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| Welcome To The Night You find yourself in London on a dreary, foggy night like any other. But what lurks in the shadows is the stuff of fantasies and nightmares, far from mortal reality. This game uses the cursed and immortal vampiric condition as a backdrop to explore themes of morality, depravity, the human condition, salvation, and personal horror. We are a writing and roleplaying community dedicated to telling complex and engaging stories. Your fate is your own. Mingle among the ivory-tower elite in the Camarilla, join the fight of the discontented and chaotic Anarch rabble, or set out independently and attempt to survive in London's nighttime underworld. Anything is possible in our World of Darkness. Create Your Account! If you're already a member, please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Army of me; Alexandra Palace | |
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| Topic Started: Monday, 22. September 2014, 20:52 (372 Views) | |
| Tsar Ilya the First | Monday, 22. September 2014, 20:52 Post #1 |
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Claiming Tsar
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NOTE: Mood music. Half past eight. Wonderful time to wake up. Days are getting shorter, and Ilya has more and more time to be awake and accomplish his alien goals. His flesh machine looks tired, sick, broken. He needs a new one, he keeps repeating himself, but he doesn't gather energy to go through the whole process of recruiting a new one, erasing their personality, programming it back and debugging the result. It's just too much work. And London's still fresh and new; too many things to enjoy out there. He checks the map. He's got a route, a walk he wants to do. A perfect chance to get to know his neighbors, the meaty robots that inhabit the Borough of Enfield. He puts on his red Adidas tracksuit, opens his safe box, takes a roll of ten pound notes, and gets out. The summer is ending, and the autumn chill is beginning to be noticeable. For someone who has spent years on Siberia, this temperature is just a joke, even more considering that Ilya is dead and he doesn't need heat to survive. But the people on the streets are starting to wear jackets and boots, instead of t-shirts and flip flops. Of course, there are plenty of proud Londoners who won't admit that they are freezing to death, and who will still wear their summery attires, but those are more an exception than a rule. Ilya walks to the Bus Station, just at the other side of Edmonton Green Shopping Centre. A lonely figure dressed in red, shinning in the small crowd like a pimple in the face of an albino teenager. He stops and looks around. His face is dead. His eyes are dead. He is a portrait of death; cold, detached and deeply alien. Something happens. It's not visible, but it's noticeable. His aura expands. It engulfs everybody around him. That deadly silence that populates Ilya's soul becomes a solid, tangible presence in the air. It demands fearful respect. It demands guilty love. It demands punishable adoration. And it gets it. People around him lower their heads, and turn slightly to face this strange totemic character. They are ashamed of adoring him, and they won't confess it to anyone, but they would do anything for him at this moment. Ilya starts walking. His aura is still a huge ball of cold energy around him, attracting every flesh machine like a trap for mosquitoes. They first feel the forbidden fascination, and then the compelling need to follow him. He doesn't even look at them. He just walks. First he heads South, then West. An old married couple gets out of their car, and starts following him. He has quite a lot of people walking behind him now. They all do it casually, as if they were going, just by chance, in the same direction. But it's slightly noticeable. They all want to get close to that Venus Flytrap of a man, knowing that even touching him would probably destroy them and condemn their souls forever. Ilya walks. After a whole hour, they walk past Wood Green, past the cinema and the mall, and they keep moving West. Some small streets get blocked when they pass through them. Nobody cares too much; this is the North, and weird stuff happens every day. Is this another riot? Maybe. The police won't move a finger until it gets violent. The press won't cover the event unless someone dies. Nobody cares what happens to the mass of people following Ilya. They are the dispossessed of London town, those whose lives are worthless and meaningless. They are human cattle. And Ilya is their shepherd now. They are not doing anything they don't want to do. It's just a nightly walk, with a large group of people, heading towards an unknown destination. Nothing wrong with that. Yes, they follow the man in the red tracksuit, but nobody acknowledges that fact; it's too shameful. Alexandra Park. One of the steepest parks in London. On top of the hill, Alexandra Palace. A little Art Deco gem, fallen in disgrace, poorly maintained and in deplorable conditions. The park's still open. People who work there couldn't care less about closing all the gates and, even if they did, there's a whole street nobody can block anyway. The crowd advances through the road, uphill, towards the palace. Are they looking for the doctor and his monster? Is that a lynching mob? No. It's just a purposeless gathering of people who are way too ashamed to admit to each other that they don't know where their lives are heading to. That's accurate in so many levels that it's better not to talk about it. Ilya climbs the steps that lead to the walk in front of the palace. His aura's projected downhill, where the large amount of people who have joined him along the way are gathered, looking anywhere but towards him -or spying him when the feel unwatched-, just doing nothing. He pulls the roll of money out of his pocket. He throws a note in the air. And then another one. And another one. Slowly, like shy mechanoids, his followers get closer and closer. They all want to take the notes from the grass, but they don't want to be seen doing it. It's quite a complex desire, as they are all surrounded by people. And more people. All trying to act casual, as if they were alone, or just passing by. It's a really bizarre show. More notes fly from Ilya's hands. They land in the crowd, a mass of anonymity that feeds on sparse attention and ten pound notes. As a test, he turns his aura off for a second. Suddenly, all of them want to leave. This is not entertaining anymore. It doesn't make any sense... wait... Yes, it makes sense. His aura is exploding outwards again. He runs out of notes, and sits down in a step, watching his creation. Not bad, for a random walk in a random night. Not bad at all. |
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Languages: Russian, Japanese, English, French, Finnish, German Oleg's Voice You may know me as Yuri Mikhailov or as Khoza. | |
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| Victoria Scott | Thursday, 25. September 2014, 13:19 Post #2 |
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Unbowed. Unbent. Unbroken.
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I open my mouth ajar and let spirals of smoke take hold on my lips and break free. My tongue helps it venture out of it's cage, but there's no breath pushing it into the cold night winds of newborn Autumn. Instead, I let it spin away at its own pace, an oceanlike dance in slow motion that blears my vision of the Alexandra Palace, tinting it with hipnotic gray, lighter than the cloudy sky above its glass ceiling. Laying back on the metal banister that protects me from a fall into the grassy slope bellow I'm still trying to figure out how to break into the place. The front gates seem to nail its glance on me from aside, like a colossal elk refusing to leave its predator unwatched. Much to its dismay, it's Alexandra and me alone. At almost ten, it seems to be late enough for the Londoners to leave their posts around the palace and the businesses in and outside the place and take refuge at home until morning come. They can do wathever they please with this gem by day, but once sun shies away and eve comes I'll be a zealous lover for Alex. I've already singled out the fire stairs at the right but for now I'm taking things slowly. Giving any possible stragglers time to leave the party, waiting for loving couples to arrive and pick their bushes... But most importantly, I'm making sure I don't miss any electrical eyes in the dark. I got all the time in the world. After all, there's no much more in need of my attention tonight. Or any night, for that matter. It's almost a blessing that my place was invaded, forcing me to pick a new hellhole to fall dead in during sunlight. Things were getting monotonous and boring; my businesses with Jelena and Church the only things pushing me away from a wake up-feed-sleep-and-repeat routine, and even those have been scarce. While in perfect conditions I would have left London a long while ago, the actual state of things is keeping me nailed to a city where all I've done is make people angry and sink on a dangerous spiral into self-pity. Yet I'm not suicidal enough to leave and risk bumping into either justice or Velvet's friends. A blessing, indeed. The sound of marching feet at my back breaks the blissful silence and my thoughts. I turn around to the city lights in the horizon and a black creeping mass advancing towards the stone stairway to the Palace's front. Getting close enough to the lamposts at both sides of the steps, the light reveals a procession of way too many people towards a place I'd rather they weren't heading to. Nocturnal visits were neither on my plans nor in the Alexandra's website calendar, that I browsed on my phone to make sure the building was as ideal a den for nightly creatures as I supposed when I came across the name in my pursuit for neglected places in London. I'm not giving up on Sandy just yet, hell no. It's not only the fact that I'm running out of time, that with a bunch of fucking kids running around spreading news of a junkie's corpse in the basement of a ruined house in the middle of Enfield I got a few nights --one of which I've already wasted-- before police and tabloids alike come to check the discovery; at daylight, most likely. No, regardless that, girl has something. Views are spectacular and Haringey borders entirely with Sabbat territory; the Sword being the perfect neighbours in a city ruled by Capes. So, instead of leaving with my tail between my legs, I choose to stay and check what the mob is here for. My eyes follow the visitors, stopping abrupty at the man in the red tracksuit that leads the march. Our gazes seem to meet for just a second, cold as the cold solemnity that embraces my body and smothers my mundane thoughts. The world darkens in the corners of my vision, forming a tunnel that brightens up around the figure of this paragon. Something's off. I recognize the trick almost immediately, being a potential user of it myself. There's something in it that reminds me of the way I felt when Church called, though much stronger and filled with an army of alien thoughts that threaten to break my will. The mesmerized dozens, that I first thought some sort of performance, help me discover the illusion. I fight against it, the cold grip closing in my chest. "Shit." With another vamp on stage, this is getting a little tricky. A sentiment of frustration joins the freezing fascination and battles to take place side by side with a defensive vanguard of anger and urgency. Then, suddenly, it stops. The coldness falls slowly like sludge. The dream collapses and the crowd loses it's uniformity; sleepwalkers waking up confused in the middle of the backyard. I take a deep breath and exhale, helping the sludge drop to my feet. But it doesn't, it claws back amidst my ribs and the illusion rearms around the sleepers. This time I let my defenses relax just a bit. My self-ruling feet heed his demands and walk to position myself amidst the rest of his army. Right now, being the only creature impervious to his call, I'm making myself too apparent. Hiding my nature is as good an excuse as any other. |
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| Tsar Ilya the First | Thursday, 2. October 2014, 14:02 Post #3 |
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Claiming Tsar
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Looking downhill, like a general looks at his troops, Ilya's heart was uneasy. In some corner of his imagination, he could feel that those people would do anything for him; throw themselves into the battle against the unknown, let the enemy artillery tear them to threads, jump on any grenade that could fall in his vicinity. But all of that had nothing to do with love, or respect. They were able to do that out fear and shame. Furthermore, his army didn't have an enemy to fight against. Just the darkness of the park, and Ilya's boredom. A pointless army with a pointless general. He still didn't understand his own motivations. Why was he doing that. All of his actions seemed the result of a deranged mind. His necessity of breaking the narrative of his own story was so big, he couldn't think one steps ahead of himself. If he got effectively reduced to a creature who was only reaction and impulse, which was beginning to look like a seemingly outcome to his evolution, would that make him more or less real? What was more real, something detached of the course of time, separated from future and past and anchored into a never ending present, or an entity who didn't exist "now", but who had a past and the project of a future? Both alternatives seemed like a jail, in Ilya's mind. The prison of time, encapsulating his every action into the servitude of memory or the slavery of impulse. One thing was certain: renouncing to the past and the future made him feel safer from unwanted meddling with his mind. It made his story an unpredictable one, thus one that could not be an invention of any regular mind pusher. However, he needed some constants. Things to hold on to. His business was one of them, although he wasn't being very careful with it lately. The rest? Nothing in his life happened without a sudden impulse governing it. Despite his appearance and self assured attitude, Ilya was behaving as the opposite of a "man with a plan". And he needed one. Urgently. Looking at his army, something came to his mind. His sister, Valera. She was the loveliest creature on Earth. Everybody loved her. She trained hard to achieve that effect. It was impossible to resist her emotional effect. When she was sinking down into the worst depression of her life, shortly after Ilya and his brother murdered Sir Hewson, her only love, she found some peace trying to make everybody adore her. If she couldn't profess that kind of romantic love anymore, she would at least make everybody feel captivated by her. Strange substitution, but it worked for her. Maybe that's what Ilya needed. Of course, the Ventrue didn't stop to think how to translate that sensation to his own situation. Following his impulse ridden philosophy, he just went for it. He was determined to learn how to make everybody idolize him. And this was a moment as good as any other moment to start doing so. He stood up, posing like a general about to address his troops. He focused his attention on his army. His aura engulfed all of them, and started intensifying its influx. At first, its influence made them all more inclined to understand him and listen to whatever he had to say, although he had nothing to say to them. [PRESENCE: Awe, Universal Grace]. The aura intensified even more. His skin was shinning. His presence was heart warming. Nothing like his usual way of projecting a piece of his emptiness on the hearts of the people. This was the same trick, but executed in a completely different way. Where there was shame, guilt and remorse, now the warm feelings of love and affection flourished. It was superbly hard for him, but the crowd was more sympathetic towards him. They all wanted to love him, and to become his friends or lovers. They were all involved in his life, and were ready to be impressed by his actions. But he had no actions to impress them with. [PRESENCE: Entrancement, Universal Grace]. It was time for the leap of faith. Time to let the golden rays of his deadly charm engulf the army of his followers, and turn all the potential into a reality. No words needed. No actions to support the feelings. Just pure love, admiration, adoration. He was to become a pharaoh, a god among sheep. His aura was getting thicker and thicker, acquiring the regal presence of a czar. An emperor. A majestic presence that allowed no one to escape unscathed. These people would return home later, and they would spend the next year drawing pictures of this night, whispering about this mystical experience in the dark corners of the neighborhood. Ilya's face was to be made a graffiti, a template to paint the streets with. Right now, Ilya's aura was shinning with a light so bright, so ambitious, that it threatened to overthrow Jesus Christ, and start several new religions that declared holy war against each other. This was a life changing event for every and each of the flesh machines gathered there. It was religious ecstasy. His blood was boiling due to the effort, and his figure was visible from the space, at that point. His majestic presence was irresistible. He made it. He was godlike. [PRESENCE: Majesty] [BRUTAL FAIL]. Or did he? Through the shinning lights of his own self sufficiency, through the blinding sparkle of his arrogance, Ilya saw something he wasn't expecting. Some angry faces. Some disappointment. Some boredom. Mostly: people ignoring the man in the red tracksuit. They were mildly confused as of why were they gathered there. It was a stupid place to gather, and it was too late to be fooling around in parks. The crowd started scattering. An old Greek man approached Ilya, and spat on the floor, just in front of him. The man had no idea why did he disliked the Ventrue so much, but he knew that this guy was a despicable, weak, wimpy bastard who was worth less than his weight in horse shit. A pathetic little man who surely did horrible things to defenseless creatures in his free time. The kind of guy who tries to skip the queue at the supermarket, and cries like a baby when told to follow the rules. From the old man's perspective, Ilta was one of those ridiculous little men, probably frustrated with the size of his own manhood, who had no issues with bullying those who were not to defend themselves, while crying like little babies when refused anything. An envious, pathetic character who profited from his own little, ridiculous maladies to make the whole world feel compassion and to get pats in his back. Such a creature only deserved to be ignored, or to receive the righteous spits of the crowd. The Greek man walked away. Ilya felt empty. And hungry. Why did it go wrong? Then he realized his mistake. He couldn't pretend to achieve that kind of excellent result without practice. His aura wasn't used to that kind of effort. It was too much to ask, all of a sudden. Next time, he would try to do that to a smaller crowd, and to take it more calmly. Instead of trying to become a God, he would just try to be loved as a local hero. That could do the trick. Also... He thought that he should ask his sister about that. She knew better than him how these things worked. Edited by Tsar Ilya the First, Thursday, 2. October 2014, 15:30.
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Languages: Russian, Japanese, English, French, Finnish, German Oleg's Voice You may know me as Yuri Mikhailov or as Khoza. | |
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| Victoria Scott | Wednesday, 29. October 2014, 02:25 Post #4 |
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Unbowed. Unbent. Unbroken.
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About fucking time, bitch. I sense the ice melt around me, the dreamers waking up abruptly from criogenic sleep. Meanwhile, on the inside, the alien tendrils writhe, die, and fall off stiff at the gates of my mental fortress. The crowd morphs from immovable obedience to confusion, but unlike minutes before, he lets it slip and fade away completely, and the former unanimity explodes in a thousand little independent wills ruled by their own emotions. It's like the cops showing up at a party when it's only started, drugs and booze and sex still at full swing when the swarm of horny teens is forced to leave the house in the middle of the heaviest acid high of their very short lives, wondering what the hell is going. Me? I'm the neighbour who called the police, curlers, rolling pin and all. And I'm about to beat the shit out of the party organizer as soon as the kids pick up their shit and leave us alone. It's only fair that I let the mothefucker taste a fistful of his own shit, but since I'm not as good meddling with people's minds I'd rather do the fingering manually. Through his eye sockets. But am I? Eyes dead in the mind driller, I feel the people around me nudge and push, and I let myself go, almost drifting, wherever they plan on going. Doesn’t matter, for now. Just that they’re carrying me closer to the man. You see, I’ve been thinking... I firmly believe in the principle that every action has a reaction and that has made me a rather vindictive fuck. Now, even though I’m perfectly fine with this, I have a habit of settling my disputes via brute force that seems to be going out of date with the way the world is evolving. It’s time to get creative with my vendettas and I know how. Let’s keep our eyes on the ball and not forget who am I here for. I’m here for this pretty lady I plan on breaking into, and Hamelin’s pied piper right there is going to help me. As we get closer to the fallen paragon, I nail my eyes on him, scanning his features like an owl on the hunt. I let the group move past the trickster, wait a few seconds and make the call. I paint a mental picture of his face, the best I can, and focus whatever brain power I got left on the image. I feel something click at the back of my head, and the faintest heartbeat as the blood burns in my veins. The group, too confused and ashamed to notice my otherwise menacing presence, is moving towards the left flank of the Palace and I have to think fast. As we reach the first corner, I break from the mob and take the turn leading me to what seems like a cafeteria. I’m still not entirely convinced he’s gonna follow, but I’m just hoping my nagging and his curiosity that there's somebody else tricking the trickster, work well together. A quick check on the walls and my surroundings to make sure no eye, electric or human, is watching me, and I jump and take hold on the aged brickwork climbing my way up to the roof. It is mostly metal work and glass in the middle, but the flat surface of stone on the edge is perfect for what I'm trying to do, and I lay belly down following the red tracksuit. What I'm trying is pretty simple. As far as I know, whenever I've been summoned, included that last time with Church in Cam turfs, I knew how to follow the trail of my target but not the exact point where he was standing. Instead, I got a sort of aura around him that attracted me like a moth to the light. I want the guy to feel that sort of thing around Alexandra whole, and since there are not many chances somebody would take a stroll around the roof of a historic building, I'm hoping for him to take a look inside. Let's see if I'm the only pretender to Sandy's love. |
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| Tsar Ilya the First | Wednesday, 29. October 2014, 03:33 Post #5 |
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Claiming Tsar
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STEPHEN HOORAN Late shift. Endless boredom. Once again. After so many years being a proud member of the territorial army, playing an extra in several action movies, and working as a security guard for luxury retail stores, pubs and illegal poker games, Stephen had secured a stable gig with a security firm. They put him to watch over a whole palace; Alexandra Palace. Night after night -excepting Sundays and bank holidays-, he was the King of the Palace, the only one to walk its corridors and halls. To be perfectly honest, Stephen rarely left the Ice Rink area. His boss had told him that teenage boys used to go there to get drunk every night, and that the rink was the place to watch. So Stephen, in his narrow minded literal world, had been staying at the rink night after night for the last four months. No teenage boy ever tried to sneak in to get drunk, of course, they had the whole park to do that; why freeze their asses in a cheap ice rink? Stephen was doing all of that for his girlfriend, Gloria; the mother of his three kids. Well... technically, she wasn't the mother of any kids, and she wasn't his girlfriend... yet. But she was going to come around. Eventually, she was going to give up her resistance, and fall in love with him. Because, according to Stephen's philosophy -extracted directly from some pick-up artist's manual that he brought online- that's how it works: Women are programmed to love, lust and desire men. Society, education and feminism are there to block the way of what's natural. Just by altering one's behaviour in some subtle ways, and by being patient and persistent, any man can make any woman fall in love with them, and wish to engage in hard core sexual relationships with him at all times too. Stephen was applying every trick in the book to impress Gloria. He did that for the last two years. Nothing had happened yet, nothing apart from her becoming hostile towards him. That was a very clear sign: she was about to finally fall for him. Meanwhile, he fantasized of their happy married life, their three kids and their prefab home in the outskirts of Southend-On-Sea. Merry times ahead of him. He just had to hold his ground, keep his job, and be persistent. Some movement outside of the Palace caught his eye. Something was going on out there. He approached a window, and blinked several times, trying to make sense of what he was witnessing. Everybody was there. Not one or two people. Everybody. All of them. They were all out there, in front of the palace, trying to look casual. It was so strange, words were not enough to describe it. Stephen was trying to make some sense of what was going on, when the mob started to separate. People walking in different directions at the same time, breaking their strange formation. What the hell was going on? He quickly made inventory of the possible access points to the Palace. Rink - check. Offices - check. Main hall - check. Pub - check. Pub... check? Pub... Oh no... The Pub's door could be unlocked. He forgot to check that one out when he started his shift. He ran. The running slob thought of himself as a mountain, a muscled mass of masculine strength. To be fair, he was not that tall. Or muscular. The only thing that fitted his own perception was his weight, but it was made up mainly by layers of fat. On top of his flabby body, a bald bearded head, supporting his round glasses, emerged like a cherry on top of a mound of lard. Let's face it: the only thing Stephen was actually good at was producing navel fluff, and that was a talent nobody was going to praise. Ever. So, he ran clumsily through the beautiful, yet poorly conserved, corridors of Alexandra Palace. If the mob entered the building through the Pub, no less, he would lose the job. That would mean that he would lose Gloria too. And his three kids. And his prefab home at the outskirts of Southend-On-Sea. He could lose it just beacuse he was way too lazy to just check a simple door. A nasty voice shouted inside his head: "You only had ONE job!!!" It was the voice of guilt, of self doubt, the dark passenger Stephen carried on his back since he was a kid, the same voice that had guided him through life, until he was a middle aged security guard, still trying to impress a girl who would never pay any attention to him, following the disgraceful tricks of a scammy book that promoted a terribly misogynistic way of life, putting all of his hopes in a ridiculously unambitious fantasy that ended up being way above his capacity. That voice was his master, and that voice was his ruin. He reached the Pub. Nobody there. It was empty. The door was locked. It was all good. All of his sweaty paranoia, dripping from his multiple chins into his stinky uniform... all for nothing. He breathed, relieved. His dreams were safe. The voice was quiet. He approached the door. There was nobody out there. The mob had dispersed and it was all over. He would never know what happened there one night. Or would he? A figure in red turned the corner and walked towards him. A tall, dark haired man, on a red tracksuit, staring straight into his eyes, walking like a robot, or an alien from an old black and white science fiction flick. Stephen was terrified, paralyzed by fear. Even the voice was quiet. The figure reached the glass door. His eyes burned inside Stephen's, like the cold flames of shameful servitude. [DOMINATE: COMMAND] "Open." For some reason, Stephen felt the necessity of opening the door. He obeyed. [DOMINATE: COMMAND] "Sleep." ---THUD--- |
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Languages: Russian, Japanese, English, French, Finnish, German Oleg's Voice You may know me as Yuri Mikhailov or as Khoza. | |
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1:15 AM Jul 11