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| Implying Unaligned; A golden sun world fic, cuz why not. | |
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| Topic Started: Aug 28 2016, 12:54 AM (690 Views) | |
| Nedben | Aug 28 2016, 12:54 AM Post #1 |
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Orzic Nedbens
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>Implying Unaligned Chapter 1: That Didn't Work Right, Good Enough A Free Kingdoms story taking place in a world that either is or is in parallel to the collective forumverse set up by alliance competitions worldbuilding (though for the moment focusing on characters not in any of the alliances) depending on continuity, by the Nedben. Edgar yawned, shifting the floating starry sphere of his weapon between hands impatiently, seated on a bench outside the research center Compound Varia, waiting for Mary from protections services to get there, before setting it back to autonomous orbit out of boredom to continue the wait. Cynthia from management had told him to wait up for a last few extra protectors in case the big day went wrong, and Mary was the last person to have accepted who needed to get here. But when she arrived, she arrived. Sprinting with a hearty Venusian radiance down the major city street where the compound was located and scaring a few citizens of the place along the way, she bounded past confused non-adepts and terrified adepts alike, the former group unsure what was making so many people utterly terrified and the latter worried she was going to fill the place with attack psynergy. She skidded to a stop by Edgar and bowed, seemingly unaffected by having scared everyone. "Officer Mary Burrell at your service!" she said with a curtsey and a mock-formal accent. "Mister Edgar Oberon, I presume?" Edgar blinked rapidly in confusion and shuddered at the return of someone he had met a few times at formal meetups and rarely on the battlefield. In the case of the former she had tended to stay just classy enough to not get kicked out with her barely-restrained self, and on the latter she had tended to murder most things not highly resistant to Venus with her demonic plants. When she wasn't patrolling her hometown or farming, she was either friendly or terrifying, and here she was being the latter without knowing it. "Oh, the Destroyer's here too." he said half to his djinn and half out of 'I'm scared but pleased this woman is on my side'. Suddenly coming back to his senses, he remembered the reason he was even there. "We should probably go inside." Getting up and avoiding meeting the staring of the confused populace, nodding to a casual "Sorry I'm late!" from Mary, he entered the dull but well-traveled double-doors of Compound Varia, Mary following behind cheerily. It was time to do something unusual, even for them. Compound Varia was a large and blocky one-stop shopping and lodging center, coupled with an alchemical research center, jointly owned and operated by the trading and adventuring guild of which the Oberon and Burrell families were parts of, contributing to the capital city of the local nation to being one of the highlights of the Free Kingdoms. Not that it couldn't have stood as one on its own regardless, for the port city of Rhamus City, capital of the nation of Rhamus, rested on a high coast, protected from the odd ravages of the alchemical through the course of Weyard's history by a small quartet of elemental radiances of its own. The temple of the goddesses Nemesis and Themis was built upon the source of this power, a giant cavern of psynergy stones and psynergetically-reactive materials, and even though it was more a great mountainside fortress sitting in place like a lording tower rather than a true temple outside of the odd pack of worshippers or priests, it still dwarfed even the compound and the other larger buildings of the city below, only the great harbor and distant mountains and fields really able to match its size and dominion of the area. But it wasn't the almighty the locals needed to fear today. It was the everyday adepts and djinni with just enough potential to really get scary they needed to be afraid of. The Adept Unleasher v18.23 floated there in a testing chamber in the back underwhelmingly, a little psynergy-laced golden-colored katar handle set on an ordinary pedestal, an easily replicated test model, said pedestal next to a chair with a belt buckle. Despite its underwhelming appearance, pulling the trigger by pulling the two handlebars together would release a vehement cascade of magical prodding and tickling and psynergy fueling that would 'unleash' even the most durable of adepts, granting them ludicrous amounts of elemental power. Or at least, that was the plan. The testing chair made it feel uncomfortably like an electric chair that the victim got to activate rather than a Jupiter adept on standby, causing many of the prepared guard adepts to feel worried more for the test subject than themselves, and previous attempts had just lead to the adept testing it attempt to (and often fail to) fuse or beastform rather than truly unleashing, no matter the stimuli tried. And yet, this attempt seemed promising. A portly Mercurian, the test subject who had been hired off the street for a few coins, plopped into the chair and buckled himself in. Then he grabbed the trigger. Then he clenched it. Then he burst into laughter. Then he burst into light, along with his possessions. The light of an adept entering beastly madlight and trying to fuse! Then he turned back into normal adept himself, because there was nobody availably ready to fuse with and he was kind of scared of his own beastform. Then everyone in the room let 'ugh, we'll try again differently' hit them, including the test subject. That hadn't gone as planned, but it had sure gone as well as the previous attempts had. Except for Zelnick Grant, who was visiting to see this experiment carried out in person only to be infuriated by the metagaming of reality itself. Making a hideous noise half born of frustration and half from disgust, he burst into a tirade, or tried to. "Oh what the hell!? Again-" he started ranting, only to be interrupted by Peggy Bridget, speedster Jovian with a penchant for nice shoes. "Not. Now." she said. "Let's just learn from our mistakes." Zelnick moaned irritably and decided to check one of the nearby psynergy crystals instead. "It looks like we really HAVE figured out the adept fusion-beastforming process is roughly the same process as unleash transformation and slash or the different outcomes in the past relied way too heavily on internal factors we don't know about, or maybe it depends way too much on available psynergy in the background." he said grimly. "The process doesn't seem to net the same results even WITH replication and modification of what worked." An offhand gesture towards Edgar's head-leaves made the latter roll his eyes and turn to face something else. Guess it was just another routine failure-success. "At least THIS model is just a more compact and unrestraining version of the previous because we thought THAT would help." Peg said, yawning now that the danger of overload insanity was not an issue. "We could probably start selling them and marketing them to adepts as a tool once we do some safety testing and figure out how to avoid going mad with power." Just another boring day of messing around with alchemy. After finishing up much boring recording and analysis, the test subject proposed letting disappointment sinking in and taking a snack break, a motion carried by everyone except technically Zelnick, who would just uncork a bottle of psynergy-based magical fuel rather than eating normal people food like the average Weyardian when eating was necessary. Weird, but nothing new to anyone present besides the test subject. The group returned to the publically accessible store and inn area by the front for food purposes. Most of the guards dispersed for now, seeing as they were irrelevant. Edgar, Mary, Peg, and Zelnick sat together at a table in the general area, and as they had acquired food and drink (an eclectic affair of a meal involving a plateful of baked potatoes, steamed vegetables, assorted fruit, and some boring lunchmeats with a side of milk), the conversation turned back towards work. "Do you ever wonder what's up with the Wise One?" Edgar mused heretically. "Maybe philosopher's stones can go completely batshit crazy without environmental psynergy stabilizing their magibrains and that's why the ancient stories have him acting all weird like chucking rocks and stopping his own plans and trying to destroy the world and save it within the same paragraph, like alternating between flinging disasters at people and trying to stop them." "Pfff." Mary stifled a laugh. "Oh my gods, really? That'd be something you guys are gonna have to account for if you ever figure out how to make one. Give it a psynergy generator or something, gotta ensure endless power is really endless!" "Gaap's light, you serious?" Edgar counter-asked back. "That's probably a healthy baseline element to include as a backup to whatever we use as the core if nothing else, we should totally get one next time we try to make a Philosopher's Stone. Do we have any spare high-forgeability mythril or reusable psynergy crystal left from that dwarf's donation a few weeks back?" "Oh, plenty." Peg answered, already scribbling instructions on a notepad. "The real problem's managing to align weave for balanced energy creation and ensure that regardless of plasticity levels or restraint thereof retain enough magical compatibility to properly psionically harmonize flexibly with a magibrain of sapient-or-above-level response-analysis complexity, I'll note it down for Zelnick to figure out once we figure out djinni intelligence to avoid Jupiter overreliance..." Then she trailed off into technobabble. "Blah, that's all complex and you guys keep talking about how you don't know enough to even start." Mary continued, rolling her whole head along with her eyes. "You know, we KNOW it's fusion-light, so...how about you get another one enchanted up and try THAT?" Everyone else at the table looked at Mary with an expression of 'no, none of us wants to even remotely do that', except Edgar, who looked at Zelnick mournfully. "Hey, didn't Edgar say you guys made a second one in case the first was destroyed by success?" Mary continued, openly disregarding everyone else's opinion out of her sudden desire to see a giant. Edgar facepalmed quietly and tried to move the discussion elsewhere. "Uh...you said you'd created some form of culinary psynergy miracle?" he said deflectively. "Involving battlefield growing and baking?" "Oh," Mary remembered, "yeah, that! Exactly that! I've taken to calling it Earth Gift, you just PULL and FILL with Venus, and then it just starts resolving into useful stuff instead of just general angry plants!" It was the usual technical talk (mixed with a bout of awkardness and explanations that explained nothing, as per usual). Even if progress was slow, it was still progress. |
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| cipher | Aug 31 2016, 09:12 PM Post #2 |
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Fancy Chicken
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Interesting story! There were a few parts I didn't understand but I probably just have to read more of your stuff to pick it up. |
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| Nedben | Sep 4 2016, 04:59 AM Post #3 |
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Orzic Nedbens
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More stuff it is then. Ch. 2: Lures and Lures Edgar scribbled notes passively, watching Rhamus City go about its day to day life from the couch firmly bordering the library great window, and periodically watching the djinn attractor hum pleasantly. An experiment he and Peg had come up with to annoy Zelnick, it had only managed to lure a few nature spirits a bit closer, according to the spirit lens' imprecise wide-area scanning. Insightful with the advances they'd made in figuring out how to build the thing, but not very useful. The Djinn Attractor was a strange little pylon of a machine a bit bigger than a person sitting snugly as a sculptural centerpiece in the library of Compound Varia, with four red-painted metal bars with matching crossbars that were tacked on somewhere in the upper middle, forming a pyramidal shape from which random little balls of psynergy-charged materials hung from magic strings, a few more of which had been awkwardly strung tight by an elvish harp maker and tuned and messed with until it created something that played a pleasant tune and organized the elemental energy around it into a pretty-sounding hum with the interspersed tinkling of the spheres within, a soft melody that when boosted could attract wild djinni and lesser spirits of that sort from all over the city if not following Adepts. Unpowered except by its own psynergy crystal and mythril magical core (the 'psynergy generator' object Mary had referenced) that gave the machine the gentle glowing psynergy light invisible to non-adepts with its endless yet very small energy, it simply served as a quiet music box that made djinni happy and gave the center room a gentle atmosphere. Edgar got up from the couch and decided to lay on the ground, continuing his musing. His spiritual aides floated about passively, occasionally deigning to nod in time to the music. He let them drift, though still making sure to keep them set and miniature. Their monster-fighting larger and more definably solid forms could be dealt with later, though some were perhaps more easily cuddled than others. His doodles intended to figure out what a magibrain on the level of a human brain would be like. He sketched the Wise One, the spherical Stone of Sages with one organic eye, and gazed at his crude rendition. What they had learned of the ancients, mostly from what Rhamus had saved from the wider world's decay in the past and slightly more recent clan-collapse chaos leading to the formation of the alliances, had revealed circuits powered by Jupiter energy, electricity and mind, easily brought into machinery. While the great alchemical and psynergetic machines of the past were often quite large, most of the defensive puzzles were for show and to keep out those they didn't like or were necessary simply because of their huge size. It was quite easy to make smaller elements, such as the Wise One, or psynergy tools...The magibrains they had created were simple things, analogous in effect if not in construction to the early 'computers' of another reality. Edgar wasn't quite sure what in him made clear that reference, woven together from the rustles of djinnithoughts and otherworldly sensations and oracular unknown-speak he called 'Gaap's light' for how it felt, as if a demon had held up a lamp to the secrets of being and something new had come up and been known, like he could shift into the minds of parallels of himself across a beautifully endless continuity, and yet... Then Peg strode in confidently to ask for tech support in little more than a runner's outfit and some lab goggles, light purple hair done up in a bun and her outfit a white tank top with dark purple shorts to match her shoes, breaking his reverie so strongly with the flinging open of the heavy library doors she'd need that voice amplifying psynergy from the Jupiter competitor and a Die The Death screamer solo straight out of the Book of Nemesis and Themis to do much worse and he swore some people outside thought something had exploded again (though that was usually the job of her close friend Atteson). It had been a few weeks since the group meal, and Edgar had settled into living at Varia for a while. "Yo." she said, almost dancing as she walked in. "Need some help here." Edgar rolled his eyes, disinterested in both the woman and the massive disruption of peace. They really needed some padding for the walls, oil for the hinges, maybe even an out and out quieting enchantment on the impact sites, the list went on about what needed to be done to stop that door from scaring people, a good reason why Edgar was often alone in the library. "Right," he said emotionlessly, slipping back into 'work mode' in hopes of fending off unwanted interest. "what do you even need again?" Not bothering to waste time, she replied with "Help with Atteson, duh." Edgar rolled his eyes. "The last time you two got together Justice Deborah from the temple sent down a personal notice to not burn down the city just as a warning and implied the Chief Justice of the port authority agreed with her." "So?" she sniped back, not distracted by this in the slightest. "We're just gonna have some friendly psynergy practice, maybe try out the fusion-" "Let me stop you there." Edgar cut her off. "No. No. No. Not safe, don't do it. Please. No. Don't. "That was an even number of negative~s" Peg shot back cheerily. "We both got goldhandles and that was the plan all along." Edgar sighed, pretty sure it wasn't worth trying to persuade or stop her here. "At least do it outside of the city limits so nobody gets hurt if it works?" "Fine." Peg sprinted off and Edgar ran behind in a hurry, but eventually both dropped to a walking pace. Eventually they made it to the boring beach, the distant city walls and farms and the occasional Taedrick-sent ship of researchers and fighters traveling abroad the only reminders that people existed remotely nearby. Atteson had started a roaring fire while waiting, raising a red naginata with his left hand as a 'hey, look over here by the fire' sign. His eyes were a demon red to match, though his hair was an average reddish brown. "Hey, you're here!" he said, acknowledging their presence and switching out his naginata in favor of raising his golden handle like the katar minus blade it was. Before Edgar could object the two friends fistbumped and handle-triggered and their lights stepped into each other as they laughed like the old buddies they were. With a great roar, a two-headed birdlike dragon emerged, radiating hot wind. Each head looked at the other for a moment. The purple one snorted wind, the red one snorted fire. The set djinni of both constituent adepts floated around it in miniature form pleasedly as both heads looked down at Edgar expectantly. The purple one grinned, baring its deadly teeth that seemed to glow with jovian radiance at the back of the maw. It was then promptly headbutted by the red head, causing them to get into a minor head-whacking fight like a pair of awkward scaly feathered giraffes, a conflict that while hilarious after only a few rounds of back-and-forth neck-knocking caused the dragon to conflagrate into psynergetic light and return to being its constituent adepts. "Okay, no, not cool Atty." Peg said displeasedly, falling to a seated position with exhaustion. "I was just gonna rough him up a bit!" "How was I supposed to know that?!" Edgar cut in, then realized something. "WHY were you going to do that?!" "Peg, you've got to stop being so silly." Atteson said, falling completely to the ground instead and looking up at Edgar. "Could use a drink after that, I think we wasted almost all of our psynergy just standing there thanks to that little self-conflict." Edgar facepalmed and let Atteson borrow his canteen. Ch. 3: Pet the Nature Spirit For A Free Story Edgar looked at Melusine, one of the 3 mercury djinni who simply followed him regardless of setness (the 9-rule's continual ambiguity of situation was just silly). It was late, and Edgar was lying in bed. She looked back at him, in her battle form to be big enough to be cuddled with as well as provide a sense of her oceanic authority. Then she deigned to say something. She spoke in the chittery and fast speak of jenei combat terse, speaking with the psynergy of her composition and sloppy common language where battling-words didn't suffice. It was a very conceptual conversation reliant on insight more often than not, and Edgar often had to get her to repeat parts with the spirit lens active, but the eventual conversation made sense. We of the narrative will rephrase it now, minus lots of repeats, mental noise, and definition. "Pet me." the water ruler demanded. "I have something to say." "Kay." the adept said, petting the beast. "What is it?" "I'm bored. Continue petting me while I talk about random stuff." "Kay." "A long long time ago, the clans had sacred fortresses around the world. Mercury's was the most beautiful, element pride yo. Just barely within Gaia Falls at the world's weakest, I think in at least six places, there are sacred passages designed to carry the great ships of Lemuria through warping into these beautiful underwater tunnels, which lead to this beautiful cathedral, somewhere deep in what used to be the Karagol I think. One tunnel inward starts from the northern ice up by the fount of Mars from the west inlet, east of the town of Kalt, another one just west of the island of treasure, one east (maybe a tad southeast I think?) of Izumo, one across the mountains to the east of Old Garoh, one east of the Atteka Inlet and south of Atteka, and one last one just a tad west of the eastern big city on Hesperia. The tunnels form a ring around the edge of the world too, but I don't think anyone's ever published where the portals are outside of the clan before it fell. Such a lovely harbor beneath the sea! The old Mercury clan used to call the holy shrine Waterman's Haven before they all got messed up. A great snowflake of six major sides, why, the cupola alone was thirty meters! I went there once, so many statues of old queen Thalassa 'round the walls! Beautiful, really. Then at the heart the statue-fountain of not-yet-fallen Poseidon and not-yet-sleepy Amphitrite, how Ankhol fired-earth wove Jupiter just to take his ward down on that fateful day at the gates of the Lemurian! Ah, prayers prayers to see them again! I fled a long time ago, we should see if it still exists, and the waterguards by the boatload too! Think of the history, we'll need to get an expedition funded! And more, to take down the big samurai crab phoenix at the end just to get inside!" "What." "Security is infuriating." "No, I mean why are we going to invade a possibly destroyed fortress in order to beat up an army and a crab phoenix?" "Future insurance. Not everybody can be Anemos or the Zephyrians." "Insurance why? Please express concepts more wholly." "Scratch a bit lower. Every now and then the elements go out of control and start ruining stuff. I think it cycles between the sapients screwing up and the elements screwing up and a brief period of peace. Now that I think about it, we should probably go check for ALL the sacred bases." "Scratching lower. Bases such as?" "I think the Mars and Jupiter ones are still fine, but the big Venus tree might be an issue too. However did the queen of spores go again? Yeah, her and her, we might want to find those again. Can't remember if it was where Yggdra is now, prolly is." "Reference pool not shared. Think more contextually." "No." "Really?" "Blow up the Wise One and I'll tell you a secret." "You really DO like keeping secrets, heh." "Indeed I do. Go sleep, little Adept." "Night." And then Edgar slept, the thoughts of nature spirits wriggling around among his own as another scene of strange biases concluded before him. Edited by Nedben, Sep 15 2016, 02:15 AM.
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| Nedben | Dec 15 2016, 03:22 AM Post #4 |
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Orzic Nedbens
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Ch. 4: Plot? What Plot? The next day had no particular events going on after lunch, and so Edgar (and of course, elemental company) beheld the Shrine of Furies from the town square. Megaera, Tisiphone, and Alecto, each of their great statues in a display-gallery-building visible jutting out from the mountainside to the left and below of the main entrance, tunneling in. A few Tisiphone Edges and a great summoning circle to call forth Megaera were enshrined there, reserved for emergencies or higher-ups' religious callings. It practically exploded in the light of Jupiter and Mars as one of the Furies actually was brought into the world for a time by the sustained effort of multiple adepts and djinn for the purpose of one of those callings. A beautiful yet kind of private matter. Edgar noticed a flyer pinned to a nearby public messageboard as a warm wind picked up for a second from all that Mars and Jupiter power flowing by. "Imil Battle Orchestra: Rhamus Field Annual Performance!" it read. Tonight, come armed and armored and ready to die fighting more than once. It'd be something for him to do if he went along for once. - That night was a cool and soft one, as a whole townful of fighters and soldiers joined together, most outside the walls but some on them. The town had given permission for a full performance to draw out the foul beasts of the land that they be smited and not accumulate for later, and the orchestra tuned quietly before the performance began from the walls. Peggy nocked an arrow, near Edgar in the ranged-focus section by the orchestra itself. "So, uh..." Edgar shouted to Atteson below, "you said you liked these, yeah?" "Yeah." Atteson yelled back. "What happens at these things again?" Edgar asked. The orchestra began playing. A riotous performance of classical music erupted, the air filling with the glow of psynergy. In the distance, a great resounding howl arose as a gigantic army of beasts, perhaps bigger than the whole city, seemed to form in the distance, all charging in abject bloodlust towards the orchestra summoning them forth. The conductor, worried, shouted something about switching to offensive, and the song changed completely, from one alluring to one even more violent than the previous, bolts of psynergy arcing up and smashing into targets in the distance. "That does!" Atteson answered, naginata at the ready and rushing towards the incoming swarm with a worryingly small army of others, eyerolling while he had the chance. "Every year, they underestimate the population....CHAAAAAARGE!" The two armies met, adepts felling beasts in a great hunt left and right, tearing through the hordes, every hunter a riotous expression of their element. A four-color stream of psynergy of every element swirled all over the place, area attacks smashing through the swarm of alchemically induced monstrosities. Cannons and ranged attacks flew from the walls And yet, it wasn't enough. There were simply too many of them, and more were on the way. The expected cavalry arrived as the fighters fell back towards the gates, that cavalry being one of the guardian goddesses of the city in summon format. Many flaming swords smashed into the ground, forming exploding circles of Mars psynergy, followed by bolts of Jupiter they'd been charged up with. The weapons and fighting-parts of the army of hunters seemed to glow with the light of Mars, the High Impact flowing over them time and time again as the goddess let blades rain over the foes, walking among the people themselves as a beautiful firestorm, a spinning inferno slicing at beasts until they've been smashed into ashes. With newly bolstered attacks, the hunters redoubled their efforts and began to push back into the army of creatures. A bolstered summon had that kind of effect on people. Atteson cast Planetary and smashed a rabid bat as he scaled the walls in one jump and high-fived Peggy, then pulled two psynergy crystals from a pocket somewhere and tossed one to Peggy, but she said "Not tonight! We didn't alert everybody." and just pocketed it, while he pocketed his accordingly and then Planetary'd back down, smashing into a manticore. "What was that over?" Edgar asked, flinging another mess of psynergy into the thinning crowd. "Fusion." Peggy said, still firing. "We'll talk it over later." The battle ended shortly, without much incident. It was simply a fight, and ended surprisingly quickly as such. Easily slain monsters, the usual. The monsters died or retreated, and the population was thinned in a very unscientific and murder-filled manner. The orchestra packed up. And still Edgar was just...sorta confused. Left out. Time had been expended, and with the Anemos-laden moon high in the sky, everyone just went home. Oh well. |
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| WitchRolina | Dec 15 2016, 02:56 PM Post #5 |
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Missing the Unified Aesthetic
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Huh... any reason you've not been reporting these stories for writer badges? I mean, you can't do it now because I'm writing the new badge topic, but before you totally could have gotten some badges. |
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| Nedben | Dec 15 2016, 10:41 PM Post #6 |
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Orzic Nedbens
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Forgetting to do so, mostly. I'll attempt getting around to it when you've set up everything and the havoc slows. :D |
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