roads existed.

When the first transports descended through Sanctuary's atmosphere, the Temple was still far beyond the horizon. The jungle beneath them stretched unbroken toward distant mountains, and somewhere beyond those mountains the Renegades were assembling an army large enough to attack something they themselves were afraid to face. Farther still, beneath a structure older than recorded Protoss civilization, the Ancient Ones waited exactly as they had for thousands of years. StarCraft Co. had agreed to save their Temple, but nobody had agreed to leave it to them.

 
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from In Babel

Clermont-Ferrand appears to be a city of music, on Saturdays anyway. In the Cathedral of Notre Dame de l’Assomption, a group led by a woman wearing a summer dress, rehearse for an event of some kind. She begins singing and her contralto voice, helped by the PA, echoes through the stone vaults. She swings one of her arms rhythmically, mustering her accompaniest to keep time. The way school music teachers keep reluctant students in line. I half suspect she may also be a teacher, when she isn’t performing in gothic cathedrals.

She stops for a moment and the echo of her voice decays softly into the shadows. She speaks to the group in front of her about something, away from the microphone. Then;

“On y va!”


 And she begins singing again. A tour group enter from the side door and, confused by the lilting voice of the singer, stop at the front to watch her. We are all secretly thrilled by the unexpected live performance.

Behind the singer, to one side of the altar a priest wearing the kind of headset preferred by theatre stage-managers stands with another woman, this one in jeans and a tee shirt. They stare intently at some piece of equipement on the floor, having a discussion only they can hear. It’s exactly the kind of thing roadies can be seen doing before gigs, in more secular settings around the world. In another life perhaps that would have been the priest’s calling.

Leaving the cool cathedral, in the adjacent square, there appears to be a festival for ham, and associated pork products, getting ready to open. The jarring juxtaposition is heightened by a brass ensemble playing unique cover versions of popular songs. Stopping for coffee, we pick a table with decent shade at a place called The Magma Cafe. The pyroclastic theme is understandable for a city built in a volcanic basin. We order, and sit enjoying the morning heat. The coffee arrives and I begin to feel alert again. At about this point we realise the brass band is covering Killing in the Name Of, including full vocal in French. This seems to be a step too far for the cathedral wardens who pull the doors shut, leaving tourists outside to wonder if the cathedral is open.

It is, for September, unseasonably warm in many parts of France. The French weather service has issued a heatwave warning for many areas in the South East, with temperatures expected to reach 39.5°C (104°F) around Perpignan. This follows a summer of record breaking wildfires, which came on the heels of record breaking floods at the start of the year. Will it be enough to herald the kind of change needed by politicians in Europe? Only time will tell.

A lot of buildings in the older part of Clermont-Ferrand are made with the same black volcanic stone as the cathedral. It makes them look sooty, like relics from the era when coal fires and diesel fumes coated whole cities with layers of black carbon. But this is the stone’s natural colour. Reminding me of the architecture of Edinburgh, and the volcanic basalt used in buildings there.

I sit drinking coffee and feeling self conscious about my jeans. I bought them months ago, and they are too long for me. I intended to take them up, but other things kept taking priority, so instead I just started wearing them as they are. Lying to myself that long flared jeans are stylish. They lost any stylishness they had as I walked the hems to a tattered and holey mess. My self-consciousness is made worse knowing this is France. A culture that, generally speaking, knows how to dress well. Apologies for the gross generalisation. I decide to find a haberdashery supplier, and affect repairs to my jeans. As soon as coffee is finished. It takes about five seconds for me to forget this plan, when I find out there is also a multilingual bookstore in town. I often plan trips based on the bookshops in a given place and have been to bookstores across Europe and the United States. A note to civic leaders everywhere, supporting bookstores to open, and stay open, in your towns and cities also brings in visitors.

Image of an 19th century building in France. The ground floor is taken up with a store, called Emma's Bookshop

One of these days I will write about the bookshop and libraries that started my love of books, but that is for another post. Emma’s Bookshop in Clermont-Ferrand is next to the cathedral, as luck has it, about two minutes walk from The Magma Cafe.

I should make it clear, given the title of this post, that as far as I can tell, Emma’s bookshop is not specifically a queer or lgbt bookshop. It has a broad but well curated selection of subjects, including feminist texts and a children’s section. They also do teas, coffee, and cakes, and had I planned things better, I would have spent more time there than I was able to. Despite it being a flying visit, I couldn’t resist their queer titles entirely. Also in spite of being told off that I don’t apparently have enough space in my motorcycle’s top box for books – I do, there is always a way to make space for books.

I bought a hardback copy of AJ West’s How Queer Bookshops Changed the World. It fills me with joy and energy when I encounter Queer history texts. Our history is a fragile and delicate thing, it deserves to be treasured and recorded but is so often lost. A.J. West has done justice to his subject collecting these accounts of important LGBTQ+ spaces together. They are inevitably stories of survival against the odds, and of loss. It is sometimes heartbreaking to read about the disappearance of spaces that would have represented safety, connection, activism and liberation, for the communities they served. Communities that are almost continuously under hostile scrutiny for one perceived transgression or another.

Image of book on a desk. The title is How Queer Bookshops Changed the World. Author's name is A J West.

To underline this, and tie the past to the present, one of the stories recounted in the book is that of Shakespeare and Company, as it existed in Paris, between 1919-1941.

Describing the proprietors Adrienne Monnier and Sylvia Beach, both of who were lesbians, witnessing the arrival of the Nazis in Paris;

“They knew the threat the Germans posed to books and to citizens who didn’t fit with Nazi ideology. After all, Hitler’s thugs had begun their tempest of literary immolation on the 6th of May 1933 with the ransacking and burning of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science) in Berlin… The Sturmabteiling could hardly get there quickly enough. It systematically confiscated thousands of books and documents from the Institute’s library and archive, burning them days later in a huge pyre. As many as 25,000 of the Institute’s books, many containing unmatched insights into transgender history and medicine were immolated in the Bebelplatz.”

The parrallels with today’s attacks on science, and the ongoing attempt by government to remove transgender people from public life in the USA and the UK, seem obvious. On the same day I was lucky enough to visit Emma’s bookshop, the UK’s new far right blackshirt thugs were disrupting traffic into the port of Dover.

Emma’s Bookstore can be found at 9 rue Phillipe Marcombes, Clermont-Ferrand.

For anyone wondering, I also visited a haberdashers and am now making my jeans more presentable, one stitch at a time.

No AI elements were used, or will ever be used in the production of my writing or research, at any stage of the process.

 
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from Roscoe's Quick Notes

TX_Rangers

Back to Baseball Today.

In the spirit of keeping this Sunday a day of rest and relaxation, for my game of choice I'm turning to MLB. It's my intention to follow my Texas Rangers as they play the Tampa Bay Rays. This afternoon's game is scheduled to start at 1:35 PM CDT. As usual I'll follow the game's scores and stats in real time via MLB's Gameday Service where we can also find links to the radio-call of the game provided by announcers of either team we choose.

And the adventure continues.

 
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from Kelly Kintner - Blog

Finally writing about writing

I wrote a song recently about writing. It is coming on The Kintners album due out Christmas, called “The Kintners – Brand Name Believers.” I explore in song my reasons for writing and encourage folks to do it too. It’s very important in my life. It’s almost like a religion, to me. I don’t “believe” anything on purpose. Writing routinely helps me suss that out. Writing is thinking on the record. Even if you forget, it is right there where you put it.

Forgetting is huge, by the way. Every login, password, glitch, update, ad, lures me away from thinking. I also wrote a Djembe Funk song lately, coming soon, that asks; “how do you ride a train of thought to the end of the line these days?” It really is difficult. I find a blank piece of paper or an offline word processor helps get me to the end of that line. That is where I need to be. I want to share the final stop in my songs. If I never get there, my songs are empty.

How do you get deep without digging?

Much like deep conversation, songs do not get deep unless I am deep into the thought of making them. Conversations rarely, if ever, start off deep. They build, dig. This is what makes me sad about folks who reject me for deep conversations. Don’t let the icebreakers I am terrible at fool you, I am there for cerebral, emotional, challenging. I just have to work up to it. That is not the norm. Most folks size me up before a song is over, or that length of time. I do not give a crap on my end. But I feel sad for folks who walk through life that way. You just don’t get deep without digging.

Google doesn’t help. I am guilty of using them too. But if anyone remembers, it was harder to find information not so long ago. You were on a train of thought until you found it. It was a quest to find what you were looking for. Now it is a search and instant answer on google. Are you going to understand that google as well as something that took a few days or weeks to learn? No. But we are allergic to staying on the train of thought. We have been trained to seek instant gratification instead of embarking on personal journeys for something to keep with us. We keep nothing. Blow and go. It makes for shallow conversations. It makes for shallow people.

Who benefits? …….(the Lenin version, Stalin can suck it.)

Why? Why all this shallowness? I know I keep saying it, but it is true from here. So I’ll say it again; it is so software developers can make more money. You have to look at who is profiting, here. Data and software are the top companies in the world, above oil. They have been for nearly a decade. That’s plenty of time to change the world if everyone has your device that tells them anything you want.

They have the tools, the talent, the budget.

It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out how to put you on a narrow grid of brand names, beliefs, income level, food preferences, etc.. It does take a data scientist. The software industry recognizes this. Why don’t the rest of us? They have data scientists with all of our data. If I was a big company, why wouldn’t I hire them to get my product moving, besides it being highly unethical? I have known plenty of business owners who find the law as like a green light/red light system. They seem to have no right and wrong sense of their own. Just “if it’s legal, let’s do it.” This is not a quality I look for in leadership, but obviously me and tons of Americans disagree.

It’s not just harvesting, it’s refining. Refining is $$

Data scientists spend on average 80 percent of their time refining and cleaning the data, (google :) ). That’s very important. Just like oil, which powered the industrial revolution, data requires refining to be worth what businesses pay for it. Unless you are a data scientist, you don’t know what to do with all the data collected. This puts a hinge in the process that pivots squarely on the backs of data contractors and data scientists. It might be hard to understand how they’re doing it. But it isn’t tough at all to see who is doing it. It’s them.

I know why you can’t think of lyrics like you used to. If you are like me, you know why too.

If you are like me and struggled for years at creative projects, I’d put down the phone and try it out. I am nearly a month without a cell phone. I write lyrics and play acoustic a lot more without it. Like I used to. That is more valuable to me than anything on profiles or a screen. I struggled with it for years. I shouldn’t have. A one month long test was all I needed. Don’t be like me. Experiment. It helps you think better.

There’s you and there’s the world. Finding a place doesn’t mean staying connected.

I have a lot of theories as to why this is. But we’re all different. I just think being connected to everyone in your brain is a lot like a drug. You probably think better after that illusion is shattered. It’s like a commercial in our heads 24/7. It is just you in there, after all.

Kintners Playlist Alert!!!

PS: I made a 25 song playlist on Subvert.fm of The Kintners stuff I like a lot. I listen to it. Just sharing if you’d like to check it out. Thanks.

Kelly Kintner – Producer, Songwriter

The Kintners, Djembe Funk (Subvert Links)

The hour later thought: Life is like the intro and safety rundown on a plane ride. They tell you to put your own mask on before saving someone. They do not tell you to punch them out and take their mask. I think a lot of folks hear the latter.

 
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from Nomina Numina

A few months ago, I was walking down 7th Street near the arena when a young woman approached me and asked if she could pray with me. Skeptical and curious, I agreed. As I listened to her prayer, I followed the meaning of her words: a plea that I might obtain salvation through her conception of the divine, the supreme, the ordered heaven she envisioned above. I thanked her, declined her invitation to join her religion, and walked on to breakfast another block away.

I did not think much of it at the time. But that evening, in my journal, I kept returning to the odd nature of the encounter — the strangeness of receiving an unrequested prayer on a random Tuesday, on a warm summer sidewalk, from a stranger who wished for my soul in the only way she knew. Nothing I write here is aimed at her. Her sincerity was not in question. What I noticed was the form of the gesture, and what it revealed about my own deliberate distance from it.

She sought, through religious authority, outward rite, and works ordered toward her own divine truth, a blessing and assurance of life beyond death. My interest of late, however, has lain elsewhere: in the deeper, inward act of direct apprehension of the eternal — an act which, as far as I can tell, involves no hierarchical heavenly order, no supreme being, and certainly no omniscient judge with, arguably, dubious designs on humanity.

What I’m pointing to is not a private certainty that entirely dispenses with tradition, practice, or responsibility. I mean a knowledge that completely alters the knower.

And in that knowing, the doing is transformed.

In such an encounter, the ego — with its fear, its self-protection, its claim to be the whole of the self — is metamorphosed. One is, in a meaningful sense, reborn: awakened to a reality that exceeds one’s prior ordinary perception, and wholly reoriented in one's relation to self, life, death, and other people.

Yet there’s a subtle risk.

An inward glimpse of the eternal, however small, cannot remain disembodied or self-confirming. The witness must carry its truth back into the world and give it form there: in humility, compassion, truthful speech, ethical action, and the patient work of sustaining life with others. At least, that is one ideal. Rites, teachings, and communal practices may therefore serve as conduits — through which insight is remembered, tested, and made answerable to consequence — rather than as guarantees purchased from authority and conformity. The inward revelation, however rare, becomes credible only because it teaches one to inhabit the world more truthfully, rather than ignoring or abolishing it.

That morning on 7th Street, I pondered the woman who prayed for my salvation as I drank my coffee. Perhaps we were reaching for the same thing — she from without, toward a heaven I do not see above; I from within, toward what was already closer than closeness, more real than real, more human than human. The difference is that her prayer asked me to leave where I stood. The knowing I trust and practice asks only that I live more truly within it.

#Intermundia

By D. Bowman Nomina Numina is a journal of reflections, moments, and meaning-making between worlds. Reply by email.

 
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from Rippple's Blog

Stay entertained thanks to our Weekly Tracker giving you next week's Anticipated Movies & Shows, Most Watched & Returning Favorites, and Shows Changes & Popular Trailers.

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Hi, I’m Kevin 👋. Product Manager at Trakt and creator of Rippple. If you’d like to support what I'm building, you can download Rippple for Trakt, explore the open source project, or go Trakt VIP.

 
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from AnOublietteofThought

For the majority of this past week, my focus was on Phoebe. I am in a unique position to be able to make that happen, so I did. As I sit here thinking about it, I realize that I was doing more than I consciously really allowed myself to think about. I think I swiftly processed the situation and then started putting in parameters to ensure that she would have the best possible outcome available once I was not there to provide it.

Aside from outside noise, the obnoxious AC, or other people's noise coming through the walls, my apartment is silent most of the time. I will have music playing sometimes, or put on a movie, but that is not the constant. Also, if I'm listening to music I usually have noise-canceling headphones on. For me, I prefer a room as quiet as I can possibly make it, generally speaking. My wind chimes are a constant, both outside and inside my apartment. I find it peaceful. They straight up lower my anxiety levels. I even dangle them from the canopy bar of my bed. Every subtle movement creates an almost imperceptible chime. If I really want it to trill for a bit, I just have to shake my bed. Phoebe really enjoyed that.

I say all of this, because I know that noise can be a big factor with anxiety in cats. They get accustomed to what they are around. I did not know how loud or quiet the environment she would be going into would be. So I did something to try to prepare her as best as I could. The television was on most of the time with various background sounds from a variety of movies and programs. Including those with animals. At certain times I would also play storms so that she could hear thunder, lightning, and rain and not be bothered. Obviously, I could not create the physical sensations of it but at least the sound became predictable for her. A brief pop-up had startled her early on, and made me think on it.

There were a variety of endeavors I sought to teach her. From grooming herself, to not attacking things that might break because most people won't handle that well. To comprehending the effect of her actions. For example, getting her claw stuck in something. Instead of rushing to fix it, I gave her time to figure out how to fix it herself while still being there and supporting her in the effort. After all, it important that she's able to do that and also distinguish danger. She learned part of using a litter box is not pouncing or walking through what she just defecated. At least she's working on it. No point in announcing everything, but I think/hope I was able to seamlessly demonstrate a variety of lessons in our day-to-day interaction and play.

She spent Friday night with my ex, and went to her new forever home on Saturday afternoon after spending the day in my ex's area of his office. He said he closed off the area with cubicle partitions and let her do as she liked inside it. I am told that after about 15 minutes of riding in the car she got curious and started observing as well as playing, and then sleeping in her carrier. That once arriving at where he lives, she ate, used the restroom, explored, investigated him, played, and went to sleep. He says they played quite a bit and she happily pounced and did the little hunting scenarios that is play for cats. He says that she snuggled with him the way our cats would snuggle with him when they chose to sleep beside him. Which was curled up in the crook of his armpit. He, too, has a soft spot for animals. Cats in particular. I'm sure he was also doing what he could to help her thrive.

I have been told she tried to groom his beard a few times, and that she did not once run from nor try to hide from him. And that she intentionally sought out being petted. She does really enjoy being stroked and petted. I am also told that she was a very big hit at work, which I am sure she was, because she is the epitome of cuteness. He said that pretty much everyone came to see her, and that instead of running away or being uncomfortable, she chose to pounce and show affection towards others. He says she got a lot of loving from a variety of people and ate up every second of it as opposed to being scared or nervous by it. That the entire business was eating out of the palm of her paw, including the woman she was going home with.

He also said that she hit it off really well with that woman, and she snuggled and purred away on her chest. He reassured me, again, that it was a very cat-loving home, and that from how the woman spoke of her prior cats that it sounded like she treats her cats in the manner that we treated ours. Which means they are spoiled rotten and family. Not pets. That is everything that I could want for her. So I really hope that it is true. He sent me photos. Her demeanor was very unstressed. So that gives me hope.

One of the many highlights of our time together was her discovery of herself. She likes to climb, and she also liked to play in the litter box if left to her own decision making about it. So I closed the door to my bathroom. She would go to it if she needed to use the restroom. To which I would then open it, and everything would happen. On the bedroom facing side of the door, I have a full length mirror. In front of the door beside one of my bookshelves, I have a closed fabric laundry hamper. I just so happened to have a hard laundry basket on top of it, because sometimes I just leave it there instead of bringing it back to my laundry area. Because she likes to climb, she would climb up the laundry hamper and jump into the plastic basket because it was like a giant slip-and-slide for her. Basically, she could go wild in it. I was very concerned she was going to knock it off, so I put it on the floor for her to go wild in. She still likes to climb, so she did. Which left her with a large space on top of the hamper lid to play on. It also gave her a very clear view of her reflection.

Initially, she did think it was another cat. She approached. She pounced backwards. She did the skitter jump-walk. She batted at it. She meowed for my attention. Etc. I could tell that she didn't quite know what to make of it. That she recognized there was a cat there that wasn't there. At one point, she started trying to look around the other side of the mirror. I stepped in shortly after that.

I picked her up and stood in front of the mirror and demonstrated petting her while continuing to speak to her, and telling her that it was her and me. While she was playing with it prior, I was also telling her that it was her. Once I felt her relax in her observation, I placed her back atop the hamper and let her explore a bit more herself. She walked up to the mirror and placed her paw upon it. She looked back at me then back towards her reflection and at her paw. She walked from one end to the other, watching her reflection. I told her that she was beautiful wasn't she? That she was very smart. And I asked her what she thought of her reflection.

She double-checked again in multiple ways to make sure that it wasn't a real cat. She used her paw upon the mirror in multiple ways, and turned this way and that looking at herself. I watched as realization dawned upon her. I witnessed her exploring her own reflection and comparing what she saw in the mirror to what she saw as she would look at herself. And I heard her happy purrs rev up the more she understood what was happening. When I asked her what she thought about it all, she ran up into my arms and gave my jaw a nip, then looked back over her shoulder at the reflection of the mirror. She seemed exquisitely happy. After that point, she gained some type of confidence that appeared to firmly center her within herself. It was a wonderful thing to witness.

I think that this past week also demonstrated my lack of trust in others, and the depth of my control issues with my environment and various scenarios. I have had to acknowledge, and am still in the act of acknowledging, how much it is driving me insane that I cannot control the outcome of her environment to ensure that she knows only happiness and contentment. I was able to give her some skills to help her adapt, but I have no control over what is occurring where she now is. I admit that the unknown of that is driving me a little bit insane, but I am working through it.

He told me that though I am always in the moment and focus absolutely on who or what is there, that he learned my mind is always at least a dozen steps ahead of that moment subtly adjusting everything for the best possible outcome. I do not think that is actually true. Partially, yes. I do think it's very dependent upon the situation. I also think a lot of it is subconscious, and I don't realize that I do it. I do know that having no way to understand what environment she was going to find herself in has driven me nuts. Preparedness is very important to me. As is the ability to think on the fly. I really hope that she will have both the confidence in herself, and the ability to do those things. I admit that I am still following possibilities through my mind, and contemplating how she might respond.

She is self-aware. Has learned how to demand her outcome and speak up for her wants in a situation. She is fully capable of wrapping a human around her paw just by being her adorable self, and I made sure to hone her hunting instincts a bit more. Obviously, everything still needs practice, but she's been given the encouragement on how to take in a room and either observe or own it. She understands the value of tenderness, and I am pretty sure she has learned that sometimes using her claws is the better reaction.

I think that my lesson in this week has been that we have to sometimes acknowledge that we can only give our best within the parameters of a situation, and that those parameters might suck. I know this. I have known this. Accepting it for myself is much easier than accepting it for someone else. Especially if that someone else is a teeny tiny bundle of fur.

Because I have not slept well, and her departure increased my stress, it should not have surprised me to experience a few hypnagogic hallucinations as I crossed the threshold towards sleep. It is something I do on occasion, though it is infrequent. I have felt my own cats before, and seen them, though they passed on some time ago. I felt her both Friday and Saturday when I went to bed. Both were very brief, but very clear moments.

When these things happen, part of me wishes to believe that it is real. Before I learned about such hallucinations, I did think it was real. Every aspect of sensory stimulation is there. Were I blindfolded and not aware that she actually was not in the room, I would have thought it really happened. The moments feel that real. However, the more I read about the brain, the more I am unable to have such beliefs. Sleep, and the thresholds crossed to and from it, are very intriguing. I am very enamored with understanding reality. The word itself is humorous. That is far too deep of a topic to begin writing on after I've already written so much already.

I think this week has been good for me. Caring for her was without a doubt a precious gift to me. I would not trade it for the world, and I'm really really happy that I got to bathe her in an abundance of love and affection.

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

 
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from Lastige Gevallen in de Rede

Overleven in het tijdperk van ongekend zinloos talent

Ik kan wel door de grond zakken jij lekker niet jij kan naar de hel lopen en dat kan ik dan weer niet Ik kan wel door de grond zakken zij kan dat ook al niet zij kan het zwart voor de ogen zien en dat kunstje beheers ik dan weer niet Ik kan als enigste hier door de grond zakken een eigenschap waar ik trots op ben ook al is dit een nutteloos talent zij ziet het zwart voor ogen, jij loopt heel langzaam naar de hel en anderen krimpen van de pijn ineen maar van hen kan er niet een wat ik kan, namelijk zakken door de grond dat doe ik met hart en ziel ik geef me er volledig aan over ga er helemaal aan onderdoor dan gaat het hele zootje er over en ben ik zonder een centje pijn de grond ingeboord terwijl er nog ineenkrimpen, pikzwart zien of onderweg zijn naar de verre, verre hel lig ik daar zalig uitgeteld als goedmoedig zwart zaad waaruit helemaal niks goeds ontstaat wachten tot de grond weer ruimte voor mij daarboven vrij maakt

 
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from nguo lai

11.

Puis on me dit que c’était « la rentrée », je devais aller à l’école, naturellement chez les Sœurs, celles de St Vincent de Paul. Comme ma sœur. Ce fut terrible. Mon français était détestable, mélangé de beaucoup de vietnamien, les autres enfants m’appelaient Chinetoque ou Viet. Pourtant je me fis une amie, elle se nommait Catherine, son papa était mort. En Indochine. Est-ce cela qui nous rapprochait ? Tant bien que mal j’appris à lire cette langue que je parlais si mal. La lecture m’a sauvé. Maintenu la tête hors de l’eau au milieu du chaos familial. Je lisais tout ce qui me passait sous la main. Je ne comprenais pas tout, je lisais, je lisais. « Encore à lire » me reprochait ma grand-mère. Je ne sais pas ce qu’elle imaginait être une activité meilleure. Mon livre préféré, très vite, fut le Petit Larousse Illustré et ses merveilleuses gravures sur bois. J’enrichis ainsi mon vocabulaire qui fit excuser ma grammaire et ma syntaxe défaillantes.

#nguolai

 
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from G A N Z E E R . T O D A Y

Season 3 of SILO ended with the media equivalent of being blue-balled.

Got around to watching PROJECT HAIL MARY with my significant other for the first time, and we might as well have put on a Disney cartoon.

Halfway through Ian M. Banks' USE OF WEAPONS, and it's fun and entertaining enough but I'm honestly a little surprised it's talked about as some great touchstone of sociocultural commentary and forward-thinking ideas. But perhaps I ought to wait until I finish it before jumping to any conclusions.

#radar #TV #film #reads

 
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from Things Left Unsaid

What if the current state of politics has inadvertently created multiple completely original mental disorders that will need to be analyzed in the coming decades? Assuming of course that we have decades coming.

Perhaps the #1 symptom of the disorder I've been afflicted by is that my brain keeps generating fiction from absorbing bits and bytes of the algorithm that the corporations decided I need to see, mixed with believing the slop that the left used A.I. to generate. Or from those piggies in charge of fake news.

So they say, right? I'm brainwashed. That's woke. Fake news. You believe in science, bro? It’s all a myth. A natural cycle. I succumb to the urge, and turn all these misfiring synapses into a blog post.

I should be criticizing the activities of my own government when I type about political things. Of course there would be no shortage of things to type. We have our flaws here that I could go on and on about. Doesn't every country? But my government people didn't stand in front of cameras threatening my life, and spewing infantile ridiculing garbage out of the gaping meat holes above their chins. They only ever choose the news people that will ask the questions that they want to answer.

Changing the name from Department of National Defense back to Department of War was significant. Look at how tough we are. That is what the name change was really about, wasn't it? They did have the brawn to back up arrogance like that for many years, but not anymore. Without the brains, the brawn has diminished. They should now change the name again to something based upon their overall performance thus far in the second term. The Department of Stupidity, Lies and Discrimination.

What have they accomplished? Aside from increasing the price of everything, they have also depleted their ammo. Dropped bombs on a mountain. They have murdered innocent people, and have blown up civilian infrastructure (for fun). They have forced some very important upper management into choosing between integrity, or resigning. They fired the ones who wanted to do their jobs right instead of supporting the warped agenda of a senile dictator and his gang of bootlicker morons. A lot of the other personnel in the military must be completely alienated (like the ones held hostage in dire conditions on a boat). But whatever right? Things happen.

The epitome of inexperience, stupidity, ego, and incompetence, the drunkard, who is leading The Department of Whatever, has turned what was once a military machine into a boisterous paper tiger burning itself up from the inside. It has more than likely left the country vulnerable to a number of enemies out there, who are now probably just (laughing at the ludicrous antics) waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. I guess the scary part of that (aside from the inevitable brutal terror and tragedy of where it occurs) will be the story they fabricate about who was responsible. Very similar to when a former administration was like, hey, we need Osama bin Laden's head on a platter asap. We know he's in Afghanistan. Let's blow up Iraq. And that was back when they still had a somewhat functioning government. Imagine now that they are not.

My money is on Canada. It will give them an excuse to just roll in with tanks and explosions. Like the objects of their envy always do. Then they can attempt to steal the things they need instead of making deals. Deal making involves giving and thinking. They are incapable of both.

That's a little far fetched, isn't it? I don't know. Is it? We're both NATO though! Sure. NATO that they have been whining about since day one. NATO is an alliance. They don't do alliances. Nothing they do is rational, or normal, or legal, etc.. They start shit from a brain riddled with senility, and another likely pickled with vast amounts of expensive bourbon. Never with any plan or goal.

The rest of the incompetent idiots, from other failing departments, get in front of cameras to talk shit about Canada. The stunning hypocrisy is that they criticize the activities of our government, while they have wasted the last two years steadily bringing their own country right to the brink of societal collapse. I haven't looked at news yet today. Maybe it has already happened? I feel like their stupidity has been more detrimental than the aftermath of 9-11 and COVID-19 combined.

This second term is like they threw jet fuel on the glowing embers left from the dumpster fire that was started during its first term. Difference is that the first time around there was still some smart people in office keeping the thing somewhat restrained. This time is total control. Full on idiocracy. How the fuck can they still go on blaming the previous admin when they have had total control for nearly two years now?

What has their leader been up to? Attending to the important matters I guess. Focus on a ballroom, and plans for an eyesore arch. Renaming things. Bragging. Blow some more shit up. Posting gibberish and lies all night on social media that makes the next day markets and the price of gas fluctuate erratically.

There is talk about his presidential library being built in Florida. We can hope that it falls over on his golf course when the ground beneath it gets washed away from his total lack of attention to the climate crisis.

The executive orders he has signed over the last two years likely require their own storage room (?) Can't be too much of a problem though. There is likely plenty of spare rooms available from all the smart people who have been fired, or who have quit. Executive orders appear to skip processes, and go straight to the outcome. Such a weak and pathetic way to lead. That's not governance, politics, or leadership. It's dictatorship.

They squish him into the chair behind the desk. Those lined up behind him resist the urge to gag, or to pinch their noses shut. Roll cameras. He signs the things with a marker instead of a pen. Does no one else find that weird? His soft tiny little weak hand can likely no longer grip a pen. They should switch it up again and replace the marker with a crayon.

He gets to choose the colour before signing the thing. Mommy mommy look! Blue! Like the sky and the ocean used to be! I actually haven't seen him sign one of those things in a long time. Does he still hold them up for the cameras, proud, like a baby that stuck its hand into the ass crack of its shitty diaper when mom turned her back for two seconds. Weeeee! Let me display to world, haha!, smeared fresh baby shit on the wall.

They say the pen is mightier than the sword. I think the marker is less mighty than the pen. It is something to be used to label a box with, not for signing government documents.

He says, bluntly and stupidly, that all the allies have been ripping them off for years. It is not true. They have just decided they are just done with being generous, and with maintaining balance and order in the economy of globalized society. They are done with making deals of any kind that don't result in fattening the pockets of all the disgustingly ultra wealthy brats and psychopaths like himself.

 
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