Artist: Run The Jewels
Album: RTJ4
Date Released: June 3rd, 2020
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Artist Background
The duo consisting of Atlanta rapper Killer Mike, and legendary underground produceMC El-P, known together as Run The Jewels, originally came together as a result of Adult Swim executive Jason DeMarco who introduced the two in 2011. After his 2011 album PL3DGE peaked at #115 on the US charts, Killer Mike told Jason that he wanted to make his own AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted. Jason informed Mike, “If you want AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted modernized, the only producer I know who comes close to the Bomb Squad-level of production is El-P”. The duo’s chemistry was immediate, as El-P went on to produce all of Killer Mike’s 2012 last solo album R.A.P. Music, and Mike featured on El-P’s final solo album Cancer 4 Cure. Mike and El’s respective albums released within a week of each other in May 2012, and the two embarked on a twenty-city US tour in the following months. After returning from tour, the pair had found a friendship growing between themselves, and made the decision to put other projects on hold and focus on the chemistry that had been sparked. Recording at an upstate NY studio beginning in April 2013, the duo re-appropriated the phrase “Run The Jewels” from the LL Cool J track “Cheesy Rat Blues", and released their self-titled collaborative album, for free via digital download, only a mere 2 months later in June 2013.
36” Chain vs. Pistol & Fist
Run The Jewels discography currently exists in a distinct pairing. With Run The Jewels as their debut, this record set the group's tone as a light-hearted, braggadocious duo with as much confidence in their abilities as swag in their punchlines. Just over a year later, the sequel Run The Jewels 2 took the foundation set from their freshman effort and dialed the insanity up to 11. RTJ2 pushed the boundaries of their aggression and flows to new heights; with incredible energy in their verses, and absolutely impeccable beats, blending El-P’s signature industrial sound with sharp synth arpeggios, chopped Zach De La Rocha vocals, and absolutely bonkers Travis Barker drums.
It was then nearly 3 years before Jamie and Mike followed up their breakout RTJ2, with Run The Jewels 3 being released again ahead of its scheduled release date via free digital download, this time on Christmas Eve 2016. Instead of these two attempting to outdo the pure insanity and in-your-face attitude found in their predecessor, Mike and El decide to evolve themselves as a group. The duo had noticeably pulled back on the swag and dick jokes which made such a splash on RTJ2, instead choosing a more subdued, electronic approach to their beats, as well as a clearly stronger political approach in their lyrics. This change in sound and style is demonstrated in the album cover’s artwork. The first two records featured the distinctive RTJ “Pistol and Fist”, with the fist tightly gripping a chain. The chain, in my opinion, represents the swag and braggadocio that drove the aggressive nature of their first two albums. In RTJ3 the chain is removed, leaving only hands that have transformed from bleeding and bandaged, to a pristine gold.
This brings us to early 2020. It’s been nearly 4 years of living in a post-Trump America, and El-P announces that Run The Jewels fourth record has been completed. Mike and El live-stream the first single “yankee and the brave” on Instagram on March 22nd, 2020. Lyrically and sonically, RTJ4 exists as the successor to Run The Jewels 3, with Mike and El again taking the good from their previous effort and launching it into the creative stratosphere. El-P’s beats are again leaning towards the synthetic, electronic side, this time with the intensity dialed all the way up to 11. From a lyrical perspective, RTJ takes the politically-charged lyrics from their predecessor, and again, up the ante, laying down some of the hardest hitting and politically poignant bars either of these two have ever spit.
Album Review
2020 was a year that none of us will soon forget. An unprecedented global health crisis kept the majority of us inside for months at a time. RTJ4 was announced on May 12th, 2020, with a release date slated for June 5th, 2020. However, with 2020 as the gift that won’t stop giving, the end of May was highlighted by the unjust killing of George Floyd. The phrase heard around the world, “I can’t breathe” instantly became a rally-cry for the oppressed to finally take to the streets to demand systemic police reform, as Floyd’s death was not the first time this phrase was uttered in an unjust police killing. In fact, a 2020 study by the New York Times showed that at least 70 people have died in police custody after using the same phrase over the past decade. As millions of American’s began organizing protests and demonstrations in the wake of Floyd’s death, Run The Jewels made the decision to release their latest chapter two days ahead of the scheduled release. El-P tweeted, just minutes ahead of the drop, “Fuck it, why wait. The world is infested with bullshit, so here’s something raw to listen to while you deal with it all. We hope it brings you some joy. Stay safe and hopeful out there and thank you for giving 2 friends the chance to be heard and do what they love”. In line with all past Run The Jewels releases, the album was made available for free digital download, two days ahead of its scheduled release date, on June 3rd, 2020.
THE RETURN (we don’t mean no harm but we truly mean all the disrespect)
RTJ4 opens with the first single, “yankee and the brave (ep. 4)”. Using the team names from their respective hometown baseball teams, Mike and El use the opening track to prove that they’re not just a hip-hop duo, they’re brothers, for better or worse. El-P kicks this installment off with rapid-fire, machine-gun esque snares, matching Killer Mike’s aggressive flow and tightly packed rhymes, before El jumps in to trade some dense rhymes as well. Mike and El depict themselves as outlaws, with Mike surrounded by cops with only one bullet remaining. He contemplates suicide instead of allowing the police to take him alive, until El-P jumps back in, offering Mike a way out, with a getaway car waiting outside. This tense situation is depicted lightheartedly in this song’s music video, which was released via Adult Swim and features the duo animated.
The trade-off between Mike and El’s short verses are reminiscent of late-80’s EPMD flows, while the production sounds like boom-bap that’s been sent to us from the future. This distinctive blend of old-school rap roots and forward thinking production is what continues to separate Run The Jewels from absolutely all of their contemporaries. While so many artists are continually playing catch-up with the latest trends, RTJ are side-stepping the trendy and moving forward with the mind-bending.
FLEXIN’ (ayo one for mayhem, two for mischief)
The second single “ooh la la” samples a Gang Star track "DWYCK (feat. Nice & Smooth)" as the basis for the chorus. I say “samples” as that’s how it is credited in the album’s liner notes, however it’s truly an interpolation of Greg Nice’s bar, slowed down slightly, and sung by El-P and Greg Nice himself. El-P is a true old-head at heart, and it’s abundantly obvious in his work, even going as far as to recruit legendary producer DJ Premiere to handle the scratching on the back end of this banger.
Out of key piano chords are looped to quickly create an unsettling aura surrounding the track, before El-P’s voice cuts through the infectious piano like a whip. Pounding, up-tempo drums are introduced after the chorus’ first iteration, creating what is possibly El-P’s first danceable beat. Lyrically, Mike and El-P initially seem scattered on this track, however the music video quickly makes their point very obvious.

”we imagined the world on the day that the age old struggle of class was finally over. a day that humanity, empathy and community were victorious over the forces that would separate us based on arbitrary systems created by man.
this video is a fantasy of waking up on a day that there is no monetary system, no dividing line, no false construct to tell our fellow man that they are less or more than anyone else. not that people are without but that the whole meaning of money has vanished. that we have somehow solved our self created caste system and can now start fresh with love, hope and celebration. its a dream of humanity’s V-DAY… and the party we know would pop off.”

The video envisions a society celebrating the fact that the class system we currently exist within has finally imploded. Money is worthless, and we have rejected the desire to bind ourselves to the constraints of capitalism. All creeds and colors unite to burn the system that has so effectively controlled us for over a century. It’s a party, and if there was a song to celebrate the end of the world as it is currently known, “ooh la la” is that song.
Mike’s last verse features a few metaphors and comparisons celebrating the destruction of capitalism, saving the most poignant for last:

I used to love Bruce, but livin' my vida loca
Helped me understand I'm probably more of a Joker
When we usher in chaos, just know that we did it smiling
Cannibals on this island, inmates run the asylum

Premo’s expertly cut scratches lead us into the equally hard hitting sample flip of “Misdemeanor”, by Foster Stevens as the basis for the beat to “out of sight”. Lending yet another nod to the old-school greats that laid the foundation for RTJ, “out of sight” samples the same track as The D.O.C.’s “It’s Funky Enough”, only adding a bouncy, electronic synth atop the inverted chord hits, and uptempo, industrial drums, to create an absolutely infectious groove for Mike and El’s dynamic chemistry to shine, rapidly jumping between each other’s two line flows in the first verse.
“out of sight” shows each MC providing insight into how each of them earned a living and achieved their current status. Mike and El’s opening verse each details themselves robbing people in order to eat. El alludes to the fact that he crossed his accomplices in crime for the whole bag, while Mike details the fact his assailant tells him it’s an “honor” to be robbed by his mother’s only son.
While El-P’s production is the obvious stand out on first listen, Killer Mike comes through with one of the most sonically pleasing and technically proficient verses of 2020.

We the motivating, devastating, captivating
Ghost and Rae relating product of the fuckin' '80s
Coke dealin' babies, never regulating, bag accumulating
It would not be overstating to say they are underrating
The pride of Brooklyn and the Grady, baby
We don't need no compliments or confidence
Our attitude and latitude is "fuck you, pay me"

The dense, intricate rhyme schemes smack you in the face, almost distracting you from Mike’s delivery and blistering flow on the verse; flexing his legendary status while paying homage to his drug-dealing past. This absolutely stunning display of technical skill, story telling, and complex rhyming illustrates how RTJ seamlessly integrates the best of both old school and new school hip-hop.
“out of sight” also features a guest verse from 2 Chainz, and he continues to lay the braggadocio on thick. Considering Tity Boi’s dedication to trap stylings, his verse feels right at home on the flex track, despite it’s late 80’s tribute sample, a considerable departure from his usual sound palette.
Up until this point, I haven’t mentioned any of the El-P’s lyrics specifically. El-P is a great rapper, but Killer Mike… Well, Killer Mike is an incredible rapper. He’s the guy who draws you in. El-P is the one who lays the foundation for greatness and Mike is the show stopper, and that’s generally the case for most RTJ tracks. But on “holy calamafuck”, El-P seems determined to make people stop and ask, “Who the fuck is this?!”.
A sharp, yet nearly minimalistic drum kit backing a heavily distorted synthesizer melody lays beneath rhymically knocking cow-bells. This aggressively set stage allows Mike and El to flex as the dynamic duo they are, until the beat suddenly takes a turn for the chaotic. A gnarled, ultra-menacing synth overtakes everything while Mike screams into the abyss, until a distorted snare, enormous 808s, and skeletal hi-hats cut through and launch the beat switch into another dimension. The minimal, yet incredibly dark soundscape allows El-P to snap in a way I have never heard from him previously. His rhymes schemes are reminiscent of an old MF DOOM lyric notebook, while his topics flawlessly combine flexing, psychedelic use, and his well-cemented legacy in the hip-hop community. Cutting and pasting a few of his bars into this review could not convey a fraction of how stunning El-P’s performance on “holy calamafuck” is.
Slightly later in the track list, making liberal use of the Ether song “Gang of Four”, “the ground below” samples and loops the sharp guitar riff and adds aggressive, pounding drums as the basis for the beat; this is finally reminiscent of the forward-thinking, stridulous production El-P has built his reputation on. Capitalising on the classic RTJ moment, Mike and El both flex in their own unique ways. Mike compares himself to Godzilla taking on Tokyo, and El-P demands respect for his name as the legend he is, threatening to smack dying children for mispronouncing his name with his middle finger to the world; his complete disregard for human life and confidence in his abilities are summed up at the end of his verse.

You see a future where Run the Jewels ain’t the shit
Cancel my Hitler-killing trip
Turn the time machine back around a century

SO¢IAL JU$T-ICE (until my voice go from a shriek to whisper...)
While the first few tracks aren’t without their social and political themes, the back-end of RTJ4 is where Mike and El start to bust out the heavy topics. “goonies vs. E.T.”. starts off light, with El-P pointing to the irony of how once he finally started to make it “big” in the industry, the world began to descend into chaos due to climate changes, increasingly obvious social injustice, and political madness. He culminates his frustration with our disregard for the Earth with a fantastic quotable.

Fuck y’all got, another planet on stash?
Far from the fact of the flames and our trash
That is not snow, it is ash, and you gotta know
The past got a wrath, it’s a lover gone mad

Mike’s verse takes the light-hearted frustration expressed by El-P, and turns the aggression to the next level. Aiming his sights against the ruling class and their society that’s been designed to oppress people for profit, who have very meticulously painted themselves as celebrities and idols to the American public. Mike accepts that he will be villainized by these people for speaking against them, but he welcomes the nefarious role, knowing that the working class will eventually eat the rich, no matter how much they are stomped into the dirt.
And this is just the warmup.
If it’s possible for a song to represent a moment in time that captures the absolute shit storm that has been 2020, “walking in the snow” is that song. It’s release coincided perfectly with the protests for George Floyd which were sweeping the nation. Killer Mike’s verse directly references the phrase “I can’t breathe”, the last words of Eric Garner, which also happened to be the last words of Floyd as well. The fact that this verse was reportedly written in November 2019 perpetually underscores the importance of the content and perfectly represents how persistent this problem is. “walking in the snow” is a true encapsulation of both a defining moment in time and an ever-persisting issue.
But he doesn’t just stop at the racial injustice. Mike goes on an absolute rant about the American education system; how it’s not designed to teach people, but to discriminate against poor populations, limiting their legitimate opportunities, and therefore disproportionately leading them into a criminal lifestyle. He calls out the media as fear-mongers, and the apathy of the American public in the face of indecency. Fortunately for Mike, by the time we finally had the chance to hear this masterpiece, we were already on our feet, using this album as a war cry to mobilize against a tyrannical government that militarized against its own citizens simply for asking that we recognize systemic racism and demanding change. Killer Mike has the best verse of the year, no doubt in my mind.
The only drawback is that Mike’s verse is so fucking good that it completely overshadows El-P’s, which is also amazing. A menacing guitar riff and haunting synths kick the track off into a bouncy groove, where El-P unleashes a flurry of internal rhymes that does not relent for about half his verse. Even adding layers of social commentary within the densely packed bars, El refuses to quit and continues on his political tirade; criticizing ICE’s detainment center practices and the “pseudo-Christians” who support them, with a bar that now lives in my head:

Pseudo-Christians, y’all indifferent, kids in prison ain’t a sin? Shit
if even one scrap of what Jesus taught connected you’d feel different
what a disingenuous way to piss away existence, I don’t get it
I’d say you lost your goddamn minds if y’all possessed one to begin with

The combination of two of the best verses spit by any rapper(s) this year and production help from El-P and long time RTJ collaborator Little Shalimar, create a bouncy, aggressive, deeply truthful banger. “walking in the snow” not only encapsulates the crux of 2020 with lyrics that will become more powerful as they age, but will also forever be associated with the Black Lives Matter movement and the determination to expose continuing racial and societal injustices.
The sonic palette of RTJ4 holds an extremely unique place in El-P’s discography. Jamie is the definition of a self-made 90’s hip-hop legend. This is the dude who put New York underground hip-hop on the map with Company Flow, and he did it with his unique flavor of dark, noisy, dense, boom-bap. Whether he was doing it with the help of Rawkus, or completely independently during his Definitive Jux run, El-P has never made music with the intention of becoming famous. Funcrusher Plus, Fantastic Damage,I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, and Cancer 4 Cure are all highly revered as industrial, technical, abrasive, and completely unsuitable for the radio or a party. The fact that three songs on RTJ4 could easily be heard on the radio, at a party, or in a TV series credits scene is frankly, astounding. In a 2002 interview/documentary on El-P’s budding record label Def Jux, he stated that his friend bet him $500 that he could not make a beat that was “happy”. At the time of the interview, El-P said that he had not won that bet yet. While I might not qualify the beats on RTJ4 as “happy”, if you showed El-P the beat for “JU$T” in 2002, I believe he might have won that bet.
Pharell opens “JU$T” with the pre-chorus, spitting varied examples of how we’re all slaves to our current system throughout the track, over echoing snares and bouncy 808s before bright synth chords and up-tempo hi-hats burst in while Killer Mike delivers the chorus, pointing to the fact that the majority of the people featured on American currency owned slaves at one point in their lives. Mike’s verse touches on the fact that he has committed crimes to get where they are today. Mike is publicly open about his past as a drug dealer. So why is he a criminal, but Benjamin Franklin isn’t? These are the people who built our country, and they built it on the backs of slaves. He illustrates this theme with a more recent examples:

You believe corporations runnin marijuana? Ooh (how that happen?)
and your country gettin ran by a casino owner (ooh)
pedophiles sponsor all these fuckin’ racist bastards (they do)

When corporations are able to sell cannabis legally, but the government continually incarcerates people who trap, our president is a notoriously fraudulent businessman, and the people who helped put him in power run a pedophile ring, yet none of them face consequences and are allowed to continue to profit and remain in power while people suffer; well, we might be closer to slaves than previously imagined.
Rage Against The Machine frontman Zach de la Rocha also makes his mandatory feature appearance at the end of “JU$T”. As the only artist to feature on three Run The Jewels albums, Zach is essentially an unofficial member of the group at this point. His fiery verse is spit with the same “Rage” energy that set him apart in the mid-90’s, ending the track questioning his place in a capitalist society as a recipe for his inevitable demise, since his “breath”, or art, as his weapon to express himself is still being exploited for other’s profit.
Continuing with RTJ4’s heavily synthetic sonic palette, “never look back” features wavering synth leads resting above the slow-jams snappy snares and thumping bass, while a haunting voice echoes in the background. This unsettling aura provides additional gravity for Jamie and Mike to continue self-reflecting on defining moments in their childhood, and as well as how far they’ve come from those moments. Mike and El are both self-made men, and while they have a certain fondness for those gritty moments that defined them, moving forward in life is undoubtedly more important.
Skeletal drums reminiscent of a slowly pounding heart opens “pulling the pin”, before rhythmic hi-hats and textured, watery synths fluttering in the upper register resting above a bouncy synth lead, and punchy 808s, burst in. The track digs itself into a slower, marching groove and shows the duo figuratively doing exactly what the title implies. Painting a portrait of a society that has turned on itself, Mike and El are ready to pull the pin and start over.
The duo both detail their despise for the ruling class, pointing out multiple examples of how the elite have designed our society to keep poor people in their class. Simultaneously recognizing their own hypocrisy for profiting in a system that inherently discriminates; Mike reflects on his own success, knowing that living the lifestyle he enjoys is one built on oppression, and expresses the guilt that has caused him. El-P opens with a brutal metaphor for police, implying that they’re the root cause of the “wretched state of danger” our society exists within, and that the only effective corrective action is to numb yourself with drugs. Despite his advice, Jamie knows this is not a permanent solution, but one that causes more self-inflicted wounds.
The final piece of the puzzle that is RTJ4, “a few words for the firing squad” begins to close the album with ever crescending strings, and loud, thunderous drums which never seem to resolve, continuing throughout their verses. While the drums that lead to nowhere can be sonically unpleasant, the unresolved melodies are intentionally representative of their current mindsets. Their verses are reflective and grim, but simultaneously optimistic and envisions a world where tragedy is a less common occurrence.
El is grateful for what he has now but recognizes his entire life has been skewed by traumas, so out of place feels normal for him. He reflects on his current success, noting that the worst people tend to end up with the most, which makes becoming “rich” something not as desirable as it once was.
Mike opens up about the death of his mother who died while he was on an airplane, admitting his struggles to not cope with his trauma with opioids. However, his wife provides him the most important reason to stay clean “but my queen/say she need a king/not another junkie rapper fiend” while a heartbreaking saxophone solo highlights the gravity of his lyrics.
The track ends with what sounds the like wrap-up voiceover to a TV show, a conceptually satisfying ending, as the opening track “yankee and brave (ep.4)” began with El-P stating:

”This week, on Yankee and The Brave”

This voiceover paints the duo as brothers on the run from the law and crooked cops, and while this does close this “episode” out as intended, the critic in me is bothered by the slightly kitschy outro to such a spectacular album. The voices singing over and over, “Brave, brave, braaaaaave, Yankee and the Brave” would be, simply put, better left on the cutting room floor. The ending of this track alone is what knocks my score of this album down a few points. Despite its stellar lyrical content, with drums that never seem to reach that “holy shit!” moment, and the easily skippable outro, it’s upsetting to me that an album this great ends on such a low note.
Overview
RTJ4 is by far my favorite album of the year. El-P’s cutting edge approach to their sound, blended with lyrical content that continues to be more relevant by the day, the duo have come together with what is objectively their most accessible album to date. RTJ4 is the natural evolution of sound and subject matter for the duo; taking the foundation set by Run The Jewels 3 and evolving it into a more concise, more accessible, and more conceptual album. While I still personally prefer the “fuck the world” intensity and experimental nature of Run The Jewels 2, RTJ4 opens themselves up to a whole new world of exposure, and when you’re as talented as these two, you know they’re going to capitalize on it. RTJ is currently at their apex, and they’ve created an album that will make many new life-long fans going forward.
9.2/10
Discussion Points

• How does this compare to other RTJ releases? How about in comparison to the member’s solo works?
  
• Does the overwhelmingly positive critical reception of this album surprise you?
  
• How will this be looked back on in 5 years?
  
• What are your favorite lyrics?
  

The story I swore I'd never share..
It was a normal day in mid May of last year and I was feeling the urge to trip alone. I wanted to go deep and have an experience that I would remember forever, and while I'll remember this experience forever it won't be for the reasons I hoped.
It was gorgeous a Saturday and when I awoke I felt a little sick to my stomach. Not so sick that it kept me home, but this weird nagging nausea that seemed to persist. I swore I wasn't going to drop acid that night unless I felt better and thankfully by about 4 p.m. I felt almost 100%. ( it's important to remember set and setting doesn't just apply to mind set and safe setting, but getting physically healthy is important aswell if you don't want to hinder your trip.) Now that I was feeling well it was time to eat dinner and get to it.
I dropped my first 2 tabs around 8, turned on the new Tipper album, and cracked on Red Dead 2 while I waited for things to take effect. By 9:00 pm I felt incredible, my room was starting to sparkle and my body felt amazing, and at this point I was certain this was going to be a great trip so I said "fuck it" and dropped another tab and a half... this is where things started to take a turn.
Not even 30 minutes after dropping the additional tabs I started to have horrible stomach cramps. It was sort of like I needed to take a shit, but the cramps were a bit to high for that. I didn't get scared immediately, but when I left my room to head for the bathroom I knew I was in trouble, but how much trouble I could have never predicted. Strap in ya'll, shit's about to get super fuckin weird.
The lighting in my hallway is much brighter than my room and the visuals immediately kicked up about 10 notches. It looked like the floor was steamy and evaporating, and the white walls were swirling and splashed with rainbow watercolors. I had two voices playing in my head simultaneously, one that said "You're fine Travis, this is the point." but the other was much louder and it was screaming "Your stomach hurts because you took a weird research chemical and you're about to die here alone! There's no one here to help you man! This is it, this is the day you die! Get help! GET HELP!"
I stumbled my way to the bathroom to try to shit but I didn't have to. The hall was bad enough but I'd it even necessary to describe the terror I felt in the bathroom? At this point my stomach hurt so bad I was afraid I was going to throw up and I was growing more and more convinced that I had taken something that wasn't all LSD.
(Quick side note... I had taken this b4 and I never take anything that I haven't tested first with a reagent, and you shouldn't either if you care about your body.)
I decided to call my mom and let her know I was sick, mostly because I needed to hear her comforting voice. I thought just hearing her might make me feel better... it didn't.
Ring ring "Hey mom, I have the flu hella bad and I'm scared. "
My mom sort of laughed and said, "You have nothing to be afraid of if it's the flu. All you can do is relax and if you're still sick in the morning I'll get you some things from the store and sit with you for a bit. "
Out of my fucking mind I frantically replied, "No mom you don't understand, this isn't normal, I think I need to go to the hospital. If I get any worse I'm going to take an uber to the ER. "
At this point I could hear the concern in her voice and she said, "I'll be by the phone so if you feel worse later you can call me, but I think you need to give it time and just try and relax. "
I ended the conversation with my mom and trust me there'd be no relaxing from this point forward.
Sometimes when you take LSD your nuts get kind of tight and on really high doses it can even be hard to piss. I noticed when I was trying to shit for the third time that my bean bag was particularly tight, and for some strange reason I became convinced in my own mind that I had lost control of my muscles, and my testicles were about to disappear into my stomach. Eventually this would cut off circulation to my testicles and I'd become the world's most lit Eunuch of all time. I'd be the Basshead Varys!
At this point I'm in full panic mode and the ER is the only option in my mind. I'm looking at myself in the mirror and I'm thinking to myself "WTF Trav? You may have gained a third eye tonight but you've lost both your nuts man! That's a net negative as far as I'm concerned! Both your balls is way to high a price for a dash of enlightenment. "
Having no one there to tell me I'm fuckin stupid and to chill the fuck out, I called an uber and headed to Saint Joseph's hospital in downtown Tacoma. When I got there it was a packed house and by that time I was soooooo fuckin lit I could barely see or walk straight. I stumbled up to the front desk with complete desperation in my eyes and noticed that the nurses station was being manned by maybe two of the hottest nurses I've ever seen... of course!
They asked me "Hi sir, what brings you in right. "
I said with a shakey voice " I'm so sorry, I took a bunch of what I think is acid and my testicles are disappearing into my stomach. "
They first looked at each other, then back at me and the blond one said, "Oooookaaaaayyy? Go have a seat over there and we'll get you back right away."
Now there's a thing called testicular torsion and it's as serious as a heart attack, and when you come in complaining about testicular pain they cut you to the front of the line and take you back right away, so not even five minutes passed and I hear my name called and I head to the back.
I'm met by that same gorgeous blonde nurse and a female doctor. I'm there for my balls so the Dr tells me to drop my pants so she can take a look. I oblige and the doctors face goes from professional to the look of of complete annoyance.
She looked away from my nut sack and back up into my eyes and with a that same tone of voice your friend gives you when you're looking for your phone and it's your hand the whole time, and she says, "Sir, you'r testicles are right there! They're not going anywhere! "
I replied with the same fear I walked in with and said, "No but you don't understand, this isn't what they normally look like. They're gonna suck up into my stomach. I need these ma'am! I want to have another kid someday. "
With anger and disgust she replied, "Just sit on that bed and we'll order an ultra sound, and run some blood tests. You're going to be ok."
"Thank you so soooooo much. I wouldn't come here if I didn't have a problem. "
The Dr just shook her head and and walked out. I'd have been embarrassed if I wasn't already terrified.
Now Saint Joe's ER isn't comprised of separate rooms, but several large rooms broken apart by curtained off areas. The beeping, the sounds of screaming from patience that are truly in pain, and the smells were way too much for my heightened senses. At times the beige curtains over took my vision with splashes of colors that can't even be found in the largest box of crayons. I don't mind testing myself by tripping in weird places. I once tripped at a casino and saw Chris D'Elia and it was definitely an accomplishment I was proud of, but this was beyond anything I thought I could handle.
About an hour in and still no one had checked on me. I had to piss bad so I tip toed out into the main hall to find the bathroom, and as I did I prayed no one would see, me but I'm the kid that's high on acid that thinks his balls have lost circulation...I'm the star of this show tonight. All the nurses were staring at me and I knew I'd forever be the subject of many a drunken story in the future for these folks. I felt like DJ Qualls when he gets his dick broken in front of his high school in "The New Guy."
This story has gone on long enough but I have a couple more things to share.
Next to me separated by just a curtain was a man probably in his 40's that was in a wheel chair. He couldn't speak and appeared to be a quadriplegic. He was there for something quite serious and his parents had taken him in. They were eastern European and spoke very little English. I wasn't able to figure out exactly why their son was there, but they were devastated by what their son was dealing with. I can't begin to describe the sadness I felt for them. At one point I could hear the husband consoling his wife in a foreign language as she balled her eyes out. These were people who despite their sons illness never turned their back on him or each other. In my mind they were a testament to how strong true love really is. I too started to cry as I listened to them. I didn't know exactly what was being said but I could feel the combination of love and sorrow so strong the it tugged ferociously at every thread in my heart. I still hope one day I can find the same kind of love they shared with each other.
8 hours in and I've had my blood drawn, vitals taken over and over, and been thrown the dirtiest looks by two separate shifts of doctors and nurses and finally it's time to have an ultrasound done on my nut sack, which by the way was completely back to normal at this point. I was wheeled back by the ultrasound tech who immediately was a breath of fresh air. He had long salt and pepper hair, a massive beard and wire framed glasses. I've seen plenty and this man was a dead head fa sho!
He begins to do the ultra sound and asks me, "What brings ya in to the emergency room son?"
I didn't hold back at all and told him everything down to the most minor detail. He felt like the first person I could genuinely speak to without feeling like a piece of shit and it felt incredible, but he was about to make things even better by putting my mind at ease.
After listening to me with full attention he explained, "Well Trav I'm not a Dr and I can't technically tell you what happened, but I can tell you what I think happened. LSD is a vasoconstrictor and can make your testicles a bit tight. You have a muscle in your body called the cremaster muscle. This is the muscle that involuntarily controls the constriction of your penis and testicles with sudden temperature change, but also during times of complete stress. Sounds like you got pretty scared earlier and you likely triggered your fight or flight and lost some control of your cremaster muscle. From what I can see here you don't have to worry about your testicles disappearing, but you're not crazy. They were likely tighter than you ever felt, and I'm glad you decided to air on the side of caution and come down and see us tonight. Now... don't be a fuckin idiot and take acid alone ok?"
I was immediately relieved and aside from the walk of shame I had to make out the door to catch an uber home I finally felt comfortable. At this point 10 hours had passed and I only had some visual distortion but I wasn't exactly "trippin bruh."
When I finally arrived home it was close to 9 a.m. and I swore to myself that I'd never share this story, but I feel like it was time. I know this is a very peaceful and loving community, but trust me I don't mind if you think I'm a dumby for this one.
Some of you are likely wondering if I ever tripped again... Fuck yeah! Dantes Inferno baby! I crawled into the belly of the beast just one week later because I love LSD. Grandma always told me "Laughter is the best medicine" and if this is true (my granny was my George Washington) then I believe LSD can also be the best medicine.
TL;DR
I took an absurd amount of acid and ended up in the ER because I thought i was going to lose my testicles. If you think you've read this before, you probably have, I wrote it a year ago or so.

The results are in for Match 8. The winner is…
Funk Odyssey, with a score of 77 to Klein Bras-cheche Heitsugi’s 76!

Category	Winner	Point Totals	Comments
Popularity	Tie	13-13	This match bears the dubious honor of being the first in T5 not to strike the eight-vote threshold set in T3, meaning that the total value of each vote is reduced so to prevent extreme disproportionate leads. Luckily, it was a tie anyway, at 3.5-3.5.
Quality	Tie	26-26	Reasoning
JoJolity	Baker Street Rat Pack	28-27	Reasoning
Conduct	TEAM	10-10

In the aftermath of the fight, there wasn’t much left of the stage - crystal, fungus, and scrap alike had all built up, scattered around the arena, and in the center of it all stood Funk Odyssey, skidding her bike to a halt after having eked out a victory at the last moment.
Klein and Funk both stood near each other, both breathing heavily and trying to recover after the tiring ordeal, amid a roar of applause from whoever was there to watch the exciting fight.
“AAAAND, WE HAVE A WINNER! A ROUND OF APPLAUSE FOR FUNK ODYSSEY! Wait, why’s the mic-” Cairo stopped in confusion, the microphone that was amplifying their voice cutting out all of a sudden. Shifting a glance towards the producers on set, it seemed like they weren’t aware of what caused the problem either.
Confused murmurs could be heard from the stand users on-set. Okay, this was a technical error, but this was obviously salvageable - Cairo’s dealt with worse in the past, so-
The already bad situation turned worse when the lights cut out entirely, the speakers in the warehouse humming to life again, though not by the hands of any of the crew members. A second later, a synthesized text-to-speech voice could be heard over the speakers.
“HELLO, CITIZENS OF LOS FORTUNA. THIS BROADCAST IS BEING HIJACKED. ”
What the fuck. Looking at one of the screens by the edge of the warehouse previewing the stream, Cairo could see that the stream’s been taken over entirely by whoever it was that did this, with them currently displaying some kind of placeholder image of a shrouded figure. Wasting no time, Cairo left the two combatants and made their way over to the filming crew, trying to figure out what the hell was happening and how it could be stopped.
“WHETHER DUE TO MALICE OR WILLFUL IGNORANCE, BEING SO NORMAL AND ITS CREW HAVE BEEN COMPLICIT IN VARIOUS CRIMES, BOTH DURING AND PRIOR TO ITS RUNTIME.”
Funk could hear the murmurings of stand users around her, and of Cairo and the rest of the crew trying to figure out what exactly was going on and how to stop them. Was this Peter’s doing? Was that why he needed her to be here? Funk remembered hearing him mention the source for this investigation of his a few times - apparently he’d been working with a “Jesse Jefferson'' from the Agricultural District who’d gotten his hands on a flashdrive made by Nova Nascens containing this information, and thanks to Peter’s skills (combined with some stand magic from that magic house Jesse lived in that repaired the hard drive every time it literally exploded in their faces).
Meanwhile, it seemed like the show’s producers were still struggling to regain control of the stream.
“CAIRO HAS BEEN COMPLICIT IN PROMOTING UNREST WITHIN THE INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT, WORKING ALONGSIDE ODIN TO SEND STAND USERS TO FIGHT WITH LOCAL UNIONS, LEADING TO RECENT RISING TENSIONS IN THE AREA.“
“FURTHERMORE, OTHER MEMBERS OF STAFF HAVE COMMITTED VARIOUS OTHER CRIMES, BUT NONE AS MUCH AS THIS SHOW’S LEAD CAMERAWOMAN - CAROLINE JEFFORDS.” The screen shifted to an image of a brown haired woman, who Funk could only assume was caroline. Then, it began shifting to a series of other, well-laid graphs, documents, and images, all presenting evidence for the accusations shown up until now.
“OVER THE YEARS, THIS WOMAN HAS COMMITTED COUNTLESS CRIMES ALL FOR THE SAKE OF PROFIT USING HER STAND - SPYING ON FIGURES OF NOTE FROM WITHIN THE CITY AND SELLING THE INFORMATION TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER, REGARDLESS OF INTENT, AND COVERING UP CRIMES AND TAMPERING WITH SURVEILLANCE FOOTAGE FOR A PRICE. OF NOTE, EVIDENCE RELATING TO THE RECENT AND TRAGIC DEATH OF THE LATE ANDRÉ TIFÀNI HAS BEEN TAMPERED WITH IN ORDER TO FURTHER SHIFT THE BLAME ONTO-”
The feed cut off entirely, power having simply been cut to the building entirely. If Peter had found a way to make the stream continue even after this, Funk wouldn’t be able to see it.
For a moment, the warehouse was dead silent. Then, murmurings began between the various stand users in the audience, no one knowing what to make of this information. Regardless of whether the feed was cut or not, one thing was clear -
The damage had already been done, and the truth had come to light.
Surprises are everywhere, and there’s still yet more mysteries to be uncovered. Two boys have found doubles of themselves, who’ve lived their same lives yet all within the bounds of the city, and the four are now fighting. You only have a few hours left to vote in that when this goes up.
Scenario:
Sound’s Garden - Alexander Dickinson Amphitheater - Early Evening
The entrance to the theater which had, months ago now, put on one of the greatest shows in the city’s history had again been filled with eager people, wanting little more than to enjoy yet concert by Metra Doria, or “TD/MD”; it had been the first in a little while, her last appearances onstage being a string of benefit shows she’d performed for immediately after the destruction of Capital Island. They weren’t bad, critics had said, but far from her best work, as though spending several weeks kidnapped by the head of a citywide crime ring had affected her ability to perform or something.
Regardless, though, there were good feelings about this one, as since that fateful day, there hadn’t been a single bad show at the Alexander, and the local interview cycle had Metra come across as so much more genuinely excited than she had been, even if she also did publicly express her frustrations with the fact that, thanks to some act of sabotage, a leaking of information, the arrest of one Toby Fox had been subverted, and he and several of his buddies were still free to wreak their havoc.
Guy Manuel-Mota wasn’t much one to complain about a gig, whatever that job happened to be, and though he’d known the unscrupulous nature of his client, the garish Tigran “Golden” Sins, he also knew exactly how much money the guy had, so when he said that he and Fox had wanted a man on the ground at the stage out of fear that somebody might attack Metra, that even if he was trying to move past his affections for the girl, he’d still wished to keep watch over her, quietly.
If it was true, creepy. If it was a bold-faced lie, at least Guy knew damn well that they were good for their money if they had Seido fucking Shuto on retainer. Either way, he knew he’d get paid as long as he didn’t fuck up.
As Guy walked up to the ticket-takers, corralling eager audience members forward, he noticed them offering strange shiny wristbands to every single person who walked by, telling them “wear it if you want!” and finding, every time, that they just sort of mindlessly nodded and did just that.
When it came to be Guy’s turn, then, of course, he was much the same, accepting it and holding it in one hand, his stub in the other, as he looked the fake-gold, glittering accessory over, tilting his head as he noted the words, very subtly engraved, on it:

IWILLPLAY

“So… That’s your game, huh?” Guy asked, shrugging and slipping it on just like all the rest. He saw where this would go from here, and figured that what the guy paying him wanted was for him to play along.
“Uh, sir-” The ticket taker murmured and stammered at somebody, “sir, please, you can only take one! W-we need enough commemorative wristbands for a full house, so please-”
“Fuck off,” the pink-headed, ornery showgoer declared, yoinking the entire box away and fishing out several, putting a few all over his hands, “I want ‘em all!”
Huh… Guess that’s ‘trouble,’ right on cue. Should I lead him somewhere alone, or just wait for something, or..?
Before he could formulate a plan of action, Guy blacked out for what felt like a moment.
Sound’s Garden Eastern Strip - Metra Doria’s Apartment - Earlier that Day
“Well, well, well,” Ananas ‘Agnes’ Bayley said, before cracking open a can of soda, downing it in several drawn out seconds, cracking open a second, downing that in seconds, and then, a third time, before stacking all three, “how the turntables.”
“…” Metra gave him a look, one which Agnes smugly knew was her asking herself, in that moment, ‘am I seriously going to work with this guy?’ It was a feeling he reveled in, being unwanted and dreaded, yet at once needed and tolerated. “So… Will you come? I’ll hook you up with VIP merch, owe you one in general, just… I dunno. I’ve been feeling extremely good about this show, excited, but now that Fox is out there again, I feel like I need… Backup, I guess? Like, I could take any one of those guys in a fight on my own, sure, but with a huge crowd, and trying to focus on my stuff, and…”
“And Arpeggi and that fuckin’… catgirl were busy, I take it.” Agnes snickered, moving around the cans’ placement, never on one of Metra’s coasters, watching as little rings formed on the table. “Heh, fuck ‘em anyway. Dealing with a situation like this… You don’t need some ‘good guy’ worried about not making a mess or whatever. You need a bona fide villain to flex on these posers. Call it fate that I was available short-notice and they weren’t.”
“Just…” Metra sounded resigned. “Please don’t cause too much trouble. Damages will come out of your reward.”
“Snrk… Of course. It’ll come out of my pay. A sentence I hear every day from Gabanna, you know.”
With Metra’s reluctance and Agnes’ amusement, a deal had been struck.
Metra Doria, too, had been handed one of those strange wristbands, and she, too, seemed to black out suddenly, only realizing a moment too late exactly what, once again, this had all meant. She hadn’t approved ‘commemorative wristbands’ on the dossier, and the text on it… Goddammit!
But… Her green room looked almost identical. What the hell was going on? Maybe her backup dancers would know something, or Agnes had noticed… He’d at least report to her if he had figured something out, right? …right?
She stepped outside, then, only to find herself, and what she’d thought was her green room, atop a shelf in a very high-up, VIP area, a sort of outdoor box seating-type arrangement which the Alexander saved for its most prized guests. Almost always, somebody from Fox’s little club.
She had been shrunk down to the size of a game piece, and sitting at a table nearby, watched with interest by about half a dozen suits she had come to recognize, was a perfect recreation of the entire stage and seating areas of the amphitheater. As she tried to process this, then, her view was taken up entirely by the giant, punchable face of Tigran Sins.
“Evening, Metra! Looks like you underestimated me again… Heh, for some reason, people keep doing that.” The very garish man laughed, but his eyes were glaring down at her. Always, he’d hated her, resented the attention she’d taken from Fox. “Been awhile, hasn’t it?”
“Tigran… What the fuck did you do?” Metra curled her tiny hands into fists, allowing her Stand, the headphones often seen at her neck, to manifest, “you… How many people are down there? I hear so many voices murmuring, even from here!”
“Thousands upon thousands,” Tigran remarked, “all waiting none the wiser for the show you promised them… Including a side appearance from two Stand Users. You really put all your faith in a loose cannon like that Agnes kid who set a fire in my casino? You’ve been acting cool, but you’re desperate, aren’t ya? You know we’re here to stay… And what game we’re playing.”
“You… You’d better run the hell away fast as soon as we’ve won, because we will ruin you.”
She tried to sound defiant, there, but Metra was trembling.
“Some things, a Stand User just can’t beat with all their strength, Metra… Now, c’mon.” He held up a cute little tiny limousine, cracking the door open. “You’ve got a show to do.”
The crowd came to at once, already amassed within the amphitheater, seats filled, standing room similarly heavily occupied. There was hardly room to move one’s arms around in there.
Which, of course, Agnes was doing anyway, swatting people away and getting called rude words, cackling as he made for himself some space. Something was fucking up here, and he did not want to be caught off-guard by-
“Hey.”
“Shit!” Agnes jumped, then, and turned around, seeing Guy Manuel-Mota face-to-face, staring him down with a somewhat even expression.
“Hey, c’mon, I’m not that scary, am I?” Guy joked, rubbing his arms and making a point of showing off his bracelet, then gesturing at it, and at the stage, and saying, “anyway, my name’s Guy Manuel-Mota. You probably already realize this, Agnes, but… You’re already in a trap here. Both of us are stuck, even.”
“Heheh, what, are you trying to warn me or something? Well, I don’t need an alliance with you… So fuck off.”
“I wasn’t asking for one.” Guy corrected, then, adding, “you know how Tigran Sins works… The only way we’re getting out of this is through each other.”
“My fucking thoughts exactly,” Agnes answered, “and exactly what I came here for… A chance to pound that gold-wearing fuck’s face in. I hear he really hates that shit, so I’ll make it permanent.
Guy’s casual demeanor, then, turned into a stiff, serious face, hands at the blades on his person. “You won’t last that long.”
“Oh, you’re fucking on, you-” “Alright, Los Fortuna! Give it up for exactly what you came here for!” An announcer’s voice cheered on, then, ringing through the arena almost deafeningly loud, followed by a cascade of rising cheers.
The noise distracted Agnes, and Guy made his getaway.
“Back again at the Alexander Dickinson…”
Shit… So many people here, not even paying attention. Where did he go?
“Unbreakable, unshakeable, here to give the show of her life again as she always does… TD/MD!”
Metra strutted out onto the stage, then, to the cheers of the crowd, but Agnes noticed that she seemed to be frequently looking up towards the sky, or towards the various short-circuit cameras wired to display her on the jumbotrons. The crowd seemed too vapid, too fandom-consumed to notice, but there was apprehension in her every step in that casual yet elegant performing costume of hers.
“It means so much to me to see you all out here… Really, I appreciate every single one of you, even if I don’t know you! Just the fact that you came here…” She was trying not to sound guilty as hell there, for what she and all of them had fallen into. Agnes wasn’t sure whether to feel bad, to get mad at Tigran Sins for pulling one over on them again, or to laugh.
“So! I’m just going to start with a classic, alright? Keep the emergency exits in mind, but more than that, get ready, because what’s coming is something hard to describe! Let’s make it a night worth remembering!”
Guy continued to grasp his swords, keeping close to the crowd, close to the stage.
Cruel what you’re doing, Mr. Sins… And you didn’t tell me I’d be fighting the guy who ripped the Ocean Soul’s arm off. I’d better get a hell of a bonus for this.
OPEN THE GAME!
Location: The Alexander Dickinson Amphitheater, in the Entertainment District (specifically, a perfect replica of its crowd area). The area for the match here is 50 by 60 meters, with each tile being 5 by 5 meters. Agnes starts at the middle left and Guy starts in the middle right as represented by their respectively colored team tokens.
The stage is at the top as represented by the grey semi-circle. The audience members are represented by the red circles and the venue is sectioned off as a concert generally would be. Each seating section is represented by the blue, green, and yellow transparencies. These areas are roped off to keep them separate.
The dotted semi-circular line is a row of metal security fences to keep people from getting too close to the stage.
Goal: RETIRE your opponent!
Additional Information:
The audience members all have flat two physicals, and are mostly paying attention to the ongoing concert, eager and excited fans that they are. Metra Doria is performing onstage with a backing band, and it’s quite loud, yet somehow (the noise-altering effect of her Stand, maybe?) you aren’t debilitated by it. The audience members won’t deliberately cooperate with you in any meaningful way, and don’t particularly care about one another either, but will try to avoid getting hurt if they can see it coming.
Due to brazen threats on the guests by Tigran and the rest, none of Metra’s crew will interfere in the match, and are basically as good as non-entities mechanically, but it goes without saying that harming them or outright ruining the performance will lead to Fox canonically and successfully killing you with a giant rock. So don’t go on the stage itself.

Team	Combatant	JoJolity
BADD GUYS	Ananas “Agnes” Bayley	“Faceless gazes passing by with me / The void in my heart changed with the path I chose” You find these ED guys absolutely loathsome, but the idea of completely stealing Metra’s thunder is nonetheless appealing to your villainous heart. Act as cool as possible in your own way!
Suburban Regalia	Guy Manuel-Mota	“There's no limit to each new encounter - everything so ordinarily bizarre” These people want their shows to be impressive, right? Well, may as well get that check… Act as cool as possible in your own way!

Link to the Official Player Spreadsheet
Link to Match Schedule
As always, if you would like to interact with the tournament community and be among the first to get updates for the tournament, please feel free to PM a member of our Judge staff for an invite to our Official Discord Server!

HELP!FNV Crashes every time when I try to loot something when Loot Menu opens
Also ctd happens on new game (softlock)
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211 d3 NewVegasBountiesIIFSOPatch.esp
212 d4 WME - GRA - Arenovalis.esp
213 d5 GunsFixedDismemberv101.esp
214 d6 No Tracer.esp
215 d7 NPCs Can Miss.esp
216 d8 NV Fatal Headshots.esp
217 d9 NPC Use Aid.esp
218 da RealtimeDeath.esp
219 db HelplessFalling.esp
220 dc FOVSlider.esp
221 dd Awesome Crippling Effects v1.8.esp
FCO - Roberts Patch.esp
222 de UndiesUnderneath.esp
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225 e1 AnimatedDrinks_1_0.esp
226 e2 Destructibles.esp
227 e3 ArmourRepairKits.esp
228 e4 hz_Automatic Weapons Fix.esp
229 e5 B42Bash.esp
230 e6 Quickthrow.esp
231 e7 Preorder items in locker.esp
232 e8 B42Wristwatch.esp
233 e9 B42Inertia.esp
234 ea FNVBCv.1a.esp
235 eb LFox Cannibal Perk Improvements.esp
236 ec Cowboy Weapons Holster.esp
237 ed BloodymessCreatures.esp
238 ee Radscorp BM.esp
239 ef Companion Sandbox Mode.esp
240 f0 DynamicTimeScale.esp
241 f1 Helmet Overlay.esp
242 f2 SexoutAnimManagement.esp
243 f3 SexoutPosNew.esp
244 f4 TGMIO_ILO_Patch.esp
245 f5 HJLLessDismembermentAndExplosionsv100.esp
246 f6 Zan_AutoPurge_SmartAgro_NV.esp
247 f7 RWD-NV v1.4 [Standard Version] Update+DLC.esp
248 f8 SexoutBang.esp
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253 fd FNVLODGen.esp
254 fe tmzLODadditions.esp

"That just means the game isn't over yet! The goddess of victory will smile upon me, Lupin III!"

Required listening for this thread
Lupin III is the grandson of Arsène Lupin. He is the world's most wanted gentleman thief. Lupin is acknowledged by virtually every law agency on earth as the world's number one thief. Often in his adventures, he and his colleagues, Daisuke Jigen and Goemon Ishikawa XIII, will take it upon themselves to foil other criminals engaged in more violent crimes. While first glance may imply Lupin as fun-loving, flighty, perhaps even "goofy", his surface façade overcoats a brilliant imagination and a thorough knowledge of a hundred varying sciences. Forever extemporizing and reevaluating, Lupin has been responsible for heists no right-minded individual would believe possible. While arrested and jailed on numerous occasions, typically by his nemesis Inspector Zenigata, he has always managed to escape. He has a fondness for fancy gadgets from time to time plus hands-on experience in many skills a thief would find useful. His infatuation with Fujiko Mine is perhaps his most significant weakness, as it lands him in undesirable situations most of the time.

Equipment

• A bag of bats

Exactly what it sounds like. They are released to distract the motion sensors of an extremely secure museum

• Airbag

A rapidly expanding airbag.

• Backup parachute

Lupin's trademark blue and white boxer shorts double as an emergency parachute.

• Ball Bomb

A small bomb that detonates when shot by Jigen.

• Balloons

A set of balloons that lift an Egyptian death mask display. Lupin also has a larger set they used to steal the Statue of Liberty

• Balloon Briefcase

A briefcase containing a rapidly expanding balloon filled with knockout gas.

• Balloon Coin

A small, golden coin with his face on it. When thrown, releases a giant Lupin-shaped dummy.

• Barrel Bombs

Several large barrels of explosive liquid set off by flaming rags.

• Bat Hang-glider

A massive hang-glider shaped like a bat.

• Blow-up Doll Grenade

A grenade that, upon contact, expands into a massive blow up doll.

• Bracelet

A decorative bracelet with a wire/chain on the end.

• Briefcase Wings

A pair of wings and an engine that extend from a handheld briefcase.

• Bubble Gum Ball

A massive bubble that protects Lupin from traps.

• Clear Hang-Glider

A nearly invisible hang-glider.

• Confetti Flashbang

A small, silver ball that emits a loud bang, a burst of light, and rainbow confetti.

• Distraction Balloon

A large, green balloon with Lupin's face on it.

• Ducky Boat

A paddleboat hidden within a larger boat's hull. The boat also has a large engine on the back

• Duck Bombs

Several duck-shaped bombs that are capable of sinking large ships. They do not discern what they're blowing up, however, and can be dangerous. They can also be hidden

• Dummy Smokescreen

A dummy head that when stomped emits a thick smokescreen.

• Dummy Suit

A dummy large enough for Lupin to hide inside. Can expand enough to lift a large truck

• Electro Light Adhesive Beam Reel

An electric gun developed by the same scientist who invented Lightsabers. Can cut through bullet proof glass, lift a store's worth of jewels and helps pull a building apart. It also instantly KOs Zenigata

• Explosives

Includes exploding chewing gum, exploding cigarettes, exploding cigars, an explosive hat an exploding head, a exploding lighter, a exploding mask, exploding navigation stick, an explosive suit, an explosive tooth, and an explosive watch

• Fake Tooth

One of Lupin's left molars. Has a brevity of uses including a remote control for one of his vehicles, a computer that can analyze any drugs he's given, a pair of robotic arms that can throw the drugs back, a radio, and a lockpick

• Fingerprint Spray

A small aerosol can that allows Lupin to lift fingerprints from a glass.

• Fireworks Grenade

A small grenade that lets off a colorful explosion.

• Flying Car

A remotely-controlled flying car. It manages to lift off the ground but nothing else.

• Fujin

A small device that opens a miniature black hole when used.

• Gas Grenade

A grenade with a powerful knockout gas. Works fast enough to cover an entire oil rig in seconds.

• Giant Flashbang

A massive, propelled dummy of Lupin and Jigen that explodes with a giant boom and flash

• Glue Rocket

A rocket fired from an RPG that, when detonated, sprays glue strong enough to stick several large ships together.

• Go-Kart

Pieces needed to assemble a working go-kart.

• Hang-glider

A small hang-glider that carries a single missile.

• Helicopter Hearse

A standard hearse that turns into a helocopter.

• Horse

A horse capable of outrunning several jeeps, dodging bullets, and running across a small ladder. Lupin has a way with animals that allows him to frequently use them in his escapes. Also he got a horse to do this once. I don't feel like trying to explain it.

• Jetpack

A standard jetpack.

• Jetpack Shoes

A pair of shoes which turn into personal jetpacks when activated by tapdancing. They can also be used offensively and for escapes

• Kusari-gama

A small kusari-gama capable of swinging a car back onto an icy road

• Lighter

Works as a lighter and also can emit a powerful knockout gas. Also explodes when dynamite is strapped to it, as most things do and works as a communicator

• Knockout Drug

A powerful drug slipped into Zenigata's drink.

• Magnetic Grips

A pair of magnetic hand grips that assist in climbing.

• Marbles

Standard marbles or ball bearings used to make a pursuer lose their footing.

• Mini-Kite

A small kite able to carry Lupin.

• Mini Oxygen Tank

A mini oxygen tank shaped like a cigarette.

• RC Cars

A fleet of tiny RC cars, all remotely controlled by Lupin. Comes in Red, Green, and Yellow.

• Rebreather

A breathing device kept in Lupin's jacket.

• Remote Control Gun

A gun that fires a suction cup dart that once attached pierces a glass window. It goes on to attach itself to a safe's dial. Lupin can control the dart remotely, cracking a safe from outside the room

• Remote Controlled Helicopter

A helicopter controlled by a small joystick.

• Remote Controlled Plane

Similar to his helicopter except it is controlled by a Gameboy-like controller.

• Riding Crop

A riding crop that fires miniature tranquilizer darts.

• Ring Light

A bright light attached to a ring on Lupin's finger.

• Robot Legs

A pair of robotic legs that can be attached to an object. Strong enough to make a statue run through a wall.

• Rocket Elevator

A device hidden within an elevator that causes it to turn into a high powered rocket.

• Rocket Weights

A pair of weights fired from an rpg. Used to wrap around submarines to weigh them down.

• Safe Opener

A small device created by Lupin that instantly cracks a safe.

• Shocky Shock Sticker

A small silver sticker that delivers a massive shock "bigger than a stun gun"

• Shoes Knives

A pair of knives fired from the tips of Lupin's shoes.

• Shoe Transmitter

A small transmitter in Lupin's shoe that signals a nearby biplane. The plane has a large bomb attached to it.

• Silver Walther P-38

A silver copy of Lupin's signature weapon. Lupin states it is "only for threatening".

• Sleeping Spray

An immediately effective sleeping aerosol.

• Smoke Bomb

Creates a thick smoke for quick escapes.

• Smokescreen Cigarettes

A pack of cigarettes that react when dropped in water to create a thick smokescreen.

• Sticky Bombs

A small bomb that can stick to any surface. The adhesive is strong enough a grown man cannot remove it and the explosion is large enough to topple a massive statue.

• Submersible Car

A car that doubles as a submarine with the flip of a switch. Allows Lupin and the gang to avoid a missile.

• Suction Cup Gun

A pistol-sized gun that fires a suction cup on a rope. Strong enough to lift a man.

• Switchback Car

A car that can be driven from either the front or the rear.

• Time Bombs

Adhesive bombs with a set timer.

• Umbrella Copter

An umbrella that grows in size and operates that a helicopter's blades.

• Underwater Bomb

A small bomb that causes a big boom.

• Underground Detector

Allow Lupin to see hollow spots underground.

• Underwater Bubble

A propelled underwater vehicle. When surfacing, turns into a raft

• Voice Changer

A small machine Lupin wears around one of his teeth.

• Watch Camera

A small camera inside Lupin's watch. Can take and print photos.

• Watch Grappling Hook

Different from his normal grappling hook, this is attached to a pistol-like controller that reels it in.

• Watch Tracker

A small dart fired from Lupin's watch that emits a trackable signal.

• Water Saber

A sword made of pressurized water. Stated to be as "hard as diamond". During their duel, the blade cuts a door in half

• Wings

A pair of wings that protrude from Lupin's car allowing it to glide.

• Wingsuit

A wingsuit.

• Yo-Yo

A pocket-sized yo-yo.

Speed

General

• Switches the times on everyone's watches while he was shaking their hands.
  
• Throws on an elaborate disguise in seconds
  
• Gets dressed and escapes before a grenade goes off
  
• Captures and trades places with a man before Zenigata realizes
  
• Saves a girl from being kidnapped
  
• Saves Fujiko from an exploding boat
  

Movement

• Instantly leaps to the rafters of a church
  
• Runs across water
  
• Outruns an explosion in two seconds
  
• Runs down a wall to catch the falling Fujiko
  
• Crosses a pair of trains quickly
  
• Hops across several falling pieces of a tower
  
• Runs up a wall after being bitten by a dog
  
• Runs along a narrow pass while being pursued by helicopters
  
• Outruns a bomb being dropped on him
  
• Runs down and across several walls while under fire
  
• Disappears from in front of a man in the time it takes him to move a book from his face
  
• Falls over paralyzed from a drug in his champagne, but recovers and appears in Fujiko's mirror in disguise
  
• Puts a mask on everyone in a theater. He also does this with several people while fleeing the police.
  
• Outruns a killer roller coaster
  
• Runs at incredibly high speeds when bitten by the ninja dog, Kotarou
  
• Avoids being swept away by a tidal wave
  

Reaction

• Avoids a scythe and several bullets
  
• Backs a car up to avoid a grenade
  
• Dodges a bullet fired from behind him at close range.
  
• Avoids a samurai's arrow
  
• Reacts to an ambush and summarily KOs the ambusher
  
• Catches a fired cork in his teeth
  
• Dodges a bullet while running through a fire
  
• Dodges strikes from a trained assassin and swipes her necklace. This assassin was able to weave through bullets
  
• Abandons a disguise to dodge a kick
  
• Turns, draws, and fires on a woman who had pulled a gun behind him
  
• Dodges a Suicide Ray and returns fire
  
• Dodges a bullet and rolls to cover
  
• Avoids a crushing trap
  
• Leaps away from a pair of gunmen
  
• Dodges and blocks several lasers from Mamo's cannons
  

Skill

Accuracy

• Knocks a woman out of the way, draws his weapon, avoids a bullet and puts a bullet directly down his attacker's guns barrel
  
• Throws a dart into a wall while falling
  
• Shoots Zenigata's handcuffs out of the air and causes them to snap around his legs and arms.
  
• Lands a grappling hook shot while jumping off a motorcycle
  
• Shoots a Nazi out of the air while riding down a bannister
  
• Accurately kicks a football
  
• Flicks a small bomb into a man's mouth
  
• While running, picks off several pursuers weapons, knocking them loose of their hands or completely destroying them
  
• Shoots the cylinder of Jigen's magnum back to him
  
• Removes a choker from a girl's neck
  
• Disables a blimp's engine with one shot while under fire
  
• Lassos a diving Fujiko
  
• Snags a gem with a fishing hook
  
• Holds back a small army
  
• Throws a jewel perfectly into a statue's eye socket
  
• Quickly shoots a man's outline in the glass behind him
  
• Shoots ropes off of Jigen
  
• Disarms a gunman with a thrown quarter
  
• Tosses a rose into a woman's lapel
  
• As a woman pulls a gun on him from behind, flips a quarter off of his finger back onto her gun, preventing it from firing
  
• Picks off gunmen while riding down some stairs on the back of a bike
  
• Shoots the lock off of a pig pen
  
• Tags a gunman with a rolling shot
  
• Goes shot for shot with Jigen. Jigen is ridiculously accurate
  
• Tags a building while flying past it in an aircraft
  
• Keeps a quarter spinning by taking turns shooting it with Jigen. He finishes the little exercise by shooting it and making it perfectly land in Jigen's hand.
  
• Dominates a game of ring toss
  
• Throws a spear into a helicopters windshield
  

Dodging

• Avoids gunfire while using a jetpack
  
• Crawls under a truck to dodge a missile
  
• Backsteps Gordeau's attack
  
• After throwing Jigen's hat through a trapped tunnel to memorize the pattern, avoids several laser-esque blasts
  
• Avoids bullets from several gunmen
  
• Leaps out of a disguise to dodge Jigen's bullets
  
• Jumps over a missile
  
• Sidesteps Jigen's shots and escapes him with a flashbang
  
• Avoids several strikes from Goemon while running through a city
  
• Avoids a strike from Goemon but does not avoid the second
  
• Dodges several goons while carrying Fujiko
  
• Dodges strikes from a massive Nazi
  
• Hand walks away from arrows
  
• Dodges bullets while running across car tops
  
• Effortlessly avoids another thief
  
• After giving himself up to be killed, avoids strikes from Goemon and Jigen
  
• Opens a door behind him to dodge Zenigata
  
• Dodges several strikes from Sadachiyo's whip
  
• Avoids bullets as he slides down a bannister
  
• Dodges bullets from Fujiko's machine gun
  
• While mind controlled, avoids both Jigen and Goemon
  
• Avoids a flash kick from Mash
  
• Avoids being killed by a mass of nanomachines. The nanomachines were fairly fast and bulletproof
  
• Dodges multiple ninja shenanigans
  

Driving

• Drives around several pitfalls during a race design to kill him
  
• Two wheels through a closing gate
  
• Avoids a sea of flames by taking his race car off road
  
• Rides a motorcycle across several metal girders
  
• Drives off the back of a moving truck
  
• Drives a car he cannot see, with a remote control on his tooth
  
• Hops a vespa up onto a rail
  
• Avoids being crushed by a large truck by driving on a tunnel's ceiling
  
• Drives through a mass of swerving traffic on a motorcycle
  
• Jumps a roadblock set by Zenigata
  
• Drives a boat that was cut in half
  
• Casually drives with his teeth
  
• Makes his car jump without a ramp
  
• Duels and defeats several other vehicles on a mountain pass
  
• After being pushed through a guard rail by a giant vehicle, manages to balance the Fiat on the guard rail and return to the roadway. He manages to lose the semi by driving under it, going offroad and tricking it into driving off a cliff
  
• Threads the needle between two large trucks
  
• Rides a motorcycle down a tight rope
  
• Drives a scooter through a casino while being pursued
  
• Figures out how to fly a UFO
  
• Two wheels between crowded New York traffic
  
• Avoids a spike strip by clipping it with his tire, sending it over his vehicle
  
• Leaps his car across a broken bridge
  
• Destroys a plane with a motorcycle
  
• Shakes a military pursuit by driving down several waterfalls, blowing up a chunk of mountain, and generally just driving really well
  
• Battles Green Jacket Lupin in a duel on top of a building. This is the only scene that should be viewed from Red vs. Green despite what Tad says.
  
• Drives off the back of a semi truck onto a highway. His vehicle dropped small, metal bearings that caused the pursuing trucks to crash. Shortly after, he avoids a grenade by forcing his car onto two wheels, after which he drives on the highways guard rail, leaning himself in and out of the vehicle to avoid the street lights. The vehicle then crashes into a dentist office Jigen is in.
  
• Chases a truck full of assassins on a motorcycle
  
• Weaves through a police roadblock
  
• Leaps a motorcycle to a blimp
  
• While being pursued by Edogawa Conan, drives his car out of an exploding boat. This includes him again driving on a guard rail and then riding the vehicle down a pair of hand rails. At the end of the chase, he recovers after being hit by one of Conan's soccer balls.
  

Escapes

• Slips free of a large claw
  
• Prevents himself being thrown by bailing on his disguise
  
• Escapes Zenigata's grasp by throwing off his disguise
  
• Slips out from under a dogpile
  
• Escapes via kangaroo
  
• Escapes Zenigata's ultimate weapon, 4 pairs of handcuffs on a rope by "giving him a leg"
  
• Escapes from ropes
  
• Escapes a pair of assassins
  
• Covers Zenigata and his officers in popcorn
  
• Builds a stick scarecrow to escape Zenigata
  
• Escapes a hospital
  
• Slips out of his clothes while riding a bike
  
• Effortless flips into an air duct and loses a pursuing Zenigata
  
• Goes plan for plan against Zenigata
  
• Escapes a trap after getting bit by a dog
  
• Easily frees himself from a rope
  
• Escapes a ton of handcuffs
  
• Abandons his clothes to escape a dogpile
  
• Escapes pursuit by jumping into the wayward top of a van
  

Fighting Ability

• Deflects a whip strike with his grappling hook
  
• Takes out several assassins with sweet Capoeira moves
  
• Brawls with a Nazi officer
  
• KOs a group of guards with a door
  
• Nonlethally subdues several police officers
  
• Fights an assassin with two ends of a broken pipe
  
• Dodges several knife strikes and wallops his attacker
  
• Defeats Cyborg Jigen
  
• Duels Mister X
  
• Fights several armed assassins
  
• KOs several cops with a staff
  
• Catches a ninja strike
  
• Cuts Fujiko's disguise
  
• Goes blow for blow with Goemon. Even without Zantetsuken, Goemon can hit hard enough to clear away stone from a statue and break limbs from a statue
  
• Battles General Headhunter. Their fight spans across several moving platforms
  
• Spins a man around by wrapping him with a whip
  
• Disarms a gunman with a staff throw
  
• Battles Fujiko's ancestor
  
• Headscissors an attacker off of a motorcycle
  
• Knife fights several assassins at once. The white haired assassin alone was able to block Jigen's shots and kill several people at once
  
• Steals a massive truck from a pair of guards and uses it against a warehouse full of goons
  
• Defeats the "mind reading" Rasputin. He explains he defeated Rasputin's technique by "emptying his mind" . Rasputing was fast enough to catch Goemon off guard and dodges his strikes and caught one of Jigen's bullets in his teeth.
  
• Flips a shoe at Gensai to create an opening to shoot him
  

General

• Off screen, won the Burglary Planning and Burglary Techniques games of the Burglary Olympics
  
• Leaps and swings across a gap
  
• Skillfully uses Zenigata's handcuffs
  
• Swings from point to point around a prison
  
• Communicates non-verbally with Zenigata
  
• Cracks a giant safe
  
• Crosses over a pressure sensitive floor using plungers
  
• Snowboards away from several police. He doesn't do it often, but when asked, Lupin is one hell of a snowboarder
  
• Lays a bike down, leaps off it, jumps over some guys and lands back on the bike
  
• Cracks a safe with several dials
  
• Flips through a laser grid
  

Quick Thinking

• While falling, grabs a rope with one hand
  
• Catches a bouncing Walther and shoots a gunman
  
• Manages to kill a snake with nothing but his teeth
  
• Steals Mamou's time machine
  
• Booby traps the Walther P-38
  
• Spits a dart into Fujiko's hair
  
• Hooks a massive Nazi's tie and pulls him down with him
  
• Escapes by pretending to turn into a werewolf
  
• Uses the suction cup gun to save a falling Julia
  
• Shoots a fortune teller before they attack Goemon
  
• Uses a nose pin to prevent himself from being gassed
  
• Shoots a damage light into the water to electrocute Mister X
  
• Throws a briefcase into the air to distract several guards, slides across the ground to shoot them all, and manages to catch the briefcase
  

Sleight of Hand

• Replaces medicine in a bag quickly
  
• Swipes a gun, removes the clip, and empties it before a girl notices
  
• Disarms a gunman by quickly disassembling his weapon
  
• Steals a keycard from a man during a scuffle
  
• Removes handcuffs from himself and slaps them on Zenigata
  
• Handcuffs Zenigata's arm to his own leg
  
• Escapes an assassin with a snazzy hat
  
• Pulls a robot's batteries
  
• Handcuffs Zenigata to a boat
  
• Blocks a spear trap with his magnetic grips
  

Disguises

As Lupin uses disguises all the time, gathering every single disguise he uses would fill the entire respect thread. I gathered some of my favorites for this section.

• A jobsite's foreman
  
• Millionaire Howard Heath. He laid it on a little thick and gave away his true self, however.
  
• Fujiko
  
• A prison guard
  
• A KO'd guard
  
• Uses a dummy of himself to convincingly disguise himself as a guard
  
• An old woman
  
• Zenigata's driver
  
• A security guard
  
• Disguises himself as Gensai, the leader of a group of ninja
  
• Fools Zenigata with a hippie disguise
  
• Wears a disguise of himself while wearing a disguise of Zenigata and doing a Zenigata impression that fooled Fujiko
  
• A fat man with a weak bladder.
  
• A tiger. To complete the disguise he also mimics the tiger's roar well enough it fools Zenigata
  
• Two people at once by using a "reflective plastic"
  
• Legendary painter, Sharaku
  
• Convinces a Nazi that he is an aged Hitler
  
• Quickly changes into a mask of a pretty lady in order to catch a pair of gunmen off guard.
  
• Throws on a disguise in the time it takes a man to fall into a snake pit
  
• May have tricked a Prince into thinking he was his father. There's also a good chance the Prince knew it was Lupin, but hey, the disguise looks good.
  

Ramtidings, dear friends! It is I, your dutiful lord and master, the eternal GM. My sabbatical proved most fruitful, having figured out some depth mechanics for 3 dimensional combat in my pet project, Blood & Thunder, a maritime piracy RPG that has been both a joy and a nerve-wracking nightmare to create. If you want to see what's going on with that, you can swing by patreon.com/BlackFlagPrintingPress to take a look or support my endeavors. But I digress, because I did not come here today to talk about Blood & Thunder, no. I came here with something else in mind, good friends, for while I have been writing my bread and butter, you have gone without your beard and butter, and this is unacceptable! And so, I have trawled the depths of my memory to bring you yet another TAAAAAALE FROM THE TABLETOP, lovingly subtitled A Prologue Into Poverty.
Life is not an easy thing. There was a time when life was very difficult for me. I had far less than most, and I went without frequently, my entire life loaded into a backpack of bare necessities. Joys were few and times were hard, but I made the best of it. I traveled the countryside, mostly alone, making friends where I could amongst the other forgotten souls who haunt the streets of the United States. I met a good number of people, many of them listless drifters in their own right, who became fast friends. We would hang out for a time, but like all drifters, we would eventually part ways, called to different places to do different things. I had just come from North Carolina. I had been in Asheville, playing bluegrass to make money with friends who eventually proved dishonest, and so I parted ways with them. While in Asheville, I had met a girl, also on the road like myself, and I developed a massive crush on her. Fortune would have it that our time together was short lived, as she disappeared on a freighter down the train tracks, and I layed curled up in a bush sick as a dog for the next 3 days.
You can't get a ride from a freighter with 8 people without getting pulled off by johnny law. Our group had fractured, and myself and one other soul continued on our own, until we parted ways in Atlanta. Now, on my own, clueless and green, I wandered aimlessly, until a friend of mine at the time reached out to me by way of the internet. He had work for me, back in California, if I could just make it there. What's 3000 miles? I've got this. I walked out of Atlanta, hitched a series of rides to Arkansas, and then caught a freighter myself, all the way back to the west coast while UP did the driving. I laid on the back of that train for 3 days until I finally ran out of water and decided to get off. I was in Los Angeles. After a bit of panhandling, I got a bus into the central valley, and my friend came and scooped me up. I worked on my friends farm for a bit, building green houses and stacking money until the time came for me to once again depart. During that time, my crush from North Carolina had found me on Facebook. We got to talking.
She told me she had gone back home to Wisconsin and was working in some greasy spoon trying to save up money to afford a bus. She'd been back for awhile now, but wasn't making any headway. Her vices were getting the best of her, and she couldn't seem to get ahead. I told her she needed to knock that shit off and clean up her act. After a long enough time talking, however, things started to get flirty and dirty.
I wanted to see her, and it's actually amazing what a guy will do for love. You're how far away? Piece of cake. Hold my beer. With the work season coming to a close, I took my pay and my leave of my old friend, and he dropped me off in Modesto at the Greyhound. On the way out, he loaded me up with gifts for my travels - a new backpack, socks, a sleeping bag, some snacks for the ride... and naturally, he gave me a gift that I always treasure. He gave me a set of RPG dice. I gave my boy a hug, wished him well in his endeavors, and promised I'd be back in the fall to help him with the harvest and gathering firewood. So I went on my merry way.
I absolutely despise Greyhounds. Have you ever been on one? It's miserable. There's no room to stretch out unless you sit in the back, right by the toilet. Some asshole is always blaring garbage mumble rap on his phone all day long. It doesn't matter who you are - at the end of the trip you exude the pungent aroma of a neckbeard. This didn't bother me too much - personal hygiene suffers when you have no way to bathe regularly, so I was used to being dirty, and my friends from the road were usually very dirty people in their own right at the time, so I could handle a certain degree of grossness... within limits. I did shower at my friend's farm before I boarded that bus, though, and was feeling rather spiffy - clean body, clean clothes. Life was good and I was on my way to see my woman.
I did my best to zone out. I tried to sleep as much as I could and ignore the general atmosphere of the bus, but that was no longer an option after a layover in Las Vegas. We boarded the bus once more after an almost 24 hour delay on our schedules, and finally got moving again. I sat in the back near the toilet, as I was no stranger to this game and wanted that bench seat, and foul smells at the time didn't bother me much... or so I thought. With the bus filling up and the seats reducing to slim pickings, it dawned on me that my coveted back seat bench was going to get shared. Then, I saw him... the Busbeard.
I'm usually a pretty nice person, but I did not want my coveted backseat benchseat getting taken up, let alone by this massive lardass that now lumbered towards me. I did everything in my power to seem as big and hostile as I could. This was all in vain, however, as some people cannot read social cues. I stared at him, dripping hostility, mentally repeating sit somewhere else like it was a Zen mantra. However, nobody wanted him to sit by them either, and so, he made his way, closer and closer, as he asked people if seats were taken until he got to me at the back. He shifted to sit into the seat, angling his ass in the general direction of my face. The smell of soggy feces-laden underwear wafted up as he slid his bulk onto the bench.
Did I mention that personal hygiene suffers on a greyhound bus ride, especially when you've been riding for days? I've taken my fair share of Greyhounds, and it's unlikely that this new arrival had been riding for awhile. He was eastbound, like the rest of us, and we were in Las Vegas. His point of origin was... not very far east. I had only been on the bus for approximately a day so far, minus the extended layover time of course, so I was getting a ittle sweaty myself, but this guy smelled as if he not only lived on this bus, but was born in the blue poop goop of the latrine. It was a question worthy of debate as to whether this man had actually employed the use of a speed stick in his life. His patchy jowels jiggled at me as he said, hi.
I responded with a gruff and monotone hello, and then turned my attentions to the window, watching the bus depot workers loading up suitcases beneath. My fate was sealed. This man was to be my travel companion all the way to Denver. I decided then that maybe it would be best to ignore him. I plugged in my phone, booted up an emulator I had downloaded, and started to play some Pokemon to whittle away the hours. It didn't take long, however, before I could feel his olfactory looming become physical looming as he examined the screen upon which I played from over my shoulder.
Busbeard: Pokemon? I fucking love Pokemon! I didn't know you could play it on a phone. How are you doing that?
His heavy respirations were like an infusion of green spearmint and halitosis.
GM: Emulators.
I went back to my game, trying to angle myself away from him in such a way that he couldn't lean over my shoulder and watch me as I trained my team, but I was effectively sandwiched between him and the wall, forced to sit straight as he leaned over and watched me play. I debated then, what I ought to do. Playing Pokemon would make the time fly, but I would be crushed between the window and a sweaty fat man. Not playing Pokemon would save me the physical agony of being squished, but I would be painfully bored for seemingly endless miles, and he may use it as an opportunity to interact further. A decision needed to be made.
I shut the emulator off and put away my phone, turning my attention back out the window as the bus pulled out of the Las Vegas terminal and began down the freeway. It was not long after we had pulled out of the station, however, when that wheezing, rasping voice chirped up again.
Busbeard: So where are you going?
I ignored him, focusing on the casinos towering in the distance of the skyline, pretending as if I hadn't heard the question, or as if it weren't addressed at me. With insistance, he repeated his question at my turned back again, searching for a response within my stony exterior. I mumbled, the Midwest, and he questioningly grunted, and asked me to repeat myself. I guess we're doing this.
GM: I'm going to the Midwest.
Busbeard: Where in the Midwest?
GM: Wisconsin.
Busbeard: I've never been to Wisconsin before, but I know they got really good cheese! Hyuk hyuk... Is that why you're going there?
Judging by his smell, he must have been an excessively avid connosieur of fine Wisconsinite cheese. However, cheese was the last thing on my mind at the time.I was enamored with my lady love.
GM: I'm going to see an old friend.
Busbeard: Oh, that's cool... who is it?
The odds of this man knowing the person who I was on my way to visit were astronomically low. Your odds of getting struck by lightning, winning the lottery, and becoming president in the same day were probably higher than this cretin knowing the one specific person whom I was going to go visit in some backwater Wisconsin town. Still, I humored him, and in the same flat voice, answered his question, and told him I was on my way to see my sweetheart.
This caught Busbeard's attention. For a grown man in his mid 30s, he let out a loud "oooooooo" like a middle schooler would when he finds out his friend has a crush. I contemplated execution methods and the subjective severity of their barbarism as he excitedly asked me where she was from.
GM: Wisconsin.
Busbeard: Yeah... but, where in Wiconsin?
GM: Fuck off, dude. I'm not going to tell you the town where she lives.
Busbeard: Heh! I'd be terrified of telling a superior male like me where my girlfriend lives, too. A little kid like you wouldn't stand a chance next to a man like me. Her panties would hit the floor from one whiff of my pheromones. It happens all the time, bro, I swear. I could have any woman on this bus. They just can't resist me. They can sense my manhood, I know it.
I shouldn't stir the pot. All common sense tells me that I should just stop myself while I'm ahead, but sometimes... sometimes I just can't help myself. I've always been a pretty reserved and self-contained person for the most part, and I just want to be left alone 90% of the time to do my thing. Apparently, that's a lot to ask, because every now and then, somebody comes and invades my personal space with their protruding belly, bad breath, and self-aggrandizement, and then I find it really hard to resist my inclination to fuck with them. I know, I know, it's wrong of me to do that, but I'm human, damnit, and something good was cooking in the kitchen. What's the harm in dipping a spoon into this self-important concoction of body odor and bravado?
GM: Any woman, huh? Tell ya what, Busbeard, I just got paid, and you seem really confident in the power of your, ahhhhh, pheromones, so... how about a wager.
I laid out the terms of my devil's bargain. With a wager of 100 dollars, I would pick a lady on the bus at the next break. Busbeard would then have to seduce her. He MUST "present" his pheromones to her, naturally. If he recovered her phone number, or anything in excess thereof, like a kiss or a consensual toilet stall consummation, it would suffice to meet my criteria and loose my grasp from the freshly printed Franklin in my wallet. He agreed enthusiastically to my terms, insisting I was going to loose and he was going to get his dick sucked in a Greyhound portajohn "blumpkin style".
We rode along in silence for the next hour or so. The sun was high in the sky when we made our next stop at some gas station in Utah, and everyone filed off the bus to stretch their legs and get their snacks. I wandered around, huffing down my smoke, chatting it up with people and making friends, seeing just who they were, asking them questions - where they were going, who they were going there with. I got to talking with one guy and his girlfriend.
The guy, who we will call Sarge, was built like a brick shithouse and was a former infantry man who served 2 tours of duty in the middle east. He was traveling with his wife, a young and pretty little thing who we will call Alexandra. They were on their way back to the east coast to stay with family. Alexandra's mom was getting old and had asked them to move in to help take care of her. They were on their way out there to steward her aging mother's estate. I remarked that that was awfully kind of them, and sincerely wished them the best on taking care of Alexandra's aging mom. I told them a little bit about myself, as well... that I was effectively living on the road, playing life by ear, and on the way to see a loved one of mine for a bit before the wind blew me somewhere else.
Eventually, the bus driver gave everyone a 5 minute warning before departure, and we all filed on board. I moved back to my seat and waited for Busbeard to arrive. He came back, cradling piles of gas station sandwiches, bags of chips, and a couple of sodas in his massive paws. He sat down beside me with a loud "oof" and offered me a drink, saying that it's the least he could do before he took my money. I took that beverage. It was both cold and delicious.
GM: Well, Busbeard, I've done my rounds, and I've come to a decision.
Busbeard: Who is it? She better be hot. I swear to God, if you make me waste my time on some dried up roastie, I'm gonna be so fucking pissed at you dude.
GM: Why would I do that dude? Naturally, I only want the best for you. No, she's very pretty. You see that girl over there, in the aisle seat? That's the one. Make your move whenever you're ready.
I pointed out Alexandra to him. I already knew this was going to end very poorly. There was no way in Hell that Alexandra would express any interest in this disgusting lardass whatsoever when she had a stable and solid man like Sarge, and Sarge wasn't about to take guff from anyone. Add on to it that Sarge was easily the size of, if not bigger than, the prodigious Busbeard himself. Sarge was also trained to kill and hardened by years of combat in the graveyard of empires. I can fight - I've fought a lot - and I would not want to square up against him under any circumstances. Busbeard was going to get the snot beat out of him and pay me 100 dollars for that privilege.
The bus took off and I listened to the disgusting sounds of Busbeard inhaling the equivalent of 5 pounds of gas station food. I was only halfway through my soda, when Busbeard emitted a satisfied belch that rumbled the seats, and the feeding frenzy had ended in an effervesence of curdling bile and preservatives just as fast as it had begun. He then started to pump himself up for the task at hand. He started to sweat with excitement and latent cardiac arrest as he prepared his pheromonal aura about himself, and then with a gruff, alright, let's do this, he stood up from his seat and waddled down the aisle, his greasy belly bumping into everybody who had chosen an aisle seat.
He approached Alexandra. They were near the front end of the bus, and so I couldn't hear a word that they were saying. I watched Busbeard as he extended an arm and held on to the overhead luggage rack, exposing the damp miasma of corn-syrup infused armpit sweat to his unsuspecting victim. His pheromones were beginning to work their magic over the unsuspecting Alexandra who would soon be enraptured by its juicy spell. I waited, leaning forward intently, when a loud shout broke the silence.
Sarge: BACK THE FUCK UP.
Alexandra started to shout, too, yelling "get the fuck away from me!"
The driver turned back and yelled for everyone to sit down and shut the hell up or he would pull the bus over.
Sarge: Please do! I'm gonna beat this fucking lardass into the pavement! Saying shit like that to my wife? Who the fuck do you think you are?
The bus driver repeated his warning, and Busbeard began to shout his protests, insisting upon his innocence.
Busbeard: B-but, I was put up to it! It was that guy, in the back seat! He said---
He pointed back at me. I yelled back, I don't fucking know that guy.
The bus driver meant his threat, and pulled the bus over. We were on a long and empty stretch on the I-15 somewhere in rural Utah. The last town I had seen was about 20 miles back. It was late spring, and it was getting hot outside that afternoon. The bus driver got out of his seat, walked up to Busbeard, and told him to get the Hell off of his bus. Busbeard kept protesting, when Sarge moved past his wife, and started forcing Busbeard towards the front door.
I've heard the threat of getting kicked off maybe a thousand times on a Greyhound, but I had never seen it play out before. Busbeard was thrown off the bus. Sarge did not join him outside and pummel him into the asphalt, regrettably, as I would have loved to have watched it. Busbeard kept pleading with the bus driver as the driver shut the door on him, sealing him out on the shoulder of a lonely stretch of highway. I breathed a sigh of relief, and stretched out my legs. It was another 15 miles before we saw signs of civilization. A part of me felt bad for Busbeard, but the other part of me said, "if I can walk 20 miles in a day with 60 lbs of shit on my back, he can do an unencumbered 15 and be fine."
The ride continued on in sweet, reclined silence for me until we reached Denver, werein there was another changeover, and this bus was much, much more desolate. The rest of the Greyhound voyage passed without incident, and I spent my time flirting with my lady love and training some Pokemons. At long last, I finally arrived in Wisconsin. She came to pick me up at the bus station, and when we approached each other, we made out like long lost lovers for a good 5 minutes before we finally caught our breath enough to say hello. I got in her car, and spent maybe a week or so with her, before it was time to take my leave. I couldn't live there forever, and so, as fast as I had drifted into her life, once again, it was time for me to disappear. We said goodbye, and she dropped me off at a lonely interstate overpass on the edge of town. I put my thumb out to catch a ride to Anywhere But Here USA.
I planned my next move, and I figured that there were some friends of hers and mine that lived not too far away in the Dakotas, and maybe I would pay them a visit next. I was in the neighborhood, and figured that I might as well say hello. I reached out to them online, and then made my way west again. They were excited for me to come see them. It was only a day into the voyage when I received a message from Janet. It said, "wait for me, I'm catching up." She had packed her backpack again, and was coming after me, hot on my tail. I told her we could meet up at our mutual friend's house.
I dialed ahead to our friends, who we shall call Sarah and Queenie. Sarah used to travel together with Janet for many months before she stabilized, and then settled down. Queenie was one of my friends from North Carolina. He was a loveable chucklefuck of a drifter, missing a few teeth, wore a skirt, and spoke in the most haggard voice you could imagine. Still... he insisted on being called Queenie. He had settled down with Sarah after they hooked up, and they were living at Sarah's house. He was on thin ice there, however, and she was threatening to kick him out.
I arrived at Sarah's and Queenie's, and spent the next few days waiting for Janet to come up on my heels. During that time, Queenie and I played a lot of Magic (he had just gotten into it), and I remembered the dice that my friend in California had given me that were laying unusued in my backpack. I asked him if he had ever played tabletop RPG's before, to which he answered no. I told him that, maybe next time I see him and I'm in a better spot, we could run a game. Eventually Janet caught up, and we prepared to leave Sarah's for good towards our own new horizons. Queenie, however, had finally broken through the thin ice upon which he skated, and was getting thrown out. On the day of our departure, we asked him if he wanted to join us in our travels so he wouldn't have to go it alone.
Thus we began from Sarah's house out into the unknown once again, a cheerful trio, and true to my word, I began to teach not only Queenie, but Janet as well, the joys of tabletop RPGs.
As I'm sure you can surmise, dear friends, that this is not the end of our story, but only the beginning of another chapter. Is Busbeard still alive? What does the future hold for Ramtide's love life? How do a gaggle of vagabond drifters play tabetop games without a table? Some of these questions will be answered, my dear friends, in our next installment of TAAAAAALES FROM THE TABLETOP.
A shoutout to my lovely patrons, Tatoferret and Sillibits. You guys are wonderful. Thank you for believing in the dream.

I have all the patches needed to play fallout NV installed and am able to start and play it for a bit up till I leave Doc Mitchells office and shortly after that the game camera freezes, stutters, and acts out sometimes freezing the game with it, sometimes continuing the game but only showing the frozen / stuttering screen.
The game works all right it seems except for this problem which is causing me a headache I was wondering if any of you more experienced mod users had any solutions for this? Almost all my mods were downloaded using Vortex except Fallout New Vegas Limit Fix which I manually installed with the instructions provided in the description.
( I installed it with Vortex before yet it doesn't seem whether I manually installed it or not matters much)
​
Load Order
​
FalloutNV.esm
DeadMoney.esm
HonestHearts.esm
OldWorldBlues.esm
LonesomeRoad.esm
GunRunnersArsenal.esm
ClassicPack.esm
MercenaryPack.esm
TribalPack.esm
CaravanPack.esm
YUP - Base Game + All DLC.esm
Sortomatic.esm
BraveNewWorld.esm
FreesideOpen.esm
MoreMojave.esm
TGMIO.esm
ELECTRO-CITY - CompletedWorkorders.esm
FCOMaster.esm
TLD_Travelers.esm
NVInteriors_Core.esm
NVInteriors_ComboEdition.esm
Less Empty Primm.esp
ELECTRO-CITY - Highways and Byways.esm
SomeguySeries.esm
Niner.esm
The New Bison Steve Hotel.esm
Kidnapped by Fiends.esm
More Perks.esm
Courier's Radio.esm
YUP - NPC Fixes (Base Game + All DLC).esp
Unofficial Patch Plus.esp
CombatEnhancer.esp
Vurt's WFO.esp
Logic and Consistency Fixes.esp
EasierMassPurifiedWater.esp
KMGL_Main.esp
EmptyWeapons.esp
B42Inertia.esp
FCO - NPC Changes.esp
JSawyer Ultimate.esp
The True Revival of Luxury - An Ultra-Luxe Overhaul.esp
FreesideOpenPatch.esp
TopsSuiteUpgrade-Main.esp
Mojave Raiders.esp
Bathroom Doors Overhaul - All IN ONE.esp
EVE FNV - ALL DLC.esp
VanGraffOverhaul.esp
TopsToVault21.esp
WeaponModsExpanded.esp
More Perks Update.esp
All Weapon Sounds Overhaul .esp
Saucy Sink.esp
WMX-DLCMerged.esp
Mojave Arsenal.esp
WMX-EVE-AllDLCMerged.esp
IMPACT.esp
Realistic Lead - Bullet Ballistics.esp
Realistic Lead - Bullet Ballistics - IMPACT Patch.esp
Mojave Wildlife (Vanilla-Style).esp
HiddenValleyOverhauled1.2.esp
BraveNewWorld-FCO.esp
CourierCacheWSE.esp
ArizonaArmy.esp
BLMedical.esp
NevadaSkies.esp
The New Bison Steve Hotel.esp
Advanced Recon Armor.esp
SecuritronsOnAlert.esp
NCR Ranger Helmet Neck Cover.esp
RetrievableThrowables.esp
Casino Exchange All.esp
HeinzTrenchShotgun.esp
Watter Putter Outter.esp
Alsatian NCR Guard Dogs.esp
NCR Battle Rifle.esp
RangerSequoiaSafehouse.esp
Living_Lucky.esp
The Tops Restaurant New Menu.esp
ImmersivePickupSoundsFNV.esp
JSawyer Ultimate - Mojave Arsenal Patch.esp
cleanatomicwrangler.esp
JSawyer Mod Vanilla Number of Perks.esp
Show Pickpocket Success Rate.esp
Loot Unconscious Victims.esp
hz_Empty Clicks.esp
IRNPC.esp
Shorter Chem Wear-off Effects.esp
Pyromaniac.esp
TBz Atomic Wrangler VIP Suite.esp
NewVegasBounties.esp
NewVegasBountiesII.esp
TheInheritance.esp
1nivVSLArmors.esp
HuntingRevolver&Sequoia.esp
JSawyer Ultimate - FCO Patch.esp
JSawyer Ultimate - Mojave Raiders Patch.esp
Russell.esp
LFox Bottle That Water.esp
FuckableCompanions.esp
Bash_Stealthboy.esp
NPCs Can Miss.esp
The Mod Configuration Menu.esp
MuchNeededLOD.esp
Nights are Darker - Ultimate Edition.esp
FCO - The New Bison Steve.esp
LiveDismember.esp
lonesome_firetrucks.esp
NVDLC04 Allegiance w Duster.esp
UniqueThinkTank.esp
Lucky38Overhaul.esp
RebreatherRestoration.esp
Simple DLC Delay.esp
Restoring Hope Quest Morale Fix.esp
Project Reality Footsteps.esp
MCPipBoy2000MK6_clock.esp
NVFeralGhoulChildren.esp
NPC Use Aid.esp
NPCsSprint.esp
MigNammo.esp
Immersive Hit Reactions.esp
ImmersiveRecoil.esp
Lobotomitess.esp
GhoulRadTweaks.esp
GhoulRadTweaks - JIP.esp
Female White Glove Society Mask.esp
BetterNCRSupplyCache.esp
Beyond The Beef Tweaks.esp
CloudGrenades.esp
Diagonal movement.esp
CoverOfDarkness.esp
JoeCobbIsFiend.esp
BraveNewWorld-JSU.esp
BraveNewWorld-UncutWastelandNPCs.esp
BraveNewWorld-YUP.esp
TrooperOverhaul-Dragbody.esp
NCRTrooperOverhaul.esp
Splint.esp
ThisMachineKillsFascists.esp
AutumnLeaves.esp
MeleeReachFixed.esp
FCO - Russell.esp
FCO - OHSB NPC Edits.esp
BraveNewWorld-ArizonaArmy.esp
BraveNewWorld-MojaveRaiders.esp
BraveNewWorld-NCRTrooperOverhaulDist.esp
NCRCF Reinforcements.esp
FCO - Niner.esp
KingOfTheRing.esp
GomorrahProstituteEnable.esp
Skip Doc Mitchell's Exam.esp
SaveCass.esp
CourierRangerArmorV2.esp
RangemasterNV.esp
Enhanced NPC Awareness.esp
DIM TYPE3clothesRETAIL.esp
Explosive Sounds Overhaul.esp
ThrowableFixes.esp
Ammo Count Memory.esp
BartonThornTrigger.esp
LootMenu.esp
JIP Improved Recipe Menu.esp
I Got Spurs.esp
ScottmackImprovisedPPSh.esp
Bunk beds.esp
WesternRifles.esp
JustDynamicCrosshair.esp
FNVLODGen.esp

Quick note: This post took me a long time to write, many hours between conception, editing, and execution. If you would be so kind as to not downvote it strictly because you disagree with me, I’d appreciate it. If you think this is a low effort post, or doesn’t contribute to discussion, then please do. This started out as more of a bullet point list of reasons but as I rewrote it became more of a story of my experiences as they relate to Goons. I hope you all enjoy it more this way.
One of the conceits of the war from the PAPI front is that “Goons are the bad guys of Eve”. I’ve found this narrative vexing, because over the last five years I think Goons have swung from comical Eve bad guys to the best of the large alliances in Eve. I’ll explain why I believe this is so.
But first let’s address some things: One of the disadvantages of being around for so long is that we have to carry around all of the bad baggage from years past. There are a lot of “old twitter posts” some of which are pretty awful. Bad people, bad memes, and the like. Some of it is just stupid in retrospect, some of it deeply embarrassing.
The positive news is that I think the alliance has become the leading example of what a large alliance should be in the game. Good to its members and a fun adversary to an outsider. Going back to 2015 Goons had gone through 1 “cultural revolution” which had defanged a lot of the casually terrible stuff that was common in Eve back then (ie: jewing was a common term for ratting/krabbing) but still had a lot of vestiges that wouldn’t be fully swept away until cultural revolution 2 (where we probably landed on the side of too heavy handed, but that’s a story for another day). However it was, in my opinion, peak “bad Goon” in terms of gameplay philosophy. Sion had just pushed the Viceroy plan - something I considered one of the most ill-conceived efforts to get content in quite a while. “Helldunks or blueballs” was the byword, and Reagalan snapping the phrase at some unremembered skirmish commander saying just that was the talk of the Eve subreddit. Spin was, in the most generous terms, pretty far-fetched. Line members were considered pretty dumb and the apparatchik were fairly devoted to passing down the party line.
At the time I was an up-and-coming FC. I had already formed my Reavers SIG about a year before in Oct. 2014 and had won some heavily outnumbered fights against most expectations. I was getting a big push from alliance leadership and kept winning fights as I got sent out on mainfleets I was quickly got promoted into bigger roles to the point where I was running main fleets as the main FC. Laz was mostly AFK after winning B-R5 and trying to do the streamer thing, but still around for big fights. Not long after Vily left Goons. A few months later Endie, Elise and others would start aggressively lobbying me pretty hard to leave Goons and I started getting BIG CASH OFFERS on the table from other people as well. This was the start of the Casino War. At this point I think Mittens started sensing the sharks circling and promoted me to ‘skymarshal’. This is a mostly tongue in cheek position but one that meant you were in charge of the Goon military.
At this point I had a lot of problems with the way some things were being handled in the alliance military, but I was fully committed to making change from inside rather than leaving my group behind (I had only been playing Eve seriously since 2013, but I’ve been a Goon since the early 2000s). One of my biggest problems was the “helldunks or blueballs” philosophy. I thought it was a great way to win one war but a terrible way to retain members. During much of 2015 I had the feeling that we were rotten to the core, that our strength was mostly fleeting. Although there were some specific moments that I felt could have stopped the Casino War before it started, (mostly by counteracting SMA’s mind boggingly bad decisions) I felt that theViceroy program and the disasterous lowsec campaign had already exposed a lot of our weakness to the whole galaxy.
Despite the losses, the Casino War turned out to be a huge boon to Goonswarm and our allies that stuck with us. It got us out of Deklein into Delve which was (at the time) much better space. We would have never got rid of Deklein otherwise. It taught us a lot of lessons about sprawl and not fighting over-extended. It showed us the flaws in our organizational structure. But most importantly it opened minds to re-evaluating certain dearly held doctrinal beliefs. One that I wanted to challenge almost immediately was helldunks and blueballs. I felt that our guys being generally unchallenged lead to us having great numbers of fair weather friends who could be relied on for dunks but would split when the going got tough, both in Goons and throughout the other alliances in the CFC. In our exile to Saranen, we saw exactly that.
My doctrinal belief was, and still is, that regularly placing your guys in tough positions results in better pilots and in people who are happier overall. We grow personally and as a group by overcoming challenges. A helldunk is a Pepsi Cola. A struggle overcome is a 14 year old scotch.
After the Casino war we moved to Delve and were in pretty bad shape resource wise but you knew every person who stuck with you was true blue. I’ve never had more fun than my days in Saranen as the war wended its course to an end, and part of that reason was you knew that every person who was with you in Saranen would ride with you against all odds. I was determined to capture the ‘Saranen Spirit’ for people who were there and for those who would start playing or join us later.
It took a while though. When we first arrived in Delve PGL followed us there with the goal of destroying us once and for all, but by this point there was no fat left. Every single person was battle hardened and the money and will to follow us had run out. We stopped his campaign pretty quickly.
Change came slowly at first. We had a lot of wounds to lick, a lot of data to process and people were just tired. The first turning point against helldunks/blueballs came with our Hakonen deployment. We took a shot at Tribute with just carriers and dreads versus an enemy supercap force that clearly outnumbered us. It was a very fun deployment for us but we did eat a ton of negative publicity about how “bad” we were. I think it bothered Mittens a bit (maybe a lot) and I don’t think he had yet realized the value we gained out of it.
After seeing GOTG’s impressive subcapital and supercapital contributions during the Hakonen deployment, we decided to deploy some of our combat SIGs to Pure Blind to begin harassing our enemies on that front, once again committing to an offensive in a deliberately handicapped fashion. For almost a year, we whittled down multiple alliances with relatively tiny subcapital fleets and the odd dreadbomb. All of this built up to a climax in 2017.
X-47 was one of the most consequential fights in recent memory, and once again we put ourselves in a rough spot to get it. We started the titan fight with dead-even numbers against an enemy with Keepstar advantage and all that entails. Less remembered but even more significant was the oppressive tether doomsday bug/feature, which put our super fleet at a significant disadvantage. In the armor timer, we gave them the opening volley and it started off really poorly for us, but we ended up pulling out a victory. The hull timer was a much more lopsided victory in terms of Titan kills, , and the Keepstar death all but ended serious resistance in the war. Still, I remember the anxiety going into the fight, I don’t want to sound over-dramatic but I spent the whole night before prowling my house, unable to sleep. I had figured out the value of the Imperium supercapital fleet and it was in the millions of dollars if you converted it to plex. It’s a huge amount of pressure on the shoulders of the FC to know that if you mess up you could lose that for the people who put their trust in you. It’s also a very small group of people in video game history who can make a statement like that so it’s a fun and unique cadre to belong to and my respect to those of you who have shouldered that burden before.
Throughout all of these campaigns, I think it became more and more clear that this new military philosophy was the superior one, and ditching the ‘helldunk’ strategy was the correct move. Over time I slowly pulled Mittens towards my view point on this - that there is something of more value than just numbers. Our doctrines started evolving too. This might sound comical, but for a long time Goons had avoided cap chains. It was thought that the Goon line member couldn’t handle it. Now when I see our fleet spreading ewar really effectively, and our very effective cap chaining logi, and multiple FCs all doing different tasks, I can’t help but smile. Hard work pays off.
After X-47 we wrapped up that war and went home. We would come back in the not too distant future to finish the work we had started. We expected a stronger response in Tribute, but after an initial hard fight the regions were vacated and we glassed it. Unlike every other group in the game, we didn’t immediately find some renters or delegate an underling to occupy the space. We left it fallow and a really healthy ecosystem of small alliances has flourished. We didn’t know exactly what would happen in this space, but since we left Deklein we have very conspicuously and openly avoided taking space and sprawling out. And I was very satisfied to see what can happen when you leave some space open for anyone to use.
After that last northern campaign, we went home again during the chaos era before we started our GEF campaigns the following year. Once again, we deployed against superior enemy numbers with capital superiority and fought outnumbered in two separate campaigns. At this point it felt like we had burnt away all vestiges of helldunks or blueballs.
Coming into July I had this short convo with Mittens, and I think it illustrates how our relationship has grown and the trust that you can build even with people who initially had vastly opposing views on how things should be run: https://i.imgur.com/YyIE1bs.png
I’d like to address a few more points that I think lie strongly in our favour: Supercaps – Goons have been opposed to them for as long as I can recall. All our CSMs have publicly come out in favour of them being nerfed, even though it’s long been to our strategic benefit for them to be strong. Over the last few years we’ve lost people in comparison relative to other alliances. Some people have aged out, some didn’t like the way we fought wars and went to climes that agreed with them more, but we’ve always had the most supers and we’ve constantly argued that they are unhealthy for the game. I have personally lobbied for them to be nerfed, in public and in focus groups with Devs, because it’s our belief that they are unhealthy for the game. Part of why we are being attacked is because our enemies believe that dreads can be used against titans much more effectively than in the past, and they can flex their numbers advantage in that area on us. If we end up losing because of this, we’ll have lobbied ourselves into that position.
I think part of the gulf in perspective between us and our enemies, especially the TAPI FCs is that they just fundamentally view the game differently than we do. But at one point we were much closer. Vily left in 2015 in the middle of helldunk/blueball and copious spin and he’s brought the Goons culture of 2015 to Test. There’s a Test poster – who I won’t name because I’m pretty sure he gets off on being recognized – who has been making the argument that Test are more Goonie than Goons. And to him I say: I agree with you. Test have inherited the mantle of Goons and we became something else. Vily is Goons without the growth. PGL tried to destroy us in 2016 and thought we’d cave in like a rotten pumpkin because that’s what happened with his alliance. When we didn’t I believe he was shocked but he thinks it will be different this time. Well, I’m going to be the bearer of bad news for him because this group has been through much worse than we had in 2015. We have a lot of people who have been fighting consistently against people who had every advantage over them and they’ve come out the other end stronger. Will it be enough to beat 3x our numbers? Who knows, but I know these guys will be with me no matter what happens.
I’ve been hearing the same story over and over in my fleets, I have pretty open comms (sorry Euros that I annoy with this policy) and people have been more reflective as of late. And I kept hearing the story from one guy after another about how they thought that Goons were the bad guys until they joined them. So tonight I asked my fleet to X up if they thought or had heard that Goons were the bad guys before they joined, this was the result: https://i.imgur.com/mJCEiS7.gif
I’ve been pondering this, and wondering why people would join the bad guys. Every story varied but often people had tried other things and were unhappy and Goons were an unhappy choice initially but once they were in they saw how things actually worked and were happy with it. Some ended up by chance through a corp moving or just a friend invited them and that overcame their doubts. The point was that even though they heard we were the bad guys once they were here and got to experience our culture they saw it was different than what they had elsewhere. That’s partly why I think a lot of our guys are really passionate, they feel unfairly attacked.
Now I’ve come a long way, but I want to address the 5 ton elephant in the room: The Mittani. I’m very aware that he said something stupid almost a decade ago. I addressed my thoughts in much more depth here. I don’t believe it was said with malice, but it still was an awful thing to say. However in my time interacting with him he’s always been a very passionate guy but I’ve never seen him suggest an untoward thing. He wants to win, he wants to use whatever legal way possible to do it and he’s a guy who’s shown a lot of growth personally. If he wanted to do something I thought was immoral I would hear about it and I wouldn’t support it, but I’ve never once been put in that position.
I think a lot of you don’t understand that he’s a wrestling promoter. He can’t help but play a heel. He’s fantastic at it. And he’s fantastic for the game, lots of you guys on the other side want to win so you can wipe the smug smile off his face. This is awesome. More leaders should be like this, there are a few I really would like to do the same to (or have done in the past) and it’s great to have people that motivate you to fight them. The worst thing for this game would be a bunch of staid boring diplomats who didn’t inspire any vitriol. This game is about fighting after all.
Another good thing about Goons and the Imperium is our diplomatic stance, although I don’t want a bunch of diplomats running the game I am very keen on keeping our words and Goons have done this more than any other group. Sister Bliss was talking with me about why Init has stuck with Goons and he said something about how every other group in the game had promised Init the world then screwed them when it was convenient and Goons were the only one who stuck to what they said and he values that.
A few quick more bullet points:

• Goons do not like renting. Of all the big alliances we’ve had the smallest rental program, we only reluctantly got into it when OTEC was broken and had to secure some income. We closed our rental program, but we kept out word and grandfathered our old renters so that they could stay and not lose what they’d agreed to. I think renting is a net bad thing for the game, actually very bad so I’m proud of this one. Culturally Goons have always opposed rental programs.
  
• We forced the game into taking on all players regardless of skill point level. Groups like Brave, Horde, etc followed in our footsteps on this one. I firmly believe that getting players into groups that have the bandwidth to teach them the game with proven programs that know how to retain people is the best way to do it, rather than just hoping they join random highsec corp #1850 and hoping they aren’t run by toxic incompetent people.
  
• Goons don’t sprawl. We’ve held 4 regions but 2 of those were more out of necessity than any desire to hold them. In one region we did the Querious Fight Club which has launched over 20 corps into nullsec alliances around the game or independently. Right now Pandafam covers 12 or 13 regions and is renting out many of them to aggressively botted alliances. If you look at the MER Frat is making more money than any other nullsec group and it’s not even close. Because of how densely packed we are our space is terrible for botting, probably the worst space in the game for it, which is another tick for us.
  
• This is a personal one but Goon doctrines are more interesting. Screw Munnins, down with boring arty doctrines. I’m really happy we’ve been iconoclastic in our doctrinal decisions and have seen success with those choices.
  

So, that about wraps up my voluminous tome. What should you do with this information? Well, I hope no matter what side you were on you found it an interesting read. I’m not trying to convince anyone to not fight us. Jay and I were talking right as the war was starting about how we were in the perfect spot, no one expects us to win so if we do it’s more credit to us but if we lose it’s to be expected. If we end up back in an NPC station then I get to just replay my favorite time in Eve ever. But I hope I have shown you a little bit about why I believe Goons are one of the best alliances in the game right now, thanks for reading.