Inspired by this prompt by u/LeviAEthan512
Will the awe ever lessen?
It hadn’t so far. Not even a little.
Captain Erik Overmars stood arms-crossed at the forward viewing deck of the Hex. He pursed his lips. His grayed beard twitched with anticipation. Around him, crew members went about their duties with robot-like precision. Each had their role; each their place.
And then there was the observer. Harold Middleton. Harry. Captain Overmars did his best not to resent the young fellow. He had been in the kid’s shoes before: youthful, ambitious, and with a keen sense of duty. Time had rusted all of those like the briny waters of Earth lapping against an abandoned dock. Now, his duty was to the crew. His ambition was to make it home. Youth had given way to aching muscles and grim apprehension.
Harry held his tablet loose in his hand. His mouth gaped like a fish’s out of water. First trips had a way of doing that. A way of awing people to silence like few other things could.
Ahead, the aurora swirled; colors twisted and pulsed, purples and greens fading into reds and yellows. It stretched a galaxy wide, a galaxy long, a hundred deep. Further than the eye could see, the veins ran.
“Ready for approach, Pop,” first-mate Rory Edwards said. She didn’t look the part of a normal first-mate. She wasn’t male, for one. She wasn’t big and burly with hands that could snap a mutineer’s neck. But she was as sharp as her eyes. A survivor. It wasn’t just due to her near unrivaled years of service that Captain Overmars had made her first-mate—there wasn’t a more qualified candidate amongst them.
Captain Overmars uncrossed his arms. He stroked his thick beard, didn’t turn towards her. Snaking in the distance, coiling and curling like a serpent preparing to strike, the aurora turned to a brackish brown that bordered on black. Rory followed the captain’s gaze.
“That’s not M-47, Pop,” she said, regret tinting her voice.
It wasn’t M-47. M-47 was somewhere here, somewhere near, somewhere between the accessible greens and yellows. M-47 was easy. Barely worthwhile. A playboy element that served no real purpose outside of mansions and uppity bachelor parties.
“How far is it?” Captain Overmars said.
Harry Middleton snapped out of his trance. He jotted a note, glared at the captain and at the first-mate in turn. “That’s not the assignment, Captain,” he said, pointing
... keep reading on reddit ➡
I was wondering if anyone had good recommendations for Egyptian magic and religious text?
I am looking for any and all Egyptian like items in Pathfinder. I found in the ultimate equipment some scarabs but that is it. Could there be anything else worth looking into?
See above ,personally i think it could do some damage to other pantheons if possible. However i could be wrong.
https://youtu.be/TU6fdmkkLNs
Hey guys, I’ve heard a lot of stuff about the Egyptian Magic Cream. Has anyone used it? If so, what did you use it for and how’d your skin react?
Hey y'all, first board game designer here, hoping to get some feedback on a game I've been working on during lockdown. Setting up playtesting has been difficult with the pandemic keeping everyone inside, so we've decided to go digital and post the game online on Tabletopia. Ambush! is a fast-paced card game that aims to blend the themed cardplay of a Magic: The Gathering with the hectic fun of ERS, Spoons, or other party games. Players work to bring down their opponent's castles by playing cards, while also staying ready for the quick and sudden Ambush! phase, where every card is up for grabs.
Pictures of gameplay and cards available on our website: http://ambushgame.com/
The demo is free on Tabletopia, or as a free mod for Tabletop Simulator. It only takes 2-4 players to start a game. Let me know what you think! All feedback is welcome!
Tabletopia: https://tabletopia.com/playground/ambushcardgame-jkq9j8/play-now
Tabletop Simulator: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2257923039
"All hands ready, Captain," Lieutenant Peters reported.
Captain Overmars nodded, stroked his beard that had long since turned white. So far behind them it'd been nearly forgotten, the pale blue dot of Earth lay nestled somewhere between Venus and Mars, somewhere between past and future.
The Hex whirred quietly. Named so as much for its shape as for its mission, it'd be closer a fossil than modern technology back on Earth. But when they'd left, it'd been new. It'd been young. Just like them.
Ahead, a pulsing, twisting vein wound light years long and galaxies wide. Purples turned to green and red; yellows glowed brighter than the brightest stars.
"Commence the approach," Captain Overmars said. Within sight of that throbbing aura, his commanding voice sounded small and withdrawn. Shy. Scared.
Lieutenant Peters nodded. He, too, had long since grayed and he moved without the youthful agility he'd set out with. Family, friends--anything but the crewmates aboard the Hex had been left by the wayside, forgotten in lieu of being the first to reach that magical vein.
Like silver through stone, veins of magic coursed through the universe at a galactic scale. It'd been theorized--the Ancient Egyptians and the builders of Stonehenge had said as much. In the Middle Ages, happenings natural to the people of the time but utterly inexplicable in the present were commonstance.
"And if we've been wrong?"
Nobody asked that, but not for lack of thinking it. Nobody asked that because they'd paid the price in lifetimes. That celestial object approaching Earth had to herald another age of magic. It could be nothing else, they'd decided. It could be nothing else, but just in case they'd sent the Hex out to confirm.
Sacrifices. Voluntold. Promised that they'd be remembered, that their memories would be honored.
Captain Overmars grimaced, pushed away those bitter thoughts, and focused on the vein.
It grew brighter. Closer. It towered above them larger than the largest clouds, stretching further than a thousand oceans lined one after another.
"Not even Jupiter looked this big," Lieutenant Peters muttered.
Captain Overmars raised a hand to shush him. "Don't talk," he said. "Listen."
It pulsed. Like a living, breathing creature, a behemoth of outer space. It twisted, it lunged and retreated. It wrapped them in its tendrils and pulled them in further.
They listened. They felt. They allowed the magic to embrace them, breathing in its very essence.
"Displays show we're i
... keep reading on reddit ➡Im looking for book
Hey guys! I (F20) have moderate hormonal acne that is mostly on my cheeks. I used differin every night for about a year and it worked great for a while. Recently, (possibly due to rona stress) I have been breaking out again, although not as severe as I used to. Frustrated, I went back to my derm who prescribed trentinoin .05% and I have been using it every night for a week and a half. The flakey dryness is definitely worse that on differin but still manageable. I don’t have sensitive skin and can usually handle harsh products. When I first started using Differin the Egyptian Magic cream was my saving grace for healing dry flakey patches over night. I’m tempted to use a light layer of the salve over my whole face but I’m worried it could cause breakouts. It just feels so DARN GOOD on my skin. So yeah, just wondering if any of you have tried it for dry skin!
Ps. If the corners of your lips get cracked or the sensitive skin under your eyes gets irritated this stuff is amazing
#Background
In the National Library of France and other libraries in Turkey there are Arabic manuscripts which contain schedules of vocal equivalents to some of the hieroglyphic signs. These manuscripts show that there were Arab scholars who had some success in deciphering hieroglyphic signs a thousand years earlier than thought.
While Medieval Europeans thought hieroglyphs were only magical symbols, Arab scholars had discovered two basic rules about hieroglyphic writing:
- Some symbols are sounds.
- Other symbols express meaning of a complete word in a pictorial way.
​
#Medieval Arab scholars attempts at deciphering hieroglyphics
###1
Ahmad ibn Abi Bakr ibn Wahshiyya, who claimed to be of Chaldean (Nabatean) origin lived in Baghdad at the beginning of the Tenth Century CE and wrote about everything, from chemistry to agriculture to pre-Islamic culture. A translation of Ibn Wahshiyya's works about systems of ancient writing, Kitab Shawq al-Mustaham fi Maarefat Romooz Alaqlam was published in London in 1806 under the title Ancient Alphabets and Hieroglyphic Characters Explained With an Account of the Egyptian Priests, Their Classes, Initiation, and Sacrifices. Ibn Wahshiyya was the first scholar to state that symbols mean words.
[GOOGLE BOOKS LINK] [PDF DOWNLOAD]
​
###2
The Sufi scholar Dhul-Nun al-Misri grew up in Upper Egypt in the town of Akhmim at the beginning of the Ninth Century CE when the majority of local residents were still speaking Coptic (a descendent of the language of the ancient Egyptians). Champollion would not have been able to decode the symbols of hieroglyphic without knowing Coptic which had disappeared from Egyptian daily life in the Middle Ages and by that point was only used in Coptic Churches. Th
... keep reading on reddit ➡Dr. Ellie Nilsson had fallen asleep on her desk again. A thin ribbon of drool had just begun to touch one of the papers she was using as a pillow, slightly smearing the ink.
“Ah, Dr. Nilsson,” Professor Phillips called from the hallway, jolting her awake. “Burning the candle at both ends, I see.”
“Phillips,” she replied after a moment of confusion. She never liked the way he subtly stressed her title of doctor, as she was only a lowly postdoc where he had been hired as a professor a year prior.
“I don’t suppose you’re coming to Brandeur’s birthday party?” he asked casually. “I know you don’t much care for social events, but it’s never too late to network a little.”
She bristled at the condescending advice. “Some of us have work to do, Phillips,” she said before attempting a casual yawn. “But you go have fun. I’m sure the boys are missing your company.”
He chuckled. “You know, Ellie, one of these days you’re going to realize that we’re not all out to get you. Most of us just want to help you find your place in the world.”
“My place is in the magic department. I don’t need to be able to do magic to study its history.”
“We have a perfectly good history department… but no, I see you won’t be dissuaded, so let us not ruin a perfectly good night by rehashing this old argument. Hopefully, you’ll come have a drink with us. If not, then good night, Ellie.” He disappeared down the hallway, and a few minutes later she heard the cheers from the conference room that the department used to host social events.
Ellie seethed. Since she had joined the department, so many of the faculty had constantly given her nothing but insults hidden by supposedly helpful advice. She had nearly quit the day that Brandeur, the department head, had told her that she should smile more.
She shook her head to clear it of the anger. Indignation was not the way to show her worth, no matter how righteous it felt. She needed to produce results, and as she could barely do magic, the only way to do that was through research of endless papers and studies.
Her latest puzzle was the same mystery on everyone’s minds: where did the magic come from?
For the first few years after the emergence of magic and magical creatures, the world had been focused on the civil unrest and violence that it caused. Now that the dust had settled and proper research was being conducted, scholars began to wonder why the gift had suddenly appeared and if it might disappear as quickly as it came.
Ellie frowne
... keep reading on reddit ➡Okay, so for as long as i can remember, my number one persistent skin issue is my legs. I cannot shave, or even really shower, without my legs turning INSANELY itchy. Scratching, of course, leads to ingrowns and folliculitis and break outs.
But let me just tell you that when you get to a certain level of itch, you are just going to scratch.
I have subsequently tried every variety of soap, shave cream, razor, sugaring and wax you can imagine. Nothing really makes a difference.
Well, last year, i was gifted some jars of Egyptian Magic. I can apply it to itchy skin and it is the first product that has ever worked to stop the itching.
I’d like to get more but come to find out EM is expensive. However, it also seems like there have to be many similar products on the market. What is it that makes EM special and are there cheaper alternatives i can buy?
Would be greatly appreciated.
