No, Bee Gonne…
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The Filth is eating my undercarriage!
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A bee-bee gun.
I’ll show myself the door now…
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Not sure if I should even share this without expecting someone to stomp my door down and put me in a nice white jacket… Well, you wanted stories, so here I go:
- looking at grandma’s old telephone, a metal alarm clock, scissors and wire and thinking “This’d make one hell of an elementalism focus!”
- humming the Sleepless Lullaby without noticing, creeping people around me out
- women saying “ciao ciao” in a certain tone makes me flinch and I start begging on the inside for split-seconds, that I won’t be called to HQ anytime soon (oh the perks of having an Illu toon)
- catching me think about what old Mosul said. Maybe all that magic in the world is still there. It is just us who stopped believing and then unlearned how to see stuff when we needed to grow up. I had way “better eyesight” as a child, but I didn’t lose all of it
- this is more a personal or an “agent”-thing rather than a TSW moment, but hey, I let you guys decide. Done this for ages now: My brain is always analyzing when I go out. I am always observing, taking in everything. How many people are around me? Do they move in a normal pattern? If necessary, how many escape routes are there and how do I get to them? etc. I could go on. And while all this sounds like I might be panicky, I am really not. These things are automated and I’m all chill and relaxed ^^ I just like being prepared I guess.
- facepalmed and sighed or yelled “For the love of Gaia!” more than once when people kept annoying me
- the nerdwave hit me really hard and I ordered a key card for a room in Tabula Rasa (OrigamiSoldier is my hero)
- another TSW moment happened on a night out a few years ago. Story hidden for your convenience. Nothing too thrilling, just a little rant. This is Part 1. Can add <part 2>, after my hands healed in hopefully a few days. Prepared this whole post one on Sunday. Typing is torture right now
Summary
It all happened… In a pub? I’m no expert in naming things. It was one of those slightly smokey, comfortably dim lit places with wooden interior. Old postcards and metal signs decorated the walls. Even though I’m a non-smoker and all that fog messed my throat up, I liked that place. It had an old music box, an even older TV placed in a high corner, some lively chaps throwing darts or playing pool and of course the ocassional biker crew was having a beer there once in a while. I wasn’t what I would call a regular either. Once a month just didn’t feel like that. Still, the barkeep always recognized me, nodded a greeting and put down a glass in front of me after I’d hung my leather jacket over the stool at my usual place at the counter. One cliché I have to break with however is that I am no whiskey drinker. I always ordered rum or absinthe. Yeah I know, shoot me, right? Anyway, after going to that place for at least 8 months or so, a man aged around 38 (maybe older) took the free seat next to me on the right and ordered. He then rummaged around in one of the inner pockets of his heavily used looking leather coat (scratches, brighter, rubbed off areas here and there) until he finally got his package of cigarettes out. I always try to be polite and not to let people feel that I’m giving them a visual check out of the corner of my eyes or a brief glance -my force of habit like I mentioned before- but when you are more or less sitting shoulder to shoulder in a stuffed pub, that isn’t always possible. So before anyone could have interpreted a look as a stare, I grabbed my choice of poison and let the absinthe tickle over my tongue and burn down my throat. I love that feeling. When I put down my glass again, I noticed a crumpled pack of filterless cigarettes that were extended to me from the side. I put on a light smile and shook my head, raising my empty glass a bit to indicate that I’d rather have another. It was loud in there and I didn’t feel like raising my voice unecessarily, but he understood the gesture. Ever so calmly, he laid down the pack next to an antique, plain Zippo in front of him, his own cigarette already lit. And while he received his order, exchanging a few words with the barkeep, I had trouble processing, that this guy could move under my radar. It is hard to describe, but even if one’s not facing someone directly, one should have an aproximate perception of them. More a feeling than anything else, but noticeable. At least it works that way for me. Normally…
Stop being an Orochi employee of the month, swallow that bee and deploy. We got filth to fight! xD
That Mancha Negra stuff looks legit enough. Damn, @TeaThief … I mean, they even brought the Germans to clean it up!
Yeah, me too. But not because of TSW. I just don’t wanna walk into a Pyramid Head… o.O
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Eh, no worries there. Just wait for him to to go all Orochi on himself and waltz right out that door, being careful to step around the entrail pool. No telling where those things have been…
Ever been through the “haunted cemetery(s)” in Louisiana? Yea. These 2, I believe are from Lafayette New Orleans.
[Mod Edit: NOLA Cemetary Pic Removed]
[This content has been removed due to a copyright claim.]
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To your story, Jack: you’re right, most people have some sort of presence they give off…or sound, or movement, or something. I don’t know what it is (and if anyone knows, I’d love to hear)–but I do know that I either lack it, or have otherwise suppressed it. I’ve accidentally snuck up on people so often that I’ve taken to joking about teleporting, and have been mistaken for a mannequin while moving. I have yet to figure out what it is I’m not doing that most folks do, but it sounds like that guy had a similar…unremarkable aura.
Secret World has infected my brain so heavily I often don’t even recognize associations I make, they come so naturally now…but recently, I was terribly amused at getting a scanner keyfob thinger for my new job in order to access the building and work area. It feels somewhat Lumie-ish…and two of my bosses very much loved Geary’s first cutscene. 
(They’re actually quite nice, if you don’t piss them off…but they appreciated her.)
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Oh god. I do the ‘accidentally sneaking up on people’ thing, too. I make so little noise, naturally, and have scared the crap out of so many people simply by being where they didn’t expect me that I have been belled before. I don’t sneak up on people on purpose anymore, because two of the people I’m closest to have the ‘Fight’ reaction instead of the ‘Flight’ reaction, and they’re as likely to scream in terror and clock me as anyone else would be to scream and jump.
Oh, oh, we’re forgetting something!
Underground Parking Garages.
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I haven’t been belled (although one of my high school friends did gift me–wait a second)…but I have absolutely deliberately made use of my silence and stillness to work at a haunt. 
(And have been very lucky so far that nobody’s taken a swing at me.)
Ah, speaking of environmental-type stuff–I’ve yet to actually see an aurora in person, but every time I see a photo (or in another game, or), I tense up and wonder who cracked a Gaia Engine this time.
…Does “associating SWL stuff with other media” count in this thread? Because I have a lot of that sort of thing that I can remember. >.>
WAIT I remembered an old thing! If anyone (*cough @Jennet cough*) remembers from the old thread…I am pretty sure those dates that they had in the fridge are gone. Probably.
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Holy crap it’s the real Filth! Where’s a bee to swallow!?
Yeah I do the sneaking up thing all the time…People at work keep threatening to put bells on me 
…
Tweaked-out bums ruined me on parking garages loooong before the Gaki.
You only need one to come screaming out of the darkness at you before you find other places to skate and do drugs as a kid. :x
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Fun little secret known to watermen in the Northeast US. The paint job on the side of a boat can actually tell you a lot. If you know the fleet colors you can figure out exactly, in the Real World, who would own the majority of fishing boats in Kingsmouth.
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Knew a captain up in Alaska whose fleet colours were rust and neglect.
Very easy to spot his boats.
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You misspelled platypus.
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In a heart-bee-t.
Puns aside, yes I would. Never been involved in anything I felt I couldn’t put down and walk away from without hesitation, and that includes 6 years (and counting) of marriage. Just my nature to not ever feel too attached.
Lucky you haven’t been swung on. I worked a haunt the past seven years, first 3, 4 years were good. No one took a swing, then they started deliberately hitting me from behind, and it’s only gotten worse as the years have gone on.
As for SW moments IRL, take a stroll through NY in game, then go visit the actual location IRL and see how… exact it is. Actually, here’s a link to the old forums where someone did just that. https://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?37096-Illuminati-Hub-IRL-(lots-of-pics!)
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Oh yeah. I noticed how exact the Illuminati HQ was when I went poking around in Google street view.
It has changed some since the game was made, (and I think the building the Illuminati HQ is in is for lease…) but it’s still plenty recognizable.
And then there’s Bukchon Hanok village in Seoul…
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Every time I do that comparison outside Lumie HQ I am both very impressed with their accuracy, and very annoyed that they then put it in entirely the wrong way around. In game you’re looking south from Brooklyn across the East River into Manhattan… try to pull that off in Google maps.
And yet we haven’t got Google to mark the Illuminati entrance on Google Maps yet.
Who is up for making some historical marker plaques for places like Modern Prometheus and sticking them on the sides of those buildings?
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