I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody.
 
Richard Lewis recently did a stream talking about the terrible state of CS esports and I thought it was an important stream anyone who cares about the CS community should listen to.
Vod Link here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/830415547
I realize it is 3 hours long so I took it upon myself to create a list of interesting points from the stream so you don't have to listen to the whole thing, although I still encourage you to do so if you can.
I know this post is still long but probably easier to digest, especially in parts.
Here is a link to my raw notes if you for some reason want to read through this which includes some omitted stuff. It's in chronological order of things said in the stream and has some time stamps. https://pastebin.com/6QWTLr8T

Intro

• "The last month has convinced me, that we are going to be heading into a dark place for Counter-Strike esports in 2021."
  • "I think I've seen the scene essentially kill itself."
• "For the past 5 to 6 years, we've basically been in a holding pattern of people coming into our game wanting to run it, wanting to run all of the esports and wanting to profiteer and its been sort of a concerted effort to drive them off and push them away."
  • "We're spread way too thin."
• "If Riot don't get involved and stop the scumbags that have moved over to Valorant from getting their feet under the table, Valorant is going to have real problems."
• RL thinks too much has happened all at once for us to do anything except watch it play out, like:
  • Recent CSPPA strike against BLAST
  • ESIC failures and them not being supported enough
  • Teams cheating i.e. coaches/bugs
  • Widespread match fixing
  • The Pandemic
    • "People who try to hold bubble events are so incompetent and fuck up and people get the 'rona and its their fault."
    • "People who say Flashpoint is a bubble is full of shit and is a lie and people are now suffering for that lie."
      • "To save money they let people go home and break the bubble for a week."
      • "Not just Flashpoint peoples decision, they have a partner that handles the production." (hinting FACEIT)
      • "People are trapped in hotels essentially under house arrest because of COVID restrictions and has fucked peoples lives up."
• "It's all too much, all of this incompetence, all of this greed, maybe we ride it out."
  • RL says he has talked to the Riot devs (the ones working on Valorant) and says, "They are so cognizant of all the fuck ups and all the problems we have in Counter-Strike."
    • He continues to say that this is factored into their business plan and that we never had a competitor, but just so happens to have one coincide, when we are at our worst.

CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association

"Who does this union really fucking serve?"

• RL believes that the CSPPA is a mockery.
  
  • He points out the hypocrisy that they wouldn't strike for the pros who were kicked out of ESL Pro League, or for Jamppi or dream3r.
    • He also says ESL paid CSPPA and are racketeering and many other TOs have to pay them to get their "seal of approval"
      • He says they would strong-arm TOs saying "well if you don't give us the money, these guys are so we'll just have to commit to playing their event."
    • Also points out that they will strike against a competitor they are not in agreement with (Flashpoint)
    • RL: "It's what it says about every other time you haven't done it and it's about every time you don't do it now moving forward." "The issues they've chosen to ignore this year alone are embarrassing."
    • Then he points out that there was no strike for Valve qualifiers even if we have no major but Jamppi and dream3r can't play in them.
      • "and Valve have said 'Oh yeah we know actually their stories are accurate, Jamppi didn't cheat, now in a legally binding document. Yep dream3r did have his account hacked in a LAN café', but they still can't play. Where is the fucking solidarity? Gone. Doesn't exist. It's not important [because] it doesn't affect you." "That's what the union does right now, it looks after all the tier 1 people."
• He says the CSPPA doesn't represent all players all the time and has driven a divide where you have the haves and have-nots
  
  • "We have a tier of players that operate with impunity and do not help their tier 2 or tier 3 players out at all." "If you are not a tier 1 player you do not matter, they don't event ask your opinion."
  • He tells chrisJ to admit and own the fact that the reason he didn't speak up during the ESL Pro League debacle is because it didn't affect him
  • "They are looking after some players at the expense of other players. How the fuck is that a union?"
• He says the BLAST situation is a reasonable dispute and supports the players but is not the right time for a strike and have not even identified the correct enemy
  
  • He thinks players are lashing out now due to previous incidents and are upset that BLAST are working with ESIC
    • He stated that CSPPA shouldn't beefing with ESIC and they should be working in harmony
  • He says what they need to do is talk with the teams/organizations that have sold that right to BLAST
    • RL: "Your employers, the people who pay you that massive exorbitant salaries, when you don't stream and you don't do interviews and you offer no value beyond your ability to click heads and you get 25k dollars a month." "Why don't you talk to them about it? Oh right. You're happy to take away BLAST's paper, but you don't want to risk your own."
  • "I am seeing such unbelievable cowardice from the players here with the battles you choose."
  • "Where was the strike action when in the qualifiers for the world championship, there were teams and players engaged in huge conflicts of interest?" "Where was the strike action when your image rights were taken and sold to every league you've ever been in every union type organization you've ever been associated with like, WESA, to your org every time you sign a contract, to the leagues you play in."
    • "Your image rights are essentially worthless now, there's about 10 fucking separate parties that have them, and how many of them are giving you anything for it? Not much pretty much your org by the way."
    • "That's a big issue. Your image is you, your image is your brand. What are you doing about that? Nothing."
• He is also angry at SirScoots who is "popping off" at people on Twitter who all want the same thing, which is 'A unified Counter-Strike scene for everybody, that works for everybody, that has a sustained ecosystem that nourishes everybody.' "We don't have that now."
  
• He also says their rankings are a joke
  
  • "Just so happened, oh look TACO, that very important prominent member of the board, we pushed his team artificially up when they weren't even in the fucking top 20, not by a long shot."
• He also says the ineptitude of the CSPPA cost Flashpoint a monitor sponsor
  
• "Is it really a player association or is it like a fucking agency at this point"
  

ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission

"They have been put in an impossible position."

• RL says that Ian Smith, the founder of ESIC and who was done work in mainstream sports, is a good and honorable man who has dedicated his life to integrity and sports. He takes on both sides, ensuring match fixers are punished, but also doing appeals and ensuring those punishments were fair.
• "ESIC is a tiny organization" and are in need of money, "They didn't run a grift like the CSPPA did."
  • "Saying 'you want our support and you want the players to turn up you better pay us.' They don't do that."
  • "Had startup seed money from MTG and since then they've been pecking shit with the hens."
    • Ian Smith made sure that the money given by MTG (Modern Times Group, parent company of ESL, ESEA, DreamHack) was nothing more than startup money and wouldn't be in debt to them
      • Ian Smith sat down with other TO's not part of MTG and wanted to partner with them. They declined and called ESIC "ESL spies and we will never align ourselves with you"
  • "They only were just able to afford, hiring a PR guy on a full time salary to deal with the press and send out those releases you've seen, this year."
    • "They have a tiny group of staff investigating these things and they have taken on the biggest problems in our scene: the cheating, the match fixing."
• ESIC have had "unprecedented levels of cheating to deal with, because there's something wrong with our scene ever since we went online. There's something wrong with it, everyone's lost their fucking pride and self-respect and they got no passion for it anymore, so they think fuck it, what's in it for me?"
  • He calls out coaches who are talking about players rights when they would rob and steal from them.
    • Also says more coaches being banned are coming
    • He also points out flaws in community's reaction to the punishments to coaches bans: "Half of the cunts still have jobs and some of the cunts got new jobs. We didn't even shun the cheating coaches."
• ESIC have "found I think another 2 or 3 exploits like that one and they are investigating them all right now, it's going on right now."
  
  • "I know that there are going to be more names getting banned, again."
  • "So they're doing that on a skeleton crew while, investigating 3 continents worth of match fixing in MDL and semi-pro level CS." "They're doing this with half a dozen people." "They don't have any money or any help. People barely even fucking cooperate with them, they are treated like pariahs. It's ridiculous."
    • "Why are the CSPPA popping off at ESIC on my Twitter timeline, when you should be working together." "because its all about what's in it in for me." "2020, the online era of CS: 'What is in it for me?' How can I cheat, how can I get my paper, how can I bleed this scene one last time before I fuck off and play shooty shooty bang bang Riot Games babys first fps."
• RL says that in the CIS region, teams have gone to tournaments and have been eliminated multiple times by the same team. We found out they were cheating and those players who lost, have been cut from their roster, careers ended because of cheaters.
  

Stream Sniping

"They're all at it in the online era, they're all at it, they're all cheating, they're all using exploits, probably that see through smoke bug got used a bunch of times"

• RL talks about how there is no integrity from dead (the player), always denying when caught doing something
  • On the topic of 'BLAST never said we couldn't stream snipe': "Lies, BLAST never said you could do that, they had to sort of retcon it." "because what happened after that they fucking started snitching and squealing"
    • "Suddenly you had like, 10 of the top 15 teams in the world, staring into the abyss of being banned for 6-12 months in line with ESIC recommendations."
      • He says that ESIC was put in a tough situation and couldn't enforce the bans because it would have resulted in killing CS. What resulted was, BLAST, ESIC, and teams came together and gave them a warning and told them, in RL's words "don't do this again or you're gonna get got."
        • He then says the top teams brushed this off and didn't give a fuck
        • The new MiBR team playing Flashpoint, that wasn't involved in the previous incidents are doing it again (stream sniping). He gave credit to Flashpoint for the quick resolution and punishment and respect for cogu's response to the situation.
        • "ESIC came out and said, once more, 'Guys, zero tolerance from now on.'" RL then got upset at community's reaction calling ESIC "pussies" for their non enforcement and said if we want competitive CS we cant ban the top 10 teams.
• He points out how players have no integrity and will do anything for an edge as long as they won't get detected or banned or it's within a grey area.
• "All of this shit was mad avoidable, even in the pandemic era."
  • He talks about why aren't we filming them. Why aren't there representatives for leagues and tournaments making sure players aren't cheating?

Match Fixing

"How many years have we let our scene be fucking pillaged by these greedy cunts?" "We just let it happen."

• RL says that gambling and skins betting which existed in moderation was "accelerated and blown up by the Call of Duty greedy fucks."
  • "Never forget TmarTn was on the board of EnVyUs." "His website, CSGOLotto, they had a bunch of off-the-books sponsorships." "NBK promoted them. People forget."
• "Those people who had access to the skins, go to the players" "Even people like s1mple, best player in the world, even he scammed knives and skins off fucking fans."
• Owners of skin casino sites would approach pros and lend them skins to use in tournaments and possibly keep them after reaching a deal
  • Players would tip off inside info about matches and teams in exchange for skins. Info such as: roster changes, how they played in scrims
    • They would use this info to bet and subvert the odds on their sites. "That happened religiously, I can't even tell you how many times it happened."
      • "I had access to the biggest database of information, from an inside betting circle in NA, and it would take information and screenshots from other pro players, who were feeding them info in exchange for money or skins."
        • "Some of these players are still playing." "Incredibly, there are players still in the CSPPA today, complaining about the BLAST recordings, that were embroiled in this murky shit back then."
• RL also says that there were tournaments where teams contrived with each other, who should throw, who should win.
• "There's a handful of people that are trying to fucking clean it up, and you think you get something over the line and you see something like the CSPPA and it's run by corrupt fucking chuckle heads, and now you've got another corrupt body you have to fight on a fucking daily basis, it's demoralizing."
  • "It's too far gone. Our entire semi-professional scene is compromised."
• "It's rife guys, I'm not going to lie any more. It's not just China, it's not just Russia, it's here, it's NA, it's Europe, it's Australia, so much more than you think, so much more than we can prove."
  • "I get sent chat logs all the time […] and they're morons, these players, short-sighted, amateur, morons and they're doing it on WhatsApp." People would get cut from the bets because they want to make more money, then they leak the logs. He says, from the chat logs, they spread "little" bets across every site they can (400 to 1k dollars) to prevent shifting odds
• He says the scumbags who've fucked off to Valorant will do the same there if Riot doesn't do something and says Valorant "is an esports scene heading for a very early fall based on the sheer volume of scumbags that are already there."
• "That's tier 2 CS in a nutshell these days. They know they're never going to play in a major, so what's the punishment?"
  • "All of these tier 2 fucks that are fixing games now they are like the fucking mafia compared to iBuyPower" "These guys are working with organized criminals to fix entire seasons worth of games. That's what's going on in your tier 2 CS."
• "I'm literally being told that there are players fixing games at all levels of Chinese esports and motherfuckers with guns are turning up to team houses and stuff."

North America

"Everyone in NA has left we've lost a continents worth of support during this pandemic and Valve haven't said a fucking word."

• RL says the Call of Duty "goblins" that destroyed CS for years are the same people who are now trying to leave CS. "The nerve to treat a game where the fans, and the community, and the TO's were nothing but good to you." "To just kick the players out now and go and leave and say 'It just doesn't make financial sense.' Oh you'll slither back when we have a major though for them stickers won't you."
• There's a cascading effect in NA where people don't bother with CS anymore and people like Chaos suffer.
• He says NA team owners are incompetent for always wanting it easy and always wanting a guarantee on their investment without skill or nuance.
  • RL says he would be able to market a team correctly and would have a good ROI and also points out how TSM wouldn't even be bothered to tweet that their team, which was one of the best in the world, was playing at the Major.
  • He also says not all NA owners are like that, compliments and respects Jason Lake who nearly lost everything to keep Complexity going.
• He then calls out the incompetence in Infinite Esports when they acquired OpTic Gaming and bought an Indian CS team.
  • He says HECZ is not to blame here and that they couldn't tell forsaken was cheating when it was so obvious.
    • They measured his reaction time to the likes of dev1ce and s1mple
    • When an enemy showed up on his screen he won that duel something like 44% of the time
    • "was like the number 1 player in the world statistically"
    • He brought a laptop to their bootcamp and refused to use the high end PCs that hey provided
• He respects Andy Miller (NRG CEO) and HECZ but says that the attitude of not being able to easily monetize their teams is "piss weak" and there needs to be a risk.
  • He says Chaos EC shouldn't be cutting their roster and should be competent enough to be able to figure out how to make money off their team.
• He says there are still opportunities in NA and people are panicking and pulling out, and says Valorant will be the same if not worse.
  • He also says "bums" who couldn't even get out of groups in NA competitions, are making crazy money in Valorant and says it will continue to inflate.
• He also said that he heard rumors that EG (Evil Geniuses) are done.
• He also thinks that the rumors of a Valve franchised league from before was sparked up from "these lazy fabled weak NA fucking team owners basically trying to see if Valve would bite at the hook if it was dangled and they didn't"
  • Slasher says NA team owners are really in favor of franchised leagues because they want to make more money. "Most of the powerful team owners right now are on board with ditching this third party organization structure, or they are trying to play this power politics with all the TOs, and that is contributing to a lot of the problems there"
• RL says that Riot has proved they can run a franchised league (LCS) and will be profitable in 2021 which is what a lot of team owners care about and says the competition will only serve to snatch people away from CS.
• RL continues to say, "I am so sick and tired of what we have done to this scene, I am just exhausted with it." "I think we have legitimately fucked it, I really think we have. I think we're staring into almost like a CGS (Championship Gaming Series) wasteland in NA." "Counter-Strike esports is a fucking joke."

Talent

"TO's have treated CS talent like absolute human garbage for years now."

• RL says that people like Sean Gares and ddk switching over to Valorant isn't for financial reasons because they are making less over there.
• He points out that TO's can't even give talent a 3 month in advance calendar.
• Because of the pandemic TO's won't hire certain people and some people are working more hours for the same money.
• He says we as a community don't respect journalists enough which is why we don't have good journalists.
  • He also says DeKay is leaving the scene soon and that Thorin is close to leaving also
• He says he had to talk a caster down from quitting and was struggling to find reasons.
• He says that DreamHack told Vince they would hire him but not if he wants to stick with dusT and says that this is the norm in esports. "Constant leveraging of people against each other." and says this is why we don't have a talent union.
• New gen casters are getting put into shit situations and the community's reaction to them is adding fuel to the fire
• He says the reason Moses left was because of the terrible conditions
• He says that Anders had to constantly leave his family and kid because someone fucked up or broke promises and had to constantly tell his kid to their face that "daddy can't be home this weekend."
• He says that esports has always been a lie to sell you this dream, "Meanwhile there's about 2% of the cunts getting all the checks."

Valve

"Anything that Riot does, is better than Valve's inaction"

• Slasher says that the larger aspect of esports as a whole compared to other entertainment mediums and Valve's lack of inattention are the bigger problems. He continues saying that the fact that Valve let their game be ran as an esport, they need to take on the responsibilities of it.
  • Both Slasher and RL wants Valve to take control but not on the level of Riot Games, there needs to be a balance.
• In case it was ever a question: Gabe Newell has been to 0 CSGO Majors.
• RL calls Valve out saying they could have done something during the gambling era.
• He says Valve used to come to the majors, but doesn't think they do anymore.
• RL had met with Valve at the Cluj-Napoca Major and had tried to appeal iBP's indefinite punishment and had also gave Brax's life story:
  • A recent family member passed away, they had lost a lot of income, they had to live in trailer, iBuyPower did not pay any salaries, and was pressured by family to make money who didn't support his career.
  • RL said that Valve told him, "How dare you try and make us feel guilty." "We shouldn't feel bad about enforcing the only thing that matters that we need to make players afraid of: cheating and match fixing"
  • RL also tried to share other info about match fixing and nothing came of it
• RL points out that Source 2 or a new engine is not something you will want based on the experience of transitioning from CS 1.6 to CS:S. "Valve's track record with brand new engines being launched, not fucking great from what I remember."
• Slasher says "If there is anything the community should do, is pressure Valve to hire a community manager."
  • They say that we need a commissioner, a community manager (not the person who runs the Twitter who posts memes all day), then we need to have a circuit
• RL reiterates that Valve doesn't care about CS esports and says they need to change the culture at Valve to make them care about CS esports
  • Slasher says a systemic problem is making it so working on CSGO would be a bad decision for you as an employee for Valve
• He also hasn't talked to Valve in ages and have sent over bugs and cheats and doesn't get emails back anymore
• Slasher says we should be directing attention at the developer leads, pointing out Ido Magal, if he even is still the project lead
  • RL thinks that Ido and Brian are the only people that "vaguely even give a fuck about CS" and were the only people that RL recalled that actually read Reddit and paid attention from time to time
• "It is really fucking precarious. Somebody has got to step the fuck up and start giving a shit"
  • Slasher suggests org owners, with CSPPA, with ESIC, with TOs have a concerted effort against Valve
• "Riot Games are doing better things than Valve in the esports space" which is something RL didn't think he'd say.
• "People who used to be talent, working with unions, arguing with other talent, when the unions fucked them over, can't understand their perspective, TOs fucking over broadcast talent, broadcast talent wanting to leave and go and work for orgs, orgs having no money, Valve might take coaches away because all the coaches are cheating, ESIC has about 4 people in a fucking call doing the investigations, everyone thinks they're spies for ESL, ESL are just the evil fucking overlords wanting to rule the scene and will just somehow, like cockroaches outliving a nuclear bomb, and Valve are in a fucking holiday in Hawaii thinking about the next Dota character because they don't give a fuck about us."

Closing Statements

"We've peaked. If we want to sustain and exist, now is the time to figure it out. No esports lasts as long as this, we've already done 8 years. We've already broke the records. We have got to figure out a way to coexist and drive the negative forces out and we need to do it as a collective and we're not doing that."

• RL compared the Counter-Strike scene to the people on the Titanic who ran around with guns robbing people while the boat was sinking.
• "We have given up on being a respectable esports scene." "We are now a conduit to make money for those who want to just milk it, just have one last ride, one last roll of the dice. It's done." "What a fucking mess. What have we done to our fucking scene?"
• "There's just too much self-interest driving all of this." "I don't see a way we stop the dominoes." "When it's that bad, when there's that many dishonest people that ESIC have to come out and say that if we punish them all there's no one left. What does that tell you?"
• "How many opportunities have we had to clean house? How many times have we said, 'this must never happen again', and another scandal." "The entire skins betting operations was the biggest criminal conspiracy in esports ever executed and no one has been punished for it." "The people who could be driving that don't want to."
• "Right now people are fans of those organizations because the scene has value. It is worth being a fan of Astralis because they are excellent at Counter-Strike. It is worth being a fan of s1mple because he is the best player in Counter-Strike, maybe the exception of ZywOo. If the scene is devalued, if the scene loses its meaning, those things lose its meaning too, and people will leave, people will stop tuning into the games. I have seen it happen in multiple esports, this is not my first time at the rodeo. I am getting big Brood War vibes right now and I don't like it."
• "The role you play in all of this as fans, as viewers, as listeners, as consumers of esports content, it's absolutely imperative that you know who the good guys are. It's absolutely imperative that you use your voice. It's absolutely imperative that when things are bad, you know who, at least, is trying to make them good, and you have to apply your criticism to the right targets."
  • He continues saying it's no good in continuing to attack ESIC and saying how they are bad, ESIC have it hard
• He says CSPPA are on the right side of the argument on BLAST but have been on the wrong side of many arguments many times.
  • "If you are not willing to stand along side the weakest member of the union, with the least amount of influence, and the least amount of power, then it is not a union at all and you shouldn't pose as one." "You wanna serve a bunch of special interest do it, everyone else in esports fucking does, but do not pose as something you are not." "We love the players. I've been fighting for players rights for as long as I've been able to, but the CSPPA is not what we needed."
    • "They are not applying the pressure to the right people, they are not fighting the right battles, they are not helping their weaker members."
• He says what orgs have done by keeping or hiring coaches is bad. "When you give up on holding an appreciable standard, you've lost the scene" "Competition matters, rules matter, punishments matter, achievements matter, excellence matters" "If you start stripping that away, you have nothing" "You guys need to take that knowledge and apply it sensibly."
• "Valve has sold you all down the river, they sold everyone in the esports scene down the river, tournament organizers are selling their talent down the river. Don't hate on them for sounding tired after a 16 hour day. Don't hate on them because the hype for a matchup they've seen for the 20th time in the past 3 months, they can't be as excited or it sounds contrived. Support your guys, they're there for you, these are your people."
• "This community has got to start acting like one for the first fucking time. Just put the petty shit away, let's try and fix this fucking scene while we still have one to save."
• "You can't rely on Valve, you can't rely on ESL, you can't rely on the CSPPA, you can't rely on anyone." "Once again, it's gonna be the likes of us, the amateurs, the people who give a fuck, rolling up our sleeves and grafting." "I'm old and tired and I don't want to have to do it again. People need to pick up the torch and do it."
  • "Like Michal did, like Dudenhoeffer did. You see something wrong, fix it. You see somebody doing something wrong, call it out. If you think something could be better, let people know."
• "Vote with your wallets if you're not happy with the direction Valve goes in. If when we do get to the Major, they serve up another subpar, same old bullshit stickers and signatures package again, do not buy it."
  • "You're a powerful block and if you use it correctly we can fucking avert this disaster."
• "I'm not doing another year in this broken, bust-up fucking scene, where everyone is miserable, everyone is broke, everyone is tired, and everyone is trying to fucking rob everyone else, blind, while the fucking people who are meant to be protecting you, are just fucking enhancing it and lining their own pockets."
  • "I'm not doing it anymore and you shouldn't want to do it either."
• "I stand by every fucking thing I said. I mean it, because this game fucking matters to me, this scene fucking matters to me. I put my life into this, my adult life, and to see it in this state is fucking sad."

Obviously, it's people playing a game for fun and they can play it however they see fit. That being said, it's also fun to analyze things, so that's what I'm doing.
I noticed back near the start of the Laughing Hand arc that TM9 seem weirdly reticent to get into combat, so good on Travis/Fjord for taking the initiative with Gelidon. When TM9 do get into fights, I feel like they always try to Defeat Your Enemies with This One Weird Trick! How many times have they tried to prematurely end a fight (either successfully or not) by using spells like Banishment or Polymorph to get rid of the threat rather than face it head on and kill it? Here's the problem with clever tricks though: when they work, it's an act of genius, but if you grow reliant on them, you forget that you can beat your enemies the old fashioned way: physically, to death. And that brings us to the Tombtakers fight last night.
TM9 went into this fight a bit low on health, but with hit dice and healing spells that could be handled. They had also burned some powerful spells in the Gelidon fight, but that should have been even less of a concern than normal, since Lucien had antimagic shenanigans going. I believe it went south so rapidly for two reasons building on one another. The first was obvious; they didn't have a clearly defined goal. Were they trying to get their stuff back? Grab a threshhold crest and run? Kill the Tombtakers then and there? They didn't know what they were trying to do, so of course they had trouble doing it.
The other issue (which I think is less obvious but more interesting) is that they've grown reliant on clever tricks. Antimagic cone or not, a sneak attack to the back or a BFS through the face will still ruin your day, so TM9 were equipped to put up a decent fight. Once they knew about the cone, they just had to focus their mundane attackers like Beau, Yasha, and Veth on Lucien while the mages spread out to handle the entourage. The problem is that only Travis/Fjord and Sam/Veth tried to take this route. Everyone else was too focused on finding that One Weird Trick until it was too late and they were forced to retreat.
TL;DR Clearly defined goals are important, and while Clever Tricks are great when they work, sometimes you just have to stab the bastard.

What this is:

This is a weekly, curated listing of Kickstarter board game projects that are either:

• newly posted in the past 7 days, or
• ending in the next 7 days (starting Feb 08) and have at least a fighting chance of being funded.

All board game projects meeting those criteria will automatically be included, no need to ask. (The occasional non-board game project may also sneak in!)
Expect new lists each Sunday sometime between midnight and noon PST.

Ending Soon

Project Info	Players	Backers	Min / Avg Pledge	Ends	Comments
Memory Decompression A solo survival miniatures gamebook. // Has raised $4,828 of $4,000 so far. (~121%) ☑	1	135	$24 / $36	Feb 08	kicktraq
1860: Railways on the Isle of Wight The long-awaited return of Mike Hutton's game of tricky track-building and questionable corporate direction // Has raised $126,512 of $20,000 so far. (~633%) ☑	2 - 4	1161	$75 / $109	Feb 09	kicktraq bgg
Big Bang Burgers This is a card game for people who are into Burgers, Sabotage and Explosions. // Has raised A$6,065 of A$2,500 so far. (~243%) ☑	2 - 6	101	$16 / A$60	Feb 10	kicktraq
The W.A.T.C.H. RPG A tabletop role-playing game in which the players become paranormal investigators and cryptid hunters. // Has raised $5,714 of $1,500 so far. (~381%) ☑	?	183	$10 / $31	Feb 11	kicktraq #rpg
Warbattle: a remote tabletop fantasy game A two-player tabletop fantasy battle game designed to be played remotely, designed by a 9 year old, his mom and his uncle. // Has raised $934 of $300 so far. (~311%) ☑	2	32	$10 / $29	Feb 11	kicktraq
COLOSTLE - A solo RPG - make100 Discover a world of mountains, valleys, seas and cities, all within the colossal impossible structure of a castle's rooms and corridors // Has raised £32,937 of £250 so far. (~13175%) ☑	1	1969	$9 / £17	Feb 11	kicktraq #rpg
Drink To Forget Relevant themed drinking games to keep your party engaged and laughing the entire night. 8 Categories and 110 cards! // Has raised $9,130 of $10,000 so far. (~91%)	3+	162	$25 / $56	Feb 11	kicktraq #lolwut
Pingyao: First Chinese Banks Pingyao: First Chinese Banks is an economic dice-as-workers placement game for 1-4 players and plays in 60-90 minutes. // Has raised $27,754 of $20,000 so far. (~139%) ☑	1 - 4	395	$55 / $70	Feb 11	kicktraq bgg
Dodoresque Jungle Fever - 2021 Edition It's a funny, fast paced Card Game about colorful Dodos including 12 Eco-friendly Miniatures. Your game for the whole family. // Has raised €592 of €500 so far. (~118%) ☑	2 - 4	32	$26 / €19	Feb 11	kicktraq bgg #take2 #newedition
XENOSCAPE - Extreme survival Sci-Fi RPG Are you ready to discover the secrets of Materia, a green and deadly raypunk world? // Has raised €19,465 of €5,000 so far. (~389%) ☑	?	244	$25 / €80	Feb 11	kicktraq #rpg
Snack Attack: The Card Game Hungry dinos everywhere! Fast-paced and easy-to-learn, steal snacks in this family-friendly, competitive card game for 2-4 players! // Has raised $5,926 of $6,000 so far. (~99%)	2 - 4	162	$20 / $37	Feb 11	kicktraq
BATTLE SQUARES: Trays and Bases Resin magnetic bases and movement trays for fantasy "rank and flank" wargames. // Has raised €2,633 of €500 so far. (~527%) ☑	-	29	$26 / €91	Feb 11	kicktraq #bling
Dice Dodgems - Make 100 A 30 minute, 2-4 player tabletop game that combines, dice, dodgems, strategic gameplay and tonnes of bouncing fun! // Has raised NZ$6,003 of NZ$6,500 so far. (~92%)	2 - 4	90	$40 / NZ$67	Feb 11	kicktraq
Tesla Science Race: The Board Game The Great Science Race: The Board Game Inspired By Nikola Tesla. // Has raised $3,482 of $3,333 so far. (~104%) ☑	2 - 4	41	$39 / $85	Feb 11	kicktraq bgg #take2
Kingdoms of the Deep Journey into the deep with our follow up to the award-winning Animal Kingdoms! // Has raised $16,027 of $12,300 so far. (~130%) ☑	2 - 6	322	$39 / $50	Feb 11	kicktraq bgg
Bunny Party at Maple Valley Play as a bunny furiously decorating for a party in this card game where two players win! evansgames.com/bunnyparty // Has raised $6,698 of $3,800 so far. (~176%) ☑	3 - 4	253	$15 / $26	Feb 11	kicktraq bgg
The Full Shanty! Card Game Can you bluff,blagg and tradeyour way to victory?Collect cards to make aFULL SHANTY.The Shanty bases card game. // Has raised £1,158 of £1,000 so far. (~116%) ☑	?	43	$17 / £27	Feb 12	kicktraq
Radlands ☢️ The game you will take with you through the apocalypse. // Has raised C$433439 of C$25000 so far. (~1734%) ☑	2	6427	$40 / C$67	Feb 12	kicktraq bgg
The Belgian Beers Race US edition The US localization of Belgian Beers Race board game. Race through Belgium, visiting breweries and enjoying beers. // Has raised $11,114 of $1,000 so far. (~1111%) ☑	2 - 4	112	$99 / $99	Feb 12	kicktraq bgg
Battle Builders Card Game A card game where you collect cards to make a weapon and take out your friends! // Has raised $667 of $150 so far. (~445%) ☑	3 - 8	29	$20 / $23	Feb 12	kicktraq
Wasted Wizards: A Party Game for Your Inner Nerd A board game that combines luck of the dice with classic drinking games. Get your friends together to have fun and slay the dragon. // Has raised $4,097 of $6,000 so far. (~68%)	2 - 6	51	$55 / $80	Feb 13	kicktraq

New This Week

Project Info	Players	Backers	Min / Avg Pledge	Ends	Comments
A Universal Truth - International Version The Strategic Game of Courtship. This is a gamer's game for 1-5 players, now with an international version! // Has raised $1,724 of $8,000 so far. (~22%)	1 - 5	28	$49 / $62	Mar 15	bgg #take2
All in one Board Game: A tactical and competitive board game consists of advance Tic Tac Toe, advance Paper Scissors Rock and much more playing ways. // Has raised HK$922 of HK$37,500 so far. (~2%)	varies	3	$15 / HK$307	Mar 02	#lolwut
Badland Wolves Guided by the law of Tooth & Claw, the wolves now fight for the crown. // Has raised $12,363 of $10,000 so far. (~124%) ☑	3 - 5	256	$30 / $48	Feb 26	bgg
Board game PLAYMATS! My kingdom for a PLAYMAT!Made of neoprene, ideal for board games or miniatures. // Has raised €2,947 of €1,900 so far. (~155%) ☑	-	77	$25 / €38	Feb 25	#bling
Brutal quest - A miniature narrative game A fantasy miniature narrative games based on the planet28 rule system. // Has raised £3,878 of £800 so far. (~485%) ☑	2	435	$11 / £9	Feb 19
Burger Builder Burger Builder is a fun new card game where players score points by building tasty food items using ingredient cards. // Has raised A$2,546 of A$2,500 so far. (~102%) ☑	?	50	$16 / A$51	Mar 06
Card-opoly A combination of monopoly and Cardistry condensed to the constraints of the 8x8 for a different feel // Has raised $121 of $100,000 so far. (~0%)	?	2	$100 / $61	Mar 05	#lolwut
Clinic Deluxe Extensions TWO new Extension boxes for Clinic Deluxe Edition containing more than 25 expansions for a level of simulation probably never reached i // Has raised $149,761 of $29,000 so far. (~516%) ☑	2 - 4	1290	$40 / $116	Feb 28	bgg #expansion
CoraQuest A cooperative and customisable dungeon crawl adventure for the whole family // Has raised £70,991 of £12,060 so far. (~589%) ☑	1 - 4	2443	$42 / £29	Feb 19	bgg
Core Worlds: Empires + Nemesis "Core Worlds: Empires" is the epic, standalone sequel to the "Core Worlds" card game. "Nemesis" is the original game's solo expansion. // Has raised $48,548 of $60,000 so far. (~81%)	1 - 4	515	$20 / $94	Feb 25	bgg #expansion
Crayne: Fractured Empire, a mission, a game, epic... Crayne: Fractured Empire is a high-fantasy epic deck-building card game with combat, high replay-ability and near limitless strategy! // Has raised A$5,121 of A$20,000 so far. (~26%)	1 - 6	64	$35 / A$80	Mar 04	bgg
Cult of the Deep 4-8 player hidden role dice game. You are a cultist, establishing your faction's rise to power as you fight over rituals and monsters. // Has raised $21,877 of $15,000 so far. (~146%) ☑	4 - 8	398	$35 / $55	Mar 03	bgg #take2
D-D 1944 A roll & write wargame that simulates parts of WWII. / Un wargame estilo roll & write que simula partes de la 2da. GM. // Has raised €535 of €100 so far. (~535%) ☑	1 - 3	106	$4 / €5	Feb 22	bgg
DEFCON 1 “War is not fatalistically inevitable.”—Nikita Khrushchev // Has raised €24,725 of €20,000 so far. (~124%) ☑	?	366	$85 / €68	Feb 23	bgg
Dodoresque Jungle Fever - 2021 Edition It's a funny, fast paced Card Game about colorful Dodos including 12 Eco-friendly Miniatures. Your game for the whole family. // Has raised €592 of €500 so far. (~118%) ☑	2 - 4	32	$26 / €19	Feb 11	bgg #take2 #newedition
DOOM MACHINE: A Mint Tin Card + Dice SOLO Game Can you destroy the ever-evolving DOOM MACHINE before humanity is lost? A pocket-sized pressure cooker fight for survival! // Has raised $24,577 of $2,500 so far. (~983%) ☑	1	838	$19 / $29	Mar 02	bgg
Dragons Fire Games: Gambler Gambler, a stand alone saloon brawl expansion to our flagship game Gunslinger. // Has raised $1,861 of $850 so far. (~219%) ☑	2 - 5	15	$15 / $124	Feb 28
Dragons Wild Quick Card Game of Mythical Creatures // Has raised NZ$1,396 of NZ$4,300 so far. (~32%)	2 - 6	34	$18 / NZ$41	Mar 06	bgg
Eggvolution Eggvolution is a strategy/random card game with the objective of destroying your friends. // Has raised €1,398 of €7,500 so far. (~19%)	2 - 6	41	$25 / €34	Mar 06
Embryo Machine — A Mecha Wargame A compact and accessible wargame from Japan for 2-6 players ft. fast-paced mecha combat across a modular grid-based battlefield. // Has raised $31,771 of $15,000 so far. (~212%) ☑	1 - 6	437	$45 / $73	Feb 18	bgg
Endangered World A Game of Protecting the Animal Kingdom // Has raised $652 of $12,000 so far. (~5%)	2 - 4	20	$34 / $33	Mar 09	bgg
ExeCUTEtion (Re-Launch) The Card Game of Adorable Capital Punishment // Has raised $3,292 of $20,000 so far. (~16%)	2 - 6	64	$24 / $51	Mar 07	#take2
Food Time Battle in Space A 2-4 player retro restaurant card game on the moon. Pushing your luck, risk-taking and planning are all required to earn 5 stars. // Has raised £1,357 of £4,000 so far. (~34%)	2 - 4	50	$21 / £27	Mar 02	bgg
Forbidden Psalm: Miniature gaming Inspired by Mörk Borg Table top miniature game. Inspired by and compatible with Mörk Borg. Rules light table top game.Miniature agnostic. Solo Play. Coop. VS // Has raised £2,870 of £300 so far. (~957%) ☑	1 - ?	104	$13 / £28	Feb 16
Games that Goblins Play. Playing Cards and New Games! Playing cards and rule book with new games. Goblin themed Zine! // Has raised $634 of $500 so far. (~127%) ☑	varies	30	$5 / $21	Feb 15
GRIDWARS: Age of Cyberpunk Complete Skirmish Wargame! 77+ Cyberpunk Sci-Fi STL Models! Terrain, Environment & Web App included! Put your miniatures into action! // Has raised €46,345 of €10,000 so far. (~463%) ☑	?	1052	$35 / €44	Feb 16
Jesters The Card Game - Let's Launch This Together Jesters is a fun, fast-paced new card game from the creator of the bestselling Quarantine The Card Game. // Has raised $759 of $8,000 so far. (~9%)	2 - 5	11	$20 / $69	Mar 04
King of Potato: A King-of-the-Hill Card Game A quick and strategic game where you compete to get the King. // Has raised $5,720 of $5,000 so far. (~114%) ☑	2 - 6	73	$19 / $78	Mar 01	bgg
Kingsfall: Guilds of Cendrenil An easy to learn 4X strategy board game set in a fantasy-lite world. // Has raised $3,169 of $16,000 so far. (~20%)	2 - 6	68	$40 / $47	Feb 23	bgg
Lift Every Voice and Meme - A Black Card Game Finally, a game for the culture, by the culture. // Has raised $2,720 of $10,000 so far. (~27%)	3 - 15	41	$30 / $66	Mar 04
MAO - Puzzle Card Game jeu de cartes // Has raised €43 of €200 so far. (~22%)	3 -10	3	$15 / €14	Mar 02
Maquis: 2nd Edition - Reprint with NEW Content! Maquis, the award-winning solo game of strategic worker placement, is getting reprinted with new missions! // Has raised $76,245 of $6,000 so far. (~1271%) ☑	1	3943	$5 / $19	Feb 25	bgg #newedition
Metro - Deluxe Big Box - City Edition 20th Anniversary of Metro! Time for new artwork, new expansions, and whole lot of component upgrades. // Has raised $75,800 of $10,000 so far. (~758%) ☑	1 - 6	605	$44 / $125	Feb 16	bgg #newedition
Moon Adventure, In a Grove and Dokojong - 月面探険・藪の中・ドコジャン 3 Games on Kickstarter by Oink Games - オインクゲームズの新作３つ // Has raised ¥9,623,468 of ¥1,000,000 so far. (~962%) ☑	varies	961	$62 / ¥10,014	Feb 26	bgg
Nations and Empires Use real historical leaders to develop your empires and conquer your opponents! // Has raised $1,097 of $15,000 so far. (~7%)	2 - 5	11	$45 / $100	Mar 05
Park Hero the game A board game based on traditional strategy games and America's national parks. // Has raised $1,069 of $14,500 so far. (~7%)	2 - 6	19	$55 / $56	Apr 02
Polysemous: The doors to other dimensions are open a chaotic, competitive, adventure board game filled with charm, chaos and betrayal. // Has raised A$3,854 of A$33,900 so far. (~11%)	2 - 6	41	$70 / A$94	Apr 01
Posthuman Saga & The Journey Home Expansion The Journey Home is the new chapter in Posthuman Saga, a post-apocalyptic, story-rich, strategic survival board game. // Has raised $48,087 of $20,000 so far. (~240%) ☑	1 - 4	953	$30 / $50	Feb 23	bgg #expansion #reprint
Ramming Robots! - a 1 - 2-player board game (PnP) A game where the more you ram your opponent's robot the more points you score! // Has raised $135 of $45 so far. (~300%) ☑	1 - 2	29	$3 / $5	Feb 28
Recarded A super fun party game // Has raised £696 of £4,500 so far. (~15%)	2 - 8	18	$35 / £39	Mar 05
Rock Paper Scissors: The Board Game A board game offering a new take on the classic rock paper scissors game! // Has raised €562 of €5,000 so far. (~11%)	2	18	$35 / €31	Mar 17
Royalty Assemble great nobles of the 15th century in a fun twist to this classic card game // Has raised $81 of $2,000 so far. (~4%)	2 - 6	5	$15 / $16	Mar 05
Space Weirdos A sci-fi skirmish wargame for whatever minis you have around. #zinequest // Has raised $921 of $100 so far. (~921%) ☑	2	124	$4 / $7	Feb 18
The Belgian Beers Race US edition The US localization of Belgian Beers Race board game. Race through Belgium, visiting breweries and enjoying beers. // Has raised $11,114 of $1,000 so far. (~1111%) ☑	2 - 4	112	$99 / $99	Feb 12	bgg
The Best Recycler Fun Card Game for sensitizing against recycling, and consume fairly. // Has raised C$1 of C$4537 so far. (~0%)	7+	1	$12 / C$1	Mar 21
The Elf Shelf High quality shelf solutions for your miniatures and dice. // Has raised $1,013 of $40 so far. (~2532%) ☑	-	14	$29 / $72	Feb 17	#bling
The Fisherman Board Game All the magic of fishing for big ocean Fishes, unknown species, life on a boat, the crew and the sea in a unique board game // Has raised €299 of €15,000 so far. (~2%)	2 - 4	5	$67 / €60	Mar 05	#take2
The Lighthouse At The Edge Of The Universe - Solo RPG A solo journalling game about running a lighthouse on the edge of the universe. // Has raised A$2,576 of A$270 so far. (~954%) ☑	1	202	$5 / A$13	Feb 18	#rpg
Time Editors: A time travel themed board game Save the past and control the use of time travel! // Has raised $13,277 of $55,600 so far. (~24%)	2 - 4	196	$59 / $68	Mar 04	bgg #take2
Toxic Takeover Board Game Dice duel and battle your way to home safe before the mad scientist takes over the world and you’re turned into a lil monster! Hurry! // Has raised $101 of $14,100 so far. (~1%)	2 - 5	3	$55 / $34	Mar 08
Truth, Dare or Spoon! A game of Truth of Dare with consequences you can taste! // Has raised $1,491 of $1,000 so far. (~149%) ☑	2 - 8	17	$39 / $88	Mar 04
Way of the Patriarchs Travel through the Land of Israel on the path of the forefathers - roll a die, collect cards, and move your piece through ancient sites // Has raised $3,007 of $8,000 so far. (~38%)	2 - 5	35	$40 / $86	Mar 13
Welcome to Sysifus Corp - A cut-throat corporate board game Race to the coveted promotion using office politics to backstab your fellow coworkers. // Has raised $13,218 of $15,000 so far. (~88%)	2 - 4	138	$40 / $96	Mar 04	bgg
WINNING SO MUCH FLIPPIN' FUN // Has raised $24 of $10 so far. (~240%) ☑	1 - 3	6	$5 / $4	Mar 04	#lolwut

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Footnotes

• #hmm means that something about the project seems a little off. Buyer beware kinda thing.
• #lolwut is reserved for projects that seem like copycat games or campaigns put together with little thought. Check 'em out for amusement.
• #take tags are for projects that have been restarted for some reason, with the number indicating what iteration we're currently on.
• Did I miss something? Particularly something new in the last 7 days or ending in the next 7 days? Let me know in the comments and I'll add it in.

Tip Jar

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So I've been part of a few threads lately on various unrelated post about GMing with ADHD, and I figure it would be helpful to post some of my tips about GMing with ADHD. I have a bit over 4 years of experience GMing at this point, and about 10 years of playing TTRPGs more generally. Note, obviously this is all pretty biased towards my own personal experiences.
So the obvious one, is the coping mechanisms you use in other parts of your life should be applied to TTRPGs. I pretty much always have a fidget toy in my hand while I am GMing since it is basically required for me to use one to sit down for long periods of time.

Organization (probably the biggest thing for me (I know, wild surprise)):

1. I use Google Docs to keep track of everything, that way I don't have to keep track of papers. I have a single document for a given session, with notes, that then gets filed away when I finish running the session. I also keep a handful of other documents with various other purposes, usually this has to do with higher level stuff. Something I am currently working on is going back an reordering my notes into a more sensible flow (doing everything electronically helps with this).
2. Basically, do everything electronically if you can. Do your notes electronically, if you have a smart phone, make sure you can access them via whatever program you choose in case you leave your laptop at home. Ideally, use roll-20 for character sheets (and also dice rolls if you forget your dice). (Guess what I have a problem with...)
3. If you are heart-set on physical notes, it helps to have them all in one place. My Ex also has ADHD and also GMs, and he uses a binder to keep track of all his notes, he has it divided into various useful sections via dividers.
4. If you use any physical books, use sticky notes to mark important pages, ideally labeled for quick reference. If you use PDFs, note important page numbers in you notes. (setting notes, factions, stat blocks, what have you)

Rules/Running the game

1. Remembering of all the rules may be an extra level of hard. Learn how to quickly search for specific rules. It can also be helpful to note page numbers in your notes if you are going into it knowing that you are going to need to reference a specific unusual case.
2. You don't actually need to keep track of anything player specific. That is on them to learn.
3. If you are having problems remembering the core rules, see if the system has a cheat-sheet, if not, make one. Cheat-sheets are your friend.
4. The world won't end if you can't read the source books cover to back. (I know my brain shuts down in self defense if I try). Skimming is fine, and so is reading the sections specific to the core rules. Luckily there are often tables to help with stuff like skills or other critical information.
5. Learn the phrase, "So what exactly is your plan?" No GM can keep track of every idea the players throw out, and I have found I am particularly inclined to space out if my players start debating between themselves. Once they finish, just ask them what their final plan is.
6. You can ask your players for help/lean on them on occasion. One of my players will basically memorize the rules once we choose what system we are running next. Since he has shown himself to be impartial when asked about rules (having jokingly apologized to his fellow players for letting me know the rules when it is to my advantage), I sometimes ask him about quick things that should not require too much of a call on my part.
7. Task that are often coupled with GMing, like coordinating, can handled by your players (these things should not be coupled anyways). If you are having problems doing them on top of everything else, make it their problem.
8. Understand you are probably going to run things a little different and that this is a completely neutral statement. I have found talking to other ADHD GMs that often our "Voice" while GMing is a bit different. This can be used to your advantage, I have found the way I approach humor works well for approaching horror.

Other:

1. Don't stress not getting all of your prep done at once, plan on doing over the time between sessions. Part of the reason I like doing my notes electronically is that I can access them via my phone when I have a cool idea, or have some time to kill while doing something like waiting for the bus. This also helps me keep track of cool ideas, as it allows me to note them down before I forget them. You will probably also want to try to start them sooner rather then later, but I am also an absolute hypocrite by saying this.
2. It is extra important you run the type of game you find interesting to run. It will help motivate you to actually sit down and do your prep if you are excited. Plus, I have found that a bored GM can disrupt a game far faster then a bored player, and I suspect part of what played into it for me was my ADHD. (I tried running blades in the dark to make my players happy, but I really don't vibe with the system and I somehow managed to derail a campaign I was running). Relatedly, it is important to experiment as a GM, but even more so as an ADHD GM due to the tendency towards wanting novelty.
3. If you are worried about your players having fun, there is nothing wrong with asking for reassurance. I am really emotive whereas my players really aren't, so when I am feeling anxious, I usually check in. It does help that my players and I have talked through stuff that went badly (either as a postmortem after a session or just chatting in our off time about how well the latest session went), so I trust them whey they say they are having fun.
4. You will run bad sessions, particularly at first, and that is OK. I am a good GM, but it wasn't until the third campaign I ran where I really got into the swing of things. My first campaign was ok, but I would go on to do way better and second was a disastrous attempt at running Blades in the Dark, both were fairly short lived campaigns, and unfortunately I learned I wasn't a super compatible GM for one of my friends (he ended up leaving the group with no hard feelings).
5. I honestly recommend keeping at it (taking a breaks if you are getting burnt out or are too stressed), the only why you'll figure out what works for you is to keep trying (and to change things as needed).

Based on my own experiences, I think RP ends up being a strong suit of ADHD GMs for what it is worth. I also suspect we end up getting drawn towards GMing. Also like, generally coming up with ideas.
Like I said, this is all biased towards my own experiences. If you are also a ADHD GM, feel free to add your own suggestions!
Edit: reformatted per suggestion to hopefully make it easier to read. Same content.
Edit 2: Regarding prep: try to limit your session notes to only a few pages. Use other documents/folders to supplement if you are having problems with this. I keep all my stat blocks in their own folder for example.
I usually have a parent folder specific to a given campaign. Inside I keep children folders with stuff like past sessions, stat blocks and handouts. I also keep additional documents for stuff like ideas, important NPCs, higher level plot notes and anything specific to the campaign/setting itself. I also title my sessions by the date they were/will be ran (and they are kept at the parent folder level until finished).

Randonaut Theory
The main goal of the Randonauts movement is to research reality outside the framework created by methodological templates, as well as to search for novelty and reveal the potential of consciousness to create the surrounding reality. By combining all available resources and tools of cognition, we discover a world around us, we never knew existed.
Project methodology and structure
The project does not claim to meet academic standards. We are somewhere in the middle between a game, science, and art, and we try to take as much as possible from each of them, because we believe that labeling and leading to a unified methodology limits the potential of activity.
The project is a symbiosis of research and cultural medium, which work to develop each other. It is an inseparable fusion of folklore and technology that continuously evolves and creates new opportunities for discovery.
The technological part of the project is based on real scientific studies, although the methodology for their application may deviate from the academic standards for research, as we are more inventors than academic scientists. Our goal is not so much the formation of full-fledged knowledge, but the acceleration of progress and the search for novelty that can indicate the direction for future searches and change our vision of reality.
The project is not profit-oriented and all commercial activities in it are aimed at providing resources for the research infrastructure. One of our top priorities is to ensure that as many people as possible can be involved in the research process. Therefore, we propose to consider the project as a collaborative experiment, and not as a consumer product. We also do not insist on the correctness of the theories presented here and leave the reader with the possibility of their rethinking and addition.
Philosophy of Noveltism
Novelty is a treasure. Novelty shows us the way beyond the imaginable and opens up new possibilities for us. The one who possesses novelty becomes the creator of a new reality.
Noveltism determines the degree of novelty of a subject by how much it differs from what already exists.
But the most valuable novelty is Absolute Novelty, the kind of novelty that provides the maximum paradigm shift and cannot be obtained consistently. This is when the answer goes beyond the question, as if you were trying to invent a faster rocket engine and discovered teleportation instead. The person who made such a discovery becomes the founder of a new branch of technological development and changes the face of civilization.
However, in the modern world, almost all research takes place sequentially, on the basis of existing knowledge, a question is formed and its formulation determines the way in which the search for an answer to it is conducted. Moreover, the further people go in a consistent search, the more difficult it becomes to participate in it and the fewer people are involved in it due to the high requirements for their competence and tools. This applies to both science and culture and any other areas of development. It's hard to make it to the big leagues when thousands are already fighting for a spot in there.
Absolute novelty always stands at the beginning of any branch of development, so everyone can discover it and everyone can be equally involved in its search, and the one who finds it will hit the jackpot and become the founder of a whole new branch.
However, since absolute novelty cannot follow from the knowledge available, it is almost impossible to formulate what exactly we want to find and in which direction this search should be conducted. The request for absolute novelty is a kind of the Ultimate Question, which cannot be formulated, since we, by definition, cannot know what we are trying to find. You can try to look for “something” where no one have looked yet, but as a rule, we do not know where it is.
Therefore, noveltist methodology is usually based on a search in all directions at once and a natural selection of the results obtained. Such a search can be realized by involving the maximum number of people in it and using randomizers to evenly distribute their efforts. Then the likelihood of finding something new will increase, and if the search results are public and available to all participants, then the most valuable finds will attract more attention, which will ensure their natural selection.
For this reason, we are trying to make research tools available to everyone, so that together we can explore every piece of reality and try all the ways to interact with it in order to find the most interesting and effective ones.
The Research Itself
Randonautica Project implements two separate experiments inherited from the Fatum Project, both based on visiting geographic coordinates, but conceptually completely different. We recommend that you carefully read the description of each, so as not to confuse them with each other.
Experiment #1. Probability Blind-Spots
Imagine that somewhere near you, perhaps near your house there is a place that you always go around without any reason, you have never been there and probably do not even know that this place exists. We call such places Blind-Spots.
Their existence is mathematically determined, since all our behaviour has a certain share of determinism in it. Imagine that you toss a coin, it can fall heads, tails or stand on the edge, but nothing other than these three outcomes will be taken as result, the set of outcomes is determined by the coin itself. The Dice cannot give you two and a half, cause its sides are whole numbers.
The same is true for our geographical routes, no matter what path we choose, wherever we decide to go, there is a limited number of logical chains that will guide our mind when choosing a route, even if it seems to us that we act by chance, there is always a place where none of these logical chains leads.
Even more convincing example is the so-called "Chaos Game", illustrating the phenomenon, which in Chaos Theory is called attractors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierpinski_triangle#Chaos_game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcvY_45XFU4
In short: If we choose three random points and move the fourth point many times half the distance to one of these points, randomly chosen by a dice throw, then despite the fact that all movements were guided by randomness, all the locations of the point during the game form a figure known like a Sierpinski triangle. In other words, the presence of any game rule forms a limited outcomes space. It is interesting that in the center of this triangle there is a space into which points never fall. Such a space in our case would be called a Blind-Spot.
Now imagine how many rules shape your routes and behaviour: logic, habits, social norms, life experience, cognitive biases, external factors that affect you according to the characteristics of your personality or are in a causal relationship with your behaviour and so on. All this together creates a causal viscosity, which we call the Stasis Field, the force that holds you in the Reality-Tunnel of your own.
We define a "reality-tunnel" as the deterministic path that your life is on. Reality tunnels are influenced by factors that determine the relative frame of reality for a particular person. That is, how one sees the world, what is used to paying attention to, in what places and when one may find themselves, and how one reacts to various situations. It is assumed that different people can have not only a different set of opportunities, but also a different vision of the world depending on their personal qualities and behavior patterns. This is something like “Filter Bubbles”, when the deterministic component of your behaviour makes the places, things and information that exists outside such a Reality-Tunnel practically invisible to you, since it simply does not occur to you to think about it.
This means that no matter what choices you make, and no matter how many variations on how your day may pass, there are always some places where you simply cannot be, because none of the chains of your decisions leads there. Such places may be somewhere nearby. On your street there may be a lane in which you will never think to look and you do not even know about its existence. What could be hiding in such blind spots? And what could be hiding in places where no one looks at all? (Since no one has been there and such a place has an absolute geographical novelty, it may well contain things that no one knows about the fundamental existence of.)
Luckily, there is a way to go beyond the Reality-Tunnel and find such places. To do this, you only need to search in places chosen independently of the rules of our thinking. In our experiment, we used a random number generator to mark random points on the map and visit them. Because of being independent from deterministic patterns, RNG brings the possibility of generating coordinates anywhere on the map with equal probability, which means you have a chance to find a blind spot by visiting many of these points. However, there is no guarantee that you will find it at the first point.
The experiment methodology is simple: As a search area, you should choose a relatively small territory that is familiar to you. Using the RNG, you should generate random points on it and visit them regardless of whether they look interesting or convenient to visit. Perhaps the first point will not lead you to the Blind Spot, but with further attempts, the chance will increase. Many participants reported finding places within a five-minute walk from home that they had never noticed before and probably never would. The evidence that the blind spot has been found will be a feeling of surprise like "How I did not notice this place before."
The debatable question is whether external determinism can influence the course of the experiment, because of which the theory of Stasis Field often resembles the hypothesis of Simulation, although in this case we do not mean an artificial universe, but only a limited frame of perception and interaction with the real universe.
Since blind spots are methodologically hidden from us and finding them requires a choice of location that does not depend on our behavioral patterns, there is no need to resort to quantum RNGs, a pseudo-random source is fine. However, one should not forget that the reality-tunnel consists not only of geographical patterns, but also temporal, psychological, social, etc. Therefore, a blind spot can be not only an uncharacteristic place for us, but also, for example, a circumstance. Even being in a familiar place at an unusual time can give rise to non-standard situations. So one of the participants in the experiment said that while traveling, he came across an old acquaintance of his, whom he had not seen for 10 years, despite the fact that they live in the neighborhood, but appear in the same places at different times.
We believe that the reality-tunnels of different people can differ so much that the world itself looks different in them, especially if these are tunnels of people who are socially separated from each other by more than three handshakes.
This is quite possible if we consider that all people exist within their own reality-tunnel, shaped by their qualities, habits and perceptions. Even just a very different person from us can live in a completely different world, because of going completely different routes and receiving different information. So, getting into random points, you can find yourself in someone else’s reality-tunnel and get new opportunities from there or meet someone who gives us a piece of information that changes everything.
It is difficult to imagine how reality-tunnels that are not at all typical for humans might look like. The ability to move between such tunnels is akin to traveling through the multiverse, only instead of physically moving to other dimensions, we move our frame of perception and interaction with reality.
For this reason, we recommend not limiting yourself to randomizing only geographic coordinates, but, for example, visit points at random times, or build sequential chains of random routes from them.
Next question is what are the long-term consequences of a researcher staying in a place where he should never have been. How much can determinism be broken by butterfly effect? Will the clockwork of the universe fail from changing its gear position? Will the objects found in these places or the images seen generate cascades of events drastically changing everything around?
It is noteworthy that our reality-tunnel can be completely changed as a result of the domino effects created by those elements of novelty that we find outside of it. We learned something new, found some unusual object and began to use it in everyday life, which is why we gained new advantages and are already doing something differently.
In such situations, if the Stasis field is strong enough, it tends to converge and displaces novelty from our reality-tunnel, but if it fails, we are pulled into the tunnel from where this novelty was brought, which accordingly changes our personality, habits, interests, so that we can match the new environment. For this reason, if you want to move into a new reality-tunnel, it is recommended to take an object from the trip and start using it in everyday life, taking advantage of novelty, such objects will not allow convergence to occur, that is seeking to return you back to the pattern.
There is also a statistical aspect to the experiment. Not every trip brings you to the blind spot, and not every randonaut finds something abnormal, but when a large enough number of people in the community visit random places, together they manage to explore even the most hidden nooks of reality, and therefore if something lurks somewhere - something strange, it will definitely be found and the whole community will know about it. This makes this collaborative search for novelty very effective and together we can explore every corner of the universe. By collecting all the found anomalies and studying them, we will gain new knowledge that will become the beginning of even more amazing research.
Memetic Factors and Side-effects.
The psychological and cognitive effects arising under the influence of novelty deserve special attention. Given that it is the patterns of thinking that largely determine how we perceive reality, it is impossible to ignore them when trying to go beyond the reality-tunnel.
What do we know? In general, novelty should have a positive effect on the psyche, as it increases neuroplasticity and, in addition, there is research proving, among other things, that geographic diversity makes people happier:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-020-0636-4 (Association between real-world experiential diversity and positive affect relates to hippocampal–striatal functional connectivity)
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/202005/the-science-behind-our-need-variety-in-activities
Based on this, we can say that randonautting is very useful psychologically.
We also assume that there are some psychological changes that are directly determined by the very setting of the experiment. Observations showed that over time, participants become more attentive to the small details of their environment and more open to new information.
However, there are two specific categories of psychological phenomena that were often observed among the participants in the experiment, which can be roughly divided into Dopamine Hit producing effects that potentiate curiosity, enthusiasm, and the ability to notice synchronicities and anxiety-enhancing effects such as Trespassing complex.
The mechanism of both phenomena is related to how our consciousness perceives the uncertainty that we are aware of when we think about the Blind Spots. Depending on the participant’s disposition, one of two mechanisms may be activated.
The first mechanism we called a Void-meme. This is a positive scenario for understanding the unknown, which is an important component of the Randonaut paradigm.
Void-memes are the open questions. In our case, this is the great unknown laying outside the deterministic world. Being completely indefinite, it, like the Rorschach stains, draws the most daring assumptions from your imagination, trying to fill the void of uncertainty.
When your assumptions are optimistic, it creates a release of dopamine and motivates you, increasing your curiosity.
And since energy is expended in the search for truth, the mind seeks confirmation of its expectations and pays attention to anything even slightly unusual, which increases your impressionability. In this way, the ability to notice anomalies is greatly increased, and any anomalies that are noticed form new attention filters, which, due to the Baader-meinhof effect, make it possible to notice new types of things. This changes your very vision of the surrounding world, thus completing the creation of a new reality-tunnel.
This effect is extremely useful in novelistic research, and in order to enhance it, it is proposed to focus more on the unknown in the subject under study than on the prospects of what may be hidden behind this unknown, leaving the participants the opportunity to reflect on it for themselves.
However, there is also a negative scenario, when thinking about the unknown, the participant’s imagination does not draw attractive prospects, but frightening threats. This is possible if the participant is initially prone to pessimistic expectations.
In such cases, uncertainty will arouse suspicion, paranoia and conspiracy theories. In addition, even if the predisposition to negative expectations is initially not very high, it is reinforced by instinctive anxiety designed to increase our caution in unfamiliar places.
This is manifested in the so-called trespassing complex, when a randomaut visiting an uncharacteristic location is haunted by the feeling that being there he is breaking some unspoken rule and thereby incurring danger. People may think that they are being watched, any bystander may appear to be a persecutor, and any surprise causes fear. Reality itself can seem hostile. This effect can be considered as one of the main psychological components of the Stasis field, which keeps us within the boundaries of the reality-tunnel.
But what determines the very balance between optimistic and pessimistic expectations from the unknown? This phenomenon is explained by long exposure to a pattern that we call Despair-meme.
The principle of Despair-meme is simple, it is transmitted in the form of signals that simultaneously carry a danger and the impossibility of resisting it. For example: an endless stream of bad, terrifying or angering news in public media, aggression from people in a higher position in the social hierarchy, nagging people who cause discomfort at the level of empathy, but not taking advice to solve problems, etc.
Since the resulting stress is unsolvable, a closed cycle of self-reflection is created, producing stress and a feeling of helplessness, prompting a person to search for an accessible target for their sublimation and send the same signal to someone else (retelling bad news or showing similar aggression to other people). Thus, with prolonged exposure to the despair meme, the brain learns that relief from the stress of helplessness comes only through antagonism and begins to see the environment as hostile and full of dangers.
To reduce the effect of Despair-meme, it is enough to understand its nature and try not to succumb to it, then over time the brain will learn to filter out groundless fears. There are also techniques, such as facial interpretation bias modification (FIBM), you can google them.
We also recommend avoiding negative emotional reactions to information in the media whenever possible if this information is outside your locus of control. Ask yourself if this information really matters to you or if you're just projecting it onto yourself. Try not to oppose yourself to anything, but to understand the principles by which the surrounding world functions and to find opportunities for yourself in them. Learn to see new things as a benefit, not a threat.
Experiment #2. Mind-Influenced Randomness
This is where the things become a bit complicated. It is worth starting by looking at the phenomenon of Mind-Matter Interaction (MMI).
This phenomenon was known back in the 80s, but the most famous scientific study on this topic is known as The Global Consciousness Project. This parapsychology experiment began in 1998 as an attempt to detect possible interactions of "global consciousness" with physical systems and an extrapolation of two decades of experiments from the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR).
PEAR employed electronic random event generators (REGs) to explore the ability of test subjects to use psychokinesis to influence the random output distribution of these devices to conform to their pre-recorded intentions to produce higher numbers, lower numbers, or nominal baselines. As their experiment shows, test subjects intention can cause randomness distribution to significantly deviate from average expected values.
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/papers/peafieldreg2.pdf
Probably, the study has entered a kind of methodological blind spot, since despite the large number of positive results it was subjected to intense criticism from the scientific community. The main subject of criticism is the low signal level (intention distorts the probability by no more than 1-5%), however, many researchers, such as, for example, Scott Wilber (Core Invention, Psigenics Corp.), are still working on solving this problem and achieving significant results:
https://psigenics.com/files/papers/PRD_Whitepaper.pdf (Machine-Enhanced Anomalous Cognition)
https://patents.justia.com/patent/9367288 (Device and method responsive to influences of mind)
https://patents.justia.com/patent/20160283197 (ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DEVICE AND METHOD RESPONSIVE TO INFLUENCES OF MIND)
Interesting experiment was conducted by Jacob Jolij ’at the University of Groningen, where participants are encouraged to look for numerical combinations that are meaningful for them in the data stream of ordinary and quantum RNG. (https://rug.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3ZXOIAG6hdImsbb )
The students were presented with ten randomly generated numbers and asked to say if the numbers meant anything to them.
Jolij wanted to know whether people saw meaning in the quantum-generated numbers more often than they did the software-generated ones. And believe it or not: they did. The p value of the significance was 0.0013. ‘That means that if you were to repeat this experiment a thousand times, you’d get these same results at least once’, Jolij explains. ‘And that’s a lot.’
Now back to Randonauting.
Mind-Matter Interaction brings us to the new form of chaotic agency. If the use of the entropy of pseudo-RNG is effective in overcoming the methodological boundaries of the mind, then the use of quantum RNG allows the intentions of our mind to overcome the boundaries of patterns of external reality. In the original experiments of Randonauts, the MMI effect was also referred to as the Genesis Field and was contrasted with the Stasis field.
Thus, assuming that the participant’s thoughts can affect the quantum RNG in a way that is meaningful to them, we designed an experiment in the context of Randonauting:
Just as in the previous experiment, a point is generated on the map to be visited, but the principle of generation is completely different now.
For generation, a strictly quantum RNG is used.
Randonautica uses an open server of Australian National University's Quantum RNG (https://qrng.anu.edu.au/ ) as a source of quantum randomness, which receives random numbers by measuring the magnetic field fluctuations of virtual particles in a vacuum. It is currently the only open source quantum entropy server with enough performance to support the computation we need.
Some members of the MMI Research Randonaut community have expressed the opinion that this QRNG has low psi-responsiveness. For this reason, we conduct a lot of internal research on alternative quantum RNGs such as Psyleron REG (tunnel effects in a field-effect transistor), CamRNG (RNG based on thermal noise in the photo-matrix detectors of a smartphone's camera) and original prototypes obtained from Scott Wilber. Some of them, we hope, will be able to be included in the Randonautica system in the future. We invite everyone interested in this topic to join our team of researchers.
Now let's talk about how the location is generated.
IDA (Intention Driven Anomalies) are places with the maximum deviation in the distribution of random points from the average expected value. In other words, in a random distribution, we theoretically expect a more or less even array of points. When we find deviations from this regular array, we call them “anomalies”. Their calculation is as follows:
First, a large number of random points are applied to the map in the area you select, somewhere around ten thousand (the number varies depending on the radius of the area).
Then, through triangulation and other mathematical transformations, areas are calculated in which points are distributed unevenly.
It is believed that the uneven distribution occurs due to the MMI effect and creates a causal relationship between the intent of the user and the observation of his manifestation.
Deviations can be positive and negative. If the deviation is positive, i.e. the density of points in some place significantly exceeds the average density in the area, this place is called an Attractor. It looks like a dense cluster of random dots.
If the deviation is negative, i.e. the density of points is much lower than average, this place is called a Void. It looks like a territory on which random points seem to be avoided and there are almost none of them here.
From the point of view of MMI, both Attractors and Voids are statistical deviations of the same nature and the difference between them is purely mathematical. In fact, both the Attractor and Void are MMI anomalies. Whether there is a difference between them in terms of results is not known for certain, and you have to figure it out yourself.
Since the very appearance of statistically significant deviations in the distribution of points is improbable, we believe that they result from the effect of intention on the source of entropy. We do not know for sure if intent can affect their location, however, in the course of experiments, many participants reported high personal significance of the resulting locations, often coinciding with what they were talking about or thinking about when the points were generated.
And although, due to the very structure of the experiment, many such observations can be attributed to confirmation bias, some coincidences turned out to be incredibly accurate, which gives us reason to assume that at least some part of the locations really reflected the intention of the users.
The main component of the majority of reports from these experiments are reports of synchronicities and meaningful coincidences, sometimes having a personal significance, but more often figuratively coinciding with what the participant thought or spoke about before the experiment.
It is worth noting that the IDA concept is fundamentally different from the Blind-Spot search, and although it is possible to discover those during the experiment, you should not expect that the IDA will be unfamiliar or completely random places. In fact, everything is exactly the opposite, since their position is formed by your mind, they should be meaningful.
Meaningful signs were also found on the way to the IDA, which suggests that the IDA does not necessarily indicate the position of the artifact, but provides the necessary conditions for its detection. That is, the very existence of an attractor-point can cause a participant to go to a place where he finds an artifact, even if this place does not coincide with the attractor-point. Meaningful signs can take the form of objects, events, or appear as combinations of graffiti encountered along the way, creating the impression that these graffiti refer directly to the participant (this effect was called "talking walls effect").
Quite revealing was the case when a participant who looked at a map of London before the experiment found a map of the London Underground at an attractor-point, even though he himself was in Australia. Also one of the most frequent synchronicities mentioned by project participants is the number 333.
How to explore IDA:
During the experiment, it is recommended to choose a larger search area in order to increase the chances of finding artefacts in it that the algorithm could point to, but within the distance that you are ready to overcome.
We recommend setting an intention by focusing on some idea in the process of point generation, so your intention could affect QRNG.
Try different types of IDA and compare results to find out the difference between them.
At the end of the day, the point of research is to understand how it all works, not just to see if it works.
It is empirically found that the best results can be achieved if we build chains of anomalies. So, for example, you generate one attractor-point, then from inside of it you change your starting location to the current one and generate a new one from there. The best result in most cases was manifested at the third point. We assume that this may be due to the gradual adjustment of the user to QRNG (or some additive causal effects).
It has also been found that IDAs lead to the discovery of expected artefacts, regardless of who expects them. There were cases when participants found what other participants were talking about at that moment in the chat. The most famous case was called "OWL-Experiment", when, after the system administrator installed an owl figurine on top of the server, the number of references to owl figurines in user reports increased sharply, from which it was assumed that by associating an owl with the server, the administrator created an intention, the manifestation of which observed indirectly through the experience of other Randonauts.
However, the technology is still being improved and there are still many questions about how the IDAs work, can you control what thoughts affect them, how do attractor-points differ from voids in terms of properties? We are still looking for ways to collect and analyze information obtained from user reports that can separate confirmation bias. If you have ideas on this matter and a desire to participate in the development, do not hesitate to let us know.
We also try to provide maximum access to the available technological base so that as many enthusiastic inventors as possible can try to create something of their own based on MMI technologies. We want the technology to develop in a decentralized fashion and evolve with maximum speed and maximum diversity, and we will be glad to collaborate with any research projects.
Some Speculations
In this chapter, we fantasise about some of the possible aspects of randonauting and how it is interpreted in the context of related ideological concepts.
The project is quite popular among supporters of the Hypothesis of Simulation. It is assumed that if the world is a computer simulation, then going beyond the standard algorithms can provoke it to inappropriate behaviour and glitches. In the original concept, we did not intend to question the reality of the universe, we only doubted the methodological accessibility of all its components, and therefore we will not particularly delve into this topic, in the end what is real and what is unreal, relative concepts. But if you want to hack the matrix, you can try.
About how the intentions of users are manifesting in IDA, the precog hypothesis seems to be the most convincing. According to this hypothesis, the place on the map is subconsciously determined by the user himself with the help of intuitive clairvoyance, and then translated into the system through Mind-Matter Interaction. In this case, Randonautica is only an interface for reading subconscious predictions.
Another hypothesis is that the embodiment of intention is a manifestation of retrocausality. According to this hypothesis, the user's expectation at the moment of setting the intention and his observation at the moment of visiting the anomaly are entangled through the quantum RNG. Thus, observing the result of an experiment in the future creates an observer-effect that retrocausaly collapses quantum superposition in the source of entropy, forcing it, thereby, to produce a distorted signal indicating this particular location.
According to this theory, it does not matter when the user visits the point, since the very fact of its existence suggests that there is already a positive outcome of the experiment in a future.
Proponents of the Dimension Jumping idea also believe that at the time of IDA generation, the user moves along the probability axis, as a result of which he finds himself in a "parallel universe", which is not actually physically separate, but is another section of a more multidimensional continuum. In other words, the user is traveling through the multiverse.
Since most Dimension Jumping methods on the Internet suggest an enhanced mental adjustment to the desired version of reality, it can be assumed that if this phenomenon is real, then it can be related to MMI.
If we imagine that at the time of IDA generation, the user and all elements of reality entangled with him move along the probability axis, then the anomalies themselves in the distribution of random numbers produced by the quantum RNG can be represented as something like the probabilistic Doppler effect, when the probability is distorted relative to the user due to that he moves in it.
In any of the above cases, we recommend that you focus only on positive expectations so as not to create trouble for yourself. Search only for what you really want to find.

Hey y’all, just had a quick question about what level of unsportsmanlike conduct you tolerate. One opponent I have is a pretty competitive player, and normally is super on top of his rules, but sometimes he may slightly amend the timing of certain stratagems, or call some missed dice as hits, or add some extra number of shots. I do notice it tends to happen more frequently when he gets tilted or starts to lose, but I always give people the benefit of the doubt during the game since forgetting rules and not seeing missed dice is definitely a possibility. However, he’s still normally super chill and friendly, so I don’t really mind since just having a mate to play with is good enough for me, especially during COVID. I guess what would you say would be unacceptable for an opponent?
Edit: I want to clarify that I’m not sure if he’s intentionally doing these things, as he tends to try out a lot of factions and their abilities which we’re not particularly well versed with. I appreciate all the advice and I’ll try to have a talk with him.

Greetings, everyone! Welcome to our final round of Lore DD's for CK2 AtE - we will start putting these out to fill gaps between developer diaries as we work on finalizing 1.2. If you're not already on the discord, please join here: Community Discord Server Link. Polls for what each Lore Dev Diary will be on are carried out there, and we are happy to welcome you!
Now, let us get started. This lore post will give you some crumbs of info about the situation in Texas, and the political strife under the lone star. As always, you are free to ask questions. I will respond to what I am allowed to answer, and this will have accompanying maps and screenshots for your viewing pleasure!
Ranger Charlie Worth put on a sympathetic frown as he picked up his dice and claimed his coins off the table. He had made a risky roll and won it, drawing most of the silver off of the table, but the young man across the table from him barely seemed to register it. He could see why Brigadier Maverick had sent him. The young man happened to be the son of Count Ironhorse out of Mclennan. It was poor rangering territory, but the Brigadier was close friends with the Count. Some of the other soldiers had noticed the state the young Ironhorse was, and the Brigadier was worried the young man was going to run before the fight even started.
Young Ironhorse rolled, a five, a star, a two, a three, and a four. He picked up all but the three. He didn’t even seem to register the star as he picked it up and added it to his hand.
“Are you sure about that?” Worth tossed the young man a bone. Ironhorse looked over the table and with shaking hands set his die down.
“I cede the table to you, sir. I think maybe I ought to retire for the night.” Ironhorse looked up to the older warrior. Worth wasn’t sure what he expected, reproach? Worth looked over the tent around them. Young Ironhorse’s nerves had been growing visibly ever since they had first rolled dice, but he hadn’t shown a sign of planning to cut and run. His saddle was still in the tent half shined from when he had been nervously shining it before their game. His saber was still at this side, his bow was ready to be strung. His tent roll and clothes stilled readied for the fight tomorrow.
“What’s your name son? First one, I know your family’s name. But I’ve yet to hear yours.” Worth lied, picking up his die and returning them to the blue bag with golden thread by his side, adding the starred die to his more complex collection. He had heard the kid’s name from Brigadier Maverick, but he needed to get him out of his shell.
“Bill sir. Bill Ironhorse. I… are you really from out West? They say you’ve been as far as Cali. Seen the offices of the valley.” Worth laughed deeply. Young Ironhorse went from reserved to desperate to talk with just the smallest provocation. The former had been his mask, and the latter meant Worth was getting somewhere.
“No sir, not from the west, and never been to Cali. I’m actually from up North, the Metro.” Ironhorse blinked in surprise.
“But, I” Worth held up his hand. Cutting Ironhorse off before he jumped to more conclusions.
“Now, I’ve been out west, never as far as Cali, but I spent my entire youth wandering from here to Arixo fighting every mean son of a bitch I got paid to. Killed a few famous ones too. Seen things you wouldn’t believe.” Worth took out his flask from the small holster on the hip. He had intended to just talk to the kid, and from the small changes in the kid’s demeanor he could see that would have been enough, but Worth could feel something more rising up out of him waiting to be told.
As he took a small draw of bourbon from his flask Worth listened to the demands of his soul and accepted that this conversation would be about more than just calming the kid with regular tales of adventure out west. The young man across from him was gonna one day be a leader of men in his own right, and Worth had been getting on in years. If he was gonna die tomorrow he wanted to make sure he made an impact, that what he had seen wouldn’t die with him.
“What do you know of the giants?” Worth grinned and tipped the flask towards Ironhorse who politely declined it. “Surely your mama told you about them when you were little unless you were one of those slicker noble families too good to raise their own son?” The young man emphatically shakes his head.
“Few better mothers in Texas than her, ranger. Count’s son but well raised was always my parents' goal and I’ve been told they succeeded. She told me about them plenty, especially when I was whining about how slow I was growing. Though she didn’t call them giants sir. She called em Obr. We’re proud Czexans.” The young man seemed firm on the matter and Worth supposed that so far that seemed true.
“Good to be proud in what you are. We’re all folk of Texas, prideful but not hateful has always been my motto. Don’t have to call me ranger son. I’ve not been a ranger long, still sounds odd to hear it. I was a merc before I swore to the Brigadier.” Worth leaned back on his stool, trying and failing to work out a crick that was forming in his back on these tiny ranger stools they took on the range with them.
“it’s why I was out west, out there the salt and silver are thinner but you’re closer to Cali gold that-a-ways. There were always plenty of fights between here and there. And a free man with coin can live an enjoyable lifestyle.” Worth wiggled his eyebrows somewhat suggestively at Ironhorse, who with the kind and direct upbringing of his parents was red with inexperience. “Plus they have all sorts of dice. Out in Cali they even use dice with twenty sides if you can believe it. Guessin’ it’s fitting for them egghead bureaucrats to play egghead games.” Worth opened his dice purse to the lad, shaking it a few times until some of those strange Cali dice rose to the top. Half for credibility and a half because he always enjoyed an excuse to share his collection.
But, in the end, I couldn’t stay with that sort of life, not after what I had seen.” The older man grinned, half egging the boy to inquire to distract him from his own nerves. Half just to enjoy the look of suspense on the kid’s face.
“What did you see?” Ironhorse took the hook, his eyes shined wide with interest. Worth took a second to prepare himself. He’d only told this a few times before. When drunk, to Brigadier Maverick, when punching in the face of some Founder-thumbing catholic around Metro, but something about this was different.
“Giants of course” Ironhorse looked ready to leap from his stool. “No, nothing alive son. No one reckons there’s been a living one for a very long time. But if you look, the evidence is there.” Worth made a two-handed swinging motion.
“Hammers boy, hammers and picks bigger than horses. I reckon the men and women that wielded them must have been taller than 6 horse lengths. Believe it or not, it shook me. I’d never been much of a man for the Twilight talk before. Like many young men I was obsessed with the here and now and the fights of the past seem so distant, but… those tools. Massive works of solid steel; ground down to a smooth nub from what must have taken hundreds of years of work. The plateau out west confirms everything. The land drops off as if it were mined. I reckon the very land we stand on now is what was left behind by them as they worked west.” Worth smiled as Ironhorse sat half on the stool half off. He reckoned he could say the sky turned green and the kid would believe it, but now was the time for truth and only the truth.
“You’ve heard the lectures from the judges, front seat too with a dad like yours I imagine. Back before The Twilight, before Texas looked like it does now. We were the greatest realm in all of America. everything here was greater, from our achievements to the people themselves, greater in stature than any other American. All the nations of the world came and traded miraculous goods to America through us. Before the Twilight took all of that from us we stood giants among the greatest realm in the whole wide world. It’s everything my mama told me when I was young, and I reckon it's exactly what yours told you. I didn’t understand what that meant until I saw those picks.” Worth took another shot of bourbon, feeling drained as he shared his base conviction with someone not even half his age, trying his damndest to scour out everything he wanted to say and find the words for it.
“Where do you think they went?” Ironhorse asked in a half-whisper.
“We betrayed America.” The old man slammed his fist on the table, anger, and frustration visible on his face as the tones of his words shifted from friendly curiosity to angry conviction. “We were the giants, and when the day was darkest, some among us betrayed America and the Founders thinking we being giants could stand alone, some scared out of their wits by The Twilight and others motivated by sheer opportunism. What they didn’t realize and what the Catholics still don’t is that we were giants because we were Americans. No pledges to gods nor power nor violence gave us the power to be giants, We were a part of something great and were made greater for it.”
“There’s a reason why the few leading Americanists left in Texas are the descendants of great warriors. The Day of Twilight hit our lands like a storm, and Texas in its cowardice fell to oath-breaking and only those who had tested their convictions in battle or were strong enough in morals and spirit to hold to the Founders' convictions stood against that betrayal.”
May those damn papist’s lies rot their tongues. The First Queen filled with the wisdom of the Founders and the conviction of Houston made her effort to undo that wrong and return its peoples to their true oaths, not their puny god of burning bush and choir boy chasers. We voted for her just as Texans had voted as Americans before the Twilight came. She counted the Airmen and First Cav among her banners with pride and those bickering aggies and longhorns were a...a compromise.” The old warrior took a deeper draw of his drink. “Any Texan or Tejano son of a bitch that tells you differently is a liar.”
“When we fight. We fight for The First Queen, to undo the lies those papists speak and show that like her the only true Texans are those who hold to their ancient oaths. When we fight we fight for the ideals the Founders spoke of, and if those idiots out East give up we’ll fight on till Twilight swallows this land again and finishes the job it started last time. Don’t you forget it.”
April 2nd, 2651.
Tent of Future Count William Ironhorse two miles south of Wescomma.
The night before the final battle of the Siege of Wescomma, the loss of the First Cav banner to the Metro-Aggie coalition, and the death of Brigadier Johnathon Maverick.
Thanks for reading! This lore DD was almost entirely composed by our Texas dev, ballgown_viking, and features a game made with u/King_of_Vinland. Go ahead and check it out here: https://www.reddit.com/AfterTheEndFanFork/comments/lf3dke/texan_range_games/?

Note: I’m not a citizen, but I’ve been living in the US long enough to be considered a resident alien for tax purposes. On my visa, I cannot work any job that’s not directly related to my major in grad school (IT/computer science), but I can invest in the stock market.

Section One: Assets and Debt

Net Worth: from -$13,603.63 (Jan 2020) to $9,605.97 (Jan 2021)
Retirement Balance: $16,000 in my 401(K).
I only started working 2 years ago and my company messed up my registration so they basically didn’t put any money into it my first year there (I found out in horror and they gave me around $1,000 to say sorry…). I contribute 9% and my company matches 3%.
Savings account balance: $2,500
I have $2,500 set aside as my “emergency fund”, and I’m building back my vacation & study abroad budgets after having to tap into them for a move. My job is very stable and I won't be let go any time soon (unless I quit myself) so I’m not setting aside a big emergency fund for now.
Checking account balance: $3,111.01
Investment account: $1,500 in some stocks.
I initially dumped half of my 2019 bonus and some monthly contributions (totaling around $4,000) to this account to test strategies. This was my “study fund” and I didn’t care if I’d lose it all. I grew the account to around $10,000 and withdrew almost everything (that went to all the fees I had to pay to break my lease, my brother’s lease, deposit, moving expenses, and new furniture) and left $1,500 worth of stocks in there right now.
Credit card debt: $2,243.76 on my BestBuy card and PayPal Credit.
I had the money to pay for the items in full but they offered X months interest-free and I wanted to throw money into my debts instead. I always pay off all balances well before the deadline. I also pay all my credit cards in full and have never paid any interest.
Student loan debt: $11,046.09 left on my $20,000 loans at 8% for my BA in Biology and Statistics. Day 1 of arriving in the US, they sat us down, handed each of us a pen, and said hey kids here are the terms of your 8% loans, sign the documents now! I just turned 17, didn't even know I had to pay this money back, and remembered thinking "Is 8% a lot?" That's how clueless I was.
As a non-citizen, I will never have them canceled, so my plan was to tackle this as soon as possible and I started paying more aggressively until they made it 0% interest since Q4 last year.
Car loan: $4,900 left on my $10,000 loan at 8.9%. I didn’t have a long credit history when I bought the car (September 2019) since I only got my first credit card after graduation, so the rate was terrible. I’m planning to pay this all off after my bonus comes in March.

Section Two: Income

Income Progression:
2012 - 2016: I had multiple student on-campus jobs all throughout my undergrad, making from $7.25 to $10/hour. After graduation, I couldn't find any job directly related to my majors within 3 months (I had only been searching for Bio lab work), ran out of money, and had to go back home. Honestly, I didn't want to keep doing science either and was very lost back then.
2017: My first full-time job was being a tutor for a private college prep institution when I went back to my home country to “figure out what I wanted to do with my life.” They paid pretty well for the standards of living there ($1,000/mo). I worked that job while self-studying how to code and data science courses on the side and preparing my grad school applications.
2019: I got a job at my current company a semester before I graduated from my MS in Data Science program. This was my first “big girl job.” I started out at $64,000 and couldn’t work for 2 months due to complications in my visa processes so that ate up all my savings that year. By the end of the year, they bumped my salary up to $76,000 and we also had an annual 3% raise, so in total $78,280 + 5% bonus.
2020: One of my teammates left and one thing led to another, I got a title change from Data Analyst to Data Scientist towards the end of the year. I asked for a raise and they bumped it to $96,000 + 5% bonus.
2021: After our annual 3% raise my salary is now $98,880 (+ at least 5% bonus). I think I’m slightly underpaid, but this job is very low-stress and flexible (especially after we WFH).
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $5,082.58
Taken from my last paychecks (before the annual raise)
Gross salary: $8,000
Tax: $2,081.68
401(k) deduction: $720
Health insurance: $115.74

Section Three: Expenses

Rent & renter’s insurance: $935 for my share for a 2bed/3bath condo. My parents pay a flat $700/mo for my brother’s share. He recently moved here since his school went virtual until at least the end of this semester and our family wanted us to be nearby to take care of each other.
Savings contribution: $900
Investment contribution: $420, but will increase once my car loan is paid off.
Debt payments:

• $1,000 on car loan until paid off.
• $200.13 minimum on student loans for now at 0% interest, will increase to $1,100 when car loan is paid off.
• $300 for Best Buy & PayPal Credit promotional deals

Car insurance: $127.01 ($762.05 paid in full every 6 months)
Car registration: $25 ($300 annual)
Donations: $20 monthly (ASPCA), plus several hundreds throughout the year (last year I donated to BLM orgs and local animal shelters)
Gas: $0. I drive an electric car. Charging probably drives up my electric bill by a bit, but still cheaper than gas. Also, this means no car maintenance at all until my car battery dies, which probably won’t happen in the next 5 years.
Utilities (electric, natural gas): ~$150
Wifi: $40
Cellphone: $10.61 ($108.66 for 6 months and I got a $45 credit from my bank)
Groceries: $500 (for 2 people)
Subscriptions: $20 (HP Ink, shared Netflix account, YNAB, Disney+)
Pet expenses: ~$20 for wet cat food
Personal care/hobby: I collect perfumes. Between makeup, skincare, clothes (which I had planned to stop buying this year) and perfume bottles and samples (the majority of my "personal care" expenses...), I averaged $400/mo last year. Without the makeup, skincare and clothes, I budget $150/mo this year for my fragrance hobby.
Household supplies: $30
Education: $30 (language/technical textbooks, Udemy/Coursera)
Gifts: $30
Credit card fee: $21 ($250 annual)

Section Four: Background

Was there an expectation for you to attend higher education? Did you participate in any form of higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it?
Education is one of the top priorities in our household and this has been instilled in my mind since I was a kid. Perhaps because my grandparents were both professors and my parents both attended grad school, it was expected of us to have at least a bachelor's degree. With that said, my family tried to support our higher education financially as best they could and I'm very thankful for it. During undergrad, I had need-based financial aid and on-campus jobs, and my parents helped with the rest of my tuition. I still had to take (required by the school) a $20,000 loan. My grandmother helped pay for my 2-year master's program.
Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have about money? Did your parent/guardian(s) educate you about finances?
During high school, I had a measly weekly allowance and my dad had me write out all the transactions in a notebook. I thought it was very silly back then but now thinking back, it was probably some good practice. Other than that, they didn't talk about money at all, and I was absolutely clueless and wasn't interested in personal finance until a couple of years ago. I don't remember how but I think I woke up one day and decided to read every book about personal finance I could find and now I do talk with my dad about finances.
What was your first job and why did you get it?
My first job was washing dishes as a student worker! We all had to do it our freshman year before we were allowed to find other jobs. I managed to find 3 other jobs (stage crew, sports event worker, and math tutor) and stayed with all of them for 3 years.
Did you worry about money growing up?
Even though our parents never let on to us about their finances, they made sure that we'd grow up comfortable financially, so I didn't worry because I didn't know anything.
Do you worry about money now?
Yes. As I grew up, I came to learn more about my parents' financial situation and realized that they've sacrificed a lot for us. I had the majority of my college tuition supported by the school, but my brother doesn't, and tuition in the US isn't cheap, especially when you convert it to our local currency. I also never know for how long I can stay in the US and keep making the same kind of money I'm making now so I'm trying my best to pay down the student loans ASAP.
At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself and do you have a financial safety net?
I became fully financially responsible for myself when I started working at my current company. Before that my student worker jobs paid for my personal expenses in college but my parents still chipped in for tuition. I guess my family back home is my safety net but personally, I wouldn't ask them for help even if bad things happen to me in the future.
Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? If yes, please explain.
Nope.

Diary

Day 1 (Thursday) - $3.35

• Alexa wakes me up and turns the light on. I change into my work clothes and head downstairs to my “office.” My boss starts our daily standup call, talking about what we did yesterday and what we plan for the day.
• I have my annual review meeting. Everything goes well and my bosses are very pleased with what I’ve done, especially after I transitioned into my new title as a Data Scientist, which honestly brought me more fulfillment in my job as well. We talk about our annual bonus and raise, which I already expected. It’s not a lot of money but hey any money is money and I’m not saying no.
• Some people bought my photocards so I gather all the orders and purchase a shipping label since 1 order is with tracked shipping. (Don’t ask me how this works but I’m a K-pop fan and we collect expensive cardboards. Depending on the popularity of the member of the group, profit margins can go up to 400%.) I head to the post office and drop off all the packages ($3.35)
• I’ve been waiting for the mailman all day and he finally comes! I’ve been working from home for almost a year now and my back pain is starting to kill me so I decided to “invest” in a $400 chair with lumbar and neck support. My cat happily takes the other chair and starts claiming her territory on it.

Day 2 (Friday) - $206.24

• I wake up on cue at Alexa’s daily briefing. Half an hour passes while I ponder on a perfume sample set I saw in someone’s fragrance collection on Reddit.
• I eventually give in and purchase the Zoologist sample set ($120.24). It’s within my budget this month, I’ve been eyeing this one for some time now and I can resell it for 80% value once I’m done testing them, so it’s not a huge loss anyway.
• Late lunch today. I make a quick lunch with sausages and keto toasts and quickly finish it while watching some YouTube videos on personal finance and updates on $GME (no I did not buy any shares).
• When in doubt, throw every leftover food in your fridge in a pan and make fried rice. Side dish is sweet and sour tomato and egg “cloud soup.” Then we have our weekly family video call with my parents back in my home country.
• I go down the YouTube rabbit hole again and buy 2 more perfume sample sets ($86.00). All the purchases today (~50 samples) would probably take me months to try out so I promise myself no more until next quarter as I click the pay button.

Day 3 (Saturday) - $71.27

• I wake up at 8:45 am and laze around for half an hour, scrolling down Twitter and answering my friend’s questions on how to enter the stock market. Today is my cheat day (I have one every 2-3 weeks), so I contemplate if I should order delivery for lunch. I check YNAB and decide that it’s too expensive, so I go downstairs to make myself a hearty breakfast with a latte, half a croissant, grilled chicken breasts, and snack on some shrimp crackers and tangerines.
• I purchase a shipping label ($3.22) and head out to the post office. For some reason I want to smell like a lemon cake today, so I spritz on Xerjoff Lira, put on sunscreen, and head out. This perfume always makes me feel so warm and delicious.
• I spend the whole afternoon catching up with my Chinese and Korean lessons for the week.
• Suddenly craving some instant noodles, so I immediately get up and head to a local Asian grocery store to shop for instant and pho noodles (I’m planning to make pho for Lunar New Year) and some snacks for my brother ($38.71). We drop by a bubble tea shop nearby and get bubble tea and 2 dessert cakes ($19.71). I usually don’t drink sugary drinks, but since it’s my cheat day, I put in an order and pay for the both of us.
• Some more PC orders came in and they’re all with tracked shipping. The post office is closed tomorrow but I’ll just pay now for the shipping labels so that I won’t forget ($9.63).

Day 4 (Sunday) - $0.00

• I literally do nothing today until 4 pm.
• I make dinner, then finish my Chinese lesson and review the flashcards I made yesterday. That’s enough activity for the day.
• One of my friends calls to show me her album haul of the day and I'm tempted, but (fortunately?) there's no kpop store in my city so I make myself forget about buying any more albums.

Day 5 (Monday) - $40.10

• I wake up with a headache, not feeling too well, so I request a day off and message my boss. I can’t go back to sleep, so I just lie there in bed for a couple of hours. I suddenly remember that WandaVision is on air, and there are a couple of movies on there I haven’t watched yet, so I subscribe to Disney+ ($7.52) and start binge-watching.
• We ran out of soft drinks for my brother, so I have to drive to Costco again after lunch ($32.58). I also need to drop off all the orders that came in over the weekend.
• I go to my old apartment for my move-out inspection (I haven't been living there since December but still had to honor the 2-month notice and pay for all the rent). There are a couple of spots that might cost me some deductions in my deposit. Sigh. At least I get to tell them to remove the charges on my lease for February, and they assure me that they will.
• I finish binge-watching some movies on Disney+. I see Colourpop is advertising some Valentine’s Day palettes on my feed. I do not need those, I do not need those, I do not need those. I should’ve just unfollowed makeup brands on social media. Some more late-night scrolling, and then I finally go to sleep.

Day 6 (Tuesday) - $8.02

• I wake up groggily, still feeling a bit sick. We have a late standup today, so I take my time making my coffee and start working, as my cat also settles in on my lap and starts napping. My head is still aching and I'm not sure if it's the cold or just keto flu so I load up on electrolytes, fish oil, and acetaminophen just in case.
• Somebody lowballed me on one of my postings. Ugh I hate it when they do this, but this one is not selling too well, so I meet them halfway. I purchase another shipping label ($3.03).
• Today is our bi-monthly deployment date, which means all the engineers (and anyone who has committed changes in our codebase) meet up and sit around until all the merges are deployed into production. I had some changes last week so I just sit there and do my own work until it's my turn. My boss told me this morning he had some test API from one of our new clients so I go to check out some of the data there. Oh how I love me some messy, messy data that nobody knows what to do with.
• The repair guy who came to fix our washing machine doesn't leave until 5:15 pm so I drop by the post office late, but just in time as they're collecting the mail! Then I drop by a nearby (rather upscale) grocery store as I'm running out of heavy cream, but everything is so expensive. I compare price per oz and pick up the coffee creamer instead ($4.99).
• I heat up the cauliflower rice and leftover curry and eat dinner as I watch Coco (I can't believe I've never actually watched it!) Then I review my Chinese flashcards for a bit, do half an hour of Just Dance until I sweat, play with my cat, and call it a day.

Day 7 (Wednesday) - $3.49

• I stayed up quite late yesterday playing a mobile game and finally wake up after snoozing the alarm for the 84th time. My boss starts our standup at our usual time; there's nothing urgent or pressing today so I just take my time. I take a quick nap in the afternoon and go back to work.
• I use the last drops of avocado oil to fry up some bulgogi for dinner. Need to go back to Costco for more avocado oil tomorrow, I guess.
• After dinner, a friend asks me about perfume samples that she wants to try. I go online to search for them but no dice since they belong to a new collection that only got launched in Europe. I take this time to try out some similar smelling samples in my collection as well.
• I review my Chinese flashcards and do some workbook exercises. After an hour, my brain is fried on Chinese but I don't want to go to bed yet, so I pick up a book on my bookcase that I was reading a while ago (A Random Walk Down Wall Street) and read one more chapter.
• An order came in so I purchase another shipping label ($3.49), update my budgeting app for a bit, and then head to bed.

Summary

​

Category	Amount	Note
Food & Drink	$95.99	Groceries
Fun / Entertainment	$7.52	Disney+ subscription
Home & Health	$0.00
Clothes & Beauty	$206.24	Perfume samples
Other*	$22.72	Shipping labels
Total	$309.75	shipping labels not included

*I don’t count the shipping labels as expenses because they’re already factored into the profits I made from my sales, but I included them anyway because they're still charges on my accounts. Any profit goes back to funding my album purchases so... I guess it's a vicious cycle.
Overall, a pretty normal week for me in terms of food. I don’t eat out often (I allow myself only one meal and one dessert every month) and have used up my 1 dessert allowance this week so I probably won't have any more this month. I might’ve gone overboard with the perfume purchases this week, but tbh perfumes bring me joy. My mood is lifted and I'm transported to old and new places every time I put on a perfume that I enjoy, so for me, it’s worth it. I try to be frugal whenever I can, but I'll never skimp on education and hobbies that make me happy. Writing this week-long diary, I realize I need to get back to working out, though. I'll probably have to stop procrastinating and pull out my RingFit gears still inside the moving boxes. Playing Just Dance also makes me miss dancing so bad as I used to be active in several dance crews since college (but stopped after I started working full time). I'll try to stick to Just Dance for now to get my cardio until Covid is over and I can get back to in-person dance classes.

So then another chapter good to go, I promise we will be back to the regular schedule soon but for now this will have to do. My thanks once again to TwoFlower68 for his work combing through all this.
I hope it's still up to scratch despite my math fried brain. What do you say we fine out... To the story!
ko-fi for those feeling generous
Sapphire
First Previous Next
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Chapter 66: Drinking, Shooting, and Balloons
As it turned out hunting deer with a flying lightning gun was incredibly efficient. The only problem was the rather singed nature of the result. Only four of the hides didn’t have substantial burn marks on them, luckily for Tom and the others, Jackalope had been in charge so she received the brunt of the verbal abuse from Nunuk for ruining such fine red-deer pelts.
The result was that they were banned from hunting using Jarix’s lightning breath. At least until they could come up with a way of doing it without destroying the valuable pelts. Then there was the matter that they really needed to hunt the woods rather than just the grasslands on the outskirts.
Jarix was nimble enough to fly between the heaven oak trees but the regular trees in the undergrowth were off-limits and he would also need a clearing or a perch of some kind to land. They had secured a sizable amount of meat once again though so they had time to work with. Given that Jarix ate more than the rest of the keep combined, they didn’t have much breathing room though, they were going to have to keep up the pressure. Tom had a feeling this was gonna put a dent in his ammunition supply then, 'cause he sure as shit wasn’t learning to use a bow right now.
He had bigger things to worry about, such as how to wind the rotor by hand in a reasonable time and how to keep Shiva from getting more than slightly drunk on his precious fuel. She and Raulf had been very merry when Tom had finally made it to the workshop. Kiran gratefully exchanging Tom’s hard helmet for his soft warm hair. Turinia was also still in Tom’s arms as he didn’t trust her and Holdey wasn't quite over their differences yet.
“Did you at least mix some of it?”
“Ohh yeah, we’re halfway with the first metal can, jug thing” Shiva replied with a sly smile clearly feeling good right now.
“Great and how much have you drunk of that stuff ?”
“We made a jar in the middle, *Hiik*, taste okay when watered down,” Raulf replied seemingly proud of the fact. Tom had been planning on teaching them how to make proper whiskey but it would seem that wouldn’t be necessary, the shittiest moonshine in history apparently did the trick.
“Wanna sip?” Might as well see how bad this stuff actually was. He accepted the small glass jar and took a small sip. It burned, but it had definitely been watered down, at least by half.
That did upset his inner engineer a bit as he had worked so hard to make this stuff as pure as possible. Aside from tasting like half-strength medicinal spirits, it wasn’t that bad actually. He had half expected to puke on contact, it just didn’t really taste of anything. Hell with something to mix with it might even make a decent drink… and Jarix had sorta solved their fuel problems for the time being, since they didn’t need the quad bike.
But they didn’t have anything to mix it with, the only juice they had was that berry stuff they made themselves, of which there was preciously little. The children had gotten some during the feast for Vulzan last time.
“So wadaya think?” Shiva questioned as Tom stood there pondering.
“I guess it’ll do for getting you drunk”
“And that is the important part” Shiva went pointing a finger at him. Tom just shook his head, she was right though it would definitely do that and more cheaply than the beer if they didn’t use the purest of the resulting distillate. Maybe just keep the leftovers from the runs for drinking, that couldn’t hurt… much.
__________________________________________________________________________________
“Do you think we can grab a proper drink or two while we are there?” Balethon questioned. Playing dice had lasted almost an hour but now the general conversation was doing the trick.
“Sure these court things usually take ages. I would be surprised if we even get to the court within a week. Then they might have to go through several sessions for which we may or may not be required.” Dakota clarified for them.
“Sweet, think we got enough money to stay for that long though?”
“If you wanna get drunk every night no, but that is on your bill, I’m paying for the tavern and meals though”
“Really?” Sapphire asked, surprised. She had thought they would be splitting at least the meals.
"Yup. Nunuk was feeling generous or perhaps more busy with figuring out how to get her claws into the bitch, I don’t know”
Sapphire had brought every coin she owned and now she could spend them as she pleased. What did she want to spend it on though?
“We need at least one good night out, come on girls, it will be fun.” Balethon tried in his most convincing tone. Sapphire didn’t have a problem with that idea though.
“If it means you won’t get drunk and cause a scene if we end up having to attend something more high class then sure. I’ll indulge you.” Dakota replied, Sapphire knew damn well that Dakota didn’t mind a good drink every now and again. So she guessed this was about making Baltethon believe they were doing him a favor.
“High class? Are you expecting some nobles to invite us to something?”
“We have friends too, Bale boy, might need to go see some of them. Don’t forget you are talking with one right now”
“Never been to something like that,” Balethon admitted. During her time in the capital, Sapphire hadn’t exactly been part of high-class society either. She had gone to a very nice ball after she won the championship, that had been quite the experience at the time.
“Sapphire, didn’t your big brother work at a sorta normal tavern?”
“Yup, the Sweet Dragon”
“Sounds like a good place to start” Sapphire had never even seen the place, so she just crossed her fingers that her brother had a decent taste in establishments.
“A bit early to worry about that isn’t it?” Cabrera joined in, clearly not having left the discussion entirely. “That is an alright place though I've been there before. We still got day’s worth of flying to do so we were wonderi...”
Tirox stuck his head over Cabrera’s shoulder. “Wondering if you had any more stories about Tom” Tirox seemed like a very excitable fellow with even worse manners than Jackalope, he didn’t seem malicious though, so that was something. “You know... that you are allowed to tell”
They certainly had a few they should probably avoid anything concerning weapons, Sapphire didn’t quite know what they were allowed to say. There was the one where he fought Rachuck till he passed out.
“What about the one where he fell asleep on the floor with Jackalope in the smithy and we all thought they did you know what?” Balethon asked eagerly.
‘Okay that one then, at least he would be the one telling it then’ Sapphire thought to herself. Then she noticed all eyes were currently looking at her, Dakota had scooted up beside Balethon looking expectantly at Sapphire as if to insinuate that she knew the story. ‘Damn tactician and her quick thinking’ Sapphire muttered to herself before beginning.
“Well, it all started with the feast following the battle, where we saved all of you.” never mind Sapphire had done diddly squat during that fight.
__________________________________________________________________________________
As they all sat in the grand hall Tom was fiddling with the projector. He had tried to make the computer write in something that looked like draconic symbols to no avail, hence he was still stuck with movies that made sense even if you didn’t know what people were saying, or at least that could be easily explained. He had really wanted to show them We Were Soldiers or maybe Band of Brothers...
In the end, he had gone for two movies. First was one for everyone to enjoy, kids included. Much to their delight. He had considered Wall-E but he wasn’t feeling up for explaining space or being accused of heresy yet. In the end, he went with Up because who couldn’t love that?
Thinking back, that particular movie did have a darker opening than he had remembered as he was currently buried beneath every kid in the keep, all yammering about how unfair it all was. It was at moments like this he wished Esmeralda was up and about already. Most of the others were too busy asking about things like, what is a balloon why do they all look so weird, so not much support there either. In hindsight, he should also have explained animation a bit more thoroughly than “Imaginary pictures that aren't real”
It got so bad a halt had to be called to proceedings while he went about explaining what an animated movie was, what the premise of the film was, what a car was, that yes they had running water in their homes and no he couldn’t just use balloons to fly like the dragonettes because that would be impractical.
“But you could do it?” Fengi questioned
“Only if I find helium and rubber. Which are both of the things needed to make balloons and remember, this is just a story. It isn’t real. Balloons can’t lift much. I would need as many as the house just to lift me.”
“Then why does the house fly?” Raulf questioned.
“In a story, things don’t have to be true, you can lie to make it more fantasti...cal. Kiran would you mind?”
“I fell off sorry” Kiran replied as he clambered up the front of Tom’s face to his usual spot.
“So remember, most of what you see isn’t how it is. We could make a movie like this where humans could just fly. That obviously won’t work in the real world, now would it?”
There were nods from around the room, Tom sighed a bit he hadn’t expected this to pose so many problems. He had continued the movie deciding to let the movie do the talking for him and just not explain anything other than what was being said. The questions started dying down, soon the adults weren’t taking it too seriously anymore and the kid’s often not realizing when something was off. by the time they found the talking dog Dug Tom was happy to see laughter around the hall even if there were a few heads shaking here and there.
They even really rooted for our unlikely heroes. He had almost feared they would side with Munzt being a hunter. There was more laughter and held breaths as Tom let the movie work its magic, they were all having a great time.
“Evil man can’t fly, he too heavy” Kiran let out, sounding a bit too cheerful at Muntz’s death.
“Good riddance, he wouldn’t have survived an encounter with Kalestine” Wiperna concluded.
No arguing there, Tom threw a slightly worried glance at Jarix. Maybe they too needed to worry about ending up in a Muntz situation on that front. Those were worries for later though right now they had a movie to enjoy. They had even cheered for Russell when he finally got his badge at the end. Then the questions started again, Fengi clearly not able to hold it in any longer.
“Tom I know the house wasn’t real but was the big gray thing? It’s like a flying building, that wasn’t real either right?”
“Yes and no. It's called an airship and they did exist, they weren’t capable of carrying that much stuff though. They were huge though”
“Were? Why did you stop making them?”
“They were expensive and dangerous. They liked to blow up.”
“That sounds bad… why did you build them in the first place then?” Fengi did have a point that hadn’t been the best sales speech, that didn’t matter though it wasn’t like he could make one anyway.
“They could fly. You could sleep in a comfortable bed and wake up somewhere new, who doesn’t like that . On that note, we need to get you lot of the bed it’s already past your bedtime”
“Tom, can we get a dog like Dug?” Calhoun Tried in doing his best to be adorable.
“Not unless we find one, you can’t make a dog”
“What about the collar thing, could we put one on a deer to make it speak?” Holdey added in very excitedly
“I’m Afraid I’m a bit to stupid to figure out how those collars work, sorry” There was a universal flattening of ears at that around the kids. Shiva just had a chuckle from the corner.
“Talking deer, that would be something” Well she wasn’t wrong.
“Now come on we need to get you lot tucked in” Wiperna and Fengi helped herd the kids up to their bedroom for the night.
There was the usual protest but in the end, they were all nice and tucked in. One advantage of dragonette children was that they were clearly a lot better at sleeping than human kids and with lights out it didn’t take many minutes before the yammering died down being replaced with cute little snoring.
For the adults, he had gone for something with more spectacle, racism, and most importantly more flying. As he sat back down at the table arranged so they could see the screen the title card came up “Red Tails”
‘This should be good’ Tom thought to himself.
He did his best to explain the setting and what was happening in the ground scenes. They were familiar with WW2 so that helped. That and the fact that they were utterly mesmerized by the aircraft. There had been questions sure, but they were mostly what the planes could do and the movie did great at that part at least spectacle-wise. It almost managed to distract the experienced flyers from some of the maneuvers being pulled.
The whole black human had been a whole new can of worms though. Tom had expected that and they needed to know. Still, there were a lot of uncomfortable questions. Tom elected not to answer and let the movie do it for him since that had worked so well last time.
The fact they were more like a dark brown than the ashen gray black the dragonettes were used to helped a lot. The fact they quickly proved themselves pure of soul and damn effective combatants did win the dragonets over rather quickly though. It did also help that they were clearly all fighting similar judgments on screen. Tom even saw quite a few ashamed faces amongst his friends once they figured out the kind of life these people had and what they had gone through to fly. They had to fight for the right to fight. Unlike everyone else.
They thoroughly enjoyed the fight scenes as he had expected, even the fatalities. They were a lot better at handling a plane with a guy being shot down it seemed they could more closely relate to that. It also helped that Tom compared the bombers to dragons. Jarix and crew of course had more than a few questions on those defense guns and Jarix had seemed a bit disappointed at their effectiveness.
Tom had assured the young dragon that that was down to the planes going three or four times faster than any dragon could in level flight and that of course did make them very hard to hit. The results once they did hit were nothing to sniff at either so in the end, the dragon had seemed content with the weapons performance even if he was already talking of more than one gun now.
Tom had tried to sell them the idea of bombs. Without much success though. Short of attacking a city or a keep he could see why. It wasn’t like hostile dragonettes would just sit there and wait to be bombed after all.
“What about my father, I don’t know where you would drop them, but he does like just cruising along nice and steady. You know nothing too strenuous.” Jarix snickered.
“Sure I don't see why not. If you wanna hit with level bombing you need to be very steady.”
“What's the alternative?” Zarko questioned sounding curious.
“Dive bombing” That got their attention. “Basically you dive at a target aiming yourself at them like you're gonna crash into them, then you drop your bomb and pull up. Rather simple really”
“I could do that,” Jarix concluded.
“And bring down a keep in a single run” Zarko added. “it has been done with big rocks and things like that during sieges, but nothing like what those things are dropping.
Tom could literally see the horror on Radexi's face at having to deal with a dragon dive-bombing the keep. The poor dude wasn’t having an easy time as of late and with the report of possible hostiles in the area, that hadn’t improved.
“How would you defend against that Tom?” The captain asked, trying to sound professional and to his credit only failing slightly.
“Anti-air guns, and fighters. Not much else you can do” Tom admitted. “Or build something that can survive the hit.”
“We sorta have fighters. We can’t just rebuild the keep, soo… what is this anti-air gun?” Tom sighed internally at the notion of adding yet another thing to his list of stuff that was likely never gonna be complete. He guessed he could put this one under cannon for Shiva though.
“I got a clip that will show both I think” It took a bit of searching but he did have Midway, that scene where they dive-bombed the carriers, unrealistic as it was, should do the trick.
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It had been a long while since Sapphire had last slept on dragonback. She did feel a little sorry for Arch and Baron, having flown through the night, but they wanted to make a small town by nightfall today.
“Good morning sleepy head" Tirox teased as Sapphire got up, instantly regretting the decision as she was hit in the face with the ice-cold wind. Laying back down she was sheltered behind Canabrera, who still appeared to be sleeping. “Or maybe not” Tirox went again with a chuckle.
“Shuus, it’s cold” Sapphire replied pulling up her bedroll tighter.
“Ain’t that the truth” It came from Dakota who had apparently decided to take cover behind Sapphire during the night. “What time is it?”
“Too early" It came from Balthon who was one notch further down the line, clearly not happy either.
“What do you think they are doing back home?” Dakota asked.
“Don’t know. Probably nice and warm though” Sapphire responded.
“I take it you don’t do much cold weather training?” Tirox responded in an obnoxiously optimistic tone. Couldn't he just let them complain in peace? “I was wondering, you're Sapphire right?”
“Yup that’s me” Sapphire replied in an annoyed tone. He knew that they had all introduced themselves already.
“As in Sapphire Rayland? The one who took the tonselra championship, what was that… 15 years ago?”
“Yup to that one too” That was a new one, she couldn’t remember the last time somebody had recognized her. Not that there had been many chances for anyone to do so in the last decade.
“No way, my sister played against you then!” Sapphire rolled over to look at him. He had her attention now.
“What was she called?”
“Nuory, she only made it to the quarter-finals where you knocked her out” Sapphire needed to have a think on that one it was a long time ago.
“I do remember she was pretty damn good too, what happened to her in the end, did she keep playing?” There was a clear ping of sorrow in Tirox at that one for some reason.
“Oh, she… she died the next year competing, made it to the semis that year” Triox went, faultless optimism cracking under what was clearly a big loss to him.
“I’m sorry to hear that… don’t wanna pry but…”
“Hit a pole and broke a wing. Snapped her neck when she hit the ground, she didn’t even scream” Triox replied with a shrug. “Just a stupid mistake”
Sapphire laid her head back down looking up into the clouds attempting to remember. She could remember the match against her well enough, she didn’t have time to look at her opponent though. All she remembered was that it had been a close call. She had seen accidents as well, of course, that was the reason she took Dakota up on her offer. She didn’t want to be next to be carried off the field.
“You're not going back to compete again are you?” He sounded concerned, she guessed that was more than understandable.
“Nah never, those days are over. Besides I would be better at archery these days.”
“You a good shot then?” Oh, he had no clue how good.
“So good I wouldn't be allowed to compete in most competitions,” Sapphire replied with a cocky smile and a chuckle. It was true of course, there wasn’t much point in having her shoot at some target 100 meters downrange, that would just get real boring real quick.
“Udanti, got one who thinks she’s a good shot” ‘this might be good fun’ Sapphire thought to herself getting up. The wind hadn’t changed its mind about being so cold though so she laid back down again. No one else got up so she was clearly not alone in that decision.
“I heard you well enough, I’ll whip her arse once we are on the ground don’t you worry” It came from below, Sapphire guessed her challenger had slept in the belly netting then.
Dakota rolled over to look at Sapphire. “Destroy her” Dakota whispered, the two of them had a little competition for who could put on the most devilish smile.
It had been another quiet day of flying. As the sun was starting to have an effect they passed Hookbill Gorge, which was quite the spectacle. Supposedly it had once been the home of a dragon calling himself Hookbill who would raid and plunder traders and keeps in the area. That was centuries ago but the name had stuck. The gorge itself was more like two mountains protruding for kilometers up into the sky. The cloud cover had obscured the bases so it looked more like two massive slender spikes that they flew between. Sapphire had almost expected something nasty to detach from the towering peaks and make a break for them but nothing happened.
Vulzan had brought out another game for them to try. Sapphire hadn’t seen it before it was apparently called jump claw. It was a small board where you would stick wooden pegs into the holes which made up the track. then a spinning wheel in the center was used to determine how far you could move. if you passed someone else's peg they went back to the start. First to get all their pegs home won.
It was a simple yet fun game, even if only four could play. That didn’t mean you couldn’t cheer the others on while you waited for your turn.
They had made it to the small town of Ylditz before nightfall where Archeon and Baron could sleep and eat. They would set up a more comfortable camp with actual tents and a campfire. Lighting a fire on Archeon’s back wasn’t exactly possible but next to him while he slept was more than welcomed by the venerable dragon.
It was an idyllic little town, buildings all strewn around the central keep. Sapphire put the population at around 150 maybe 200 so it was a lot bigger than their home and there was obviously safety in numbers. The keep could hold everyone in a pinch but for the most part, they slept in their houses.
They had just about finished setting up camp on the outside of the little village and begun to go over the plan one last time. Udanti had come up behind them a few of the escorts following along at her heels.
“So archer girl. Ready for a spanking?”Udanti seemed very sure of herself, head held high and ear perked. Her tone was more teasing than malicious though, this was just a friendly competition. She was an older dragonette than Sapphire, probably somewhere between her and Dakota. “I see you got a proper bow as well, afraid yours couldn’t cut it?”
Sapphire had been scheming with Balethon and Dakota to make this as fun as possible. For starters, she was holding Dakotas bow, with Baltheon hanging on to her real one Dakota made a quick getaway to get on with her part of the plan.
There wasn’t much prospect of interesting things happening so the archer's duel was the evening's only attraction apart from the local tavern so most of them were gathered around. Sapphire didn’t mind a crowd though. Hashaw was currently perched atop Baron’s head watching with interest.
“Just don’t cry when you lose,” Sapphire replied confidently as ever.
“Wanna pick a target and go first or shall I?”
“Why don’t you start”
“Very well” Udanti nocked an arrow in her bow “Range to that tree with the cleft trunk. What do you say... 80 meters?”
“Yeah thereabouts,” it was a far target, Saph would give her that. “What are we shooting over?”
“A round at the tavern?”
“Sure thing.”
“One in the center of the cleft and one in each branch,” she stated confidently. Then she drew and fired 3 arrows in rapid succession. She was almost as fast as Sapphire when it came to rate of fire and she hit her targets which was very impressive and every shot was perfectly centered. There was a good chance she used magic to guide them then. This just got interesting. She seemed very pleased with herself as she turned to Sapphire expectantly.
“Not bad, my turn” She might have hit, but she lacked flair, something Sapphire knew a thing or two about. It helped a lot when competing to be a crowd-pleaser, at least if you wanted a decent meal that night.
Sapphire nocked an arrow in Dakota’s bow, drew and fired normally using only the slightest hint of magic to land the arrow right in the center of the cleft, swearing a bit she didn’t manage to break Udanti’s arrow, that would have been awesome. Then she drew another and pretended to sneeze as she fired sending the arrow low skimming across the grass before it miraculously pulled up burying deep into the left branch. To much oohing and aahing from the crowd. Sapphire smiled a bit to herself as she continued her shenanigans.
“Oh, that was lucky wonder what happens if I” Sapphire loosed another arrow deliberately aiming high and doing her best to seem surprised by the shot. She then carefully guided it back down on target, landing squarely in the right branch. Three perfect hits.
“Gods dammit” Udanti protested, clearly not pleased. Sapphire was far from done though.
“Huh, would you look at that… Baltheon real bow” Sapphire demanded switching tone, holding out her hand looking sternly at Udanti.
Sapphire swung her hand above her head, that being the planned signal for Dakota who came flying overhead and began dropping four of the pieces of firewood she had borrowed from the pile for the campfire.
Sapphire drew and fired in rapid succession nailing all four pieces, one by one. The power of her new bow ensured the arrows hit before she needed to send the next one. She might be good, but guiding two at the same time was still beyond her. By the time all targets were hit the first one hadn’t even reached the ground yet. As the last of them came down Sapphire turned and bowed to her audience with a flourish.
“I told you she was good” Archeon went in a very serious voice. “That’s gonna cost you a beer.” Of course, the trader was more worried about the monetary costs, Sapphire mused to herself shaking her head a bit.
“Yeah yeah, she got any more of those pieces up there” Udanti questioned, Sapphire just nodded “Very well” Udanti raised her hand doing the signal and Dakota came around again and began dropping more pieces.
Udanti raised her bow and fired, hitting the first one, but she was slow on her follow up shot, spending time leading the target before firing. She was good, no question about that, but Sapphire was rather confident right now. The second shot hit as well but by the time her third left the bow, Sapphire had already finished. As Udanti took aim at the last target she didn’t have time to lead it and she just fired early hoping for the best. The arrow went way high and Sapphire could see it starting to curve in flight, no doubt about using magic then. It wasn’t enough though as the arrow went flying over the firewood and off into the woods downrange.
“Dammit… You spend too much time practicing” Udanti conceded, she was gracious in defeat and Sapphire had to give her that especially after just having lost an arrow.
“What can I say? It’s my job” Sapphire went, running a finger through the tuft of soft fur on her crown.
“What kind of bow is that though, that thing shoots like crazy”
“Oh this little thing.” Sapphire went brandishing her weapon “It’s just one of Tom’s creations, in time he might sell you one.” That obviously caught both Archeon and Vulzan’s attention. Hashaw too came over with her best archer, a quiet woman named Laetho, at least Sapphire thought that was what she was called, she hadn’t actually said yet.
After a short demonstration, as well as a personal best for Vulzan in terms of draw weight, he was ready to order a dozen already. Hashaw hadn’t made an attempt to get her bow so she guessed Tom had agreed to her demand of receiving the design then. Hopefully, he had gotten paid for that.
“What about this one then surely more could be made” Vulzan tried in vain.
“I can’t do that and you know it. This is a prototype” Sapphire revelled in using the fancy word which no one except the trio from the keep understood. “It means it is the first one ever and it’s mine.” She stated proudly as she slung it over her back where it belonged, tapping it daintily.
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ko-fi for those feeling generous
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So the story continues, I hope you enjoyed it. If so do let me know down below, as well as what you would like to see more of, any favorite moments, characters, or questions.
If there is something you don't like do also please let me know for improvement the problems must be known. Until next time though, have an awesome day.