update on my absence and the flooding disaster

Hey everyone!

I'm terribly sorry for the lack of updates here and my general absence, allow me to give you a little background and explanation on that in this post. This is most likely going to be long so I'll do a little TLDR below.

I'm not sure how much of this has been reported internationally but I'm pretty sure all of the European people here have at least heard about it, Germany has been hit by a terrible flood disaster and unfortunately I'm living right in the middle of the area that has been hit by it the most. It's nothing short of a miracle that my flat has been left mostly unscathed by it, but the whole surrounding area looks like a war zone. Streets have been torn open, whole houses have been destroyed or damaged  very badly, cars have been wrecked, our local bridges are in danger of collapsing and there's mud everywhere.I wish this was an overstatement or just dramatic speech but the situation here is terrible.  Below are a few pictures we took so you have a measure on how bad things were & still are. Keep in mind there's been some villages here that have been affected even worse and these are only from the areas that are still accessible.

Lots of people lost everything, over 150 people died and some are still missing and some of the surrounding villages are almost completely destroyed. if you want to get a full picture on it, you can google the flood to see how terrible it has hit some of the areas here. Even Cion himself went missing on his way home for ~6 hours during the heavy rainfalls because he was trapped by the flooding with no way to get home, thankfully he managed to stay safe during that and managed to get home once the rain stopped and nothing worse happened, but with the complete power outtage & no means of communication at all during that time, I was absolutely worried sick and lots of people we know have been hit by this much much worse and we tried to help during the past few days as much as we could.

Aside from the obvious destruction we've been also completely shut off from the outside world.
We had several complete power outages, the longest lasted for over 12 hours, no water either for equally as long and while that has been solved at least due to the terrible destruction our tapwater has been contamined with bacteria and hasn't been safe to drink without previous cooking for over a week now. All of the local stores have been wrecked too, making it hard to even get access to food or water, wired phone line and internet connection is still completely dead in the whole area and they don't know yet at all when they'll be able to fix it. No trains, some streets are completely unuseable and there's been a whole bigscale disaster warning a few days ago for one of the big dams here has been on the verge of breaking due to the flooding. They even completely evacuated all of the villages closer to it for a few days. Thankfully they gave it an all-clear on that in the meantime but the whole area has been on the edge during that time.

I'm only able to type this because they managed to get at least the mobile connection to work somehow, albeit badly most of the time with lots of connection issues & it's slow as hell but hey, it's better than nothing at least. Huge kudos to the service providers for giving everyone here free data & access to it today to help out during these terrible times and workig tiredlessly to get the mobile connection somewhat stable. They're even handing out free cellphones and powerbanks in some areas here so I can at least update y'all now myself. I asked Cion previously to give you guys at least a quick update on discord since his phone is the only means of communication we have available here atm.

So yeah up until today I had no way of getting in touch with anyone on the issue and even this is just an emergency solution, I'm not sure if the connection will be stable enough to post art but I might try it later.
I'm terribly sorry I wasn't able to post anything during this time and also was unable to reply or read any messages, the whole situation was beyond my control and I'm also terribly sorry that there was no monthly voting this month. I doodled a few things and finished some WIPs to distract myself a little whenever it was possible (though I have to admit I wasn't feeling like drawing or doing much at all considering the circumstances...) which I'll be sharing with you as soon as I can which I hope will make up for that. With no voting options available I took your last month's suggestions to mind and thankfully already had a little WIP saved that I wanted to work on anyways and ended up finishing. I will resume with my normal monthly patreon routine as soon as things are working normally here again, promise! Will also catch up with messages etc. properly as soon as I can. There's alot going on here atm. So please be patient with me🙏

Thankfully me and Cion are relatively safe considering the situation and I'm forever grateful our home still stands but the overall situation is still bad. They already announced another wave of heavy rain for the upcoming weekend and I'm incredibly worried about that. I hope it won't be as bad as the rain last week. So yeah, that's the situation here , you could say the shit has hit the fan big time.
I'm incredibly thankful for the kind words some of you guys have sent my way in the meantime and for your patience and understanding 🙏💖💖


TLDR: Big flood catastrophe here in Germany and I live right in the middle of the area that has been hit the worst by it, been completely cut off from the outside world ever since, our home still stands but lots of power outages, no access to water, destruction, phone lines and hardwire network connection are still not working at all, am only able to type this now thanks to an emergency solution by the local mobile net providers and Cion's cellphone.