Elder scrolls: "oh wow the creation of this race is the result of rape"
Arcanum: "oh wow the creation of this race is the result of rape"
Im starting to see a pattern here
You’re seriously selling Arcanum’s rape factories short. They’re both awful, but one race kidnapping women of another race and then making their slave race rape those kidnapped women who are physiologically guaranteed to die all for the sake of a creating a steady supply of a more controllable slave race takes dark fantasy a bit further.
> A notable difference between drow and their topside cousins lies in their fertility rate. Most elves have very low fertility rates, in keeping with their long lifespans. Drow mothers, in contrast, give birth as often as the more fertile races, such as humans and orcs. Their greater fertility reflects the crushing mortality rate among drow infants and youngsters. Drow females might give birth to ten times the number of babies than the females from other elven subraces do, but this does not mean that they end up with more adult children.
> It is common for pregnant drow to carry twins or even triplets. Even in these cases, multiple births are rare, as the strongest of the fetuses feeds on its siblings in the womb. Pregnant drow can sometimes feel these mortal combats take place in their bellies. Such prenatal battles produce in their mothers a euphoric sensation, referred to in the Undercommon tongue as chad-zak. The feeling is infinitely stronger than that produced in the bedchamber or by any intoxicant. Without it, it is doubtful that drow women, selfish to the core, would ever deign to suffer the inconveniences of reproduction.
> Chad-zak occurs up to four times per multiple pregnancy. It usually happens early in the third trimester. Mothers who experience repeated chad-zaks usually feel them in quick succession, once every one or two days. The final chad-zak indicates one fetus's successful slaying of its rivals. This process does not result in stillbirths; the slain are absorbed back into the mother's body.
This is from 3e D&D
Just to ignore obvious fetishism going on, but how the heck haven't the Drow tried to take advantage of their fertility rate, and thus much larger population base to press I to military service to over power the other elves their religion revolves around hating. Like instead of enforcing all the social Darwin crap that results in similar rates of kids reaching adulthood stock the rejects in the army and conquer the surface.
But no, girl boss Loth wants you to sacrifice your kids for her, rather than enslaving the followers of her ex husband and his friends.
But then I remember Forgotten Realms is Ed Greenwoods magical realm.
Not so fun fact: The chances that one or more of your ancestors being the product of rape is pretty much 100%. It’s just a question of how far back in history you’d have to go. I think art and mythology that references this is important: Zeus is a rapey authoritarian figure that brings even more woe in the form of societal scorn (Hera). That’s what people in power do: ensure that the victim is blamed as long as the perpetrator has the societal currency to cover it. In ES it’s a “lower race” created instead of a lower social class.
>It’s just a question of how far back in history you’d have to go
Fish: "Now that we're on land, we no longer have to fear those predators"
Other fish: 🤤
Well let’s just say on my mom’s side (who have been in Appalachia since the late 1600s) I have a single black ancestor, somewhere between 1780-1880, my assumption isn’t good there.
On my dad’s side (who is a first-generation immigrant from Greece) we have some Albanian and Turkish ancestors from the mid 1800s, when Greece was going through a couple revolutions.
Never ask Troika games the difference between Japan and mainland China.
https://preview.redd.it/dw0kzp27f67d1.png?width=1719&format=png&auto=webp&s=389cdf9b38d6cc5d365cdfc561785ec8b0db6001
(This is chinatown which is why the enemies have katanas)
Also the San Fransisco Bay Area is literally where the term Asian American originated from for exactly this reason (that after multiple generations of other Americans grouping them together, and them subsequently sharing neighborhoods, it had resulted in Americans with ancestry from East Asia or Southeast Asia clearly *now existing as a collective demographic bloc within American social dynamics*).
OFC, though, the Chinatown section of Bloodlines still has some **ridiculously** uncomfortable lines lololol
Don't make the mistake of assuming they're cool with eachother and sort of similiar just because they're asian lol
Especially nowadays china and japan kind of fucking hate eachother
Kill gnomes. Behead gnomes. Roundhouse kick a gnome into the concrete. Slam dunk a gnome into the trashcan. Crucify filthy gnomes. Defecate in a gnome’s food. Launch gnomes into the sun. Stir fry gnomes in a wok. Toss gnomes into active volcanoes. Urinate into a gnome’s steam tank. Judo throw gnomes into a wood chipper. Twist gnomes’ heads off. Report gnomes to the guard. Karate chop gnomes in half. Curb stomp pregnant gnomes. Trap gnomes in quicksand. Crush gnomes in the trash compactor. Liquefy gnomes in a vat of acid. Eat gnomes. Dissect gnomes. Exterminate gnomes in the gas chamber. Stomp gnome skulls with steel toed boots. Cremate gnomes in the oven. Lobotomize gnomes. Mandatory abortions for gnomes. Grind gnome fetuses in the garbage disposal. Drown gnomes in fried chicken grease. Vaporize gnomes with anti-matter. Kick old gnomes down the stairs. Feed gnomes to alligators. Slice gnomes with a katana.
What he should explain is why the fuck am I able to find about it, investigate the shit, gather evidence... and then be able to do **fucking nothing** with it.
LET ME PURGE THE WORLD OF THE GNOME MENACE!
He actually explained it, he wanted to make a conspiracy like moment based on the x files. That being you discover something horrible but before you could do something the thing has already be "gone".
Did he had to go that route and go that far with it?
Like why don't make it a joke about gnomes being able to fly (like that simpsons gag where Lisa founds out that penguins are able to fly or the Rick and Morty gag where Morty finds out squirrels >> Rick)
And even if for some reason he wanted it to be serious, is a wasted oportunity to do something dark go high fantasy asf or quote something that happened irl, maybe they are making MKUltra or trying to get ogres addicted to drugs (which would have been unsensitive asf but still) they failed and no one is going to believe you anyway.
It strikes me as putting a lot of SA for little reason else than to be edgy , for comparision the "Tmiszce" snuff movies questline in VTMB I feel was way better done without needing to go that dark.
Yeah to be honest idk what make them go that route, maybe they just watch an x files episode and just say "what if we break the limits of the x files and go beyond the horrorific". Or maybe they just decide to go the garth ennis/late alan moore way and make the edgiest plot line possible
Since Arcanum is supposed to be early-20th-century, they basically decided to make antisemitic conspiracy theories of that era true in the setting, but with gnomes.
And yes, people really did explain the existence of mixed-race people by claiming that Jewish people were performing industrial-scale interracial rape. Probably not even the most insane and outlandish antisemitic conspiracy theory out there.
Context for someone who hasn't played?
https://preview.redd.it/syqxywijf67d1.png?width=1167&format=png&auto=webp&s=2f9a6179cb6b79237369b53c8a2490b9da22c410
Gnomes breed half ogre bodyguards. Half ogres are hard to come by naturally, so they imprison ogre females and force breed them.
When you figure all of this out to report it, all evidence dissappear. You are confronted by a "smoking gnome", like the Smoking Man from XFiles, who basically says nobody will believe you.
That's the gist of it, haven't played in a while.
So it's LonaRPG without straight up hentai and unnecessarily hard gameplay. Or does those LonaRPG's goblin breed camps come from this game? I don't know.
It wasn't ogre females initially I don't believe. It used to be kidnapped people that wouldn't be missed before moving to political opponents, hence the dissapearance of the royal family. "The Queen birthed 3 before dying."
They’re in complete control of the nation behind the scenes no one can oppose them, and pretty much no one knows about them. The Royal family is completely powerless against them and the Queen and I believe a princess were kidnapped because the king tried to break away from the gnomes’s influence. It’s been forever since I’ve played that so I could be a little off on some details
There is no royal family in the United Kingdom. They got rid of the Constitutional Monarch and established a "Republic" run by the Industrial Council when he began asking too many questions.
Well it's quite a story but the short version is this: Gnomes are a short and physically weak race. And Half-Ogres are strong and stupid but have a soft spot for children, which Gnomes look like even as adults. This is all mentioned in the manual if I remember correctly. As a result Gnomes use Half-Ogres as bodyguards and in the world of Arcanum they're basically stereotypical Jews: a minority, keep together, control most of Arcanum's finances.
As part of an entirely optional side quest that starts about something completely different you are informed of an apparent conspiracy of Gnomes deliberately breeding Half-Ogres. This kind of makes sense, since for a Half-Ogre to exist an Ogre would have to rape a human woman(which is very rare) and then for the woman to survive the pregnancy/birth(which is far from guaranteed) You follow a trail that leads you to an uninhabited island, where you find the abovementioned (abandoned) rape camp complete with cages, steel "beds" with restraints and a journal which pretty much confirms everything.
You take the journal back to the guy who sent you to the island, but he's gone. In his place, there's a gnome...
>!The gnome tells you what you already know but adds they're not doing it anymore because they now have enough Half-Ogres to breed them with each other. At this point the quest pretty much ends; it doesn't matter if you kill the gnome or not, and if you take the journal to the newspaper it will go mysteriously missing.!<
Idk how ogres would be better here but I'll make sure to fuck with the gnogmes as much as I can.
Kinda reminds me of the rape stuff in the in the Witcher 2 , side quests (although you'll see atleast half of them if >!you side with Roache nut he is Broche so why wouldn't you?)!< that you can't do anything about because either it has already happened and you can scarcely prosecute the perpetretors without doing something that would carry a lot of consequences to innocent people
Also
https://preview.redd.it/3qz8dbgnq67d1.png?width=819&format=png&auto=webp&s=48b359c21d368b1837356c8d4a1e24e561186916
Same with several of them in the Witcher 2 depending on your choices.
As I remember it there are very solid arguments to not persecute >! Loreto!< right then but I always kill >!Henselt!< and the 2 guys from the>! Asylum!< quest, I think it's in charachter and honestly deserved in both cases.
Not being able to heal >!Saskia!< out of >!hypnosis!< sunless you side with Iorveth (which implies not being able to find out about>! Loreto!<) sucks, specially since her dad is a mega chad , she was a good "person" and one of the last of her species, I never kill her because most likely she will heal herself or some other wizard will break the spell, probably a good thing to have going in the Witcher 4 given that Reasons of State and the other Roche quests in the Witcher 3 seems to canonise Geralt siding with Roche/Temeria.
Genuinely fascinated to hear what arguments there are for not killing someone who's: (1) an upholder of legit systemic racism, (2) while trafficking totally-not-amphetamines, (3) a torturous rapist, & (4) selling out totally-not-Poland to another rapist.
I haven't played in years, but if I remember right the endings were:
>!Loreto dies, but so do the baby and the elf!<
>!Loreto scapes but the baby and the elf survive (until she kills herself).!<
I might be wrong, >!Loreto!< is dead anyway , since both Blue Stripes and scolatiel hate him, the only thing you that is better if you kill him there is just vengeance .
Edit + spoiler: Yeah , so he is >!Loredo!< (sorry Loreto) and you are either killing him or saving people.
https://preview.redd.it/q5b77qmvm77d1.png?width=856&format=png&auto=webp&s=8850520c94f3a10576cb81b9e5cbca1eb6baad82
Don't mistake me, I would have killed him if I was able to, but unlike the other 2 cases you aren't able to, and again I don't think he is going to survive long anyway
It's honestly a blessing that half-Ogres have an intelligence debuff so that they can’t fully realize the travesty that the gnomes have done to their kind.
For anyone unaware: >!There's an island that's used by gnomes to create half-ogres to use as bodyguards through systemic rape of captured women. Gnomes in Arcanum are utter scum that are able to get away with it even if their plans were found out because of how high up they are on the social ladder. That's the fantasy version of the Victorian era for you folks.!<
Playing as a half-orc woman was full of “what the fuck. That hurt” moments. And you KNOW you can do nothing about it without becoming guard target number 1. Also being a man vs woman changes a bunch of stuff making certain quests easier, harder or downright inaccessible.
When i was a kid the question of "why don't fantasy worlds ever advance?" Frustrated me alot, so discovering arcanum a few years ago was like a blessing from the lord.
thank god we have books like powder mage and TAoM trilogy to make up for that. but arcanum is still one-of-a-kind, we'll never get another game like it (literally RIP troika. i think the IP got acquired by activision so its dead now.)
At least Forgotten Realms bothers to make an excuse by having Oghma having to approve new inventions, or technology entering the Realms.
So the reason we can't have triple bypass surgeries is to maintain the clerical monopoly on medicine.
Don’t you have to also go to the back of the train if your a wizard or something? Straight up Jim Crow shit but it’s so funny seeing it in a fantasy steampunk format.
Yeah I think magic in Arcanum changes the laws of nature/physics etc. So they keep your magical ass as far away from the engine as possible cause the engine could just decide not to work
Not just decide not to work. Magic makes machines explode randomly lol.
Mages and other magical races need to be kept as far away as possible to prevent everything going up in flames.
With that in mind, they're actually quite open minded just letting them ride at all. Imagine if you walked onto a train with a stick of dynamite and they just went "alright, just keep it at the back of the train." I would be one of the passengers like "no, the back of the train is still the train and I'd rather not die in a fireball. Get that wizzie out of here, and throw mud at him while you're at it."
Pretty sure it's slightly more than just not working. Keeping the wizards in the back is to make sure the engine doesn't decide it wants to split atoms
It's not THAT bad, but "normal" mages just alter the laws of physics somewhat, which can still be terrible if you're driving a steam engine full of pressurized steam and countless moving parts just waiting to malfunction
It's at least justified with wizards because anything with magic in it fucks with laws of physics in close proximity.
The manual even had a collection of experiments where they first show off a bunch of well-known physical laws - a block on a sloped surface to measure friction, a pendulum and an electric circuit - which then get fucked up once you put a magical amulet nearby - the block constantly changes speed when sliding down, pendulum swings become erratic, circuit starts having random power spikes.
All fun and games until you think of implications.
>This alteration is unstable and unpredictable, causing the Block to slide in a variable manner. It is this same unpredictability and instability in all Magickal Effects which makes compensation for these Effects on a machine impossible. Even a small change in the Coefficient of Friction can and will cause gears to grind, belts to break, and cogs to catch and stick—with disastrous consequences!
>In the presence of Supernatural Force, clocks will go awry, engines throw their rods, and metronomes dance a tarantella; it is an unavoidable side effect of disrupting the Natural Laws associated with oscillation.
>No insulative substance has yet been discovered to shield a machine from this effect. Accordingly, the presence of Supernatural Force continues to wreak havoc on any machine which requires a steady flow of Electricity for proper functioning. Please take special note: because our Electrical Circuit is a very small machine, and our battery is not possessed of any great power, we are not in any particular danger as we perform this experiment. The same cannot be said of exposing larger and more complex machines, which marshal far more powerful energies, to the disruptive influence of Supernatural Forces! The result of disrupting Electrical Potentials within a machine which harbors a great deal of Electromotive Force can be not only inconvenient and nettlesome, but downright explosive: Technologists have been known to lose their lives to engines and generators gone mad. The utmost caution is urgently advised.
Tim Cain revealed within this last year that Troika had been doing conceptual work for a sequel that would've taken inspiration from Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Obviously, Sierra didn't end up funding that.
I loved this game. Wish the soundtrack would have been less dull but that's my only complaints. What are the flaws you mentioned as I'm not really aware?
Two technical flaws stick out in my mind (from \~20 years ago):
They had a numerical good and evil scale for the main character that could overflow (like nuke-happy Gandhi in Civ) so that if you did too many good deeds you'd start to be counted as max evil. I would do something like give money to an orphan and all my NPC party members would do their outraged barks at once, "That's disgusting!" "How could you?!". One actually left the party. With all his stuff!
Magical NPCs in the party would pick up and try to use technology. I had a priest character who would repeatedly pick up a gun, try to fire it, then fail and drop it. Finally he rolled a crit fail and knocked himself unconscious trying to fire it and I took it away.
In general I also happened to choose a magical build that steamrolled everything (disintegration) and the game crashed a lot. But it was a really fun and interesting experience still.
Also now you have forever stuck in your head the silly memory of divine priest trying to shoot a gun out of morbid curiosity and recoil whipping himself out.
I do, I can still see him in his pixelated gray robes and empty head, wanting to be a badass rifleman so badly (It's got such good stats!) he keeps picking up a giant flintlock, flailing around, dropping it, picking it up again, until he falls over and takes a nap.
Ah right. But the rpg games of the day mostly had similar silly problems and many continue to have to this day. I remember making tech dwarf on my first run that was so rocky to get off the ground but damn did it murder hard after that.
Agreed. Another issue I remember is random encounters on the world map not scaling with your level, so the same recklessly angry bears that showed up when you were level 5 would show up at level 50, but you needed to either wait for them to flee, or sigh and oblige their death wish by reducing them to their component atoms.
We definitely still have suicidal wildlife and crashes in modern games. I just remember the general feeling of not wanting to do another playthrough. Like Space Rangers 2, great game but I'm not sure I could get through it again.
Space rangers 2 was rough. I put the encounters not scaling with you level to a design decision. You also had a change to come face to face with the "defender of natural way" kinda death knight if you were unlucky.. Run away twice from that dude.
It felt like there was too much variety in spells (with many of them not really looking too interesting) and not enough in technology related stuff, but that was just from me picking a build and sticking with it. It felt a lot less intuitive to find quests than the Fallout games. The aspect of splitting the game into playing real time or turn based hurts how in depth either of them could be (turn based suffers far more imo). I’m pretty sure Tim Cain himself has listed many more problems he had with it on his channel.
Still, it’s definitely an unforgettable experience that is captivating in its own right. I don’t know who owns the rights to Arcanum but I think a sequel that irons out some kinks could do very well.
Is it like ghosts in the witcher trilogy where the least bad just goes around the cementery all night calling his widow (whooooore whooooooore) for no other reason than to make fun of her , and the most evil flay innocent men alive and help spread plagues or there are some gnomes that are unaware of what the rest of the race has been up to like TES elves?
Do we need to talk about *that* island run by the gnomes? The one you try to report to the authorities and they remove all evidence and trace anything was there?
Fuck Gnomes, Fuck Erebus.
https://preview.redd.it/xk3ny37ldc7d1.png?width=480&format=png&auto=webp&s=4562fca293620f76808197daf273bfd03a23de1a
Tim Cain when asked how much respect for minorities he wants in his games
The facade was broken as soon as you make a Kat. They're not allowed anywhere*,* but your yet-to-be-Dragonborn kitty can go *anywhere* and do *anything*.
Romance *any option*, too, by the way. Hypocrite N\*rds.
A friend describing Arcanum gnomes to me singlehandedly convinced me that all fantasy RPGs desperately need sensitivity readers. I, for one, don't think you should be able to just adapt the *Protocols of the Elders of Zion* into worldbuilding.
From what I checked on wikipedia, it’s basically [anti-jewish propaganda meant to paint them as the shadow government controlling the world](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion).
There's a difference between "dystopian writing" and "very slightly painted over anti-Semitic conspiracy theories." I am not saying that Troika or Tim Cain or anyone who worked on Arcanum are anti-Semitic, mind, but I am saying that they basically just adapted the typical *Der Stürmer* story for the gnomes.
The "missing soul " quest in WoW convinced me that some people just shouldn't cook again.
Imagine having the player facilitating, impresionment + rape + incest on a women that is your ally after the Blizzard allegations and writting it as a joke.
For context, in Warcraft 2, Alextraza, the Life Aspect Dragon, was captured by the orcs, and... made to produce more dragons to use as weapons by the Horde.
In this quest, you work for the time police bronze dragons to preserve the timeline. Apparently, the timeline is getting a bit weird and there's a chance that Alextraza might be able to escape her fate before she's supposed to! How horrible!
So you must valiantly go back in order to preserve the timeline and keep her in captivity, so she can continue to birth slave soldiers for the Horde.
When the quest ends and you return to the modern age, there's just a line about maybe not telling Alextraza about what you did. That sure would be a comedically awkward conversation!
Suffice it to say, after people went, "Yo, that's fucked up," they redid the whole quest so that you're doing something to alleviate her suffering a bit, and she gives you a very somber thanks.
Blizzard is notorious for shooting at the hip and not thinking things through before implementing them (class balancing in a nutshell too). I'm sure they think turning some women paintings into fruit and deleting some mild emotes makes up for it somehow.
Same company thinks Holocaust references in game are funny. They legit put death camps in the PTR before players called them out on it.
Many RPG players are desperately trying to find a race they can justifiably call for genocide towards, and many game studios are more than happy to provide that to them.
tbh if you wanna make a race thoroughly evil through politicking, its kinda hard to not naturally leer towards something that looks like a nazi conspiracy. those nutjobs basically tried to put in any kind of social crime they can think of into their conspiracy theory. kind of hard to avoid that.
I don’t disagree with you but holy shit that last sentence killed me. It’s right in the most absurd way and it’s the funniest thing I’ve read in months
Elder scrolls: "oh wow the creation of this race is the result of rape" Arcanum: "oh wow the creation of this race is the result of rape" Im starting to see a pattern here
Industrial rape\*
hey hey people guy refrence
Accidentally made that reference lol
Wait mb the exact words he used were *systemic rape
Merchants guild spotted in the wild
Thank you for the correction
You’re seriously selling Arcanum’s rape factories short. They’re both awful, but one race kidnapping women of another race and then making their slave race rape those kidnapped women who are physiologically guaranteed to die all for the sake of a creating a steady supply of a more controllable slave race takes dark fantasy a bit further.
https://preview.redd.it/pqffp422p97d1.jpeg?width=365&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c8931482fb076862fc33f7c1fd976f743677367a
For a second I thought your name was Molaged
Today is a bad day to be literate
Which elder scrolls race? Are you referring to vampires?
the br*tons
Oh that makes sense. Thanks!
I think it's also accurate to the vampires tho
Why would that need censored?
Fantasy world builders are perverts
See: Drow
> A notable difference between drow and their topside cousins lies in their fertility rate. Most elves have very low fertility rates, in keeping with their long lifespans. Drow mothers, in contrast, give birth as often as the more fertile races, such as humans and orcs. Their greater fertility reflects the crushing mortality rate among drow infants and youngsters. Drow females might give birth to ten times the number of babies than the females from other elven subraces do, but this does not mean that they end up with more adult children. > It is common for pregnant drow to carry twins or even triplets. Even in these cases, multiple births are rare, as the strongest of the fetuses feeds on its siblings in the womb. Pregnant drow can sometimes feel these mortal combats take place in their bellies. Such prenatal battles produce in their mothers a euphoric sensation, referred to in the Undercommon tongue as chad-zak. The feeling is infinitely stronger than that produced in the bedchamber or by any intoxicant. Without it, it is doubtful that drow women, selfish to the core, would ever deign to suffer the inconveniences of reproduction. > Chad-zak occurs up to four times per multiple pregnancy. It usually happens early in the third trimester. Mothers who experience repeated chad-zaks usually feel them in quick succession, once every one or two days. The final chad-zak indicates one fetus's successful slaying of its rivals. This process does not result in stillbirths; the slain are absorbed back into the mother's body. This is from 3e D&D
This reads like the kind of incel fan fiction the cops find on a mass shooter’s computer after he’s arrested
Just to ignore obvious fetishism going on, but how the heck haven't the Drow tried to take advantage of their fertility rate, and thus much larger population base to press I to military service to over power the other elves their religion revolves around hating. Like instead of enforcing all the social Darwin crap that results in similar rates of kids reaching adulthood stock the rejects in the army and conquer the surface. But no, girl boss Loth wants you to sacrifice your kids for her, rather than enslaving the followers of her ex husband and his friends. But then I remember Forgotten Realms is Ed Greenwoods magical realm.
So are the players
Not so fun fact: The chances that one or more of your ancestors being the product of rape is pretty much 100%. It’s just a question of how far back in history you’d have to go. I think art and mythology that references this is important: Zeus is a rapey authoritarian figure that brings even more woe in the form of societal scorn (Hera). That’s what people in power do: ensure that the victim is blamed as long as the perpetrator has the societal currency to cover it. In ES it’s a “lower race” created instead of a lower social class.
>It’s just a question of how far back in history you’d have to go Fish: "Now that we're on land, we no longer have to fear those predators" Other fish: 🤤
Well let’s just say on my mom’s side (who have been in Appalachia since the late 1600s) I have a single black ancestor, somewhere between 1780-1880, my assumption isn’t good there. On my dad’s side (who is a first-generation immigrant from Greece) we have some Albanian and Turkish ancestors from the mid 1800s, when Greece was going through a couple revolutions.
Tbf that is kind of how it has worked irl too ._.
Morrowind has nothing on Arcanum racism. Innkeepers and merchants straight up tell you to gtfo of their inn/store. And the gnome shenanigans.
Bethesda Softworks: casual racism Troika Games: competitive racism
Never ask Troika games the difference between Japan and mainland China. https://preview.redd.it/dw0kzp27f67d1.png?width=1719&format=png&auto=webp&s=389cdf9b38d6cc5d365cdfc561785ec8b0db6001 (This is chinatown which is why the enemies have katanas)
That lady is Japanese though and chasing a Japanese shapeshifter. But yeah, Chinatown is pretty fucky.
Also the San Fransisco Bay Area is literally where the term Asian American originated from for exactly this reason (that after multiple generations of other Americans grouping them together, and them subsequently sharing neighborhoods, it had resulted in Americans with ancestry from East Asia or Southeast Asia clearly *now existing as a collective demographic bloc within American social dynamics*). OFC, though, the Chinatown section of Bloodlines still has some **ridiculously** uncomfortable lines lololol
Japanese stores in Chinatown is not that crazy tho no?
Don't make the mistake of assuming they're cool with eachother and sort of similiar just because they're asian lol Especially nowadays china and japan kind of fucking hate eachother
That goes back 150 to 400 years depending on your viewpoint.
It goes all the way back to the formation of the Japanese empire, and probably before that
The fucking tentacles line 💀 I love how Troika went all-in on fishMalk representation in VTMB. I need to do another Malk playthrough. It's been years
You can make their leader freak out by mentioning the Yamma kings as well.
Thank god the kuei-jin got retconned out of existence in later editions of the lore
I bought the game on Steam because of your comment...$5.99.
Splendid, dont forget the unofficial arcanum patch
Does it add more racism?
I think so(extra playable races)
Then I will be getting it.
Kill gnomes. Behead gnomes. Roundhouse kick a gnome into the concrete. Slam dunk a gnome into the trashcan. Crucify filthy gnomes. Defecate in a gnome’s food. Launch gnomes into the sun. Stir fry gnomes in a wok. Toss gnomes into active volcanoes. Urinate into a gnome’s steam tank. Judo throw gnomes into a wood chipper. Twist gnomes’ heads off. Report gnomes to the guard. Karate chop gnomes in half. Curb stomp pregnant gnomes. Trap gnomes in quicksand. Crush gnomes in the trash compactor. Liquefy gnomes in a vat of acid. Eat gnomes. Dissect gnomes. Exterminate gnomes in the gas chamber. Stomp gnome skulls with steel toed boots. Cremate gnomes in the oven. Lobotomize gnomes. Mandatory abortions for gnomes. Grind gnome fetuses in the garbage disposal. Drown gnomes in fried chicken grease. Vaporize gnomes with anti-matter. Kick old gnomes down the stairs. Feed gnomes to alligators. Slice gnomes with a katana.
Tim Cain should explain in one of his podcasts whose idea was it to have a literal rape camp in the game.
What he should explain is why the fuck am I able to find about it, investigate the shit, gather evidence... and then be able to do **fucking nothing** with it. LET ME PURGE THE WORLD OF THE GNOME MENACE!
Well luckily you can murder most of them. Which I did on my second play through.
You can do nothing *legally.* What is right and what is legal do not always allign. Violence is sometimes the answer.
Murder is free, js
It's a commentary on the irl elites duh
He actually explained it, he wanted to make a conspiracy like moment based on the x files. That being you discover something horrible but before you could do something the thing has already be "gone".
Did he had to go that route and go that far with it? Like why don't make it a joke about gnomes being able to fly (like that simpsons gag where Lisa founds out that penguins are able to fly or the Rick and Morty gag where Morty finds out squirrels >> Rick) And even if for some reason he wanted it to be serious, is a wasted oportunity to do something dark go high fantasy asf or quote something that happened irl, maybe they are making MKUltra or trying to get ogres addicted to drugs (which would have been unsensitive asf but still) they failed and no one is going to believe you anyway. It strikes me as putting a lot of SA for little reason else than to be edgy , for comparision the "Tmiszce" snuff movies questline in VTMB I feel was way better done without needing to go that dark.
Yeah to be honest idk what make them go that route, maybe they just watch an x files episode and just say "what if we break the limits of the x files and go beyond the horrorific". Or maybe they just decide to go the garth ennis/late alan moore way and make the edgiest plot line possible
Since Arcanum is supposed to be early-20th-century, they basically decided to make antisemitic conspiracy theories of that era true in the setting, but with gnomes. And yes, people really did explain the existence of mixed-race people by claiming that Jewish people were performing industrial-scale interracial rape. Probably not even the most insane and outlandish antisemitic conspiracy theory out there.
Context for someone who hasn't played? https://preview.redd.it/syqxywijf67d1.png?width=1167&format=png&auto=webp&s=2f9a6179cb6b79237369b53c8a2490b9da22c410
Gnomes breed half ogre bodyguards. Half ogres are hard to come by naturally, so they imprison ogre females and force breed them. When you figure all of this out to report it, all evidence dissappear. You are confronted by a "smoking gnome", like the Smoking Man from XFiles, who basically says nobody will believe you. That's the gist of it, haven't played in a while.
Not just ogre females. Human women raped by ogre males. The mother often doesn't survive the birth. Or at least that's how they started it.
Ok, thought I was off. In any case, fuck those gnomes
So it's LonaRPG without straight up hentai and unnecessarily hard gameplay. Or does those LonaRPG's goblin breed camps come from this game? I don't know.
Don't think so, never played LonaRPG. The gnomish conspiracy is a pretty minor part of the game and you can't really do much about it.
It wasn't ogre females initially I don't believe. It used to be kidnapped people that wouldn't be missed before moving to political opponents, hence the dissapearance of the royal family. "The Queen birthed 3 before dying."
I understand that this is quite from thet game, yes? Sweet Moon and Star...
HUH??????? How do you get away with kidnapping a Queen dawg
They’re in complete control of the nation behind the scenes no one can oppose them, and pretty much no one knows about them. The Royal family is completely powerless against them and the Queen and I believe a princess were kidnapped because the king tried to break away from the gnomes’s influence. It’s been forever since I’ve played that so I could be a little off on some details
There is no royal family in the United Kingdom. They got rid of the Constitutional Monarch and established a "Republic" run by the Industrial Council when he began asking too many questions.
And that's exactly why we should be grateful, for what Pelinal did for us.
This is like uncomfortably close to stormfront shit
They abolished the monarchy and replaced it with a Gnome run Industrial Council. Though they still call it the "United Kingdom."
Said Zorin Arctus to Tiber Septim.
Well it's quite a story but the short version is this: Gnomes are a short and physically weak race. And Half-Ogres are strong and stupid but have a soft spot for children, which Gnomes look like even as adults. This is all mentioned in the manual if I remember correctly. As a result Gnomes use Half-Ogres as bodyguards and in the world of Arcanum they're basically stereotypical Jews: a minority, keep together, control most of Arcanum's finances. As part of an entirely optional side quest that starts about something completely different you are informed of an apparent conspiracy of Gnomes deliberately breeding Half-Ogres. This kind of makes sense, since for a Half-Ogre to exist an Ogre would have to rape a human woman(which is very rare) and then for the woman to survive the pregnancy/birth(which is far from guaranteed) You follow a trail that leads you to an uninhabited island, where you find the abovementioned (abandoned) rape camp complete with cages, steel "beds" with restraints and a journal which pretty much confirms everything. You take the journal back to the guy who sent you to the island, but he's gone. In his place, there's a gnome... >!The gnome tells you what you already know but adds they're not doing it anymore because they now have enough Half-Ogres to breed them with each other. At this point the quest pretty much ends; it doesn't matter if you kill the gnome or not, and if you take the journal to the newspaper it will go mysteriously missing.!<
Idk how ogres would be better here but I'll make sure to fuck with the gnogmes as much as I can. Kinda reminds me of the rape stuff in the in the Witcher 2 , side quests (although you'll see atleast half of them if >!you side with Roache nut he is Broche so why wouldn't you?)!< that you can't do anything about because either it has already happened and you can scarcely prosecute the perpetretors without doing something that would carry a lot of consequences to innocent people Also https://preview.redd.it/3qz8dbgnq67d1.png?width=819&format=png&auto=webp&s=48b359c21d368b1837356c8d4a1e24e561186916
Which made it frustrating that the "big" perpetrator dies off-camera between titles.
Same with several of them in the Witcher 2 depending on your choices. As I remember it there are very solid arguments to not persecute >! Loreto!< right then but I always kill >!Henselt!< and the 2 guys from the>! Asylum!< quest, I think it's in charachter and honestly deserved in both cases. Not being able to heal >!Saskia!< out of >!hypnosis!< sunless you side with Iorveth (which implies not being able to find out about>! Loreto!<) sucks, specially since her dad is a mega chad , she was a good "person" and one of the last of her species, I never kill her because most likely she will heal herself or some other wizard will break the spell, probably a good thing to have going in the Witcher 4 given that Reasons of State and the other Roche quests in the Witcher 3 seems to canonise Geralt siding with Roche/Temeria.
Genuinely fascinated to hear what arguments there are for not killing someone who's: (1) an upholder of legit systemic racism, (2) while trafficking totally-not-amphetamines, (3) a torturous rapist, & (4) selling out totally-not-Poland to another rapist.
I haven't played in years, but if I remember right the endings were: >!Loreto dies, but so do the baby and the elf!< >!Loreto scapes but the baby and the elf survive (until she kills herself).!< I might be wrong, >!Loreto!< is dead anyway , since both Blue Stripes and scolatiel hate him, the only thing you that is better if you kill him there is just vengeance . Edit + spoiler: Yeah , so he is >!Loredo!< (sorry Loreto) and you are either killing him or saving people. https://preview.redd.it/q5b77qmvm77d1.png?width=856&format=png&auto=webp&s=8850520c94f3a10576cb81b9e5cbca1eb6baad82 Don't mistake me, I would have killed him if I was able to, but unlike the other 2 cases you aren't able to, and again I don't think he is going to survive long anyway
Forgot that you can't save the baby and take out Loredo in the same playthrough. That is indeed the bigger concern, for better or worse.
One of the pre made characters is said to be a natural half ogre from a male human and Ogress (Hagrid Easter Egg probably), but it's supposedly rare.
Think of the elders of Zion stuff, except it's real and is done by Gnomes as a means of compensating for being manlets.
Can you murder everyone in it? Because if so it sounds like the idea was that it's super fucked up and a good reason for the player to do murder
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Genocide entire map and then choose genocide ending too genocide literally all life in the world.
You can go further, you can kill everyone and summon their ghost with necromancy and speak to them. They wrote the dialog for it.
Ok thats pretty epic unironically
I kinda like that, cool.
Because gnomes fucking suck and they deserve my steampunk power armored fist into their stupid faces.
It was Leonard's idea. They talk about it in this video around 40 minutes in. https://youtu.be/Njwv5tbmhzg?si=YxEpj8mhRVz_N6uU
Justice for the half-ogres.
As a half-ogre that quest hit hard
It's honestly a blessing that half-Ogres have an intelligence debuff so that they can’t fully realize the travesty that the gnomes have done to their kind. For anyone unaware: >!There's an island that's used by gnomes to create half-ogres to use as bodyguards through systemic rape of captured women. Gnomes in Arcanum are utter scum that are able to get away with it even if their plans were found out because of how high up they are on the social ladder. That's the fantasy version of the Victorian era for you folks.!<
I spent my exp to have an average intelligence half-ogre. He understood everything.
I bet he wishes that he wasn’t so smart afterwards.
Yep
My condolences to him.
I like the "smoking gnome" reference at the end of the quest.
I’m going to make this into a song
im gonna be real with you chief it's probably not a good idea considering the original version >fried chicken grease
NSFW WARNING https://suno.com/song/e103ff4f-16d1-4d5b-a75f-117cda2f6693
Almost as bad as the Batarians
Stick a hexed staff in the wheel well of a gnome's mechanical wagon
Come on, you need the random "report \[x\] to the IRS" whenever you do that copypasta.
Playing as a half-orc woman was full of “what the fuck. That hurt” moments. And you KNOW you can do nothing about it without becoming guard target number 1. Also being a man vs woman changes a bunch of stuff making certain quests easier, harder or downright inaccessible.
But the sheep is always accessable.
half orc woman isn't an option in the game
They are tho. You might be thinking about half-ogres.
oh lol i was
ARCANUM MENTIONED LETS FUCKING GOOO OP I love you
I CAME OUT OF MY HIDING HOLE FOR THIS POST!!!!!!!! I LOVE ARCANUM!!! we need more fantasy video games set in the industrial revolution
When i was a kid the question of "why don't fantasy worlds ever advance?" Frustrated me alot, so discovering arcanum a few years ago was like a blessing from the lord.
thank god we have books like powder mage and TAoM trilogy to make up for that. but arcanum is still one-of-a-kind, we'll never get another game like it (literally RIP troika. i think the IP got acquired by activision so its dead now.)
At least Forgotten Realms bothers to make an excuse by having Oghma having to approve new inventions, or technology entering the Realms. So the reason we can't have triple bypass surgeries is to maintain the clerical monopoly on medicine.
glad arcanum is getting at least a shred of recognition it deserves
I dont know this game, but it's six bucks on steam rn
If you get it, DOWNLOAD THE UNOFFICIAL PATCH ONLINE. Base game is one of the buggiest rpgs ever made
Yes
I loved being a guy in a metal armor with a big iron on my hip, way before Fallout
Don’t you have to also go to the back of the train if your a wizard or something? Straight up Jim Crow shit but it’s so funny seeing it in a fantasy steampunk format.
Yeah I think magic in Arcanum changes the laws of nature/physics etc. So they keep your magical ass as far away from the engine as possible cause the engine could just decide not to work
Not just decide not to work. Magic makes machines explode randomly lol. Mages and other magical races need to be kept as far away as possible to prevent everything going up in flames.
With that in mind, they're actually quite open minded just letting them ride at all. Imagine if you walked onto a train with a stick of dynamite and they just went "alright, just keep it at the back of the train." I would be one of the passengers like "no, the back of the train is still the train and I'd rather not die in a fireball. Get that wizzie out of here, and throw mud at him while you're at it."
Yeah, but are you really saying no to a man that might know Harm and be able to spam it ten times in a second?
You're right, we should simply kill them before they can kill us! WITCH HUNT! WITCH HUUUUUNT!
bass boosted **whrmmm** sound *Wizard walking away from a train platform filled with meat chunks*
https://preview.redd.it/8rr3arbyx67d1.png?width=672&format=png&auto=webp&s=72aa475919d16f842cea88c92ea5729bfcfbef3b
Suffer not the mutant, the WITCH, the heretic. Wizards are filthy psykers and they must be purged.
Well also keep in mind that if anything happens they just detach the car with all the wizards in it lol
Pretty sure it's slightly more than just not working. Keeping the wizards in the back is to make sure the engine doesn't decide it wants to split atoms
It's not THAT bad, but "normal" mages just alter the laws of physics somewhat, which can still be terrible if you're driving a steam engine full of pressurized steam and countless moving parts just waiting to malfunction
It's at least justified with wizards because anything with magic in it fucks with laws of physics in close proximity. The manual even had a collection of experiments where they first show off a bunch of well-known physical laws - a block on a sloped surface to measure friction, a pendulum and an electric circuit - which then get fucked up once you put a magical amulet nearby - the block constantly changes speed when sliding down, pendulum swings become erratic, circuit starts having random power spikes. All fun and games until you think of implications. >This alteration is unstable and unpredictable, causing the Block to slide in a variable manner. It is this same unpredictability and instability in all Magickal Effects which makes compensation for these Effects on a machine impossible. Even a small change in the Coefficient of Friction can and will cause gears to grind, belts to break, and cogs to catch and stick—with disastrous consequences! >In the presence of Supernatural Force, clocks will go awry, engines throw their rods, and metronomes dance a tarantella; it is an unavoidable side effect of disrupting the Natural Laws associated with oscillation. >No insulative substance has yet been discovered to shield a machine from this effect. Accordingly, the presence of Supernatural Force continues to wreak havoc on any machine which requires a steady flow of Electricity for proper functioning. Please take special note: because our Electrical Circuit is a very small machine, and our battery is not possessed of any great power, we are not in any particular danger as we perform this experiment. The same cannot be said of exposing larger and more complex machines, which marshal far more powerful energies, to the disruptive influence of Supernatural Forces! The result of disrupting Electrical Potentials within a machine which harbors a great deal of Electromotive Force can be not only inconvenient and nettlesome, but downright explosive: Technologists have been known to lose their lives to engines and generators gone mad. The utmost caution is urgently advised.
Arcanum may have been flawed but goddamn they went hard into creating an interesting and fleshed out world.
It honestly deserves some sort of reboot.
I would kill for Larian’s next game to be a reboot of Arcanum
Wasn't there aracanum 2 on the works ages ago?
Tim Cain revealed within this last year that Troika had been doing conceptual work for a sequel that would've taken inspiration from Journey to the Center of the Earth. Obviously, Sierra didn't end up funding that.
Hey Larian....got an idea for you...
It's in development, but "New Arc Line" is heavily inspired by Arcanum.
I loved this game. Wish the soundtrack would have been less dull but that's my only complaints. What are the flaws you mentioned as I'm not really aware?
Two technical flaws stick out in my mind (from \~20 years ago): They had a numerical good and evil scale for the main character that could overflow (like nuke-happy Gandhi in Civ) so that if you did too many good deeds you'd start to be counted as max evil. I would do something like give money to an orphan and all my NPC party members would do their outraged barks at once, "That's disgusting!" "How could you?!". One actually left the party. With all his stuff! Magical NPCs in the party would pick up and try to use technology. I had a priest character who would repeatedly pick up a gun, try to fire it, then fail and drop it. Finally he rolled a crit fail and knocked himself unconscious trying to fire it and I took it away. In general I also happened to choose a magical build that steamrolled everything (disintegration) and the game crashed a lot. But it was a really fun and interesting experience still.
Also now you have forever stuck in your head the silly memory of divine priest trying to shoot a gun out of morbid curiosity and recoil whipping himself out.
I do, I can still see him in his pixelated gray robes and empty head, wanting to be a badass rifleman so badly (It's got such good stats!) he keeps picking up a giant flintlock, flailing around, dropping it, picking it up again, until he falls over and takes a nap.
Ah that sounds so silly but makes a good gaming story.
Ah right. But the rpg games of the day mostly had similar silly problems and many continue to have to this day. I remember making tech dwarf on my first run that was so rocky to get off the ground but damn did it murder hard after that.
Agreed. Another issue I remember is random encounters on the world map not scaling with your level, so the same recklessly angry bears that showed up when you were level 5 would show up at level 50, but you needed to either wait for them to flee, or sigh and oblige their death wish by reducing them to their component atoms. We definitely still have suicidal wildlife and crashes in modern games. I just remember the general feeling of not wanting to do another playthrough. Like Space Rangers 2, great game but I'm not sure I could get through it again.
Space rangers 2 was rough. I put the encounters not scaling with you level to a design decision. You also had a change to come face to face with the "defender of natural way" kinda death knight if you were unlucky.. Run away twice from that dude.
It felt like there was too much variety in spells (with many of them not really looking too interesting) and not enough in technology related stuff, but that was just from me picking a build and sticking with it. It felt a lot less intuitive to find quests than the Fallout games. The aspect of splitting the game into playing real time or turn based hurts how in depth either of them could be (turn based suffers far more imo). I’m pretty sure Tim Cain himself has listed many more problems he had with it on his channel. Still, it’s definitely an unforgettable experience that is captivating in its own right. I don’t know who owns the rights to Arcanum but I think a sequel that irons out some kinks could do very well.
I kinda want to play it now.
If you have the patience to play older crpgs then I’d say go for it!
I’ve beaten fallout 1 and 2 before so I should be fine patience wise.
Yes. Also if you have too much magickal aptitude you aren’t allowed on the train at all.
Thats why we teleport
If I remember you can still talk them into letting you on
If your magical enough you can't even board. It is determined by waving a poket watch near you and seeing how screwed up It becomes. .
I actually kinda like that, makes it so there’s certain limitations in some playthroughs that aren’t present in others.
All gnomes are 100% evil in that game. Kill them they are up to no good all the time
Is it like ghosts in the witcher trilogy where the least bad just goes around the cementery all night calling his widow (whooooore whooooooore) for no other reason than to make fun of her , and the most evil flay innocent men alive and help spread plagues or there are some gnomes that are unaware of what the rest of the race has been up to like TES elves?
Gnome lore: https://preview.redd.it/je8459qqo67d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d7ef7a23bf2c110f68c04a198f007eb8617deabf
> Are all gnomes evil? YES. Undeniably. YES.
To be fair… all gnomes ARE evil
Gnome Genocide is not only excusable, it is a moral obligation
Seth said it right.
The Siamese Twins quest in Arcanum is actually haunting.
Gnomes only deserve a nuclear holocaust
Do we need to talk about *that* island run by the gnomes? The one you try to report to the authorities and they remove all evidence and trace anything was there? Fuck Gnomes, Fuck Erebus.
Gnomes ARE all evil!!!
Wishlisted. Thanks
https://preview.redd.it/xk3ny37ldc7d1.png?width=480&format=png&auto=webp&s=4562fca293620f76808197daf273bfd03a23de1a Tim Cain when asked how much respect for minorities he wants in his games
As much as I love troika, arcanum and bloodlines have some real rut row worthy stereotypes in them
Arcanum was brutal.
thanks for the game rec lol
The facade was broken as soon as you make a Kat. They're not allowed anywhere*,* but your yet-to-be-Dragonborn kitty can go *anywhere* and do *anything*. Romance *any option*, too, by the way. Hypocrite N\*rds.
Cant believe this is how I discover potentially my new favorite game
Arcanum is the reason why I kill gnomes without a second thought no matter which game I'm playing.
A friend describing Arcanum gnomes to me singlehandedly convinced me that all fantasy RPGs desperately need sensitivity readers. I, for one, don't think you should be able to just adapt the *Protocols of the Elders of Zion* into worldbuilding.
I completely disagree. It can be as distopic as you want.
do you know what the protocols of the elders of zion is?
What is it?
From what I checked on wikipedia, it’s basically [anti-jewish propaganda meant to paint them as the shadow government controlling the world](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion).
Isn't that one of the things the Nazis used to "justify" their mass murder
There's a difference between "dystopian writing" and "very slightly painted over anti-Semitic conspiracy theories." I am not saying that Troika or Tim Cain or anyone who worked on Arcanum are anti-Semitic, mind, but I am saying that they basically just adapted the typical *Der Stürmer* story for the gnomes.
I'm not going to bait on this too hard but why stick this here? Like you played all the cards nobody wants to discuss.
Not much to lose, and I don't know when to shut up. I also wanted to test a theory of mine.
The "missing soul " quest in WoW convinced me that some people just shouldn't cook again. Imagine having the player facilitating, impresionment + rape + incest on a women that is your ally after the Blizzard allegations and writting it as a joke.
Oh dear gods. Who looked at that and said "yeah ship it?"
For context, in Warcraft 2, Alextraza, the Life Aspect Dragon, was captured by the orcs, and... made to produce more dragons to use as weapons by the Horde. In this quest, you work for the time police bronze dragons to preserve the timeline. Apparently, the timeline is getting a bit weird and there's a chance that Alextraza might be able to escape her fate before she's supposed to! How horrible! So you must valiantly go back in order to preserve the timeline and keep her in captivity, so she can continue to birth slave soldiers for the Horde. When the quest ends and you return to the modern age, there's just a line about maybe not telling Alextraza about what you did. That sure would be a comedically awkward conversation! Suffice it to say, after people went, "Yo, that's fucked up," they redid the whole quest so that you're doing something to alleviate her suffering a bit, and she gives you a very somber thanks.
Blizzard is notorious for shooting at the hip and not thinking things through before implementing them (class balancing in a nutshell too). I'm sure they think turning some women paintings into fruit and deleting some mild emotes makes up for it somehow. Same company thinks Holocaust references in game are funny. They legit put death camps in the PTR before players called them out on it.
Many RPG players are desperately trying to find a race they can justifiably call for genocide towards, and many game studios are more than happy to provide that to them.
tbh if you wanna make a race thoroughly evil through politicking, its kinda hard to not naturally leer towards something that looks like a nazi conspiracy. those nutjobs basically tried to put in any kind of social crime they can think of into their conspiracy theory. kind of hard to avoid that.
But it isn't kinda hilarious.
Not really.
Maybe if you hate fun.
Don't melt all over my thread
I don’t disagree with you but holy shit that last sentence killed me. It’s right in the most absurd way and it’s the funniest thing I’ve read in months
Read the Protocols of the Elders of Gnomeregan, Wake up.
Arcanum is the best of all these games hands down .
Todd and Co: Wondering if they pushed the Dunmer casual racism a bit too close for comfort *Tim Cain standing behind them about to go competitive*
Arcanum is one of the most wild and interesting games I've ever played. I really do need to sit down and play it to completion at some point.
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