Tobacco mortality

The last time we see Wayne, he’s standing in front of the hole asking it to make sense of everything. He then feels some kind of force (I’m guessing he got a voice like how Luke did with the owls), and proceeds agrees that it makes sense, and proceeds to jump into the hole, and that’s the last time we see him.
My personal theory is he jumped into the hole, and became Chronos, the god of time. Now here’s what little evidence I have.

• Luke’s vision when he put his head in the hole ended with an image of Wayne, all black eyed, and red background, same as when he was alone sitting in the bar. The fact that Wayne was the last thing he saw, makes me think that Wayne may be something bigger than what Luke sees with the cult, something that Wayne tells Luke constantly.
  
• Wayne is able to see what Perry is doing in 1982 while he’s sitting in the bar, and he seems to have control over what the 1982 version of himself is saying. Royal, and other hole jumpers only got headaches/ ear ringing.
  
• The magic tobacco that the Tillersons use is able to heal them back up to damn near perfect health, Wayne had both a bad heart disease, AND was in a coma, and was walking around fine after what was at longest a week. Something no mortal human could accomplish.
  

I hope we get a season 3, and I hope it ends with Royal, Joy, Time traveler Perry, and the rest of the Abbot family ending Autumns cult plan, only for the hole to re open up, with Billy signing his angelic bars, and a Wayne Tillerson Chronos like time god, for a final battle for the West Pasture.

Seven
...
In 1945, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were students at Columbia University and were lodging in Joan Vollmer’s apartment on West 115th Street. Kerouac, a Catholic who had gotten in on a football scholarship described Ginsberg as “this spindly Jewish kid with horn-rimmed glasses and tremendous ears sticking out…burning black eyes”; the two men had a brief, awkward affair. Their friend William Burroughs was living nearby, on Riverside Drive, and after Kerouac and Ginsberg set him up with their landlady, he moved in, too. The gaunt and lanky Burroughs was more than a decade older than Ginsberg and Kerouac, and already seemed, Ginsberg recalled, to have the “ashen gray of an old-age cheek.” The younger pair admired him, Ginsberg wrote, like “ambassadors to a Chinese emperor.” Kerouac hailed him as “the last of the Faustian men.” Burroughs returned the compliment by introducing the other members of the “libertine circle,” as they dubbed themselves, to drugs, sailors, porn, bathhouses, and Wilhelm Reich.

After leaving Harvard in 1936, Burroughs had enrolled at the University of Vienna’s medical schools, Reich’s alma mater, with vague plans of becoming a psychoanalyst, but his stay was dominated by the administration of arsenic shots for the syphilis he had contracted in America, which left him feeling nauseated and depressed. He left after a semester. Back in New York, Burroughs was analyzed by Paul Federn, who had been Reich’s first therapist but whom Reich came to consider his nemesis. Burroughs was institutionalized in 1940 after he chopped off the tip of his finger in a Van Gogh - like gesture of unrequited love (Bellevue psychiatrists diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic). Burroughs’s parents gave him an allowance of two hundred dollars a month on the condition that he seek further help, and in 1946 Burroughs was undergoing narco-analysis with Dr. Lewis Wolberg, who used nitrous oxide and hypnosis to stimulated the unconscious.
Burroughs would return from his sessions with Wolberg to practice “wild analysis” on his friends, interpreting their dreams from the comfort of a wing chair. He also played a game that parodied the Reichian character analysis that he’d become interested in. The group would play an adaption of charades to facilitate the exploration of the onion layers of their personality armor. Burroughs referred to these exercises in amateur dramatics as “routines.” For example, underneath Burroughs’s public persona as the distinguished heir of an important St. Louis family lurked a prissy, lesbian English governess (“My dear, you’re just in time for tea. Don’t say those dirty words in front of everybody!”). Scratch the governess surface and you reached Old Luke, a gun-toting, tobacco-chewing sharecropper from the Deep South (“Ever gut a catfish?”). The last stratum, at his very core, held a silent Chinaman, a contemplative, impassive character who sat meditating on the banks of the Yangtse. Ginsberg’s hidden self was “the well-groomed Hungarian,” and Kerouac liked to play the naïve American lost in the sophistications of Paris.
Alfred Kinsey met Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac on one of their nocturnal trips to Time Square through their friend Herbert Huncke, the male prostitute who coined the term “beat” and introduced Burroughs to recreational drugs. Kinsey paid Huncke
Taking advantage of the proximity of Cott’s office to his father’s home, and still buzzing in the mouth, Ginsberg chose to come out during a posttherapeutic visit. “You mean you like to take men’s penises in your mouth?” his father said unsympathetically. But Cott thought homosexuality a perversion, as Reich did, and was working toward establishing heterosexual primacy rather than trying to persuade Ginsberg to come to terms with his queerness. “Frankly I won’t trust that kind of straight genital Reichian,” Burroughs wrote in disgust at this dogmatism. “Feller say, when a man gets too straight he’s just a god damned prick.”
Cott terminated Ginsberg’s therapy after three months because he continued to smoke pot against the doctor’s advice. Ginsberg though cannabis an integral part of his aesthetic education; Cott feared that it would lead to a psychotic episode. The summer he quit therapy, Ginsberg began experiencing auditory hallucinations. “It was like God had a human voice,” Ginsberg wrote of his transcendental experience, in which he discovered his calling as a poet, “with all the infinite tenderness and mortal gravity of a living Creator speaking to his son.” Consumed by a desire to share his amazing experience, Ginsberg crawled out onto his fire escape and tapped on the next-door neighbor’s windows, declaring to the two frightened girls inside, “I’ve seen God!”
His father, still reeling from the discovery of his son’s sexuality, feared that he was suffering from the paranoid schizophrenia that had caused his mother to be institutionalized in Pilgrim State, a mental hospital on Long Island. She also heard voices, feared her husband was trying to poison her, hallucinated Hitler’s mustache in the sink, and thought spies were following her. When Ginsberg entered Reichian analysis, she was reportedly banging her head against the wall so ferociously that the doctors recommended a lobotomy.
Ginsberg phoned up Dr. Cott, his former therapist, and told him, “It happened, I had some kind of breakthrough or psychotic experience.” Cott, who followed Reich in rejecting the talking cure, and who was obviously still angry at Ginsberg for choosing pot over therapy, said, “I’m afraid any discussion would have no value” and hung up on him. Soon afterward, when Ginsberg was involved in a car chase in a stolen vehicle that ended in a dramatic crash, he was encouraged by a law professor at Columbia, where he was still a student, to plead insanity. Dr. Cott appeared in court to testify to his mental instability, and two months later Ginsberg was admitted to the Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric institute, where he stayed for eight months.
During Ginsberg’s hospitalization, Burroughs wrote to Jack Kerouac to ask him to find out from Ginsberg what the “gadget made by Reichians” looked like. “I want especially to know its shape and if there is a window, and how one gets into it.” Kerouac doesn’t seem to have been much help in providing a blueprint. Burroughs built his first accumulator in the spring of 1949 when he was living on a rented farm in Pharr, Texas, with Kells Elvins, a friend from his Harvard days. They were both enthusiastically reading Reich’s The Cancer Biopathy and decided to build an accumulator in the orange grove Kells owned in the Rio Grande Valley. Built without recourse to any plans, the resulting device included some curious innovations. “Inside was an old icebox,” Burroughs explained, “which you could get inside and pull on a contrivance so that another box of sheet steel descended over you, so that the effect was presumably heightened.” It took them a few days to construct the box. The result was eight feet high, much taller than the ones Reich manufactured: “It was a regular townhouse,” Burroughs recalled.
The pair took turns sitting in the accumulator and obtained, Burroughs wrote, “unmistakable results.” Burroughs wondered what the Mexican farm laborers thought of this strange box that they entered “wrapped in old towels,” and came out of feeling “much sexier and healthier,” “with hard-ons.” Burroughs and Kells also made one of Reich’s smaller shooter boxes, with a funnel, which they used as a supplement to the big box. Their DIY was, Burroughs admitted, “a very sloppy job,” but it still have a powerful “sexual kick.”
"I have just been reading Wilhelm Reich’s latest book The Cancer Biopathy,” Burroughs wrote excitedly to Kerouac. “I tell you Jack, he is the only man in the analysis line who is on that beam. After reading the book I built an orgone accumulator and the gimmick really works. The man is not crazy, he’s a fucking genius.” Kerouac described Burroughs enthusiastically promoting the box in On the Road (1955). According to Kerouac, Burroughs said, “Say, why don’t you fellows try my orgone accumulator? Put some juice in your bones. I always rush up and take off ninety miles an hour for the nearest whorehouse, hor-hor-hor!”
Burroughs used an orgone box on and off for the rest of his life. (There is a picture of the rock star Kurt Cobain waving through the port-hole of Burrough’s last box, a scruffy, patched-up shed that he kept in the garden behind his house in Lawrence, Kansas.) In the 1970s he wrote an article for Oui magazine entitled “All the accumulators I have owned” in which he boasted, “Your intrepid reporter, at age thirty-seven, achieved spontaneous orgasm, no hands, in an orgone accumulator built in an orange grove in Pharr, Texas. It was the small, direct-application accumulator that did the trick.”
….
Perls concluded that any positive claims for the orgone box were attributable to the placebo effect. “I invariably found a fallacy,” he said of the orgone box users he met, “a suggestibility that could be directed in any way that I wanted.” Reich, Perls thought, had made a major contribution in giving Freud’s notion of resistance a body, but he erred in trying to make a verifiable reality out of the libido. “Now resistances do exist, there is no doubt about it,” Perls explained, “but libido was and is a hypothesized energy, invented by Freud himself to explain his model of man.” He thought Reich had hypnotized himself and his patients into the belief of the existence of the orgone as the physical and visible equivalent of libido.
Perls found that users of orgone boxes usually exhibited some paranoid symptoms. “Then I had another look at the armor theory,” Perls went on, “and I realized that the idea of the armor itself was a paranoid form. It supposes an attack from, and defense against, the environment.” Perls criticized vegetotherapy for encouraging the formation of paranoid features by encouraging the patient to “externalize, disown, and project material that could be assimilated and become part of the self.” Orgone energy, Perls concluded from his investigations into the orgone box, was “an invention of Reich’s fantasy which by then had gone astray.” The realization that the Reich he had met in New York was different from the one he had known in Europe, and that orgone mysticism was at the crackpot end of science, was tinged with melancholy. “The enfant terrible of the Vienna Institute turned out to be a genius,” Perls wrote in his autobiography, “only to eclipse himself as a ‘mad scientist.’”
In his own elaboration of character analysis, which he called Gestalt therapy, Perls turned the idea of armor around: where Reich had come to see character armor as a defense against a hostile external world, Perls saw that same layer of self as a shield for one’s own true drives - a straitjacket designed to safeguard against explosions of excitement from within. Thus, it wasn’t a shell to be crushed but something integral, to be owned. (Laura Perls said they tried to convince Rosenfeld to give up his box, that he could increase his physical vitality and mental agility “entirely on his own, without external devices.”) He wanted his patients to be aware of their bodies, to feel the present vividly in the “here and now,” to be “authentic,” to act on their desires.
Perls got his patients to act out their feelings so that they could assimilate and take responsibility for them. He had originally wanted to be a theater director - he’d been a student of Max Reinhardt’s when he was growing up in Berlin, and he’d become closely associated with the avant-garde Living Theatre troupe in New York. Julian Beck, a founder of the Living Theatre, explained to Perls’s biographer, Martin Shepard, of Gestalt therapy, “[Perls] had something in mind that was halfway between the kind of performance we were doing [direct spectacle, aimed at challenging the moral complacency of the audience] and therapeutic sessions.”
“You are my client,” Perls told one female patient. “I care for you like an artist, I bring something out that is hidden in you.” He described therapy as if it were a magic trick; the rabbit he claimed to pull out of the hat was a person shorn of the “neurosis of normalcy” and all the bourgeois niceties associated with it. This person, he hypothesized, was confident enough to be selfish, to act on rather than repress all her desires, whatever the social consequences. All the energy that others wasted on repression and concealment, Perls thought, should be available for creative self-expression. Another of Perls’s patients recalled, “Fritz loved some types - open bastard-bitch - open defenses, that type. He didn’t like anyone who would placate him or be too good to him or used good-girl or good-boy defenses - that drove him up the wall.”

Perls’s views ,and some of his methods, were much indebted to those pioneered by Reich in the thirties: Perls would habitually accuse his patients of being “phony” and was deliberately aggressive, much as Reich had been with him. Yet, his observations about the paranoid deviations in Reich’s terminology and thinking were painfully perceptive, precisely because he had built on those very ideas.
In 1951, Perls, Paul Goodman, and a Columbia professor of psychology named Ralph Hefferline published Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality. Rewritten by Goodman, and bearing all the hallmarks of Goodman’s exasperating style, the book blends Reich’s ideas about energy blocks and flows with Sartre’s cafe philosophy to create an American brand of existentialism turned therapy. The authors intended their self-help book to provide the reader with the tools for revolution: “In recommending [these experiments] to you,” they warned of their mass-market therapy, “we commit an aggressive act aimed at your present status quo and whatever complacency it affords.” They promised immediate liberation, without the hard grind of political struggle; all you had to do was unleash your “authentic” self.
The “excitement” to which the subtitle of the book refers is a generalized libido, an elan vital that is seeking various outlets, not all of them sexual. Life, for Perls, was a series of “unfinished” or “undigested” situation, frustrations that were all waiting their turn for satisfactory closure. “After the available excitement has been fully transformed and experienced, then we have good closure, satisfaction, temporary peace and nirvana,” Perls summarized his position. “A [mere] discharge will barely bring about the feeling of exhaustion and being spent.”
It sounded very like the Reichian orgasm. But for Perls, excitement was no longer exclusively genital, as it was for Reich, and this shift only served to open up numerous other slipways to pleasure. In Reich’s view, the libido theory was an inviolable article of faith. In broadening its range to celebrate oral and anal pleasures, Perls heralded a polymorphously perverse and heretical vision - one that, ironically, would prove particularly amenable to exploitation under capitalism.
In 1952, Perls, his wife, Goodman, Isidore From, Elliott Shapiro, and two others founded the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy, headquartered in the Perleses’ apartment and with treatment rooms at 315 Central Park West. The seven founding members met on a weekly basis for group therapy. There was no bureaucratic hierarchy and everyone, including Perls, was subject to the honest criticism that was seen as the key to self-discovery. It was a very public form of character analysis: members of the group would draw one another’s attention to every repression or hang-up, none of which was to be tolerated.
Elliot Shapiro, an ex-boxer and the head of a psychiatric school attached to Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, brought a friend to one session; Shapiro’s friend said he “had never witnessed the aggressive and profound battling that went on in those groups. Nobody, virtually nobody, was safe at any time.” Shapiro recalled, “We hammered at each other, and hammered, and hammered - every week. And it was the most vigorous hammering you can image….If you could live through these groups and take the corrections, the insults, the remarks…” Not all the participants had sufficiently thick skins to take such brutal candor. The psychotherapist Jim Simkin left the group because he felt that everyone was “loading elephant shit on him,” as did Ralph Hefferline, a coauthor of Gestalt Therapy.
To promote this new school, Perls traveled from city to city, introducing an audience of psychiatrists, social workers, and other interested parties to his “here and now” philosophy. He taught groups in Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto, and Miami how to be sensitive to their bodily needs and to follow their impulses, to be honest and unalienated. He’d be sharp and confrontational as he pushed his awareness techniques on the participants: What are you doing now? What are you experiencing? What are you feeling? Isadore From, who was part of the original New York group, remembers that these occasions were often very dramatic, with “a lot of shaking, trembling, anxiety” - effects that he thought were the result of the audiences’ hyperventilating under the strain of Perls’s relentless goading and questioning.
The New York Institute of Gestalt Therapy also ran public seminars, including one by Goodman, “The Psychology of Sex” (“What you can’t do, teach,” he said with a laugh). Following Reich, it was thought that neurosis could be treated by exposure to sexual pleasure. Goodman made this his area of expertise and people with sexual problems were often referred to him. One was a man who was worried about the quality of his orgasms after prostate surgery. Another thought he might be homosexual; the bisexual Goodman got his penis out and demanded that the patient touch it to help him make a diagnosis. In so doing he was no doubt influenced by Hitschmann, the Viennese analyst who once asked Perls, then tormented by sexual inadequacy, to show him his penis .
In one of Goodman’s group sessions, when someone complained of the lack of sexual companionship, Goodman went around the circle and set up a week’s worth of dates. “See, that wasn’t so difficult,” he reassured her. He was not beyond offering his own neurosis-busting services to patients of either sex, and once agreed to accompany a patient who invited him on an all-expenses-paid trip to Europe. He joked about setting up a College of Sex so as to put his vast experience to educational use. “I’m a sociopath,” he wanted a potential client. In a diary entry written in 1957, Goodman looked back on the previous decade and concluded that he’s made a “false cultus-religion (an obsession)” of sex: “The sexual act itself had just about the meaning of a ritual communion sacrifice.”

As Mr Pagliacci left, Professor Markus entered,
His temples tight, his skin turned white, his tie not even centered,
He quivered and he shivered running fingers through his hair,
Till the Doctor quelled his fractious mind and offered him a chair,

"My dear Professor Markus" said the Doctor with concern,
"I know you as a character both logical and stern,
As stoical and sensible as any man can be,
So to catch you in this fearful state's a sorry sight to see,
The treatments for Hysteria are plentiful in number,
Morphine, Teas, Tobacco Leaves or sometimes merely slumber,
But first you must permit I ask what caused you such distress",

The man replied, or rather cried, "... I lost a game of chess."

The Doctor struggled not to laugh. "Well that's a fearful shame",
I've heard it told by many you're a master at the game,
Who is the twisted gentleman who'd manage such a thing?
To break your reasonable resolve as well as take your king"

"The Turk." Said Markus full of dread "The World's Fair's greatest prize,
An Ottoman automaton a mere five feet in size,
It's upper half is humanoid it's lower half a chest,
Its clockwork fingers play a game no single man can best,
Its face is made of chiseled wood, its eyes are made of glass,
It slid a white knight cross the board toward me as I passed,
I stood stock still, a shocking chill careering though my brain,
Then took a chair and met its stare, and so began the game,

My strategy was tactically, and practically sublime,
Yet every piece that I removed, The Turk took two of mine,
It met my every tactic with superior riposte,
And once it took my second rook, I realised all was lost,
With every trick, each rotary click, it marched towards its prize,
A cold and stark intelligence behind its lifeless eyes,
I tipped my king and left the thing, my only thoughts to flee,
That creature is a monster, more intelligent than me."

The Doctor laughed uproariously, "My man you've no idea!
A simple trick has left you sick and trembling with fear,
A person hides within the chest, and watching through a scope,
He orchestrates the Turk's advance through dials and pegs and rope,
The clockwork figure's every move is subject to his will
The fact the Turk has never lost speaks only to his skill
So now the matter's straightened out and all's as it appears
Your quarry was a mortal man, does this allay your fears?"

Professor Markus hung his head, and somberly replied
"No Doctor. For I'd just stepped out..."

"... I was the man inside."

I run a small hedge fund based out of Raleigh, NC. Myself and my Fund are long $HAYPP. Please see the disclaimer at the bottom of the post. For more blog posts like this check out my Fund's blog at https://www.rogue-funds.com/blog
Also if you would like to see this blog post with pretty pictures you can also check out: https://www.rogue-funds.com/blog/haypp-group
All Financial Figures are in USD unless otherwise specified.
I think HAYPP Group, the biggest online retailer of nicotine pouches, can capture a huge chunk of the sales in what I believe will be the biggest form of nicotine intake growth over the next 10-15 years.
The future of nicotine consumption will be nicotine pouches and it is growing at an unprecedented rate. Here in the States the go to item for nicotine pouches are Zyn’s (owned by Philip Morris), in Europe it’s Velo (owned by British American Tobacco), but there are various other brands that all catching fire: ON! (Altria), Rogue, Juice Head, FRE, Lucy, and Sesh, among various others.
What is HAYPP?
Brief History
HAYPP is an online retailer and distributor of nicotine pouches and snus. The company was started by a couple of Swedish teenagers in 2009 and through mergers and acquisitions they no longer are in charge of the company as the current CEO joined in 2017/2018. The company bought Nicokick.com and northerner.com (northerner owns 9% of stock) which are now both of their main American brands. They switched from Snus to Nicotine Pouches 6 years ago and haven’t looked back.
HAYPP currently owns a roughly 85% online market share for their Nordic part of the business, which they refer to as their “core” business as well as a ~55% market share of the oral nicotine market (85% market share of the legal nicotine pouch e-commerce market) for their growth market which is considered the US, UK, Germany, and Swiss countries.
SEO Powerhouse
So how do they have such a grasp on what would obviously be a hyper competitive online industry? The main reason for their hyper success in the online market is that they have a death grip on the SEO landscape. Their mastery of SEO allows them to spend almost nothing on marketing and to keep pushing out their distribution system (which continues to drive costs down for them and consumers). This creates a positive feedback loop as they become even cheaper than their competitors, allowing them to lock in customers (over 90% of the customers becoming recurring customers).
If you google just about anything related to Nicotine pouches, there is probably a 95%+ chance that the top unpaid search result will be a HAYPP Group Domain. Even niche searches such as “what is an upper decky” (Gen. Z slang for nicotine pouches) or basic searches such as “what are the top nicotine pouches” you will see that HAYPP Group owns the top of the search.
This is huge when sites like Google severely limit the amount of advertising that addictive products can utilize on their search engine. HAYPP ends up barely spending anything on marketing due to 40% of new customers coming through word of mouth and the rest from SEO.
Data
Their other field of expertise is data collection and selling. Due to the large variety of pouches and being the number one online seller of nicotine pouches, they have created a major database which they sell to various nicotine pouch producers such as Philip Morris and Altria. Producers buy these on an annualized basis, and you can see the usage of their data among the investor relation reports/presentations/websites of various producers. As you can see from my beautiful pictures on this post, they compile plenty of data to help me understand the business better.
Lowest Cost Seller and Best E-Commerce Distribution
Due to their distribution network, HAYPP has become one of the cheapest (if not the cheapest) sellers of nicotine pouches in the world. You can buy Zyn’s cheaper from HAYPP websites than you can from the ZYN website. Haypp’s prices are 20-40% cheaper than grocery stores and 30-50% cheaper than convenience stores.
They have been integrating their distribution network so that most variable costs are being converted to vertical fixed costs creating operating leverage for them as they rapidly scale their revenue and are able to increase margins. They have implemented 2-day delivery across the US and close to implementing across Europe markets as well.
Leveraging Market Share for High Quality New Products
The last part of their business model is their ability to leverage their large consumer base to help new products capture market share, which allows them to capture higher margins on their products and it increases the variety of products which consumers would like to buy. In Nordic countries the variety of products is a benefit to them as consumers want to try various brands and flavors. When this competition trend hits the US it will only benefit them even more.
Why Haypp vs Pouch Companies
Currently in the US there are only a couple main brands with Zyn owning a huge chunk of the market. In Europe, Velo is the most popular brand but there are many Nordic brands that consistently attack margins and currently there is little competition in the US market which most likely won’t last much longer. As consumers search out the cheapest product and try to hunt for variety, HAYPP will be that future as convenience stores lag in variety and cost.
Products such as Zyn will definitely continue to grow (currently Zyn is growing at 70% y/y) but we could see margins shrink as competition becomes fiercer and consumers branch out away from the first movers, although Zyn continues to take up 70% of the US market. This only further benefits HAYPP as they are the go-to spot for a large amount of variety. Although they don’t benefit as much from less competition, they are still beneficiaries of an oligopoly esque market due to their cost and distribution networks.
Most large publicly traded pouch companies are also cigarette and chewing tobacco sellers who are rapidly seeing those segments get cannibalized by vaping and nicotine pouches combined with regulatory crackdown risk. Since HAYPP has no exposure to either one, you will not experience any cannibalization outside of snus cannibalization in the Nordics. This is the best pure play bet on nicotine pouch consumption.
Certain countries have limited the ability for consumers to have access to nicotine via retail stores which will allow them to take huge shares of the overall market in places like Germany or in California where they have banned flavored nicotine products in retail stores has led to windfall of customers to HAYPP’s e-commerce model.
Management
The current CEO of HAYPP group, Gavin O’Dowd, used to work for British American Tobacco (BAT) and was the driving force for the VELO acquisition. He currently owns 3.6% of the stock and various other PE firms and Family Offices own large chunks of HAYPP. Most executives have warrants that could give them the right to 200k-400k shares each (29m shares outstanding with no serious history of dilution).
Regulations
As many of you are aware, regulations are a huge part of the nicotine industry. Taxes are going to be huge risks, which are then combined with flavor bans. I think nicotine pouches are one of the products that are least likely to get hit with serious bans since their health risk is much lower than almost any other nicotine product.
The nicotine pouch industry as a whole has been behaving spectacularly well when it comes to ensuring they are not purposefully marketing to young people. They are trying to avoid having a Juul 2.0 fiasco which basically murdered that business and completely fragmented the vaping industry which is on the brink of regulatory crack down.
HAYPP does their part by ensuring age regulation across their whole site. They have age verification to order and deliver. They have a huge emphasis on ensuring that they abide by the law.
Financials
Core Segment (Nordic Countries)
The company is growing heavily in every segment that it operates in. Its core segment seems to be slowing down in growth due to heavy cannibalization from snus sales. This should only be temporary as nicotine pouch volume grows at 30%+ y/y. Once snus nears its cannibalization endpoint, I would expect revenue to begin growing again in its core market (although not at 30%). Current revenue is $250m USD and EBITDA is about $18m USD for just the core segment for the last twelve months. Management expects high single digit EBITDA margins for 2025.
Growth Segment (US, UK, Germany, Switzerland)
The growth segment is skyrocketing. Growth is over 46% y/y and this growth has been consistent and should continue to be consistent. EBITDA margin for the growth markets has begun to inflect positively which will cause a massive amount of leverage in their EBITDA to occur as their fixed cost model begins to do its job. As economies of scale drive forward, we should see this margin increase substantially over the coming years. Currently Revenue is at $77m USD for growth markets and EBITDA is at -$3.5m USD.
Let’s Talk about the Growth Segment a bit more.
This is where the real value from HAYPP will come into play. While it currently begins to inflect positive in terms of profitability, it should be noted that the Growth markets have a massive TAM compared to their core market and could cause the company to 5x in the next few years if they maintain or gain market share and continue to grow in these massive TAMs.
As they grow, their competitive advantage deepens due to sticky customers and cheaper products from economies of scale. The US has an even faster scale of 49%+ growth y/y and HAYPP is outpacing the US nicotine pouch growth at 57% y/y. As the US begins to approve various products and variety begins to flood the US market, a ton of US users want to try various Nordic brands that don’t have access which lends a very strong lean towards an online website such as HAYPP. The US is a very ripe environment along with the UK and Germany (where nicotine can only be sold online) for HAYPP to continue to outperform massively.
Emerging Segment
Their “emerging” segment is where they have begun to introduce vapes into their value chain. HAYPP is beginning to sell vapes to UK and Germany, but it is at the very beginning stages and has no current significant impact on their bottom or top line. The company says the growth they are experiencing in this segment has been very similar to the growth that they experienced when they introduced Nicotine Pouches in growth markets. This is the most likely segment to get hit with regulatory concerns, so for now I won’t even consider this in a to be a profitable unit and will just assume it will be a small drain on EBITDA for the foreseeable future.
Balance Sheet
The balance sheet is great with no large debt burden and good working capital management. As they hit profitability this yeaearly next year I would expect a cash build up until the company decides if they will be returning cash to shareholders or reinvesting in the business.
Valuation
HAYPP is extremely undervalued based on where they are from a profitability standpoint and their current inflection point. Due to their high growth, it will be hard to pinpoint an exact value on them so this will merely be an exercise in estimating their value among a range more than usual (anyone who claims they can perfectly value a high growth company is probably overvaluing due to unsound conviction).
First let’s look at how they are currently valued, which is roughly 14x their core EBITDA. Now let’s take a second and think about how insane that statement was. Their core market is the Nordic countries which will be hitting growth again as their snus cannibalization slows, the Nordic countries basically have no further regulation risk for nicotine pouches, and it is a noncyclical industry. I would argue that 14x their core EBITDA is probably an appropriate valuation based on only their core segment.
What this means is (if you haven’t noticed already) that you are getting their “growth” segment for free based on the valuation of the stock. The growth segment alone is probably worth multiples of the current stock price due to the massive TAM and extreme growth prospects. If we assume the emerging segment is worthless (which it isn’t and it will be profitable at some point) then that means all of the upside in the stock can be based on what the value of the growth segment. Based on TAM, growth, and lack of cyclicality then this leaves the only risk as regulation.
There will most likely be some sort of regulation, but we are very far from that as the Tobacco industry has been very careful in how they implement their new nicotine pouch momentum in a more appropriate way compared to vapes. The most likely regulations will probably be flavor bans of some sort or retail bans (which further benefits HAYPP). Regulations will most likely be limited in scope due to just the sheer lack of mortality risk associated with pouches vs any other form of common nicotine intake.
Based on their probable conservative revenue growth (40% average for the next 3 years, and 15% after that), EBITDA growth, the fact that they will have both core and growth markets at high single digit EBITDA margins in 2025, and their lack of cyclicality, then I would estimate that their Growth markets are worth a very conservative $400m-$500m USD. I am likely undershooting the valuation because they are driving profitability very fast and their revenue is growing closer to 40%-60% in growth markets right now. If they are able to keep up current growth figures and expand to double digit margins before the end of the decade then they could be worth 2x-3x this value (which is why valuing growth companies are so hard, because I can’t foresee the future). Again, I valued the emerging segment as worthless which is unlikely as well.
So, based on the value of $450m USD for the growth markets and the current value of $240 USD for the Nordic markets, that would create a sum of the parts equal to roughly $700m or nearly triple the current share price. This valuation leaves a ton of room for margin expansion and higher growth prospects because let’s face it, the US alone is probably worth at least 3x-5x more than the Nordic countries not including the UK, Germany, or Swiss. This is a very conservative valuation for the company, but it shows how great the risk/reward is based on the current price. Using a conservative valuation here also helps accommodate for regulation risk.
In SEK terms this would be 250 SEK/share or 7.35B SEK.
Conclusion
Even accommodating for regulation risk, a valuation of $700m seems appropriate as a starting point for the valuation for HAYPP Group. I think there is a very high likelihood that I could be off on this by a large margin, but I feel like the downside is very protected with this valuation. Management has been great in execution and I expect that to continue. In a more bullish case where every segment of the company fires on all cylinders we could see a valuation of $1.5B+, but that is not a scenario that I would like to bet my investors’ money on. For now, I will stay invested and keep watching them execute and adjust my valuation accordingly.
Disclaimer: The author of this idea and his Fund have a position in securities discussed at the time of posting and may trade in and out of this position without informing the reader.
Opinions expressed herein by the author are not an investment recommendation and are not meant to be relied upon in investment decisions. The author is not acting in an investment adviser capacity. This is not an investment research report. The author's opinions expressed herein address only select aspects of potential investment in securities of the companies mentioned and cannot be a substitute for comprehensive investment analysis. Any analysis presented herein is illustrative in nature, limited in scope, based on an incomplete set of information, and has limitations to its accuracy. The author recommends that potential and existing investors conduct thorough investment research of their own, including detailed review of the companies' SEC and CSA filings, and consult a qualified investment adviser. The information upon which this material is based was obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but has not been independently verified. Therefore, the author cannot guarantee its accuracy. Any opinions or estimates constitute the author's best judgment as of the date of publication and are subject to change without notice. The author and funds the author advises may buy or sell shares without any further notice. This article may contain certain opinions and “forward-looking statements,” which may be identified by the use of such words as “believe,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “should,” “planned,” “estimated,” “potential,” “outlook,” “forecast,” “plan” and other similar terms. All such opinions and forward-looking statements are conditional and are subject to various factors, including, without limitation, general and local economic conditions, changing levels of competition within certain industries and markets, changes in legislation or regulation, and other economic, competitive, governmental, regulatory and technological factors, any or all of which could cause actual results to differ materially from projected results.

Part nine covers Unity. I've done my best to get the dates as accurate and precise as possible. All of the dates are sourced directly from the game and the Unity novel, along with other research that's been noted below.
For obvious reasons, I did not include the server bridges, Nostradamus enigmas, or the companion missions.
Part 1: AC1 + Altaïr's Chronicles & Bloodlines
Part 2: AC2 + Discovery
Part 3: Brotherhood
Part 4: Revelations
Part 5: AC3
Part 6: Liberation + Black Flag Aveline DLC
Part 7: Black Flag + Freedom Cry
Part 8: Rogue
Prologue: 1307–1314

• The Tragedy of Jacques de Molay (Temple assault): 13 October 1307
• The Tragedy of Jacques de Molay (seven years later): 18 March 1314

Sequences 1–2: 1776–1789 (Arno aged 8–20)

• Memories of Versailles (Palais de Versailles): 27 December 1776
• Memories of Versailles (thirteen years later): 5 May 1789
• The Estates General: 5 May 1789
• High Society: 5 May 1789
• Imprisoned: 5 May–15 July 1789^\1])
• Rebirth: 15 July 1789^\1])

Between sequences 2 & 3: 1789–1790 (Arno aged 20–22)

• [Paris story] The Great Escapist: 16 July 1789^\1])
• [Social club, Ventre de Paris] Let Them Eat Hay: July 1789^\1])
• [Social club, Ventre de Paris] Cat Food on a Hot Tin Roof: July 1789
• [Social club, Ventre de Paris] Hoarding Hostages: July 1789
• [Social club, Île de la Cité] Bridge Brigands: 1789
• [Paris story] À la Lanterne!: 1789
• [Paris story] Devilishly Tricky: 1789
• [Co-op] Women's March: 5 October 1789
• [Paris story] Headlining the Guillotine: December 1789^\2])
• [Social club, Le Marais] Breaking the Habit: 1790^\3])
• [Paris story] Carmalite Nuns: 1790^\3])
• [Paris story] Stop the Presses!: 1790^\4])
• [Paris story] Swiss Stash: September 1790

Sequences 3–7: 1791 (Arno aged 22)

• Graduation: 4 January 1791
• Confession: 5 January 1791
• Council Briefing: 5 January 1791
• [Café Théâtre] Explore the Café Théâtre: January 1791
• The Kingdom of Beggars: 19 January 1791
• Le Roi Est Mort: 19 January 1791
• Council Report: 19 January 1791
• [Café Théâtre] Auto-Da-Fé: 1791
• The Silversmith: 31 March 1791
• La Halle aux Blés: 31 March 1791
• The Prophet: 31 March 1791
• The Jacobin Club: 31 March–1 April 1791
• Templar Ambush: 1 April 1791
• A Cautious Alliance: 2 April 1791^\5])
• Meeting with Mirabeau: 2 April 1791
• Confrontation: 2 April 1791

Between sequences 7 & 8: 1791–1792 (Arno aged 22–23)

• [Paris story] The Cult of Baphomet: 1791
• [Paris story] The Ritual of Baphomet: 1791
• [Paris story] Vicious Verses: 1791^\6])
• [Paris story] Tapestry Thief: 1791
• [Murder mystery] Eugène François Vidocq: 1791^\7])
• [Murder mystery] Murder Foretold: 1791^\7])
• [Murder mystery] Barber of Seville: 1791^\7])
• [Paris story] Arm the People: February 1792^\8])
• [Paris story] "Escort" Mission: March 1792^\8])
• [Paris story] Constructing a "Close Shave": April 1792^\9])
• [Social club, Le Marais] A Dramatic Exit: 1792
• [Social club, Les Invalides] Special Delivery: 1792
• [Social club, Le Quartier Latin] Café Procope: 1792
• [Paris story] Encyclopédie Diderot: 1792
• [Paris story] A Fistful of Duelers: 1792
• [Paris story] Turtle, Snake, Bear, Paper, Scissors: 1792
• [Paris story] Cartouche's Memoirs: 1792
• [Murder mystery] The Red Ghost of the Tuileries: 1792^\7])
• [Co-op] The Food Chain: Summer 1792

Sequences 8–11: 1792–1793 (Arno aged 23–24)

• The King's Correspondence: 10 August 1792
• [Heist] Tithing Templars: August 1792^\3])
• September Massacres: 2 September 1792
• [Co-op] The Austrian Conspiracy: 2 September 1792
• [Heist] Catacomb Raider: September 1792^\3])
• [Café Théâtre] Colette: September 1792^\10])
• Starving Times: 31 October 1792
• Hoarders: 31 October 1792
• The Escape: 31 October 1792
• [Café Théâtre] Damsel in Seamstress: December 1792^\11])
• [Café Théâtre] The Queen's Necklace: December 1792^\10])
• [Café Théâtre] Foxy Renard: December 1792^\10])
• [Social club, Île de la Cité] Marat's Missive: 1792 or 1793
• [Social club, La Bièvre] Extortion Contortion: 1792 or 1793
• [Social club, Le Marais] Artful Dodger: 1792 or 1793
• [Heist] It Belongs in a Museum: 1792 or 1793
• [Heist] The Party Palace: 1792 or 1793
• [Heist] Smuggler's Paradise: 1792 or 1793
• [Heist] Royals, Guns and Money: 1792 or 1793
• A Dinner Engagement: 20 January 1793
• The Execution: 21 January 1793
• Council Debriefing: 21 January 1793
• Bottom of the Barrel: 4 June 1793
• Rise of the Assassin: 4 June 1793^\12])

Between sequences 11 & 12: 1793–1794 (Arno aged 24–25)

• [Murder mystery] The Body in the Brothel: 1793^\7])
• [Murder mystery] The Body Politic: 1793^\7])
• [Murder mystery] The Hand of Science: 1793^\7])
• [Social club, Le Louvre] The Black Office: 1793
• [Paris story] The Chemical Revolution: 1793^\13])
• [Paris story] Flying Boy: 1793^\13])
• [Paris story] La Bande Noire: 2 July 1793^\14])
• [Murder mystery] The Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat: 14 July 1793^\7])
• [Co-op] The Tournament: July 1793
• [Co-op] Political Persecution: 28 July 1793^\15])
• [Murder mystery] Killed by Science: 31 July 1793^\7])
• [Paris story] Critical Comedown: Summer 1793^\16])
• [Paris story] Scene Stealer: Summer 1793^\16])
• [Paris story] Up in Arms: September 1793^\17])
• [Social club, Le Louvre] Betrayer of the Queen: October 1793
• [Murder mystery] The Death of Philibert Aspairt: 3 November 1793^\7])
• [Co-op] Heads Will Roll: 13 November 1793
• [Paris story] My Kingdom For Some Whores: December 1793
• [Paris story] De Sade's Reprieve: December 1793
• [Paris story] Sadistic Blackmail: December 1793
• [Paris story] French Crown Jewels: December 1793^\10])
• [Paris story] The League of the Crimson Rose: 1793 or 1794
• [Paris story] Return of the Crimson Rose: 1793 or 1794
• [Paris story] Crimson Sunset: 1793 or 1794
• [Paris story] Marianne Returns Home: 1793 or 1794
• [Paris story] The American Prisoner: 1793 or 1794
• [Murder mystery] Hot Chocolate to Die For: 1793 or 1794^\7])
• [Co-op] Les Enragés: 10 February 1794
• [Paris story] Coat of Arms: February 1794^\18])
• [Paris story] The Condorcet Method: 25 March 1794^\13])
• [Social club, Le Louvre] Retribution for a Rabble-Rouser: 5 April 1794
• [Co-op] Danton's Sacrifice: 5 April 1794
• [Paris story] Using the Ol' Noggins: 1794
• [Paris story] Waxworks: 1794
• [Social club, Le Quartier Latin] Roux's Remains: 1794
• [Social club, La Bièvre] Chouan Riddles: 1794
• [Social club, Les Invalides] Smoky Yet Robust: 1794
• [Heist] Ancient History: 1794
• [Co-op] Moving Mirabeau: May 1794

Sequence 12 + Dead Kings: 1794 (Arno aged 25)

• The Supreme Being: 8 June 1794
• [Paris story] Iscariotte, the Giant: June or July 1794^\19])
• [Social club, La Bièvre] Bara's Funeral: July 1794^\20])
• The Fall of Robespierre: 27 July 1794
• The Temple: 28 July 1794
• [Co-op] Jacobin Raid: 29 July 1794
• Buried Words: 3 August 1794
• The Book Thief: 4 August 1794
• A Shadow from the Past: 4 August 1794
• Raising the Dead: 5 August 1794
• Under Lock and Key: 6 August 1794
• A Crown of Thorns: 7–9 August 1794

Epilogue + remaining side memories: 1794–1822 (Arno aged 25–54)

• [Franciade story] The Unopened Rose: August 1794
• [Franciade story] Last Will: August 1794
• [Franciade story] The Eyes of the King: August 1794
• [Franciade story] A Royal Hide: August 1794
• [Murder mystery] Blind Justice: August 1794^\7])
• [Murder mystery] Equal Justice: August 1794^\7])
• [Paris story] Cassini's Constellations: August 1794^\13])
• [Co-op] Last Rites: 11 October 1794^\21])
• [Heist] Holy High Rollers: October 1794
• [Paris story] Sewer Rat: 1795^\22])
• [Paris story] The Little Prince: June 1795^\23])
• [Paris story] Désirée Desired: 1795
• [Paris story] Désirée Dismayed: 1795
• [Paris story] Désirée Delighted: September 1795
• [Paris story] A Romantic Stroll: September or October 1795
• [Paris story] Signaling Officer Murat: 5 October 1795
• [Paris story] A Nice Chappe: October 1795
• [Paris story] Precious Correspondence: October 1795
• [Murder mystery] Ancestral Vengeance: 1796 or 1797^\7])
• [Murder mystery] Bones of Contention: 1796 or 1797^\7])
• [Murder mystery] The Decapitated Warden: 1796 or 1797^\7])
• [Murder mystery] Cut the Middle Man: 1796 or 1797^\7])
• [Murder mystery] A Dash of Poison: 1796 or 1797^\7])
• [Social club, Les Invalides] Spiked Bourbon: 1798^\24])
• [Co-op] The Infernal Machine: 24 December 1800
• Years Later (Arno returns to the Temple vault with Napoleon): 1808^\25])
• [Paris story] Tall, Dark Strangers: 1810s^\26])
• [Paris story] Flamel's Secret: The Monks: 1810s
• [Paris story] Flamel's Secret: Denis Molinier: 1810s
• [Paris story] Flamel's Secret: The Elixir of Life: 1810s
• [Social club, Le Quartier Latin] An Engaging Egyptologist: September 1822^\27])

^\1]) The Unity novel gives the date of Arno's reunion with Élise after his escape from the Bastille as 25 July 1789. This is likely either a typo or an error because it creates a continuity issue with how these events are portrayed in the game. Firstly, after Arno's escape, he makes his way to the de la Serre estate in Paris, which is located in Le Marais. This is literally down the street from the Bastille. Even with lying low and dodging guard patrols, I can't imagine it would've taken Arno more than a day to reach the estate, let alone eleven. Not to mention why he'd wait that long to find Élise when that was his singular objective while stuck in prison for two months. Another thing to consider is that there are a few side memories that take place prior to 25 July. The Paris story, The Great Escapist, happens on 16 July which is when Jean Henri Latude retrieved his rope ladder from the Bastille. And all three of the Ventre de Paris social club missions have to take place at some point prior to Joseph Foullon de Doué's execution on 22 July. If we go by the novel's date, Arno wasn't inducted into the Assassins until 25 July, which means he would've been doing missions for the Brotherhood before he even joined them. This obviously doesn't make any sense. So for the above reasons, I'm disregarding the novel's date and placing Arno and Élise's reunion and the events of Rebirth on 15 July instead, which resolves the continuity issue.
^\2]) Widespread public debate regarding Joseph-Ignace Guillotin's proposed method of capital punishment began in December 1789 after a speech he made to the National Constituent Assembly.
^\3]) As France dechristianized during the Revolution, many religious institutions came under attack. On 12 July 1790, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was passed, outlawing religious life and giving complete control of the Church to the government. As a result of this, many congregations such as the Filles du Calvaire Convent were formally dissolved by the National Constituent Assembly. As the Revolution progressed, these tensions only got worse. Shortly after the insurrection of 10 August 1792, the Notre-Dame Cathedral's treasury was looted of all of its liturgical objects, artifacts, and other religious relics. Not long after, the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés got an even worse deal as it was ransacked during the September Massacres, resulting in hundreds of executions. Among the victims were 22 priests, 135 Swiss guards, and the Princesse de Lamballe. After the massacre, the abbey was converted into a storehouse until 1795 when it was reinstated as a church.
^\4]) While Mirabeau's reputation remained largely untarnished until after his death, public criticism of his conduct began as early as 1790 when it was discovered that he had secretly met with Marie Antoinette at the Château de Saint-Cloud on 3 July.
^\5]) The on-screen text incorrectly dates this memory to 1 April 1791.
^\6]) André Chénier finished writing "Le Jeu de Paume" in 1791.
^\7]) Eugène François Vidocq and Charles Cochon de Lapparent appear throughout all of the murder mystery memories. In the initial cutscene for these memories, Lapparent is anachronistically referred to as a police minister by Vidocq. Historically, the Minister of Police position wasn't established in the French government until 1796, and Lapparent served in this position from 3 April 1796 to 16 July 1797. This anachronism creates a potential continuity issue since a large number of the murder mysteries explicitly take place in the years prior. Despite this inaccuracy, it's technically plausible for the murder mysteries to begin in 1791 as during that year there was a short period where Vidocq and Lapparent were both in Paris at the same time. Lapparent was a frequent attendee of the Jacobin Club from late 1789 to around October 1791. Meanwhile, Vidocq was in prison in Paris for a two-week period during the summer or autumn of 1791. Using this evidence, it can be surmised that the initial cutscene and Murder Foretold take place around summer or autumn 1791. The dates for the rest of the murder mysteries are as follows:

• Barber of Seville also happens in 1791 as indicated by a database entry.
• The Red Ghost of the Tuileries happens in 1792 since during the memory, a document indicates that Louis-Michel le Peletier is still alive and the Ministry of Finance is still keeping their offices at the Tuileries Palace, which was no longer the case after the insurrection of 10 August 1792.
• Both The Body in the Brothel and Hot Chocolate to Die For make reference to the Committee of Public Safety, which existed from 1793 to 1795 and was the executive power of the French government during the Reign of Terror. Documents found in The Body in the Brothel indicate that the memory takes place prior to the Marquis de Sade's arrest in December 1793. Hot Chocolate to Die For contains no other specific references so it could take place in either 1793 or 1794.
• Dialogue in The Body Politic indicates that it takes place in 1793 shortly after the execution of Louis XVI.
• The Hand of Science most likely takes place in 1793 prior to the Academy of Sciences being abolished by the National Convention on 8 August.
• The Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat takes place on 14 July 1793, one day after Marat's assassination and the day that Jacques-Louis David began painting "The Death of Marat". Marat's body remained in the tub for another two days so that onlookers could gawk at his corpse before finally being removed on 16 July when the stench became unbearable.
• Documents found in Killed by Science confirm the date to be 13 Thermidor, Year I. On the Gregorian calendar, this date converts to 31 July 1793.
• Both the dialogue and the condition of Aspairt's corpse confirm that The Death of Philibert Aspairt takes place on 3 November 1793, the day that Aspairt disappeared into the Paris catacombs. In real life, his cause of death is unknown and his body wasn't found until 30 April 1804.
• Blind Justice and Equal Justice both take place in August 1794 during Arno's stay in Franciade.
• All remaining murder mysteries give no indication of when they take place. So I've placed them in 1796 or 1797, during Lapparent's term as Minister of Police.

^\8]) After being released from the custody of the Austrian government, Théroigne de Méricourt returned to Paris in January 1792. About a month later, she began working with the Jacobin Club to gather arms and supporters for the approaching war with Austria. In addition to this, Théroigne spent most of the spring of 1792 campaigning for women's rights to bear arms, and on 11 March, she distributed a summons for the formation of a battalion of women. These efforts were ultimately unsuccessful and proved unpopular among the Jacobins who promptly turned on her.
^\9]) The first working prototype of the guillotine was constructed by Tobias Schmidt and tested by Charles-Henri Sanson in April 1792. A week later on 25 April, Nicolas Jacques Pelletier was the first person to be executed by guillotine.
^\10]) In September 1792 during a five-day looting spree, most of the French Crown Jewels were stolen from the Royal Treasury. Most of the jewels were eventually recovered. The Regent and the Hortensia, along with several others, were found hidden in an attic in Paris fifteen months later in December 1793. The Sancy made its way to Russia where it eventually reappeared in 1828 as part of the Rudanovsky collection. The French Blue was eventually smuggled to London where it was recut at some point between 1792 and 1812. The largest remaining piece of the French Blue is now known as the Hope Diamond.
^\11]) Marie-Jeanne Bertin, better known as Rose Bertin, served as Marie Antoinette's personal fashion merchant from 1774 to 1792. During the Revolution, Bertin made several trips to England and Germany in 1791 and 1792, which fueled speculation that she was carrying secret messages to foreign leaders on behalf of Marie Antoinette. Bertin returned to Paris in December 1792 to settle some of her accounts before leaving for London in February 1793. She would not return to France until 1800.
^\12]) The Unity novel indicates that Arno killed la Touche on the same day that Élise finds him in Versailles, as by the following day, Arno and Élise are already back in Paris.
^\13]) The political maneuverings of the Revolution often targeted individuals in academia. By 1793, scientists like Antoine Lavoisier and Pierre-Simon Laplace fell under the scrutiny of the National Convention due to their connections to the ancien régime. As a former member of the ferme générale, Lavoisier was arrested on 30 November on charges of fraud and selling watered-down tobacco. He was later convicted and guillotined on 8 May 1794. On 3 October 1793, a warrant was issued for the arrest of Nicolas de Condorcet after he criticized the Montagnard Constitution. Condorcet went into hiding for several months before fleeing Paris on 25 March 1794. Two days later, he was caught and imprisoned in Bourg-l'Égalité. On 29 March, he was found dead in his cell of an apparent suicide. Jean-Dominique, comte de Cassini was arrested on 14 February 1794 simply for being a noble. He spent several months in prison before finally being released on 5 August 1794. Later that month, he retired to his estate in Thury.
^\14]) A database entry gives the date of the Bande noire auction as 14 Messidor, which converts to 2 July. The French Republican calendar as adopted by the National Convention began implementation on 22 September 1792. Since Fabre d'Églantine, who was guillotined on 5 April 1794, is still alive during this memory, that leaves 2 July 1793 as this memory's only possible date.
^\15]) On 28 July 1793, the National Convention declared 21 deputies, several of whom were Girondists, as traitors. The National Guard, led by François Hanriot, was sent to round up the accused deputies for trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal.
^\16]) After narrowly escaping death during the September Massacres, Pierre Beaumarchais pledged his services to the new French Republic. He traveled to Holland in an attempt to purchase arms for the French Revolutionary Army but failed to complete the transaction. He briefly returned to Paris during the summer of 1793 before leaving the country again to conduct other business. While he was in Germany in late 1793, he was falsely declared an émigré and forced to spend the next two and a half years in exile. Beaumarchais' stay in Paris during the summer of 1793 coincides with Marguerite Brunet's ownership of the Théâtre National which opened on 15 August. Brunet managed the theatre until she was arrested on 15 November 1793.
^\17]) In September 1793 during the Siege of Toulon, Napoleon Bonaparte ordered more artillery to establish another battery. The siege was successful and Toulon was captured by the French Republic. It was during this time that Napoleon's success caught the attention of the Robespierre brothers.
^\18]) During Louis Antoine de Saint-Just's term as president of the National Convention in February 1794, he was noted for wearing unusual-looking clothing. This and his rather extreme political positions resulted in rumors circulating that he wore clothing made from human skin. These rumors were unsubstantiated and most likely invented by his political rivals in an attempt to discredit him.
^\19]) During this memory, a civilian mentions the Supreme Being. The Cult of the Supreme Being was a deistic cult created by Maximilien Robespierre who intended for it to be France's state religion. It was authorized by the National Convention on 7 May 1794 and inaugurated at the Festival of the Supreme Being on 8 June. Its existence was short-lived as Robespierre was executed on 28 July, rendering the cult defunct. The cult was later officially banned by Napoleon on 8 April 1802.
^\20]) Joseph Bara was a 14-year-old French republican drummer boy who was killed by pro-Monarchists at Vendée. He was subsequently hailed as a hero of the Revolution. Historically, Bara's funeral procession to the Panthéon never actually happened. It was originally scheduled for 28 July 1794 but was canceled when Maximilien Robespierre was arrested.
^\21]) After his death in 1778, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was buried in Ermenonville, France. In October 1794, it was decided that his remains would be moved to the Panthéon in Paris. While on their way to Paris, the convoy carrying Rousseau's remains passed through Franciade on 11 October.
^\22]) Jean-Baptiste Rotondo was arrested in 1793 and spent the next several years in prison while awaiting trial. The last mention of Rotondo in the historical record comes from a court document dated 20 December 1794. Rotondo disappears completely after this, most likely dying in prison at some point in 1795.
^\23]) Louis XVII died on 8 June 1795 at the age of 10. He was buried two days later in an unmarked grave at Cimetière Sainte-Marguerite. Shortly after, rumors began circulating that the boy who died was not the Dauphin and that the real Louis XVII was still alive. This created the legend of the Lost Dauphin and over the next several decades, hundreds of people claimed to be the long-lost Louis. It wasn't until 2000 that it was finally proven that the real Louis did die in 1795, based on DNA testing on a heart that was taken from the autopsy of the boy who was buried at Sainte-Marguerite.
^\24]) The Council of Five Hundred began holding their meetings at the Palais Bourbon on 21 January 1798.
^\25]) Though the game doesn't give a date for this cutscene, it can be determined that it takes place in 1808 since that's the year that Napoleon ordered the Temple to be demolished. Napoleon gave the order in a letter he wrote to Joseph Fouché dated 16 March 1808. The building's demolition began immediately and was completed in two years.
^\26]) Marie Anne Lenormand was born in 1772, which actually makes her younger than Arno who was born in 1768. Despite Lenormand's set of memories being available as early as sequence 2, there's ample evidence that they actually take place much later. The game gives her the voice and appearance of an older woman, and depicts her wearing the headscarf that she was known for wearing during her later years (the earliest mention of Lenormand meeting her clients while wearing a wig and headscarf comes from a newspaper dated 1814). Her first memory features unique dialogue that can only be triggered if the memory is played after completing the main story. And the conclusion of the three Flamel's Secret memories where Arno hands her the Elixir of Life seems to be a direct reference to the claims of immortality that she made about herself towards the end of her life. Though Lenormand did live a relatively long life, she was most certainly mortal, dying at the age of 71 in 1843.
^\27]) Jean-François Champollion began studying the Rosetta Stone in 1808. Over the years, Champollion continued his research until finally making a breakthrough on 14 September 1822 when he was able to identify the phonetic values of individual hieroglyphs using clues from the Greek and Egyptian inscriptions on the Philae obelisk. Champollion quickly documented his findings and published them on 27 September 1822.

I have been wanting to try this stuff forever, I can remember reviews from ryomagazine.com comparing the smell of perique tobacco to dog shit, so I knew I had to try it at some point! 😂
Guess what? He was totally right. There is a tiny bit of a poopy/manure/dog shit smell to it. It would be about 2% of the total bouquet, let's say. Appearance-wise it looks very similar to many other types of RYO tobacco, with a select few dark stands of perique here and there. What was really disappointing is that the cut on this stuff is extremely fine. There are no long strands whatsoever, it's just loose flaky tobacco. I was kind of worried that it would not work well in my injector, but I get pretty good results. I don't know American Spirit date codes but I did include a picture of the only code I could find on the package, maybe somebody knows. It could be old, it could be new but either way I'm making it work. This would absolutely no way work for hand rolling at all.
The moisture content was still good and the package was well sealed. it was on the low end of what I like my tobacco to be, so I left it in a small plastic container with a hydrating sponge overnight and that improved it's workability. Other than the tiny dog crap smell, it's a really really REALLY clean smelling Virginia and possibly a little bit of burley. I've had American Spirit cigarettes before, and the smell took me back immediately to the last time I had a pack. Absolutely amazing, this is the best smelling cigarette tobacco I have had in years. It is very similar to a factory pack, and I imagine would smell identical to the black pack / perique blend cigarettes, which I've never had due to my obvious limited availability in Canadadadada.
The smokeability on the stuff is great, just fantastic. Very flavourful and smooth, if you pack it nice and tight it will burn as long as a factory American Spirit cigarette. Because of the small cut it will tend to ash itself and might make a bit of a mess if you're smoking inside. If they could make this stuff in a much longer shag cut, or at least a little chunkier that could make it easier to handle. I'm going to lose at least 10% of the package to shake and powder, which is really unfortunate, but I won't cry about it too much. 😞
For me, the flavour and aroma out of the package is a 10, and the rating only goes up when you smoke it. The loose and flaky cut really cuts a few points off, so I hope this is just an older package or a fluke that's been handled a bunch of times and started to break down before I got my hands on it perhaps??
Would I buy it again? I would commit mortal sins, without shame or remorse to get my hands on this stuff on a regular basis. Off the charts!

It was late Sunday night, after midnight; so, early Monday morning. I had been boozing it up pretty good all night. Fortunately, the cocaine kept my mind sharp. I was enjoying a nice smoke, a Cohiba habano, I picked last week when I was in Havana on business. It tasted excellent! I was also on my iPhone checking my stocks in the Asian markets. Oh, and I was also banging this brown Asian chick I met a couple hours ago at a gas station, pumping her doggy style on my iguana skin sofa.
It was at this time that my Bigfoot hunting partner, Graveyard Tom, called me. I answered. Tom said, “Hey, Rod. What’s up?” I said, “Aww, not much, buddy. Just checking my stocks while enjoying a Cuban. You know. Oh, and I am pumping this brown chick. I am fucking the shit out of her!! Her uterus is going to be DESTROYED when I am done with her!!!” Tom responded, “Umm hmmm … Well look, I just got a Sasquatch report.” This got my attention.
It seems that no less than an hour prior to Graveyard Tom calling me, the old widow Elvira, who lives up on Hell Top Mountain, was attacked and eaten alive by a big ass Bigfoot! Tom heard the chatter on his police scanner. Only, they do not say “Bigfoot”. They speak in code, referring to the creature as a n****r over the airwaves.
Apparently, what happened was that this particular Bigfoot busted into Elvira’s house, grabbed her, ripped her head off, then had sex with the neck hole before eating her. Real gruesome shit. Of course, our local PD won’t do anything. See, old Elvira was a witch. I am not talking about Wicca either. That crazy old bitch was was Satan’s bride. Everybody was scared of her. The police are probably glad she is gone. Rumor has it she is a widow because she threw her mortal husband on the Weber then ate him.
Once I was finished with the Asian chick I grabbed my load-out gear and we hit the road to meet up with Tom. I took along Kim Dong Ho, figuring we could use her as Bigfoot bait. See, my gig is to kill one of these monsters and then sell it to China for a huge payout. The way I understand it, the Chinese want a Bigfoot body for experimentation purposes so they can develop a way to enhance the taste of their Sesame Chicken sauce. It’s probably just a bullshit cover story, but I don’t give a shit. I need some money so I can fix my old black Bandit Trans Am and get it back on the road.
We arrived at the rendezvous at 5:15 am Monday morning. Tom told me that I looked like shit. Then he asked why the Asian chick was with me. I told him, causing him to wince. See, old Graveyard Tom is not nearly as cool as his name implies. He is a God-fearing Protestant working man with a family, while I am none of those things. But we work well together because he does not cause me any problems and I am able to do things his morality and upbringing will not allow him to do. When you are hunting Sasquatch you need every edge you can get.
Old Tom got into my Hummer and the 3 of us took off toward Elvira’s homestead. Tom was still cringing over using the Asian chick as bait, but he knew there was no talking me out of it. I tried to convince Tom to let the chick blow him on the ride up to Hell Top so he could relax, but he refused. So I yanked her upfront with us and had her blow ME while I drove. This distressed Tom, so he looked away and sang Bible hymns, which I later drowned out with my moans of carnal satisfaction.
Upon arrival at Elvira’s old run-down shack I took the Asian chick and tied her to a tree. Then we examined the home. There was no yellow tape or anything else to suggest that the police had even been there, save for the recent tire tracks we both noticed. There was a huge hole in the front of the house that was obviously caused by the beast.
We both looked at the huge, gaping opening. Tom asked me if I noticed anything strange about the hole in the house. I said, “It opens outwardly. That is not how the Sasquatch entered the house. It exited the house through this opening.” Tom agreed.
We entered the home. We searched every nook and cranny. Nothing eluded our observation. There was a bunch of spooky satanic and witchcraft shit. But there were other things too. For example, there was dark brown animal hair everywhere, especially on the floor. But there was no evidence of any pets. She had a very ornate bedroom that centered focus upon her bed. But her bed was merely an old smelly mattress laying on the floor. And the place smelled really bad, especially the bedroom. It smelled like a mix of Arby’s roast beef and a yeast infection. It was such a horrible smell that both Tom and I were starting to heave when we decided to go back outside.
Once we got some fresh air in our lungs we walked over to my Hummer and leaned up against it. Old Tom got himself a chaw of tobacco in his cheek. I casually pulled out my coke bag and did 3 lines. Then we shared our thoughts on what we just saw. I went first.
“That damn witch was fucking that Sasquatch”, I said. Tom responded, “WHAT?!?”, he asked, his voice shrouded in shock and disbelief. I continued. “Think about it, Tom. All that hair everywhere. The bed. All the dried jizz stains on the wall… Elvira was engaging in some beastly love with that mangy critter. The Bigfoot was her boyfriend”, I said. My logic was unassailable. Tom had to concede.
Then Tom asked me why the Bigfoot would have killed her. I responded, “I am glad you asked. See, you would think that a big old mangy Sasquatch would have a huge wang, right? It would probably tear up a normal sized woman like Elvira and put her in the ER. But it did not. Therefore, it is fair to assume that the beast had a little dick.”
I was on fire!! My spot-on analysis was impeccable. Tom’s jaw had hit the ground from the truth I was hitting him with. I continued.
“So, like with any relationship between male and female, at some point the chick is going to get all hormonal and start bitching at her mate. It’s natural. But that damn Bigfoot is not used to being spoke to that way. So he went ape-shit”, I said.
Tom responded, “But Rod, what does that have to do with the monster’s little dick?” I told Tom, “I’m glad you asked!”
I continued, saying “See, we know that witch was going to turn into a bitch at some point in the relationship. They all do. So when she did, the obvious target for her to attack is the Bigfoot’s dick size. I can hear her now. Can’t you? ‘Oh, you are just a smelly ape with a little dick. Blah, blah, blah.’ She probably drove the Sasquatch into a towering, animalistic rage, causing it to rip her head off, rape the corpse, then eat her. After that, he angrily knocked out a huge hole in the front of the house and stormed off.”
BAM! Mystery solved. Tom took off his fedora and scratched his head. Then he said, “Well, hell, Rod. Maybe you are right. I just figured she let it inside through the back door thinking it was Satan’s spawn or some stupid shit.”
Tom knew I was right, and now there is a pissed off booger stalking our woods. We had to act fast before it walked up on an unsuspecting hunter or farmer and rips their heads off. I told Tom to grab his shit while I fetched the little ching-chong for bait. Bad that turned out to be a bad idea.
When saw the mess it stopped me in my tracks. I had walked over to the tree where I tied her up. There lay her body, head ripped off and neck hole desecrated. Holy shit! We did not even hear the attack!!
I called to Tom over my shoulder, “Hey, Tom! You in the mood for some chopped suey? Ha ha ha ha ha!!! Because I got some for you over here!!!” Tom was not amused when he saw the bloody mess. He said, “How the fuck did it do … THIS … without us hearing it?!?” I knew Tom was serious because he was swearing. I said, “I don’t know, dude. But I’m figuring we better back the fuck out of here and regroup before we end up like the former cum dumpster there.”
Tom agreed and we high-tailed it out of there. Neither of us said anything on the drive back to Tom’s truck at the rendezvous. Even when we got there the two of us sat in silence for the moment. Of course, I wanted to get out of there and go get some breakfast. But I stayed silent out of respect for Tom’s delicate sensibilities. Then about 30 seconds later I said, “Goddamn, Tom, I’m hungry! Let’s go get some breakfast!” Tom opened the Hummer door without saying a word and puked on the ground. I’m thinking, “Fuck. I’m hungry too. Now I got to deal with Tom”.
Old Tom was pretty shaken, so I drove him home, telling him we would retrieve his truck later. After I dropped him off I went through the drive-thru window at McDonald’s and got 2 sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits and a coke.
By now it was going on 9:00 am, the time of my next court-ordered AA meeting. So I scarfed down my food and drink on the drive over there. “Poor Tom”, I was thinking. He wants to hunt Bigfoot but he is just a big, fat pussy.
As I was sitting through the stupid fucking AA meeting I resolved to go after this Bigfoot on my own. Fuck Tom and his pussified tendencies. I can handle that motherfucker myself. It would not be the first time. Hell, back in 2003 I took out a 10’ tall Sasquatch with my bare hands. I choked out that sumbitch! I had that motherfucker!! But it was too big to haul out of the woods. I had to go back to my truck for my chainsaw so I could cut it up into pieces. But when I returned the damn beast was gone!! I knew I had killed it. I believe some of its kin retrieved the corpse, then took it off somewhere to bury it, or fuck it.
During a break in the stupid AA meeting I poured the contents of my flask, Kentucky sipping whiskey, into the empty McDonald’s cup I had with me. While sipping on the said sweet Appalachian Mountain nectar. I made some notes for the upcoming hunt. In the end I decided to bring in a couple of heavy hitters I know, just to ensure a successful mission. Why be careless?
The first dude is an acquaintance of mine named Murder. We met in a Columbian prison where I had been sent to get rid of me after I had been double crossed by some local middlemen. Murder was in prison too and awaiting execution, for trying to execute a contract to whack a certain someone in local politics. We broke out of there together during a prison riot, then blended in with some swarthy migrants headed to the American border.
The second guy is named Blood Rag. He’s a mute. The Asian gang he was in cut out his tongue for fucking the gang leader’s wife. Apparently, he excelled in tonguing twats. When I met him he was delivering packages for Amazon. He’s a real stud, and a pussy magnet. He just cannot work the old oral magic he once could. I met him when he delivered my set of bamboo napkin holders. He silently strolled up behind me in my driveway while I was dismembering a problem in the back of my pickup truck. Blood Rag saw what I was doing and got me to stop. Being Asian, he then pulled out some fancy Ginsu knives and made short work of it. What would have taken me an hour only took him 5 minutes!! We quickly became good friends.
The AA f*ggot caught a whiff of my whiskey and said something to me about it, which unfortunately caused me to stomp the shit out of him. As everybody was running off and crying for help I said to myself, “Fuck this shit. I got more important shit going on.”
I left the building and set off to find Murder and Blood Rag. Then we are going back to Hell Top to murder that Sasquatch.

say I'm looking at the effects of mother's education on under-5 mortality, and I've included those two variables, and some controls such as prenatal care, tobacco use, immunizations of babies, access to clean water, population density etc...
what are some basic things i should do on stata e.g. tests? I've done the hausman test to test for random/fixed effects, test for heteroskedasticity etc. what else can i do to be more thorough?

FRIDAY

• Brewgaloo, Fayetteville Street, Raleigh
• Durham Bulls vs. Scranton/WB, Durham Bulls Athletic Park, Durham
• NEEDTOBREATHE: The Caves World Tour, Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek, Raleigh
• Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the North Carolina Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, Raleigh
• Carolina Ballet presents: Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2, Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh
• Wheels Roller Skate Party at Durham Central Park, for Public Art Engagement, Durham Central Park, Durham
• Carolina Dance Theatre presents COMMUNITY, Town of Cary, Cary
• Culture At the Mic – Poetry and Music Showcase, CAM Raleigh, Raleigh
• Bluey's Big Play, DPAC, Durham
• Trap Bingo, The Ritz, Raleigh
• Simon Fraser, Room 861 at Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh
• Bruce Bruce, Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh
• Members Only Plant Sale, JC Raulston Arboretum at North Carolina State University, Raleigh
• Mordecai Heirloom Plant Sale, Mordecai Historic Park, Raleigh
• North Carolina State University vs. Ball State Baseball, Doak Field (North Carolina State University), Raleigh
• Duke Baseball vs Florida State, Jack Coombs Field, Durham
• El Futuro's 20th Anniversary Benefit Luncheon, Durham Convention Center, Durham
• Into The Woods, Theatre In The Park (Ira David Wood III Pullen Park Theatre), Raleigh
• The Night Rider Presents: Gnarly Sacs/The Hoots/AndrewWilco's American Band, The Night Rider, Raleigh
• Big Jay Oakerson, Raleigh Improv, Cary
• Carolina Mudcats vs. Salem Red Sox, Fice County Stadium, Zebulon
• HerbFest, Festival Park, Wake Forest
• NCCU Jazz Festival, NCCU - various locations, Durham
• LIVE! From The Fayetteville Street Corridor: Cameron Elyse's Divine Nine Legacy Memoir Exhibition, Lyda Moore Merrick Gallery at the Hayti Heritage Center, Durham
• RetroNoir Film Series, Carolina Theatre, Durham
• DJ Night with Three Count Records, The Glass Jug Beer Lab, Durham
• Eric Williams Quintet, Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham
• Three Dog Night, The Carolina Theatre, Durham
• Fullsteam Karaoke, Fullsteam Brewing, Durham
• Doric String Quartet, Baldwin Auditorium, Durham
• Stereo Reveries, DSSOLVR Durham, Durham
• Max Lane w/ Brian Revels, Rubies on Five Points, Durham
• The Wiley Fosters, The Blue Note Grill, Durham
• Afrobeats Night @ Unscripted, Unscripted Durham, Part of JdV by Hyatt, Durham
• Taylor’s Version: A Swiftie Dance Party, Motorco Music Hall, Durham
• Gorgon City, The Fruit, Durham
• Last Fridays & the Art Walk!, Downtown, Hillsborough
• Set For The Fall, Local 506, Chapel Hill
• Podcast at Cat's Cradle, Cat's Cradle, Carrboro
• Charanga Carolina, James & Susan Moeser Auditorium in Hill Hall, Chapel Hill
• Apollo Remastered: A High Definition Presentation by Andy Saunders, Morehead Planetarium & Science Center, Chapel Hill
• Carolina Dance Theatre presents COMMUNITY, Cary Arts Center, Cary
• Paint & Sip, Carollock Farms, Willow Springs

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SATURDAY

• Brewgaloo, Fayetteville Street, Raleigh
• Sandlot Revival, Historic Durham Athletic Park, Durham
• Durham Bulls vs. Scranton/WB, Durham Bulls Athletic Park, Durham
• Cook's Mill Whiskey Supper, Angus Barn, Brier Creek
• Beats n Bars Festival Block Party 2024, American Tobacco Campus, Durham
• 2nd Annual Adult Recess Festival, Fred Fletcher Park, Raleigh
• Party Y2K!, The Pinhook, Durham
• Appalachian Road Show, Cary Arts Center, Cary
• CaryLive!: Alejandro Aranda, Downtown Cary Park, Cary
• NC Courage vs Seattle Reign, WakeMed Soccer Park, Cary
• 2024 Music at the Museum Festival, featuring Tift Merritt and more!, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh
• Raulston Blooms and Plant Sale, JC Raulston Arboretum at North Carolina State University, Raleigh
• Master Class: Sirena Huang, North Carolina Chamber Music Institute, Raleigh
• LG Jordan Oil & Gas Co. 100-Year Open House Celebration, LG Jordan Oil and Gas Co., Apex
• Mordecai Heirloom Plant Sale, Mordecai Historic Park, Raleigh
• HerbFest, Festival Park, Wake Forest
• North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble (NCYTE) presents "Regeneration", The Carolina Theatre, Durham
• Simon Fraser, Room 861 at Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh
• Bruce Bruce, Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh
• Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the North Carolina Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, Raleigh
• Carolina Ballet presents: Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2, Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh
• 22nd Annual Birdhouse Competition, JC Raulston Arboretum at North Carolina State University, Raleigh
• 3 Bluebirds Farm Feather Fest 2024, 3 Bluebirds Farm, Garner
• Dueling Dinosaurs Grand Opening, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh
• Acorns and Iron Family Health & Wellness Event, Brier Creek Park, Brier Creek
• Lamp, Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh
• Mozart's Requiem, Westwood Baptist Church, Cary
• North Carolina State University vs. Ball State Baseball, Doak Field (North Carolina State University), Raleigh
• Rising Stars, Jones Auditorium at Meredith College, Raleigh
• Spring Daze Arts & Crafts Festival, Fred G. Bond Metro Park and Boathouse, Cary
• The 11th Annual Festival of Legends, Jefferson L. Sugg Farm at Bass Lake, Holly Springs
• The 35th Annual Oakwood Garden Tour, Historic Oakwood, Raleigh
• The Postal Service & Death Cab For Cutie: Give Up & Transatlanticism, Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek, Raleigh
• The Raleigh Concert Band Spring Concert, LeRoy Martin Magnet Middle School, Raleigh
• The Taylor Party: The Ts Dance Party, The Ritz, Raleigh
• Unleashed’s Spring Fling Dog & Cat Fundraiser, Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary
• Big Jay Oakerson, Raleigh Improv, Cary
• Carolina Mudcats vs. Salem Red Sox, Five County Stadium, Zebulon
• NCCU Jazz Festival, NCCU - various locations, Durham
• Hometown (Inherited): Ten Year Retrospective, The Fruit, Durham
• RetroNoir Film Series, Carolina Theatre, Durham
• Bluey's Big Play, DPAC, Durham
• Duke Baseball vs Florida State, Jack Coombs Field, Durham
• Bull City Yoga Festival, ZincHouse Winery & Brewery, Durham
• Durham Center for Senior Life 75th Anniversary Gala, Durham Center for Senior Life, Durham
• Angels Among Us 5k and Walk of HOPE, Duke University, Durham
• Bull City Madness, Recity Network, Durham
• 159th Anniversary Surrender Commemoration, Bennett Place, Durham
• Old North Durham Art Walk, Old North Durham, Durham
• High Performance Home Tour, Throughout the Triangle, Triangle
• Poetry in the Park, Eno River State Park, Durham
• Beats & Blooms, DSSOLVR, Durham
• Tall Glass and Sara Jean Kelley, Huron Stage Music Venue, Durham
• JZM Brazilian Jazz Trio, Succotash Southern & Creole Kitchen, Durham
• Ghettorauchi Presents: Glorious Laughter, Durty Bull Brewing Co, Durham
• ADF Showings at Scripps: Jasmine Powell & Anthony Otto Nelson, Jr., ADF's Samuel H. Scripps Studios, Durham
• Waynard & Rainbow Full of Sound, The Blue Note Grill, Durham
• Live and Lux 1 Year Anniversary Party, Uncle Jessies, Raleigh
• Bull City Press Presents, Mettlesome Theatre, Durham
• Angela Bingham Trio, Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham
• Metal Show: An Offering to Bragi, Moon Dog Meadery, Durham
• PARADOX: the essence of early rave, The Fruit, Durham
• UNC Baseball vs. Virginia Tech, Boshamer Stadium, Chapel Hill
• Pnltybx, Local 506, Chapel Hill
• Northside Festival, Northside Neighborhood, Chapel Hill
• Magical Hill Festival & Fairy House Contest, Chapel Hill Community Park, Chapel Hill
• Farm Interest Tour of Chapel Hill's LGBTQ Community Farm, Wildwoods Community Farm, Chapel Hill

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SUNDAY

• The 11th Annual Festival of Legends, Jefferson L. Sugg Farm at Bass Lake, Holly Springs
• The 35th Annual Oakwood Garden Tour, Historic Oakwood Garden Club, Raleigh
• Durham Bulls vs. Scranton/WB, Durham Bulls Athletic Park, Durham
• Back to the Future Fashion Show, Durham Armory, Durham
• Renaissance Brunch Presents: The HIVE Hoedown & Brunch, Motorco Music Hall, Durham
• Soul Sunday w/ DJ Soul, Congress Social Bar, Durham
• Rooftop Yoga, The Willard, Raleigh
• ALOK: A Work in Progress, Raleigh Improv, Raleigh
• Carolina Ballet presents: Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2, Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh
• City Nature Challenge, Historic Yates Mill County Park, Raleigh
• Flight Attendant, The Pour House Music Hall & Record Shop, Raleigh
• Forest Commons Spring Art Show, Brown House Raleigh, Raleigh
• Four Seasons Signature Series: The Brilliance of Five, Hayes Barton United Methodist Church, Raleigh
• North Carolina State University vs. Ball State Baseball, Doak Field (North Carolina State University), Raleigh
• Raleigh Camerata Early Music Ensemble: Music of the Spanish Baroque, Cary First United Methodist Church, Cary
• The Night Rider Presents: Johnny & the Man Kids, The Night Rider, Raleigh
• YMCA Kindergarten Celebration, YMCA Camp Kanata, Wake Forest
• Carolina Mudcats vs. Salem Red Sox, Five County Stadium, Zebulon
• HerbFest, Festival Park, Wake Forest
• High Performance Home Tour, Throughout the Triangle, Triangle
• NCCU Jazz Festival, NCCU - various locations, Durham
• RetroNoir Film Series, Carolina Theatre, Durham
• Duke Baseball vs Florida State, Jack Coombs Field, Durham
• Bluey's Big Play, DPAC, Durham
• Sandlot Revival, Historic Durham Athletic Park, Durham
• Jazz Brunch at Lula & Sadie's, Lula & Sadie's, Durham
• Durham Underground Market, Durham Central Park, Durham
• Soul Cocina cooking class, Il Laboratori by Melina's pasta, Durham
• Pancake Pop-Up + Prints-4-Prince Pre-Party!, LouElla Wine, Beer & Beverage, Durham
• Sip and Solder Stained Glass Workshop at Hi-Wire Brewing, Hi-Wire Brewing Durham, Durham
• Trinity Park Garden Tour: Celebrating Nature in City Gardens & Landscapes, Trinity Park Gazebo
• Duke Chapel Evensong Singers, Duke University Chapel, Durham
• Seed Theory Permaculture Mini-Series, Glass Jug Downtown, Durham
• ADF Showings at Scripps: Jasmine Powell & Anthony Otto Nelson, Jr., ADF's Samuel H. Scripps Studios, Durham
• Durty Bull Car Care Class, Durty Bull Brewing Co, Durham
• Candlelight: A Tribute to Queen, Hayti Heritage Center, Durham
• The Conjure’s 7th Anniversary Party!, The Pinhook, Durham
• J. Samuel Hammond Carillon Recital Series: Jonathan Lehrer, Duke Chapel Quad, Durham
• Chili Cook-Off for Living Wages, Carrboro Town Commons, Carrboro
• UNC Baseball vs. Virginia Tech, Boshamer Stadium, Chapel Hill
• UNC Baroque Ensemble & Consort of Viols, Person Recital Hall, Chapel Hill
• The Westend Bazaar, Parking Lot, Chapel Hill
• The Community Dinner, McDougle School Cafetorium, Chapel Hill
• Aaron Lee Tasjan, Cat's Cradle, Carrboro
• The Triangle Wind Ensemble Presents: LIGHTSCAPES, Cary Arts Center, Cary

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DAY: APRIL 25 2024
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• 4-25-2024NEW SCHOOL LUNCH RULES TARGET ADDED SUGARS, SALT School lunches will soon contain less added sugars and salt under new nutrition standards announced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday. “We all share the goal of helping children reach their full potential,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a news release announcing the changes. “Like teachers, classrooms, books and computers, nutritious school […] Read More
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• 4-25-2024USE OF ALCOHOL AND E-CIGARETTES AMONG YOUTH ‘ALARMING’: WHO The widespread use of alcohol and e-cigarettes among adolescents is “alarming”, according to a report released on Thursday by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) European branch, which recommended measures to limit access. Based on survey data from 280,000 young people aged 11, 13 and 15 in Europe, Central Asia and Canada, the WHO said it […] Read More
• 4-25-2024NOW HE’S TRYING TO CHANGE THE INDUSTRY For the past year, police Detective Tim Lillard has spent most of his waking hours unofficially investigating his wife’s death. The question has never been exactly how Ann Picha-Lillard died on Nov. 19, 2022: She succumbed to respiratory failure after an infection put too much strain on her weakened lungs. She was 65. For Tim […] Read More
• 4-25-2024TYPE OF SURGERY AND RISK LEVEL HAVE SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ON COMPLICATIONS AND DEATH IN ELDERLY PATIENTS Frailty is a well-established predictor of complications and death after surgery. However, patients over 65 who undergo a high-risk operation in the emergency room are at significantly increased risk of postoperative complications and death in comparison to the same patients who are assessed solely on their level of frailty, according to a study published in […] Read More
• 4-25-2024STUDY SHOWS HOW ADAPTING SUGAR METABOLISM STARTS IN THE BRAIN The mitochondria in the liver change their shape as soon as food is perceived. The image shows an electron micrograph of the mitochondria in liver cells. Credit: S. Henscke/Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research What happens in the body when we are hungry and see and smell food? A team of researchers at the Max […] Read More
• 4-25-2024WHAT IS HEALTH EQUITY? HOW THE IDEA GREW—AND WHY IT MATTERS It’s an idea as old as modern medicine and as new as the latest medical research. No matter how you look at health equity, the conversation involves contradictions. But at its core are fundamental questions about illness and health, say experts who have watched the conversation move from the fringes of scholarly debate to the […] Read More
• 4-25-2024CREATINE FOUND TO IMPROVE COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE DURING SLEEP DEPRIVATION Creatine administration led to significant improvements in word memory task (WMT), speed in processing time in WMT, language, logic, and numeric tasks, […] Read More
• 4-25-2024MEAT AND DAIRY ALTERNATIVES SHOULD BE CLEARLY LABELED TO HELP CONSUMERS MAKE HEALTHY CHOICES, SAYS STUDY Consumers need clearer information about the nutritional content and processing of meat and dairy alternatives when they are buying food, according to a new study. Overall, the research from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) found that plant-based alternatives are more environmentally friendly than animal-based products, and can be healthier. Read More
• 4-25-2024STUDY FINDS VITAMIN D ALTERS MOUSE GUT BACTERIA TO GIVE BETTER CANCER IMMUNITYResearchers have found that vitamin D encourages the growth of a type of gut bacteria in mice which improves immunity to cancer. Reported in Science, the researchers found that mice given a […] Read More
• 4-25-2024USING AI TO IMPROVE DIAGNOSIS OF RARE GENETIC DISORDERS Diagnosing rare Mendelian disorders is a labor-intensive task, even for experienced geneticists. Investigators at Baylor College of Medicine are trying to make the process more efficient using artificial intelligence. The team developed a machine learning system called AI-MARRVEL (AIM) to help prioritize potentially causative variants for Mendelian disorders. Read More
• 4-25-2024STUDY ARGUES TRAFFIC NOISE IS A NOVEL RISK FACTOR FOR CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASESAn international group of noise experts r have analyzed recent epidemiological data and found strong evidence that transportation noise […]
  
• 4-25-2024PERINATAL SUBSTANCE USE MAY SHAPE HOW STRONGLY MOTHERS FEEL TOWARD INFANTS
  
• 4-25-2024INTENSIVE BLOOD PRESSURE TREATMENT MAY HELP SOME MIDDLE-AGED WOMEN WITH TYPE 2 DIABETES, EARLY-ONSET HYPERTENSION
  
• 4-25-2024MORTALITY UP FOR BREAST CANCER DIAGNOSED FIVE TO 10 YEARS AFTER CHILDBIRTH
  
• 4-25-2024SHOULDER SURGEONS SHOULD RETHINK A COMMON PRACTICE, NEW STUDY SUGGESTS
  
• 4-25-2024STUDY REPORTS NEW COMPOUND THAT HALTS REPLICATION OF COVID BY TARGETING ‘MAC-1’ PROTEIN IN CELL MODELS
  
• 4-25-2024STUDY REVEALS RACIAL DISPARITIES IN COVID-19 TESTING DELAYS AMONG HEALTH CARE WORKERS
  
• 4-25-2024WATCHDOG GROUP SAYS US FOOD RECALLS ROSE AGAIN LAST YEAR
  
• 4-25-2024FDA APPROVES NEW ANTIBIOTIC AGAINST UTIS
  
• 4-25-2024AI’S PIVOTAL ROLE IN ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION MANAGEMENT
  
• 4-25-2024TO PROTECT HUMAN HEALTH, WE MUST PROTECT THE EARTH’S HEALTH
  
• 4-25-2024SWITCH TO ACETAMINOPHEN LEADS TO FEWER UNPLANNED INTUBATIONS AND IMPROVED MORTALITY IN THE NICU
  
• 4-25-2024MICROBIOTA B. FRAGILIS-SECRETED BFT-1 PROMOTES BREAST CANCER CELL STEMNESS AND CHEMORESISTANCE: STUDY
  
• 4-25-2024STUDY RECOMMENDS EXPOSING DEAF CHILDREN TO SIGN LANGUAGE BEFORE AND AFTER COCHLEAR IMPLANTATION
  
• 4-25-2024STUDY UNCOVERS DRUG TARGET IN A PROTEIN COMPLEX REQUIRED FOR ACTIVATION OF NF-?B
  
• 4-25-2024AI-POWERED ‘DEEP MEDICINE’ COULD TRANSFORM HEALTH CARE IN THE NHS AND RECONNECT STAFF WITH THEIR PATIENTS
  
• 4-25-2024HOLDOUT STATES CONSIDER EXPANDING MEDICAID—WITH WORK REQUIREMENTS
  
• 4-25-2024PERCEPTION OF SOCIAL ISOLATION AND LONELINESS CAN INCREASE DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS
  
• 4-25-2024LIVING AT HIGHER ALTITUDES IN INDIA LINKED TO INCREASED RISK OF CHILDHOOD STUNTING
  
• 4-25-2024ANTIMICROBIAL-RESISTANT HOSPITAL INFECTIONS REMAIN AT LEAST 12% ABOVE PRE-PANDEMIC LEVELS, STUDY FINDS
  
• 4-25-2024IMPROVING HEALTH COMMUNICATION TO SAVE LIVES DURING EPIDEMICS
  
• 4-25-2024RESEARCHER DISCUSSES IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATING TO THE PUBLIC DURING A PANDEMIC, AND THE PERSONAL RISK IT CAN ENTAIL
  
• 4-25-2024ANTIBIOTIC USE IN PATIENTS HOSPITALIZED WITH COVID-19 APPEARS TO HAVE NO BENEFICIAL EFFECT ON CLINICAL OUTCOMES
  
• 4-25-2024NEW RESEARCH FINDS PAID FAMILY LEAVE HELPS PREVENT CHILD ABUSE
  
• 4-25-2024CANCER SURVIVORS REPORTING LONELINESS EXPERIENCE HIGHER MORTALITY RISK, STUDY SHOWS
  
• 4-25-2024BETTER HEART HEALTH AT MIDLIFE LINKED TO LESS COGNITIVE DECLINE IN BLACK WOMEN
  
• 4-25-2024TARGETING SPECIFIC PROTEIN REGIONS OFFERS A NEW TREATMENT APPROACH IN MEDULLOBLASTOMA
  
• 4-25-2024WOMEN CAREGIVERS ARE STRESSED; TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE COULD HELP
  
• 4-25-2024ALZHEIMER’S AND ARAB AMERICANS—MORE RESEARCH NEEDED
  
• 4-25-2024NEW TOOL HELPS IDENTIFY BABIES AT HIGH RISK FOR RSV
  
• 4-25-2024THREE MORE AFRICAN NATIONS ROLL OUT MALARIA VACCINE
  
• 4-25-2024A TURN-KEY BRAIN NETWORK AND GRAPH THEORY ANALYSIS PLATFORM BASED ON MRI DATA
  
• 4-25-2024STUDY REVEALS EMOTIONAL TURMOIL EXPERIENCED AFTER DOG-THEFT IS LIKE THAT OF A CAREGIVER LOSING A CHILD
  
• 4-25-2024ELUCIDATING THE COMPLEXITIES OF MATERNAL MICROBIOMES AND PREGNANCY DISORDERS
  
• 4-25-2024STUDY CONFIRMS EFFECTIVENESS OF BIVALENT COVID-19 VACCINE
  
• 4-25-20242 MILLION BOTTLES OF PERRIER ORDERED DESTROYED BY FRENCH AGENCY
  
• 4-25-2024STUDY REPORTS CHLAMYDIA AND GONORRHEA MORE LIKELY TO BE TREATED PER CDC GUIDELINES IN CERTAIN POPULATIONS
  
• 4-25-2024JOB LOSSES HELP EXPLAIN INCREASE IN DRUG DEATHS AMONG BLACK AMERICANS
  
• 4-25-2024THE ROLE OF RESIDENT MACROPHAGES
  
• 4-25-2024PUBLICLY FUNDED FERTILITY PROGRAM LINKED TO A DECREASE IN RATE OF MULTIFETAL PREGNANCY
  
• 4-25-2024PREMATURE MORTALITY HIGHER AMONG SEXUAL MINORITY WOMEN, STUDY FINDS
  
• 4-25-2024WITH HYBRID BRAINS, THESE MICE SMELL LIKE A RAT
  
• 4-25-2024NATIONAL TRIAL SAFELY SCALES BACK PRESCRIBING OF A POWERFUL ANTIPSYCHOTIC FOR THE ELDERLY
  
• 4-25-2024DIFFERENTIATING CEREBRAL CORTICAL NEURONS TO DECIPHER MOLECULAR MECHANISMS OF NEURODEGENERATION
  
• 4-25-2024NEW MOUSE MODEL ENABLES IDENTIFICATION OF CHEMOKINE PRODUCERS AND SENSORS
  
• 4-25-2024RURAL JAILS TURN TO COMMUNITY HEALTH WORKERS TO HELP THE NEWLY RELEASED SUCCEED
  
• 4-25-2024TOBACCO SMOKING REDUCES THE ODDS OF PSORIASIS IMPROVEMENT, STUDY FINDS
  
• 4-25-2024NEARSIGHTEDNESS IS AT EPIDEMIC LEVELS—AND THE PROBLEM BEGINS IN CHILDHOOD
  
• 4-25-2024NEW ZENDAYA TENNIS FILM REVIEWED BY AN EXPERT IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COMPETITION
  
• 4-25-2024JAPANESE STUDY FINDS INCREASE IN HOME DEATH RATIO DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
  
• 4-25-2024TREATMENT FOR DEADLY SUPERBUG C. DIFF MAY BE WEAKENING
  
• 4-25-2024CANCER DRUG TRIAL PROVIDES LESSONS FOR FUTURE
  
• 4-25-2024DRUG, ALCOHOL ABUSE GOES UNTREATED IN MANY EX-PRISONERS
  
• 4-25-2024SCIENTIST WHO HELPED DESIGN R21 ANTI-MALARIA VACCINE REFLECTS ON 30 YEARS OF RESEARCH, AND WHAT IT PROMISES
  
• 4-25-2024CD7 CAR T-CELL THERAPY, STEM-CELL TRANSPLANT BENEFICIAL FOR CD7-POSITIVE TUMORS
  
• 4-25-2024NANOMATERIAL THAT MIMICS PROTEINS COULD BE BASIS FOR NEW NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASE TREATMENTS
  
• 4-25-2024STUDY FINDS RNA MODIFICATION IS RESPONSIBLE FOR DISRUPTION OF MITOCHONDRIAL PROTEIN SYNTHESIS IN ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE
  
• 4-25-2024GLP1 RECEPTOR AGONISTS DO NOT UP RISK FOR COMPLICATIONS AFTER EMERGENCY SURGERY
  
• 4-25-2024BLOCKING GENE MAY HALT GROWTH OF BREAST CANCER CELLS
  
• 4-25-2024FUTURE PARENTS MORE LIKELY TO GET RSV VACCINE WHEN PREGNANT IF AWARE RSV CAN BE A SERIOUS ILLNESS IN INFANTS: STUDY
  
• 4-25-2024THEY PARTLY DEVELOP FROM SAME GENE MODULE
  
• 4-25-2024ASTRAZENECA PROFIT UP ON STRONG SALES OF CANCER DRUGS
  
• 4-25-2024BIRD FLU IN HUMANS? EXPERTS SEE LITTLE RISK
  
• 4-25-2024US BIRTHS FELL LAST YEAR, MARKING AN END TO THE LATE PANDEMIC REBOUND, EXPERTS SAY
  
• 4-25-2024CLIMATE CHANGE IS BRINGING MALARIA TO NEW AREAS. IN AFRICA, IT NEVER LEFT
  
• 4-25-2024MALARIA IS STILL KILLING PEOPLE IN KENYA, BUT A VACCINE AND LOCAL DRUG PRODUCTION MAY HELP
  
• 4-25-2024GENETIC VARIATIONS MAY PREDISPOSE PEOPLE TO PARKINSON’S DISEASE FOLLOWING LONG-TERM PESTICIDE EXPOSURE, STUDY FINDS
  
• 4-25-2024EXPERTS CALL FOR GLOBAL GENETIC WARNING SYSTEM TO COMBAT THE NEXT PANDEMIC AND ANTIMICROBIAL RESISTANCE
  
• 4-25-2024WOMEN WITH HEART DISEASE ARE LESS LIKELY TO RECEIVE LIFE-SAVING DRUGS THAN MEN, RESEARCHERS FIND
  
• 4-25-2024VENEZUELA BROKE ITS HPV VACCINE PROMISES, AND THERE’S BARELY ANY SEX ED. EXPERTS SAY IT’S A PROBLEM
  
• 4-25-2024NHS BABY CHECK MAY MISS DISLOCATED HIPS IN NEWBORN BABIES
  
• 4-25-2024RESEARCHERS PUBLISH FINAL RESULTS OF KEY CLINICAL TRIAL FOR GENE THERAPY FOR SICKLE CELL DISEASE
  
• 4-25-2024UNDERSTANDING THE CELLULAR MECHANISMS OF OBESITY-INDUCED INFLAMMATION AND METABOLIC DYSFUNCTION
  
• 4-25-2024UVEITIS EXPERTS PROVIDE AN OVERVIEW OF AN UNDERESTIMATED IMAGING TECHNIQUE
  
• 4-25-2024STEM CELL TRANSPLANTS AND SURVIVAL RATES ON THE RISE ACROSS ALL RACIAL AND ETHNIC GROUPS
  

It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update to this subreddit, but the posts have been popping up on my feed more frequently than usual, so it’s brought me back to drop a hopefully inspiring update.
I’m closing on 8 months, writing this from the exact same chair I wrote my first progress post about quitting. It’s surreal. I will be very honest, I had a slip a few months back due to personal life stresses, not an excuse, just honesty, and it truly was a one-day slip that I was VERY LUCKILY able to control.
My breathing has improved tremendously, the hacking is gone, full stop. My memory, dreams and I believe overall psychological functions have been restored in full as well. The chest pains are gone, and the random spells of apnea are gone. My resting heart rate has plummeted from what used to be upper-80s to mid-60s.
My anxiety is still as bad as it's ever been, but I don't think that was ever going to go away, I'm an anxious person, c'est la vie.
I guess the reason that I'm typing this is that I've seen far too many posts pop up on my feed about people who just started, might start, or need to talk to people in their lives who are considering starting, and I got tired of leaving comment after comment feeling like I might have been too harsh. So here it is, uncut:
Vaping is the fucking worst thing I have ever entertained in my life, and I used to be in sales. It disguises itself as a temporary bliss with all of the positives of tobacco and none of the negatives, when in reality it's its own bullshit concoction that causes the strangest most unpredictable side effects. If you're lucky, and I mean lucky like a slot machine and not blackjack or sports bet lucky, you might beat it. It's not worth the risk.
I think a lot of people hop into this subreddit and are like "my lungs hurt and I'm considering quitting" or they've yet to really start vaping and are concerned about what could happen to them and read up on 16 posts about how someone's coughing chronically. If you're considering quitting or considering starting, or someone you know might even be entertaining the idea, this is for you: You have no fucking idea what vaping is going to do to you.
Here's a laundry list of symptoms (albeit some psychosomatic) that I MYSELF experienced that I have been able to directly tie to vaping due to them all but clearing up entirely after quitting:
Breathing problems and shortness of breath Chronic cough and phlegm production Post nasal drip that feels like battery acid in your throat Inflamed sinuses and respiratory system which causes obstructive apnea Memory issues, sleeplessness, consequential neurological function degradation, and loss of dreaming Heightened anxiety and/or depression (if you're already either of those things to begin with, if not, it'll cause them) Anger issues and irritability Physical lethargy Palpitations (that you can hear, feel, and see bouncing against your rib cage, and it HURTS), high blood pressure, erratic heart rate Muscle tension, tension headaches, nausea, limb numbness Loss of appetite (obvious) Acid reflux Somehow both diarrhea and constipation
The ages that I see people vaping get younger and younger every day, it's heartbreaking (almost literally). Because it means they get dumber and dumber, it's why they're not supposed to be doing it. Kids are stupid, rebellious, bullheaded, and worst of all think they're invincible. But there is nothing more humbling than the first time you throw your back out lifting something. But I'd rather have thrown my back out than contemplated my mortality at the ripe age of 20 because I thought if I fell asleep I'd never wake up again.
Parents of potential smokers, do not punish or force your child to not start vaping because as long as they leave the house, they'll find a way, and the resentment will translate. The only solution is to have open communication with them and be aware of what they're doing and how much they're doing it, help them through it, and find and address the desire to smoke at the root: social, psychological, physical, or whatever else.
Non-parents scared to die: you should be. Stop fucking around, you are wholly unlikely to get cancer statistically (don't be stupid and take this as a free pass), but if you end up with half of the rolling carousel I experienced and detailed above you're going to stay up nights waiting for god, or a fucking falling tree to kill you first.
If it's early on: quit now. If you're late into the game, try and quit now. Start with patches or go cold turkey, get a therapist. I am so goddamn lucky I didn't die. Again, I AM SO LUCKY I'M NOT DEAD. OR WORSE. AND YES. THERE'S WORSE.
If you just quit: you're incredible, you've begun the journey to take your life back. It will suck, it will be grueling, like walking through a septic swamp that you're always one misstep from drowning in, but keep pushing, and keep your head up. You will get to shore. If it's getting tough, play Tetris when the cravings and anxiety build up, it'll soothe your mind and you'll get very good at a very popular game. God luck, I'm rooting for you.
So that's day 232. Here's to 233.

DAY: APRIL 22 2024
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• 4-22-2024EXPLORING THE POTENTIAL OF PREBIOTICS Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) depletes the microbial ecosystem within the gastrointestinal tract leading to inflammation and metabolic dysfunction. Prebiotics have been shown to alleviate these symptoms by serving as an energy and food source for gut microbes, restoring the microbiome and alleviating IBD symptomology. Credit: Ariaee A, Koentgen S, Wardill HR, et al. A growing […] Read More
• 4-22-2024WHY YOU SHOULDN’T BE AFRAID TO START RUNNING AFTER MIDDLE AGE As someone who started marathon running in midlife, I know how many aches and pains (and doubts) you can have if you take on the challenge to start running at an older age. But as an orthopedic surgeon who has replaced thousands of worn-out hips and knees throughout my career, I also know just how […] Read More
• 4-22-2024‘MIRACLE’ WEIGHT-LOSS DRUGS COULD HAVE REDUCED HEALTH DISPARITIES: INSTEAD THEY GOT WORSE The American Heart Association calls them “game changers.” Oprah Winfrey says they’re “a gift.” Americans are most familiar with their brand names: Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound. They are the medications that have revolutionized weight loss and raised the possibility of reversing the country’s obesity crisis. […] Read More
• 4-22-2024NEW THERAPY HELPS CANCER PATIENTS FACE BIGGEST FEARS Imagine your greatest fear. Now, write it down and tell it in first-person, as if it’s happening right now. Vividly describe what it looks, sounds, smells, tastes and feels like. Don’t hold back. Such an exercise could be daunting for anyone, dredging up feelings we try to avoid. But for late-stage cancer patients struggling with […] Read More
• 4-22-2024HOW OBESE PEOPLE AND TALL, CENTRALLY OBESE PEOPLE ARE MORE LIKELY TO GET COLORECTAL CANCER Body shape phenotypes have been derived by a PCA on six anthropometric traits (BMI, weight, height, WHR, WC, and HC). PC1 showed high and same sign loadings for all traits except height. PC2 showed high but opposite loadings for height and WHR. PC3 was characterized by high and same direction loadings […] Read More
• 4-22-2024PRESCRIBING NATURE FOR MENTAL, PHYSICAL HEALTH Eating right and exercising are important ways to stay mentally and physically healthy. And instead of getting off the couch and hopping on a treadmill, you might want to consider going outdoors and reaping the health benefits of being in nature. And don’t be surprised at your next doctor’s visit when you get a prescription […] Read More
• 4-22-2024USING AI TO IMPROVE ALZHEIMER’S TREATMENT THROUGH THE ‘GUT-BRAIN AXIS’ Cleveland Clinic researchers are using artificial intelligence to uncover the link between the gut microbiome and Alzheimer’s disease. Previous studies have shown that Alzheimer’s disease patients experience changes in their gut bacteria as the disease develops. The newly published Cell Reports study outlines a computational method to determine how […] Read More
• 4-22-2024OZEMPIC ‘OOPS’ BABIES SPARK DEBATE ABOUT WEIGHT-LOSS DRUG USE AS FERTILITY DRUG A surprising thing is happening to some women on weight-loss drugs who’ve struggled with fertility issues: They’re getting pregnant. That’s leading to questions about the safety of medications from Novo Nordis during pregnancy. “I thought I couldn’t have any more kids,” said Torria Leggett, 40, who had been trying […] Read More
• 4-22-2024EU SHOULD ADOPT RESEARCH-BASED APPROACH TO ENSURE QUALITY, SAFETY OF SUBSTANCES OF HUMAN ORIGIN, ARGUES STUDY Substances of human origin (SoHOs) such as blood, plasma, skin, corneas, and embryos play an increasing role in life-saving medical procedures. Governments around the world are reevaluating their health care policies to ensure of a supply of SoHOs for their population, while also considering the best-interests of both donors and patients. A paper published in […] Read More
• 4-22-2024HOW PANCREATIC ANATOMY MAY AFFECT DIABETES RESEARCH AND TREATMENT Generation of volumetric and 3D-spatial data sets of the complete ?-cell distribution across the human pancreas. Researchers at Umeå University have succeeded in imaging an entire human organ, a pancreas, in microscopic resolution. By staining different cell-types with antibodies and then using optical 3D imaging techniques to study the […] Read More
• 4-22-2024TAXING UNHEALTHY FOOD HELPS CUT OBESITY, SAYS GLOBAL STUDY Mexico is leading the way in implementing taxes on unhealthy food options, successfully helping to tackle obesity and related health issues. Taxes on foods that are high in fat, salt or sugar (HFSS) reduce the sale, purchase and consumption of those foods, according to a new analysis of evidence from around […] Read More
• 4-22-2024LANGUAGE MATTERS IN PREVENTING SUICIDE Of all the issues in psychiatry, even in all of medicine, suicide may be the most challenging to discuss responsibly in public. Any suicide is a tragedy. We know that language matters, and that using helpful and respectful language reduces stigma, making it easier to talk more openly and safely about suicide and its prevention. […] Read More
• 4-22-2024HELP YOUNG ATHLETES AVOID SUMMER HEAT HAZARDS Another broiling summer looms, along with another season of kids’ summer sports. It’s a potentially harmful, even lethal combination. But experts at Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH) have advice for kids, parents and coaches on how to keep young athletes safe when thermometers rise. Each year, an estimated 240 people die from heat-linked illnesses, and heat […] Read More
• 4-22-2024COMPUTER PROMPTS COULD REDUCE EMPIRIC ANTIBIOTIC USE FOR UTI For non-critically ill patients with urinary tract infection (UTI), computerized provider order entry (CPOE) prompts providing patient- and pathogen-specific multidrug-resistant organism (MDRO) risk estimates can reduce empiric extended-spectrum antibiotic use, Read More
• 4-22-2024WHAT’S THE CONNECTION BETWEEN AIR POLLUTANTS AND ALLERGIC DISEASES Researchers report that air pollutants—including particulate matter, pollen, greenhouse gases, and other harmful substances—can contribute to the development and exacerbation of allergic diseases by disrupting the skin barrier. “People are aware of the connection between pollution and respiratory disease, […] Read More
• 4-22-2024BETTER HEALTH CARE ISN’T THE ONLY ANSWER Katherine Goodlow is only 20, but she has experienced enough to know that people around her are dying too young. Goodlow, a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, said she’s lost six friends and acquaintances to suicide, two to car crashes, and one to appendicitis. Four of her relatives died in their 30s or […] Read More
• 4-22-2024STUDY CONNECTS ENJOYMENT OF NATURE TO LOWER INFLAMMATION LEVELS Plenty of studies link exposure to the natural world and improved mental and physical health, but a new Cornell study connects enjoyment of nature to a specific biological process—inflammation. Led by Anthony Ong, professor in the Department of Psychology and director of the Center for Integrative Developmental Science (CIDS) in the College of Human Ecology, […] Read More
• 4-22-2024COST INCREASINGLY IMPORTANT MOTIVE FOR QUITTING SMOKING FOR 1 IN 4 ADULTS IN ENGLAND Health concerns are still the primary motive for more than half of those who say they want to stop smoking in England, but cost is now a key factor for more than 1 in 4, finds an analysis of national survey responses, published in the open access journal BMJ Public Health. Given this shift in […] Read More
• 4-22-2024IMPROVING CANCER IMMUNOTHERAPY BY PROLONGING T-CELL SURVIVAL In the past decade, immunotherapy has emerged as the fourth pillar of cancer treatment, joining surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. It is an approved treatment for 15 cancers, including melanoma and some types of lymphomas and leukemias, but it is not effective in all cancers or in all patients. Immunotherapy uses a patient’s own cancer-fighting cells, […] Read More
• 4-22-2024VISUAL IMPAIRMENT LINKED TO INCREASED RISK FOR SUICIDE Visual impairment is associated with an increased risk for suicide, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis published online April 18 in JAMA Network Open. Chung Young Kim, M.D., from the Seoul National University Hospital in South Korea, and colleagues examined the association between visual impairment and different aspects of suicide. The primary outcome measure […] Read More
• 4-22-20243 IN 5 PARENTS PLAY SHORT ORDER COOK FOR YOUNG CHILDREN WHO DON’T LIKE FAMILY MEAL Parents describe their biggest challenges with making sure their child gets a healthy diet as the child being a picky eater, the higher cost of healthy food and food waste. Fewer say they don’t have time to prepare healthy food. […] Read More
• 4-22-2024HOW DOES ASPIRIN HELP PREVENT COLORECTAL CANCER DEVELOPMENT AND PROGRESSION? Long-term daily use of aspirin can help to prevent the development and progression of colorectal cancer, but the mechanisms involved have been unclear. New research has revealed that aspirin may exert these protective effects by boosting certain aspects of the body’s immune response against cancer cells. The findings are published […] Read More
• 4-22-2024SMARTPHONE SWABS PROVIDE CONVENIENT TOXICOLOGY TESTING A simple and convenient method to collect drug use data from the surface of a smartphone has been revealed for the first time in a new study published in […]
• 4-22-2024HOW YOUNG ADULTS PERCEIVE THE RISK OF A SINGLE DRINK VERSUS RISK IN BINGE DRINKING When drinking choices are perceived as “just one drink,” with each single drink representing relatively slight risk, it may ironically lead to heavier drinking and alcohol-related harms. That’s the finding of a novel study exploring the decision-making process around binge drinking. A better understanding of how people think about heavy episodic […] Read More
• 4-22-2024HOW THE ROLE-PLAYING GAME MAY SOON BE USED AS A FORM OF THERAPY Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is crossing a new frontier, as the game may soon be used as a form of psychological therapy. Over the last five years, I have researched possibilities for the game’s clinical implementation, as well as potential hurdles. The therapeutic interest in the game only arose in the last five years, when […] Read More
• 4-22-2024DESPITE AI ADVANCEMENTS, HUMAN OVERSIGHT REMAINS ESSENTIAL: STUDY State-of-the-art artificial intelligence systems known as large language models (LLMs) are poor medical coders, according to researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Their study, published in the April 19 online issue of NEJM AI, emphasizes the necessity for refinement and validation of these technologies before considering clinical implementation. The study extracted […] Read More
• 4-22-2024WAYS YOU CAN FILTER OUT HARMFUL PFAS FROM DRINKING WATER AT HOME Chemists invented PFAS in the 1930s to make life easier: Nonstick pans, waterproof clothing, grease-resistant food packaging and stain-resistant carpet were all made possible by PFAS. But in recent years, the growing number of health risks found to be connected to these chemicals has become increasingly alarming. PFAS—perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances—are now […]
  
• 4-22-2024ADVANCING HIGH-RESOLUTION ULTRASOUND IMAGING WITH DEEP LEARNING
  
• 4-22-2024MENTAL IMAGINING OF SELF-HARM CAN INCREASE URGE, HEIGHTEN RISK OF PEOPLE HARMING THEMSELVES
  
• 4-22-2024IMPROVING PROSPECTS FOR PEOPLE WITH PARKINSON’S
  
• 4-22-2024CHRONIC PAIN LINKED TO SOCIOECONOMIC BACKGROUND
  
• 4-22-2024SCIENTISTS HARNESS ULTRASOUND FOR DRUG DELIVERY AND TISSUE IMPLANTATION
  
• 4-22-2024SYSTEM-LEVEL FACTORS INFLUENCE DOCTORS TO REDUCE LOW-VALUE CARE PRACTICES, FINDS STUDY
  
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I've seen a few posts of people making suggestions for improvements, voicing complaints, shouting into the void, etc. This will be lengthy. You probably shouldn't waste your time reading it. You have Po8 to go collect and all.
I've spent a fair amount of time on this game so far. ~233 hours played so far. I do really enjoy it and will keep playing. The good outweighs the bad and annoying parts of it, plus my wife, brother-in-law, and I play together and I really enjoy that.
That being said, I do feel the need to shout into the abyss about it. Downvote or ignore me here, I really don't care. I feel like there's something of value to just get thoughts out of your head and put somewhere else. If the devs see it, cool. If it generates discussion, cool. If it doesn't, cool. This is the 2024 digital equivalent of a message in a bottle thrown into the sea.
I had such high hopes for this game, and I didn't even see the "AAAA game" claims that were put out. I simply LOVE Pirate lore. I've watched documentaries on Netflix, read The Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodard, A General History of the Pyrates by Captain Johnson, and Treasure Island. Black Sails is one of my favorite shows to the point that as a wedding gift, someone bought a Zack McGowen Cameo for us as Charles Vane. My wife and I were Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny for Halloween a few years back. I never cared about the AC series until Black Flag. Then I picked it up and played the fuck out of that game. After my last finals were over in my senior year of college, I bought a bottle of Captain Morgan and drank it playing AC Black Flag for the rest of the night. I was loudly singing the shanties alongside my crew at the end. My wife and I preordered this game years before it was released and didn't realize we needed to upgrade to the Xbox One Series S in order to play so we bought two used consoles in order to play (which wasn't necessarily in the budget btw).
In short, I heard 'open world pirate game from the maker of a game series you really enjoy' (Ubisoft- AC). I didn't need more details. I was always going to buy it.
Like many, I wanted this game to be the best parts of AC Black Flag without the stupid parts (The Knights Templar storylines, better graphics, and so on). It's not, and while I think that's okay, I still think it missed the mark in ways that aren't just gameplay, but overall theme. To say it's a failed game, or 0/10 is a step WAY too far though. It's just not. Here are my thoughts, in no particular order.
The Good
Visuals. The game is visually beautiful, and the details in a lot of it are impressive. One of my complaints from the River Raids part of AC Valhalla is that it's lazy. Basically, every village or fort looks the same as every other one. This world has distinct regions that look and feel different, from the elephants roaming around in Africa, to small and largely unnoticeable details in Telok Penjarah. Each outpost is different and most feel at least logical in how they're constructed so they aren't just different for different's sake. There's enough variation in the style of NPCs that don't just all feel like the Mortal Kombat I days where Scorpion is just Yellow Sub Zero and Jade is just green Kitana.
Ship Combat. The ship combat mechanics are great. Sailing and taking in battle while the firing mechanisms and timing aren't just automatic is a tough task. AC Black Flag's aiming system also made accuracy basically guaranteed. Skull and Bones abandoned that for a more FPS-style gun crew aim and I think that adds to it. A volley of cannon fire requires some skill to land.
The fireworks. It's a small detail and likely ahistorical, but it's fun. I enjoy finishing a multi-ship fort takedown or sinking Le Peste and seeing the celebratory fireworks from ships. It doesn't make or break the game for anyone, but is a nice, enjoyable part of the game that wasn't necessary.
The shanties. Yes, this is an obvious one, but I don't care. I wish there was a little more variety, but it's an important part of the pirate look and feel and you still did well here, Ubisoft.
The rumors. When they worked (they currently aren't doing much of anything it seems) it sent you on investigations that added to the game and made it feel more than just set-in-stone missions with objectives and a little more play-by-ear. I think it would be good to add more of this, whether those rumors are fleet locations, elite ships, or something like that. The rumor mechanism is a cool part of the game.
World-building. There is a good bit of world-building here. Seeing a Companie vessel immediately come into conflict with a DMC ship makes the world feel bigger than just you. Privateers chasing down NPC Rogues or Le Peste ships teaming up with Rogues to take down a privateer and then going after each other? That feels more immersive and like my surroundings are more than just the whims of my ship.
The setting. The Golden Age of Piracy in the Caribbean has been done a LOT. There are TV series, movie series, and other video games made by Ubisoft about that specific time frame in that specific location. There's not much about the Indian Ocean despite there being a lot of pirate history there. I think that a slight change in scope has been beneficial to the game overall.
Commodities. The commodity system is good. The rising and falling prices that respond somewhat to market forces and fluctuate give a more real feeling to the world of S&B. It also gives me a direct path as a pirate to sell my pirated wares.
3 person fleets. The ability to have a fleet at all. The one part of the AC games is that they're all solo. Big open world and it's Me vs It. Here, I can sail with my wife and brother-in-law, or with internet randos and go pirating. I'd like to see this expand to 5, but I understand how in a 17-person server, that might not be possible.
The Bad
Bugs. The easiest and lowest-hanging fruit here- the bugs are bad. Not just the 'Oh hey I have to reload because this treasure chest doesn't want to be dug up but then it works' bugs. The 'I can never collect Po8 from Megafort Oosten because it's not designed to function' bugs. My wife and brother-in-law play regularly and occasionally have trouble logging on and connecting to each other but that's a tolerable level of annoying buggyness that resolves itself eventually. The number of 'this mission/action/etc is broken' bugs is a stain on Ubisoft. This game was in development for HOW long? Take another 6 months or whatever and give us a clean game at least.
NPC Ship spawning. I pick up my first pieces of 8 and a La Peste ship just plops out of the sky right in my view and is hunting me. Then he sails RIGHT into the side of an island. This happens SO often and just snaps me out of any world I may have felt immersed in. The stupid sailing part is more silly than anything, but the spawning out of the air right in front of me in plain view is just poor design.
Matchmaking. The matchmaking is also such a pain. I've sunk Le Peste a few times and each one has been just stumbling by him and seeing a battle going on and joining in It's been pure serendipity EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Same with Ghost ships and forts. I've sent up several calls for help that go unanswered from forts to Le Peste, to ghost ships. I have yet to have anyone answer and I don't put that on the semi-random 16 people on my server. Connect me to people who are doing this somewhere else in the S&B universe, damnit. I do play with others often, but it'd be nice if I didn't have to depend on them and their schedules because despite being in a connected game with thousands of others, I can't tap into the ones who DO want to team up.
Currency. The currency system is stupid. Ignoring the 'Ethereal Ashes' and 'Monster Tooth' currencies for their inclusion because WTF is that even about...The 3 of 4 main currencies don't make sense- Gold, Silver, pieces of 8, and sovereigns. The silver is pressed with the DMC logo, they're backed by the Danish government and the DMC is largely throughout the region so it being part of the economy and having value makes sense. Gold is ONLY usable in the store and can really only be purchased with real money. The quantities that you earn through the Smuggler's Pass are minimal and don't really enable anything more than a single small purchase. That's stupid, but sure. Microtransactions make the world go around in gaming in 2024. Fine. Pieces of 8 are historically Spanish dollars. Spain has no presence in the game (yet?). Sovereigns are British currency. Britain has no presence in the game (yet?). So why the fuck is the Helm, a non-government body by design, issuing a currency that is either British or Spanish and serves ZERO value except to them? Can I feed my crew with it? No. Can I buy cannonballs with it? No. Can I exchange it for silver in the game so I can buy those goods? No. Moreso, these manufactories are being paid for their goods in pieces of 8? What?! How is a currency you can only spend WITH the Helm being used by NPCs to purchase opium, snuff, and alcohol? If you wanted to include a multi-currency system, you should have had Companie ships with Francs, the Dutch with silver, and the native groups (Rempah, Sea People, etc) with their own thing and be able to exchange them at the commodities trader. That would have felt more "world-building" like.
Ship contents. The ship contents don't make a lot of sense. That massive DMC warship has 2 cannonball crates, 2 screw mechanisms, 2 camphor, 400 silver, and a grilled chicken. No water barrels? No more food or ammunition? How are they sailing around for hours or days with just that? If you target warships then you should be able to loot cannons, powder, food, water, lumber, or the DAMN BOAT ITSELF. In general, pirates didn't hunt warships. They hunted MERCHANTS and TREASURE CONVOYS. Both are in the game but with what reward? Merchant ships in S&B have like 5 precious stones, 3 tobacco, 2 grilled bread, and maybe 300 silver. How are you sailing from port to port for marketplaces and that's it? Treasure Convoys have what? 5k silver? 10k? ACTUAL treasure convoys had MILLIONS. Yes, having ships that were more realistic in their contents would make accumulating goods too easy as is. See- Crew recruitment in the suggestions section for a solution.
Crafting materials market. The commodities market is a great addition. The crafting materials market is a joke. Especially as some materials are useless after the early game. Another bronze ingot? That hasn't been useful in weeks. Moreso, I can refine a Greenhart plank for 20 silver each AFTER I supply the trees. Or I can buy them from Port l'Hermine for 110 silver each. Then, suddenly when I try and sell them to ANYONE- Single-digit silver!?!? New cars don't depreciate that much. How the fuck is this material so expensive that there's a market for it from the Lumberyard for 110, but from me it's only worth a tiny fraction of that?!? This is true for just about any crafting material outside of a small handful of gold items. That's silly. I should just set up my own lumber shop at St. Anne's and sell the planks for 70 silver each.
Endgame. The endgame is bizarre. The Helm are smugglers, not pirates. That's not to say they aren't welcome in this world of the Golden Age of Piracy, but they're firmly not pirates. Sinking ships to take their goods to refine them so someone else can profit is literally the DMC, Companie, and British East Indies Co business model. That keeps the common person down while the kings and corporations profit from their labor in return for nothing is one of the main drivers OF sailors and sellswords TO piracy in the first place. "Join our ship and earn a share." That's not to say there's no place for smugglers like the Helm in S&B, but their places as the endgame overlords feels wrong and something pirates would rebel against. They ought to be another faction like the DMC where you could do missions for them if you choose, but they don't control endgame progress. Now, I'm relegated to remotely requesting and acquiring goods the Helm wants processed and then going and picking them up and bringing them back to the Helm. My Brigantine that's designed for Po8 runs is literally red and white and named "Helm DoorDash".
IKYK
This is more a continuation of the bad but in a different way. IKYK stands for I know you know. As in, there's stuff here that's missing in a head-scratching way, because I know you know how to make these features in big games, Ubisoft. So their exclusion here is very....odd. Especially for a game in development this long. Yes, this game isn't Assassin's Creed, I'm well aware. But if you're not using features, game engines, or mechanics that your company has already put in its other games, then wtf are you even doing? Making a major console game is hard enough. You should be copying your own notes here.
Autopilot. In most of the recent AC games (games Ubisoft makes), you can jump on your horse or camel or whatever tamed animal and set a destination and it'll ride there for you, or at least try to. It wasn't ALWAYS available but it by and large could get you somewhere close. This feature was invaluable in combat as you could have the horse/camel/whatever follow the trail so you could focus on combat. Now, following a path is something you can teach an animal. Horses can't sail ships. But crew members can. How is there no shipmaster that I can hand the wheel to and say 'Set a course for X' and then I can focus on battle or cargo or helm factories while they pilot that not into the rocks at the minimum? This feature is in other games, so why not here?
Crew recruitment. AC Valhalla has this. AC Odyssey has this. Even AC Black Flag had SOME minimal measure of this. In AC Valhalla, you had 4 key crew members who had abilities that mattered. Where is my Quartermaster (effects crew morale, spyglass accuracy, supply prices/usage), Armorer (ship weapons effectiveness, ship weapon accuracy, crew winning boarding battles), Shipmaster (speed, maneuverability, maintenance), or Boatswain (Rigging speed, repair effectiveness, crew recruitment). That's not a huge development over what AC Valhalla and Odyssey had. Why isn't it here, but in other, older Ubisoft games?
Better worldbuilding. There is good worldbuilding here, but there's also bad. AC Odyssey felt alive because the world around you SHIFTED without your input. Athens and Sparta didn't just have static battle lines, they shifted during gameplay, and that made the world feel alive around you. Here, the Companie and DMC ships will attack each other, Rempah, Sea People, Fara, etc. Why can't they take over foundries from another? Lumberyards? Forts? Outposts? That would feel like a more immersive open world. This is one of the main draws of AC Odyssey for me, a Ubisoft game, so why isn't it in here in any form?
Crew parties. AC Valhalla had a feast buff that cost some resources but had a fun cutscene and then boom, you had extra buffs. In S&B, you're crew basically only gets upset when stamina is low which is instantly replenishable, or when you sail out of bounds. They are otherwise neutral pirate robots. Why can't stamina or rigging speed, or crew morale (see Crew Recruitment below) be boosted by a crew party or something similar? Pirates weren't saints in port (or anywhere for that matter). Why not add that to the game?
Hunting. In AC Black Flag, the fishing boat was lowered from the main vessel. Here, I have to go switch to the dhow and sail my bitchy boat from port a fair distance to wherever my prey is. Why?! Longboats to get ashore are already stored IN the main ship. The dhow isn't much bigger than that. Also, sharks, hippos, crocodiles, and fish are okay to hunt, but whales and dolphins aren't?! Did you REALLY get that much shit over Black Flag for the whaling? AC Valhalla has HOW many types of fish? Other Ubisoft games got this much more right. Why?
World event quests and minigames. Nearly all the recent AC games include some sort of in-world mini-game. AC Black Flag had 3- Fanorona, Morris, and Checkers with different skill levels of opponents. AC Valhalla had Orlong, flying, and drinking games. In the AC editions that lacked these, people asked for them back. Some card games like poker or checkers would be a great addition here, as well as basic challenges like ship racing (a feature in AC Syndicate). Other AC games also had in-world sidequests that felt WAY more fulfilling, even if the ones in Valhalla were largely stupid. In S&B, it's escort or protect some hapless merchant (which could NOT be more anti-pirate). The side quests from the outposts are fine, but why aren't there any random pirates at port looking to team up with you to take down a fort, and then on the way back, they double-cross you and lead you into two ships and try and sink you? Or they lure you out to sea with them and are actually privateers and try to sink you. Those kinds of world event side quests were in other Ubisoft games. Why aren't they in here?
Suggestions for updates and/or Skull and Bones 2
Endgame. You're a 'Kingpin' pirate, but you rule over what? Your ship? Every captain does that. Scurlock rules over St. Anne and oversees commerce there. Rahma rules over Telok Penjarah. They are kingpins. I am not. Why is the endgame not taking over from them or starting my own pirate fort in Africa and defending it from the Companie, DMC, Scurlock, Rahma, etc. using Helm resources, or contracts with the Sea People, Rempah, Fara, etc, or straight up piracy to build and defend THAT is a WAY more engaging and worthwhile endgame.
Crew recruitment. As mentioned previously about having a Quartermaster, Boatswain, Shipmaster, and Armorer, but I'll go more in-depth here. Historical pirates didn't just jump onto a ship and say 'Hey I'm on your crew now!' There were articles to be signed and shares to be earned. That's what made a crew. Signing articles and being on the account of the ship as a share of the profits. While I don't expect players to write up legal paperwork, something like the articles for the crew would be a fun addition. Have the articles be 3 things the crew wants that you can negotiate with them on. Infamy, Money, and Treatment. Does the crew value Infamy (sinking warships and taking forts that don't offer much money, but build fear), or Money (straight cash and valuables from prizes), or Treatment (How often you sail into rocks, Frequency of Crew parties, frequency of port, variance of food....I mean I've been feeding mine nothing grilled vegetables and water for WEEKS. I'd have mutinied over that alone a long time ago.) And your balance of doing that was how Crew Morale was determined. If it fell low, some crew may leave for other ships. Too low and the crew could mutiny and you'd lose the whole crew or the ship and have to recruit or build all over again. This also would help balance out ships that you took with inflated goods. Oh, that merchant ship had 25k silver? What's left for the captain after the crew's share? A smaller crew means a bigger share for everyone, but it means it's harder to take down big ships and win crew battles.
More open area. By this, I don't mean the map needs to be bigger. I mean that it's fine that foundries and lumberyards and the like aren't dockable and walk-around-able, but Capitals and settlements should be. That was a missed opportunity for more world-building that's missed here. Your own ship should be included in this with a captain's cabin that you can customize or add trophies to from monsters or elite ships or whatever.
Hand-to-hand combat. Someone else here made the excellent point of this being a pirate SHIP fantasy game and not a PIRATE fantasy game. Some level of sword and pistol fighting had to make it here. It really did. An over-the-top elaborate combat system like AC Valhalla and others had wasn't necessary, but SOMETHING. It could have been a three-button system- slash, block, shoot/reload. A basic health bar that can withstand maybe 4 sword slashes at most or 1-2 bullets.
Boarding ships. There NEEDS to be more here and the mechanic currently in place needs tweaking. My crew can throw firebombs like they all won gold for Olympic shotput, but when it comes to a grappling hook to board they're suddenly the most noodle-armed pirates to ever set sail. Good luck boarding a DMC ship with a high deck, that's nearly impossible at any distance. Once grappling hooks are in, that's it though!? ZERO crew fight. The other boat is just taking an instant L. That's incredibly silly. Harvesting Coconuts has a skilled minigame but a fight for boarding a ship doesn't? IN A PIRATE GAME?! Also, explain to me how boarding a ship nets me MAYBE 10% more return than sinking it. How is it that successfully boarding the ship, which should net me every piece of cargo I want, is only getting me an almost indistinguishable difference in cargo obtained from sinking it!? Boarding ships should give me a TON more. Double, if not triple. As well as certain items shouldn't be lootable from a sinking ship. Did you really just get that grilled bread out of the ocean? I'm sure the crew wouldn't be thrilled with eating it. Sacks of spices do REALLY well floating to the ocean floor because 1600s-era merchant sacks were basically vacuum-sealed.
Spyglass accuracy. While I'm thinking of problems with the boarding, the spyglass is part of this. Zoom improvements you work towards are one thing, but I know the EXACT cargo from just putting a spyglass on them?! TSA doesn't even have technology that good. Putting your spyglass on a ship should tell you the name of the ship, what flags they're flying, what kind of ship it is (warship, merchant, etc), and some educated guesses as to what's in the hold and how many crew they have. That's it. Unless you have lead from a rumor or something like that, the spyglass telling you exact amounts of what's on the ship is too much. Do you know how many ships I've let go because I knew they weren't worth the effort to sink? A whole lot. 'Oh, another screw mechanism? Sheet glass? My warehouse will be so thankful *eye roll*' but if it's maybe some Gin because my spyglass isn't magical and only gives me clues? Load the cannons my hearties!
Crew Stamina. The every 20 seconds or less feeding of the crew is silly. Crew stamina should be part of the game, I agree, but it should fall MUCH slower and be independent of trimming. Trimming should make it fall faster, but leaving port should start it depleting because sailing is hard work for the crew regardless of whether you're just touring around the Red Isle or chasing down a prize. Trimming and boarding should take faster rates of depletion but you shouldn't be feeding a crew 40x in one lunar day. Crew food should replenish the stamina bar a bunch, like it does, with different food effects boosting differently, but this every 20-second nonsense needs to be adjusted. The idea that I could sail around without trimming endlessly and not feed my crew is silly.
Raise the Black. The ship customization in the game is okay. I'd like more control but then I see how you can't sell "sets" if I can just customize every inch in every color I want. The one thing that bothers me though is the clear pirate signs on the sails. If a Rempah ship with Rempah sails and flag sails their ass into Megafort Oosten, what happens? They light his ass up. Because the DMC and the Rempah don't get along. MY Pirate Ship brandishing pirate sails goes past and unless I shoot at them or cause problems, I'm A-OK. Because that's the relationship the Dutch, French, etc. had with pirates right? NO! Those bastards shot at and chased pirates all the time when they knew the ship was a pirate. Pirate hunters made a WHOLE damn business model out of it. Pirates would have regular sails (again, I'm fine with customizing here for the ahistorical sake of fun gameplay) and pretend to be merchants or a same country warship, get close to a ship they wanted to take then drop their fake British/Spanish/Dutch/French flag and raise their custom pirate banner and maybe fire a shot or two over the bow. This signaled to the ship it was time to fight, flight, or surrender. I think this would have been a fun addition to the game. You target a prize in the spyglass and then have to time when to raise the black. Too soon and they run and you may not catch them. Too late and they're more likely to fight. Just right and they're more likely to surrender and you don't lose any crew and gain a free boarding and the entire hull's worth of goods. This aspect fight/flight/surrender aspect is also something that changes with your infamy. As you become more infamous, merchant ships are more likely to surrender vs fight or flight. As you become more infamous, bigger merchant ships have more warship escorts, etc. You raise the Black on a warship and maybe they surrender if you're infamous enough. You could also have to EARN more fake flags so you could be incognito more. If you only start with a fake French flag, that'll get you past the Companie ships, but the DMC will attack on sight. Eventually, you board a DMC ship and take its flag as part of the haul. Now you can raise the DMC flag and strategically switch to a French/Merchant/Spanish/Rempah flag when necessary.
End
That's all I got. I spent WAY too much time thinking about this and writing this post, but I do love this game, and I think that shows through. I don't imagine anyone reads the whole thing. Again, I don't care. It feels good to get the thoughts out of my head and in the digital message in a bottle. This game is good. It could be great. Maybe it won't be, but S&B 2 could be that AAAA game that was marketed. I don't think it's THAT far off.

Context: The Bell of Saint Gerstahl was a bell made from the blood of a Saint and guarded by the Sisters of Battle. The bell was said to have divine properties, and it was prophesied that the bell would ring when Cadia was in trouble. During the 12th Black Crusade, Trazyn stole the bell to save it from the clutches of the Black Legion after its Soritas guard was massacred by the traitors, and it remained in Trazyn's collection for the next few centuries
When the Bell began to ring in Trazyn's possession, a small force of Traitor Guardsmen/cultists and a limited amount of Black Legionnaires had already been assaulting Cadia for the past few months. The Imperials genuinely believed that this was the full force of the 13th Black Crusade. When this screening force was repelled, the Imperials believed that they had successfully defeated the Black Crusade and saved Cadia, but when the bell rang for the 13th time, the true might of the Black Legion emerged from the Warp. There's a lot of fluff in this excerpt, so I decided to skip over it so that this post doesn't become longer than it already is

Blood and iron. Iron and blood. One lay on the other, and within the other. The slick shine of the iron-rich blood – still warm – on the cold surface of the bell. Two related elements, joined in accidental symbolism. If records were to be believed, the bell had been forged from blood. It was said that when Saint Gerstahl – the sacred soldier, favoured patron of the Cadian trooper – fell defending the Gate in the centuries after the Great Heresy, acolytes collected his vitae in a crystal reliquary. There it stayed for centuries, a venerated and lucrative relic on the shrine world christened with his name. Until, one night, Blessed Gerstahl appeared to the cardinal with a message: he must extract the iron from the tarry, coagulated remnants and forge it into a bell.
A bell that would toll when Cadia was in mortal danger.
That was when the Black Legion descended upon it, in the opening raids of the Twelfth Black Crusade.
The vanguard had sworn to die rather than surrender their relic. And they fulfilled that oath. Their bodies now lay beneath the cold iron of the bell, some resting in its shadow. Chest cavities blown open, limbs severed from the impact of traitor bolt-shells, their own vitae splashed onto the blood-forged iron. It ran in frozen rivulets down the engraved surface, turning the scrollwork and decorative psalms into channels of gore. They had saved it, in a sense. Their stoic defence had given Trazyn time to lock the bell and its entourage in stasis, then spirit it to the archival vaults of Solemnace. Now it hung, unmoving and fastened in time, among the relics of Cadia past. Gazed upon by the unseeing eyes of general officers snatched from the battlefield, zigzag trench-lines full of Shock Troops and a rank of Chimera variants bisected to show internal detail. Overhead, a squad of Night Lords Raptors arced through the vaults above a lit display of human eyes.
All of them, artefacts of the Cadian Gate. The ephemera of Abaddon the Despoiler’s twelve Black Crusades. Darkened exhibits stretched across twenty-five square miles, a private gallery of humans, exquisitely arranged to please the historical and aesthetic tastes of the alien curator who’d imprisoned them. Nothing in the gallery apart from maintenance scarabs had moved in over a millennium. Which is why the soft pat-pat-pat of fluid echoed as far as it did. It fell from the iron surface of the bell like the first drops of icicles melting on the eaves of a hab. Drip. Drip-drip. Jewelled drops met the upturned forehead of a slain Battle Sister and stained her pale skin with splashes of crimson. Pat. Pat-pat. More drops. Coalescing on her brow, trickling into her open eyes. Blood moved on the bell’s skin, collecting in beads like rain on a window and falling in defiance of the stasis field
And the bell, without propulsion or force, began to swing. A hand’s breadth at first. A sway. Its clapper moving in a soft pendulum arc too weak to do more than scrape the sides. Then, the arc widened, the violent motion of the bell flinging droplets of blood to either side, spattering the faces of stasis-locked Shock Troopers. Sizzling on the protective fields of lasgun displays. Swaying wider until the bell went fully perpendicular and the clapper inside dropped, its hammer striking the iron of the bell.
Clang. One.
The blackstone floor vibrated. A rank of medals swayed, its stasis field shorting out. An organic clatter filled the chamber, the sound of ten thousand jaws – held shut by hard-light holograms – shaken so hard that the teeth rattled. Overhead, the flight of Night Lords Raptors tumbled from the vaults and into a trench display, snapping bonesand crushing lasgun barrels. Neither Traitor Space Marines nor Guardsmen reacted.
Clang. Two.
Trazyn, Overlord of Solemnace, Archaeovist of the Prismatic Galleries and He-Who-Is-Called-Infinite, screamed in rage. ‘Sannet! What is happening?’ ‘Unclear,’ answered his chief cryptek, his multijointed fingers dancing across phos-glyph panels. ‘Unknown resonance. Macro-seismic. Cracking the vaults, releasing coolant. We’ve lost the Ooliac sand sculptures.’ ‘Call the restoration scarabs.’ ‘Not responding,’ Sannet answered, data-chains flashing across his ocular. ‘Our nodal program misinterpreted the vibration as a re-interment signal. The legion has entered radical shutdown. I cannot rouse them.’ Trazyn cursed the very wheel of the cosmos. The interval between shocks had been only seconds apart, and while mental speech between he and Sannet was near instant, they were running out of time before the next tectonic shudder would hit
‘It’s not tectonic, lord,’ said Sannet. ‘It’s coming from the gallery.’
‘Where?’
‘The Black Crusades wing.’
‘That’s only two levels do–’
Clang. Three.
The shockwave shook Trazyn apart, his joint servos spasming and dislocating with the intensity of it. He evacuated the dying body and rushed his spirit-algorithm into the network of data-channels in the walls. Found a waiting lychguard he could use as a surrogate. Melted and reshaped the borrowed body into his accustomed form as he ran towards the gates of the Cadian gallery. Waved a hand at the enormous gates in a gesture of opening.
Clang. Four
The doors ahead, twice the size of a monolith, blew off their hinges andtoppled down at him. He felt them crumple the necrodermis of his cranium like parchment and burst his central reactor before he transferred to another body, sheltered in the lee of a Baneblade.
He sprinted. Waving hands at display plinths, throwing code-signals from his palm emitters. Trying to restart shielding and repulsors, to protect his delicate artefacts.
‘No, no, no, no, no, no–’
Trazyn saw the bell. Trazyn saw the blood. He slowed his chronosense to take in the swinging relic and its sheets of ruby spray. It was far more human vitae than had been splashed on its surface. Almost as if the relic itself were bleeding from the pockmarks and scratches where bolt-shells had marked it.
‘Sannet,’ Trazyn said, casting his visual senses into the data-stream of Solemnace so his cryptek could run analysis. ‘The stasis field has failed. Hard restart.’
‘The field is active,’ Sannet responded. ‘Movement should be impossible.’
‘Not impossible, warpcraft.’ Trazyn watched in fascinated horror as the bell completed its arc, the blood-forged metal swinging high as the hammer inside dropped like the great mace of a warmaster.
Clang. Five...
Clang. Six.
‘It started an hour ago, canoness,’ said Sister Navarette...
'It’s ringing?’ Genevieve asked. ‘Are you certain?’
'Without being touched...'
‘A bit late for a warning, isn’t it? We’ve been fighting the Despoiler’s Thirteenth Crusade for nigh three months.’
‘It rings in celebration,’ said Arch-Deacon Mendazus.
‘Celebration of what?’ she asked.
He looked at her, scorn on his features. ‘Victory, of course.’
Clang. Seven...
Clang. Eight...
Clang. Nine...
'What’s wrong?’ asked Ravura.
‘We’ve stopped,’ said Hellsker. ‘The engine’s cut.’ She banged on the communication hatch until the driver slid it open. Told her what was coming over the vox. Hellsker bit her lips. Took a moment to compose her face before turning to deliver the news. Keep it short, she told herself. Be stoic. They were looking at her, expectant, when she turned. Smiles still gleaming under their helmets.
'Message from the front. Enemy is in full retreat. Pulling back to landing fields. The Thirteenth Black Crusade is over. We are victorious'...
Clang. Ten...
Clang. Eleven...
Clang. Twelve
Corks popped, bouncing off the ceiling and landing on the long table.A group of artillery staff officers were trying to hit the chandelier. They cheered as one missile lodged in the hanging strands of crystal, and the lieutenant who’d fired it celebrated by pulling directly off the bottle. To Colour Sergeant Jarran Kell, it sounded like the hollow pop of mortar tubes.
As the cheer rose, he disappeared through the blast-proof doors before it became quiet enough for more demands. ‘Those idiots are still at it, I see,’ said Ursarkar Creed. The commander of the Cadian Eighth, saviour of Tyrok Fields, and Lord Castellan of Cadia bent over a desk collaged with documents and maps. Empty sacra tumblers served as paperweights, and an ashtray fashioned from an Earthshaker shell smouldered with half a dozen cigar-butts. The room – so pristine when Creed had moved into it – reeked of tobacco.
As the cheer rose, he disappeared through the blast-proof doors before it became quiet enough for more demands. ‘Those idiots are still at it, I see,’ said Ursarkar Creed. The commander of the Cadian Eighth, saviour of Tyrok Fields, and Lord Castellan of Cadia bent over a desk collaged with documents and maps. Empty sacra tumblers served as paperweights, and an ashtray fashioned from an Earthshaker shell smouldered with half a dozen cigar-butts. The room – so pristine when Creed had moved into it – reeked of tobacco.
‘The Archenemy is in retreat, pulling off-world,’ Kell answered. ‘You told them to enjoy themselves.’
‘I said to enjoy it while it lasts, there’s a difference.’ Creed turned red-rimmed eyes back to the charts. ‘I know Shock Troopers can’t do anything in moderation, but I didn’t mean for them to undermine readiness. This isn’t over.’...
Let’s hope that I’m being paranoid.’ Creed leaned backwards with his hands on the small of his back.
‘It’s true what the war council says, you know. The forces that hit us were commensurate with previous Black Crusades. Larger, even.’
‘Not you too, Jarran.’ Creed shook his head.
‘It is possible he was killed in the Eye, fighting some other warlord.’ He saw Creed’s look and added: ‘It’s happened before.’
‘You can’t believe that.’
‘We picked up signals saying so. Good quality intercepts. Hard decryptions, definitely look authentic.’
‘Tell me this, if this was the main Archenemy attack, where are the Terminators? Where’re the waves of Black Legion, the warp engines? We’ve had cultists and mutants, Traitor Astartes in tactical roles, but you’re telling me the Archenemy leadership spent centuries building this force then never landed here in person?’
‘No one can explain that to me. Not any of them. Not the Navy, not the Aeronautica, not Militarum intelligence or the Scholastica Psykana or the demigods of the Adeptus Astartes. None of them can tell me the one Throne-damned thing I want to know.’
He threw his cigar-butt on the desk in frustration, smearing a debris field of ash across a chart of the Rossvar Mountains. Then he slammed both fists onto the desktop and shouted the last three words: 'Where is Abaddon?’
Clang. Thirteen.
The ship emerged from the immaterium with a noise like a child being torn from the womb. A moment of blood, a primal experience of a creature first feeling the cold air and pull of gravity – sucking atmosphere into its lungs before screaming it out in pain and confusion. Except in this case it was not the ship that screamed, it was the material world around it. The very atoms rent apart, bleeding indescribable colours.
Abaddon. The Warmaster of Chaos, right hand of Horus, Master of the Black Legion and the being fated to kill the False Emperor. The man who had pulled Morkath out of the dark as a child, and made her what she was – though what that was, exactly, remained a subject of whispers.
The Warmaster sat in an ebony throne too large for his enormous frame. What manner of creature required such a seat – one large enough to dwarf the Warmaster, even in his battle plate – was, like so much aboard the Blackstone Fortress Will of Eternity, beyond Morkath’s understanding.
Yet the space around the Warmaster was not empty. Daemon-things flitted there, darting and howling. Folding in upon themselves in geometric shapes or bursting into flames that devoured their essence as some stray emotion set them ablaze.
‘The stars are different this time,’ he said.
‘Different, my lord?’ Morkath asked, opening her eyes to see the Warmaster without his shroud of parasitic spirits.
‘I remember.’ Abaddon’s head, twice as large as that of a mortal, did not regard her as he spoke, yet even so, the low rumble of his voice rattled through her. ‘I recall how the stars looked when we exited the Eye last time.'
'I remember where every star was fixed, then. It was the same. The same constellations, unchanging from the first time we exited the Eye to the last. Twelve times, the same starscape.’
‘But now they have changed?’
‘New stars,’ growled Abaddon. ‘Different stars. Moving… a fleet.’

At this point, Abaddon's crew detect multiple Imperial warships

‘A combined fleet,’ said Abaddon. ‘Consolidated due to casualties.’
‘Our opening moves must have damaged their fleet assets even more heavily than we estimated,’ Morkath said.
‘With the remnants split chasing the Vengeful Spirit away from Cadia,’ added Siron. He seemed ready to speak again, but the Warmaster cut him off.
‘Meaning, the Gate is open.’ Abaddon said
‘To Cadia!’ roared a beastman, raising its clenched fists. Across the command deck, crew howled, crowed, bellowed, gurgled, ululated. A thousand mutant throats screaming the elation that came with an achievement millennia in the making. Feet and hooves stamped the decking. ‘To Cadia! To Cadia!’

The next few pages are dedicated to describing the massive horde of ships that had emerged from the Eye of Terror from the Imperial perspective. It's easily the largest Chaos fleet the Galaxy had ever seen since the Siege of Terra, and is the main force that Abaddon planned to use to take Cadia

‘Holy Throne,’ whispered Admiral Quarren. ‘How many are there?’
The command deck of the Emperor-class battleship Might of the Faithful had observation windows eight hundred feet wide – but the roiling wash of warp translation took up nearly the entire expanse. By far the largest warp emergence Quarren had ever seen.
But it wasn’t the prismatic un-colours of the immaterium that chilled him – it was the splinters of black amidst the unnatural hues. Ships. So many ships. More than he’d battled so far in the entire Black Crusade – a campaign his force had barely survived...
Quarren saw a stylus rattling on the arm of his command throne, and realised he was shaking, with the ship rattling in sympathy...
This was like no fleet he’d ever faced. No fleet anyone living had faced. The greatest Archenemy armada since the Great Heresy

I think this is one of my favorite openers for a 40k book that I've read. The way that the Imperial forces genuinely believed that they had won, only to be surprised when a fuck-off massive armada of Chaos warships emerged from the Eye is really cool imo.

DAY: APRIL 17 2024
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The Days in Our Millennia
Stories of the Scions
New Recruits
2
The realm’s forces were gathered and the gods of Protection and Justice were going to come to blows, made all the more tragic as two angelic forces gathered outside the God of Protection’s palace. Wolven beings with wings and stood twice the size of a war-horse gathered on the border of the palace’s reach in the celestial realms. A single form clad in armor made of bronze and silver rode forward on a massive silver-furred wolf. It reached the gap of the drawbridge and raised a glaive, silver and shining, then lowered it and raised a shield. They were asking their opposition to surrender, one last time without words, a final chance at a peaceful resolution.
A war horn sounded deep in the palace.
The armored form sighed and shook their head in regret, then looked around. They caught the sight of a distant angelic being in odd garb with midnight black wings, probably here to document the events. The heavens loved their documentation, still they could tell the angel’s gaze was locked on them and it was very unsettling in a way they could not explain. The armored figure gave the command with their glaive raised.
The wolf they rode turned and ran several hundred feet, then turned and raced at the bridge. Then in a single massive leap it slammed into the raised drawbridge and smashed through it. The armored form dismounted in mid air and their glaive cleaved through several golden angels that fell clattering to the ground in pieces. Gears clicked loudly in the palace as the armored form marched forward, hearing the battle rage outside.
They came to a massive clockwork door and kicked it open, there on a now twisted golden throne was the God of Protection, now a tyrant swayed by some dark corruption. They marched forward and their opponent rose, producing a golden spiked chain that ended in a morning star.
“This is my-” The God was cut off as the armored figure of Justice raced forward and lanced their glaive out, it barely missed the startled God of Protection.
“I don’t care.” The voice of the armored figure was slightly distorted by their armor.
“Hale, we should talk. You need to listen, a dark force is rising. We need control.” The God of Protection raised his hands defensively.
“You had your chance.” Hale struck forward once again, “No longer will people suffer oppression under the guise of protection. Yield and face judgment or die in this tragedy of a throne room.”
The Corrupted God roared and lashed their chain forward, Hale’s shield was raised and the chain bounced off harmlessly. Then another strike lashed out and it too bounced off. Hale stepped to the side on the third lash and put their foot down on the chain and pulled hard with their leg. The Corrupted God stumbled forward and the silver glaive was there to meet his throat and remove his head.
Hale looked the scene over as the golden ichor of the god’s blood flowed from the stump. They took off their helmet revealing a woman’s scowling face as she surveyed the room once more before she turned to leave. As she approached the now claimed drawbridge she saw many golden angels vanish in clouds of golden dust, they would soon be reborn to new godly masters and serve a new cause, but it was always a sad sight. The drawbridge was down and the hole merely a small obstacle her forces helped her over. She directed her forces to a ridge where they could watch the scene unfold.
Once upon the ridge she watched as the castle slowly began to fade. The former god’s power was now being returned to the world to be recycled and a new god to be made or chosen. Another sad, but necessary sight. Then she noticed the black winged angel approaching her ridge. That was unusual, and the closer it got the more immediate the sense of something being very off became. When the being landed she was no longer convinced she was staring at just an angelic being, but something far more powerful in the guise of a weaker creature. As it landed it’s wings compressed into nothing and faded into its back. Definitely not a normal angel.
“Now was that really a challenge, beating a half starved god, corrupted and on his way out.” The “Angel” asked as he pulled out a small package from his odd garb then lit what looked to be a small piece of paper. “Smoke’em if you got’em, I’m here to chat.” He raised his small paper and offered her one from his package.
Cautiously she took the small paper and looked it over, it smelled of tobacco and other things. She looked at the man and nodded, motioning her forces to lower their raised arms. “I answered the call of the people, it was a duty, not a challenge.”
“Duty, you say.” The being nodded, his shaggy raven black hair blew in the celestial winds as he puffed out the smoke from his small paper. “It’s a hell of a duty to kill a god.”
“Then he should have not strayed from his path.” Hale stood firm, “He should have listened to reason, we would have helped him. He was once a brother in arms. But a tyrant is a tyrant, be they mortal or divine.”
“Astral Frieght.” The man extended his left hand.
She looked the hand and leered at the man.
“So you do believe in that here.” Astral snorted, and offered his right hand.
Hale tilted her head, trying to gauge this odd being, but shook it and offered her name, “Hale Alkan, God of Justice.”
Astral smiled, “That’s gonna get butchered to Hayley, I know it.”
By whom?” Hale asked.
“By my friends, my kind if you will.” Astral smiled as he dropped his paper to the ground and lit another one. “We’re on a level above yours. Where you deal with one world we manage countless sections of the Mutliverse.”
“That is an insulting way of talking to someone.” Hale noted.
“I don’t pretty up truth, God of Justice who slew her emperor in life.” Astral sighed.
“I did not slay him, I made him answer for his crimes.” She raised the paper up, “Now what is this odd thing you breathe in?”
Astral laughed, “Cigarette. Think like a pipe, but smaller. I got cigars if you want one.”
Hale nodded and motioned to her mount. The wolf approached and she dug in a saddlebag, she pulled out a beautifully decorated wooden pipe. “Do you mind?”
Astral gave a deep barking laugh and nodded his approval. “You. You got the spirit, that's for sure.”
“The spirit?” Hale stuffed her pipe, then lit it and leaned against her wolf while she patted it.
“She got a name?” Astral nodded to the wolf.
“Kyra.” Hale nodded, “She has been with me since I became a god.”
“She’s loyal.” He nodded, “She’d be welcome to join you too if you both wanted.”
Hale, once again leered at the man. “Speak openly, please.”
Astral nodded, “We’re about to have a nasty situation, one where we need numbers. I am a Scion and we need more Lesser-Scions.”
Hale nodded, she had heard of the Scions, so called Janitors of the Multiverse. She never understood why there were so few of them, but that apparently was being addressed. She tapped her pipe to her chin for a moment.
“It’s a challenge, but we have a duty, a responsibility to keep the multiverse healthy. One of our own fled her responsibility and is now positioning herself to do some dark shit.” Astral sighed, “So we’re looking to pad our numbers, make sure we don’t get caught with our pants down.”
Hale looked up at the angelic being and squinted as she tried to figure out if she had been scanned by a mind reader.
“You’re easy to read.” Astral smirked as he tossed the second cigarette to the ground. “Now, if you’re up for a real fight, we can get this show on the road if you’re interested.”
“I have questions.” Hale said as she emptied her pipe and motioned for her glaive and shield.
“Shoot.” Astral casually lit a third cigarette.
“Firstly, that cannot be healthy in such a quantity.” Hale nodded to the cigarette.
“We’re fuckin’ immortal.” Astral snorted, “Besides, ‘health’ falls under my aspect.”
“Which is?” Hale asked.
“Order.” Astral held the cigarette in his mouth as he took his long coat off and put it over a rock. His wings once again spread and Hale could almost feel the wave of power that rolled off them.
“And how do you function as a group, who leads you?” Hale asked.
“We’re a semi-autonomous group of high functioning lunacy.” Astral laughed, but sighed when Hale’s response was a confused squint. He shook his head and continued, “No real leader per se, we got one guy we all kinda respect, other than that we do our best to do the job and not lose our minds in the process. We got our own internal police in the form of the Scion of Destiny and our own advocate, the Scion of Defiance. You screw up to a degree we can’t fix, Destiny dolls out punishment. If they come after you for no reason Defiance has your back and that mother fucker is a bigger asshole than I am.”
“You enjoy vulgar speech.” Hale noted.
“Who the fuck doesn’t. Besides Heroism.” Astral snorted.
Hale raised a finger, “I believe I will understand that later.”
Astral nodded, “So offer’s still open. You interested? You ready to actually move worlds?”
“I’m ready to help those in need.” Hale nodded.
“I got a goddamned paladin here.” Astral laughed, “P’s gonna have a field day.” Hale readied herself. “My forces will not interfere.”
Astral rolled his eyes, “That’s good for them.” In a flash he was behind Hale and sent her sailing towards the edge of the ridge.
Hale drove her glaive into the ground and skidded to a halt, then spun just in time to barely dodge the fist that was directed to her face. She suddenly regretted starting this fight without her helmet, even more so when the punch ended in a thunderous crack despite hitting nothing. Still she swept her glaive down to the exposed fighter’s legs. They swept through air and she cursed herself for expecting a being with wings to remain on the ground. Then Astral was back a few hundred yards with his arms crossed, and a smile on his face as he continued to smoke his cigarette.
“Pretty good on the defensive, but can you get offensive?” Astral smirked.
This time Hale grinned and brought her glaive to both hands and caressed the edge, then slashed it in the air, gouts of silver dust floated around it then rushed forward as a beam of light. Astral moved out of the way with a smirk, until his cigarette fell from his mouth in three pieces. His gaze suddenly became a glare and Hale felt a chill run down her spine and felt like a child being pursued by a monster.
In a flash Astral was at her side and grabbed her arm, looped it through his own and tossed her into the air. As she rose into the sky she called forth a gout of bronze dust to provide her stability via her shield. Then all at once the shield was wrenched from her arm as a black shadow passed over her. She grabbed her arm in pain as it twisted unnaturally. She landed and rolled, holding her arm to her side and stood up with a glare at the landing angel who simply tore the shield in half as if it were paper. The gap in their power suddenly became crystal clear and she knew she had no chance at victory, but she would not falter. Astral began to walk towards her, slowly gaining speed with each step, she readied herself and lanced her glaive out at just the right moment. She watched the Scion’s hands pass through the godly blade and shatter it like glass, then she was blown back into a rock and had to struggle to breathe.
“Goddamn.” Astral cursed, “That stung...” He approached the downed Hale and closed his eyes.
Hale immediately felt better as he body returned to its state prior to the very quick brawl. Even her shield and glaive returned to her, fully repaired.
“I am not worthy.” She nodded, accepting her failure.
Astral laughed and squatted to be face to face with her. “You passed kid.” He smiled wide as he patted her cheek. Then he pulled his arm back and produced a contract glowing with a powerful white light. “It’s yours if you want it.”
Hale blinked in confusion.
“You never stood a chance, but you went for it. Hell we didn’t even have to fight, it was yours by your actions alone.” Astral laughed, “But I’m glad we got some exercise out of it.”
“We didn’t have...” Hale took a cleansing breath. “You are, as the common people say, a cad.”
Astral blinked, then burst into laughter, “Yeah, yeah. Pretty much.” He stood up and nodded.
“So, what do you say?” Astral extended his hand to help her up.
Hale took the offered hand and stood, then turned to her forces. Then looked at Astral with a look of concern and some traces of fear.
“You’re not obliged to, and it's not like you have to give up being a god.” Astral said, “Well unless they make you. We can’t stop that.”
Hale nodded, “I will be taking the Scion’s offer.”
The wolven angels and the dire wolves in her service bowed to her decree.
“Return home, I will discuss this with the others the first chance I get.” Hale nodded to her forces, then turned to Astral once again. “When do we--”
She was silenced as a door opened as Astral gestured to it. She had seen other gods pull such tricks, but this felt less like magic and more like reality simply acquiescing to a request. She stared down the long hall and looked once again at Astral.
“It’s a bit of a walk. Mostly so I can answer questions and to give you a chance to change your mind before you can’t.” Astral explained as he extended his hand and his coat returned to him. “Kyra can come with us if you want.”
“For now she should stay here.” Hale nodded nervously, she had no idea how the other Scions would take to a wolf the size of Kyra.
Astral nodded as they stepped through and the door closed. “That’s a shame, like everyone loves dogs and Wraith’s animal is also the wolf. Granted he uses the big black european wolves. I think it’s ‘cause he’s an Irish as hell son of a bitch.”
“That is rude.” Hale countered with a roll of her eyes. “You said Lesser-Scion is what I would be.”
“Basically most of us were mortal in some way before we became Scions. One or two of us were gods, the one who left us was always one though, the other ascended. Kinda like you.” Astral explained, “But where a Scion is tied to a broad concept, a Lesser-Scion is focused, more specific.”
“And I would be?” Hale asked.
“Thinking Noblesse Oblige, but I think Responsibility is easier to parse.” Astral nodded, “Opinions?”
“I would agree.” Hale nodded.
“Any other questions?” Astral asked.
“Any warnings?” Hale asked.
Astral paused and laughed for what seemed a solid minute before he collected himself and simply said, “Too many to count.”
Hale paused this time as she tried to comprehend the statement, then rushed to catch up. She suddenly very much regretted leaving her pipe with Kyra.
Then they came to a door, simple and wooden.
“Last chance Hale.” Astral put his hand on the door. “You sure this is something you want?”
“What I want doesn’t matter.” Hale nodded, “I have a duty.”
Astral paused and took his hand off the door. “Let me be clear. This is a hell of a responsibility, a duty not many others can expect to commit to, but it is also a choice. If you don’t feel you can commit by your own desire-” Astral silenced himself as she pushed the door open, then he smiled as they walked into the Dais Room.
“What is this place?” Hale asked in awe, she had seen godly places of gathering, but the simplicity and power in this room was something she had never felt before, it eclipsed even Astral’s power.
“Welcome.” A being made of crystal spoke as it appeared on the center Dais and descended to the floor. “I am the Scion of Destiny, you are the newest brought to us.”
“Lesser Scion of Responsibility.” Astral said, “Caught wind of her a long while ago. Circled back and picked her up for the journey ahead.”
“You are a Scion? Were you mortal?” Hale asked.
“No, but my primary concerns do not include mortals, but the Scions themselves. Should they step out of line, I am the force they meet.” Destiny said with a bow.
“And if glass-ass steps out of line, I smack him down.” A man who was leaning against a low set wall called out. He had shaded glasses on and was accompanied by a short red-haired girl. Both had pale skin compared to Hale’s umber tones.
“Hale, this is Alan Quain, the Scion of Defiance, and his daughter Anna, the Leser-Scion of Heroism.” Astral nodded.
“Ah, that’s what you meant.” Hale nodded, “His daughter you say?”
“Yeah.” Anna blushed, “I’m one of three Lesser-Scions that got the role without the Scions offering it. It just happened. It’s nice to meet you.”
Hale blinked and then nodded, “It just happened?”
“Only other two to get that to happen are Mercy and Terror.” Astral sighed, “And once you meet Terror you’ll understand.”
“Elbee just needs time to get used to people.” Anna said with a smile, “But he is a brat.”
“So this is your newbie.” Alan pushed off the low set wall and walked over, glancing down at Hale. “Man, I don’t get to say this often, but you’re shorter than me.”
“You seem tall enough.” Hale commented.
“Ah...” Alan looked at Astral, “Time period?”
“1500 CE equivalent.” Astral shrugged, “Maybe?”
“My dude.” Alan shook his head, “Your concepts include time.”
“I know!” Astral shouted, “I suck at timing and time stuff!”
Hale stared at Astral for a moment before he realized something.
“What do you mean ‘my newbie’?” Astral glared at Alan, “Who else got a new Lesser-Scion before me?”
Alan smirked, “I’ll give you three guesses and they all are gonna piss you off.”
“Hi....” A man only a few inches shorter than Astral seemed to peek out from behind him. He had solid lime green eyes and a mop of messy black hair.
Hale peeked behind Astral only to find no one was there. She blinked and shook her head, then went to ask Astral what was happening, but the man was now directly in front of her. Her mind raced with the possibilities.
“Oh she’s a good one.” The man smiled at Astral.
Astral sighed, “Hale this is Perfection, the Scion of Chaos. My opposite and don’t let the blatantly lazy attitude fool you, he's smarter and more powerful than he lets on.”
“Oh, you flirt.” Perfection gave a lecherous grin to Astral.
“Perfection is also taken and if I tell his lovely lady about this ‘incident’, she makes sure he suffers.” Astral grinned.
“Suddenly I feel less compelled to aggravate you today.” Perfection smiled and slowly slunk a foot away.
“Feeling better?” Astral asked, letting the annoyance seemingly melt away.
“I mean one of my best friends is gone. I’m not great, but we got work to do.” Perfection sighed as he then began to circle Hale. “Godly armor, check. Godly weapon and shield...” He looked at Astral. “You just ripped her right from the plane didn’t you?”
“We came right here, yes. Should we have not?” Hale asked.
Perfection sighed, “Listen, my lovely Astral’s a stand up guy but lacks a sense of style...” Perfection gestured to the black shirt and pants that Astral wore under his coat, then glance to Alan, “As do a few others.”
“Hey.” Astral and Alan said in unison, both clearly offended.
“I didn’t want to say anything.” Hale nodded.
Perfection clapped his hand excitedly. “Oh, you...” He laughed, “You, I like.”
“What have I done?” Astral groaned.
You know what...” Perfection smiled. “SAMMY, GET OUT HERE!” Perfection stepped to the side and a young man stood in his place.
The young man had combed back brown hair with a large cow-lick. He had golden-hazel eyes and a lopsided grin. A deck of playing cards rested in a sleeveless denim jacket. He was a few inches taller than Hale and pulled out a strange device that he turned into a comb with the push of a button.
“Well aren’t you a precious lookin’ thang.” Sammy smirked, his odd drawl seemed to accentuate the oddest parts of words.
“Oh god you got an Atom Cat.” Astral stared in shock.
“He’s amazing. I love him.” Perfection smiled. “Watch. Sammy, she needs to look the part of a Lesser-Scion.”
“Well, that I can handle.” Sammy circled Hale and pulled out a measuring tape. “Excuse me, my lady.” He took her measurements with a lightning flash rush of power and movement. “I got it all, we’re good.”
“For what?” Hale asked.
“What’s your name?” Anna asked quickly, “Before this one mentally scars you for eternity.” She glared at Perfection.
“Hale Alkan.” Hale responded, remembering she had not introduced herself to the rest of those gathered.
“Hayley!” Perfection grinned, “Lovely name.”
“Hale.” She corrected him, only to meet a sly grin. She suddenly felt like the mouse pursued by the cleverest of cats.
“Don’t.” Astral slapped Perfection on the back of his head. “Let her adjust before you torment the kid.”
“I am not a child.” Hale said in a huff.
“Forgive us.” A voice said as the room chilled greatly. “We are older than even a god can perceive.” Hale turned to see a floating set of robes with a hood, in the empty darkness of the hood were two glowing cyan eyes that somehow seemed to be smiling. Its arm was looped into the arm of a darker skinned woman with fire-red hair.
Hale froze, despite his smile the being before her had a more and air about him that felt like it was driving her into the ground, if she hadn’t been used to not needing to breathe she would have panicked when she realized she stopped. She had never met this being before but every instinct in her body told her she was staring at a Reaper.
“Oh my, you are distressingly easy to read.” The Reaper spoke, but he gently nodded to a chair for her to sit. “I am Wraith, the Scion of Death. Reaper of Reapers. You have no doubt seen my kin and ilk before. You have nothing to fear from me, Justice, not unless you fall to corruption as well.”
Hale felt her godly heart skip a beat, she could tell the warning was meant o be gentle, but she also could tell it was deathly serious.
“Heya bud!” Perfection waved.
“Wraith!” Anna rushed forward and hugged the specter by the waist, eliciting a playful ‘oof’ from the spirit.
Wraith’s eyes continued to form a smile as an invisible hand patted Anna on the head.
“Anna’s his favorite.” The red-haired woman smiled and offered her hand. “I’m Karma. Scion of Balance and Wraith’s wife.”
Hale blinked in astonishment. “Wife?”
Wraith laughed and shook his head. “Yes, we cannot be alone forever. Some of us live forever with our mortal family made immortal, some live with the spirits of our loved ones and others are perpetually accompanied by family and don’t feel the need to have such company.”
“Not us.” Alan clarified. “I got a slice of Heaven with almost all my ladies back in my Verge.”
“He isn’t kidding.” Anna crossed her arms, “He should just be glad my mom is among them.”
Alan blushed, “I can’t help it if the ladies like me.”
Anna sighed and rolled her eyes, “Anyway, welcome to the madhouse Hale.”
Hale suddenly felt even greater concern.
“Don’t worry about them.” Sam finally spoke up as he checked a device on his arm.
“He has a pip-boy.” Astral sighed.
“That’s a DM design.” Perfection smiled, then paused. “Maybe best not too-”
Sammy pressed a button and nodded. “All right Hale, imagine yourself as you would want to ideally be.”
Hale noticed light benign to glow around her body and froze in slight panic, but did as she was instructed. When the light died down she looked out on the Scions again then checked her hands. Her armor was gone, she was now in a strange silver and bronze outfit. She wore sleek pants with comfortable firm boots, a jacketed cover and soft, light shirt underneath. Then she was handed a mirror by Sammy. She looked and saw her black hair now had streaks of silver and bronze in it, and two wolf-like ears stood on her head. She smiled and saw more wolf-like canines. She held the mirror close for a moment before remembering she had an audience.
“Well now, that’s a look I can support.” Wraith laughed, a slight accent peeking through.
“Well that’s one way to do it.” Perfection admitted. “Not half bad Sammy. What do you think Hale?”
Hale took a moment to notice that the Scion of Chaos used her proper name this time. “I feel perfect.”
Perfection clapped and stepped back, taking Hale’s form and armor she previously had on. The change was perfect to the point that Hale herself stumbled back in shock.
“Forgive me, Perfection, but it will take more than shapeshifting to aggravate me.” Hale smirked, regaining her stance.
Perfection frowned in her form and shifted back to his normal form..
“You couldn’t tell it was him?” Anna asked.
“What?” Hale asked in return, “Of course I didn't, it was perfectly replicated, startling to be sure.”
Perfection chuckled. “You’ll need to forgive me for that. I can choose who sees me when I shapeshift.” He winked and changed once again, but this time it was just him wearing oddly proportioned and sized armor. He seemed uncomfortable for a moment. “Man, I don't have the hips for this armor.” He then returned to his normal form.
Hale let a small laugh escape her lips.
“There we go.” Perfection smiled, “The most important part of being a Scion.”
“Laughter?” Hale asked.
“Not taking the job or oneself too seriously.” Perfection smiled. “Now, I’m off to teach Sammy some of the funner parts of the job.”
“Wait.” Wraith said as he raised his hand. “Perhaps we should have another Lesser-Scion break them both in and slowly.”
“Oh!” Anna hopped up and down. “Me! Pick me!”
“Oh dear, it would be a hard choice.” Wraith laughed, “I think you would work fine Anna. Take them around a Marvel or DC world for warm ups.”
Anna smiled, “I know just where to go!” She stretched and a red dragon lurched forward from a red aura that formed around her. The dragon then ripped open a hole in reality.
“We have doors.” Destiny gestured to one of the many doors.
“But this is fun!” Anna chuckled and dove into the opening, then the dragon’s form completed and wrapped its tail around both Sammy and Hale, pulling them along for the ride.
“Well that’s gonna be interesting.” Alan laughed, “Wait, what was her concept?”
“Responsibility.” Astral said in horror.
“Parker’s gonna drive her mad.” Alan sighed.
“I’m more worried about Bruce Wayne.” Astral admitted. “They can bully Spider-Man, but Wayne will find a way around them.”
Perfection chuckled as he ate a single potato chip.
“You can’t take credit for this.” Wraith glared at the other Scion.
“Moi?” Perfection feigned offense. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Get him.” Alan said.
At that moment another door opened up and DM, the Scion of Variable, walked in with a man with a red wide-brimmed hat and grin as wide as Perfection’s.
“I got newbie!” DM shouted.
“NO!” Alan shouted as he turned to see a variation of Alucard standing in the Dais room.
“DM, you idiot!” Astral shouted as he turned to look, then spun back to find Perfection had vanished. “Astral, me idiot!”
“He did it again!” Alan roared.
Wraith sighed and shook his head. “I hope they don’t lose too much sanity on this trip.”
Karma stood next to her husband and smiled, “Honey, Perfection got involved, sanity left a while ago.”
Wraith nodded and sighed as the Dais room erupted into Scions arguing with each other.
Alucard took a moment to walk over to Wraith and looked the reaper over before speaking. “So I’m told you need a guy to take over Madness?”
Wraith just looked up in confusion, he glanced to the balcony where Lachesis stood. She nodded and walked into a door to her own home.
“We may.” Wraith said, “Just give us a bit here.” He turned to the arguing Scions. “HEY, SHUT IT! WE HAVE WORK TO DO!” His full Irish accent broke through.
“Oh, I like you.” Alucard grinned.
“Would you be up for a position under Vengeance?” Wraith asked as he turned back to the vampire.
“I really like you!” Alucard laughed.
“I may have to rethink that.” Wraith sighed.
<<<>>>
The Scions are © u/TheSmogMonsterZX
Hale is © of Foxboy aka u/TwistedMind596
All other characters not a part of the Scion-Verge-Verse are © Their Original Creators and are not used with intent to infringe upon their creator’s rights.
First Story
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<<< The Voice Box/Author’s Notes>>>
Smoggy: Told you all.
Perfection: Still a dick move.
Smoggy: Look, I get it, but the biggest change has now occurred.
Wraith: We can die. Well retire.
Smoggy: Eh, little of Column A, little of Column B.
DM: I don’t get it, we needed strong people...
Perfection: It’s not about the very questionable Lesser-Scion choice you made.
DM: Oh, well I’m good then.
Perfection: Where did this lovely lady Astral found come from though.
Smoggy: You don’t want to know...
Perfection: Come on...
Smoggy: (points to credits)
Perfection: (looks up) AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
DM: Is he foaming at the mouth?
Wraith: He is.
Smoggy: The meme will never die. AHAHAHAHA!!!
Wraith: Not this shit again!
DM: I’ll get the straight jackets.
Smoggy: And to clarify, it is pronounced “Hah-lei”.

DAY: APRIL 16 2024
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