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IT IS ALIIIVE! Reviving the Cadaverous Earth Campaign

Started by Steerpike, January 23, 2011, 02:47:33 PM

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LD

12. Presents for other party members :D

13. Enjoyment at Houses of Ill Repute. (Endorsed by Wispy!)

--
The questions posed require some reflection. I can answer one at least, however. Fridays probably will work for me if it does move to that day of the week--in fact, given my issue with start times, a Friday game day may potentially be better than mondays in the future; With respect to start times; I will keep you posted if I cannot make it to the current start time (I already arrive a few minutes late :o). Around June 1st I may not be able to make sessions that begin at the current time, but that is uncertain. Sadly, I do realize that the European posters cannot stay online very late, so I may enter into a Nomadic-like situation of sitting out (:o pun) at that point.

Verdict: My schedule is still very much in the air, but it will stay constant at least through the end of May.

Weave

Thank you, SP! That list is very helpful and right up my alley. It's concise, far from overwhelming, while still giving me plenty of options to think about.

I think Kryz would be interested in clockwork contraptions more than anything, so those would probably be along the vein of upgrades to equipment? I wouldn't go all out like Kaius and his armor, but little widgets and gadgets would be very cool.

Kryz will, when he can, make a point to look into such things.

Steerpike

Glad it was helpful!

Some more info on the city's districts (copied from the CE main thread):

[spoiler]
Macellaria
[/b]
City of Bodysnatchers, The Maggot City
[/b]
Demographics

Cestoid '" 10%
Ghilan '" 32%
Hagmen '" 12%
Human '" 33%
Leechkin '" 6 %
Shades '" 5%
Other '" 2%

Architecture

Like most of the Twilight Cities Macellaria has a pastiche, variegated architecture.  The shanties and the crude houses of Resurrection Row are raw, unornamented structures of wooden planks, hastily mortared brick, wattle, and daub, small and poorly built habitations and businesses with rickety upper floors; often the windows are boarded up and holes or imperfections in the walls are patched with other material, such as scrap metal or plaster.  The rest of the city is considerably more opulent, the buildings that rise in clusters or sprawl in rambling warrens mixing arabesque domes, arches, and narrow towers with skeletal, buttressed halls and spiked spires.  Pinnacles and minarets rise up above bulbous cupolas; columned arcades overlook broad courtyards; stained glass, gargoyles, ribbed vaults, and ornate facades clash and mingle with quadrangles of glazed tile, gaudily coloured semi-domes, and tapering hexagonal monoliths.  Red sandstone is a common material for these older buildings, and many bear the remnants of frescoes or murals, now chipped and mutilated.  A layer of dust and grime adheres to the walls and the winding stone streets.

Fashion

Fashion in Macellaria is incredibly eclectic.  Many of its inhabitants are garbed in apocalyptic rags; boiled leathers and scavenger gear, dust-goggles and dusters are ubiquitous.  Most individuals in Macellaria have hand-me-down clothes inherited from hundreds of different cultures and time periods.   Very often outfits are formed out of scraps stitched together, tattered patchwork shirts and trousers, cloaks and coats, a bewildering array of colours and patterns.  Ancient military uniforms are the most common, totally depleted of their original symbolic meanings.  More morbidly, burial garb looted from old tombs forms a major part of most citizens' wardrobes.  People walk through the streets wearing loose-fitting shrouds, funerary masks, and dour, flowing robes.

More than any other city, the inhabitants of Macellaria modify themselves with fleshcraft.  Extra appendages are a frequent sight, and clothing modified to accommodate unusual anatomies is sold in the Curio Bazaars or in the streets of Hexwarren, outside of the tissue shops.  Often these augmentations are purely cosmetic, forming a part of fashion themselves; the most outlandish and ostentatious modifications are the most lauded.  Almost everyone in the city goes armed with scavenged weapons '" unusual firearms, curved blades, exotic polearms, strange clockwork contraptions, combat gloves, and a diverse array of others.

The Watchdogs

The three colossi known as the Watchdogs (or just the Dogs) of Macellaria are huge, venerable creatures that guard the three gates of the walled inner city '" the Witch's Gate, leading to Moroi, the Eel's Gate, leading to Lophius, and the Butcher's Gate, leading to the Slaughter-lands.  The Watchdogs were created four hundred years ago, commissioned by the Robber Guilds and the Rag-and-Bones cartels from the mad magister Orlando Petrifax, renegade of Skein and specialist in fleshcraft; though many of their constituent parts have been replaced over the centuries, they remain at the three gates of the Maggot City, motley sentinels easily capable of dispatching any wandering horror or band of mutant brigands that might dare approach Macellaria from the Slaughter-lands or elsewhere.  In times of war the Dogs have very rarely been unleashed upon the battlefield to aid in the destruction of some particularly malignant foe.

The Watchdogs are gigantic, only vaguely canine creatures formed from innumerable scraps of glyph-scribed, hairless flesh grafted irreverently atop the puissant bones of malformed dire-beasts or giants dug from the Slouching-devil Mountains.  Petrifax apparently conjoined these bones without respect for their previous owners' anatomy, resulting in strange, unwieldy configurations of limbs, odd protrusions, and unlikely skeletal structures: instead of arranging the bones in their original composition, Petrifax mixed and matched to his own bizarre design, crafting three roughly dog-like guardians.  As a result the Watchdogs are misshapen and monstrous, their deformed skeletons clothed in a grisly patchwork, a palimpsest of stitched skins.  Within their sigil covered bodies strange presences squirm and rustle, pressing against their fleshly prison '" the animating spirits the magister bound within the Dogs' warded skin, to give his creations life.

The Dogs are chained to their gates but can wander a fair distance, though they are well trained and so spend most of their time dozing in the shade of the walls, the terrific stench of their breath and the sickening quantities of formaldehyde used to preserve their bodies assailing those who approach the gates of the Bodysnatcher's City.  They are fed every three days, glutted on huge bowls of raw meat '" a spectacle which draws large crowds of visitors who haven't witnessed the Feeding before.  An elite unit of the city guard comprised of witches and beast-masters tends to the Watchdogs, called the Kennel Masters.

The Walls

The walls of the Maggot City are thick and extremely tall, built of ruddy stone with wooden battlements constantly being replaced along the top.  In addition to the gun emplacements, trebuchets, and soldiers who man the walls, Macellaria maintains a legion of specialized archers and crossbowmen.

The obscene number of bodies in the city attracts hordes of ravens, vultures, and crows to the City of Bodysnatchers, and were such carrion-feeders to descend upon the Skin Markets the city's economy would be devastated.  To ward off unwanted aerial intrusions a band of mercenary archers called the Black Arrows (after their fletching) defends the city walls (alongside a series of leering straw scarecrows, though these do considerably less to deter would-be scavengers).  Though these defenses are effective, many birds still enter the city limits, and there is an obelus reward for any crow corpse brought to the city bounty office in Resurrection Row.

Hexwarren (The Witch's Gate)

The arcane district of Macellaria is Hexwarren, by the western Witch's Gate.  A commercial district, Hexwarren is composed of glyph parlors, tissue-shops, alchemists, and booksellers.  Eldritch texts, scrolls, charms, amulets, pendants, talismans, potions, and all other sorts of arcane bric-a-brac can be purchased here, but most come to Hexwarren looking to augment themselves with biomechanical and bio-eldritch implants or purchase glyph-born servitors, fleshcrafted creatures like organic automata not dissimilar to the zombies of Somnambulon or the clockwork automata of Skein, though somewhat less pervasive.

In Hexwarren one might have an orison or sigil of power tattooed on a limb or torso, turning one's body into a living hex to poison or enflame with a touch, manipulate objects with pure thought, or conjure some transformative effect '" scales, fur, wings, horns, fangs.  Toughs and mercenaries have slabs of muscle grafted to their bodies, while adventurers buy extra limbs from unlikely beasts.  The city's supply of nectar, the sap of the Elder Tree in Moroi, can be found in Hexwarren, and junkies clamor constantly at the few dealers, all agents of the Resin Merchants who sell the highly addictive drug at a greatly marked up price.

Hexwarren itself is a rambling, tangled district of stone and wood with many narrow streets and lanes, interspersed with larger plazas or quadrangles, notably Murrain Square (where various venoms and antitoxins are sold) and Tatterdemalion Court (where graft peddlers congregate).  Major buildings include the city's moldering but incredibly extensive library, the so-called Vellum Citadel; the glowering, gargoyle-encrusted Fane of Dust, an all-ghul temple dedicated to distant star-gods; and the small Academy of Witchcraft, where would-be spellcasters can seek professional training for exorbitant tuition rates.

Slimesquallor (The Eel's Gate)

The hagman ghetto of Slimesquallor smells of stagnant water and the mucus excretions of its occupants, sticky trails that leave the streets slick.  Here the architecture is mottled with fungus and moss, as a result of the dampness peculiar to the district; some hagman additions have also been erected next to the brown stone structures that make up the bulk of Macellaria.  The hagman buildings are coiled, undulating edifices with many pillars, open spaces, and large Courts rather than honeycombs of smaller rooms.  Apart from the enormous residential buildings there are hot mud-baths (distinct from the usual slimy pools hagmen bathe in), numerous shrines to the plethora of hagman god-aspects, and an indoor fish market.

Resurrection Row (The Butcher's Gate)

Resurrection Row is a rather ragged district named for its central street, a winding, crooked lane leading from the Butcher's Gate to the inner city.  A poor, shabby district, Resurrection Row is distinguished from the shanties only by its position within the walls of Macellaria and the old stone edifices which rear up above the tightly packed rows of tenement housing.  Though there are a few shops here, most bodysnatchers and tomb raiders returning with a haul from the Slaughter-lands make for the Curio Bazaars and the Skin Markets rather than lingering in this dilapidated district.  As a result of its impoverishment Resurrection Row has become a haven for thieves, pickpockets, and cutthroats, who gather in rookeries when they're not plying the markets or the back-alleys of Hexwarren, Pulsetown, and Velveteen Circus.  The city's bounty office is located in Resurrection Row, as well as a large number of warehouses and rough taverns, most of them geared towards the quick.

The Skin Markets

The Skin Markets reek of carrion and continuously bustle with thousands of merchants and customers, especially at night when the city's ghilan wake.  The Skin Markets are roughly divided into four huge, open-air Courts or atria, not including Velveteen Circus which is more properly a district in its own right.  The atria are bounded by huge, ancient buildings, the lower floors of which are occupied with shops and storerooms; passage between the market quadrants is achieved through a series of corridors accessible via tall, arched doorways.  The upper floors of the Market buildings are given over largely to the offices of the multifarious Rag-and-Bones cartels.  The atria themselves have a transient, constantly shifting architecture composed of booths, tents, stalls, and ramshackle wooden buildings, labyrinthine even to the initiated.

The first atrium is the Court-of-Flesh where whole bodies can be purchased, typically from large wagons piled high with the dead.  Flayed skins, leather, vellum, candles, and slaves are also for sale here.  Numerous eateries sell fried or boiled meat from various species, predominantly that of humans, pigs, dogs, and lizards, though a few booths sell bowls of mealworms, broth with noodles, and deep-fried spiders.  The chief buyers one sees in this atrium are quick humans and ghilan, with a smattering of hagmen and cestoids.  There are a few ghul-bars here, though fewer than the Court-of-Blood, and there is also usually an array of embalming fluids and preservatives available as well.

The second atrium is the Court-of-Bones.  Here are crates and wagons full of skeletons, but also carved bone trinkets, bone weapons (much more common than metal ones in the City of Bodysnatchers), bonemeal, and marrow.  The Court-of-Bones also has many fortune-tellers and gutter witches who cast the bones for a few coins, supposedly to glimpse the future.  Though there are fewer eateries in the Court-of-Bones than in the other atria there are several dice halls, notably Death's Gambit, The Reaper's Luck, and The Ribcage.

The Court-of-Blood is the third atrium, dealing exclusively with fluids.  It is common to see merchants here displaying several barrels full of liquid, variously labeled: 'arterial,' 'venous,' 'plasma,' etcetera.  Blood sausage and half-coagulate jellies (a lilix delicacy) can be purchased here.  The Maggot City's population of leechkin and lilix, though fairly small, can be found here in inordinate numbers. The Court-of-Blood contains numerous ghul-bars around its edges, taverns catering to ghilan serving hot and chilled blood (sometimes sweetened or with added alcohol) in skull cups, in addition to various foodstuffs; the best known of these are the establishments Sanguine Bliss and Porphyria.

Finally, the Court-of-Innards sells viscera, offal, and organs of all sorts.  Some graft peddlers do business here, though most of them are concentrated in Hexwarren; the fourth atrium deals mostly in raw materials for consumption and fleshcraft.  Pickled brains, hearts, and spleens are displayed in jars; bowls of freshly plucked eyes stare at passersby; barrels full of intestines glisten with briny preservatives.  Here one might snack on sweetbreads or a shish-kebab of eyes, sip chitterling stew or brain soup with head cheese, chew on boiled tongues, or munch on stuffed gizzards and kidney pies.  A crowd consisting of a large number of cestoids adds to the grotesquerie of the place.  Though most oracles do business in the Court-of-Bones, a few soothsayers look through piles of steaming organs in the Court-of-Innards to predict the future.

Velveteen Circus

The red-light district of Macellaria, Velveteen Circus is close to the Skin Markets, hovering near the edge of the Court-of-Blood.  Low class brothels and higher quality pleasure houses do business here, alongside opium dens, ghul-bars, taverns, and restaurants.  The brothels cater to both quick and grave-spawn, though the seedier places pay little heed to such niceties as living or undead.  The more expensive establishments cater to fetishes and peccadilloes, and many of the girls and boys have been modified in tissue-shops to better suit the often perverse preferences of the clientele '" everything from full body tattoos and extra limbs, heads, and orifices to more surreal augmentations and mutilations, bestial xenografts, radical anatomical alterations, or grotesque enlargements.

The Curio Bazaars

Although named for the collections of relics and scavenged miscellanea found in its many pawn shops and junk-dealers, the Curio Bazaars comprise essentially all merchants not found in the Skin Markets or Hexwarren.  Interspersed with the shops selling lost technology and the detritus of the past are hawkers with carts of fruit, cabinet-makers, knife merchants, blacksmiths, armorers, clothiers, tanneries, and dozens of other businesses.  In the Curio Bazaars one might find a mangy ghul street-seller with a booth full of pocketwatches, or a booth with piles of porcelain and silverware, or an ancient idol of some chthonic deity inscribed with mantras in dead languages.  A shop window might display an impossibly old runesword, or mannequins garbed in silk dresses from Skein, or a selection of fresh produce, or the crown of a long dead sorcerer-king.  The Robber Guilds have their headquarters here, half a dozen prominent structures with a certain faded grandeur where the innumerable tomb raiders and scavengers who plumb the Slaughter-lands congregate.

Pulsetown

The main residential district for the quick in Macellaria, Pulsetown is louder and more energetic than the Worm-Hive, though smaller in size.  Apart from its sprawling housing blocks Pulsetown is distinguished by several prominent landmarks: the Temple of Striga, the fighting pits, and the Hollow Skull playhouse.

Striga is a goddess of blood, life, and vitality and has a congregation almost entirely of the quick.  She demands sacrifices, and the temple chimneys constantly smolder, the burnt offerings filling the sanctum with the aroma of cooking meat.  Cannibal funerary rites apotheosize members of the faith, and diluted blood is usually consumed at sermons.  The religion has strict dietary laws and other requirements and forbids the consumption of inhuman meat ('unclean').  Worshippers of Striga believe that the Red Ravishing was a kind of tribulation from the goddess, and that soon a day of judgment will come and the faithful '" those 'pure of blood' '" will ascend to become divine vampire-seraphs, ruling a newly ordered and revitalized earth.

The fighting pits are a series of small arenas close to the Skin Markets, dedicated to combat sports and other spectacles.  Gladiatorial competitions, beast-baiting, and other bloodsports are held in the pits, which draw large crowds of gamblers and simple spectators.  Macellaria's few cestoids of any wealth are all gladiators, deadly fighters who feast on their dead opponents.  The current Grand Champion of the pits is the five hundred year old shade gladiator called the Rotten King, a supremely skilled swordsman who has worn many different bodies over the course of his career.

The Hollow Skull playhouse is the largest and most popular playhouse in Macellaria, known especially for its revenge tragedies.  A huge domed structure converted into a theater, the Hollow Skull attracts the wealthy and the poor alike.  Many spend the day at the fighting pits before visiting the Hollow Skull in the evening, then heading to Velveteen Circus for a night of pleasure.

The Worm-Hive

The grave-spawn district of Macellaria, the Worm-Hive is a conglomeration of spires and tower-blocks that looms darkly above the seething Skin Markets.  Its many windows are universally shrouded with black curtains during the day, warding off the much-loathed sun while its residents slumber.  The lower levels are dedicated to ghul-bars, a smattering of shops, and cheap honeycombs of housing, each room a narrow cell.  The upper levels are progressively more lavish, and the towers of Worm-Hive are crowned with ornate manses often with attached chapels and courtyards.  A series of covered bridges link the spires together in dense, claustrophobic clusters.

Large portions of the Worm-Hive remain empty, whole spires given over to dust and cobwebs, though most have long been looted of anything of value.  Squatters and animals have moved in, and one of the spires is rumored to be infected with a cluster of gibbergeists, floating horrors who babble an eerie sing-song jinx incessantly; those who hear this twisted song can be lulled into a trance-like state in which they too may begin to babble, eventually degenerating into gibbergeists themselves.

The Catacombs

The catacombs of Macellaria are incredibly extensive and largely unexplored, but they are far from uninhabited.  Most of the city's cestoid population and its few leechkin make their homes underground, along with the poorer ghilan and other heliophobic grave-spawn such as shades, eidolons, haunts, and predatory geists.

The Maggot City's sewer system bleeds into the catacombs in numerous places, and the two are often indistinguishable.  Whole clans of wiry sewer-scavengers or toshers, equipped with lanterns and caged canaries, make a living plundering the sewers of lost valuables and accretions of coin, bones, and metal.  The sewers are hazardous, the air polluted, the tunnels sometimes flooding during the short rainy season; disease and even cave-ins are also major dangers.  In addition, the runoff and other waste pumped into the sewers from Hexwarren is tainted with a number of eldritch substances.  The result is a population of warped, unlikely creatures: quasi-sentient giant rats, monstrous fish-like things, and other, less recognizable beasts.

There are older, stranger things deep in the bowels of the city.  Rumors persist of shrines dedicated to Hirud dating back to the times of the cestoid Imperium; of rogue demons and renegade servitors, gruesome sigil-scribed horrors; of tribal, bloodthirsty men, skinchangers capable of transforming themselves into bats or hyenas or huge spiders.

The Shanties

In contrast with the grim stone structures of the city proper, the shanties of Macellaria are built of mud, wood, adobe, and brick, huddling close to the towering stone walls.  The shanties are low, unplanned, and filthy, consisting mostly of shacks, cheap alehouses and brothels, tanneries, and second rate shops.  Freelance tomb raiders and merchants deal here instead of the city proper, and the few black-market items banned in Macellaria itself can sometimes be found here.[/spoiler]

Kindling

Might not make it to next week's session. It's one of my very old friends' birthday and, much as I love the game, I love him more.
Seeing as Vetter is in a huff with, well, a good chunk of the party, maybe he can head off and chill on his own/blow some of his loot on booze while he calms down enough to start running with the others again? I dunno.
all hail the reapers of hope


LD

>>Also, eldritch ammo for firearms/missile weapons.

Hm... How much for a crossbow bolt that for example:

1.Makes the person do an Irresistible Dance
2.Causes someone to Rage (as per the spell) (Lvl 2 bard)
3.Replicates the spell Pyrotechnics (Lvl 2 Bard)
4.Sound burst (1d8 damage to subjects sonic in area) (lvl 2 bard)
5.Heroism (lvl 2 bard) (Just imagine Wispy with Kaius- "Okay, let me shoot you here...you'll like it. The guy I sold it from said if I shoot someone with it, it'll make him more heroic.")


>Drugs and poisons. Imagine your weapon dealing an extra 1d4 Con or Str damage with a successful hit.

Where would I look to find the costing for this?


Also, when Wispy gets a chance (if it's possible), before Ekwaneseu spends his bones, Wispy might invite him to a friendly game of Jatayi playing sticks to see if he can win a bit of obeloi, now that he knows Ekawneseu has a gambling problem and apparently isn't that good at it :D.

Steerpike

I'd say most of those a roughly equivalent to a +2 bonus, so that'd be 160 obeloi per bolt.  However the Rage and Heroism bolts are unusual enough that Wispy would definitely have to commission them specially.

CoyoteCamouflage

"Glyph tattoos - basically 1/day spells available at a wide range of prices, and usable by anyone (not just Witches)."

For these, would we just use the standard 3.5 wondrous item rules, or do you have a different system?

Specifically, I was considering the benefits of a Haste Glyph Tattoo. A red one. Because everyone knows that red goes da fastest! :D
**Updated 9/25**

Ages Lost

In Progress

Game of the Month
Coming Soon!
Maybe.

Steerpike

This was a bit hidden... here's the feat with the details (obviously you don't need the feat to actually *use* a tattoo, just to make one):

Craft Eldritch Tattoo - Lore, Base Mastery 1

Prerequisite: Caster level 1st

Benefit: You can create an arcane tattoo of any spell that you know. Creating the tattoo takes one hour for each 100 obeloi in its base price. The base price of a tattoo is its spell level × its caster level × 50 obeloi. To create the tattoo, use up raw materials costing one-half of this base price. There is no XP cost (XP costs are very silly).

Eldritch tattoos function exactly like scrolls, and can be used only by those "wearing" the tattoo. However, no spellcraft check/read magic spell is necessary. Following a tattoo's use, it fades from the user's flesh. A medium sized indidivudal can have up to 13 tattoos at any one time: 2 on each limb, 2 on their back and chest, and one on their face or neck.

Expanded Mastery 2: Your tattoos can now be crafted as permanent for spell level × its caster level × 500 obeloi. Their powers are usable once per day.

EDIT: Haste would thus be quite expensive.  3rd level spell x 6th level caster x 500 bones = 9000 bones.  However, that's hardly out of line with the cost of d&d wondrous items.

LD

Thank you for the answer; but what about the answer to this one:

QuoteDrugs and poisons. Imagine your weapon dealing an extra 1d4 Con or Str damage with a successful hit.

Where would I look to find the costing for this?


LD

Quote from: SteerpikeHere, under Poison.

Ah, thank you. The link was broken, but I figured it out and corrected it here.


LD

At last, answering the survey.

1) What would you like to see more or less of, if anything?

I enjoy exploring and anything non-combat. Combat seems to bog down if more than 3 or 4 PCs are playing.

I have very much enjoyed how when Wispy gets off with Kryz, we can have a side conversation while Steerpike is managing the rest of the group; similarly, I think the parallel stories of Carver and Kol to the group of us looting the crypt worked well.

I think that my side conversations have helped well to develop characterizations and to both understand myself and Kryz better.

Ghostman- sadly I'm having a hard time getting a handle on Tarim...what makes him tick and how to interact with him, or the nuances of his personality. Wispy has been making tentative moves to suck up to him, but is unsure exactly how to approach it.

2) Favorite bits so far or things that added to the experience, or things that annoyed you or detracted from the experience?

I very much enjoyed the side quest I went on with Mr. Carver; robbing the wizard's tower and descending into hell.

3) The original players probably had more time to get to know the city; do you have a good feel for Macellaria (and CE more generally) or are you a bit lost?

I think I have a good feeling for Macellaria...Probably need to keep reading up. Which city in the real would would you say that it is most like. I get the feeling that it is a lot like a Renaissance Italian city.

4) Any other comments/questions/issues?

Note: I think we've had a lot of battles with hordes of very weak creatures (The tree scenario, the crypt monsters, etc.) I think that we are best equipped to deal with these... just mentioning though that we haven't fought too many strong individuals... Although I think we are more likely to succeed against the weak hordes; just mentioning the balance.

Nomadic

Quote from: Light Dragon4) Any other comments/questions/issues?

Note: I think we've had a lot of battles with hordes of very weak creatures (The tree scenario, the crypt monsters, etc.) I think that we are best equipped to deal with these... just mentioning though that we haven't fought too many strong individuals... Although I think we are more likely to succeed against the weak hordes; just mentioning the balance.

Just tossing my two cents in here but Eareg is actually uniquely equipped to deal with large singular threats. Provided someone better prepared for close range combat can keep such a threat off of him he can put a huge amount of pain onto a single target. He doesn't do so well against swarms. I plan on coming back (me and steerpike have just been trying to hammer out a time for another session so I can wrap up stuff and ease back into the game) so hopefully that should tip the scales a bit more back towards dealing with lone nasties.