Matt

@whorrak

He/Him/SJW; Father, husband, feminist, roleplayer, aspiring woodworker. Hell, aspiring to be better at all five. Beer snob.

474 Folgt443 Follower1.416 Posts

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Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir whorrak.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Matt@whorrak· 29d

Quite the #PokemonTCGPocket pack.

Screenshot from Pokemon TCG Pocket, displaying a pack containing two versions of the Mega Magnetic EX card.

Matt@whorrak· Jun 26

Rotation 009.

Screenshot of a word processor, the text of which reads: "Rotation 9, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer whorrak reporting.

Ship systems status report: External proximity alarms have tripped four times this rotation already, and its only three hours in. Nothing on video feed, nothing on thermal. For my own sanity, or what’s left of it, I’m disabling the prox alarm subsystem. Anything crashes into us, into me, it’s too late anyway.

Entity status report: Sensors weren’t bad. Feed wasn’t bad. Prox alarms weren’t bad. There are three of these fuckers. Either it called buddies or laid eggs or divided or… Doesn’t matter. There’s three of them in here and there’s nobody out there. Beacon can flash for fifty years and nobody’s gonna see it. Even if they do, we can’t risk a fucking family of these things hitchhiking back to civilization. I can’t do it alone. I had to get Lenova from the morgue. I need her strength. I’m sorry. Well, the beacon is disabled. Fire suppression subsystem deleted. Charges are set. With any luck, the increased o2 distribution throughout the ship will give the explosion enough fuel to… uh... to uh… oh shi<feed ends>"

Matt@whorrak· Jun 26

Rotation 008.

Screenshot of a word processor, the text of which reads: "Rotation 8, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer whorrak reporting.

Ship systems status report: No change since last rotation. Propulsion is still down. Beacon is still lit. Video feeds and security subsystem are still glitching. Water still smells like piss. Exterior hull is still swiss cheese.

Entity status report: It’s been quiet since the disturbance in cargo bay two last rotation. Quiet means one of three things: 1) the sunshine and roses option, the Entity has bled out (or whatever the equivalent is), 2) its laying in wait somewhere to ambush me, or 3) its planning on how to break into the bridge. I’m going to need a fallback point.

Entity status report (addendum): I’ve vented cargo bay three. I was trying to hold off on this, hoping the Entity would smell the bodies and go in for a feast, giving me a second chance to vent it back outside again. Since it hasn’t gone near that end of the ship, it must be wise to that risk. Damn thing is too smart, too fast, too sneaky. Now I can head that way myself if it comes to it, either acting as bait and venting the monster, or just using the escape pod should rescue finally arrive.

This is whorrak, the last survivor of the Wretched, signing off."

Matt@whorrak· Jun 26

Rotation 007.

Screenshot of a word processor, the text of which reads: "Rotation 7, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer whorrak reporting.

Ship systems status report: The short range sensors must be malfunctioning. I keep getting readings of an unidentified object the size of a class 2 or class 3 shuttle, but the readings only last for a few moments before the object seems to wink out of existence. At first I thought it was someone responding to the emergency beacon, but that’s just wishful thinking. Although, with the creature back on the ship, do I even want to take the chance of anyone docking? I need to put together a plan for rescue via an escape pod. I should note that in the beacon broadcast.

The external hull cameras are also ghosting. There are intermittent periods of blackout and occasional archival footage is being pulled into the feed.

Entity status report: The creature is loose. I don’t understand how. The security doors between the crew quarters and the central corridor still reports as sealed in the emergency lockdown subsystem. Same for the ventilation diverters. No new inner hull breaches detected. How the hell does this thing keep moving around like this? Security camera footage of the central corridor shows damage along the starboard wall, scraps and scratches and a trail of some dark fluid. Is the Entity wounded?

Entity status report (addendum): Holy shit. Either the external hull camera system is compromised, or there are two of them. Two Entities. I know the original one is still inside the ship; I just heard a bunch of shit in cargo bay two tumble to the deck. But I caught sight on the video feed of another one, maybe smaller looking, scuttling across the hull, zig-zagging its way from the starboard engine coupling toward the master docking clamps. Maybe archival footage is ghosting into the feed, but that’s a stretch. With any luck, they’ll kill each other over who gets to eat me. Right, cause I’m so lucky. I’m so fucked."

Matt@whorrak· Jun 26

Rotation 006.

Screenshot of a word processor, the text of which reads: "Rotation 6, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer whorrak reporting.

Ship systems status report: Sensors still say all the inner hull patches are holding. No o2 leaks. Pressure looks good. Beacon’s still beaconing. Just need to wait it out.

Entity status report: Can’t asphyxiate it; this fucking thing doesn’t need to breathe. Can’t freeze it; this fucking thing can survive the void like it’s nothing. Can’t burn it, the life support system is still rattling like a cat in a clothes dryer. Can’t reason with it; we never figured out why it attacked us, is attacking me, in the first place.

The creature is skittering around in the vents, just like in my fucking dream. I locked all the diverters down, just like in the dream. I got a movement ping in Lenova’s room, just like in the dream. Gotta hope it’s stuck in her room, or at least in the crew quarters now. Locked those doors down now, too.

This is whorrak, the last survivor of the Wretched, signing off."

Matt@whorrak· Jun 26

Rotation 005.

Screenshot of a word processor, the text of which reads: "Rotation 5, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer whorrak reporting.

Ship systems status report: Lights are still out in the crew quarters and emergency storage. Not worth it to spend hours in the dark trying to fix. Someone’s gonna respond to the beacon any minute now.

The sewage silo, though, now that I had to fix. Damn thing sprung a leak and started draining into the primary corridor into the bridge. I didn’t even know the plumbing ran through there. Why the hell does it run through there? There’s no lav nearby. Either way, it’s fixed now. This outfit is ruined and the corridor smells like shit, but it’s done. Maybe this backup is why the water smells. Fingers crossed.

Entity status report: I guess it got too quiet for a whole rotation. I had a dream last night about the Entity. It had burrowed through the outer hull and was skittering through the ventilation shafts. I managed to lock down the diverters and corner it above the crew quarters. I don’t go there anymore, so it made sense. I remember seeing it through the window into Lenova’s room, hanging from the ceiling by its feet. Waiting. Making that same high pitched noise.

Couldn’t get it out of my head all rotation, the Entity hanging there, swaying in the (total lack of) breeze. I finally broke down an hour ago and forced myself to to go to the crew quarters. I wanted to grab a batch of emergency bottled water anyway. I still haven’t gotten over the smell of the recycled stuff. Peeked in the window like some kind of scared kid, but nothing was in Lenova’s room. I still have her… the spare keycard, so I opened the door just to triple check. Not sure what I was going to do… Still nothing in there, but the vent cover was missing. Was she hiding something in the vents? I’m sure as shit not going to look.

Entity status report (addendum): The fucking thing is in the ship again.

This is whorrak, the last survivor of the Wretched, signing off."

Matt@whorrak· Jun 26

Rotation 004.

Screenshot of a word processor, the text of which reads: "Rotation 4, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer whorrak reporting.

Ship systems status report: Fuck. Yes. Extremely good news: I managed to repair the distress beacon. Actually, the beacon itself ended up being just fine. It was the initialization subsystem that had failed. Change control logged no modification date; the code was just corrupted. I managed to find a previous revision stored away in an archive, copied it in, and beep boop the beacon is transmitting. Now I just need to sit back and wait for rescue. Surely there’s somebody else out here.

Right, bad news. Well, relatively less-bad, just annoying news. The bridge door control subsystems failed during my attempts to get the beacon code running, locking me in there for hours. Was it damaged from a fight with the Entity? Intentional sabotage by the creature? A low-bid contractor’s bargain basement work overlooked by corporate in favor of cost savings? All I know is that I couldn’t get anything else done for the last few hours of this rotation because I had to learn how that subsystem works so that I could override it and get out of the damned room.

Entity status report: All quiet today. No sightings on video, no audio on sensors. Maybe the creature gave up and has moved on.

This is whorrak, the last survivor of the Wretched, signing off."

Matt@whorrak· Jun 26

Rotation 003.

Screenshot of a word processor, the text of which reads: "Rotation 3, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer whorrak reporting.

Ship systems status report: The life support system is making terrible sounds that hopefully are not its death throes. Good news: unlike with the engines, I at least have the physical system manuals. Bad news: They were damaged by the Entity, its bodily fluids have destroyed entire sections. If I can get the file systems back online, hopefully I can find the digital versions. That’s the plan that will definitely happen before the system fails. In the meantime, at least I was able to (sloppily) patch up the majority of the inner hull breaches this rotation. At least we don’t be venting o2 into the service hatches between the hulls.

Entity status report: The creature is still searching the outer hull for an entrypoint; its scratching woke me up this rotation. I thought it was a dream at first. Not sure this is any less scary. Fresco (RIP) had a terrible dream a few nights before the Entity made contact. Something about being stranded on a failing ship and stalked by something. The preacher would have called it a premonition and harangued us about attending service. Maybe we should have.

There’s nothing out there. Nothing but debris from this gigantic floating coffin, the Entity, and the corpses of the crew. I had to vent them for my own safety. Who knows how the Entity reproduces? One of them was enough. Strange to think that my last exchange with another person was bagging them. Even with them gone I can’t get the quiet solitude I always wanted. The creature lurks outside, and the ghosts of the crew linger in the shadows.

This is whorrak, the last survivor of the Wretched, signing off."

Matt@whorrak· Jun 26

Rotation 002.

Screenshot of a word processor, the text of which reads: "Rotation 2, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer whorrak reporting.

Ship systems status report: The water purification system is on the fritz. I can’t shake the feeling that it’s not, well, fully purifying the water. The water and the dispensers smell vaguely like ammonia, like urine. The more I drink, the more the system reprocesses. The more the system reprocesses, the less I can stomach drinking from it. That’s a vicious cycle that I don’t want to think about anymore.

Main and auxiliary engines are still down. I’m a flight engineer, not an engine mechanic. I have no idea how to fix this ship and get moving again, some of the documentation is missing (thanks, Corporate), and what is here might as well be in another language. I can’t even fix the water purification system. Maybe tomorrow I can get the rescue beacon working instead.

The Entity is still out there, exploring the outer hull like the freezing vacuum of space isn’t a problem. It would be better, maybe, if it were some mindless thing acting purely on the instinct to survive. Unfortunately, the creature is intelligent. It listens. It plans. It learns. It sets traps. It must have a sense of self, of identity. I wonder what it calls itself. Hunter? Avenger? Has it adopted our label The Entity as some badge of honor? What did we do to draw its attention? Does it even matter?

This is whorrak, the last survivor of the Wretched, signing off."

Matt@whorrak· Jun 26

Rotation 001.

Image of a word processor screenshot, the text of which reads: "Rotation 1, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer whorrak reporting.

The other members of the crew are dead and the engines remain non-operational, though ship integrity remains good and life support systems are still active. I successfully jettisoned the intruder from the airlock, but it remains alive and continues to try to access the ship. With a little luck I can repair the distress beacon and somebody will pick me up.

This is whorrak, the last survivor of the Wretched, signing off."

Matt@whorrak· Jun 23

Emma Thompson

Matt@whorrak· Jun 16

USA! USA! USA!

An image of a portion of a medical bill, citing a service cost of $900 and an Insurance Paid amount of $46. Burn it all down.

Matt@whorrak· May 24

Next I scraped and oiled the boards & cut them to four foot lengths. Today, in the pouring rain, we placed the garden blocks, slotted in the wood, lay down a cardboard base layer, and dumped in the dirt. No pics of these steps. Focused on doing. Wife for scale. (cc @adigoesswimming.bsky.social)

The image is of a fat white woman in a red rain jacket standing in a grassy back yard beside a raised garden bed. The bed is 4x8 feet in size and constructed of garden block stones at the corners and at the mid points of the long sides, with all stones connected by blackened wooden boards. The bed is roughly 10 inches in height, filled with dirt (moreso on the right half than the left), and contains 16 little baby plants. It is pouring rain, with muddy footprints in the grass as evidence of this being built in the rain.

Matt@whorrak· May 23

Various action shots along the way. This is really fun.

The image is a photo of a driveway. In the foreground, a stack of 2x6 wooden boards burns, flames coming up nearly 12 inches. A white man with a beard holds a garden hose in the background, ready to extinguish the fire. A wheelbarrow full of leaves and a propane tank sit to the side.

The image is of three 2x6 boards arranged in a trough shape, stuffed with leaves and sitting on an asphalt driveway.

The image is a photo of seven 2x6 wooden boards arranged side by side, resting on a set of stone garden blocks in an asphalt driveway. The boards are badly scorched. A wire brush sits on one of the boards.

The photo is a view through the open side of four 2x6 wooden boards which are arranged in the shape of a rectangular box. Inside, the boards are on fire. Ash covers the bottom board, and smoke billows out towards the camera.

Matt@whorrak· May 23

Trying my hand at some shou sugi ban (Japanese wood burning) today as step one of building a raised bed garden. I couldn't figure out how to get good results in the traditional triangle orientation, but building this box with rebar separators for air flow? *Chefs kiss*

Matt@whorrak· Apr 25

Meet Arlo, kobold minstrel and Baldur's Gate vagabond. In the #dnd 5.5e campaign I'm currently running, he's decided our band of intrepid heroes is interesting enough to follow around in search of musical inspiration. He enjoys pickles and restaurants. Created using @heroforgeminis.bsky.social.