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|Doppelgängers. They're powerful, mystical, naturally recurring...
— Qetsiyah about Doppelgängers in Death and the Maiden
Doppelgängers, also known as Shadow-Selves or Mortal Shadow Selves, are a supernatural occurrence that were created by Nature as a result of Silas and Amara becoming true immortals after consuming Qetsiyah's immortality elixir. The purpose of this supernatural species is to maintain the natural balance by dying in place of their immortal progenitors. For this reason, doppelgängers have existed for at least 1,000 years during which time they have been born and died in the place of Silas and Amara, who, as true immortals, were invulnerable to any conventional weapon.
There are two known doppelgänger lines which stem from Silas and Amara, respectively. Known doppelgängers of Silas are Stefan Salvatore and Tom Avery, and known doppelgängers of Amara are Tatia, Katherine Pierce and Elena Gilbert.
As of Season Eight, Elena Gilbert is the last remaining doppelgänger. However, since Elena is shown to be deceased in a flash forward, this species will inevitably become extinct.
- "Qetsiyah: When they drank the immortality elixir, they violated the natural law that all living things must die, so Nature found a balance by creating mortal shadow selves.
Stefan: Doppelgängers."
- —Original Sin
The phenomenon of the shadow-self occurs to counterbalance a disruption to Nature's law that all living things must die. Qetsiyah, one of the most powerful witches and member of very gifted people called the Travelers, created a spell for immortality with the intention that she and Silas would drink it together at their wedding. However, Silas stole the immortality elixir and used it on himself and his lover, Amara, who was Qetsiyah's handmaiden, so that the two could be together for eternity. Disrupting the balance of Nature when they became truly immortal, Nature eventually began to create doppelgängers of Silas and Amara that could die to counter the balance that was disrupted by these new immortals. With Silas and Amara now both dead, it is unknown if Nature will continue to spawn more doppelgängers.
Introduction of the Doppelgängers
The first doppelgängers introduced in this universe were Elena Gilbert and Katherine Pierce (also known as Katerina Petrova), but they were initially believed to exist due to Elena being one of Katherine's descendants. However, it was later revealed that, while doppelgängers do have a bloodline connection, they are not simply a supernatural species like werewolves—they are actually mystically occurring beings who are loopholes to the creation of the Immortality Spell by Qetsiyah in the 1st century BCE. Because Nature decreed that all living things must die, the Immortality Spell disrupted the balance Nature had created, which forced Nature to counter it by creating living "shadow-selves" of the immortal Silas and Amara who could die in their place. These doppelgängers are believed to either be direct descendants of Silas and Amara's respective bloodlines, or descendants of one of their siblings, who would be the closest genetic match to continue their lineage.
Because their creation was a consequence of the use of magic, doppelgängers are supernatural, and as such, their blood can be used as a binding agent for powerful spells, such as the spell that created the Originals, and therefore the creation of the vampire race. However, they have no actual supernatural powers of their own aside from the mystical properties of their blood, and the only reason it is known that they are truly supernatural is because Elena mercy-killed Alaric Saltzman while he was wearing a Gilbert Ring in hopes that it would cause him to come back, as the ring can only resurrect the wearer if they die at the hands of a supernatural being, and they were unsure of who had originally seriously wounded Alaric before Elena got there. Since the ring brought Alaric back from the dead, it was confirmed that Elena, despite being otherwise human, was a supernatural being. This also confirmed Elijah Mikaelson's suspicion that the Gilbert ring wouldn't work on Elena because she was technically a supernatural being. Though doppelgängers are supposed to represent mortality in the place of an otherwise truly immortal being, they can achieve immortality through vampirism, as was in the case of Katherine, Stefan, and Elena, as a result of their being technically human as well. This could also be because vampires aren't fully invulnerable creatures like immortals are—they can be killed through various means such as staking, heart extraction, decapitation, etc.
Silas and Amara: The World's First Immortals
Over two thousand years ago in ancient Greece, a young witch named Silas was engaged to be married to Qetsiyah, also a fellow witch. Together, they were the most powerful members of a gifted people called the Travelers. Silas told Qetsiyah that he wanted their love to last forever, even beyond death, and he convinced her to create a spell that would make them immortal. On the night that their wedding ceremony was to take place, Silas absconded with the elixir Qetsiyah had created, and as Qetsiyah watched the plant life around her wither before her eyes, she realized that not only had Silas taken the elixir and left her at the altar, he had also given her portion to someone else. She sought out Silas and found him in the wilderness with another woman – her handmaiden, Amara - who had taken Qetsiyah's share of the immortality elixir.
Silas, having left Amara alone for an unknown reason, returned to their hiding place to find Qetsiyah crouching over the chalice that had held the elixir they were to drink at their wedding. He cautiously inquired after Qetsiyah's purpose for being there, so she explained that, to follow up her first gift of the immortality elixir, she had brought a second gift: The Cure for immortality. Silas was dumbfounded, hardly believing her, but she insisted that it worked, as she had already used it on another immortal. Filled with dread, Silas ran into the tent he had shared with Amara, only to find blood soaked into every surface, as though someone had been brutally slaughtered there. Qetsiyah followed him into the tent and lifted a bloody human heart out of the chalice, admitting that she had slit Amara's throat before ripping her heart out. She then gave him an offer to take the cure and spend the rest of his human life with Qetsiyah, an offer that Silas refused.
In retribution for betraying her, Qetsiyah used the eternal and indestructible body of Amara (whose death she had faked just prior to using magic to desiccate her into stone) to create the supernatural purgatory known as the Other Side. She then lured Silas to an island off of what is now Nova Scotia, Canada, where she trapped him inside a tomb and gave him a choice: he could take the cure and eventually die a mortal death (which would then cause him to pass on to the Other Side, where he would be trapped with her for eternity in the afterlife) or he could stay immortal and starve into petrification for the rest of his immortal life. Silas ultimately chose the latter and desiccated for the next two thousand years while the cure was left untouched.
One major consequence of Silas and Amara becoming immortal was the creation of two lines of shadows-selves, or doppelgängers of the two immortals. Their immortality had violated Nature's law that all living things must die, and so the doppelgängers came to exist as versions of Silas and Amara that could die. According to Qetsiyah, many identical replicas of Silas and Amara have been born over the centuries, finding each other time and time again as though drawn together by destiny. However, it was later revealed by a fellow Traveler, Markos, that he had cast the spell on the two respective lines of doppelgängers to draw them together so they could eventually break the curse on their people by harvesting the blood of the sole remaining doppelgängers of each line.
Tatia and the Mikaelson Family
Tatia was a descendant of Amara and was her first known shadow-self. She lived in the New World in what eventually became Mystic Falls, Virginia, in the late 10th and early 11th centuries as a contemporary of the Mikaelson Family. Even though she had already had a child by another man, a Viking warrior who had died in battle, both Elijah and Klaus fell in love with her and fought each other for her affections. Tatia ended up choosing Elijah over Klaus in the autumn of 1001 AD. Shortly afterward, their mother, the powerful witch Esther, came to Tatia to ask her for some of her blood to use in a spell, presumably because she knew Tatia was a doppelgänger due to her plan to use a modified version of Qetsiyah's immortality spell to turn her husband Mikael and her five surviving children into immortal creatures and sought out the powerful mystical properties of her blood; Esther was intent on preventing herself from losing any more family following the loss of her firstborn daughter Freya and her youngest son Henrik over the years. Esther then enchanted Tatia's donated blood and laced the wine that Mikael and the children drank with dinner that night. Afterward, Mikael drove his sword through the hearts of Finn, Elijah, Klaus, Kol and Rebekah before presumably turning the blade on himself. Upon awakening in transition, the six Mikaelsons fed on human blood and sealed their transformation into what became known as the Original Vampires.
Unfortunately, with this transformation came a terrible hunger for human blood that was nearly insatiable, a side effect that Esther didn't foresee prior to casting the spell on them. When Klaus made his first human kill while feeding on a woman from their village, he triggered his werewolf gene, revealing that he was actually the product of an affair Esther had with the village's werewolf chief Ansel and causing him to transform into a wolf for the first time as a result of becoming the world's first vampire-werewolf hybrid. The morning after his transformation, Elijah found Klaus in the woods next to the bodies of six villagers he had accidentally slaughtered in his confusion. They were then caught discussing Klaus' werewolf heritage by Tatia, who was so frightened she immediately ran away from them. Elijah chased after her to explain what had happened, and Tatia admitted that she had given his mother her blood, not knowing that she would use her dark magic to turn them into monsters. Elijah, hurt by her harsh words, tried to argue that he was not a monster, but he became overwhelmed by his newborn vampire bloodlust when he caught the scent of her blood on her palm, as she had injured it earlier when she tripped and fell into the woods. Despite Elijah's attempts to get her away from him before he could hurt her, he eventually succumbed to his bloodlust and fed on her to the point of death.
When he came back to his senses, he was horrified by what he had done and brought her body back to his mother in hopes that she could save her. However, Elijah was too late, and Esther instead took Tatia's body, eventually using the small amount of blood that remained to cast the Hybrid Curse on Klaus to make his werewolf side dormant in a futile attempt to make up for her sins to her husband and the Spirits of Nature for disrupting the balance. It can be assumed that it was Tatia's child who continued on the bloodline of doppelgängers descended from Amara.
Katerina, Elena, and the Hybrid Curse
- Main article: Hybrid Curse
The notion of the doppelgänger as a class of supernatural beings was first formally introduced in The Vampire Diaries Season Two episode Rose by the character of the same name. Until that point, the term was used simply to describe the human Elena Gilbert's uncanny resemblance to the vampire Katherine Pierce, who was born by the name of Katerina Petrova. In this episode, Rose explained that Elena is a "Petrova doppelgänger" and that she is one of the necessary components in a ritual to break what was referred to as "the Sun and the Moon curse," which allegedly caused vampires to be slaves to the sun and werewolves to be servants of the moon. Rose and her best friend Trevor had originally tried to hand Elena over to Elijah Mikaelson in an effort to earn back their freedom from him and Klaus.
Unfortunately, while Elijah granted Rose her freedom because he respected her loyalty to Trevor, he killed Trevor in punishment for not demonstrating the same loyalty to him and his brother, leading Rose to decide to tell Elena and the Salvatores what she knew about Klaus and his interest in the Petrova doppelgänger. Rose's story was corroborated by Katherine in the episode Katerina, when she told Elena most of the story of how she came to be involved with the Mikaelson family. In 1492, two years after she had been exiled from her home in Bulgaria by her family after having a child out of wedlock, Katherine had settled in England and had assimilated into the culture there. It was then that she was introduced to Klaus and Elijah, who were noblemen in England at the time, by Trevor; the Mikaelson brothers were immediately struck by her resemblance to Tatia and realized they had finally found the Petrova doppelgänger necessary to break the curse, which Katherine led Elena to believed was the so-called "Sun and Moon curse." Klaus then began a relationship with Katherine to keep her at the castle, though she was unaware at first that he was only using her for her blood. However, Elijah, despite his best efforts, fell in love with Katherine in the meantime, to the point where he even sought out a witch to create an elixir infused with a protection spell that would prevent her from permanently dying in the sacrifice ritual to break the curse.
Unfortunately, Katherine was eventually tipped off about Klaus' true intentions by Trevor, who had also fallen in love with her, and so right before Klaus planned to take Katherine back to Bulgaria to perform the ritual, Katherine fled the castle with Trevor's help, eventually seeking shelter at the cottage where the vampire Rose was living. Once there, Rose made it clear she intended to return Katherine to Klaus when the sun set to bed him for his forgiveness, so Katherine tricked Rose into feeding her her vampire blood and then hung herself while Rose and Trevor were fighting in the next room, turning herself into a vampire. Because the sacrifice ritual required the blood of a human Petrova doppelgänger, Katherine's newly-vampiric nature meant that her blood was now useless to Klaus, which forced her (along with her unwilling co-conspirators Rose and Trevor) to go on the run for him for the next 500 years, although her new supernatural abilities helped her evade him for all those centuries. about how Klaus had wanted to use her in the sacrifice five hundred years before, which involved his intention to "drain every single drop of blood" from her body.
In the episode Klaus, Elijah revealed to Elena that the Sun and the Moon curse was actually fake, and that the real curse was one that had been placed on Klaus to suppress his werewolf nature in order to keep him from becoming a true hybrid. He continued to explain that five hundred years ago, Klaus had intended to sacrifice Katerina in the ritual, but she thwarted him by turning herself into a vampire, thus rendering her blood and sacrifice useless – the doppelgänger had to be human for the ritual to break the curse. As a result, Klaus and Elijah created various fake curses attributed to vampires and werewolves in as many different languages and cultures as they could think of, taking care to include the ingredients they needed to break the Hybrid Curse in it (the moonstone and a human Petrova doppelgänger). Their intention was to ensure that vampires and werewolves across the globe would seek the two ingredients out, which would ultimately alert Klaus and Elijah to their existence and allow them to take what they needed to break the curse once and for all. Elijah also confirmed what Katherine had already told Elena in the previous episode—to break the curse, Klaus would need the moonstone, a witch to cast the spell, and one vampire, werewolf, and human Petrova doppelgänger each to sacrifice. Specifically, Klaus would need to feed on Elena until the point of her death after killing a werewolf and a vampire to represent each half of his supernatural heritage.
In The Last Day, Elena surrendered herself to Klaus, and in The Sun Also Rises, after Jules the werewolf and Jenna the vampire had been sacrificed and their blood spilled over the moonstone by the witch Greta, Klaus drained Elena of her blood until she died, and thus successfully broke the Hybrid Curse.
Fortunately for Klaus, Elena actually survived the sacrifice due to a spell cast by the witch Bonnie Bennett that transferred the life-force of Elena's biological father John Gilbert into her body at the cost of his life.
In Season Three's The Reckoning, Klaus discovered from Esther (via Bonnie and Matt Donovan, who had contacted the spirit of Matt's sister Vicki on the Other Side) for information about the curse) that the blood of the human doppelgänger is required to create more hybrids like himself; this was a fail-safe created by Esther to prevent Klaus from being able to create a race of vampire-werewolf hybrids in the case that he was able to break the Hybrid Curse, as if he killed the doppelgänger to break the curse, he would have none of her blood to use to sire hybrids. After Klaus experimented with the process of siring hybrids by feeding the werewolf Tyler Lockwood his blood, killing him, and then feeding him Elena's blood to complete his transition, it was confirmed that human doppelgänger blood is what is necessary to successfully create a hybrid.
Silas' Return and Qetsiyah's Resurrection
In the twenty-first century, a man named Atticus Shane set in motion a series of events that led to the releasing of the immortal Silas from his desiccated state in his tomb. Once he had regained his strength, Silas manipulated those around him to further his agenda. First, Bonnie was tasked with the creation of the Expression Triangle, which he wanted her to use to permanently drop The Veil between the Other Side and the living world, essentially merging the two dimensions and resurrecting all the supernaturals who had been trapped there after their deaths over the two thousand years it had existed. Once the Other Side was gone, Silas intended to take the cure, kill himself, and join his beloved Amara in the Afterlife, not knowing that Amara was still alive. Secondly, Silas threatened Klaus with a illusion of the indestructible white oak stake to force Klaus to find the cure and return it to him. These missions, for the most part, all occurred according to Silas' plan—Bonnie completed the triangle, but she only temporarily dropped the veil within the borders of Mystic Falls in hopes of contacting Qetsiyah for help in taking Silas down; and Silas gained possession of the cure by tricking Elijah into thinking he was giving it to Rebekah. However, Silas' plan went awry when Bonnie subdued him and turned him to stone with Expression magic, allowing Alaric's ghost to steal back the cure and give it to Damon.
Later, while trying to resurrect Jeremy, Bonnie died, and with her death, the spell desiccating Silas broke. Because Bonnie, who, as a ghost, was still able to interact with the living world and perform magic while the veil was down, became too distracted by bigger problems to put the veil back up when she planned. As a result of the veil being dropped longer than she had expected, Qetsiyah was able to take advantage it by using the opportunity to resurrect herself so she could finally get her revenge on Silas. That night, when Stefan was about to dump what he believed was Silas' desiccated body into the quarry, Silas appeared and revealed to Stefan his true form, which looked exactly like Stefan himself. Stefan was shocked speechless as Silas explained that Stefan was his shadow-self before locking Stefan in a safe that was meant to be Silas' grave and dropping it into the bottom of the quarry.
Months later, Qetsiyah freed Stefan from the safe and told him her version of the story between her, Silas, and Amara. She then used Stefan in a spell to link him to Silas; once they were linked, Qetsiyah cast a spell on Stefan that fried his brain so severely that it essentially disabled the powerful psychic abilities Silas possessed as an immortal, preventing him from being able to read anyone's mind or use mind control on them to do his bidding. The only way to neutralize this spell was to cause Stefan to die temporarily by snapping his neck, giving Silas his powers back for as long as Stefan remained unconscious.
In Season Five, Qetsiyah explained that over the centuries, she witnessed the doppelgängers of Silas and Amara being drawn to one another, whether by fate, the universe, or some other mystical phenomenon. She surmised that she and Damon were merely obstacles in the doppelgängers' destined true love that was meant to make their love stories interesting. It is unknown whether she had been deliberately misleading Stefan, Damon, and Elena with this information or not; regardless, it was later revealed that this was not exactly what the prophecy foretold. Some time later, Markos, the leader of the Travelers, revealed to Damon that the prophecy regarding the doppelgängers was not about them being destined to fall in love—in reality, there was a prophecy that the blood of the last two surviving doppelgängers could be combined and used to undo Spirit Magic, which would thus remove the curse that the witches placed upon the Travelers after Silas and Amara became immortals. Markos also revealed that he had cast a spell 1,500 years ago that would draw the doppelgängers together, as the Travelers needed the doppelgängers to be in one place in order to use them to break the curse, and he knew that the lure of true love would be powerful enough to make this happen.
With the exception of Stefan and Elena, the Travelers saw to it that all of the remaining doppelgängers and their progenitors were killed (specifically Katherine, Tom Avery, Silas, and Amara), the Travelers tested this prophecy by performing an experiment: they turned one of their own members, Sloan, into a vampire using Tyler Lockwood's blood, and then, once Sloan had completed her transition, Markos had her consume the mixed doppelgänger blood. Once she had ingested the blood, Sloan's vampirism was stripped away, returning her to the last state her body was in before it became a vampire—dead with a slit throat. Armed with the knowledge that the prophecy was correct, the Travelers then prepared to use a large amount of Stefan and Elena's combined blood to cast a powerful spell to remove the Travelers' Curse. To do this, the Travelers all cast Passenger spells on the town's citizens to allow them to possess them, as their curse prevented them from practicing magic as a group without devastating natural disasters occurring at their locations. Once in their new loaner bodies, the Travelers broke vials of the combined doppelgänger blood in their hands while they cast the the Magic Purification Spell, a spell that radiated throughout the entire town of Mystic Falls, unraveling and stripping away all non-Traditional Magic in the area, including the magic that reanimated the bodies of vampires, activated lycanthropy, created the Brotherhood of the Five, gave witches their magic, and that imbued any enchanted object such as Daylight Amulets. It was also the combined blood of Stefan and Elena that ultimately destroyed the Other Side and caused the majority of the souls trapped there to move on to find Peace or get sucked into Hell
Powers and Abilities
- Blood: Doppelgängers, being mystical and recurrent, are massive sources of magical power.
- The blood of a doppelgänger can be used to link supernatural beings with the help of magic conducted by any witch.
- Their blood can also be used to bind an extremely powerful curse or spell or to use as a power source in spells that require more magic than the witch in question possesses on their own.
- For some spells, the blood must come from a human doppelgänger. For other spells, the blood of a doppelgänger can still be used even if they've been turned into a vampire, as seen in Death and the Maiden when Qetsiyah used Elena's blood (along with Katherine and Amara's blood) to transfer the Anchor from Amara to Bonnie. There are certain spells and uses that require the doppelgänger to be "pure" and human, however, like the undoing of the Hybrid Curse and the siring of hybrids.
- The blood of the last two "living" doppelgängers can be used to reverse spells cast using non-traditional forms of magic, especially Spirit Magic (e.g. turning a vampire back into a (dead) human, undoing the spell that bound the Other Side, reversing the spells cast on daylight rings for vampires, removing a triggered gene in those cursed with lycanthropy, etc).
- Linking: Doppelgängers, being modeled after immortals and other doppelgängers, have an inherently strong mystical connection to each other that can be used to invoke linking spells.
- Unique Physiology: Doppelgängers are fully capable of being turned into vampires, and can retain the mystical properties of their blood despite their vampiric abilities. Since they can also be born witches, as in the case of Katerina Petrova, it can be assumed that doppelgängers could theoretically also be born as other supernatural species, such werewolves or Brotherhood of the Five hunters.
- Magic: Doppelgängers are susceptible to the powers of witchcraft. This is inclusive of mystical objects such as Papa Tunde's Blade, and Dark Objects.
- Mortality: Despite of their supernatural status, doppelgängers are very much human and share many of the same weaknesses as non-supernatural beings (e.g. age, decapitation, disease, heart-failure, suffocation, etc.)
The Doppelgänger Progenitors
Silas or Silvanus (Ancient Greek: Σίλας or Σιλουανός, Latin: Silvanus, Modern Greek: Silouanos) was born sometime in the 1st century B.C., during the Biblical Times. His origins are from Ancient Greece. Silas was the world's very first immortal being and was the earliest known ancestor of the Salvatore family bloodline, as well as the progenitor of the Salvatore doppelgänger bloodline, which spawned Stefan Salvatore and Tom Avery, presumably among other unknown doppelgängers over the course of two thousand years. Before becoming an immortal, he was a very gifted and powerful witch in a community that eventually became known as the Travelers. Silas was deeply and passionately in love with his true love and soulmate, a young woman named Amara. Silas' love for Amara was so strong that his love for her was the major motivator behind him wanting to create the very first spell of immortality. To do this, he sought out the help of his best friend Qetsiyah, to whom he was betrothed, though his heart truly belonged to Amara. Silas and Amara's love, though powerful and strong, was also forbidden as Silas was engaged to be married to Qetsiyah and Amara was her personal handmaiden. Silas manipulated Qetsiyah and convinced her that he loved her and wanted to spend an eternity with her. Out of love for Silas, she created the world's first spell of immortality in the form of an elixir, which was intended to be drunk by them both at their wedding ceremony. However, Silas had no intention of allowing Qetsiyah to become an immortal with him, so on the night he was to marry Qetsiyah, Silas stole the elixir and left Qetsiyah at the altar, instead meeting with Amara in the woods and sharing the elixir with her, turning them both into the world's first immortal man and woman.
After Qetsiyah discovered that Silas had granted the gift of immortality to his true love Amara and not her, she supposedly cured Amara of her immortality and then brutally killed her out of jealous rage by slitting her throat and cutting out her heart. Silas was completely and utterly devastated. Qetsiyah then lured Silas to an isolated island and entombed him in darkness, leaving him to starve and desiccate for eternity. Buried with Silas was the cure for immortality, in which Qetsiyah created. Silas had two choices: either take the cure, die a mortal death and be on The Other Side, which is a purgatory meant for dead supernatural beings, with her for eternity or stay entombed in darkness and desiccate forever. Out of spite, anger and vengeance towards Qetsiyah murdering Amara, Silas chose to not take the cure and ended up staying entombed in darkness and starving for over 2,000 years. Because Silas refused to take the cure and die out of spite, Qetsiyah ended up creating the Other Side in order to trap Silas should he take the cure and die. Creating the Other Side would prevent Silas from finding eternal peace and being together in death with Amara on the earth's metaphysical plane, which is where human souls go after they die. Qetsiyah also created The Five, a group of supernatural hunters whose main goal and mission was to find Silas, cure him of his immortality and kill him, so that Silas would end up on the Other Side with Qetsiyah instead of with Amara as she wanted. After over 2,000 years of being entombed in darkness, Silas has risen and plans on wreaking havoc everywhere he goes. He is determined to join his true love Amara in death by getting Bonnie, who is a very distant descendant of Qetsiyah , to drop the veil so that he could take the cure and die a mortal death and cross over to be with Amara. It was revealed after 2,000 years that Qetsiyah had lied to Silas about Amara and had faked her death. Qetsiyah had actually desiccated and entombed Amara and then used her as the physical anchor for the Other Side spell in which Qetsiyah had created in order to trap Silas' soul shall Silas die a mortal death. Silas reunites with Amara after she is re-awakened, Qetsiyah having lied about her death. Amara tells Silas that she loves him and that she is sorry. She then stabs Silas in the neck in order to obtain the cure for immortality which is running through Silas' veins as she doesn't wish to live anymore. Silas still intends on destroying the Other Side so that he could be with Amara in peace in true eternal death. Silas and Amara reunite once more and Amara begs Silas to kill her so that her suffering can end for good and she can find peace. Amara tells Silas that she loves him and that she will always love him but that she cannot live for another day and wants to end her suffering. Silas tells Amara that he understands. Amara stabs herself and dies, crossing over to the metaphysical plane where humans go to after they die. Afterwards, Silas is stabbed by Stefan, his doppelgänger and descendant, and he dies. Unfortunately, Silas dies before he ever had a chance to destroy the Other Side. Silas ends up crossing over to the Other Side, which means that he is separated from Amara forever. To make matters worse and more tragic, Qetsiyah ends up killing herself after transferring the anchor from Amara to Bonnie. Qetsiyah crosses over to the Other Side, where Silas is stuck with her for all eternity. This means that Qetsiyah got her 2,000 year old wish; Silas being stuck with her on the Other Side and being separated from his soulmate for all time and for all eternity. When Silas made himself truly immortal, he created an imbalance in nature and nature needed a loophole, a version or versions of Silas that could die. Therefore, shadow selves, doppelgängers or a doppelgänger bloodline of Silas was created in order to maintain the balance of nature. Silas was a distant ancestor to the Salvatore family.
Amara (Ancient Greek: Αμάρα, Latin: Amarantha) was born sometime in the 1st century B.C., during the Biblical Times. Her origins are from Ancient Greece. She is the oldest known ancestor of the Petrova family bloodline. Personality wise, Amara comes off as gentle, docile, and innocent, similar to that of Katherine before she became evil. Her age is unknown but it could be assumed that she was anywhere between fourteen to eighteen years old. As a human, she was the handmaiden to Qetsiyah, a very powerful witch. Amara fell deeply and passionately in love with a young, gifted and powerful warlock named Silas. Amara's love for Silas was so strong that she desired to be with him forever. However, her love for Silas was also strongly forbidden as Silas was engaged to be married to Qetsiyah. Therefore, Silas and Amara had a secret relationship. Silas also strongly loved Amara, so much that he desired immortality so that he and Amara could be together for eternity. Silas manipulated Qetsiyah into creating the spell of immortality with the intention of sharing the gift of eternal life with Amara, instead of Qetsiyah. However, after betraying Qetsiyah's trust after she created the spell, Qetsiyah became filled with anger and rage and she wanted revenge. After Silas and Amara drank the immortality elixir, Qetsiyah found the latter by faking her death and forced her to become the phyiscal Anchor to The Other Side, binding it's existence to her immortal life and desiccating her. After her awakening two thousand years later, the pain of her existence was too much to bear and she wished to die. She consumed the Cure in order to become mortal again. Amara reunites with Silas after 2,000 years of being apart from him adn she confesses her undying love for him but says that although she loves Silas, she desires to die just as much. Amara then asks Silas to kill her and end her 2,000 years of suffering. Silas is hesitant to do so at first but he then understands. Unexpectedly, Silas is killed by Stefan after he is stabbed with a blade. Silas passes through Amara as she was still currently the anchor before Qetsiyah had transferred the spell and made Bonnie the anchor instead. Amara, realizing that she has officially nothing to live for now that her beloved is dead and she has endured endless suffering for centuries and centuries, tells a dead Silas that their eternity together would start with her death. She then takes the same knife that killed Silas and stabs herself, killing her and ending her endless suffering. She is presumed to have found peace and has passed on to the afterlife where human souls go to once theyr die. Unfortunately for Amara, she did not get her dying wish which was to be reunited with Silas in true death as Silas ended up stuck on The Other Side with Qetsiyah, who ended up killing herself to be with Silas. It is currently unknown whether or not Amara reunited with Silas and found happiness in death with her true love after the Other Side deteriorated since Silas was seen being sucked into oblivion.
Known Doppelgänger Lines
Amara's Doppelgängers
Amara's doppelgängers are Tatia, Katherine and Elena, all three of which have appeared on-screen. Elena is sometimes referred to as the Petrova doppelgänger because of her striking resemblance to Katerina Petrova.
With Amara's death and Elena being the last doppelgänger, the Petrova doppelgänger line is expected to be extinct with Elena's death.
Tatia was born during the 10th century A.D. in the area where Mystic Falls was to be formed. She was a contemporary of the Mikaelson Family around the early 10th century. During the Middle Ages, Tatia had a child with an unknown man; later in time, she met Elijah and Niklaus Mikaelson, both of whom fell in love with her (especially Klaus, according to Elijah). Esther, the mother of Elijah and Niklaus and also the Original witch, used Tatia's blood in the spell or ritual to create the Original Vampires, as part of the wine laced with blood in which Mikael had given his children. Her blood was also part of the spell Esther used to bind Klaus' werewolf side, which resulted in Klaus' werewolf gene being dormant.
Katerina Petrova (a.k.a. Katherine Pierce) was born in Bulgaria during the 15th century on June 5, 1473. In the year 1492, when she was still a human, she was captured by Klaus. She knew that she was going to die, so she tricked Trevor, one of Klaus' servants, into helping her escape. Katherine was clever, cunning and smart; she knew that if she became a vampire, she'd be rendered useless to Klaus. Katherine stabbed herself with a knife but was given vampire blood by Rose in an attempt to heal her stabbing wound and afterwards, Katherine hung herself and came back as a vampire. In return for her escape, Klaus made her suffer by killing her entire family in Bulgaria, thinking that the doppelgänger would never appear again. What Klaus didn't know was that Katherine had a child out of wedlock that was kept secret and this child continued the bloodline of the Petrova family, leading to the birth of Elena Gilbert. Tired from running, Katherine intended to make a deal with Klaus by giving him the ingredients he needed to break the curse in exchange for her freedom. She planned to hand over the moonstone, Elena Gilbert, Caroline Forbes (a vampire), Tyler Lockwood (a werewolf) and Bonnie Bennett (a witch). When Katherine was about to take out her own doppelgänger, Elena shoves the cure, into her mouth. She is the doppelgänger of Tatia and her doppelgänger is Elena Gilbert.
Elena Gilbert was born in Mystic Falls, Virginia during the 20th century on June 22, 1992. Elijah was the first one who found out about Elena before Klaus. At first, when Rose told Elijah about this, he didn't believe it. But soon enough he found out that the Petrova Family line didn't end with Katherine because she had given birth to a baby girl, thus continuing the Petrova bloodline. Once Klaus learned of the Petrova doppelgänger, Elena, he came to Mystic Falls, and he kidnapped Katherine, temporarily taking over the body of Alaric Saltzman. As with Katherine, Klaus is responsible for the death of Elena's family, most notably their aunt Jenna Sommers, Elena and Jeremy's legal guardian. He terned Jenna into a vampire and killed her for the sacrificial ritual. Unlike with Katherine, Klaus successfully killed Elena and as a result, he breaks the curse. Fortunately for Elena, John Gilbert had Bonnie form a special spell that bound Elena's life force or essence to his. This spell brought Elena back to life, but in return, killed John and took his life. In The Departed, Jeremy took Elena to Mystic Falls Hospital after discovering her lying unconscious at home. Meredith Fell discovered Elena was suffering from a serious cerebral hemorrhage and secretly injected her with vampire blood to heal her. This action fortunately saved Elena from death. The same day, Rebekah ran Elena and Matt off Wickery Bridge to save her siblings from Alaric, since his life force was tied to Elena. That way, if she died, so would Alaric. Jeremy arrives home to see Alaric, and he talks to him and Jeremy realizes that he is a ghost, and that if he is dead, that means his sister, Elena, must also be dead. Stefan hurried to Wickery Bridge, intending to save Elena, but she insisted that he save Matt's life instead, who was unresponsive after crashing into the water. By the time Stefan pulled Matt out of the water, Elena had drowned and died. Stefan brought her body back to Mystic Falls Hospital, where she woke up, transitioning into a vampire with Damon's blood in her system. She is the last of Amara's doppelgängers. She later reverted back to human after taking The Cure.
Silas' Doppelgängers
Compared to the Petrova Doppelgängers, the Salvatore Doppelgänger do not seem to be as recognized, since Klaus and Rebekah seemed to have failed at recognizing Stefan for what he was during the early 20th Century, other than an emotionless Vampire at the time.
With the death of Stefan, the last doppelgänger, Silas' doppelgänger line is extinct.
Stefan Salvatore was born in Mystic Falls, Virginia during the 19th century on November 1, 1846. He was turned into a vampire along with his older brother Damon in the year 1864 by Amara's distant descendant, Katherine Pierce. Like his ancient ancestor Silas, Stefan was involved in a love triangle with Katherine and Damon. Stefan was unaware of the fact that he was a doppelgänger during his human years, and had no idea Katherine herself was a doppelgänger. Stefan was turned into a vampire against his will; Katherine had been compelling Stefan to consume her vampire blood for weeks. When Katherine is captured by the Founders Council Members, Stefan and Damon plot to rescue Katherine from being burned in a church by fire. Although Stefan and Damon do end up rescuing Katherine, Stefan and Damon are both shot dead by their own father Giuseppe. It was then that Stefan transformed into a vampire. When he first transitioned, Stefan suffered from severe hunger for blood and therefore, had problems controlling himself around human blood. Regarding the bloodline of Silas, not too much is known about it, its background and its history. Qetsiyah mentioned to Stefan that she has seen doppelgängers of Silas preceding Stefan while watching from The Other Side. Stefan later received the Cure and became human again, and died a while afterwards.
Tom Avery was born during the 20th century. He was a doppelgänger of Silas who is discovered in the episode While You Were Sleeping. He is a paramedic who resides in Atlanta, Georgia. In Rescue Me, it is revealed that he was kidnapped by a witch named Hazel and put in a comatose state under a cloaking spell in order to protect him from The Travelers. He is later found by Caroline and Enzo. Caroline snaps Enzo's neck in order to prevent him from killing Tom. Caroline then takes Tom to a diner and compels him to tell her about his life. Confirming he is a good person, she compels him to run, far from the Travelers and Enzo. Before he can leave, however, Enzo catches up to them and snaps Tom's neck, killing him and making Stefan the last living doppelgänger of Silas.
Doppelgänger Lines
|Immortal Beings
|1st century
|Amara †
|Silas †
|10th century
|Tatia †
|Unknown Doppelgänger †
|15th century
|Katerina Petrova †
|Unknown Doppelgänger †
|19th century
|Unknown Doppelgänger †
|Stefan Salvatore †
|20th century
|Elena Gilbert
|Tom Avery †
The Originals
Doppelgänger Myths, Facts and Theories
- A Doppelgänger is the ghostly or in some cases, a physical double of a living person. The word Doppelgänger is a loanword from German, written there (as any noun) with an initial capital letter Doppelgänger, composed from doppel, meaning "double", and ganger, as "walker". In English, the word is conventionally not capitalized, and it is also common to drop the German diacritic umlaut on the letter "a" and write "Doppelgänger", although the correct spelling without umlaut would be "doppelgaenger".
- In some traditions, when a doppelgänger is seen by a person's friends or relatives, the contact prophesies illness or danger, while a person seeing their own doppelgänger is an omen of death.
- In other traditions or legends, a doppelgänger is connected with the person copied; sometimes causing the feelings of injuries between the original and the doppelgänger. For example, if the doppelgänger is injured, the other person will also be hurt or feel pain.
- "Doppelgänger" is a German word or term meaning "double walker" or "double goer"―a shadow self that is thought to accompany every person. Traditionally, it is said that only the owner of the doppelgänger can see this phantom self and that it can be a harbinger of death. Occasionally, however, a doppelgänger can be seen by a person's friends or family, resulting in quite a bit of confusion.
- 'Definition of a Doppelgänger varies between the accounts of the old ages. They were mentioned as double spirits of human beings since the very old times. They were also mentioned as apparitions or reflections of people. Although they looked exactly the same or indistinguishably similar with the person they impersonated, Doppelgängers were not twins of these people. It was stated in some mythological accounts that Doppelgängers cast no shadows and had no reflections in the mirror.
- The term "Doppelgänger" is used often to describe someone that looks just like (or at least very similar to) another person, but there are more mysterious and sinister roots than the word suggests.
- Literally meaning "double-goer", a real Doppelgänger is an apparition that appears in place of a person in a location or situation that would not otherwise be possible. Many people have seen this image of themselves, both in life and in visions. Other times, a person may be seen walking through a room when they are, in actuality, several miles away at the time. The third most common sightings occur when the image of a person appears to walk past an area twice in a row - moving in the same direction - to where it would be impossible for the person to have returned there fast enough.
- A Doppelgänger is a creature who has the ability to mimic any human being's appearence and characteristics. Usually a Doppelgänger chooses a particularly wealthy person to impersonate, being that they are lazy and would rather have resources already for them. Occasionally, but not always, a Doppelgänger has a larger, more detailed plan for why they would impersonate a person. This often makes them seem "evil" or "malevolent".
- According to legend, Doppelgängers (German for "double-walker") are paranormal duplicates of a real person. They can manifest in a number of ways: You can see them out of the corner of your eye, meet them on a lonely road somewhere, or, chillingly, see them standing behind you when looking in a mirror. Sometimes a Doppelgänger can't be seen by the person at all, but instead manifests to other people in a completely different location. It may even cooperate with the person, help them with tasks, or act as a surrogate body of sorts.
- The term has, in the vernacular, come to refer to any double or look-alike of a person, most commonly in reference to a so-called evil twin, or to bilocation. Alternatively, the word is used to describe a phenomenon where you catch your own image out of the corner of your eye. In some traditions, seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death. A doppelgänger seen by friends or relatives of a person may sometimes bring bad luck, or indicate an approaching illness or health problem.
- The doppelgängers of folklore cast no shadow, and have no reflection in a mirror or in water. They are supposed to provide advice to the person they shadow, but this advice can be misleading or malicious. They can also, in rare instances, plant ideas in their victim's mind or appear before friends and relatives, causing confusion. In many cases once someone has viewed his own doppelgänger, he is doomed to be haunted by images of his ghostly counterpart.
- Some accounts of doppelgängers, sometimes called the 'evil twin' suggests that they might attempt to provide advice to the person they shadow, but that this advice can be misleading or malicious. They may also attempt to plant sinister ideas in their victim's mind or cause them great confusion. For this reason, people were advised to avoid communicating with their own doppelgänger at all costs.
- Other folklore says that it is considered unlucky to try to communicate with a doppelgänger.
- In Ancient Egyptian mythology, a "ka" was a tangible "spirit double" having the same memories and feelings as the person to whom the counterpart belongs. In one Egyptian myth entitled, "The Greek Princess", an Egyptian view of the Trojan War, a "ka" of Helen was used to mislead Paris of Troy, helping to stop the war.
- In Norse mythology, a "vardøger" is a ghostly double who precedes a living person and is seen performing their actions in advance. In Finnish mythology, this is called having an "etiäinen", i.e., "a first comer". Norse folklore describes entities known as vardøger, ghostly beings that preceded their living counterparts, taking their places at various activities and performing their actions in advance. The spirit with the subject's footsteps, voice, scent, or appearance and overall demeanour precedes them in a location or activity, resulting in witnesses believing they've seen or heard the actual person before the person physically arrives. This bears a subtle difference from a doppelgänger, with a less sinister connotation.
- "Vardøger" (vardøgr or varsel) in Norse mythology can be considered as another reference to Doppelgängers. A vardoger was the ghost-like double spirit of a person which was seen doing the actions of a person before he did it, kind of like a reverse déjà vu that actually happens. In Norse mythology it was also interpreted that these beings might be some kind of bilocation (existing at two locations at the same time) as well as guardian spirits for a human being.
- In Breton mythology as well as in Cornish and Norman French folklore, the doppelgänger is a version of the Ankou, a personification of death.
- Doppelgängers were once thought of as aliens who would land on earth in order to execute a plan to invade the human race and replace every person with a look-alike Doppelgänger. This is not the case. Doppelgängers, like most other mythical creatures, have some tie to the human race. They are not a different species altogether, but rather a hybrid.
- Silas and Amara's doppelgängers may not be limited to a continuous 500 years recurrence as it has been speculated since Season Five.
- In Original Sin, Qetsiyah stated that "century after century", she watched versions of Stefan and Elena find each other and fall in love—this could mean that Klaus only presumed that Petrova doppelgängers only appeared every half-millennium or so because it took him that long to find one after losing Katherine. However, it is also possible that Qetsiyah's statement was meant to be hyperbolic to emphasize the misery she felt watching the shadows of Silas and Amara continue to find love while she was trapped on the Other Side.
- According to Qetsiyah, the shadows of Silas and Amara are destined to find each other and fall in love, based on her observations throughout the centuries. It is unknown if Qetsiyah saw versions of Silas and Amara fall in love when they were alive or if they died and fell in love on The Other Side. However, evidently, they are also capable of developing romantic feelings for other people. Examples include:
- The term doppelgänger doesn't seem to imply any hierarchy.
- Qetsiyah has, in one instance, mentioned Silas as Stefan's doppelgänger.
- Silas himself referred to Amara as Elena's doppelgänger.
- Silas and Stefan can be called doppelgängers of each other. Similarly, Tatia, Katherine, Elena and Amara are all doppelgängers of each other since they are all lookalikes of each other.
- The term "Shadow" has some implied hierarchy as opposed to doppelgänger.
- Katherine referred to Elena as her shadow-self and Silas did the same to Stefan.
- Elena is the shadow of Amara, Tatia and Katherine, while Katherine is that only of Amara and Tatia.
- Doppelgängers are humans for most intents and purposes. However, they are a supernatural occurrence and are therefore, considered to be a supernatural species. The difference between regular humans and doppelgängers is that spells that use a doppelgänger can be broken using another doppelgänger.
- Death by a doppelgänger counts as a supernatural death. A person wearing a Gilbert Ring will come back to life if killed by a human doppelgänger.
- The Gilbert rings do not protect supernatural creatures and is, thus, theorized not to work on a doppelgänger. This has never been confirmed.
- They can, however, be compelled by vampires like any regular human.
- It seems that the men who spend a lot of time with doppelgängers of Amara can't help but fall in love with her or fall vulnerable to her charms. Back in the 11th century, it was stated that every man in the village fell in love with Tatia, though Elijah and Niklaus Mikaelson more than any others. Trevor, Elijah, Damon Salvatore, Stefan Salvatore and Mason Lockwood all fell in love with Katherine, and Noah was obsessed with her. Matt Donovan, Stefan, and Damon fell in love with Elena.
- Similarly, it seems that many women also find themselves strongly attracted to Salvatore doppelgängers. An example is Elena, Bonnie, Caroline, Katherine, Qetsiyah and Rebekah all finding Stefan appealing and all of them being attracted to him at one point or another. It could easily be assumed that Silas was also very attractive to the opposite sex as well, since he had two women who were passionately in love with him (and one psychotically so) in Qetsiyah and Amara.
- Katherine and Elena both became vampires, though Katherine was cured of her vampirism and returned back to a human/witch before eventually dying of old age.
- Silas and his doppelgänger, Stefan, have first names beginning with the letter "S". It is unknown if other doppelgängers of Silas also had names beginning with the letter S.
- Tom Avery, the second known doppelgänger of Silas (who is assumed to be the final doppelgänger of the line) seems to break this tradition, as his name begins with the letter T.
- All of the known shadows of Amara, like herself, have first names that rhyme with each other. All of the known Petrova doppelgängers, including the progenitor Amara, have first names which end with an "A" (AmarA, TatiA, KaterinA, ElenA).
- A doppelgänger will look identical in appearance to their immortal progenitor, but there will be variations in both their looks and their personalities due to differences in their rearing and community standards (such as their expressions, speech, reason, and connections with others), especially as a result of them all being born in different time periods. For example, the timeline of the progenitors of the line and their shadow-selves is as follows:
- Silas (Progenitor/Originator of Salvatore Doppelgänger bloodline): Born some time in 1st Century BCE in Ancient Greece
- Amara (Progenitor/Originator of Petrova Doppelgänger bloodline): Born some time in 1st Century BCE in Ancient Greece
- Tatia (1st Petrova Doppelgänger): Born in the late 900's CE in the New World (now Mystic Falls, Virginia, USA)
- Katerina Petrova (2nd Petrova Doppelgänger due to the Hybrid Curse): Born in 1473 in Bulgaria
- Stefan (3rd Salvatore Doppelgänger): Born in 1846 in Mystic Falls, Virginia, USA
- Tom Avery (4th/Final Salvatore Doppelgänger): Born in the late 20th century in the USA (possibly Atlanta, Georgia)
- Elena Gilbert (3rd/Final Petrova Doppelgänger): Born in 1992 in Mystic Falls, Virginia, USA
- According to some myths, doppelgängers tend to undo the lives of each other. Tatia was used to create the Original Vampires but her doppelgängers have influenced the deaths of all three deceased Original Vampires.
- Now that Stefan has been revealed to be a doppelgänger of Silas, in retrospect, it seems more than just a mere coincidence that Stefan too influenced the deaths of the three Original Vampires.
- Stefan intervened when Damon tried to take a shot at Klaus, which led to the death of Mikael.
- Stefan took the first shot at Finn and was disarmed immediately by Sage. In his process of recovering the stake, Elena shot Finn with the crossbow.
- Stefan spent an entire evening trying to obtain the dagger from Rebekah which, at the very least kept her at bay, while Elena and Jeremy went about killing Kol.
- On more than one occasion, Katherine has actively harmed her doppelgänger Elena. Silas made his doppelgänger, Stefan, suffer for a whole summer by stabbing him, locking him in a safe and throwing the safe off a cliff into the water under a quarry, where Stefan would drown repeatedly and die over and over for three months.
- The very danger, of being prematurely undone by his doppelgänger, is probably why Silas locked Stefan in the safe and left him to drown repeatedly - he might have wanted to keep Stefan out of the way for as long as he remains immortal. As it turns out, Stefan's release from the safe allowed Qetsiyah to neutralise Silas' mental powers.
- The term "Petrova Doppelgänger" comes from the last name of Katherine Petrova, the second doppelgänger of Amara. It is a term used by those who strove to find Katherine's doppelgänger and once discovered, directly referred only to Elena.
- It is possible that the doppelgängers were finding each other and falling in love on The Other Side. Doppelgängers are known to be supernatural beings and hence, would go to The Other Side when they die. This could possibly be what Qetsiyah meant when she said she has watched versions of Silas and Amara find each other and fall in love century after century; she could have been watching them find each other and fall in love on the Other Side. However, with the destruction of the Other Side, this is presumably no longer possible.
- Doppelgängers can be born or the doppelgänger "gene" can be passed down the bloodline without the doppelgänger himself/herself having children or a direct bloodline due to having children. For example, Silas and Amara, the progenitors of the Salvatore and Petrova doppelgänger bloodlines respectively, were assumed to not have had any children before they became truly immortal. Therefore, it is very likely that they had a sibling(s) which would have passed down the doppelgänger "gene" through Silas and Amara's respective bloodlines. So, doppelgängers would not need to have children in order for the doppelgänger "gene" to be passed down the bloodline. It should be noted that all of the known Petrova doppelgängers (i.e. Tatia and Katherine), with the exception of Elena due to becoming a vampire, have had children. It could be assumed that Silas' doppelgängers all had children as well, with the exception of Stefan, since he became a vampire and therefore, could not reproduce.
- The two known doppelgänger lines are, both, the result of The Immortality Spell being cast. It is possible that other spells (such as The Hybrid Curse while it was active) may also produce doppelgängers depending on their nature.
- As of Season Five, both Amara and Silas had become mortal and died. Theoretically, being cured of immortality and their deaths means the end of their doppelgänger lines, as nature would no longer require their shadow selves to die in their places.
- Since Tom Avery was born in the 20th century chances are is that he was meant for Elena, had she not met Stefan. If the prophecy held truth, then that means that Stefan may have never been meant to meet neither Katherine or Elena, nor fall in love with them. Katherine may have had another Salvatore doppelgänger that was meant for her, and Stefan could have had a different Petrova Doppelgänger that was meant for himself, IF, of course, the prophecy meant that two doppelgängers were born in the same century and were meant fall in love with each other.
- It was revealed that the reason why the Travelers want the blood of the doppelgängers was because they wanted to break the curse that was placed on them by Luke and Liv's coven 2,000 years ago.
- Qetsiyah's belief that the shadows of Silas and Amara were destined to find each other and fall in love was proven to be incorrect; it was revealed that the reason why the Salvatore and Petrova doppelgängers find each other is because of the spell that was placed on them by Markos 1,500 years earlier to obtain doppelgänger blood. The Salvatore and Petrova doppelgängers fell in love on their own throughout the centuries.
- It was coincidental how Amara was the handmaiden of Qestiyah in 100 BC, while in the 19th century, Qestiyah's descendant Emily Bennett was the handmaiden of Amara's doppelgänger and descendant, Katherine. Another one of Qetsiyah's descendants, Bonnie Bennett, was best friends with Petrova doppelgänger Elena Gilbert, showing a pattern of Qetsiyah's descendants being involved in some way with Amara's doppelgängers. Likewise to this, Ayana was a witch, and one of Qetsiyah's descendants, that lived in the same 'New World' village as Tatia.
- There are several theories in the show's fandom that speculate the true number of doppelgängers spawned by Amara and Silas' immortality. One theory suggests that there were nine total doppelgängers for each line, not including Silas and Amara, one for each century. This theory came from Qetsiyah's comment in Original Sin that she has been forced to watch as century after century, Silas' doppelgängers fell in love with Amara's doppelgängers and vice-versa. However, Qetsiyah could have been exaggerating or using hyperbole to describe the torture of watching their love. The second theory is that there has been one doppelgänger from each line every five hundred years, meaning that there would be Amara (1st century BC), her first doppelgänger (5th century AD), Tatia (10th century AD), Katherine (15th century AD) and Elena (20th century AD). However, since Executive Producer Julie Plec and actress Nina Dobrev had described Tatia, the Petrova doppelgänger who came between Niklaus and Elijah Mikaelson, as the first true doppelgänger after Amara became immortal, making this theory also unlikely.
- Due to Klaus' obsession to break The Hybrid Curse over the last 1,000 years, he would have kept an eye on the Petrova Bloodline which led him to Katherine in 1492 a little over 500 years after the curse was placed on him. Then he killed her entire family after she turned herself into a vampire not knowing about Katherine's daughter, having been given away at birth two years earlier. Still he had vampires go around the world chasing after Katherine and looking for ways to break the spell for 500 years. If there had been a human Petrova Doppelgänger in the 19th Century any vampire working for Klaus would have notified him immediately. It wasn't until the 21st Century that a human Doppelgänger was found: Elena Gilbert. So not including Amara there are ONLY three known Doppelgängers in her line: Tatia, Katherine and Elena.
- According to an interview with Michael Narducci on November 3, 2014 with ksitetv Tatia IS truly the first Doppelgänger of the Petrova Line. He explained it as such, "Tatia did have a husband prior to her relationship in the past with Elijah. He died in battle and through that marriage with the man who died she had a child. That child would begat the Petrova line and then after generations and generations, bloop, there would be another doppelgänger. And then after generations and generations there would be Elena."
See also


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If you already have a new business or want to make a business, there are two basic types of business, namely business to business (B2B) and business to customer (B2C). Both B2B and B2C have very different types of effective content strategy, business models, ranging from the customer segment, marketing strategy, capital, to how your business plans in the future.
Now we will try to explain first what is the difference between B2B and B2C, then we will discuss how different marketing strategies are. In addition, we will also discuss how B2B and B2C marketing tips are then how to sell the business to the company. But before that, in order, the Writer team will invite you to know what B2B and B2C really are.
What is business to business or B2B?
Business to business or B2B are transactions that are carried out electronically or physically and occur between business entities one to another. When you see what is thick, B2B is the sale of the product or service provided by the business and is intended for other businesses, not the customer.
For example, you have a culinary company engaged in catering. Then because the business you have is a large enough catering business, so you have a target market for the company. So your catering service is for companies that have quite a lot of employees, this is called B2B because your business or service is for other companies. If your catering business is for individuals or groups, that means your business is business to customer, not B2B.
What about business to customer or B2C?
The opposite of B2B, business to customer or B2C is a business that performs services or sales of goods or services to individual customers or groups directly. In other words, the business that you do is directly related to consumers, not companies or other businesses.
For example, suppose you have a basic food business. When you sell goods to individual consumers, that means your business is B2C aka business to customer. But if you sell large quantities of groceries to other businesses, that means your business is B2B, not B2C anymore.
Broadly speaking, almost all B2C products can become B2B products, but B2B products are very little used by individual consumers directly. For example, your catering business cannot be sold individually, but you can sell basic food businesses with fellow businessmen.
Now about the differences between B2C and B2B marketing strategies
After knowing the fundamental differences between B2C and B2B, we will now discuss how different marketing strategies are. Marketing strategies have significant factors to business continuity because when you make a marketing strategy wrong, your business can lose a lot.
If you look at risk, a business or product from B2B has a greater risk than B2C. Because the product you produce must be in sufficiently large quantities, the maintenance and manufacturing costs that you have to spend are also slightly larger.
We will take the example of a catering business (B2B), the … Read More

subset: commoncrawl


text:
View Interactive London 2012 Olympic torch route in a larger map
Updated at 12:11 p.m. ET on July 26: LONDON - The Olympic flame has been carried past famous British landmarks and tourist spots including Queen Elizabeth II's home at Windsor Castle, the Scottish Highlands and the castle in north-east England where the "Harry Potter" movies were filmed.
The torch is nearing the end of a winding, U.K.-wide 8,000-mile itinerary that culminates in its arrival at the Olympic Park in Stratford, East London, on July 27 for the ceremony at which the queen will declare the Games open.
You can watch NBC video of its progress on the interactive map above. It has already been carried from Land's End, at the far south-western tip of England, to Wales, Northern Ireland and across to Scotland.
More Olympic coverage from NBC News
It even briefly crossed the border into the Republic of Ireland on its route, which was designed to take it within an hour's journey of 95 percent of Britain's population.
Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images
Lit by the sun's rays in Greece, the Olympic torch takes a 70-day, 8,000 mile trip to London for the 2012 summer games.
However, some didn't have to travel anywhere to see it: The queen carried an unopened umbrella as rain-sodden runner Gina Macgregor, 74, took the torch directly to her front door at Windsor Castle, in Berkshire on Day 53 of the relay.
Earlier that day, it was held aloft by Roger Bannister, the first runner to smash the four-minute mile in 1954. Bannister, 83, walked 30 yards along the same track in Oxford where he ran the mile in three minutes, 59.4 seconds on May 6, 1954.
Read more coverage of the Olympic torch relay at ITV News
The torch has seen its fair share of human drama, including a torchbearer in Yorkshire who paused to propose to his girlfriend.
If you're heading to the Olympics you'll find yourself in Cockney country, where the accent and slang may not make much sense to the untrained ear. NBC's Chapman Bell reports.
And in emotional scenes last month, Lance Bombardier Ben Parkinson -- the most seriously wounded British soldier to survive the war in Afghanistan -- was cheered and applauded by crowds as he bravely carried the flame 300 meters despite his crippling injuries.
American stuntman Nick Macomber carried the torch in a special hands-free carrier while using his free hands to control a jet pack on his back when the relay passed Britain's National Space Centre in Leicester, central England.
Diana Gould, the oldest person to carry the Olympic torch, told ITV's Nina Nannar she ready to carry the Olympic flame by walking around her retirement home carrying a two pound weight.
More London 2012 coverage:
- UK military asked to cover 3,500 Olympic security worker shortfall
- Olympics hurdle: US athletes' bus driver gets lost in London
- Inside Olympic Village: World's top athletes share college dorm-style rooms
- London's 'East End': From haven for gangsters to Olympic showcase
- Terror suspect's eye color? Flying cameras to spy during Games
- Gigantic welcome for London Olympic attendees
- Venues for the London 2012 Olympic Games
- Bad neighbors for Team USA? Occupy camp faces ax
- VIDEO: Olympic torchbearer proposes mid-relay
- Brits revel in gloom ahead of Games, but don't believe the gripe
- Olympic housing crunch: Landlords evict tenants to gouge tourists
- At London Olympics, dogs have sniffed out key anti-terror role
- Slideshow: When the Olympics is your neighbor
- Go behind the scenes with our 'TODAY in London' blog


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Great production (as always) characterises The Awakening by 4hero. It features acclaimed poet, Ursula Rucker who wraps her raw insights into smoothly powerful lyrics that mimic a conversation between mother and daughter. Thankfully for me, 4Hero continue the poetic, almost orchestral sound created on other tracks such as Twelve Tribes from the Creating Patterns album — the beats are still warm, driven and complex but the sound is more organic, even if the label says, "electronic".
The animation is by Judd Brett. He does a superb job of syncopating the video with the aesthetic of jontangerine.com, and throws in a few bits of caption typography too. Thanks, Judd!
The Awakening is taken from the recent Album Play With The Changes which you can get in MP3 format via Tune Tribe or the proverbial iTunes.


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Due to the amounto of sales we have gotten with our new Mohawk service we have lowered the monthly price of the service and added a new promotion were you can get your first months serverice free. Honestly we belive that our first sale item was better but we will see how people feel about getting their first month free with Mohawk.
We have also started to add the interactive trainings into our guides section. This is long overdue but everyone should be very happy with the delays as the trainings are better then anyone else in the industry.
Sunday, May 2, 2010


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A new study finds that Silicon Valley's job growth has jumped to numbers not seen since the dot-come boom and San Francisco has become a new technology center.
The 2013 Silicon Valley Index, an annual study by the Joint Venture Silicon Valley and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, reports that the Bay Area added 92,000 jobs and that Santa Clara and San Mateo counties had almost half of those jobs, the San Jose Mercury News reported. The 42,000 jobs are considered "prodigious" according to Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley.
"Employment growth in Silicon Valley is impressive, very impressive," Hancock told the Mercury News. "Some might even say the job growth is cause for euphoria."
San Francisco has also risen as a new tech hub, and now is being included in what is typically known as Silicon Valley. Several companies, such as Twitter and Square, make their headquarters in San Francisco and it is increasingly attracting startups. Both Santa Clara and San Mateo counties increased job totals by 3.6 percent, while San Francisco sported a 3.7 percent rise.
The growth shows that San Francisco is now just as important to technology in the region as the geographic Silicon Valley.
Although job growth is good, there is a growing disparity in high and low incomes. Also, many people of color seems to left out of the growing job market. From 2009 to 2011, incomes rose for whites and Asians, but African-American and Latinos had incomes fall. African-Americans saw their incomes fall 18 percent while Latinos lost 5 percent. "Silicon Valley is two valleys," Hancock said. "There is a valley of haves, and a valley of have-nots."
Despite the growth in the tech sectors, not surprising much of it has seemed to benefit both Asian and white engineers or techies most. While the report suggested that other industries, such as construction, have also been helped the boom in job growth, the numbers don't suggest that it's helping all of the Bay Area. These jobs are for the highly skilled and those without those skills will find that no amount of job growth in the tech sector will help them.


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The guys at Pro Wind Russia produced this clip of the European and World freestyle champion's van whilst at the first European Freestyle pro Tour...
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Lyon County, MNHome Menu
Vital Statistics
Birth and Death Certificate Application If you are interested in obtaining a certified birth or death certificate you must complete an application found under Applications and Forms and be able to show tangible interest in the certificate you are requesting. There are a couple of ways you can obtain the certificates other than in person. Non-rush orders: (through the mail)
Complete the entire application form, sign it in front of notary public (if required), send the application and appropriate payment to our office: Lyon County Recorder
607 West Main Street
Marshall MN 56258 Once the application is received the certificate will be processed and sent out either that same day or the following day depending on the Post Office mail pick up time. Faxed or Rush orders: Complete the entire application form, sign in front of a notary public, on the second page of the application you will need to complete your credit card information, fax the application to our office: 507-537-7988 or email to firstname.lastname@example.com We process your application as soon as we receive it and send out the certificate(s) that same day by mail to the address shown. In order to get it in the mail that same day, we need to receive it by 12:30 pm. If there are problems or questions – we will contact you if you have given us your phone number. For even faster return service we can return through "Express Mail" for an additional fee. If you should choose this faster service – you can mark "Express Mail" on the application, which authorizes us to add the additional fee to your credit card.
OTHER INFORMATION: If you (with a tangible interest) want someone (without a tangible interest) to obtain the birth or death certificate(s) for you, you must provide that individual with a letter authorizing him/her to get the certificate(s). Your signature must be notarized. The individual then must complete an application, present your letter of authorization and pay the fee.
Certified Certificate of Marriage
If you purchased your marriage license from Lyon County and are looking to obtain a certified copy of the marriage record, please fill out the form which you will find under Applications and Forms.
Certified Copy of a Marriage Record-$9.00
STATEWIDE SEARCH FOR MARRIAGES If you are unsure whether the license was purchased in Lyon county you can check the Minnesota Official Marriage System (MOMS) http://www.moms.mn.gov. It is the website address for a statewide marriage search. The site will tell you what county to contact for a specific marriage certificate and assist you in ordering one. If you have any questions, please contact the Recorder's Office at (507) 537-6722 and we will assist you.
Marriage License Information
Couples applying for a marriage license in Lyon County can save time and simplify the process by filling out the application form online at www.moms.mn.gov/application/. After completing the online form, couples receive a confirmation email. The couple must appear in person at the county office to have their signatures witnessed, pay the license fee and complete the marriage application process.
$115.00 - Full Fee
$40.00 - Reduced Fee-applicants must present an "Educators Statement" at the time of making the application to receive the discounted fee. The Educators Statement must appear on the educator's letterhead, be signed and notarized or have the church seal as following the requirements shown in MS 517.08 Subd. 1b (b).
Waiting Period:
Minnesota Statute requires there to be a five-day waiting period before the marriage license can be issued. In case of an unforeseen emergency - applicants can request a five day waiver from a Judge. EFFECTIVE August 1, 2016 - the five-day waiting period no longer exists. Upon applying, the applicants will receive their marriage packet immediately.
License Expires:
The marriage license is good for six-months. If it is not used within that six-month period, it becomes null & void. Applicants will need to purchase another license and pay the appropriate fee. The license can be purchased in any county within MN and the marriage ceremony must take place within the geographical boundaries of the State of Minnesota.
Both applicants must make application for the marriage license. If either of the parties have been previously married, you will need to enter the date of the divorce on the application so it may be helpful to bring a copy of your divorce decree with you. If one of you has been convicted of a felony and wants to change your name through marriage, there is additional paperwork required and it will delay the issuance of the marriage license for 30 days. The application for a marriage license can be found under Applications and Forms. You can print and complete the application but do not sign it until you bring it into the office. We accept application for marriages between 8:30 - 4:30.


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Hey guys,
I used to be able to play BF1942 this past month since I joined but the last few days I'm getting kicked every time I join a server.
Usually the game loads the map and I can join for like 10-20 seconds but after that I always get kicked.
Am I banned or something?
I've tried refreshing and updating the server list but the problem continues.
My name on bf1942 is the same as my account here, darko.
Thanks anyway!
EDIT: issue seems to be resolved after a modem reset, weirdly enough.


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What to Know
- Ahmad Rahami was seriously injured during a shootout with police in New Jersey Monday
- Officials said Thursday he had been shot at least 11 times, and one of the bullets narrowly missed vital organs
- Rahami is sedated and intubated at the hospital, but he is expected to survive
Alleged bomber Ahmad Rahami was more seriously injured in the shootout with police than initially reported, law enforcement officials say.
Officials say Rahami, the 28-year-old naturalized citizen from Afghanistan, was shot at least 11 times in Monday's confrontation with Linden police that led to his capture. At least one bullet narrowly missed vital organs, officials said.
Rahami is sedated and intubated at a hospital in New Jersey, where he is being held on state charges of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer. He also faces federal terror-related charges, but will not be arraigned on those until he is transported to New York. Despite new reports of more serious injuries, officials say Rahami is still expected to survive.
On Wednesday, authorities released an image of Rahami's blood-stained journal, a bullet hole piercing the small booklet that was found in the alleged bomber's possession when he was captured after the shootout. The journal paints a chilling picture of a man rife with anti-U.S. sentiment who praised leaders of terror groups and wanted to make a martyr of himself.
Authorities have said Rahami had a gun and extra ammunition on him when police encountered him sleeping in the doorway of a bar in Linden Monday. Federal officials said Thursday the weapon was bought in Virginia. They say Rahami has a younger brother in the Roanoke area and bought the gun during a visit.
The federal complaint filed against Rahami in lower Manhattan court this week charges him with the use of weapons of mass destruction and bombing a place of public use, among other crimes. He allegedly planted the pressure cooker device that blew up on 23rd Street in Chelsea Saturday, injuring 31 people, and another device that exploded in a trash bin along a Marine 5K race route in New Jersey hours earlier. Officials allege Rahami is behind the cluster of pipe bombs found near a commuter rail station in his hometown of Elizabeth, N.J., late Sunday, and an unexploded pressure cooker on 27th Street, blocks from the blast site that rocked the city on a warm summer night.
Surveillance video captures Rahami at both Manhattan scenes, officials have said. One video exclusively obtained by NBC 4 New York shows him wheeling a piece of luggage to the 27th Street site, presumably with the bomb inside. The pressure cooker on 27th Street had 12 of Rahami's fingerprints on it, according to law enforcement officials, but other fingerprints were on the device as well. That's one reason the FBI and NYPD want to find the two men who walked away with the luggage the bomb had been in, leaving the device behind.
Officials want to see if any of the additional fingerprints on the device belonged to either or both of the men; they also want to recover the luggage. Authorities released a photo of the men Wednesday. They said they are being considered witnesses in the case.


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All together now: Aww.
Channing Tatum decided to make his fans a part of his first holiday as a dad.
PEOPLE's Sexiest Man Alive – who, along with Jenna Dewan-Tatum, welcomed daughter Everly into the world on May 31 – debuted their 2-week-old baby girl on their Facebook accounts Sunday night.
"First Father's Day with my girls," the White House Down star, 33, wrote, sharing a photo of himself holding his newborn with his wife by his side.
Dewan-Tatum, who referred to Everly as "our lil angel" in her own post, is feeling the fan support as well.
"Thank you everyone for all the loving messages! Chan, myself and Everly are happy as can be and appreciate them all," the actress and new mom, 32, Tweeted on June 6.
Courtesy Tatum Family
– Dahvi Shira


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Conservation and Environment in Costa Rica: Monthly Updates
Conservation in Costa Rica - Monthly Update – July and August 2013
Before bringing you up to date on our ongoing work here in Costa Rica, I would like to provide some basic information on our project site. The Barra Honda National Park (PNBH) is located in the Canton of Nicoya, Guanacaste Province, about 22km northeast of the city of Nicoya.
It was created in 1974 to protect an interesting cave system. The fauna is characterised by a high diversity and abundance of bats with some colonies that may exceed several thousand individuals (Artavia. 2011). The protected area is characterised by calcareous soils with steep and irregular topography. The highest peaks are just over 500m in the Cerro Corralillo with lower troughs a little less than 100m in other areas.
Barra Honda National Park is an interesting ecological niche, known as tropical wet forest in transition to dry forest. However changes in the global climate, coupled with logging on site years ago, means that much of this protected wilderness area looks very similar to the features characteristic to a tropical dry forest.
Butterfly project
The general aim of this project is to record the order of insects Lepidoptera. At present we are focusing on diurnal species in the waterfall section ("Las Cascadas") of the Barra Honda National Park. We hope to process our findings considering incorporating variables, such as weather conditions and different habitat types.
In Barra Honda National Park we have been collecting this data for two years. This site is a large protected area and we have identified around 70 species using two capture techniques. The first involves using high traps and a system pioneered by Van Someren, where rotting fruit is placed as bait. The second is manual capture with nets. Some species of Lepidoptera are known to occasionally disappear only to return to the area many years later and, for this reason, we must continue with the inventory in the protected area.
In order to broaden our research we have decided to evaluate other areas of the park, these sites are the Cascades and Inns. This year we established research plots in these areas, which possess slightly different habitats compared to those observed in Barra Honda. It will be interesting to see the results and to investigate whether we discover species not found in the first study area. Such results would enable us to perform habitat comparisons and site specific species.
We used 12 fixed traps placed at heights of 2.4 and 6 meters in every corner of the plots, i.e. 3 traps per corner. We attempted to identify every capture on site but new registers and difficult individuals were taken back to camp for further study. New species are then added to our ongoing list. Each individual collected is placed in paper packets for good preservation, with a label indicating the collection site, date, collector's name and a comment. Once in the office, the specimen is placed in a refrigerator for 24 hours and then be prepared on foam sheets using entomological pins and scraps of paper.
Animal and human feces contain methanogenic Archaebacteria that decompose organic material without oxygen. Storing feces in a bio-digester allows the use of the decomposition by capturing the gases produced to generate green energy for various uses; for example cooking, lighting and feeding combustion engines that produce electric energy.
This new practice is considered by many to be the technology of the future, as its implementation has already improved the quality of life of numerous families and industries, this by using costless and natural products – allowing a considerable economic gain whilst helping in the protection of the environment.
In Barra Honda National Park, Projects Abroad is implementing this technology. During this month we received important materials to be used in the construction of a bio-digester. Volunteers and staff members have started the construction of the bio-digester and are hoping to finish it by the end of November 2013. In February 2014 we are hoping to be able to produce and use the resultant gases.
Bat Project
This is one of our longest standing projects at Barra Honda and the principal aim is to identify and monitor the species of the order Chiroptera. We hope to establish a database to understand the status of bat populations in the Barra Honda National Park.
The importance of the Barra Honda National Park for the conservation of bats is well documented. There are bat colonies numbering in their thousands on site which roost in different caves, primarily in the caves "Pozo Hediendo" and "Nicoa ". Some bats are able to build their own shelter using the leaves of different plants and these are very important species in the Barra Honda ecosystem.
We have set up mist net transects around the park and each study site uses 8 nets which are 12m long and open to a height of 2m.
Below is a list of bats found so far during this study:s
|Scientific Name
|Common (local) Name
|English Name
|Saccopteryx bilineata
|Murciélago listado
|Two-lined Bat
|Noctilio albiventris
|Murciélago pescador
|Lesser Bulldog Bat
|Pteronotus davyi
|Murciélago de Davi
|Lesser Naked-Backed Bat
|Pteronotus parnelli
|Murciélago de Parnell
|Mustached Bat
|Fam. Phyllostomidae
|Subfam. Phyllostominae
|Glyphonycteris silvestris
|Murciélago silvestre
|Tricolored Bat
|Micronycteris brachyiotis
|Murciélago de orejas cortas
|Yellow-Throated Bat
|Micronycteris mirgalotis
|Phyllostomus discolor
|Murciélago careto
|Pale Spear-Nosed Bat
|Phyllostomus hastatus
|Murciélago punta de lanza
|Big Spear Nosed Bat
|Tonatia brasiliense
|Murciélago punta de lanza
|Big Spear Nosed Bat
|Tracops cirrhosus
|Vampyrum spectrum
|Vampiro falso
|False Vampire Bat
|Subfam. Glossophaginae
|Glossophaga leachii
|Murcélago de Leach
|Gray´s Long-Tongued Bat
|Glossophaga soricina
|Murciélago musaraña
|Pallas Long-Tongued Bat
|Subfam. Carollinae
|Carollia perspicillata
|Carolia transparente
|Seba´s Short-Tailed Bat
|Carollia subruga
|Carolia parda
|Gray Short-Tailed Bat
|Subfam. Stenodermatinae
|Artibeus jamaiquensis
|Artibeo jamaiquino
|Jamaican Fruit-Eating Bat
|Artibeus lituratus
|Artibeo correcto
|Big Fruit-Eating Bat
|Sturnira lilium
|Esturnira blanca
|Little Yellow-Shouldered Bat
|Subfam. Desmodontinae
|Diphylla ecaudata
|Vampiro chingo
|Hairy-Legged Vampire Bat
|Desmodus rotundus
|Vampiro común
|Common Vampire Bat
Bird Project
I am pleased to announce a new initiative at Barra Honda, the bird project. This has been set up principally by Oscar Cubero (staff member) who wrote the proposal and got government approval. The papers were provided by MINAET (environmental office in Costa Rica) and we got all the permission for this.
The project is designed to help us ascertain the abundance of resident and migratory birds in the Barra Honda National Park. This will then lead to data on their conservation status in the area. We plan to utilise standard data collection techniques for avian censuses which will include fixed-point observations, walks and song recognition. We hope to determine the presence of migratory species in the national park and determine how long they stay in the area.
Five zones will be established for the study and fixed points will be designated every 250m for bird identification. We will use trails, fire protection lines and roads as transect routes to avoid cutting down new areas of the park. These five sites are:
- La Palma-El Pozo-Frijoleras (eight points).
- Main Trail (eight points).
- Laureles Trail (eight points).
- Fire line-Ceibo trail-Mantequilla (eight points).
- Ojoche Cave-Pozo hediondo Cave (six points).
The count time at each point is five minutes after an initial minute to allow the birds a chance to accept the presence of observers. Monitoring hours in the morning will begin at 5:30am and in the afternoon at 3:30pm. Each session will utilise eight fixed point studies and the project will run throughout the year. Apart from compiling an extensive bird list for the area we hope to observe the presence of migratory species that arrive every year to the national park and determine how long they are on this site.
For species that fly over the canopy or feed high up in the trees we will use a different strategy. High lookout points will be established in different places around the park where a clear view of the canopy is provided. Such locations include Nacaome View point, El Frío, Frijoleras de El Flor y Las Delicias.
Counts have been made in two three-hour sessions, the first beginning at 7:00 and ending at 10:00, the second from 10:00 to 13:00. Birds were counted in 10 minute intervals during the three hours of sampling. In addition we collect data on weather variables, temperature and wind speed. We aim to collect data once a fortnight in each lookout location. This is the beginning of this project and in the future we hope to produce a "Field Guide: The Birds of Barra Honda National Park".
Tree Seeds and Nursery Garden
In this project we have selected 10 tree species present in the Barra Honda National Park. These include: Cedrela salvadorensis (sweet cedar) Cedrela odorata (cedar), Dalbergia retusa (Cocobolo) Swientenia macropylla (Mahogany) and Astronium graveolens (Ron Ron). We aim to cultivate seedlings of these species for reforestation and our goals is to plant 3000 trees during the rainy season in the both the park and surrounding communities.
Environmental Education Programme
We are working in three different schools around the National Park. Work in this programme consists of providing necessary materials to give classes to children. Volunteers work hard to get everything ready and then a member of staff, headed by Jose Mario Gonzalez, explains the topic of the month (biodiversity, pollution etc) to the children. As you can see we are very busy here in Costa Rica and I look forward to bringing you more news next time…
Anthony Ruiz
Conservation Manager, Costa Rica


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Hard to say goodbye after 20 years, but the shop is being left in capable hands with a new name: TOADS GUIDE SHOP
Tim Kenney is the new owner, and has years of experience guiding both the Gunnison Gorge and all of our walk-wade waters as well as guiding rafting and hunting trips. His new shop is located in the Downtown Mercantile building at 309 East Main Street in Montrose.
Toads Guide Shop is currently offering guided trips and has access to some spectacular private water.
Visit ToadsGuideShop.com
or call 970-249-0408.


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UK's leading coffee company realise outstanding results for Sales Team
Established in 1864, Matthew Algie is the UK's leading independent coffee roaster and serves the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Customers include Marks and Spencer cafes and restaurants, as well as the House of Commons, Gleneagles Hotel and numerous establishments nationwide. They are coffee partners with some of the biggest names on the High Street, espresso bars, and top hotels throughout the UK and Ireland.
Matthew Algie implemented a TomTom PRO 9100 solution which in addition to vehicle tracking includes hands-free calling support, speed camera alerts, advanced mapping with IQ routes and lane guidance support. The system has the bonus of live TomTom Traffic, allowing the driver to make the most economical and swift journey available. This solution is then integrated with third party software to make a highly effective solution.
Car and van fleets have realised fantastic efficiencies and have benefited from an impressive 20% increase in the number of sales, training and engineer calls made since the system was installed. The sales managers are now able to see where their team are at the touch of a button, using the WEBFLEET web-based telematics software. This allows for greater visibility of sales force activity and resources can be focussed in the most effective areas, which is a fantastic benefit to the company.


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Sunday School – 10:00 am
Worship Service – 11:00 am
Bible Study – 12:15 pm
Wednesday Bible Study - 6:30 pm
12859 Martin Road Spur
Northport, AL 35473
Watering the Tulips
May 27, 2015
"To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen." – Romans 9:5
Jesus is God. The man Who walked on Earth as Jesus of Nazareth some 2000 years ago was the same God that created this world. John wrote, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). This "Word" that "was God" speaks of Jesus. John makes this plain when he says, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). And just a few verses later, John refers to Jesus as "the only God, who is at the Father's side…" (John 1:18). Clearly, John (who received his learning at the feet of Jesus Himself) believed Jesus is God…and he was right.
The Apostle Paul affirmed that Jesus is God. Our text verse declares Jesus to be "God over all". That couldn't be much plainer! He said again that we are to be "waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13). So, the very God Who is over all is the same God Whose return we are now awaiting. This Jesus is both "our Great God and Savior".
Peter made a similar statement to Paul when he declared Jesus to be "our God and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 1:1). As was the case with John, Peter learned these things at the feet of Jesus.
When Thomas saw the risen Jesus standing before him, his declaration was "my Lord and my God" (John 20:28). None of the apostles corrected him. Jesus didn't correct him. For Jesus certainly is God manifested in the flesh.
Certainly this is difficult to comprehend with a human mind. Paul spoke of the difficulty of grasping this with our minds when he said, "Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory" (1 Timothy 3:16). Paul said, "For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily" (Colossians 2:9). He was 100% man and 100% God at the same time. A momentary consideration of that makes our head want to explode – but it's true!
Jesus was hated by the Jews for declaring Himself to be God in the flesh. The Jews clearly knew what He meant when He said "I and the Father are one" for they "picked up stones again to stone him" (John 10:30-31). This was not merely his CLAIM. It was a declaration of the truth. He is God manifested in the flesh.
Watering the Tulips is brought to you by Sovereign Grace Baptist Church in Northport, AL. For more information, please visit www.sovereigngrace.net . "Your App to the Gospel" can be downloaded at iTunes for iPhone, iPad and IPod Touch, Google Play for Android, the Windows Phone Marketplace, and the Windows Store for Windows 8/8.1 based tablets and computers. Please download it today!