RoyalRoad
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Marketplace, Zakabara Second
Mollikutta got recognized again. She'd been wearing makeup disguises out in public to avoid the shame and scorn of her people. This time, it was a trader selling salt who saw through it, and he was not staying quiet about it.
"Hey guys, look, it's the governor herself trying to do her shopping like the rest of us dirty Seconders here!"
There were some jeers and boos among his peers.
"Governor, I'm so sorry, we're all out of salt," he taunted, not even bothering to hide the bags of goods on the table of his booth.
Not wanting trouble, Mollikutta started to back away.
"Going so soon, governor? You sure you don't want to shop around more?"
A crowd was gathering, and they were pushing up against her from behind. One of the adjacent tools vendors was pulling out a dangerous looking tool from the back, and she absolutely did not want to find out what he planned on doing with it.
She dropped her basket of shopping goods and bolted, squeezing a hole through the crowd. They didn't expect her to just start running! Behind her, Mollikutta could hear some of them starting to chase her.
Flapping her wings to give her a bit of speed, she ran down the street like a mad-bird.
Only half a mile to the palace, she thought, I should be able to make this! From now on, there would be no more shopping alone without guards.
As she came up next to an alleyway, a blur suddenly came out of nowhere and snatched her up, dragging her unceremoniously into a nearby hut. Struggling uselessly against the strong appendages that held her, she got a better look at her attacker and her surroundings.
It was a human! And he'd brought her into an empty street level hut with nothing but a table and a stool.
"Shh… quiet, quiet, Governor, you don't want everyone to hear you, do you?" he asked, loosening his grip on her as she slowly complied.
"Who are you and what do you want with me?" she asked like any hostage does.
"My name is Mark, and I'm here to help," he said, with a dangerous grin on his face. He chuckled, "your people don't seem too happy with you. And that guy with the Bhak welder didn't look like he was messing around-"
"That's none of your business, alien kidnapper! I have it all handled!" Mollikutta replied, not convincing herself even a little. She wanted to scream at him, but didn't dare attract any undue attention to where she was.
"Alright, well, I don't want to keep you from your busy schedule, Governor," the human said, winking as he handed over a laminated rectangular piece of paper to her, "but here's my card for when you change your mind."
She looked out the window of the dark little hut to check to see if the angry mob was still chasing her. "How did you even get onto this planet with the military blockade in orbit anyway, human?"
Not getting an answer, Mollikutta looked back towards him.
He wasn't there anymore.
Two Months After McDonald's Grand Opening
Gophor Spaceport Space Traffic Control Tower
"Gophor Tower, T-three zero-four-six, request clearance for landing pad," came the voice in Grayin's headset.
It was N'har again. She knew the serial number of his new Terra Three by heart. He'd even taken her into outer space on it once. It was an exhilarating experience that did not diminish her desire to go to space again. On the contrary, it burned brighter.
"T-two one-four-eight, cleared to approach pad two," she transmitted back without a hint of recognition. Pad two was objectively the best landing pad open on the spaceport at the moment. Except for pad one, which was only used for emergencies. Pad two was the closest to the market and hangar, and every space trucker wanted it.
"Thanks Grayin! You're the best," came his cheeky voice back on the radio, "see you tonight?"
Blushing right to her ears, Grayin glanced around the traffic control tower furtively. Luckily, none of her colleagues seemed to be paying attention. She hoped that no one else was listening in on this completely open and unsecured channel.
"See you tonight."
Ironically, what became known to the galaxy as the Earther Dream was mostly not for the original residents of Earth. In fact, while many humans took it as a point of pride for their planet, its originator was alien, and most of the creatures who see it as a guiding ethos were not of Earth.
Earth's streets were lined with credits, beings around the galaxy would say. Humans would sometimes give out credits for creatures who did work for them, even if they didn't agree to it beforehand! They called it tipping. Oddly, even human research showed that its practice only has a small correlation to quality of service. Rather, other effects have much more of an influence on tipping amount, like the bust to waist ratio of a waitress.
It was an odd practice which arose out of a combination of habit and social conditioning on Earth. For the rest of the galaxy, it only enhanced the mythos that all humans must be incredibly rich and lived their lives without worry. A few of them even managed a ride to Earth to see it for themselves.
Of all the non-human creatures who made the pilgrimage to the origin planet of currency, some were disappointed by the reality: that humans were just as mortal and concerned about the future as they were. However, one thing that most had in common was that dipping their appendages into this pot of wealth was not enough. Many went home to their planets with dreams of their own.
On some planets back home, their neighbors were skeptical. What good were new factories or new ideas that could barely compete with those of the poorest areas on Earth? Inevitably, it often took humans to lead the way and blaze the trail for these to advance and be accepted.
In that way, Rey's simple restaurant on Gakrek opened up an entire galactic market. And her dream became the Earther Dream for many around the galaxy.
"Gophor Tower, Z-sixteen six-two-two, request clearance for landing pad," came the next request on Grayin's plate.
The designation seemed familiar, but she did not recognize its owner out of hand. Pulling out a tablet from underneath her seat, she punched the designation into a program and waited for its return.
"Kwoofer from Olgix," her tablet showed, and then added, "paid for priority access."
Ah, it's that Olg trader who brings in raw materials, she vaguely recalled. That last part of his data snippet was her own innovation. She had the bright idea of charging traders a little extra on the side to skip the line or get a good landing pad closer to the merchants.
Bribery. Corruption. Graft. These were some of the ugly names that humans had given for what she was doing. On Gakrek, it was known by its other name: business as usual.
It wasn't anything that other Gaks with any power weren't also doing. She knew for a fact that the spaceport managers weren't supposed to charge the vendors for doing business on the spaceports, but they did it anyway. And they skimmed a little off the top of her government salary too. It's a cost she was now passing onto the traders.
Soon after she started doing it, the other traffic controllers caught on pretty quickly. Rather than reporting her (there was no one to report her to), they cut themselves in on the lucrative deal. After all, everyone knew the traders were rich and had plenty of credits to spare for all of them.
Of course, increasing the cost of doing business to their spaceport was not great in the long run. But as long as everyone did it, except Earth, nobody noticed it.
"Z-sixteen six-two-two, cleared to approach pad six," she dispatched. Pad six wasn't bad. It wasn't the best, but it was good. Much better than being in the double digits; nobody who came to Gakrek wanted a pad in the double digits. The long walk of shame with their heavy goods sucked unless they had a forklift or some other labor saving device.
"Thank you, Tower," came Kwoofer's reply, "is there a line at the burger place?"
Grayin stood up and looked over at the golden arches on the other end of the spaceport. It was far, but there did appear to be a small line of locals and traders out the front. Rey's business was still doing really well, she marveled to herself, and then prepared herself to transmit a reply to a hungry Olg waiting in orbit.
"There's about a ten-minute line right outside. Do you wish to place your order with us to deliver straight to your spaceship when you land? There is a small surcharge of 5 credits," she offered with her sweetest voice. This was another one of her bright ideas. One and a half of those credits would go to an honest local kid who was already in line, just standing by for her to place the call.
This business was an absolute no-brainer. Each delivery she facilitated was almost equivalent to two days' worth of pay for a mid-level controller like her. She was providing a useful service, even if she knew that ultimately the restaurant itself would probably be able to do something similar and cut her out. That's if Rey found out that she and her colleagues were doing this.
"Yes, please," came the reply from space. She did a mental fist pump as he continued, "I'll have one double cheeseburger meal with extra salt, please. And the drink will be a medium Coca-Cola."
"We'll get right on it," she said as she started typing out the order to her waiting contact, "welcome to Gakrek, captain Kwoofer."
"They're doing what?" Rey asked, amused at what she thought she heard.
"Uber Eats, essentially," Enrico summarized, then frowned, asking, "should we cut out the middleman and do it ourselves? If we bulk our orders, we could probably do it for a third the cost and still make more per delivery."
Rey almost thought about it, then smiled and rejected it, "there's no way Corporate would even think about approving something like this. Besides, why bother them? We need those controllers on our good side. Get Grob to pass them some of our menus on the side and ask if they'd like to borrow our wheelbarrow."
Grayin never expected that she'd ever fall for an alien, but N'har was a different beast. If her dad were still alive, he would probably throw a fit. An alien?! She could already hear him screaming at her.
Then again, N'har is rich, so maybe not. In many agrarian societies like Gakrek, parents often wielded their children as financial instruments, whether they knew that's what they were. It was just a normal way of life. A father who didn't care about the possessions of his children's suitors would be the outlier to the rule, and they were certainly not looked up to as good examples.
Of course, the humans didn't think like that. Not all of them at least. But they were the exceptions to everything.
Her still-alive mother would be supportive, though. That's what mothers did. If Grayin told her about this…
And Grayin liked N'har not for his spaceship or credits, she told herself. He's charming, and funny, and handsome in his own way. One day, he would often say, he would take her to see the gorgeous mountains of Yis'Meh. It was a beautiful dream, and her favorite part was the idea of traveling through space in his spaceship again.
So, here she was walking into the only restaurant on the spaceport. Strange for humans to think this would be the food place for a date night, but it wasn't like they had an abundance of choices. Spotting him on the second floor, she walked right past the line and straight up to his table where he was wolfing down a box of fries.
"Good evening, beautiful," he said as she approached. N'har was not subtle.
Her face reddened as she giggled, and replied, "good evening to you too! How did your new trade route go?"
"Never better," he replied in between bites. Then he pushed over the tray containing her usual order, and continued, "the example of the Zakabaran blockade is causing some other planets to think about closing their ports too. There's lots of hoarding on those planets, so prices have gone through the roof. How's traffic control?"
"Pretty good today too," she said as she unwrapped her sandwich, "we got four deliveries through today. And we've got one more trader signed up for priority access."
"Ah…" N'har almost instinctively started to complain about the priority fees that spaceports had, but then remembered that he wasn't exactly a saint himself, profiting from a goods shortage. Instead, he said, "that's wonderful. Cheers!"
He clinked his plastic soda cup against hers, which she returned cheerfully.
Grayin did have something on her mind. She brought it up casually, "I'm thinking of leaving my job."
"What?" N'har stopped chugging his Sprite for a second to look up at her, as if trying to detect if this was a test of some kind.
"I want to start a business like this one with your help," she said, completely seriously. Grayin didn't have nearly enough credits to start a venture like this, but if he agreed and could lend her some credits here and there… it could be done. She added dreamily, "I've thought of a good business with a lot of credits to be made in it, and one day I'll make enough to go into space."
N'har sputtered, "but you can already go into space in my… our ship. We can make it our ship. Let's go tonight!"
"N'har," she said, not giving up, "I don't want your ship. Maybe eventually it'll be our ship. But I want to do this. I've been thinking about it for a while." She smiled and held his paw in hers, hoping he could see it from her view.
He did. When it's all said and done, N'har liked her a lot. And he did have plenty of credits.
"So… what's the plan?" N'har asked. He'd lived most of his life in space, so while he was very familiar with the space trade, he was completely lost on how to do anything on the ground. "Enrico mentioned that their most money consuming part was buying the equipment from their chain headquarters, and there's some complicated scheme with regard to the building."
"Yes, they must spend a lot of money maintaining their equipment and buying food stuff from McDonald's," she said. She'd done some research, so she knew a bit about what she was talking about. "But that's not what my idea is. We don't sell food."
"Don't sell food?" he asked, confused. He thought that she wanted to open a restaurant! "So what do we sell?"
"We sell to the people who will come here to sell food!" It took a bit for N'har to get it. His eyes widened and recognition set in as he did.
She wanted to start the first commercial development company on Gakrek.
After she explained the business model to him and showed him human figures on how successful such a venture could be, N'har said, "I see." He thought about it and then asked, "realistically, how much profit could we make per building here on Gakrek?"
"Actually I did some research and math on that. When I said sell, I don't actually mean we sell the buildings, just the right to use it," Grayin said, bringing out some sheets of paper filled with writing and business planning that she'd been doing since a year ago. "It's called rent, and it's legal even on Earth. We finish the exterior of the building, and then we call up one of their companies that wants to open up a chain. Then, we let them use the building every month for a fee."
N'har seemed skeptical. "Isn't that just a protection fee? How much would that make us in the long run?"
"It's not!" she contested, "it's more like a partnership with the business, and it's all above board. And I heard from someone at work that Grob was getting paid a hundred thousand credits every month for their building!"
"One hundred thousand credits!" he exclaimed, "there is no way that isn't an exaggeration!"
"Yeah," Grayin admitted it sounded far-fetched, "but if we get even a fraction of that, we'll cover our construction costs in a few months. We'll start calling them once we're almost finished building and get a better idea of how much they're willing to pay."
East Gophor Quarry
"How much are you offering us, again?" the fore-Gak asked skeptically.
"Three credits a day per worker," Grayin replied, "it's a brick two-story building, just like the one you built for the humans."
"That's less than Rey paid us!" he sniffed. It was still a lot of money, and certainly more than the miners were paying him, but a good Gak never works for less money when they could get more. "She paid us four credits a day! Each!"
"It's still more than you make now," she replied, "and we'll build more buildings. And in the future, you'll be the first one we go to." Grayin wasn't the best businessbeing, but she knew how to barter as well as any human.
N'har interjected, "and we'll pay you ten credits a day!" Looking around to make sure none of the others were listening to their conversation, he added, "just you, though. And you'd be responsible for making sure the other Gaks get on board. We want to get started as soon as possible."
The fore-Gak was torn. On one hand, skilled workers often felt a kinship and solidarity towards each other, and this felt somewhat like a betrayal of that. On the other hand, the offer would earn him more money in a day than he currently got in a week!
He reluctantly accepted. His twelfth child was just born. He needed the credits to send her to a school when she got older.
The fore-Gak justified it to himself: three credits a workday was still a lot for the other Gaks, and he was providing a valuable managerial service for Grayin and N'har, even if the others would probably be paid a little more if he had haggled more.
"Okay. Do we get weekends?"
"Of course."
Hangar Sixteen, Gophor Spaceport
They moved their secret business planning from the McDonald's to the hangar where N'har stored his spaceship. It didn't feel quite right discussing it all in Rey's restaurant. And there was always a slight risk that they could be overheard by the workers there.
That didn't mean they couldn't still order takeout from there, though. N'har paid again this time. Grayin thought it was mighty chivalrous of him. She didn't feel like she wasn't taking advantage of him though: he had more money and made several times more than she did on a Gakrek government salary.
Between mouthfuls of chicken burger, N'har asked, "so where are we going to build our first site? Rey and Enrico seemed to have gotten the best location."
"I've thought about that," Grayin said. She wiped her paws on some napkins, and then she carefully pulled out a high definition top-down photo of the spaceport from her bag. It showed everything, from the traffic control tower to the vendors, food tents, and the restaurant.
"Wow, that's a great picture of Gophor," N'har looked genuinely impressed, which brought a swell of pride to her chest. He asked, "where did you get that?"
"I paid a trader with a camera four credits to take it while he was landing," she said proudly, "I read that this was how they plan for new construction on Earth. They have an entire profession for it called urban planning."
Then she continued directing his attention to the various spots on the photo she marked. "Here's where we are," she pointed at the row of hangars. And then she pointed at a space slightly offset from the vendors, "and here's where we can build our first buildings."
N'har frowned as he looked at her plan, and commented, "that seems pretty close to Rey and Enrico's place. They're not gonna be happy with the competition, whatever business we let open up right next to them."
"You're probably right," she admitted, "but they can't have expected no one to copy their idea when it makes them so much money!"
"That's true," N'har said as he picked a sesame crumb off her snout, "I just don't want to get the humans mad at us. That's all."
"Well, maybe eventually they'll want to get in on this too. Meanwhile, we can just try to build as much as possible before they notice. I have plans for our first three. We just need to start early in the morning…"
He let her ramble on and talk about her plan excitedly. It involved gathering materials and assembling the frames in the hangar, and then moving them to the right spot for the final construction.
This project was bringing out a passionate side of Grayin that he didn't know he'd be so attracted to. She got so confident, and she knew exactly what she wanted. He could really get used to this, N'har thought as a goofy grin naturally came up on his face.
"… and what are you smiling at me about?" she asked suspiciously as she came to a natural end to her presentation.
"Nothing!" N'har said hurriedly, blushing hard as he snapped out of his daydream, "I can't wait to meet your family."
Grayin's heart fluttered, and she grabbed his warm paws in hers.
"I can't wait either."
Zakabara Second
Mobs often start with grievances. In some cases, they may even seem trivial. Unfavorable results for a high stakes soccer game. A security guard striking a poor widow selling contraband cigarettes. Acquittal of some police officers who severely beat a motorist on film. In this case, however, the ignition point was anything but trivial.
Seeing the astronomical prices for Earth goods on Zakabara Second, a trader decided to risk it for the biscuit. Using a series of daring maneuvers and relying on the aftermarket upgrades on her already fast sublight engines, she somehow managed to get through the Prime military blockade in orbit.
The excited Seconder spaceport closest to her offered a good landing zone, and news of her arrival quickly spread. As she came in to land, a large crowd gathered near it cheering for the arrival of fresh new goods from the galaxy.
Then, without warning, a space-to-ground missile from an orbital blockade ship broke through the clouds, instantly vaporized her ship, killed a dozen merchants waiting near the landing pad, and severely burnt many others.
Seconders were furious.
This was the final straw.
At dusk, the factory workers who had just finished their shift had heard about the incident. They gathered their tools, and headed to the streets.
The students at the nearby Industrial Institute of Second also heard about the atrocity as they got out of class for the day. They gathered their friends, and headed to the streets.
The nurses at the Second Medical Center saw it firsthand from the horrific burn victims who were being rolled in on improvised stretchers. They gathered their medical equipment and first aid kits, and headed to the streets.
When the crowd was small, they were simply angry. Angry at… someone. They didn't really know who was to blame for this disaster; after all, the people who had done this were sitting pretty in outer space. Or on another planet.
Then, some students began singing some song about angry people and something called drums. Whatever that meant. It was a catchy tune.
As the crowd got bigger, and they all started singing it, this lull in rage provided some much-needed clarity to the unofficial leaders. Even if they couldn't reach the stars, they remembered that the Primers did have representatives on their planet after all.
They started making their way towards the Governor's palace.
???, Zakabara Second
"It's starting," Mark reported without emotion.
His tablet digitized, encrypted, and then transmitted his voice to a stealth ship hidden in orbit, which bounced the signal through various FTL relays before it got to its intended recipient. Technically, it was very impressive security work.
Realistically, none of it was necessary. None of the Zakabarans on Prime were listening. If they were, they would have noticed what was happening on the ground months, if not years, before this happened. It was possible that remote Inuit villagers in Greenland knew more about what was happening on Second than Popptaw herself.
"Copy that, we're running this upstairs now," came the reply, "how is the Governor?"
"Mollikutta is surprisingly competent for a hereditary appointee, but her hands are tied within the system they've set up here. She's on a call with Prime right now," Mark said, glancing at his small crew of four diligently working at their tablets. He gave a signal to one of them to get ready to put the next phase into action. He chuckled, "I'm surprised she's even bothering. Unless my translator is broken, I think they've had this same conversation thrice this past week already. It ends the same way every time."
"I see," the controller replied, "you have all their comms feeds locally right?"
Mark confirmed, "we're tapping into all their frequencies. And just in case, I slipped a listening device into her wings when we grabbed her near the market last week."
"And she didn't notice that?" came the incredulous reply from Langley.
Mark chuckled and said, "according to a local bird, they don't have nerve endings under there. She wasn't exactly concerned about being bugged when I snatched her off the street. And fortunately for us, the governor hasn't been indulging in luxuries like taking showers and baths since this crisis started."
"Alright. Hold on a second…" The line went silent for a second, and then it came back, "we just got word. Operation Vulture is a go. Good luck." The connection terminated.
Mark looked out his tent at their unpacked helicopter spinning up outside, gathered his supplies, and commanded his unit, "pack up or burn everything. Let's get to work!"
Governor Palace, Zakabara Second
"Mollikutta, you know how these people are! Things like these come and go. Just tell them that the prices of food are still lower than before, and they'll go home!" Popptaw said. She had heard absolutely nothing Mollikutta had to say for the past few years, and she was determined not to change her obtuse mind in the course of this two-hour conversation either.
Popptaw was the type of dictator who thought that the problem with "let them eat cake" wasn't the tone deafness; to her, the problem would obviously be the nutritional quality. If she was queried on the subject, she would have preferred "let them eat oatmeal" instead.
"Popptaw, you don't understand. People here are done with Prime! Don't you get it? They were at their breaking point before, and killing a few of them hasn't made them more afraid. They're just more angry now," Mollikutta insisted, "we need to de-escalate the situation by promising actual change and showing that we've heard their concerns!"
"Dear, that's not how we do things. We must show them that you are truly in charge. I've sent you more internal security troops every time we talk. It's time you put them to use and they start earning their pay!"
Mollikutta was exasperated. Those troops were truly useless. At best, they either had family or knew someone on Second, and weren't about to enforce any of Popptaw's mandates too harshly. At worst, the way they acted towards the Seconders only made people dislike the Primers even more.
She insisted, "we need to calm the people and convince them that we're doing the best we can. After all, as the leaders and governments of our people, we must express the general will of the people because we derive our power and right to rule from the consent of the governed-"
Popptaw narrowed her beady eyes at that last sentence, and squawked suspiciously, "you've been reading those human books again, haven't you?"
"We had to! You directed us to read them-"
"Yes! So you can run your factories to produce more goods for us!" Popptaw shrieked angrily at this display of insolence from the governor, "not so you learn their wretched and primitive ideas about how to run our species. Or did you not get to the part in their history where they fought not one, but TWO, planetary wars among themselves? Control your people, or I'll find someone else to control them instead!"
Mollikutta was going to make a biting retort about how the stupid protectionist policies that the Primers were enforcing onto her people were the same ones that had partly caused one of those human planetary wars, but Popptaw had already hung up.
She looked out her window at the mob banging on the gates of the Governor estate, and then she looked at the portraits hanging on the walls in her office representing an unbroken streak of countless millennia of oppressive rule from the homeworld.
The phone rang. It was probably the gate guards calling for permission to deploy a lethal response.
She looked at the caller number and frowned. Her eyes widened as she realized that it matched the one written on the business card she'd memorized last week, before burning it.
Mollikutta made up her mind.
Grayin and N'har got something wrong in this chapter. That was intentional.
Ironically, "let them eat cake" shouldn't be nearly as controversial today. Brioche, the type of luxurious cake Marie Antoinette supposedly referred to, is downright affordable for most households in developed nations. You can get a full loaf of it at Walmart for $3.50, only slightly above the cost of whole wheat bread. In terms of calorie-price ratio, even slightly fancier store-brand cake is probably below average compared to other major primary foods in an average grocery store.
Also, Marie Antoinette probably never actually said this.
Now, if you really wanted to offend hungry people with your tone-deafness today, what you should instead say is something like "let them eat low-fat, organic Greek yogurt from Whole Foods!"
RoyalRoad
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I’d woken up early one again. I tottered downstairs, holding tight to my dressing gown and curling my toes up with each step, so as not to let my slippers, well, slip off. They had a tendency to do that.
I could feel the morning chill hanging heavy in the house, as if it had as much right to be there as I did- perhaps more, it had lived here longer than we had, after all. The windows had grown a coat of icy condensation, but it failed to hide the lands of endless shadow behind them. Muted both in aesthetic and sound – I always thought that was odd. The background noise and artificial light that most people are accustomed to, to a point where they’re not even noticed – like the tip of your nose peeking in your vision – were absent here. And, the sheer lack of, well, either, was ironically deafening and blinding. I missed them a lot.
At this time of morning, the house may have been situated in the centre of space, or some vast endless void. There was nothing but inky blackness that pressed in around us in every direction, as if we were a foothold, a mere redoubt of life and vibrancy that it, at all costs, must snuff out.
I made my way to the kitchen, muttering a prayer beneath my breath which was answered when I switched on the light and the old room bloomed into vision. It was antiquated here – everything in the house was - the décor left a lot to be desired; the drapes were moth-eaten and dusty, but that was neither here nor there, as they were never used. Why should they be? There were no eyes from man, nor beast, that we had to block.
There was a stag’s head protruding from the wall, its fur somehow growing matted and in desperate need of grooming. I could only assume that occupants before us had placed their greasy, oily hands on the poor soul’s bust. One of its antlers was broken in half, the missing counterpart nowhere to be found. The old table that sat in the middle of the room was sturdy, considering its scraped and effaced state, but the sturdiness was mostly due to the fact that some unknown master of DIY had affixed a great wooden block to a broken leg.
More often than not in here, the generator gave way, and I had to wake my dad up early to go down to the basement and fix it. He’d tried to show me how to do it, but, outside of revving the little cord, I was at a loss. But, if I was being honest, I didn’t want to let them know I could be relied on to do it – especially since I was the one who woke first most times.
The basement was old, dreary, dark- it was everything horror movies and childish nightmares gave warning klaxons about. I knew there was never going to be some assailant waiting, crouched and hidden in some corner, nor that there any supernatural entity, whether I believed in them or not (a constantly battle of logic versus wild imagination) would be drifting, in miserably solitude, in the dank sub-room, awaiting to harass me as I descended… but still, when your body tenses up, hairs stand on end and goose pimples proliferate across your body as if each a vector of some diabolic, terror-fuelled plague, it was best to pay heed and stay away. We have instincts for a reason, after all… and fathers.
With the humming bulb above, bravely illuminating the dated room against all odds, I checked the decking held tight around the walls of the old home. It was bathing in the weak glow coming from within, and I could see that it had rained in the night. The wood, dark and moist, was splintered and mossy. It rose only about a foot from the creeping weeds that were the duty of the ‘temporary residents’. It was usually my mother’s job to wage war on those, but, after realising they would forever grow back within a week, she made it a monthly job. I’d escaped being drawn into that one, thus far.
I filled the kettle with water, which was, thankfully, as crystal clear as you’d want water to be. Water, just like electricity on demand, wasn’t something we could take for granted out here. I placed the old thing on its base, letting the little orange flickering light give me the queue to wait, and rested my sleepy head on the counter, humming some song that had wormed its way into my sub-conscious. I hummed because, should I try to find a lyric, I’d be searching fruitlessly.
The kettle started to roil and bubble behind me, but I decided to wait for the button to click up, and the unfurling steam to waltz carelessly into the slatted roof above, before I moved away from my current state of comfort. I opened the cupboard, lifting it up on the hinge (which I’d learned quickly) and fished out the rather bulbous baby-blue mug that I had incidentally claimed as my own since we were positioned here. Then, I smiled to hear the little tinkle, tinkle, tinkle of coffee granules hit the base, and then poured the boiling water in, letting that hypnotic steam, heavy with the bitterness of the coffee, drift into my nostrils.
I didn’t take milk anymore. We had it, of course, but we’d only have a delivery every two months. It was usually UHT milk, or soya, oat, or almond variants – which I tended to prefer – but, as a general rule, whoever finished the last of the carton had to go and procure more from the stock, which was in the basement. “No, thank you, Mr. non-existent ghost or murderer, you won’t get me today.”
“Fuck,” I uttered aloud, and the sound of my voice was strange when it was the only sound amidst such silence. I forgot to defrost and toast the bread (loaves upon loaves frozen downstairs, but we usually had at least two in the freezer up here). But, I quickly shrugged. Beggars can’t be choosers. I opted for two rich tea digestives, the victuals my mother had fought for against my dad’s commanding officers, and, funnily enough, they seemed terrified of her, and so they sent them along the other provisions (more than she could eat, so, it was never a point of contention within).
Then, quite satisfied, I gave a cursory, greedy sip of the coffee, as I always did, and regretted it, as I always did, when the liquid scolded my lips and tongue where it swilled. As if the biscuits had the power to extinguish the burn, I chomped at the edge of one – it didn’t quell the burn, but at least it gave it was a sweet accompaniment. Then, having conducted my integral morning duties, I shuffled back upstairs, turning the light off as I ascended, condemning the rickety kitchen and mossy, dew-glistened deck to the pre-dawn darkness.
I was cautious not to step on those snitching steps, that groaned and creaked, which I didn’t begrudge them, it was understandable in their old age. I crept across the landing, sticking to the edge for that same reason – I was always the villain if I awoke anyone before the alarm clocks – and traced my free hand across the wallpaper; a once-white, now slightly yellowed canvas with drooping tulips which had, over time, become victims to endless glare and began to fade.
I continued past my room, and opened the door which led to the attic. Strangely enough, I know that the top level of any house is as infamous for the same hidden assailants or vengeful poltergeists as the basement, but, I never felt uneasy here. In fact, I felt very comfortable. Perhaps because this was decorated, rather than old, cracked stone wall which was the backdrop to a network of rusting old pipes.
The attic had the same wallpaper as the landing, and was home to old dusty furniture. A sad old couch, brown and fraying, sat before a rug. I daren’t move the rug, ever, because I was loathe to see what colour lay beneath it, as the floor surrounding it was a murky, soiled variant; an aged echo of what it once was when this place was built.
There were no lights in the ceiling here, something to do with the wiring not reaching all the way up – the house was built pre-electricity, and everything was installed, naturally, post-construction.
The one window in the room sat as the main focal point on the other end of the room - a small, boxed number with a chipped, cracked and soft frame, was now just a black patch; only a few speckled stars offered respite from the darkness. Just next to it, at an angle, was a high-backed chair, one of the legs replaced by a mound of books (none of which were of any note, I’d checked them all). And, beside that old thing, was a little end table, a dark varnished wood – flecked and chipped, ever the theme. It had a browned, aged doily resting atop it, and on that, the was an old lamp.
This lamp, for some reason, always made me smile. It was quite a magnificent piece of furniture. There was a triangular chunk missing from the body of it, little hairline cracks spread from this focal point, as if trying to escape slipping into the hole, like souls scrambling from the maw of hell – but it wasn’t that I loved. It was just how disproportionate the lampshade was. The circumference was so bizarrely large, that it seemed to more depict a possible orbit, rather than a cute little halo of light. That, too, had been dirtied and dulled with disuse or time, but I didn’t care. I switched it on, and plucked up my book which I always left under the cushion (this I washed after it treated me to a coughing fit one too many times), and then, with coffee, biscuits and book, I lulled into my little reading nook, and waited for the early hints of sunlight to clamber above the distant mountains.
We had a small, boxed TV in the lounge area – but, as there was no signal, it was just old VHS or DVDs that other families had brought and left here. But, as a rule, we tended to avoid using any unnecessary electricity. After a month, it was quite easy to grow accustomed to.
The view was always stunning, anyway – or at least, it was before it was diluted by familiarity. I was always used to sub-urban life, and a little getaway like this would have been such a dream that my fancy for halcyon, romanticised, escapes always yearned for. But, it was funny how quickly I grew accustomed to this, and began to pine for what I considered mundane… such as streetlamps and the distant grunt of passing vehicles.
Still, we had only just over two months left of our six-month placement here. So, for posterity’s sake, I came up here whenever I rose before the drowsy dawn, to convince myself upon my return, that I took full advantage of my time away.
After bout thirty, to forty, give or take a few, I started to see, far in the restricted patch of distance offered from my dainty living canvas, the unmistakeable gradient of morning. A diluted pink that valiantly began to sail into the void, embracing it with a, today, pinkish hue. That was nice, that meant that today was going to be warm, bright, pleasant. Within an hour or two of the sunrise, the rain may have evaporated into a cold memory, and I may take my sister on a little adventure. It was rare I left the house, but I liked to make a journey of it when I did.
I closed my book with a muffled thump, and placed it on the doily-ed table-top. Doing so, I noticed I had been so absorbed in my book, that I forgot about my last biscuit, and the dregs of coffee. I downed the drink, the sensation of the cold liquid was almost as undesirable as the scolding contrast I subjected myself to earlier on. And, as if someone may reach behind me and snatch the treat from my hands, I shoved the whole disc in my mouth, and then snapped my teeth down.
When we first came here, the winter was hard and brutal. The journey over here was turbulent. We had to drive from our home under heavy, black gathering clouds, which, by the time we got onto the small military transport ship had begun pouring forth with an insatiable primality. We docked at some non-descript island, that was home to nothing but some old ‘lab’ as my dad called it. The people there weren’t exactly the most scientific, in aesthetic or demeanour – but apparently were dealing with experiments which couldn’t happen on the mainland, “nothing top secret,” my dad assured me when I grew wide-eyed, “just stuff we can’t really risk over there,” a quick jerk of the head that, though indicated clashing waves and darkened skies, I knew was the direction of home. We stayed there for the night, the four of us in one room – with creaky dorm beds, a brave heater buzzing away to keep us warm against the persistent gushing that clanged like steel drums on the corrugated steel roofing.
The next day, we took advantage of the calmer weather – though it was still colder out here, with no structures to break the salty, icy wind – and boarded the precarious looking seaplane. I fell asleep, nursing a flask of coffee, as the plane bounced and swayed. The large noise-cancelling headsets, which thankfully diluted the screaming engine and roaring wind, and replaced it with the inane chatter of the pilot and my dad.
Then, we were brought to the house – the mountains surrounding us were completely snow-capped, the grassland was frosted a solid white, and the island air was glacial. Thankfully, the family who were posted here just before us had left two days prior, so the house needed no assistance in settling.
When I first found this little attic view, I’d watched with an uneasiness through the frosted window, the edges and corners closing in with a frosted vignette – but, as the pale sun yawned awake, and I could see the view – with lingering mists enveloping the hills, and rolling down to drift above the land, like a chorus of spectres, I decided six months here wouldn’t be all too bad.
The view only got better as our esoteric world warmed, though. The snow had melted, allowing us to see an army of trees – no longer shivering, naked, in the winter – and as if offering consolation for the bleakness that greeted us, a stretch of colourful flowers popped and bloomed all around. Venturing for as far as I could peer, crawling into the forest that started a fair distance from the foot of the mountain, and crawled all the way to the tip.
Even now, I could see, almost as if alive, the trees bristling and basking in the warm stroke of sunlight. I struggled with the little drawer under the end table, which was less of a drawer and more of a test of strength, considering it forced you to pull with all your might, before it finally acquiesced, and seemingly exploded. Then I took the binoculars out. I decided to leave the drawer open, because closing it – jagged, staccato shifts from side to side – was just not worth it until I was putting them back.
The island wasn’t all so much littered with wildlife. There were a few beasts of burden that had been placed here, and allowed to graze freely. The reason for this was, god forbid something awful happened, and either the supply drops that came every two months didn’t make it for some reason or other, whoever was on the island could, in extreme circumstances, take themselves out and, before long, bring meat enough to feed their family without having to worry about starving. Apparently, this had only ever happened once, and even then, the supply drop was rectified within the week.
Still, I liked to scour the land to see any roaming sheep, or flitting bird that had decided to roost here. When the notion took me, I’d take my sister to the advancing forest, and together we would search for bugs to bring back, or count how many nests we could find – and I’d always tell her there was a family of bears here, which sufficiently terrified her.
I took in the view of the dew-kissed nature, and enjoyed the little glistening dazzles of pink where the wetness caught the ever-blooming pink; scintillating like some great, grand monarch’s treasury. I often felt a little pride in this – only a small number of people would ever see these sights, and, the very vision I was taking in, I knew, that the floral ancestry had only ever been witnessed by our predecessors. Whenever I stroked my hand amongst a tree, or let the scent of some unnamed flower tickle at my nose – I may have been the first human interaction, in the entire history of the planet, that had ever graced it. Was a bizarre feeling.
I carried on scanning the land, feeling more and more like today may be an adventure day, compelled by the tantalising petrichor that was no doubt suffused into the morning breeze, when. I’d maybe even take a trip to the mountain top, get some nice landscape pictures to show my friends when I got home, or post up on the socials when signal was no longer a sweet, convenient memory. The trees were getting thicker and thicker in their foliage, but it should be easy to traverse without getting lost. My dad said if we ever go in there, it’s easy to lose yourself – because you’re suddenly swallowed by a different biome altogether, and that the weather conditions here often just let the trees grow wildly, but if we were to ever get disorientated, to just carry on descending, because sooner or later we would break out of the perimeter, and our temporary home was visible enough once outside.
I followed the small brook that was our main source of drinking water, outside of the bottles. Our tap water was from this reserve, bath water, etc. It snaked its way up the mountain, just a meek little thing that froze over in the winter, near enough, and flooded in the rains. It was rushing today, the little white surf looking like an old, faded scar, and just before the trees conspired to cover it from my view-
An intense, haunting uneasiness stole over me.
I dropped the binoculars in fright, even though the sudden clatter of them snapped me back to my sense, it felt like the time from dropping to collision was eons.
I felt the nerves in my body tingle, traipsing down from my scalp to my toes in a fuzzy panic.
A figure- a person-
For a split second.
I was certain I saw someone. Out there. Naked flesh, hunched over, cupping their hands into the stream. They looked emaciated; near skeletal with pallid, clinging flesh. The brief flash of their hair showed a wild, unkempt and patched mess. The image that was now scorching itself into the forefront of my mind was more ghoul-like, than human.
My heart was storming a rapid beat, and I ducked to clutch the binoculars back, almost bruising my eyes with how hard I placed them to my face. The zoomed in world was shaking, quaking, trembling, as I scanned up and down the brook once again. It took a few seconds before I could stabilise my breathing enough so that the world wasn’t just wild blurs.
But, nothing… no person, no trace, no evidence.
It was impossible. I knew what I saw, but… I couldn’t have. To get here, anyone would have to- no, it was impossible. But, what else could it have been? I was too clued up about normalcy bias to start doubting my own experience. There was no animal it could have been. But- we were so far away. A boat to a classified island, then a sea plane?
I couldn’t focus. I scanned as much as I could, just waiting to see a slither, a flash of flesh somewhere out in the distance. But, nothing. No-one.
I instantly retreated from the window, and scrambled backward. I didn’t know much of my dad’s job here, but I knew it was of utmost importance to national security. If someone was here- if something was here- it couldn’t be a positive thing.
Shaking, terrified, I crept away from the small window – the sunlight beaming through, and giving stage to a flurrying whirl of dust particles. The intense sensation of distress was mounting. Then beneath me, I heard a chorus of screeching, as the alarms in the house began to drag everyone from their sleep.
This was good, because I had to tell my dad what I just saw.

Warning: lots of words ahead! This is kind of a compilation of interesting things I’ve gathered from the descriptions of items, books, voicelines, stories and more. I haven’t included much lore from the main story, and I also haven’t focused on many theories (apart from one of my own), so I'm trying to stick to facts or “implied” possibilities that have some evidence supporting them.
If you have anything interesting that you’d like me to add to the dump, or if I'm completely wrong about something, please let me know! I plan to keep updating this as I keep getting new information. I’ve included excerpts of most of the sources I’ve used, but I’d suggest fully reading the books and stories I’ve included (cause they’re great). Also, please read the webcomic!
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Hilichurls

• Hilichurls aren't mindless goblins. They have a whole language and culture of their own and are capable of philosophy, anger, grief and joy: (Books on Hilichurl Ballads / Cultural Customs)
• Hilichurls are capable of using elements without visions. This could possibly imply that hilichurls are more "native" to the world than humans are, since humans require visions to actually harness the power of the elements. (However, Hlory tells us that they suddenly appeared on Teyvat a few centuries ago so they can't be native to Teyvat). Also, while humans worship the archons, hilichurls worship the elements themselves:

Interestingly, hilichurls seem to have a unique ability to manipulate the elements despite their low intelligence and primitive social structure. The ability is most notably manifested in the Shamans. Typically, humans require a Vision in order to exercise elemental control. The question of how Hilichurls are able to do so without a Vision is, therefore, one that requires further investigation and analysis.)
(Just as the inhabitants of the Seven Nations of Teyvat each have their religious beliefs, so too do the hilichurls. However, they worship not a specific figurehead with a presence in this world — such as one of The Seven — but elemental power itself in a more abstract sense. For instance, some hilichurl tribes in Mondstadt revere Anemo just as their human counterparts do, but they do not recognize the Anemo Archon Barbatos. Instead, they worship the power of Anemo itself.

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• The hilichurls of the Eclipse tribe are the most intriguing. They are known to be the most occult with the most powerful shamans, and worship the symbol of the eclipsed sun. From the official story videos and various pieces of lore, we can assume that they are closely related to the eclipse kingdom before its downfall 500 years ago.
• Hilichurls are drawn to ancient ruins for some reason, indicating a close link to the ancient ruined civilisation. The eclipse tribe is also situated in ruins, while the other 2 tribes are not.

It would appear that the hilichurl possess no concept of either the past or future, living only in the present. They do not intentionally store up food for survival, nor do they commemorate their deceased forebears. Though crude attempts at something like calligraphy have been widely observed within their camps, closer inspection reveals these markings to be nothing more than botched imitations of what they have seen in ancient ruins, possessing no originality whatsoever. Hilichurls do seem to have an inexplicable affinity for remnants of the past, evidenced by the fact that ruins are one of their preferred locations to camp. But investigations thus far have turned up nothing which might hint at the true nature of their connection with the lost civilizations to which these ruins belong.

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• Hilichurls are controlled by Abyss mages using rituals and are forced to do their bidding. For example, they were forced to fight us near stormterror's lair even though the elemental energy is too powerful for their physical bodies to withstand for long.
• They do not seem to be inherently evil: Ella Musk manages to have a peaceful conversation with them in Hilichurlian, and Dusky Ming (the ghost girl) makes friends with Hilichurls (story from Uncle Ghast).
• Even MC feels bad about being "too harsh" on hilichurls:

(Traveler): Do you think that we're too harsh on the hilichurls?
Paimon: Well... sometimes we kinda seem like children who just can't resist kicking the hornet's nest...
(Traveler): I think we're doing more than just kicking it...

Seelies

• The Seelie are not human spirits, they're a different species. "Once a mighty race that guided humanity, now the most they can do is lead willing adventurers to treasure”. (loading screen tip)
• The Seelie have Seelie Gardens, i.e. their small stone pillars, that they all want to return to. (loading screen tip)
• Traveler mentions that she gets a certain sense of sadness from touching Seelie treasures (Traveler voicelines)
• The Seelie used to have mighty palaces and it is possible that the Seelie were originally from Khaenriah. (read story below)
• This entire story from A Drunkard’s Tale III is really amazing, so please read it fully to understand more about the Seelie’s past:

https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/A_Drunkard%27s_Tale_(III))

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Traveler

• An idle animation of the Traveler shows that she can create the same constellations as Paimon. These constellation particles can also be seen emitted from other ancient structures like light actuators and ancient seals.
• Traveler knows about nozzles and machinery but Paimon doesn't, indicating she comes from a modern world or has visited one

Paimon: Mondstadt is full of wide plains and rolling hills.
Paimon: People say that when Barbatos made this land, he used the storm to flatten the cliffs and valleys...
(Traveler): Still, it looks like he missed a few spots.
Paimon: Like Starsnatch Cliff?
(Traveler): Exactly
(Traveler): It looks like a nozzle that wasn't smoothed out in the modeling stage.
Paimon: What's a nozzle?

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• Traveler didn't originally know how to speak the Teyvat language, and learned it from Paimon. Maybe she doesn't speak much because she's not fluent in Teyvatian (voicelines)
• Traveler is able to materialise and dematerialise her weapon, which Paimon has never seen before. Both she and Paimon share the same ability to make things appear and disappear (in Paimon's case, it's herself) (voicelines)
• Roses represent love in Traveler's homeworld, but secrecy in Mondstadt (Noelle voicelines)
• Traveler knows something about the Eclipse symbol of the Eclipse tribe that she doesn't want to reveal to Paimon. She suspiciously diverts the conversation when Paimon asks about it.

(Traveler): The "Eclipse tribe..." So the hilichurls have normal-sounding tribe names like these, too.
Paimon: The hilichurls of the Eclipse tribe are really mysterious.
Paimon: All the hilichurls of that tribe can draw an eclipse symbol.
Paimon: But rumor has it that only the Dada Samachurl of the Eclipse tribe knows why the Eclipse symbol is so revered within their tribe.
(Traveler): An Eclipse symbol...
Paimon: Hmm? Did you say something?
(Traveler): Ah. I was asking you what sort of soup you'd like to have tonight.
Paimon: Can't stop thinking about food, huh? Seems like you'd be more at home in the Meaty tribe than the Eclipse tribe. But anyway, Paimon wants boar soup. Thanks!

Traveler and their sibling both landed up on Teyvat 500 years ago when it was under collapse. When they tried to escape, one was trapped by the unknown god and the other was sent forward through time. This does not mean that Traveler's sibling has been alive for 500 years. The abyss order has only recently gotten a new "prince" or "princess" (depending on MC gender) which we know from the main story. This means that Traveler's sibling came through time just like Traveler did.

A boy and a girl stood amidst the tumult, under an unfamiliar sky. You were a pair of traveling twins, passing through countless worlds during your journey. Descending upon a continent named Teyvat, you hoped that you would be able to enjoy your time here.
But as you awoke among the falling stars, you saw the world in turmoil, a cataclysm raging across the land...You sought to leave this place and move on to the next world, but then an Unknown God stood before you, barring the way. This deity was spotless, floating over a world of chaos.Looking down on you.
The god took your only kin away, and you were sealed and cast into a deep slumber filled with nightmares...When you reawakened, the world was changed. The flames of war raged no longer, and nothing was left that looked familiar.

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Khaenriah and Time

MAJOR EDIT: Khaenriah is said to be underground and deep in the abyss, not necessarily across the sea from Mondstadt (Albedo Story 5, and Bloodstained Hourglass) However, the theory can still make sense since the portal to the abyss lies east of Mondstadt. Therefore, there are still deep links between the east of Mondstadt and the abyss, which is, as mentioned, where Khaenriah actually might lie.)

• Khaenriah seems to neighbour Monstadt, or is at the very least closer to it than other nations:

Kaeya profile: "His biological father squeezed his lean shoulders, but his look stretched through Kaeya, to someplace far beyond. On the other side of the horizon, sat their distant homeland of Khaenri'ah. Kaeya would never forget that look, intertwined with both hopefulness and hatred."

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• Khaenriah appears to have been destroyed by an evil alchemist called Gold, who corrupted life into hideous monsters with some otherworldly force. (Could this be Honkai? I haven’t played HI3):

(chunk of aerosiderite: When Khaenri'ah was destroyed, a great sinner created endless monsters with alien, dark blood flowing through their veins. They rampaged across the land, destroying all in their paths. Their lives were mutations, caused by powers beyond this world. The black serpentine dragon Durin that attacked Mondstadt was such a mutation.)
(Breeze Amidst the Forest - Ballad Selection: The Eclipse Dynasty had fallen, and disaster spread across the land. The alchemist known as Gold was corrupted by his own greed and ambition, and created an army of shadowy monsters with his uncanny powers. Durin, a black serpentine dragon, rose from the sea to cast its shadow over Mondstadt...)

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• Khaenriah appears to be a place where time has gone out of control: In the Teyvat Chapter Storyline video, Dainsleif describes Khaenriah with "In the perpetual meantime of a sheltered eternity". In his bio, an unnamed prophet mentions "The confluence between the past and future" and " The future must atone for bygone mistakes, as the bond familiar falters and breaks".

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• We know that in the distant past, the eastern side of Mondstadt worshipped both wind and time:

(sacrificial sword: "On the cliff facing the eastern sea, the ancestors worshiped the masters of Time and Anemo together. The two are intimately related, as expressed in the saying, "Anemo brings stories while Time nurtures them.")

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• So if Khaenriah neighbours Mondstadt and is a land of time, and the eastern shore of Mondstadt used to worship time, what do we see in game? We can visit many mysterious places on the eastern side of the region, such as the Thousand Winds Temple (originally used to worship the Time God as well), the Eclipse Tribe (implied to have connections to ancient dynasties), the entrance to the Spiral Abyss (perhaps related to the fall of Khaenriah) and the unmarked Time Island.
• The unmarked Time Island is particularly interesting, since it’s literally off the shore where Traveler and Paimon suddenly pop up in Teyvat. You can read my theory here: (https://www.reddit.com/Genshin_Impact/comments/jfhrwv/theory_paimon_is_actually)

Kaeya and Diluc

• When his favourite wine goes out of season, Kaeya actually does his job and drastically reduces the crime rate in Mondstadt:

Kaeya Story 3: “The flourishing winery business in Mondstadt has been a great source of prosperity in the region over the years. This prosperity often entices greedy bandits and monsters to the area. They are a motley bunch who hide in the shadows, and their backgrounds, motives, and allegiances are varied and complex.
Kaeya battles against this threat to Mondstadt not only with his sword, but also with his smarts and his wit
.
A young knight once dedicated years of his life to studying threats in and around Mondstadt, and reached an astounding conclusion: When Death After Noon is out of season due to lack of supply, the number of reported incidents inside and outside the city show a drastic decrease, and this remains the case until Death After Noon returns to the market...
The young knight showed his findings to Cavalry Captain Kaeya in hopes of getting some advice from him.
"Interesting. I'll look into it." Kaeya answered, with a wry smirk on his face.”

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• Kaeya was intended to be a pawn of Khaenriah, planted as a double agent . He used to be torn between 2 worlds, but then finally realised his duty to Mondstadt when his adopted father died. (below)

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• Kaeya used to be a staunch supporter of Diluc, preferring to help his brother rise to success rather than compete with him. However, when Diluc turned 18, he was attacked by the Fatui and his father was forced to sacrifice himself to save his son. To end his suffering, Diluc had to kill his own father. (Story 5 + Webcomic)

(Kaeya Story 5: “Many denizens still remember the two most eye-catching young gentlemen in all of Mondstadt. One of them was the impeccable Diluc, an elegant swordsman who always wore a friendly smile on his confident face. The other gentleman was the eccentric Kaeya. He was Diluc's friend, support, and sounding board, ensuring he got through every challenge he faced smoothly. They were almost like twins, knowing each other's thoughts and intentions without a word, protecting Mondstadt in both light and dark.
...Until that fateful day, now ingrained deep in Kaeya's memory, when the convoy Diluc was escorting was attacked by a huge monster. It was the first and only time Kaeya failed in his duty. By the time Kaeya finally reached Diluc, it was all already over. The power their father had used to successfully fend off the monster also backfired and took their father's life with it.”)

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• Kaeya and Diluc had a "hard-fought battle", upon which Kaeya awoke his vision for the first time in his life; they have been at odds ever since. It would appear that Kaeya in-game has been nerfed a lot compared to what the lore would suggest:

Kaeya Vision Story: There was a side to Kaeya that he kept hidden from the world: In truth, he was an agent of Khaenri’ah, placed in Mondstadt to serve their interests. His father had abandoned him in this strange and unknown land to fulfill his mission, and it was Master Crepus and the city of Mondstadt that had welcomed him with open arms when they found him.
If Khaenri'ah and Mondstadt went to war, which side should he support? To whom should he offer his assistance: his birth father, who had ruthlessly abandoned him? Or his adoptive father, who loved him and raised him?
For the longest time, Kaeya had agonized over these impossible questions, caught between the opposing demands of loyalty and duty, faced with an impossible choice between truth and happiness.
But now, Crepus' death upset this delicate balance. He felt liberated, but also ashamed of how selfishly he was responding.
As an adopted son, he should have saved Crepus, but he had arrived moments too late. As a brother, he should have shared in Diluc's grief, and yet as their father lay dying on the ground he had hung back behind his brother, that ancient plot running through his mind.
Consumed by guilt, Kaeya knocked on Diluc's door. As the rain poured down, the shroud of secrecy was washed away, all lies were revealed. Kaeya had finally come clean.
He had anticipated Diluc's anger.
The brothers drew their blades, this time pointing them at each other. Kaeya felt that this was his punishment for a lifetime of lies.
But as the two crossed blades, Kaeya was overcome by the sensation of great elemental power surging through him. For years, he had stayed out of the way in his brother's shadow. But now, for the first time ever, he was facing his brother as his true self.
Bitterly cold and brittle elemental energy burst forth from the tip of his sword to meet Diluc's searing flames head-on. The clash of crimson fire and azure ice created a sudden swirl of wind that stunned them both. This was the grim moment at which Kaeya's Vision appeared.
Since that day, Kaeya and Diluc have gone their separate ways.
But he never discusses it, just as he never discusses the origin of his Vision
Though it is a reminder of the hard-fought battle, and the prize that he earned in exchange for revealing the unadulterated truth, Kaeya sees it as a stern reminder that he must live the rest of his life under the heavy burden of lies.

Gods and Power

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• Gods aren't invincible or all-powerful; they come and go with the times. Many have been killed or defeated, and some have moved to chaotic wastelands to rule them. We are told of a salt god, a dust god, a time god (Paimon???) and of other minor gods in pieces of lore. Similarly, Teyvat is just a continent, and many places of chaos and darkness exist beyond it.

(Bit of Aerosiderite: The coastal nations of Teyvat refer to the region beyond the protection of The Seven as the Dark Sea. It is said many defeated gods refused to live under the new order of The Seven, so they fled to remote islands and became evil gods. However, their powers came from the same source as Rex Lapis, separate from this all-devouring darkness.)
(Piece of Aerosiderite: Rumors of sea monsters are commonplace in Liyue, since the other-shore is an unknown region that lies outside of Teyvat. Without the protection of The Seven, all that lies beyond is unknown chaos. Only power beyond the order of Teyvat is able to stain the power of Rex Lapis black.)

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• Decarabian was the lord of the Mondstadt region before Barbatos rose to power. He created the city now known as stormterror's lair, and forced his subjects to play along with his dream of eternal power.

(Decarabian Fragments: The place now known as Stormterror's Lair was once the capital city of Decarabian, the God of Storms. Since this dream of prosperity was created entirely by his divine might, the broken pieces left behind by the shattering of that dream still possess great power. Decarabian, the God of Storms, was content with the capital city he had raised, and accepted the worship of the people from atop his tower. But he knew not that the people did not bow to him out of respect or adoration. The people did not bow to Decarabian out of respect or adoration, but because the harsh winds had laid them low. This was the shattered dream and ambition of the Anemo Archon before the rise of Barbatos. He tried so hard to make his dream come true, and so the fragments of that dream are still mighty. Andrius once declared war upon Decarabian, but failed to even scratch the capital of the Lord of the Tower. If it were not for the song of freedom that shattered the city in an instant, Decarabian's dream would have gone on forever.)
(Teyvat Travel Guide, Mondstadt: Brightcrown Canyon leads to this huge ruin of an ancient city which was built by the cruel King of Gales, Decarabian. The city was built in a ring-shape. It seems that every resident of the city had been arranged their own spot between the inner and outer rings. Right in the center of the city was the tall tower where the King of Gales resided. The ruins of the domain of this cruel king, who once tried to control his people’s lives, are now utterly deserted.)

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• Not all of our current gods may be noble, and not all of the dead / defeated gods were evil:

(Diary of Roald the Adventurer: Sal Terrae: From the scale of this ruin, I suspect it is the temple that provided safe refuge for civilians during the Archon War several millennia ago. I’ve heard that the Goddess of Salt built such a place. Liyue folklore holds that she was the gentlest of the gods. In the brutality and chaos of wartime, human beings were puny and disposable. But the Salt Goddess refused to join the other gods in their senseless battle for dominance, instead choosing to give shelter to those dispossessed by the war. She brought them here to build a new settlement. She showed them kindness and comfort. And even as global upheaval ushered in the end of an epoch, she worked tirelessly to bring about a return of peace between the Archons. The gentlest of the Archons fell not in battle at the hands of the other Archons. She fell at the hand of her own people, the people she had loved so dearly.)
(Diary of Roald the Adventurer: Guyun Stone Forest: I had the most awful night's sleep last night. I dreamt I was somewhere pitch-black and damp. Suddenly, I was a sea monster, and my impaled body was being driven into the ocean floor by the Geo Archon's polearm. I writhed around and clutched at the giant polearm made of rock, trying desperately to free myself, but it was wedged firmly in place. Each movement I made filled me with agony, and with rage...)

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• (Food for thought) Jiu, a child near Mount Hulao, proclaims Rex Lapis is an usurper, and that the resurrection of an ancient being (the chi?) is coming soon.

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• There is evidence to suggest that the elements may be more important than the gods in terms of natural hierarchy. We know that hilichurls worship the elements themselves and do not appear to draw power from the gods. We also know of elemental leylines of the world, hidden deep within the earth. They create elemental ecosystems of creatures and "organs" to sustain balance, such as Regisvines (and, to a smaller extent, whopperflowers, slimes, etc):

Cryo Regisvine: a monster formed from a vine that was imbued with the essence of biting frost within the Ley Lines. Some studies hold that plants are like the world's organs, harmonizing the turbulent elemental energies of the Ley Lines. Concrete examples of this phenomena are Mist Flowers, Whopperflowers, and the like, which brim over with elemental energy.
Pyro Regisvine: A giant vine that has absorbed the ancient flame that rages within the Ley Lines. It is restless, as if filled with an endless fury. Poets, bards, and even some academics believe that elements also contain emotions and hope. If this is true, then one can only wonder what emotions cause the Pyro Regisvine to burn eternally, writhing like one longing to be free of the confines of the earth...

Ley Line Sprout: It is said that there was a great tree whose roots once spread out to every corner of the world, and this branch is said to be part of it. It is almost if it was never broken off and taken far away, for its vitality is such that it still sprouts new leaves even now.
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Lisa

• Lisa taught Razor how to use his Electro powers:

(When I taught Razor how to utilize Elemental Energy, I never expected him to master the technique so quickly. Come to think of it, you're talented too. Maybe I could teach you a few tricks...)
(Razor Story: "Master, what is... 'friends'?" Razor once asked of his new mentor, working at the limits of his vocabulary. His purple-clothed mentor seemed to know it all, from how to make hash browns from potatoes in the ground, to the name of the brightest star in the summer night sky. However, Lisa simply smiled and yawned without answering him. Razor thought about it when the wind blew, when the rain fell — even when Wolfhook berries got stuck in his fur. He just couldn't figure it out.)

• Lisa used to be much more powerful than she appears to be ingame, but she’s lazy and doesn’t feel like putting in the effort now:

(Hi darling, are you going to be Lisa's little helper? What? Me, a grand mage? That was a long time ago, I'm just a humble librarian now. \chuckles*)*
(Ascension 4: \chuckles* If I were to recover my full power, who knows what kind of things just might happen?)*

• Lisa and Jean appear to be very close, judging by these voicelines:

(\yawns* Good morning, Jean... Oh it's you! Sorry, dear.”)*
(When Lisa is around, I always have peace of mind.)

Alice

• Alice is Klee’s mother and the author of the Teyvat travel guide. She is a cruel sociopath, and has mentioned torturing and killing hilichurls on multiple occasions:

(The three hilichurl tribes located in this valley are all densely populated. What if we built a huge spinning ball-shaped cell in the center of the valley and threw all of the hilichurls into it? That way we might be able to generate enough energy to power all the mills in Mondstadt for at least five years. If we took it one step further by grinding the hilichurls that are too old or too weak into food and feeding them to the strong ones, we might just build ourselves a perpetual motion machine that can support a huge factory like in Snezhnaya!)
(At the center there is a huge oak tree. It is said that Vennessa ascended there. I searched around the tree for a long time but did not find any launching device. I grabbed some hilichurls nearby to put my theory to the test. Sadly, the longest flying distance was from here to the hunters’ huts around Springvale. How disappointing.)
(This valley I found at the northeast coast of Cider Lake is still guarded by ancient mechanisms, but the soldiers responsible for holding the pass for the King of Gales were nowhere to be found now. All the winds of time had left behind were the unintelligent hilichurls and silent mechanical guards. My attempt to control Ruin Guards with hilichurls failed as well. The guard split into pieces, and as for the fate of the hilichurl strapped onto it… I will spare you the gory details.)

Bosses

• The 3 hypostases we know have their names based off the Hebrew alphabet (Beth, Aleph, and Gimel). Also, a hypostasis in philosophy is defined as "the underlying state or underlying substance and is the fundamental reality that supports all else.". Perhaps this would indicate that the hypostases are kind of like representations of the underlying elemental powers that govern the universe?

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• The Oceanid's name, Rhodeia, is derived from Greek mythology: Rhodeia is the daughter of Oceanus, the Titan of the sea. The lore of the Oceanid appears to coincide with that of its real-life counterpart:

(Oceanid description: "A lifeform created from condensed Hydro elements of incredible purity...it is also said by some that Oceanids were once sea creatures from a home far away who carried the fragments of a long-dead god to the many corners of this world. Perhaps they did this so that the love their god held for this world could be spread through the water to all the land...")

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• The Oceanid's voicelines disappear really quickly, so it may be hard for people to focus on what she's actually saying. However, these and the Oceanid's description appear to suggest that it is a noble being that is a defender of pure waters and the people of its home (in this case, the people of the Qingce village). You can decide for yourself whether we're the good guys or bad guys in our battle with the Oceanid:

(When the fight starts: "So, murderers from our homeland have come on a futile journey to harass the people of the Qingce waters...very well then. But be warned, her power shall crush any miscreant that would dare pollute these waters. With no place to flow, even the purest of water will begin to envy the forms of living being who can roam about freely. it is this water that will be used to drown you and the pollution you bring.)
(Upon defeat: "We but only seek tranquil waters. Why should we be denied such a thing? However, as long as lakes and streams still remain, then rain shall continue to fall from the skies and water will never truly disappear...")

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Thank you for reading everything I’ve dumped so far! I haven’t covered too much of Liyue, so I’ll be sure to add more of that soon. I’ll also gladly include anything I’ve missed out on, if you have something new for me to add!

I've been a bit depressed these past few days, which is alright because you need to have some downs to contrast the ups. However, it feels like all I've been doing is scrolling Reddit in a zombie-like state. This is a positive feedback cycle where my sedated state seeks out activity on that frequency, and the passive consumption of meaningless information leads to more low-level feelings. I've been able to break free from this days long funk by pepping myself up with a bunch of coffee and losing myself in fantasies of world domination. Ah! That's something worth talking about: my grand delusions.
After my mom passed away, I spent a lot of time alone. Most of the time I was busy being brainwashed by a hypnotizing level of consumption of video games and TV. So, in those off hours where I was bored with what technology offered me, I would spaz out like the autistic tard I am, lost deep in the fantasies of merging the fictional realities planted in the garden of my imagination and playing with the respective trademarked and copyrighted characters in my mind like girls play house with their dolls. Yet, I was not just mentally masturbating through maladaptive day dreaming. No, having been raised without a meaningful framework from which to derive the nature of reality from, I began filling in the metaphysical gaps with an extreme delve into magickal thinking, where I attributed the totality of everything I knew, real or fictional, to exist in a multidimensional reality wherein I was the center and connected to anything and everything.
Throughout my middle school career, I carefully evolved an entire self-serving mythos to explain the nature of the universe and explain the reasons I suffered as I did. This mostly consisted of taking what nuggets of philosophy and the nuances of working models of reality that I parsed from the stories the media I consumed provided. In particular, I weaved together a crazy narcissistic paradigm using the themes of "God is dead," morality is subjective, and humanity had a potential that was dragged down by a misguided attachment to the light and law, all present in my favorite RPG, Grandia II. In this reality I soon lost myself in, I came to believe that I was the reincarnation of the god of evil, Valmar, and it was my life mission to find my dead sister and conquer the world to prepare humanity for a final battle against the corrupt forces of good and get revenge on the family of deities that shunned me from birth for their convictions for the status quo. Seriously, by the time I was a freshman in college I was prepared to write a whole book series about how the damned were just in revolting against a universe that rejected them, complete with the arrogant social commentary of a militant atheist that preferred the culture of 4chan over the community-binding behaviors of the normal culture. It would have been terrible, primarily because of how self-absorbed and completely oblivious to my own bullshit I was, but it stands that my entire world was defined by the convicted belief that I really was on a divine mission to take over the planet.
But let's back up a second. This obsession wasn't just fueling a vivid imagination that attempted to utilize and explain every piece of media I found interesting or important. It was actively ruining my life by sending me on a path of deluded obsession and feeding into my darker compulsions for vengeance. When I say I was planning on taking over the world, that was my life plan. I didn't have serious goals for what I should go to college for or what sort of career I should pursue. I spent large chunks of every day lost in my mind devising insane strategies for how I could rise in power. Really, this is where my apparent lust for starting a cult began, as my expulsion from high school happened as a result of me trying to form a resistance cell and bomb the school. It all seemed so real, such a necessary and readily apparent goal to chase after above all others. I know this is how much of my schizophrenic reality came about. The more I fed into the delusion that I was being guided by a higher power (I used to believe my future self was sending me messages by scripting events of my life), the more overwhelming the synchronicities telling me that this was my fate became. There were stretches of time that I did nothing but plot elaborate schemes that involved the full obedience of countless minions. Never did I seriously consider an attainable starting point outside of assuming that people would naturally flock to my superior wisdom and infallible and purely evil plan to become the sole ruler of the cosmos.
Hell, my obsession with track was propped up by the idea that I would eventually make it to the Olympics and become a world famous figure. I know that was pieced together by my desperate, lonely brain upon seeing the power I accumulated by rising into the role of being the fastest in the school. The ecstatic attention I got from my dad, my coach, and my teammates as I consistently outperformed myself was definitely the nail in the coffin that got me addicted to pushing myself to my limits. Even though I wasn't making friends in the traditional sense, I was gaining influence and that led to an easier means of interacting with my peers and gave me the confidence to extract the reactions I wanted by being a troll protected from consequences because I was someone important. I was respected, and in some cases feared because without the need to respect boundaries I liked to make people think I was a dangerous psychopath, and with that status I could freely be an ass without repercussions to my social status. I wasn't mean to people, unless my unregulated temper was flaring up, but I was able to further my quest for more attention by being a troll with a deeply disturbed sense of humor. I was known as a freak that could regularly get a laugh out of most of the teenage boys I hung out with by ridiculous displays of not giving a fuck what people thought of me. Yet I was unappealing to the girls for some reason, and I felt compelled to bridge this gap for the sake of finding Eskgaige, the dead deity that was my sister that I named by taking the initials of my crush at the time and translating that in a fictional language I made up. So naturally, being plagued by an array of personality problems and my rejection-fearing mental blockages, I believed that investing 110% of my effort into becoming a running god would beget the girlfriend I so pathetically craved. Many a lonely night was spent dreaming up the scenario where I finally broke that impenetrable barrier and united with the woman of my prophetic destiny who carried the soul fragments of the mystical sister whom I killed in a past life in an uncontrolled rage at the family of gods I truly spawned from that kept me in a hellish, tortured existence. My God did writing that tidbit out make me realize how much time I wasted dreaming up justifications for why I hadn't found that special someone during my troubled school years.
Anyways, moving on, it goes without saying that when I got to college and found how far I was from being the hero the team depended on, and how my antisocial and deviant behavior would not fly in this new world, I kinda collapsed on my sword. My motivation to work hard every day at practice faltered when I was relegated into the position of being the slowest on the team. Admittedly, if I was not bumped up onto the cross country team (I was a 400/800 runner), I may have been able to continue and climb to the heights I so desired. But, the grueling distance workouts combined with being treated as the black sheep of the team that ruined every party by breaking down and crying because alcohol alone did not magickally solve my social deficits eventually resulted in me completely giving up on everything I worked so hard for over the past several years when my IT band popped. I remember waking up the morning I had my first appointment with the sports medicine trainers and morosely contemplating suicide out of the petulant reaction I was going through as a result of fully realizing that my synchronicity-foretold future was a lie. With no aspirations left alive inside me, I didn't even try to recover properly and routinely regressed to faking that my IT band was flaring up to get out of workouts I saw no longer served my mission to rise to fame.
Now, having gotten a girlfriend by the end of my freshman year by forcing myself to squeak out the words "d-d-do you want to go out w-with me sometime?" as my legs shook uncontrollably in front of the most nerdy and quiet girl in my dorm, I started reformulating my quest to take over the world. Not needing fame to secure a female body anymore, and slowly beginning to acknowledge the monumental shortcomings of character, personality, and motivation to follow a reasonable traditional life path, I became enamored with the idea of joining the military. I had some longstanding compulsions of fulfilling my civic duty that stemmed from a compulsion to do the supererogatory thing in memory of the selflessness my mother had showed me growing up, so I naturally fell in line with the brainwashing of ROTC and the National Guard. Yet, my whole value system, to include my conviction to honor my word, was still wrapped up in the belief that I was serving a higher purpose that transcended any oath I took (being so wrapped up in my newfound love of militant atheism, I actually swore to "Got" not God during my swearing in ceremony, and being overjoyed at the fact that my real devotion was still held in service to the future version of me manipulating events of my life to plant the necessary ideas to climb the ladder and accumulate as much power as possible). In fact, I would smile a devilish grin every time we went over what it meant to be a soldier and our obligation to serve and protect because in my mind I was just there to learn how to command others and think strategically so that I may one day lead a coup and literally go to war with the United States. I was completely convinced that I was rapidly going to rise to general status and pull a Caeser one day by crossing a theoretical Rubicon when the clear and apparent revolution/civil war erupted in our country. I spent every class, lab, and lesson eagerly devising how I could use this information to betray the Army and corrupt/weaken it from the inside out. Hell, I fought through the immense emotional turbulence of basic training that once almost resulted in me shooting a drill sergeant with the absolutely crooked devotion to learning how to best imitate a good soldier for the purposes of rising up the ranks by impressing my superiors. Holy shit, I'm looking back on the totality of how far gone I was in this double life of mine that I'm amazed I managed to stay aligned with the expected course load and follow orders for as long as I did.
Well, when combined with my other world-shattering problems, it goes without saying that I did eventually crumble as I failed to assimilate to such a demanding and consuming reality in a blazing fury of the most spectacular dumpster fire my life has ever come to resemble. Sure, I was able to find praise in my athletic ability that allowed me to regularly achieve scores close to 400 on the APFT and my high intellect that earned me a 98 on the ASVAB, but I was a complete failure when it came to the practical lessons a soldier needs to learn in order to achieve something as basic as not dying, and by extension I didn't come close to my peers when it came to being useful. I was a complete fuck up, a total Gomer Piles, and was reminded of this every day. During the summer between semesters, I managed my crowning achievement of my drill sergeants calling me the dumbest smart person they ever met. Then during the school year, my ROTC cadre would have regular meetings with me to address the long list of issues they had with my behavior and performance. I remember completely failing to learn how to tie a single knot in the most frustratingly perplexing lab and going berserk on a fellow cadet and choking him for the well-deserved chuckle my ineptitude generated. I remember the looks of disgust I got for doing my report on leadership on Erwin Rommel, whom stood out as fairly neutral among my /pol/ inspired cast of role models. I remember being pulled aside by concerned MSIV's and having them routinely offer assistance in learning things that should be basic common sense to anyone with a functioning brain. I remember stimulating my autistic brain by rubbing my fingers together in a weird way while meeting with the XO and having him question me for over an hour on that and other weird quirks he and the other cadre had noticed and feeling like a subhuman mutant the entire time. I remember crying myself to bed most nights because I dreaded getting up in the morning to be reminded once again that I was different and would never make a real friend among the ranks of this cursed organization. I remember thinking terrible thoughts to propel me through this tough assimilation period, like my favorite fantasy of the time where I forsook my higher desires to rise to power in favor of the pleasing temptation to just stick it out long enough to get into a position of power and using that to complete my divine mission by deliberately getting as much of my platoon killed as humanly possible. I remember masturbating to trans porn on a daily basis and having the repressed thought of knowing I would never be able to pursue my fantasies of transitioning while I was trapped in such a conservatively controlled culture. I remember fucking my girlfriend and realizing that the sick fantasy of imagining her to be my sister was a degenerative tumor amongst many others and that I had gotten myself into something with dire consequences if the reality in my head ever escaped to be heard by a fellow service member. And all the while, my delusions of grandeur that told me in was on the right path to world domination mutated into an masochistic roller coaster that I was forced to silently ride and bear the pain of without any means to talk about my true intentions or express the actual nature of my suffering, and I slowly grew obsessed with the deranged notion that my future was not about taking over the world, but causing as much damage to the United States of America as possible. I grew sick, as the easier to achieve desires of doing something like unleashing an indignant fury of bullets into my peers and superiors became more and more appealing in my desperation to stop the endless suffering I stupidly signed myself up for. Thank God I cracked when I did, that's all I have to say.
Needless to say, the turbulent nature of my bipolar tendencies surging uncontrollably from the unresolvable dual reality I was stuck in drove me to the brink of self-harm and risk-taking behavior. I was stealing from local stores almost every day, mostly choosing to take sources of DXM and diphenhydramine, having no other means to become intoxicated because I was still underage and completely undersocialized. Even though these drugs were far from being especially enjoyable, I loved escaping into a world where nothing mattered, where my compulsory duties no longer mattered, and I could forget my dreams of world domination and all the synchronicities compelling me to bear the pain and stay the course. As I succumbed to this rampant non-solution to my problems, I let myself believe that I was actually on Earth to enjoy all the pleasure I could find and nothing else mattered but my joy and my joy alone. How could other people matter? They weren't trapped in an eternally damned story where soulless pursuits of temporary happiness were all the universe had to offer as an alternative to the deeply-entrenched pain of my worrisome and doomed life.
My all-round performance started suffering and I stopped going to a lot of my classes. At the same time, I was finding peace in the belief that nothing mattered, and my first cynic instincts beyond my existing ability to ignore social norms began to take root. I remember one day coming to the raised edge of a platform and carefully walking along it, suddenly aware that I didn't actually care if people thought I was being weird and I started walking freely around campus on azimuths never before travelled. In the wake of this revelation about my true freedom, wherein I became selfishly unbound by any and all social obligations and synchronous compulsions, I started up a conversation with a random weird girl I had crossed paths with several times that semester. For the first time in my life, having discarded all compulsions to be the person I thought I should be, I was unafraid of opening up to a woman and as a result of being so "liberated," I regretfully wound up in her room, where we discussed the nature of the universe, which resulted in me lustfully creating an explanation that we were here to love each other, and boldly kissing her. She returned the affection, but the sudden frightful acknowledgement of the nature of the situation sobered me back up into my worrywart reality. Realizing I could potentially lose my girlfriend whom I was in a mostly long-distance relationship with at this point, I brought up my relationship status and questioned her thoughts on polyamory. This deservedly caused her to call me an asshole, which lingered in my mind over the next few days until it pissed me off during my next regular temper tantrum causing me to sociopathically carve a mythical cursed symbol that had meaning only to me into her door and prompted me to slice the first wound that would heal to become the start of the tally mark scars on my left arm.
This psycho transgression got noticed by the school and I had to go back to therapy and get medicated (I had previously been forced to see the head of the consoling department in my freshman year after I had the worst drunken explosive episode of my life and threatened a team mates life and spewed racially-charged comments at him in a bout of jealousy that transcended my feelings for him and his success with women and was really a reflection of my intense hateful anger and gross feelings of inadequacy surfacing in the drunken stupor of a fated night of partying). During this time, I lied profusely, refusing to acknowledge I had any real problems, but playing along with their analysis and suggestions as I shamelessly continued my hedonistic pursuits unabated by any guilt or desire to put the work in to improve. Even though I was still following the path I was expected to walk out of habit and lack of alternative, I had given much conscious thought to committing suicide and mostly relegated myself to the belief and excuse that my life was over. Didn't stop me from seeking out all manners of distractions, though. Most regretfully during this time, I started lurking on Craigslist and found a trans woman that I met after only a few messages and had a terrible one night stand with her. Thankfully, the awfulness and complete awkwardness of the encounter deterred me from seeking out further affairs with anyone other than my girlfriend, whom I was now treating as a sex object and being the epitome of a red-pilled incel misogynistic piece of shit to. Although, and this is funny, because I was once secretly robotripping during a visit from her, I convinced her that smelling her armpits was a new fantasy of mine, and I was forced to keep up that odd lie over the next few months to hide the fact that I had really just been locked into the boundary-dissolving aspect of behaving like an unhinged lunatic and believed in the moment that the scent of her pheromones would magickally intensify my orgasm, which I was impossible to achieve because DXM makes your ding dong feel like rubber.
It goes without saying that in time, my drug-addled mind started breaking down. One morning I woke up to a conversation between two unseen actors, that commented on everything I did getting ready for PT, screamed obscenities as I pushed through the burn, and then told me to go jump in the river and kill myself on my way back to my dorm. Similar auditory hallucinations plagued me to a lesser extent in the weeks that followed. I arrogantly didn't think anything of it; quite the contrary, I found it fascinating to experience my own consciousness disembodied this way. It wasn't until I suffered a total aura migraine and went blind for a day that I began to take seriously the problems of messing with these OTC drugs. That didn't stop me though, as I was addicted to escaping the duress of being a complete and total failure, degenerate, and all-round fuck up. Not knowing what to do, I started hurting myself in the desperation that someone would notice and get me the help I needed. The only person that showed any concern was my girlfriend who was too good for me, and when she convinced me to go to the hospital, I started opening up about believing her to be my real, heavenly sister. Everybody's reaction to me treating my first and only love as a relative and confirming we were enjoying an incestual relationship completely terrified me from revealing the truthful totality of how I had functionally jury-rigged my mind into believing over the years. Or at the very least let myself be shamefully convinced to obey whatever self-serving synchronous seeds were planted and forgo the rational choices available to me and sin like my life depended on it. I did not trust the doctors and believed they were secretly working with the army to extract evidence that I had conspired against the military and government, and I was one misspoken fact away from being sentenced to a cruel punishment for treason, that I started changing my story halfway through telling it and completely stopped caring about getting the help I knew I needed. As my stay in the hospital stretched from days to weeks, I started telling them tall tales that had a basis in reality but ultimately hid the truth of the dimension of serious problems that had sent me there in the first place. Omitting and obfuscating my darkest intentions and the belief system I had yet to objectively assess as batshit insane was my highest priority, overtaking the need to make sense or accurately reflect why I was behaving the way I was. Just as with the time I got expelled, I refused to betray the higher power and personal destiny I had complete faith in by revealing it existed, and instead chose to accept the consequences of whatever the authority I was in the grips of believing the tip of the iceberg they saw was all that was really the issue. I was labeled as having an acute psychotic episode, with Bipolar II and Intermittent Explosive Disorder.
With the full extent of my schizophrenia safely kept hidden, I was released and questioned by my concerned cadre. I was through with toeing the line of this rotten institution that was too good for me, so I made no attempt at recovering, instead choosing to return to the comforts of the only drugs available to me and honestly depicting the nature of the struggle I had kept under wraps for so long without actually revealing that I had secretly planned to slaughter as many of their uniformed robots as possible while hurting from the constant reminders that I was inadequate and defective. Thus began the process of being transferred to a unit in New York, where it was decided by all the cadre involved that I would return in order to stay with my father. I was relieved that this nightmare was ending, and let loose with the deviant behavior before I left, taking some substantial risks with the doses I was taking and irresponsibly wandering around in a delirious stupor most nights in the hopes that an adventure would spontaneously develop. Boy howdy did I get bold with other boundary-shattering escapades as well. I might not have gotten completely naked while running across campus, but I cam say with a regretful pang of embarrassment that I tried hard to ruin my life in the worst way possible. Sweet sinning saints sodomizing savage sailors, how boundless a person's lack of care metastasizes when any consequences can be happily erased with a sharp knife ready and waiting to brutally tear apart their willingly-exposed throat, followed by the desperate mutilation and evisceration of a body that has long sought to be removed from all the crowded groupings of people a hurting mind categorizes the world into for the sake of protecting itself because it is forced to bear the pain of standing in a lonely box that was constructed to hold only one soul whose fear and loathing have trapped it by such pitiful circumstances and compulsions that keep it from ever having a real chance at fixing its perceived barriers that disdained social failures have created in the first place as a natural conclusion to events beyond that persons control. I dunno. Sometimes a long sentence feels like the right conclusion to admitting I was a leper at this time of my life and did stupid, dangerous things as a result of believing the magick wand of suicide could solve any and all problems.
Without continuing on that subject more than we have to, a result of everything progressing with no real reprieve or corrective suggestion from the universe in sight was my synchronicities continuing to devolve from a guiding hand that helped me push forward on my mission to a demonic impulse that lurked watching from the shadows and tempted me with the perpetual desires to only serve my need to indulge the flesh in a vain attempt at forgetting how much of a loser I actually was. This continued for years as I regressed to a reclusive life of masturbation-driven escapism, and all the will to do something truly inspiring or meaningful with my life fell to the wayside. My social skills atrophied over the years of reclusively rejecting the outside world while I grew increasingly paranoid as I again succumbed to the pressures of what other people thought of me, transforming my reality into one of harsh judgment and persecution, as obviously everyone knew what my life had regressed into and sought to conspire against me because I was a complete and total parasite that deserved to die. I reached a point where I only left the house for two primary reasons. I did manage to convince myself to go to therapy and be treated as a guinea pig as the list of doctors I went through tried every permutation of cocktail out there to help with the symptoms I continued to report inaccurately. Both sets of appointments with my highly talented forensic psychologist and my regularly disposed of psychiatrists were trials of deception as I tried to hide the true nature of my fallen and depraved lifestyle. My psychologist knew what I was really up to though. Holy shit am I grateful he never reported me for anything like malingering during the initial stage of our relationship where I didn't trust him and continued to present a set of problems he easily saw through. Always trust your mental health team, folks. They really do want what's best for you, no matter how shameful the issues you are hung up may seem. And on that note, the second reason I would ever willingly leave the house was to go on the occasional date or meet a potential friend I hoped to get real drugs from. I taught myself a lot about the nuances of marketing and advertising, the hallmarks of a fisher of men, during this period of my life as I managed to secure semi-regular connections with other lonely strangers through a brazen campaign of chasing every possible lead I could find through online networking. Dating sites offered some support in my vice-driven pursuits, but really I'm proud of how clever I became in creating successful pain on the Craigslist personals. Had a lot of fun trolling people on there as well. However, despite my ability to attract a lot of attention to myself, I had difficulty reeling anything in. I felt like I was on a futile quest to move past being acquaintances as I tried in vain to lie away all my shortcomings and present myself as the person I thought each potential new contact wanted to meet rather than just being my authentic self. Often, I picked up on their awareness to my deception and grew hyperconscious of my flawed character, further fueling my paranoia and fear of people. Sometimes I would literally run away from people as they began saying things that sparked a whole galaxy of concerning and worrisome thoughts. Other times I felt frozen in place, like I had to take the ridicule from this person as punishment for being so shallow with my pathetic attempts at being someone I'm not. Occasionally, I would scrape by and be able to mostly be myself with someone that was more like me than not, and when I accomplished winning their trust, I did manage to enjoy the infrequent spoils of sex, camaraderie, and better drugs. Once I found myself in my first gay relationship, which I ended up ruining with my addict-like quality of getting as drunk or as high as humanly possible whenever possible. Still, it was nice to safely admit that I had desires to dress like a woman, and oh joyous hell ravens what a pleasure it was to lose my anal virginity to someone gentle and caring enough to take things slow with my trauma-induced terror-stricken mind that was continued to believe he was trying to give me AIDS well after him earning my trust. Not that it matters to this story, but I had yet to deeply explore my psyche and discover that I can find that peace of mind and let go to enjoy the full, thrilling and mindless pleasure of being a naughty bottom by regressing in age to a time when I wasn't aware and thus didn't have a care in the world about the threat of AIDS. If you're curious, and if you're reading this far into my diatribe of unfiltered confessions you faithful audience member you, that was before the fateful evening where my dad took me upstairs and showed me a whole website of diseased genitals to condition me to never have unsafe sex. This was a year after my mom died, when I was ten, and as a result I started having irrational fears about getting AIDS at that time, so I'm sorry if this makes you uncomfortable but I like entering into the free-spirited little persona that I had around the age of nine when being receptive of men's bulging needs. TMI? Oh well, not my problem. Chalk up another victim to my free speech jihad.
Returning to our actual story, it wasn't until I anonymously started posting an array of creepy and provoking ads looking for a pervert sister in a final, completely defeated attempt to come across someone, anyone that could handle my true self that I thankfully discovered my lifelong friend who saved me from the rapidly approaching conviction to kill myself. She was so nice in her greeting and shared a lot of facts about herself like her infatuation with obscure old computer games that I felt like I hit the jackpot right away. Still, my defensive, analytic mind got caught up on the paranoid belief that she was working with people concerned that such a degenerate was flooding the local internet with disturbing posts, and she was saying whatever was necessary to win my trust so she could spy on me. Despite these lingering fears, her unbelievable generosity to buy me a new laptop three days after we started to message each other gave me the confidence to begin trusting this weird but wholly compassionate woman who wound up spending almost every waking moment in contact with me as I began to fill with life once more. With her help and the ensuing feelings of gratefulness that the universe could possibly be so kind despite my history of transgressions, I gathered the courage to take back my life and start to free myself from all the challenges that previously held me back and caused such a self-destructive implosion when I couldn't cut it in this world. I had fallen so far, and had allowed my mind to atrophy and become fixated on hedonistic escapism, that all the fanciful delusions that carried me for years before my regretful regression had been put on the shelf and were gathering dust in the back of my unconscious mind. As I continued to video chat with my first sister day after day, my energy soared into the stratosphere, and I had no where to direct it all but the ancient demands and estranged outlook that had once made me believe I was a god of pure evil in a world of corrupted light, and it was my mission in this life to correct the mistaken fools and actual sources of all that is wrong in this world. Soon, when combined with the synchronous messages I was getting from all the activities we were able to enjoy doing together over the internet, my new best friend and I agreed that we were here on this planet to accomplish something great. I just didn't know what yet.
Fast forward some months and we reach a critical series of events that sent me starting down the path I've zealously devoted my life to finishing. You see, when I networked with some cool people here on Reddit during this period, I managed to finally get my hands on some acid and experience my first psychedelic upgrade. It was a normal meeting where we smoked some weed and played some civilization at his house, but my heart skipped a beat when he mentioned he had some of the one drug I had fantasized about trying for years by this point. I bought some and took it the next day when I was home alone.
My belief that it would just be another fun means of mental masturbation rapidly dissolved along with so many blockages and attachments to my past that I had erected over the years as I wallowed in the belief that I was broken and would never accomplish anything in this world that I convinced myself I was maladapted for. During that eight hour trip, I revisited with a fresh and creative mind the forsaken framework I had chiseled all my current reality from. The notion of being a revived god, my overwhelming desires to take over the world, and my repressed desires to freely romp about this Earth and thoroughly enjoy the many bodies I relegated myself to merely dreaming about while on my back in front of my computer with my erection in hand all were visited in their totality that strangely serene day, and never before have I ever been so convinced that my destiny was clear and apparent and no other journey would be as satisfying as vigorously clawing after those spirited desires deep within me in a constructive manner that would beget many rewards as I followed a plan that was not only realistically plausible to pull of, but would feel automatic and natural for me to progress with. In but a few graceful moments of reflection, the revelation that I was a living deity was reborn with a frenzy of willpower to carry me along, and I began scheming for grand accomplishments once again. As I regaled myself with excellent ideas and eager ambitions, I gazed into my brothers toybox and saw two plastic eggs. A synchronous conversation with my friend who sold me the acid had planted the idea of what a music career could allow me to do, and that mixed with my sister's advice of not letting the preconceived limitations of a traditional path dictate how I proceed in life, giving me the clear vision of becoming a juggling superstar. It was perfect. I knew I had the brain and body to transcend the normal expanse of juggling talent, and it was a perfectly novel move to make that would make marketing myself in a sea of boring conformity a breeze. Somehow, my future self was showing me what I would become, and in the months that followed I was completely absorbed by the quest to transmute my present self into the master I was destined to be. Without another second to lose, I picked up those eggs and began hours of practice tossing them about every which way, as I knew the fastest way to condition my reflexes was to throw random stimuli at my algorithmic attention, and as you can clearly see, the results speak for themselves.
And that's that. Now you know where my insane desires to form a cult and take over a local government stem from. This idea has evolved tremendously over the years, picking up nuances and other detailed insights from the many mouths of God, and will continue to change shape and direction as I too change on my strange but divinely-chosen path. I know I can do much good sharing my story and all the wisdom I've acquired living in the riveting pages of a book that I hope is worth reading by the time I finish writing the final chapter and move on to the next story that calls my unusual soul to begin with an exciting chapter that uses everything from this blessed tale and manifests a sequel that defines the pataphysical essence to be. Every day I invest more in this plan to make my life one worth living, and every day my reality progressively warps into one most functional for accomplishing the goals I have dedicated my life to chasing after. We may still have a long ways to go, and I have many problems and challenges to still overcome, but no one can deny that my grand delusions and bizarre fantasies have driven me to the doorstep of greatness. I knock loudly and proudly at the portal fate has provided me, and whether I become a saint or a devil in the eyes of the masses does not matter. What I care about is living a life that evokes a sense of oneness and moral fulfillment within me, and having this journey I'm on inspire all the strange, weird, and totally nuts to not conform to the expectations projected on them by people so unlike them, and chase after their most authentic dreams like the mystic maniacs they are. And if I can help some normal people on the many traditional paths available to them, then I'll be that much happier with my mission. Until then though, I have to keep working hard and actualize the reality that the oracle named Lucy showed me was possible to travel to. So, that's what I'm going to do! Thank you for reading my long regurgitation of things very personal to me, and I wish you the best of luck in the chosen pursuits of your life, whatever they may be, no matter how weird, fanciful, possible, socially acceptable, or legal they may be. Much love, and don't forget to take the cat out of the oven. It's probably dead by now. It might not even be edible anymore. Whatever. What's done is done. Don't mind me, I'm talking to a specific daemon running random.exe in my head. Best of luck on your own journeys, whomever may have spent the eternity reading this. Thank you for joining me, for whatever reason compelled you to travel this far along on my rambling confession and authentic release of things that I've never shared with the world. It means a lot, friend <#

Tomorrow is exactly 18 year's since Audrey was last seen. Her case is full of details and police involvement and investigation, but is still unsolved with no leads ever leading to an arrest.
Audrey May Turk Herron was 31-years-old at the time of her disappearance. She had a 10-year-old daughter, Sonsia, at the time with her first husband, and two younger children, Katie and Quinn, with her second and at the time current husband Jeff Harron.
Thursday, August 29th, 2002
At 9:30 p.m. the night of August 29th, Audrey called home to her husband Jeff from her work. She told Jeff she was excited to have just gotten a raise at work.
Audrey finished her shift as a part-time nurse at the Columbia Greene Long Term Health Care Facility at around 11:00p.m. in Catskill, New York. She was last seen walking to her 1994 black Jeep Grand Cherokee in the parking lot of her office, saying goodnight to her coworkers. One coworker claims that Audrey drove behind her for a few minutes after leaving the office. Audrey took the same commute to and from work every day, and that night she left work heading home westbound on State Route 23 in the Jefferson Heights area of Catskill. On the night of the 29th the weather was rainy and foggy, and Audrey may have taken another way along this route to avoid driving on a dangerous path in that weather, though it’s unknown if she did. Any other way to get home would be a significant detour and would have added a lot of time to her drive. The drive from the nursing facility to Audrey’s home in Freehold, New York is about 12-15 miles, about 15 minutes.
Audrey usually arrived home from work by 11:30p.m., but didn’t that night according to her husband. Jeff later recounted that he woke up at around 2:00 a.m. the morning of August 30th, and he decided to do some dishes. He noticed Audrey was not home at this time but rationed that maybe she had decided to work overnight and didn’t tell him. He then went back to bed. It's been reported in some outlets that Ron, Jeff's father, called him in the middle of the night, but no reason behind this or what was talked about has been mentioned. Many of Audrey’s friend later on say that this is extremely odd for Jeff. He was extremely persistent that Audrey must call him whenever she is leaving some place or going somewhere, he had a habit of needing to know where she was at all times and if she didn’t call him, he would be extremely anger and would repeatingly call her or call around to anyone she knew to locate her.
Friday, August 30th, 2002
Jeff called Audrey’s mother the morning of August 30th, 2002, at around 6:00 a.m. Audrey’s mother, Shirley and Audrey’s 10-year-old daughter, Sonsia, had just returned from a trip to Florida. They had both been in contact with Audrey during their trip, and remember Audrey being very excited to see her daughter when she returned. Shirley and Sonsia had arrived home the previous night on the 29th, and went straight to Shirley’s home. Earlier that day, Shirley had called Audrey about picking up her daughter from her home the following day, and Audrey told her mother she had a doctor’s appointment the next morning (the 30th), but would pick up Sonsia after that.
When Jeff called Shirley around 6:00 a.m., he asked if Audrey was at her home, as Audrey had stayed at her mothers for the night in the past. Shirley said she wasn’t but didn’t think anything of it at the time, and Jeff never mentioned Audrey hadn’t come home the night before. About an hour later, Jeff called Shirley again telling her that Audrey hadn’t come home from work the previous night and he was concerned. Jeff than got in contact with Audrey’s stepmother, who used to work in law enforcement, who reported Audrey missing at around 10:00 a.m. (some accounts claim that Jeff called the police at 6:00 a.m. to report Audrey missing, but according to the officer who received the phone call, he received it at 10:00 a.m.).
On August 30th, Jeff also called around too many of her friends to let them know he could not locate Audrey, after she was reported missing. One of Audrey’s friends, Corrina, recalls getting a voicemail from Jeff at 1:00 p.m. on the 30th saying, “Hi Corrina, it’s Jeff Harron. We’re having trouble locating Audrey. If you’ve heard from her, please call me. Thank you.” Corrina has been very vocal that Jeff did not sound concerned in this voicemail, just sad. Corrina has wondered why Jeff didn’t contact her earlier in the morning before Audrey was reported missing, as she was one of Audrey’s best friends and Audrey had stayed the night with her before. She also wondered why Jeff sounded low-toned and sad on the voicemail, instead of panicked and concerned, considering it was less than a day into not being able to locate Audrey. This is all Corrina’s personal take on the voicemail.
Search Effort
A group of Audrey’s friends got together on the evening of August 30th to walk the route she would have taken home that night, trying to look for her or her vehicle on the roadside. Audrey’s route was along the main road of State Route 23 until she turned onto a side road that she would have driven for about 5 minutes until reaching home. The group felt that it was raining that night and Audrey had driven off the road due to the poor weather and that they would find her and her car right away, but didn’t find anything. Her friends also produced flyers and began fundraising to produce funds to aid in the search efforts.
Law enforcement got involved quickly and began their search. The common thought in the beginning of the search was that Audrey was in an accident, considering that her vehicle was missing along with her. Information was sent out to be on the lookout for Audrey, and her 1994 black Jeep Grand Cherokee. They conducted a 12-mile-radius foot search of the area Audrey would have driven home that night, deep into the woods off the road and an 8-mile-radius search of any buildings, every home, every road, and any body of water that her car could have ended up in. The police searched other detour routes she could have taken that night. Many helicopter searches were conducted to try and locate her vehicle. Over the years, law enforcement claims to have re-searched this area over a dozen times.
Though it was 2002, Audrey did have a cellphone that she kept in her car at all times. When law enforcement tried pinging the phone’s location, they soon found that the phone had either been disconnected, turned off, or had died. The police department claims that Audrey’s purse was at her home and not in the vehicle with her that she disappeared in. Many in her life feel that Audrey would have brought her purse with her that day to work no matter what, which makes them question if Audrey did make it home that day and something happened there, or something happened to Audrey and her purse was brought back to the house somehow.
Investigators were able to pull only one security camera tape from the area where Audrey was last seen.
“We only have one grainy video from Cumberland Farms in which it appears that [Audrey’s] vehicle does leave her place of employment and basically turn left, going west on country route 23-B. That’s the last of any kind of technological evidence we had,” Senior Investigator Kusminsky said. “We can’t confirm it’s the vehicle -- but it appears to be -- because the quality of the video was very poor and very grainy, and it does appear to leave at the time she would have ended work.”
In the years since Audrey’s disappearance, the police have received well over a thousand leads but none of them have ever led to the case being solved. According to current detectives, “There are a couple persons of interest, I would say, but no direct link to her disappearance. At this point, clearly, we suspect foul play. It’s clearly a very frustrating case for us, because there were no solid leads to follow.”
Theories
Jeff Harron
In 1998, Audrey and Jeff had their first child together, Katie. In 1999, claims have come about that Audrey was planning on leaving Jeff that year. From all accounts, Jeff did not treat Audrey’s first daughter, Sonsia, well. The pair were going through a rough patch at that time, and Audrey was extremely upset that Jeff had a habit of yelling at Sonsia. Sonsia later recounts that though Jeff was harsh with her at times, she described herself as a ‘bratty child’ and felt that Jeff was a good stepfather overall. The pair had reconciled sometime during the same year during the same time Audrey discovered that she was pregnant with her second child, Quinn, whom she gave birth to in 2000. Soon after this, the couple moved to Freehold, New York from Coxsackie, New York, and began building their dream home on a golf course that Jeff’s father owned.
His controlling nature on where Audrey was and when she would be home, and how that contradicted with his behavior the day she vanished, is a key factor in why many of her friends feel he is involved. Her friends made an example that if Jeff was expecting her to call at 10:00 p.m., but she did not, he would call yelling at her by 10:03 p.m. wondering where she was and why she didn’t call. It’s strange he didn’t keep this attitude the day she never came home from work, reported by his own account of that night, as he waited till the next day to ask anyone where she was.
When Audrey vanished, Jeff did not search for Audrey himself, nor did his family, and he did not seem to be emotionally overcome by her disappearance according to Audrey’s friends and some family. News outlets, police, and friends, all claimed that during the initial investigation, Jeff was not very cooperative, though he has claimed he was. Despite these allegations, Jeff did contribute monetarily to the search for his wife. Audrey’s friends created a fund to hire a private investigator, and went door-to-door in the area selling car wash tickets and coupons to earn funds. Jeff’s family came from money, his father owned a golf course that Jeff also had a part in. Jeff donated $1,000 to the fund, which the public felt was not enough and suspect considering the wealth that his family had at the time. Jeff has claimed that he was not very active the search and fundraising for Audrey, and kept a low profile in the media, because he did want his children to be the media for their own protection.
About 2 months after Audrey disappeared, Jeff was contacted by the Montel Williams Show to come on and talk about Audrey’s disappearance, but he declined. Audrey’s friends were then contacted by the show 10 months after Audrey disappeared, who did end up going on the show, feeling that this was a great opportunity to get Audrey’s case out to the public and produce new leads. Audrey’s friends feel it was extremely disappointing and suspicious of Jeff rejecting the chance to get Audrey’s case out to the public 2 months after she vanished.
In 2017, Crime Watch Daily attempted to talk to Jeff at his home to interview him but he declined. Ron, Jeff’s father, was interviewed during this segment and commented that he felt his son was not involved whatsoever, and that Audrey and her vehicle could have been crushed altogether or her or her car could have been put into a shipping container and sent somewhere.
An investigator for the county in which Audrey disappeared from was interviewed for this segment and revealed that the police department did a lie detector test on Jeff at the time of Audrey’s disappearance, which came back inconclusive. Supposedly, Ron, Jeff’s father, pulled him out of the lie detector test in the process. Jeff has been recalled as being “cooperative to an extent”. Though this could be something to create suspicion, lie detectors tests are not an accurate way of gathering information and aren’t often admissible in court due to their inaccuracy. Jeff has also allowed authorities to search his property three times.
Sonsia, who is Audrey’s oldest daughter and not biologically related to Jeff, has been very defensive of him and believes he is innocent. She feels that the media has portrayed him incorrectly, she admits that Audrey and Jeff argued a lot when she was younger but doesn’t feel he is violent, and that he had anything to do with her mom’s disappearance.
There doesn’t seem to be a monetary reason for Jeff to want to kill Audrey. She didn’t have life insurance at time and he would have received no money from her death or disappearance. His father was always very rich, and Jeff himself did well and didn’t struggle with finances.
Jeff has never been named a suspect formally but has never been ruled out either. Jeff
The Russian Mob
The golf course that Jeff’s father, Ron Harron, owned, was also the spot that Audrey and Jeff had begun building their new home. The golf course was owned in part by a silent partner, who was believed to be a Russian national involved in organized crime. It’s been confirmed that a Russian national bought into the golf course with Jeff’s dad, Ron. When asked by this Russian mob connection to Audrey’s disappearance, Jeff claims that Audrey walked into an argument amongst this Russian partner, Ron, and Jeff, about Ron wanting to evict the Russian from the property for some reason, whether due to finances or security, and that could have been a part of Audrey’s disappearance.
It’s also been claimed Ron owned the Russian mob money and that killing Audrey was a “warning” to pay up. Jeff seems to have put some stock into this theory, but continued to work at the golf course after Audrey vanished despite the fact he felt that this Russian mob tie in could be a possibility.
This theory was investigated by police, but nothing came of it, though it is still a point that police are looking into always.
Not Publicly Named Persons of Interest
A rumor began that a maintenance man who worked at her job at the Columbia Greene Long Term Health Care Facility had been flirty towards Audrey, who at first was nice about it, but when the flirting intensified, she told the man she was not interested. This lead was looked into with nothing coming from it.
In 2016 a tip came into police about a man, by his sister, whose mother worked at the health care facility along with Audrey, who could be involved. Apparently, this man had seen Audrey there while visiting his mother one time, and could have taken an interest in her. This individual has a criminal history of rape and attempting kidnapping, which made police consider him deeply. The tip made included that Audrey’s body could be at his property, but a draining of the pond near his Catskill home and a search of his property with cadaver dogs brought up nothing.
This theory is what Shirley, Audrey’s mom, and Sonsia, Audrey’s daughter, feel is the closest to the truth about what happened to Audrey. Audrey’s mom theorizes that this man could have been hiding in her Jeep before Audrey got in to leave work that day, because the back doors on her Jeep apparently did not lock, and she was grabbed then. Audrey was recorded on CCTV leaving her work with nothing wrong from what it seemed, though there is no knowledge from what came after she left the facility parking lot.
Neither of these theories seem to have been ruled out.
A Car Accident
This was the first theory police and the public believed, but after extensive searches of the area with nothing coming up, it is no longer believed by police. Police have always stated that they believe foul-play is now involved, considering her vehicle has never been located. Despite extensive searching of the surrounding area, is it possible that Audrey fell victim to a car accident whether along her normal route or an alternative route, due to the weather that night, and her car has never been located?
Did Audrey leave willingly?
There is no indication Audrey left willingly, nor any reason why she may want to, though it has been theorized. Audrey loved her job, and even received a pay increase the day she vanished. She was a devoted mother to her children and had a great social life. Her relationship with Jeff, though rocky at times, seemed like a somewhat stable one. Tips have come in over the years of sightings of Audrey alive in other parts of New York, and even neighboring states, but nothing has ever come from looking into these leads. Some reports state that Audrey was seen in Cairo, New York, though this hasn’t been proved. Is it possible Audrey left and started a new life?
Audrey Harron & her 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee have never been found.
Audrey is described as a Caucasian female, 5’0”, 106 lbs, with dark blonde hair and hazel eyes. She was 31-years-old at the time she vanished and would now be 49. Audrey has been known to wear eyeglasses. She has a scar on her right thumb that also covers a portion of her hand, and a mole on the inside of her right knee. Herron is of petite size. She smoked cigarettes. Herron's maiden name is Turk.
She was last seen wearing a blue turtleneck, dark green medical scrubs, a yellow gold necklace with a pendant reading "#1 Mom," and a watch with a white leather band and white metal face.
Audrey’s car was a black 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee with New York license plates numbered X233UV. The vehicle had no fog lamps, and minor damage to the front passenger side bumper.
What do you think happened to Audrey?
References
Charley Project
NBC News
News 10
True Crime Daily
DailyFreeman
The Vanished Podcast

I’d woken up early one again. I tottered downstairs, holding tight to my dressing gown and curling my toes up with each step, so as not to let my slippers, well, slip off. They had a tendency to do that.
I could feel the morning chill hanging heavy in the house, as if it had as much right to be there as I did- perhaps more, it had lived here longer than we had, after all. The windows had grown a coat of icy condensation, but it failed to hide the lands of endless shadow behind them. Muted both in aesthetic and sound – I always thought that was odd. The background noise and artificial light that most people are accustomed to, to a point where they’re not even noticed – like the tip of your nose peeking in your vision – were absent here. And, the sheer lack of, well, either, was ironically deafening and blinding. I missed them a lot.
At this time of morning, the house may have been situated in the centre of space, or some vast endless void. There was nothing but inky blackness that pressed in around us in every direction, as if we were a foothold, a mere redoubt of life and vibrancy that it, at all costs, must snuff out.
I made my way to the kitchen, muttering a prayer beneath my breath which was answered when I switched on the light and the old room bloomed into vision. It was antiquated here – everything in the house was - the décor left a lot to be desired; the drapes were moth-eaten and dusty, but that was neither here nor there, as they were never used. Why should they be? There were no eyes from man, nor beast, that we had to block.
There was a stag’s head protruding from the wall, its fur somehow growing matted and in desperate need of grooming. I could only assume that occupants before us had placed their greasy, oily hands on the poor soul’s bust. One of its antlers was broken in half, the missing counterpart nowhere to be found. The old table that sat in the middle of the room was sturdy, considering its scraped and effaced state, but the sturdiness was mostly due to the fact that some unknown master of DIY had affixed a great wooden block to a broken leg.
More often than not in here, the generator gave way, and I had to wake my dad up early to go down to the basement and fix it. He’d tried to show me how to do it, but, outside of revving the little cord, I was at a loss. But, if I was being honest, I didn’t want to let them know I could be relied on to do it – especially since I was the one who woke first most times.
The basement was old, dreary, dark- it was everything horror movies and childish nightmares gave warning klaxons about. I knew there was never going to be some assailant waiting, crouched and hidden in some corner, nor that there any supernatural entity, whether I believed in them or not (a constantly battle of logic versus wild imagination) would be drifting, in miserably solitude, in the dank sub-room, awaiting to harass me as I descended… but still, when your body tenses up, hairs stand on end and goose pimples proliferate across your body as if each a vector of some diabolic, terror-fuelled plague, it was best to pay heed and stay away. We have instincts for a reason, after all… and fathers.
With the humming bulb above, bravely illuminating the dated room against all odds, I checked the decking held tight around the walls of the old home. It was bathing in the weak glow coming from within, and I could see that it had rained in the night. The wood, dark and moist, was splintered and mossy. It rose only about a foot from the creeping weeds that were the duty of the ‘temporary residents’. It was usually my mother’s job to wage war on those, but, after realising they would forever grow back within a week, she made it a monthly job. I’d escaped being drawn into that one, thus far.
I filled the kettle with water, which was, thankfully, as crystal clear as you’d want water to be. Water, just like electricity on demand, wasn’t something we could take for granted out here. I placed the old thing on its base, letting the little orange flickering light give me the queue to wait, and rested my sleepy head on the counter, humming some song that had wormed its way into my sub-conscious. I hummed because, should I try to find a lyric, I’d be searching fruitlessly.
The kettle started to roil and bubble behind me, but I decided to wait for the button to click up, and the unfurling steam to waltz carelessly into the slatted roof above, before I moved away from my current state of comfort. I opened the cupboard, lifting it up on the hinge (which I’d learned quickly) and fished out the rather bulbous baby-blue mug that I had incidentally claimed as my own since we were positioned here. Then, I smiled to hear the little tinkle, tinkle, tinkle of coffee granules hit the base, and then poured the boiling water in, letting that hypnotic steam, heavy with the bitterness of the coffee, drift into my nostrils.
I didn’t take milk anymore. We had it, of course, but we’d only have a delivery every two months. It was usually UHT milk, or soya, oat, or almond variants – which I tended to prefer – but, as a general rule, whoever finished the last of the carton had to go and procure more from the stock, which was in the basement. “No, thank you, Mr. non-existent ghost or murderer, you won’t get me today.”
“Fuck,” I uttered aloud, and the sound of my voice was strange when it was the only sound amidst such silence. I forgot to defrost and toast the bread (loaves upon loaves frozen downstairs, but we usually had at least two in the freezer up here). But, I quickly shrugged. Beggars can’t be choosers. I opted for two rich tea digestives, the victuals my mother had fought for against my dad’s commanding officers, and, funnily enough, they seemed terrified of her, and so they sent them along the other provisions (more than she could eat, so, it was never a point of contention within).
Then, quite satisfied, I gave a cursory, greedy sip of the coffee, as I always did, and regretted it, as I always did, when the liquid scolded my lips and tongue where it swilled. As if the biscuits had the power to extinguish the burn, I chomped at the edge of one – it didn’t quell the burn, but at least it gave it was a sweet accompaniment. Then, having conducted my integral morning duties, I shuffled back upstairs, turning the light off as I ascended, condemning the rickety kitchen and mossy, dew-glistened deck to the pre-dawn darkness.
I was cautious not to step on those snitching steps, that groaned and creaked, which I didn’t begrudge them, it was understandable in their old age. I crept across the landing, sticking to the edge for that same reason – I was always the villain if I awoke anyone before the alarm clocks – and traced my free hand across the wallpaper; a once-white, now slightly yellowed canvas with drooping tulips which had, over time, become victims to endless glare and began to fade.
I continued past my room, and opened the door which led to the attic. Strangely enough, I know that the top level of any house is as infamous for the same hidden assailants or vengeful poltergeists as the basement, but, I never felt uneasy here. In fact, I felt very comfortable. Perhaps because this was decorated, rather than old, cracked stone wall which was the backdrop to a network of rusting old pipes.
The attic had the same wallpaper as the landing, and was home to old dusty furniture. A sad old couch, brown and fraying, sat before a rug. I daren’t move the rug, ever, because I was loathe to see what colour lay beneath it, as the floor surrounding it was a murky, soiled variant; an aged echo of what it once was when this place was built.
There were no lights in the ceiling here, something to do with the wiring not reaching all the way up – the house was built pre-electricity, and everything was installed, naturally, post-construction.
The one window in the room sat as the main focal point on the other end of the room - a small, boxed number with a chipped, cracked and soft frame, was now just a black patch; only a few speckled stars offered respite from the darkness. Just next to it, at an angle, was a high-backed chair, one of the legs replaced by a mound of books (none of which were of any note, I’d checked them all). And, beside that old thing, was a little end table, a dark varnished wood – flecked and chipped, ever the theme. It had a browned, aged doily resting atop it, and on that, the was an old lamp.
This lamp, for some reason, always made me smile. It was quite a magnificent piece of furniture. There was a triangular chunk missing from the body of it, little hairline cracks spread from this focal point, as if trying to escape slipping into the hole, like souls scrambling from the maw of hell – but it wasn’t that I loved. It was just how disproportionate the lampshade was. The circumference was so bizarrely large, that it seemed to more depict a possible orbit, rather than a cute little halo of light. That, too, had been dirtied and dulled with disuse or time, but I didn’t care. I switched it on, and plucked up my book which I always left under the cushion (this I washed after it treated me to a coughing fit one too many times), and then, with coffee, biscuits and book, I lulled into my little reading nook, and waited for the early hints of sunlight to clamber above the distant mountains.
We had a small, boxed TV in the lounge area – but, as there was no signal, it was just old VHS or DVDs that other families had brought and left here. But, as a rule, we tended to avoid using any unnecessary electricity. After a month, it was quite easy to grow accustomed to.
The view was always stunning, anyway – or at least, it was before it was diluted by familiarity. I was always used to sub-urban life, and a little getaway like this would have been such a dream that my fancy for halcyon, romanticised, escapes always yearned for. But, it was funny how quickly I grew accustomed to this, and began to pine for what I considered mundane… such as streetlamps and the distant grunt of passing vehicles.
Still, we had only just over two months left of our six-month placement here. So, for posterity’s sake, I came up here whenever I rose before the drowsy dawn, to convince myself upon my return, that I took full advantage of my time away.
After bout thirty, to forty, give or take a few, I started to see, far in the restricted patch of distance offered from my dainty living canvas, the unmistakeable gradient of morning. A diluted pink that valiantly began to sail into the void, embracing it with a, today, pinkish hue. That was nice, that meant that today was going to be warm, bright, pleasant. Within an hour or two of the sunrise, the rain may have evaporated into a cold memory, and I may take my sister on a little adventure. It was rare I left the house, but I liked to make a journey of it when I did.
I closed my book with a muffled thump, and placed it on the doily-ed table-top. Doing so, I noticed I had been so absorbed in my book, that I forgot about my last biscuit, and the dregs of coffee. I downed the drink, the sensation of the cold liquid was almost as undesirable as the scolding contrast I subjected myself to earlier on. And, as if someone may reach behind me and snatch the treat from my hands, I shoved the whole disc in my mouth, and then snapped my teeth down.
When we first came here, the winter was hard and brutal. The journey over here was turbulent. We had to drive from our home under heavy, black gathering clouds, which, by the time we got onto the small military transport ship had begun pouring forth with an insatiable primality. We docked at some non-descript island, that was home to nothing but some old ‘lab’ as my dad called it. The people there weren’t exactly the most scientific, in aesthetic or demeanour – but apparently were dealing with experiments which couldn’t happen on the mainland, “nothing top secret,” my dad assured me when I grew wide-eyed, “just stuff we can’t really risk over there,” a quick jerk of the head that, though indicated clashing waves and darkened skies, I knew was the direction of home. We stayed there for the night, the four of us in one room – with creaky dorm beds, a brave heater buzzing away to keep us warm against the persistent gushing that clanged like steel drums on the corrugated steel roofing.
The next day, we took advantage of the calmer weather – though it was still colder out here, with no structures to break the salty, icy wind – and boarded the precarious looking seaplane. I fell asleep, nursing a flask of coffee, as the plane bounced and swayed. The large noise-cancelling headsets, which thankfully diluted the screaming engine and roaring wind, and replaced it with the inane chatter of the pilot and my dad.
Then, we were brought to the house – the mountains surrounding us were completely snow-capped, the grassland was frosted a solid white, and the island air was glacial. Thankfully, the family who were posted here just before us had left two days prior, so the house needed no assistance in settling.
When I first found this little attic view, I’d watched with an uneasiness through the frosted window, the edges and corners closing in with a frosted vignette – but, as the pale sun yawned awake, and I could see the view – with lingering mists enveloping the hills, and rolling down to drift above the land, like a chorus of spectres, I decided six months here wouldn’t be all too bad.
The view only got better as our esoteric world warmed, though. The snow had melted, allowing us to see an army of trees – no longer shivering, naked, in the winter – and as if offering consolation for the bleakness that greeted us, a stretch of colourful flowers popped and bloomed all around. Venturing for as far as I could peer, crawling into the forest that started a fair distance from the foot of the mountain, and crawled all the way to the tip.
Even now, I could see, almost as if alive, the trees bristling and basking in the warm stroke of sunlight. I struggled with the little drawer under the end table, which was less of a drawer and more of a test of strength, considering it forced you to pull with all your might, before it finally acquiesced, and seemingly exploded. Then I took the binoculars out. I decided to leave the drawer open, because closing it – jagged, staccato shifts from side to side – was just not worth it until I was putting them back.
The island wasn’t all so much littered with wildlife. There were a few beasts of burden that had been placed here, and allowed to graze freely. The reason for this was, god forbid something awful happened, and either the supply drops that came every two months didn’t make it for some reason or other, whoever was on the island could, in extreme circumstances, take themselves out and, before long, bring meat enough to feed their family without having to worry about starving. Apparently, this had only ever happened once, and even then, the supply drop was rectified within the week.
Still, I liked to scour the land to see any roaming sheep, or flitting bird that had decided to roost here. When the notion took me, I’d take my sister to the advancing forest, and together we would search for bugs to bring back, or count how many nests we could find – and I’d always tell her there was a family of bears here, which sufficiently terrified her.
I took in the view of the dew-kissed nature, and enjoyed the little glistening dazzles of pink where the wetness caught the ever-blooming pink; scintillating like some great, grand monarch’s treasury. I often felt a little pride in this – only a small number of people would ever see these sights, and, the very vision I was taking in, I knew, that the floral ancestry had only ever been witnessed by our predecessors. Whenever I stroked my hand amongst a tree, or let the scent of some unnamed flower tickle at my nose – I may have been the first human interaction, in the entire history of the planet, that had ever graced it. Was a bizarre feeling.
I carried on scanning the land, feeling more and more like today may be an adventure day, compelled by the tantalising petrichor that was no doubt suffused into the morning breeze, when. I’d maybe even take a trip to the mountain top, get some nice landscape pictures to show my friends when I got home, or post up on the socials when signal was no longer a sweet, convenient memory. The trees were getting thicker and thicker in their foliage, but it should be easy to traverse without getting lost. My dad said if we ever go in there, it’s easy to lose yourself – because you’re suddenly swallowed by a different biome altogether, and that the weather conditions here often just let the trees grow wildly, but if we were to ever get disorientated, to just carry on descending, because sooner or later we would break out of the perimeter, and our temporary home was visible enough once outside.
I followed the small brook that was our main source of drinking water, outside of the bottles. Our tap water was from this reserve, bath water, etc. It snaked its way up the mountain, just a meek little thing that froze over in the winter, near enough, and flooded in the rains. It was rushing today, the little white surf looking like an old, faded scar, and just before the trees conspired to cover it from my view-
An intense, haunting uneasiness stole over me.
I dropped the binoculars in fright, even though the sudden clatter of them snapped me back to my sense, it felt like the time from dropping to collision was eons.
I felt the nerves in my body tingle, traipsing down from my scalp to my toes in a fuzzy panic.
A figure- a person-
For a split second.
I was certain I saw someone. Out there. Naked flesh, hunched over, cupping their hands into the stream. They looked emaciated; near skeletal with pallid, clinging flesh. The brief flash of their hair showed a wild, unkempt and patched mess. The image that was now scorching itself into the forefront of my mind was more ghoul-like, than human.
My heart was storming a rapid beat, and I ducked to clutch the binoculars back, almost bruising my eyes with how hard I placed them to my face. The zoomed in world was shaking, quaking, trembling, as I scanned up and down the brook once again. It took a few seconds before I could stabilise my breathing enough so that the world wasn’t just wild blurs.
But, nothing… no person, no trace, no evidence.
It was impossible. I knew what I saw, but… I couldn’t have. To get here, anyone would have to- no, it was impossible. But, what else could it have been? I was too clued up about normalcy bias to start doubting my own experience. There was no animal it could have been. But- we were so far away. A boat to a classified island, then a sea plane?
I couldn’t focus. I scanned as much as I could, just waiting to see a slither, a flash of flesh somewhere out in the distance. But, nothing. No-one.
I instantly retreated from the window, and scrambled backward. I didn’t know much of my dad’s job here, but I knew it was of utmost importance to national security. If someone was here- if something was here- it couldn’t be a positive thing.
Shaking, terrified, I crept away from the small window – the sunlight beaming through, and giving stage to a flurrying whirl of dust particles. The intense sensation of distress was mounting. Then beneath me, I heard a chorus of screeching, as the alarms in the house began to drag everyone from their sleep.
This was good, because I had to tell my dad what I just saw.