A HANDY CHART FOR THOSE OF YOU WONDERING WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THESE. NOTE THAT THESE ARE ALL THE INFORMAL AND YOU IS THE FORMAL SO LIKE YOU WOULD ALWAYS ADDRESS YOUR SUPERIOR/ OLDER PERSON/ SOCIAL BETTER WITH YOU BUT WITH YOUR BUDS YOU CAN USE THESE.
please read this even if you're not indian. especially if you're not indian.
you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.
first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.
now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:
in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.
and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.
and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.
it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:
• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.
• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.
• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.
• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.
• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.
• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.
and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.
what i'm asking:
if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.
if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.
india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.
Series summary: When you are unexpectedly reaped in the 47th Annual Hunger Games, your only hope of survival is your mentor, Aemond Targaryen, who won his Games a decade ago. Aemond is very good at his job, and he's your only friend here in the luxurious and depraved Capitol. But this professional partnership might be turning into something personal...and forbidden...and dangerous.
Series summary: When you are unexpectedly reaped in the 47th Annual Hunger Games, your only hope of survival is your mentor, Aemond Targaryen, who won his Games a decade ago. Aemond is very good at his job, and he’s your only friend here in the luxurious and depraved Capitol. But this professional partnership might be turning into something personal…and forbidden…and dangerous.
Series warnings: Language, blood and violence, serious injury, sexual content (18+ readers only), prostitution, references to noncon/dubcon, character deaths (obvi), bugs, cakes, drugs, drinking, smoking, references to suicide, survivor’s guilt, desert trivia, mentions of pregnancy/children, a special Targaryen guest star, the curse of the pharaohs 🐪
Word count: 8.1k
Dividers were made by the wonderful @saradika-graphics 🎨
⏳ Character list can be found HERE! ⌛
⏳ All of my writing can be found HERE! ⌛
"If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. There is no place to hide and so we are found." - Terry T. Williams
You dream you are looking into Aemond’s cold, crystalline house, as if you are a journalist with a camera and a microphone begging for a quote, as if you are an admirer who believes you know him. You cup your hands against the glass and see his strange skeletal dogs padding across the marble floors, the rambling empty rooms punctuated by furniture he almost never uses, the ceilings so high you could forget they exist, like the roof is only open air and giants can reach down inside to rearrange the fixtures and the occupants like a dollhouse. You can see Aemond standing in front of his case of treasures he’s earned over a decade of blood and sweat and forced smiles, smoking as he contemplates the glittering gems and ancient relics, the stones mined from foreign earth, the paintings and the sculptures and the fossils and the coins.
You tap the glass, and it begins to crack. You open your eyes, and you’re back in the Tribute Center, tangled up in Aemond’s smooth silk sheets. You sit up in bed, looking for him, hoping he isn’t gone yet. He isn’t: he’s in front of his bathroom mirror, massaging a gelatinous blue substance into his scar tissue. After a few seconds, the blue goes clear and fades into the color of his skin, pale like froth on the ocean, pale like bones.
“What is that?” you ask, your voice dazed with sleep.
Aemond says, still peering into the mirror: “Numbing gel. For the nerve damage.”
“You could have used it on me.” So I wouldn’t be so afraid to give you everything.
“No. Pain exists for a reason. I would never touch you if you weren’t able to tell me when to slow down or when to stop. This is for when the pain can’t be avoided.” He finishes and turns to you. He’s already showered and dressed, damp silver hair, black suit, good for a funeral. “Go back to sleep. You have another hour. I’m going down to the Control Room, but I’ll return before you go into the arena. I promise.”
You remember what Aegon said: I don’t want him to do something stupid and get himself killed. If he breaks the rules to help you, he’s slitting his own throat. “Aemond, please don’t break the rules for me.”
“I do this every year. The news starts leaking right before the Games begin. If I can find out anything about the arena, I can help you more.”
“I don’t want you to get in trouble.” I don’t want them to take away your treasures, your hope, your life.
Aemond comes to the bed, touches your cheek, kisses your forehead. “Go back to sleep,” he says again, a murmur, a whisper, and then he leaves.
You try to listen, but every time you close your eyes you see visions of other arenas and other Games: Jack hurling a spear through the belly of a District 8 girl and leaving her to die alone in the mountains, Sirena crawling through the prehistoric trees of a bayou, Aemond stalking a girl named Sapphire through a maze of glass tanks bleeding from blue to gore. You get up and go out to the common area.
Commodore is at the table struggling to get down a bowl of oatmeal. An array of gluttony—prime rib, lobster, cake and crepes, pitchers of fresh-squeezed fruit juice—goes untouched. Aegon and Charm are on the couch; he’s still in his pajamas and stretched out across the length of it, his bare feet in Charm’s lap as she sits at the other end, rigid and grim, wearing tall gold heels and matching hoop earrings and a short dress the color of sand. She’s smoking, something you’ve never seen her do before; didn’t she say it causes wrinkles? But she’s puffing away nonetheless, restlessly, agitatedly. On the television screen, the news is showing a montage of pictures taken of you and Aemond last night in the back of the car: your first kiss, you in Aemond’s lap, you laughing as the driver takes a sharp turn and you are photographed mid-fall, Aemond focused and unsmiling as he’s climbing on top of you.
Aegon and Charm glance over at where you stand in your silk nightgown. Aegon seems intrigued, Charm irritated. She takes a fidgeting drag and then points to the dining room table with her cigarette. “If you don’t eat breakfast, Aemond will skin me alive.”
Instinctively, seeking something to toy with, you reach for the knife hung around your throat; but it isn’t there anymore. You took it off last night. You go to your own bedroom to look for it, but it’s gone, and so is the wooden box containing Daddy’s filleting knife set.
Someone collected it already, you realize. To put it in the arena for all the tributes to fight over.
You return to the common area. On the television, little Babylon is showing Caesar Flickerman how he’s been working on his right hook. “Jesus,” Charm mutters, flicking ashes onto the floor. You still don’t know who that is. You’ll have to ask Aemond someday. If I’m still alive.
Aegon says from over the back of the couch. “You good, Sparkles?”
“Eat,” Charm orders again, not like she wants to, like it’s her job. You look to where Commodore sits at the table; he is glowering at you. He thinks you’ve upstaged him, and he’s right. In the fishbowl, Sunfyre meanders in slow shimmering circles.
“Do you know about the auction?” you ask Aegon, being vague so Commodore won’t understand. Charm ignores this, gazing vacuously at the television screen, smoking and finicking with her already perfect hair. “You know…after?”
Aegon furrows his brow; he’s surprised Aemond told you that much. And he’s sad too. His words are hushed and flat. “Yeah, I remember that part. Why?”
“How much money does someone have to pay to win?”
He nods, like now he understands why you’re asking. “For the right piece of property? More than most people, even here in the Capitol, ever see in their lives.”
More than Aemond could afford, he means. Unless he surrenders every stone, every relic, every treasure bricked up in his glass tomb. And maybe not even then.
You surrender and go to the table. You survey the spread, and you don’t want any of it, so you try one bite of everything like Aemond would tell you to. You chase bleeding prime rib with saccharine cherry cake, butter-drenched lobster with a crepe wet with berries and whipped cream. You guzzle pineapple juice, not knowing when you’ll get to eat or drink again. You watch the television, highlights from the interviews last night: Roosevelt grinning as he cracks his knuckles and plucks the pins out of Caesar’s hair before the enthralled host has time to react, Commodore talking about how grateful he is for Jackline Humboldt’s mentorship, Brookie demonstrating proper axe-throwing technique, Isla saying hello to her grandmother through the warmthless blue-white screen.
After breakfast, Charm takes you and Commodore downstairs for your final treatments from your prep teams. She stands between you in the elevator, as if she could stop it if Commodore decided to snap and break your neck. But he doesn’t. He stares straight ahead with his deep-set dark, placid eyes, one of his colossal fists squeezed shut.
“What do you have there?” Charm asks him as the elevator descends.
Commodore opens his hand. Nestled in his pink, meaty palm is the silver Lock Ness Monster pin that Charm put on the lapel of his blue suit last night.
“They won’t let you have that, sea monster,” Charm says gently. She takes the pin and, after a moment, affixes it to the front of her dress instead.
“It doesn’t go,” Commodore says, and Charm blinks at him, as if she can’t believe he’s making a joke. Slowly, he smiles. “Gold shoes. Gold jewelry. Can’t do a silver pin.”
Charm laughs, her green eyes shining. “I don’t take fashion advice from you, Commodore.” She pats one of his massive biceps fondly, gives it a squeeze, rests her head against him for only a moment and pinches her eyes shut, as if she can open them and see all of this vanish—the elevator, the Tribute Center, the Games, the grotesqueness. Then she perks up again, whips out her gold compact, rubs white powder into her nose as the reflective metal doors open and she canters out into the hallway in her gold heels.
There are twice as many Peacekeepers as usual here. You spot a few other tributes—sweet quiet Noria from District 5, polite watchful Bobcat from District 9—but large berths of space are kept between you. Charm waves to your pod, and you obediently go to it as she accompanies Commodore to his. The prep team engulfs you and ushers you onto the metal table, scrubbing, rinsing, plucking, waxing, exfoliating, moisturizing. You have to look good for the audience. You won’t have access to these things in the arena, no lip balm, no lotion, no tweezers, nothing.
This is really happening, you think, dizzy, nauseous, trying not be sick so you won’t lose the calories from breakfast. The water they haphazardly wash you with isn’t hot enough. Is Aemond alright? Will he be back in time?
One of the men smirks as he works and gossips to the others: “She smells like him, doesn’t she? His cologne. His smoke.”
And you think as your heart hammers in your ribcage: Aemond, please come back. Please don’t be late. I want to see you again before they kill me.
The prep team dries you with towels that are thick and white and very soft, but they leave you sitting naked on the table, trying to cover yourself with your arms. Salem arrives and wrangles you into a loose-fitting tan sweatsuit, cotton socks, sneakers, no jewelry. They apply light makeup and tie up your hair so it is out of your face and almost painfully tight.
“Is Aemond back yet?” you ask Salem, not particularly hopeful.
“Back from where?” they reply shortly. “I haven’t seen him.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Nauseous?”
“Yes, actually.”
With no ceremony, Salem jabs a pill into your mouth. You would have protested if you had time, you don’t trust anything unless it comes from Aemond, but you don’t drop dead and your nausea instantly abates. Now is the last step, and you hadn’t even thought of it—even today? even in the valley of death?—but the Capitol expects its tributes to shine, and all the brighter if they intend to live. Salem raises the spray bottle, clear cool liquid that smells like coconuts, a galaxy of ever-whirling stars, no constellations, only chaos that catches the light.
“I can do it myself,” you say, and Salem is surprised but gives you the bottle. You mist what little of your skin is visible, your hands, your throat, and then spray your fingertips so you can draw sparkling half-moons under your eyes. You pass the bottle back to Salem. “Done?”
They nod, suddenly somber, and lay a small hand on your shoulder. “Good luck,” Salem says.
“Thank you.” Your voice is thin, weak, young, desperately afraid. “I know it’s not your fault.”
The partition rolls open, and Aemond is there, and as soon as you see his scarred face you know he’s thunderstruck, horrified, trying to think fast enough to come up with something useful to tell you. “Come on,” he says, and begins walking. There is no time to be patient. The minutes are being siphoned away like water through a drain, like blood from a slit carotid.
You bolt after him, almost running into little Babylon as his mentor leads him out of a pod, an arm draped across the boy’s shoulders, counsel whispered through his fluffy chocolate-brown hair. God, I hope it’s quick when he goes, you think as you hurry after Aemond. He is moving swiftly down the corridor, then pushes through a door on the wall and takes a winding spiral of steps to an even lower level. His shoes pound on the stairs, his silver hair flows out behind him.
“Is it bad?” you say, already knowing the answer.
He doesn’t reply. He burst through another door at the bottom of the stairwell, starts down a long white hallway that’s empty except for Peacekeepers stationed outside each room, reaches back for you to make sure you’re keeping up and grabs you roughly by the wrist.
“Aemond, is it bad?”
“You’ll need electrolytes,” he says, speaking as each thought occurs to him. “Not just water. Sodium, potassium, magnesium. I’ll send you packets of powder, if I can. Mix it with any liquid you can find. Squeeze out the moisture from wet sand or mud, find an oasis, collect dew in the morning if there is any. But try to test the water before you drink it. Watch someone else go first, if you can. Sometimes it’s poisoned.”
“It’s someplace hot? A jungle, a beach, a steppe?”
“It’s a desert.”
“What?!” I’m from the WATER district and my arena doesn’t have any fucking WATER?!
“And don’t drink juice from a cactus, it’ll make you ill or hallucinate or both. Don’t drink urine. You can drink blood if you absolutely have to, that will keep you alive in the very short term, but it will dehydrate you over time so only resort to that if you’ll die otherwise. Animal or human, it makes no difference.”
“Blood?!”
“It’ll be scorching during the day and freezing at night,” Aemond says, picking up speed in both body and mind. You’re almost running to match his stride; he realizes this and slows down so you can conserve your energy. His fingers are still clenched around your wrist. He lets go and rests a palm on the small of your back instead. “So try to move around dawn and dusk if you can. Don’t take off your clothes. Other people will, because they’ll be burning up, but that’ll only make it worse. Loose fabric will shield you from the worst of the sun and keep your sweat on your skin longer, which will cool you. And you’ll need as many layers as you can get at night. Animal skins. Tents or tarps. Take other tributes’ clothes if the opportunity presents itself.”
“Okay,” you say, trying franticly to remember every detail. Peacekeepers watch as you and Aemond pass by, their heads turning beneath their armor.
“The sand will be hot, so try to get off of it as quickly as you can. Find shelter, rocks or ruins. Watch out for snakes. If you can’t find shade, dig a hole in the sand a few feet deep, and you’ll find cooler ground. But never dig deeper than your knees, or you’ll be buried if it caves in.”
“Got it.”
“Wet your skin to stave off heatstroke, especially your face and the back of your neck. Plants like cottonwoods will show you where there’s water underground. Don’t light fires no matter how cold you get at night, other tributes will see it and come kill you. Eat insects. Eat birds, or their eggs. Some nest in cactuses.”
He opens a door and guides you to a room, your room, maybe the last room you’ll ever stand in. It’s cold and concrete, with a massive glass cylinder—called a Tribute Tube—that you must be sealed inside so you can be raised up into the arena. There are three Peacekeepers in the corner, only observing but prepared to intervene at the first sign of trickery or refusal. The schedule must be adhered to.
“I won’t be allowed to send you much, so anything you receive—any item, any note—is the single most important gift you need at that moment given everything I know. Remember that.”
A disembodied voice echoes through an intercom system: “Two minutes until launch.”
You turn to Aemond, petrified, shaking wildly. “Aemond…”
“When the cannon fires and the Games begin, you turn and run. Run as fast as you can and as far as you can until you find shelter. Then wait there for a while. Rest, try to find food and water, let the other tributes kill each other. Come out again at dusk. You will find a weapon, or I will send you one, but do not try to get your filleting knife set from the Cornucopia. It’ll be there, I guarantee it. But you can’t fight your way to it when the other tributes are still fresh. You’ll die. Are you listening? When the Games start, you run.”
“It’s not my knife set,” you say nonsensically. “It’s Daddy’s.”
Aemond pulls you into his arms and holds you there for the bare seconds he can. “Then live to give it back to him.”
The Peacekeepers inch closer. You have to get into the Tribute Tube now. You have to go to the arena. Aemond opens the clear glass door and you step inside, your palms pressing to the curved claustrophobic walls, your pulse racing, your lungs starving for oxygen. Aemond’s gaze flits down to your feet.
“Take off your shoes,” he says, and immediately you comprehend why. You’ll be faster on dry sand without them. You kick your sneakers away. He kneels down to yank off your socks.
“Aemond, I can’t, I can’t—”
He grabs your face with both hands. “As long as you fight in there, I will fight out here, okay? You’re not alone. I’m here with you. I’ll be right on the other side of the screen the whole time.”
“Okay,” you manage. There are tears welling up in your eyes.
“No,” Aemond says, whisking them away. “Don’t waste the water.” Then he kisses you, hard and fast, all that there is time for. “I love you,” he says when he breaks away, and closes the door before you have time to respond. You reach for him; your palm hits the glass. Aemond places his hand over yours and keeps it there until the floor of the Tribute Tube begins to rise, carrying you away. He turns and leaves, fleeing from the room, going to wherever he will watch the Games from. You get down on your hands and knees to watch him vanish like rainwater beneath the sun.
This is really happening, this is really happening, this is really—
For a moment, the chamber is completely dark as you pass through the concrete birth canal between here and hereafter. You stand up straight again, trembling everywhere, swiping priceless moisture from your eyes. “Don’t waste the water,” you tell yourself fiercely, and you feel just a little more in control. Is it getting brighter? Yes, there’s light streaming in from above, and there is the sound of a heavy metal hatch opening, and then fresh air fills your lungs, hot, golden, flecked with dust. You look up, but the sun is blinding; after a few seconds the world begins to take shape. An blue sky. A powerful wind. Sand, endless, dunes that crest and trough like waves on the ocean. In the distance, so hazy it could be a mirage, is the ghost of a pyramid.
The twenty-four tributes are arranged in a circle around a black obsidian obelisk, which serves as this arena’s Cornucopia. A mountain of weapons and other supplies is arrayed at the base. You see plastic gallons of water but no food, axes for Brookie, spears for Commodore, crossbows and swords and nets and hammers…and the wooden box that contains Daddy’s filleting knife set. That’s your bait. You can’t take it, you know you can’t, but still…the temptation is instinctive and nearly overwhelming. I need my knife, I can’t protect myself without it.
But you are surrounded by the problem: people who will try to kill you. Commodore is on your right, staring fixedly at the Cornucopia, planning what he’s going to grab. After him are the kids from District 3, then Sara from District 2, then Roosevelt, the wind in his red hair. He peers over at you, his dark eyes shrewd and narrow. He sees that you’re barefoot, mouths you bitch, then squats down to take his own shoes off too. It’s not fair, he must be thinking. Aemond is already giving you advantages. To your left is twelve-year-old Babylon from District 5, looking astonished, looking lost. Who’s going to be the one to kill him? you wonder, anguished. Who’s going to let their families watch them murder a little boy on television and try to say it was brave?
An omnipotent voice thunders from the sky, counting down from sixty. Glowing gold numbers hover above the obelisk, ticking away at the same tempo. Each tribute, in their roomy sand-colored uniform, waits on their own small circular platform; to step onto the ground early, whether on purpose or by accident, means instant death. The platforms are just far enough apart that the tributes cannot touch each other, or at least you assume they are. At twenty seconds left on the clock, you hear a scream and whirl towards it. Sara has realized what’s happening just a moment too late. Roosevelt leaps from his platform, shoves Sara off of hers, effortlessly regains his balance as she plummets to the sand and explodes into blood and gore and gristle. People are shrieking and wiping red from their eyes. The boy from District 3, Tendo, cowers because he’s next in line and Roosevelt is already eyeing his platform; but there’s not enough time and Roosevelt realizes this, so he forgoes the advance. Ten seconds. Five seconds.
I want my knife, you think, clutching at your throat where no thin silver chain hangs.
But Aemond’s voice is louder: When the cannon fires and the Games begin, you turn and run.
You don’t glance behind you, because you don’t want anyone to notice and know where you’re going. The golden number above the obelisk reads zero. A deafening boom shakes the earth. You don’t want long enough to see the other tributes charging the Cornucopia, you just run. Your bare feet hit scalding sand, and it’s very dry and ever-shifting but you’ve run in sand before, playing on the beach with your siblings, carrying creels of fish to the marketplace. One step, two, three, four, and then you’ve crested the dune and there’s a steer drop on the other side. You bite back a yelp as you slide down the embankment, hands buried in the sand wall, trying to slow your descent so you don’t shatter your ankles at the bottom. Above, you can hear people shouting and wailing and pleading and bleeding and dying. You tumble when you hit the dune slack, like a narrow alleyway through the steep walls of sand. You roll twice and then force yourself upright again, choosing a direction at random, staggering until you can sprint. The cannon is firing, counting out fatalities.
I have to get out of the trough, there’s no cover, anyone could find me here—
A girl screams and then comes plunging down the embankment. She lands a few yards in front of you, clawing at a gash in her throat, too deep to be anything but lethal. She’s Calico, the girl from District 8, and a few days ago she was braiding her friends’ hair, and now she’s dying alone on the sand as the sun bakes her from above.
Aemond’s voice is in your skull again: Take other tributes’ clothes if the opportunity presents itself.
“I’m sorry,” you moan as you tear off Calico’s bloodstained sweatshirt, leaving her with only the plain cotton sports bra underneath. She doesn’t seem to notice; her eyes are glassy, her pupils huge as she gazes up at the cloudless sky. You knot the sleeves around your waist and keep running. The cannon booms again. You flee through the desert, not looking back.
He takes the steps down two at a time, finds the alcove where Charm and Aegon are sitting, collapses into a chair beside them. The Amphitheatre is buzzing as mentors and escorts watch the enormous television screen, which pivots between the myriad of cameras imbedded in the arena. Presently, Roosevelt, Brookie, and Isla are picking through the Cornucopia treasures, and for a moment Aemond thinks of his towering glass case and sees fossils and gemstones in place of arrows and blades.
“Relax, your girl listened,” Aegon tells him, pink shorts, teal unbuttoned t-shirt, sandals up on the back of the chair in front of him.
“She ran?”
“She’s already almost a mile away from the others. They’ll show her again soon. They kept panning between the bloodbath and her sprinting through the wilderness, it’s funny.”
“Funny,” Charm snorts, pouring herself a flute of champagne from a bottle served in a bucket of ice. There’s a bowl in her lap, buttery popcorn and rainbow Mars Morsels. When her flute is full, bubbles overflowing the rim, and pours some for Aegon and Aemond too. Aegon drains his glass in two gulps.
“Commodore?” Aemond asks, ignoring his champagne.
“Sea monster is doing swimmingly,” Charm says proudly. “Got himself a spear. Warmed up by skewering that District 10 boy, what was his name? Jerry? No, Jutland. Stuffed a sack full of water and sunscreen, smart boy, not as dumb as he looks. Trudged off with Hawk.”
“You’re not in charge of sending gifts for Commodore, are you?” Aegon asks Aemond. “Seems like a conflict of interest.”
Aemond shakes his head, preoccupied. “No, he and I both agreed to sign it over to Jack.”
Citadella, the escort for District 2, calls over smugly: “Isn’t it a little early for champagne, Charm?”
She flings back: “It’s it a little early for fifty percent of your tributes to be dead?”
Citadella shuts up, turning back to the screen and nursing a Bloody Mary.
“That Roosevelt kid makes for good tv,” Aegon says, his hand rummaging around in Charm’s popcorn.
“What did he do?” Aemond asks, puzzled. “Sara’s gone already?”
“He pushed her off her platform before the Games even started. Brilliant. Rattled the others, and got scraps of her in some of their eyes too. The poor District 3 girl was stumbling around blind, that dork Tendo had to lead her away like a guide dog.”
Aemond is gazing at the television, where the aforementioned Roosevelt is scanning the horizon with his sharp falconine eyes, so dark they’re nearly black. That will help him, Aemond thinks. Blue and green eyes are more sensitive to sunlight. “At least it was quick.”
“It was very quick,” Charm agrees.
“Oh, there she is!” Aegon says, pointing, and a murmur ripples through the Amphitheatre. But people aren’t just watching here. They’re watching throughout the Capitol, and across all twelve districts too, parents, children, sponsors, admirers, men and women whose bellies rumble with hunger when they see her on the screen, her eyes fearful but adorned with silver glitter. She is climbing up a red rock formation to squeeze onto a narrow shelf between two boulders; but before she disappears inside, she pauses to check for snakes.
“Good,” Aemond whispers, as if she can hear him. He picks up the heavy landline phone for their station—secure connection, no interference—and checks the green display screen mounted just below it. It keeps an account of the funds available for each tribute; they fluctuate rapidly as mentors call in to send gifts and sponsors make their own calls, pledging tens, hundreds, thousands. Every time Aemond looks, her number is higher. The sponsors are coming through for her…but they’ll expect things in return.
“Yes?” says the woman pleasantly on the other end of the line, one of the Gamemakers in the Control Room.
“This is Aemond for District 4. I’d like to make my first purchase.”
You hear wings flapping, and when you peek out from the rocks you see the vast shadow of a bird, and then the gargantuan black vulture it belongs to. It seems to circle the rock formation a few times, then drops something in the sand and flies off. You listen closely for footsteps or voices, but don’t detect any. You wait a few more minutes and then creep out from your hiding place, trading the cool shade for blistering sunshine.
There on the dry golden sand is a burlap knapsack. You open it to find a single bottle of water and a silvery packet attached to the side by a rubber band. You smile. “Thank you, Aemond,” you say softly, and maybe he can hear you, depending on where the cameras are. You rip open the packet and pour the blue power inside into the water bottle, then shake it up before you drink it. The mixture is horrible, salty and bitter, but you guzzle it anyway. At once, you feel revived: your thirst quenched, your budding headache extinguished. You decide to keep the rubber band in case you find a use for it later, looped around your wrist like a bracelet.
You hear a rustling and startle, looking around for the source. The red rock formation is wide and tall, perhaps ten feet at the highest point; you can’t see the other side of it.
Maybe it’s an animal I can eat, you think hopefully, but it doesn’t sound like an animal. It sounds like sneakers on stone. You clamber back towards your hiding spot, clinging to the rust-colored rock so you can heave yourself up onto the shelf—
Someone yells, not like they’re in pain, like they’re burning up with wrath. A weigh collides with you and knocks you off the rocks, yanks the air from your lungs, leaves you dizzy and disoriented on the sand. It’s little Babylon, twelve years old now and forever, and somehow he survived the bloodbath and grabbed a hammer from the Cornucopia before he escaped into the wild. He lunges at you, wielding his weapon with perilous force.
“Baby, stop!” you shout, scrambling away, trying to find your footing in the shifting sand.
“I have to!” he shrieks, blood on his face, blood in his hair, blood spilling from a gash wound in his shoulder. Tears glitter savagely in his hazel eyes. “I have to, or I can’t leave!”
“Stop!” you beg again, but he swings at you with the hammer and it grazes your skull. I’m not dying here, I want to live, you think with sudden and ruthless conviction. He pounces and you remember what Aemond taught you: Solar plexus. Achilles tendon. Knee. Temple. Zygomatic arch. Eyes. Carotid artery.
You tear the hammer out of Babylon’s grasp and strike him in the side of the head, not hard enough to kill but hard enough that he’ll never get better. You hear bone crack; you hear the sick soft squishing of brains. Blood rockets from an ear. An eye bulges from its ruptured socket. And when Babylon can breathe again he starts screaming, so loudly and so piercingly other tributes will hear. You can’t let that happen, you can’t let them find you. You can’t let this little boy suffer any more than he already has. Knowing that you can’t waste the water but sobbing anyway, you hit him again, and it’s still not enough. A third blow, a forth, and then at last he’s still and silent. You stay on your knees beside him, the hammer raised in your shaking hands in case you need to hit him again. Distantly, the cannon fires.
Someone appears from behind the rock formation: Monty, looking withered from the heat but otherwise unharmed. He carries a machete, but his tan sweatsuit is marred by no blood splatter. His hair has been shaved down nearly to the skin, like Commodore’s. So no one can get a grip on it. He stops when he sees you. His eyes go down to Babylon’s still-hemorrhaging body, then back to you. You’re still clutching the hammer. He stares at you with cold revulsion, with something like hatred.
You drop the hammer, tears snaking down your cheeks. “I didn’t…he wasn’t…”
Monty keeps walking, his sneakers etching deep tracks in the sand. He leaves you behind like you have something terrible he might catch, fever or rot. Then the desert is quiet again, the only sound the hot arid wind. Far from here, very far, you can see the hazy peak of the pyramid rising over the dunes.
Still weeping softly, you pick up the hammer. You might need it again. You crawl back into your hiding place, curl up in the cool clandestine shadows, and wait for dusk.
More footsteps, more people, not just one intruder but at least three. Somebody rakes a blade against the red stone and then taps three times, like they’re a neighbor popping in to borrow some eggs or sugar.
“Knock knock,” Roosevelt says, and you can tell from his voice that he’s grinning. “Anyone home?”
No, no, no, you think, wriggling into the gloom of the crevice as far as you can. There’s no other entrance or exit, which was perhaps an oversight on your part. Nowhere is safe in the arena, only more or less dangerous. You can’t stay in any spot for long.
“Come on out, Sparkles. We know you’re in there. You left footprints.”
“Fuck,” you sigh, and decide you have no choice but to obey and hope for the best. Roosevelt said he didn’t plan on killing you; if you’re lucky, that’s still true. You slink out of the darkness and climb down from the narrow shelf between the boulders, more difficult now that you’re grasping the hammer in one hand. It’s afternoon, and the sun is just beginning to dip behind the height of the dunes, and it’s still hot but not quite so sweltering. The breeze is picking up, carrying sand and dust. You drop down to the ground and face them sheepishly: Roosevelt smiling as he twirls a knife, Brookie carrying two axes, Isla tagging along with them but glancing around noncommittally as she fiddles with a short curved sword, as if she’s just waiting for the right moment to break off on her own. Her plume of curls has been braided into tight rows that can’t tangle or snag or get hooked by clawing fingers.
Roosevelt chuckles, the wind tousling his flame-colored hair, his freckles starker than ever. “Relax, girl. I ain’t even looking at you until Commodore is dead.” He glances down to the hammer. “Well, that’s not your weapon of choice.” He reaches into one of the pockets of his sweatpants and you gasp when he produces your favorite filleting knife, unsheathed but still attached to the long silver chain Aemond had fashioned for you. “I’ll trade ya.”
You yield the hammer. Roosevelt hangs the chain around your neck, the blade resting against your loose sweatshirt. You reach to touch it, to make sure it’s real: the mother of pearl hilt, the flashing steel. “Why would you help me?”
“I’m not helping you. I’m keeping the Games interesting. The sponsors will appreciate that, and I’ll be rewarded.” Roosevelt smirks. “And also, you’re going to tell me what Aemond said.”
You feign confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t act stupid. He tipped you off. Thanks for showing me the thing about the shoes, by the way. It does make you faster.” His nimble feet are bare, as are Brookie’s and Isla’s. There’s blood on his sweatpants, you notice now, and some in his hair; Roosevelt is shirtless, and Brookie and Isla have stripped down to their sports bras. They’ll regret that when the sun goes down, you think, with more pity than satisfaction. Why can’t you be a monster like Jack? Why can’t you be the kind of tribute who wins?
“Okay,” you say. “But Aemond didn’t say that much, so I don’t know how helpful I’ll be.”
“Hurry up, we have things to do,” Brookie says, tossing an axe high in the air and catching the handle boredly. Her blonde hair is pulled back from her face in a low, unfussy bun. Isla watches the perimeter for any sign of interlopers.
I’ll tell them some things, but not everything. How can you hope to win if you don’t keep what few advantages you have? “Don’t drink cactus juice, it will make you sick. Don’t move around too much during the day when it’s so hot, wait for dawn and dusk.”
Brookie snickers. “Avoid the sun in the desert. Genius. Groundbreaking.”
“If you can’t find shade, you can just dig a few feet under the sand and make a little den, and it’ll be a lot cooler there.”
Now she’s appreciative. “Alright. Wouldn’t have thought of that one.”
“What are we supposed to drink when the water runs out?” Roosevelt asks you. “If the cactuses aren’t an option?”
“Look for plants like cottonwoods, and that might be where there’s groundwater under the surface. Collect dew in the morning. Hope your mentors send you something.”
Roosevelt nods thoughtfully. “Anything else?”
You deliberate whether to share more. They’re still my friends, you think, and that settles it. “You shouldn’t have left your sweatshirts behind. It’ll get cold at night, and you’ll need layers. So you should go back to wherever you left them or find replacements.”
“Damn,” Brookie sighs, exchanging a weary glance with Isla. All three of them note the extra sweatshirt knotted around your waist, as if now they understand why you took it; but no one tries to steal it from you.
“We’re going to go pick off some of the little kids,” Roosevelt says, grinning. “Nice and humane, you know I’m quick.” You do: you remember the way he pressed his fingers to your throat and made you black out almost instantaneously. It wouldn’t be a bad way to go, if it had to happen. It doesn’t give you any time to be afraid. “Want to come with us?”
“Thanks, but I’ll stay here. I’ll wait until dusk and then hike out farther.”
He nods to where Babylon’s corpse lies in the sand nearby, bloody and mutilated. “You prefer to work alone, huh?”
You peer down at your feet, ashamed, near tears again.
With the head of the hammer, Roosevelt gently lifts your chin so you have to look at him. Then he smiles, not cunningly, not cruelly. “Don’t hang around here too long, Sparkles. If we could find you, somebody else could too.”
“Got it,” you reply hoarsely.
“Good luck,” Isla says, seemingly sincere; then they vanish into the dunes and the dust and the sun glare, and soon are lost to the sands of time.
At dusk, you venture out into the desert again. The blue sky turns to lavender, gold, rust, gore. You walk in the direction opposite of the obelisk and the pyramid, away from the other tributes, away from the violence and the mercy, either of which could get you killed.
Your feet sink and slide into the powdery sand. You pass cactuses with enticing red blossoms, think of lionfish when you study their spines. It gets cold, abruptly and shockingly cold, and the dead girl Calico’s bloodstained sweatshirt keeps you just warm enough to stay alive but not to stop you from shivering so forcefully that your bones ache. When the sun is gone completely, the moon and stars come out, and they’re the same constellations you have at home in District 4: Orion, Perseus, Scorpius, Cassiopeia, Ursa Minor.
Misty is under the same stars, you think, and it makes you feel less alone. And so are my other sisters, and Daddy, and Fleet. And so is Aemond.
You keep walking. You’re hungry, but you can’t find anything to eat. Your luck is better when it comes to water. You stumble across an oasis, a small pool of water maybe three feet wide and surrounded by scraggly shrubs, the water shining under the moonlight. A camel with one lofty hump is down on its great knobby knees in the sand, drinking down the plentiful liquid without dying, which is a promising sign.
“Hey, fuzzy guy,” you say smiling. The camel’s head snaps up, and it bares its teeth: sharp fangs beneath murderous red eyes. It lurches upright—horrifyingly tall, seven feet or more—and charges at you, and you scream as you flee.
You try to outrun it, but the carnivorous camel mutt is faster, its large stomping hooves growing louder as it gains on you. You grab the knife that swings from your neck and spin towards the beast, slicing, gutting. The blade cuts into its throat and opens its veins and arteries, its windpipe, its esophagus that hungered to swallow you. You reel backwards as the ruby-eyed mutt chokes and bellows furiously, sinks down to the sand, eventually ceases its twitching and dies.
Great start, you think. Day 1, and I’ve courageously slaughtered a twelve-year-old and a camel. My odds couldn’t be better.
Then you notice the way steam rises from where the creature’s hot blood meets frigid air, and you get an idea. You twirl your knife, considering the pelt. You’ve never skinned a mammal before, but it can’t be that much different than a fish. You go to the camel and nudge it a few times with your foot to make sure it’s gone for good. Then you get to work.
Fifteen minutes later, you’re snuggled up in your very messy but also very warm camel skin, drinking from the tiny oasis in the midst of the sea of sand, cool clear water raised to your lips with cupped hands. You can taste lingering salt and copper from the camel blood, but that’s not so bad. Those are electrolytes, like Aemond said, and you need them. You left the carcass on the sand, roped with muscle and gleaming bones and organs. It was too heavy to flip over, so you could only skin half the body, but that still gave you plenty to work with. You sit cross-legged at your infinitesimal oasis, not thirsty, not cold, not even that hungry now that your belly is full of water, and beneath the moon and the stars you could almost believe you’re somewhere safe and beautiful and where a future is possible.
Is this what Egypt is like? you think, remembering Aemond’s treasures. On the nightscape horizon, you can see the pyramid, not just a faint outline but unmistakably aglow: there is a beam of silvery light that shoots up from the apex into the indigo sky, so you can see it from anywhere in the arena. Is this where he’ll go when he leaves the Capitol?
You hear someone coming, plodding footsteps and huffing breaths. You fear it might be another homicidal camel, but no: it’s only Roosevelt, shivering in his sweatshirt and trekking alone across the sand, probably searching for someplace to tuck himself away for the night. He must not trust Brookie enough to sleep beside her.
Roosevelt sees your silhouette in the darkness and startles, raising the hammer, then lowers it when he realizes it’s you. He sways a little; he must be exhausted. After a while he says: “What the fuck are we supposed to be eating?”
“Each other, probably.”
He smiles. “If I tried to nibble on you, would you let me? You can close your eyes and pretend I’m Aemond.”
You smile back. “You can give the raw meat a try, if you want. I haven’t worked up the nerve yet, what if it has parasites or something?”
He sighs, observing the camel carcass. “Right. Can’t light fires to cook. Couldn’t do it even if we had the right equipment, people could see the flames for miles.” He shivers harder; he’s worse off than you, only one layer of clothes and hardly any fat on him. “I didn’t know deserts got this cold.”
“So now that I have a nice cozy camel skin, you want to be friends again?”
He laughs. “I have a trade to offer.”
“Yeah?”
He comes close to show you, three strips of beef jerky he must have been sent via Vulture Mail. “Turns out my mentor isn’t totally useless.”
You hold your right arm out wide, opening the skin. “I have room for two, I guess.”
Roosevelt huddles next to you and clutches the camel skin around him, gasping in relief. He jams one strip of jerky between his teeth, gives you the second, twists the third until he can split it in half for you to share evenly. Together you gnaw on your meager dinner, feeling more blessed than people who feast, glitter, sleep in sheets of silk. “Good call about the cactuses. We found that District 8 kid Houndstooth lying under a palm tree, he’d just about shit himself to death. It was a mercy killing, honestly.”
“The camels eat people.”
“What?”
“The camels. They’re mutts, they’re carnivorous. This one tried to attack me, that’s why I killed it.”
“More good news,” Roosevelt marvels.
From high in the sky, from everywhere, the music begins. Each night, the fallen tributes are honored, and thus you’ll know how many lives still stand between you and survival. Their images are framed in gold, their names and districts listed. The memorial is very far away, but you can still make it out, suspended over the obelisk where the Games began this morning. Eight kids are dead already, a third of the field: Saratoga from District 2, Babylon from District 5, Pacific from District 6, Ironwood from District 7, Houndstooth and Calico from District 8, Marble and Jutland from District 10. All of your friends are still alive. So is Commodore.
“If you keep watch while I nap for a few hours, I’ll let you sleep too,” Roosevelt proposes, trying not to sound too desperate.
“Deal.”
He rests his head on your shoulder and is unconscious almost instantly. It’s not actually that difficult for you to stay awake. Your adrenaline is still surging, and Aemond’s REM sleep pills did exactly what he said they would.
Are you watching, Aemond? you think as you ponder the pyramid. Am I doing this right? Do I still have a chance? Are you proud of me? When you said you love me, was that real?
You are beginning to wonder when you should wake Roosevelt when he rouses all by himself, yawns and drinks some water, tells you to take your turn because he wants to get moving again before dawn. You rest your head on his bony shoulder—it feels awkward at first, but you get used to it—and close your eyes, and for some reason you are back in Aemond’s glass house as he tells you about his treasures and his ancient phantoms of dogs pad across the cold marble floor.
Roosevelt sings softly to himself as you drift off:
“Nighttime on The City of New Orleans
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee
Halfway home, we’ll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness, rolling down to the sea
And all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain’t heard the news
The conductor sings his songs again
The passengers will please refrain
This train’s got the disappearing railroad blues…”
You swim around in the dimness with no gravity, like Sunfyre in his bowl, until Roosevelt shakes you awake.
“Hey. I’m going.”
“Okay,” you say groggily.
“You’re really up, right? Don’t fall back asleep. I won’t be here.”
“I got it. I’m awake.”
“Good.” He stands, brushes the sand off him, leaves you still wrapped in the camel skin—not so toasty warm anymore, but better than nothing—and marches off into the desert. The sun is just beginning to rise again. The sky is a shade brighter; the air is getting warmer. The stars fade.
You hear monstrous wings flapping, and you look around eagerly for the vulture. Hopefully Aemond has sent you a ribeye steak or nice meaty lobster. But he hasn’t. Instead, the vulture drops from its talons a folded piece of paper, a message, a clue. Aemond has written, in meticulous black-ink penmanship you would recognize anywhere: The curse of the pharaohs.
“I don’t know what that means, Aemond,” you sigh as you gaze out through the dawn at the shadow of the pyramid and its bright white beacon, like a lighthouse calling boats to shore.
Hekki grace, sisters! I’m so excited to share that prints of the official illustrations I made for the game 1000xRESIST are now available. With the blessing of the Allmother (and sunset visitor 斜陽過客), I’m proud to present these beautiful prints for you to adorn your walls with.
The Cover Art depicts the Shapen Sisters, with Iris embodying all the colors of the rainbow. The landscape of Inside Sunrise exists in multiple timelines: an airplane carrying the Kwans takes flight from the Hong Kong skyline while Secretary lays in the grass of a distant future. The title itself is a reference to a drink that is as old as the sky and as sweet as a brand new day.
These will be available online on my website, as well as in-person at San Diego Comic Con 2026 next week at Artist Alley Table ii-08!
Graham was a homophobe and was seen as one of Trump's closest allies in the Senate. His death will not meaningfully impact the partisan balance of the Senate, as South Carolina's Republican governor can immediately appoint a replacement to serve out the remainder of his term.
Graham's death, which was unexpected, comes as the nation is expectantly waiting for the death of former Republican Senate Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell — who was hospitalized weeks ago and has mysteriously not made any public appearances, statements, or updates since.
How to read the Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Light Novels
I was recently reminded that there is a lot of people who simply don’t know that they can read the Case Files light novels, and that there are people who do know but have no idea where to find them. This is especially a problem when these people have only watched the anime and want to know where they can find more of the story. Since it kind of requires you to go through some hoops (not a whole lot but still), I decided to take a page out of @humbertozero’s excellent Fate/strange Fake resource post and make one for my other favorite Type-Moon Fate spinoff, the dossiers of El-Melon.
Read the First Volume: Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Vol.1 (PDF) (EPUB)
Read the Second Volume: Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Vol.2 (PDF) (EPUB)
Read the Third Volume: Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Vol.3 (PDF) (EPUB)
Read the Fourth Volume: Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Vol.4 (PDF) (EPUB1) (EPUB2)
Read the Fifth Volume: Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Vol.5 (PDF) (EPUB)
Read the Sixth Volume: Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Vol.6 (PDF) (EPUB)
Read the Seventh Volume: Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Vol.7 (PDF) (EPUB)
Read the Eighth Volume: Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Vol.8 (PDF) (EPUB)
Read the Ninth Volume: Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Vol.9 (PDF) (EPUB)
Read the Tenth Volume: Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Vol.10 (PDF) (EPUB)
Important note!
It should be noted first that I am just the compiler here. I am neither the translator nor am I the files’ creator. So all credits go to…
Credits
Credits and thanks to TwilightsCall on the Beast Lair forums (from which the majority of the other creditors originally posted their contributions) for translating the first 4 volumes and some of volume 5, thus getting the ball rolling. Further thanks to azwhoisverybored for translating the rest of the series from volume 6 onwards, and thanks to Kneenaw for translating the rest of volume 5. Thanks to Dotelias for making EPUBs for volumes 1-3, thanks to cereal_ for making EPUBs of volume 4, thanks to u/confusedkuratowski on Reddit for making EPUB of volume 6, and thanks to ProtoformX for making PDFs and EPUBs for volumes 5 to 10 as well as for Adventures volume 1 and 2!
And big thanks to Makoto Sanda for writing Case Files in the first place!
Further explanations
Anime
The anime adaptation of Case Files, with the mouthful of a title that is Lord El-Melloi II’s Case Files: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note, is particular to use as an entry-point in the series, because it only partially adapts the series. See, the author, Makoto Sanda, said in interview that the two first arcs/cases in the series didn’t quite work as scripts for anime episodes, so the anime only adapted the third case/arc, Rail Zeppelin, which is more action oriented than the more mystery focused first arcs. But because they still needed to explain stuff like Gray, Reines, El-Melloi’s students, etc., many of whom are relevant characters to the arc, the first half/six episodes of the anime is about introducing them.
So to the question “where do I start reading after the anime?”, the answer is unironically to restart at volume 1. And then you may skip volumes 4-5 since they are the Rail Zeppelin arc and there are not much differences besides some characters not being present during that arc. This is why I think you can watch the anime first if that’s more your speed (I have my problems and criticisms of the anime but that’s irrelevant to this post).
And you can’t start with the anime and start reading with volume 6, the first 3 volumes have characters and plot points that come back for the final arc, so you’re gonna be incredibly lost if you think to consume the series this way.
Weirdly enough, despite being original episodes, the anime originals are most likely canon in some ways. Episode 0, the original OVA, is an expansion of an anecdote Gray mentions in the first volume’s prologue, and Episode 1 takes place during Waver’s travels before the story starts and is an actual story, one of the 3 incidents Sanda has in mind for Waver’s journey before he returned to London. Episodes 2 to 6 take place during the one month period between volume 3 and volume 4, and finally the special OVA take place on Christmas also in between arcs. And then two characters original to the anime show up in Fate/strange Fake (go read it to find out who!).
Manga
The manga’s translation used to be on hiatus for a long time, but it has fortunately been picked up by the team doing the UBW and HF mangas. As of the time of writing (02/08/25), it has been translated up to the Atlas Contract arc, meaning if LNs aren’t your thing, you can experience the first two arcs that weren’t adapted in the anime in manga form and keep going for at least one arc It has really gorgeous art so definitely check it out.
Shame about the mangaka being a right-wing idiot though.
The Adventures of El-Melloi II
The sequel series currently ongoing, started a year after the first Case Files ended in 2019. You might know it as “the (other) series where Rin shows up grown up and also a pirate” and, as of recent volumes, “that one series where Shirou comes back spending the entire time half-naked”. @call-me-noa has been compiling pretty thorough chapter-by-chapter summaries of the volumes by @kaibutsushidousha if you don’t mind being spoiled. Or you can be patient and wait for azwhoisverybored to finish translating them on Beast Lair in this thread.
At the time of writing (14/10/24), the first and second volume of Adventures have been completed and compiled into PDF and EPUB forms:
First Volume: The Man Who Devoured God (PDF)(EPUB)
Second Volume: The Demon of the Wandering Sea I (PDF)(EPUB)
Lord El-Melloi II Case Files material
This is absolutely not required reading in any shape or form, those lore books are usually of interest only to dumb nerds like me lol. A timeline of the Clock Tower? An explanation of its politics? Yes please. But it also has insights into the characters by the author that aren’t in the books proper, as well as behind-the-scenes explanations for some decisions (for example, why it’s Gray with the American spelling instead of Grey with the British spelling). Only the glossary/encyclopedia is translated, but give it a look…after you read the series, because it assumes you did and has some big spoilers.
Drama CD
What’s that? You heard something about a Buzzfeed quizz about the most handsome Clock Tower teachers and how it’s somehow a plot point? Look no further than one of my only posts that did numbers. Read the summary, it’s hilarious.
