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The results are in for Match 10. The winner is…
Ananas “Agnes” Bayley, with a score of 72 to Guy Manuel-Mota’s 69!

Category	Winner	Point Totals	Comments
Popularity	BADD GUYS	18-12
Quality	Suburban Regalia	22-23	Reasoning
JoJolity	Suburban Regalia	22-24	Reasoning
Conduct	Tie	10-10

Amidst the sea of concrete snow that the stage had become, egged on by Agnes’ unusual encore request that Metra had agreed to, the killing intent of the self-styled villain and master mixologist had won out against the comparable brutality of the affable mercenary who had tried to take his life with just as much brutality.
The crowd, though annoyed by being utterly doused in carbonated everything, literally tossed around, literally watching their fellow partygoers exsanguinated and turned into meat puppets, did not allow it to ruin their fun, cheering on for Metra and her eclectic song choices. Agnes hopped off the makeshift surfboard he’d constructed, his opponent cut to pieces and speared and speared to hell, and it a testament to the sheer resilience of Guy-Manuel Mota that, even in such a gored, pulverized state, his opponent wondered if he was actually dead.
Regardless, he wasn’t getting back up, or reassembling, or pulling any more surprises or attempts to play possum. Realizing that it was over, Agnes was shaking. Breathing heavily. Hints of tears started to form in his eyes… but before he had a chance to cry, he arched back, laughing into a sea of concrete snow.
He’d won again.
“There you go, Metra, your show is saved or whatever,” he said with a mocking flippancy as she left the crowd to meet him backstage, “and I didn’t even kill any of these guys who paid to see you… They’ll just have to deal with sticky-wet clothes and some broken limbs.”
“Can’t believe this happened again… And I just had no choice but to keep singing and dancing.” Metra rubbed her hands on her arms, shaking her head. “I’m sick of this shit… I thought it was all almost over, but it’s just going to be forever in this city, huh?”
“Probably,” Agnes said, still half-laughing through a strained face, “just a constant, encroaching wave of ‘despair’ every waking moment… Way I see it, either you ride that shit as far as you can, or you let yourself drown. Doesn’t make a difference to me which you do.”
He glanced up at the ceiling then, cupping his hands. “Hey, fuckers! I won now! I beat the guy you sent! Get on the biggering or I’ll burn your casino down again!”
The game had, in fact, been won, and Agnes and Metra were the first to start to be free of its grasp, along with the spiked and bloodied separated bits of Guy, still pulsating ambiguously.
“He’s out for blood.” Tigran declared, warning the others Entertainment District highrollers observing, as he produced a deck of cards. “My Stand can’t hold him at that size much longer… But this whole place is about to be flooded with people, too. Duck into somewhere, and get away in the confusion.”
He spoke authoritatively, and even his sole superior, Fox, complied with his wishes after an urgent glance. “I… I’ll come for you! I promise I will!”
Tigran didn’t hear much more of that, then, beyond the sounds of Pork Soda’s Stand cry amplified by sonic boosts courtesy of Metra Doria. He fought impressively with little more than a deck of cards, but even then, could only buy his friends the seconds they needed to get away, live to gamble another day.
Tigran “Golden” Sins, User of ‘The Grid
Retired!
Face broken in nearly a dozen places by Agnes and TD/MD, the 48 year-old owner of Heartache Casino would be very quickly interned at Red Clay penitentiary, Metra insisting that her ally not kill him.
As thousands of confused concertgoers suddenly grew to full size and began to flood the halls of the Alexander Dickinson Amphitheater, the rest of his accomplices were able to escape the authorities yet again. Despite his extremely infamous protectiveness towards his face, he almost seemed to wear the damage with pride, knowing that this time, it represented having allowed the only man he considered greater than himself to run free yet again.
Red Clay Penitentiary - Industrial District
“Well, well, well, isn’t this a small world now? Tigran Sins, now in my care… Certainly less of a looker than I’d heard.” A dark-wavy-haired twenty-something sat snickering in the warden’s big swivel-chair, clad in a sleeveless velvet minidress, what of her flesh was exposed covered in flickering tattoos resembling closed eyes, flanked by uncanny-looking guards. “You don’t know me, but I’ve certainly heard of you… Of how you treated someone I hold dear very cruelly. Don’t you understand we’re all Stand Users trying to live our best life, Mr. Golden? I’m not the one who hurt you and threw you in here, and you’re not the one who said that I needed to be kept half-starved at all times so I couldn’t create anything.”
“Wh… Wait. Who the hell’re you?”
“Did my sweetheart never mention me, or do you just not pay attention to anyone but you and yours?” She leaned forward, bridging her fingers together. “I’m Palmer. I was a drama teacher at a small-town high school, but they kept overfunding football, one thing led to another, and now… I’ve got some serious vision.”
Tigran would be the last inmate admitted to Red Clay before a coup months in the making finally came to fruition.
Hey, yeah, Palmer! Remember that fun NPC? She was dating Mr. Jones and killed four people for him! Anyway, yeah, adjacent to him, an all-out meanspirited brawl in a sewer is taking place, feat. two chaotic clowns and two very frustrated young women.
What rotten luck this had been.
That leak, now of all days, when Being So Normal, Cairo Satori’s pet project that they had been slaving away at ever since setting foot in this series, had the deals with the devil that it had been built upon from the very beginning exposed for the world to see, and the city, which had loved every second of it before, had now been divided sharply between the loyal fans remaining and those protesting the entire thing, demanding the resignation of their producer, the cancellation of a show which had been picked up by so many streaming platforms, had already begun to make so much for the people who had made a livelihood of it all.
With the connection to Andrew Tiffany’s demise, even the oh-so-loyal Purple Flying Man resigned with only a short argument, and even the damage control removal of Caroline Jeffords, responsible for the worst of it, did little to contain the fact that Cairo knew about this, and Cairo allowed this to proceed nonetheless.
What, were they going to just throw it all away at the last minute? Ruin lives, tank companies, get how many people laid off? All over the failures of those close to them? Of course not.
“Cairo, dear,” the voice of that ever-troublesome producer, Million Dollars, muttered into a cell phone for them, “I’m going to need to go under the radar for awhile… People are beginning to look into my own affairs as well. But know that, as always, no matter what, you have my support. This show isn’t just a cash cow, Cairo… It’s an example. An example for the world to look to, and something for Stand Users to aspire to be better. I know you’re probably mad at us as well, but… You know that, don’t you?”
“Dollars… You’ve got a lot of nerve, trying to plead with me right now,” Cairo answered, tense in what had been their green room, sitting in the mall their producer had owned, “we definitely need to talk about our future… But we need to have one, too. Of course the show must go on… Nothing’s gonna jeopardize that!”
Free Viper Strip Mall, Suburban District
In recent times, the atmosphere at Free Viper was… somewhat dire. In fact, it had been on a rapid decline since that fateful day a couple months ago when Bert hijacked a ritual meant to challenge fate and did so, while murdering tens of thousands of people and injuring far more than that at the same time. Actually, Black Knight Penitentiary Album’s death and the realization that Remix was a serial killer came before that and weren’t very uplifting either, but what Bert did was somewhat hard to top.
Either way, the realization that he found one of the most morally bankrupt groups of people to team up with in Los Fortuna was one that Arthur Lifeson had reached not too long ago, and though it was somewhat of a painful thing to come to terms with, he had no choice but to do so and simply carry on. Bert had died, and the least Arthur could do from here on out would be to do his best to assist the city of Los Fortuna and bring justice to those who deserved it. The city certainly needed it, given all that was occurring right now.
For all the time Arthur spent in the city, he hadn’t gotten enough of note done yet… but that was soon to change. He had a plan in mind, one that would help keep the city and the world of stand users as a whole from devolving into further chaos. Before he could put it in place, however, he’d have to get some help.
Los Fortuna Shopping District, Sweet FA Mall - The Next Day
Nix Ripa had been in this city for months now, and in that time, all he had done was tear down walls, break buildings, break people who had dared to step all over the safety of others, of those too weak to bend fate to their whims.
It was despicable to him, and the icy Stand User was seething with hot rage. Those without the power to change the world themselves were pitiable, in their ways, yet at once, he knew they were not above help… That they needed to be driven higher, reach for the stars rather than wave to the heroes they saw in them!
When Arthur Lifeson discovered and contacted him, he did not hesitate to make his way to the megamall in which this was all set to culminate. Rather than in the comfortable solitude of the Black Hill Estate, where he could train without disruption, he’d even spent the night in an alley nearby, wanting to be able to spring out first thing in the morning!
When he did, then, as if on schedule, the older bearded man who had requested his help stood at the foot of Sweet FA, looking himself quite regal with that increasingly modified Medieval Times getup.
“Sir Ripa… It is an honor to meet in person, with yet another warrior of great acclaim.”
“Heh… I’ve seen you around,” Nix answered, stretching off the sleeping-on-a-dumpster aches and forcing out his hand, which Arthur, in turn, grabbed firmly, the pair locking fingers tightly and staring one another down intensely. “Did a damn fine number on those guys at this very mall awhile back… And it takes some guts to drive out into the Middle Finger for any reason! The mountains are where I do my most intense training of all!”
“Aye, I regrettably was fooled into following the glorious allure of Being So Normal… I lack even your good reason, of how you and your fallen brother-in-arms, Sir Rains, apprehended a true villain in the process of this fight, and even a black knight who would have put a past companion of mine to shame with her depravity.” He looked towards the space and shuddered. “The show, it refused to show the truth, but the wounds from that grueling battle, the burns… They were excruciating. That witch Jeffords, nothing she’s touched can be trusted as a truth to show the world.”
“So we’re in agreement then!” Nix said, finally letting the handshake go as Arthur’s hand began to grow numb, rolling his arms around and turning to face Sweet FA. “I looked into this place, their mission statement, their show, their producer… Set a good example my ass! They just want the whole damn world to think there’s nothing better than being a Stand User! That the ground we walk on should be kissed just for what we’ve got! Well… I’m no goddamn celebrity!”
“Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” Arthur agreed, “and this mockery… It will not do good for the world to learn of us this way. A knight’s honor is not something we seek for glory, for congratulation, but because there is no greater purpose than to slay evil, to protect those who cannot for themselves!”
“Heh… I like you. After this, we’re sparring ‘til one of us can’t move!”
Nix led the way in there, then, Arthur feeling pause for a moment at the sheer intensity of his companion. This was not of fear, however, or of a sudden feeling of inadequacy at someone so much younger, yet so much more driven than him.
Nay, he had been filled with more righteous determination than ever, and with a battle cry that led to a family with two kids in a stroller staring his way, he ran in after him!
…
…
As soon as they reached the main foyer of the mall, both of them realized, in tandem, and Nix spoke first, “…this place is huge as hell! Where do we even go to smash shit up?”
“I… That. That is a good point! Perhaps we should conduct a map kiosk, one which says ‘you are here!’ Ugh, those are always a pain to read…”
“I’ll help you.”
Both turned, then, to see a very fashionable teenager, clad in a purple aviator cap and goggles, slim and bearing a dour expression on his face. All who had hung around Cairo would recognize the Purple Flying Man from someplace or another, as well as all the extremely online and influencer-following of Los Fortuna.
“This show… They’ve done so much to capitalize on my uncle’s death. They’ve actively stopped the truth of whatever might have happened to him from being investigated with their frameup… And this conflict, I have lost two of my brothers to it all over again.”
He paused, then, and the two men seemed to trust him.
“You won’t be able to erase the show completely… It’s already had a limited run in this city. But masters, extra footage, content they were going to actually send out… There’s a storage space nearby… Most of the show’s data is backed up, of course, but that’s where everything is being saved. If your wish is to sabotage Being So Normal, to ruin its international release before it can cause any more harm to the outside world, that is where you go.”
“So you’ve had a change of heart yourself… I am thankful to hear that, Purple One…” Arthur snapped his fingers, then, as if remembering his name. “Right, now I remember! ‘Afton,’ wasn’t it?”
Purple’s face faulted. “Erm… N-no, eheh. It, uh… It wasn’t that. I haven’t been anything but ‘Purple’ for a very long time.”
“No matter what you’re called, an enemy of this show’s from within is just what we need to make this a little less of a pain in the ass!” Nix declared. “Lead the way!”
A Series of Backstage Halls Deep Within Sweet FA
Acrobatic and stealthy as he was, after leading the way in for those who had sought out this quest to begin with, Purple hurried along deeper inward, well aware that it was likely this place would not be unguarded, and meaning to scout ahead, maybe even fight a bit if he absolutely needed to.
He really, really did not want to, and so far, it wasn’t reassuring to him that nobody had interrupted them. No show staff, no Stand Users, not even some rent-a-cop had yet gotten into the way of this.
As he made his way to a security room, quietly bemoaning the fact that he would never live down infiltrating a security room with that damned nickname Bad Apples had given him, his worst fears were confirmed.
His friend, his confidante, Cairo Satori was sitting in a swivel chair, watching screens displaying the entire mall and idly leaning their head into a metal baseball bat.
“Purp…” They spoke up without even turning to face him. “Wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon! I mean, with everywhere you’ve blocked me, privated your accounts… I was under the impression you needed some time away from the show.”
Purple hopped down, then, walking closer towards the chair, clearing his throat and pondering his words clearly.
“The show needs time away from the show, Cairo… You know damn well why I brought myself back. Come on. You know this isn’t right… It doesn’t have to be this, and even just delaying could save-”
“Delay, huh?” They stood, twirling that bat they’d always carried around. It didn’t worry Purple. He’d never seen them actually using it. “C’mon… You know it’s not that simple, buddy. I’m just trying to make sure everyone has a good time… Already, I’m cutting toxic people out of the show! Even when they’ll make it harder to make anything going forward, Caroline is gone! I’ll keep that producer on a really short leash! I am doing everything in my power to make sure that this goes well… C’mon, can’t you look on the bright side?”
“You… You already know my answer to that. You’ve betrayed my trust, Cairo. The trust of my uncle, of everyone you’ve worked with… Of this whole city!” He shifted in place, then, becoming a much more avian humanoid figure with its pose. “I am its lavender courage, and I am your friend! And as both, I cannot abide by-”
Cairo swang their bat, and as they did, the arms of a Stand emerged from their own hand and struck it as well, multiple times in quick succession.
By the time the bat impacted Purple, it was with enough force for the deeply resilient eternally-young ghost to be sent hurtling towards a wall, literally impacting it hard enough to leave an impression in its form, embedded and unconscious in a single swing. He was alive, and would walk this off, but he wouldn’t be getting back up today.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” they said, standing with the bat over their shoulder, ‘Peach Pit’ manifesting more fully by their side (drawn by the artist Boy George, as usual), “but I can tell we don’t have time to chat… I’ll send you a gift basket from the launch party, yeah?”
Then, their attention turned towards the others on the security room screens, addressing their Stand in the meantime, “uh, hey, Peach…”
“I’m on it,” the Stand answered, “Arthur Lifeson and Nix Ripa… I’m excited for this, honestly.”
“And you don’t need to know that I am to, honestly…” Cairo moved to press the intercom button.
“I heard violence!” Nix called out, balling his fists. “Purple found someone!” He began to rush forward, then, Arthur preparing to make a blade, only to be stopped by the crackling of an intercom button.
“Hello again! Wow, it really isn’t all that often that Being So Normal has repeat appearances, but that’s, what, twice in this promotional cycle alone?” Cairo’s voice rang through, then, and they continued, “I figured we’d see some trouble here, so I gave most of staff the day off… I knew it’d be types like you two who showed up, and honestly, I gotta say, despite the circumstances, I’m a bit psyched!”
“Cairo Satori!” Arthur spoke up then, waving his hands. “Put this madness to a close, before I have to put you to my blade! You need not fall victim to this any longer… To fight us is a waste of time!”
“Well, I’ve got time to kill, and nobody to talk to, now that my friend’s taking a bit of a nap. And besides, you think I’m gonna just let you destroy everything we’ve been working to build up because you don’t like a couple of the crew members? C’mon, have a reality check here! No way I’m gonna allow that… Especially not right now! Look, why not come talk to me after I’ve completely closed this Netflix deal?”
There was silence, then, and then they spoke up again.
“Oh, who am I kidding? We both know that this is only gonna end one way! If you wanna stop me from sending this show out for the whole world to know and love, and not just be another little piece of Los Fortuna’s super storied, super amazing history, then STOP me! I’m already sending Peach your way, and there’s no way the two of us will just get walked all over!”
Arthur shut his eyes in frustration, but Nix shook his shoulder. “We knew from the start it’d come to this. C’mon… Any more talking this through will be a waste of all our breaths.”
“Yeah! This pre-battle stuff goes on way too long, I swear! So much to cut down in post without missing the meat of it… But enough talking shop, yeah? Let’s get to what we’re here for… You wanna say it with me? …no? Okay, suit yourself!”
“OPEN THE GAME!”
Location:
A hallway to several storage rooms in Sweet FA Mall. The area here is 40 by 80 meters with each tile being 2.5 by 2.5 meters. The white tiles are completely out of bounds for this match. The light magenta tiles are the main hallway, the purple tiles are side hallways, and the red tiles are the rooms. Each room has a number associated with it for convenience, as shown by the purple numbers. The ceiling is 8 meters tall. The doorways are denoted by the dotted lines between the rooms and hallways.
The players start at the left end of the hallway and Cairo starts in the security room (room 5) to the right of the bottom center. Cairo’s Stand starts in the middle of the main hallway.
The grey X marked circles are security cameras on the ceiling that connect to the monitors that are represented by the yellow notched rectangles in room 5. The light blue rectangles in the main hallway are 4 meter tall metal shelves that house stage set up equipment such as stepladders, light fixtures, microphones, extension cables, construction tools, and anything else needed to set up or tear down a stage. All shelves are bolted to the ground.
The yellow stars are disks, tapes, harddrives and other recordings of the footage shot by Cairo’s show.
The walls are drywall while the floor is ceramic tiled.
Now onto the different rooms:

Room 1: Contains racks and cardboard bins of merchandise. The brown rectangles are cardboard bins of plushies and hats. The red circles are racks of clothing merchandise.
Room 2: Contains a mountain of chairs and other furniture within a 5 meter tall metal storage fence as represented by the light blue rectangle and the junk inside it. Each side of the fence has a chain locked door.
Room 3: Contains various cooking appliances and peripherals. The white rectangles are 4 meter tall metal storage shelves and the magenta rectangles are 5 meter tall metal storage containers. Basically any appliance that doesn’t fit on a shelf is put into one of the three containers.
Room 4: Contains two long tables as represented by the grey L-shaped rectangles. On these tables are neatly laid out items that were used in Round 2 Match 4, this means Riot Shields, Fireworks Cannons, Magnetic Ray Guns, Grappling Hook Guns, smoke bombs, Tar filled paintball guns, mannequins, body armor, skateboards, net launchers, fire extinguishers, step ladders, marbles, bowling balls, trampolines, shovels, steel chairs, and blankets. Only the crystal ball is missing. The blue circle is a barrel of fencing foils and the yellow rectangle is a banged up motorcycle that while not completely totaled is in pretty bad shape.
Room 5: The security room. It is rather bare, only housing the monitors set-ups to the security cameras and three swivel chairs to go with them.

Goal: RETIRE your opponents!
Additional Information:
As a reminder, White Tile areas are out-of-bounds for this match. If you willingly traverse through them you will be retired by a pair of mall cops.
Here is a shortened version of Cairo’s character sheet with all relevant information, the full sheet is linked below
Name: Cairo Satori
Age: 21
Gender: None, whose business is that anyways?
Species: Human
Occupation: Beloved Media Icon
Equipment: The newest smartphone, two sets of wireless earbuds for communicating directly with [Peach Pit] quietly, a bag of weed mints, and a baseball bat.
User Stats:
Strength: 3 (Too much effort to get properly strong- Cairo can throw as much effort into a hit as they need to in order to finish someone off after being brought to near-retirement by [Peach Pit], and that’s about the maximum they need.)
Agility: 2 (Never had to run after or from anything.)
Endurance: 2 (Not one to hold up under sustained pressure for very long, hoping to duck back from any conflicts except where absolutely necessary.)
Conduction: 2 (Able to personally carry their Stand’s damaging energy through them, and has a general knowledge of how to apply it.)
Vibing: 3 (It's for vibe checks- the necessity of finishing an opponent off personally, in a fast and hard strike. The full force of their strength, loaded into one moment rather than a series of fests. Also, they do have good vibes.)
Stand Name: [Peach Pit]
Stand Appearance: On the bulkier side of stand builds, Peach Pit has some resemblance to a knight in plate armor- big, dark metallic pauldrons, a chestplate, an assortment of straps and buckles, etc. The surface of the stand looks very much like a sunset with its colors flipped around. Its face is smooth except for a simple minimalist icon of the sun, and the rest of the head is mostly covered by a knight's helmet as well. A gradient of sorts goes from the head of the stand down to its armored feet, starting with an orange-red and ending in black with white specks like stars in the night sky.
About/Oddities: The stand is dangerous, outright. The manifestation of an incredible will for a very specific life gave it incredibly high offensive might, and although Cairo has depleted its very low ‘potential,’ nothing else has decreased in the slightest.
Additionally, [Peach Pit] is sentient, and thinks of itself as a close friend and bodyguard to Cairo. Despite being able to dish out high damage, it is very much a friendly, calm and collected individual, having respect even for those it has to fight. As such, [Peach Pit] leaves RETIRING opponents up to its user completely. An enemy can be beaten down, but will still be able to pull together and carry on albeit impeded until Cairo personally finishes them off. This isn't simply a choice- if instructed to keep pressure on an opponent who's down but not out, its strikes can indefinitely inflict serious pain and yet never be quite enough to injure a foe to the point where they're considered RETIRED.
Due to the bold weakness in this, for how combat inefficient and easily hurt its user is, Peach doesn't have full damage transference. Instead, it can be destroyed repeatedly- Cairo takes one instance of C power damage upon its destruction, and it can be resummoned from Cairo's position after ten seconds.
Peach's presenting identity has been influenced by Cairo's insistence against defining things that way, to the point of being comfortably seen subjectively as anything. Peach will respond to any pronouns without questioning it.
Stand Stats:
Power: A(The stand can exert a great amount of power in its attacks)
Speed: A (Its movements are very fast and its attacks can travel just as quickly)
Range: B (50 meters)
Durability: E (Subpar durability, however when destroyed the user takes C power damage and the stand can be summoned back to Cairo’s side after 10 seconds.)
Precision: C (Generally decent in its movements, but its projectile attacks only move in a straight line once fired and can only be stored within conductive materials. In non-conductive materials it would keep traveling)
Ability: Peach Pit lacks a complex ability, as far as one would expect. Rather than intricate effects, its hits themselves can simply be conducted through material similarly the way that electricity does, with distinct variation based on the conductivity of the material. Within conductive material, damage is stored up much like a battery - the moment someone touches the "battery", the damage transfers directly to it on the point of contact. This means that if Peach were to punch a metal rod and someone were to touch it, they would feel the full brunt of Peach's attack the moment they do so. A battery remains charged for up to fifteen seconds, and at any point if it hasn’t been touched and discharged already, Cairo can pick any direction from where the battery is in contact with non-conductive materials to activate the next type of attack.
Within non-conductive material, either deployed through battery or direct strike, damage "travels", moving forwards in a straight line at A speed in the same direction it came from. This wave of damage can be seen as it travels, with slight shimmers of light and a crackling sound emanating from where it's currently positioned.
Damage cannot travel further than B range from Cairo.

Team	Combatant	JoJolity
Black Hill Regalia	Arthur Lifeson and Nix Ripa	“The thing in Hayato's hand was definitely a handy cam. It doesn't seem to be in this room right now...” This show is a sweet-sounding idea, but it’s so corrupt to its core that you can’t allow it to spread any further than it has. Destroy as many physical backings of the recordings Cairo has made for their show as you can over the course of your strat!
Being So Normal	Cairo Satori	“I even took a video of the cat-like plant you've got in the attic!” This show… You know it’s been an unsavory road, one you wish you could have managed differently, but the good it can do, the way the world might finally begin to understand the ugly and wonderful truths of Stand Users and appreciate them more as a part of their lives… You will celebrate that. Take creative inspiration from actions that took place in matches related officially to ‘Being So Normal!’ That is to say, these 5 matches, R1M5,R1M23,R1M29,R2M4, and R3M8!

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!

Drowning In Pheromones On A Greyhound Bus

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.

The fundaments of Armenian nationalism, cultural/moral standards, the Armenian Honour Codes and political guidelines of the Armenian Renaissance movement (still a concept, needs to be rewritten and there are a lot of points that need to be added).

Lately the extreme leftist Armenians (usually whitewashed, Westernized or NGO shills) engaged an attempt to rewrite and redefine on what Armenian traditional family life means. This is mostly consisted of cheap misrepresentations and presenting the worst examples as being the main drive of our traditional family life - which actually in reality proves to be more stable, lovely and meaningful than the current Western family life that mostly got deconstructed by the academic, cultural and media influences of Cultural Marxism, harmful parts of capitalism/hypermaterialism/consumerism, feminism and egocentrism/hedonism that replaced any sense of belonging and higher transcendent ethnic goals.
Problem with "liberalism" is that it gives people the illusion of choice while this "choice" is mostly decided by the dominant corporates and globalist powerstructures that give the mass selective ideas of "freedom" (through controlled/conformistic ideas that are pushed by their institutions of education, artificial mass-cultures & media). Most people rather let others think for thems & follow their lusts.Thats why any administration that loves the well being of it's own people needs to have a defense-mechanism against external threats & subversive elements that damage the cultural and religious values of your nation (which are essential for the continuation of your ethnic group). It was evident that Armenians were easy to manipulate in 2018 by the effective Western ideologic imperialism and didnt understand the socio-cultural harmful parts of "liberalism" (especially for a country like Armenia that can't afford to be weakened and fragmentized).Western "liberalism" also gives room for other influential parties to spread degeneracy among your people (this happend to Armenia with all these Soros lackeys infiltrating in our government). We cant let the current globalist օտարամոլ traitors of Nikols party rule us any longer. You can also clearly see the negative results of "liberalism" in our diasporan communities where many of our young Armenians are alienated from our traditional culture & rather LARP the values & ideologies of white liberals. Many of them have severe identity-crisises due to this & then call your culture "outdated", "bigoted" & "archaic" for the sole reason that it doesnt represent their "progressive" standards. Liberals and fake neo-conservatists are the true colonizers of the modern world, while the most European nationalists just want their own space. There are many examthes in this document on why certain Western liberal doctrines should be rejected in order to protect the moral and cultural well being of your people. Liberal-progressivist Armenians should wake up from their ideologic arrogance and realize that we cant afford to culturally and morally weaken ourselves. The CM methods are meant to deconstruct our essential values and replace them with what the political Western elite wants.
West-Europeans have ruined many unique cultures in the past by Westernizing/Colonizing them and trying to make them behave and think like them. They still try to do the same by using their political and media influences (to reach Ideologic Western Hegemony > their code word for this agenda is Cultural Globalism, political liberalism/progressivism or mass culture). For example: the Brits used Westernized Indish lackeys for their colonial/imperialistic interests by giving them power and the idea that they are superior over other Indians who wished to stay true to their cultural principles (Im sure any there should ring a bell to any Armenian EU-NGO shill reading this). Be an individual for heavens sake, there is no pride in being a tool of foreign group of people who dont care about Armenia or Armenians (its their own idoelogic, political and cultural agenda that has the priority).
Thats why we non-Western PoC that value our traditionalistic cultures need to have a more aggressive tone and approach towards their indoctrination methods (cultural whitewashing/assimilation), so that we dont fall for the same cultural deconstruction proces that happend to many authentic cultures who were assimilated and Westernized by white West-Europeans (you can compare the contemporary Melting Pot tactics to this development). If you’re proud of your traditionalistic culture say it out loud! You will not conquer us ideologically, culturally or spiritually (by spreading your void, liberalism and nihilism) and we will stay true to ourselves even if it means literally fighting you! Dont trust white liberals, they are just as arrogant like their ancestors who thought that you’re a savage if you didnt submit to their “progressivism”.
The Rebirth of the Armenian Soul in the Modern Era : The Struggle For Survival of The Armenian Diaspora.
The imprortance of a New Cultural Awakening and a Revolution against Cultural assimilation and ideologic liberal colonialism.
The fundaments of Armenian nationalism, cultural standards, the Armenian Honour Codes and political guidelines of the Armenian Renaissance movement.

Family and community are the cornerstones of the society and the guarantee of having a future for the Armenians. Starting a family and having as many children as possible must be encouraged at all time and by any means. This also implies not giving postmodern Western anti-family values any space in Armenia or in our diaspora.
Armenian nationalism should be the default mindset of any nation loving Armenian who prioritizes the well being of his/her people. Protecting our own interests and countering globalists or Panturkic powerstructures is an essential part of maintaining this mindset.
Respecting our Armenian church that ensured the existence of the Armenian identity during the periods of Islamic and Soviet occupation. Christian values are also vital for having a morally balanced society and Armenian Apostolic Church is the main institution to project these values into our people. Every Armenian family is obliged to teach their children proper theology, Church history, teachings of our Church fathers (not seculahumanistic drivel of the current Western churches) and giving the same responsibility to pass this on to the next generation.
(Diaspora): Permanent repatriation should be the goal of all Armenians who live in the diaspora. There is no long term future for the Armenian diaspora since cultural detoriation, Westernization (mass-culture) and mixed-marriages intensify the assimilation process.
(Diaspora): being able to speak, read and write in Armenian is an important part of what makes us Armenian and what makes possible to pass down our cultural identity to the next generation. Speak Armenian at home and with your Armenian friends, there are no excuses of not knowing your own language when we live in the age of accesible information overload. The Armenian soul lives through the breath of our language.
(Diaspora): Our history (see lost diasporas) and many researches already proved that mixed-marriages result into higher rates of assimilation for the upcoming generation (its basically game over when your half-Armenian child also marries a non-Armenian). By knowing this we should teach our children to focus on trying to find an Armenian partner and try to avoid dating otars (this will make it harder for your future children to grow up Armenian (identity crisis). This does not mean that we should exclude half-Armenians (its not their fault that they are half), in contrary: we should encourage them to adapt the same protectionistic mentality and to marry with an Armenian. We cant afford to lose even more Armenians to assimilation since we are less than 8 million in the world (this would have been different if we had 20+ million Armenians around the world). Its important to recover from the Armenian Genocide by increasing our population. Note: this is not relevant for Armenia itself since the mixed Armenians will be overwhelmengly influenced by the dominant Armenian culture and will stay Armenian.
Ensuring a more interactive connection/relation/institutions between Armenia and the Armenian Diaspora (as a means for repatriation or cultural preservation).
Installing diaspora governments that are situated in Russia, USA, France and Middle-East (as a part of guideline 7).
Every Armenian should aspire to have a higher understanding of our history, ethno-genetics, literature, poetry, language, music, traditional/cultural values, dance, customs and spiritualism. Its important to also facilitate this knowledge/insights to your children.
The Western liberal order and its mass-culture bring new challenges in preserverving our culture in the diaspora and in Armenia itself. Armenians must be aware of this ideologic warfare and not replace our values with the ones that go against our own principles and cultural standards. You're not only Armenian by name but also need to be Armenian in your soul, mind, behaviour and lifestyle (by being wise, mentally strong and intelligent enough to recognize Western postmodern poison and protect whats ours - this should also apply to Armenian socialists that reject imperialism and Western neo-colonialism). What use does it have to call yourself an Armenian when you have culturally more similarities with foreign nations? (Becoming more enveloped in and identified with the Western contemporary culture/mindset) Being raised and surrounded by primary Western culture and influences is not an excuse to degrade and feel more superior over the culture/mindset which the majority of our people from our actual homeland cherrish and respect (refind your roots instead of trying to change it for your own comfort or cope for your identity crisis).

No matter what these deconstructionist/Globalist pseudo-intellectual "educated" subversives say, what an Armenian is does depend on essential collective factors (they are interlinked):

Genetics
Cultural identity
Language
Religious identity
Traditional values

I will complete the following guidelines in the coming days (these are still unfinished concepts) -

The nuclear monogamous hetrenormative family structure remains the standard (by opposing the Capitalistic Trojan Horse of Neo-Feminism ).
Traditional gender norms in the family that generate harmony, healthy relationships and order.
Wholesome protectionistic masculinity.
Virtueous nurturing femininity.
Men have the obligation to take care of their community, be responsible for its people, protect the honour of its women, raise their sons in way that they can take over this responsibility and act as strong moral guidelines.
Having higher standards of sexual morals that is needed to keep the worth of love and intimacy in balance. Not losing the worth of intimacy by normalizing meaningless soulless HookUp and Tindr culture in your community - sexual "liberation" degeneracy (Essentialism)
Respect and decency against older people and our parents.
Egocentrism, selfishness and having cold relationships are not appreciated within the family.
Honour, dignity, sacredness, class & nobleness are concepts that we have the responsibility to keep them alive (see point ... for more explanation).
We don’t hypersexualize our culture or sexually objectify our women (at least not our decent women who dont want to oversexualize themselves and rather keep their class, elegence and dignity).
Honour-codes in the family
Dont let your daughters fall into whoredom and your sons into weak effeminized men or MGTOW lowlives
When we date each other, we have the intention to look at the possibilies of engaging a long term relationship that eventually will lead to marriage and start a family.
We don’t see our women as sexual objects for temporary use but as future mothers and loving wives (unless they present themselves as such).
Reject promiscuity. Valuing your intimacy and not sharing it with everyone is vital for having a healthy marriage & healthy perception of what love is. There is a good reason why promiscuity causes so much misery in the more Western liberal countries (higher divorces, teen pregnancies & degeneracy). Teaching your children that unfiltered "sexual revolution" does have negative consequences on their mental state & commitment is one of the essentials to prevent this damage. They will only accept partners who have serious intentions with them (not solely for their temporary pleasure). This is the an important obligation that parents have towards their children. You need to give your daughters wise directions on how to be modest, elegant and most important of all: to be a woman that has dignity. This will reduce the chances of attracting the "wrong crowd". You need to teach your sons to protect their women, be responsible, be respectable towards women who also respect themselves and focus on finding and recognzing women that are suited for marriage.
Even before marrying, we make sure to involve our parents and create a stronger bond so our families can unite with each other (collectivism > individualism).
After the marriage the other family members are still involved to assist and support you with matters like raising up children, relationship issues or maybe help you out from certain financial problems. We always look for each other.
During the marriage there are clear roles and functions that the husband and wife NATURALLY are taking on them.
Upholding the sanctity of marriage between husband and wife.
Husband: keeps the peace at home, loves his wife and makes her feel the queen of the castle. Loves his wife unconditionally and does everything to fulfil her demands, makes his wife confident and lets her feel special, provides for the needs of his wife and kids, takes important decisions, sets out the essential moral values of the family, is a natural leader that radiates dominance without even forcefully demanding authority. Protects his daughter from intruders who have bad intentions with her (also teaches her how to recognize wrong men and how to bond with men in a more healthy way) - she also needs to understand the concept of the worth of intimacy and selfrespect. Explains to his son what being a man is, the concept of honour and how to take responsibility for his own actions + teach him how to recognize girls who are suited for marriage.
Wife: she is the safe haven of the home and very caring for the whole family. She decides how the house is run, takes care of the household, is the architect of the appearance of the house and makes sure everyone is loved at home. She supports her husband to become more successful and gives him confidence and hope, loves him UNCONDITIONALLY even when he gets struck by misfortune, always doing effort to look good for her husband. Her traits are soft, elegent, classy and she cares the pride of the family with her. The mother must be like a second girlfriend to her daughter and teach her everything what it means to be a good loving wife and protects her from the filth of the outside world (oversexualization, degeneracy, wrong men, harmful subcultures). Also every other aspects of giving them the Christian and Armenian heritage that I described in the sections ...
Active ivolvement of other family members. “To each his own” is a postmodern selfish individualism that diminishes any warm bonds between the family members (cold approach).
Keeping our tradition of valuing and respecting erudition, intelligence, talent, excellence, high education, ancient wisdom and creativity by not being taken away by Western Mass Culture, consumerism-materialism and their shallow decadent entertainment industry that lowers and dumbs down the collective quality of our people (brain drain).
The militarization of our minds and bodies
Rejection of decadentism, hedonism, nihilism and cosmopolitan worldview (duty before pleasure) - having a connection to our homeland and culture rather than identifying with an abstract cosmopolitan feeling of “universalism” or "Global Citizen" (which is a vague artificial Western concept) or worshipping the corporate pushed Western mass-culture (entertainment industry, liberal order and other institutions of social-engineering).
Ethnocentrism
Allegiance to the foreign country first is out of the question (supporting/working for foreign powers that go against our interests)
Understanding the fragile position of Armenia and Armenians in the diaspora by not promoting Western liberal values like pacifism, cultural-moral relativism, anti-patriotism and egotistic fake "individualism" which weakens the fundaments, unity, ethno-cultural identity and the urge to fight for the cause of our people
Defensive Nationalistic mindset and having Historic Realism above Political Correctness if it comes to our enemies (reject all notions of the deluded illusions of "co-existence).

39.The transcendent understanding of our Tribal (pagan), Tseghakron and Christian Spiritualism

Rejection of normalizing and facilitating sins that go against our religion or common cultural moral standards
pornikutsjun
gomikutsjun
alcoholism
drug addiction
cheating
see 7 deadly sins
Healthy dose of “social-control” (keeping each other sharp and on check).
The current Western notions of secularism and "humanism" are counterproductive for the interests of the Armenian people.
Rejection of the progressive religion, 3th wave feminism and the goal of moral/cultural deconstruction to reach their idealistic standards of utopian egalitarianism.
Completely reject the actions of Armenians who degrade themselves sexually but still use the Armenian label, which they have no right to, to advance their evil intentions (ex. lowlife hook-up culture that is spreaded by the likes of Kim Whoredashian trend, materialistic/shallow “Kukla” lifestyle and neo-feminist degeneracy)
Completely reject the throwing down the name of Armenians via cultural, historical, and other means of harassment (attempts of liberalization, whitewashing and Westernization of our ethnic-cultural identity)

THE POLITICAL GUIDELINES OF THE ARMENIAN RENAISSANCE MOVEMENT

Prioritizing the position of the Church and our faith with the use of education, media and public Church activities.
Oppose any form of LGBT-propaganda, anti-family feminism or other ideologic imperialistic movements that are instigated from the West - the true inentions rely behind geo-political hegemonie and dominance in our region (stop being naive and understand the intentions behind the Western NGO infiltration of our government and other public institutions).
Abortions must be more restricted in order to stop the decrease of the Armenian population.
Not allowing any mass-immigration from nations that are not compatible with our ethno-cultural identity (repat of Armenians must be the top priority).
Ban online porn websites in Armenia.
Increase the punishment of prostitution (also for the visitors).
Restrict the requirement for casino permits.
Increase the punishment for the distribution of drugs.
Free speech will only be restricted in cases of physical threats
Aspire for higher standards of aesthetics & beauty in the fields of art, theater and architecture
Improve the Labour Laws and working conditions of the least paid workers (ARF Socialism)
The public schools do not promote or push demoralizing and deconstructive harmful doctrines of Cultural Marxism and other ideologies (see points ...) that go against our Armenian interests.
The Armenian public tv/media do not broadcast and facilitate degeneracy and demoralization.
Not allowing hormone therapy on children to turn them transgender
Localism above Globalism if it comes to fragile markts/branches/sectors (putting some restrictions on hostile/predatory multinationals)
Prohibit any Soros linked NGO’s.
Responsible deep ecology/environmentalism.
Improving our own Labour Market instead of importing cheap immigrant workers.
Criticizing mass bio-industry.
Implementing laws that improve transparancy and monitoring banks.
Maintaining good diplomatic relationships with Russia, Iran and China and be more attentive (in a careful way) on Western hegemony in the region (their imperialistic program of ousting Russia in expanse of Armenia).

Why Goons are the "Good Guys" of Eve - An essay by Asher

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.

A goodbye letter for the anti-President. Written by Michael D’Antonio.

I thoroughly appreciated reading this opinion piece. So much so that I’ve linked it and am pasting the article here as well.
A goodbye letter for the anti-President
Dear Donald,
When we first met in 2014, I was a year into research for the biography I was writing about you. I knew about your stern father, your exile to military school at a tender age and your tendency to spin dramatic fantasies. I knew that you considered life a battle for survival and humans to be "vicious" by nature.*
In your Trump Tower stronghold, you were attended by aides who looked like soap opera stars and surrounded by ego-boosting emblems: a wall of framed magazine covers, each featuring your face; a boxer's championship belt given to settle a debt; a stack of clippings delivered with a note that read, "Dad, FYI -- All great press. Ivanka." These totems of greatness, which I haven't seen in the quarters of other super-rich Americans, made me think of you as desperately, and perhaps dangerously, insecure.*
In five interviews that lasted about 10 hours total, you would heighten my fear that despite a life spent in unending luxury and privilege, no amount of wealth and power would move you off the life-is-warfare view. Even worse, you told me that you might run for president because Twitter fans said you should (I wasn't surprised by your ambition and, given your celebrity, I thought you might win). Then, as we stood to inspect a framed letter you had received from the disgraced Richard Nixon, you said his only problem was that he had left office for the good of the country. In your view, he should have stayed and fought.
*You ran for president and you won. And as you visited upon the country more pain than Nixon ever did, you fought on. Unrelenting in your aggression, lies and cruelty, you presided over four years of chaos and conflict provoked by your words and deeds. Though impeached, you escaped conviction and stayed in office to redouble your commitment to ego-driven chaos.
As you refused to mount a serious federal response, the Covid-19 death toll surpassed 400,000. Defeated in your bid for reelection, you spun lies that created an alternative reality so powerful that hundreds of your followers formed a mob that carried out a bloody attack on the United States Capitol. Many there intended to overturn the election, which you had repeatedly claimed was invalid due to fraud that in fact had not occurred.*
In the attack, which was televised by news networks and livestreamed on social media, five people -- including one Capitol police officer -- would die. A DC Metro Police officer, who had been Tasered several times, heard one of your followers say, "Kill him with his own gun." Although Congress reconvened after the mob was driven out, you stand disgraced as the only president in US history to be impeached twice, and all I can think is that you had finally made your narcissistic nightmare of a constant battle against vicious enemies come true for us all.
Your dangerous narcissism was not widely noted when I interviewed you, but it seemed, to me, to be the hallmark of your personality. I consulted experts and learned that this grandiosity was likely a defense mechanism against a fear of shame and rejection. I came to believe this fear was installed by your father, who, when you were a child, demanded you be a "killer" and a "king." When you failed to meet his expectations and became a troublemaker, he exiled you to military school, at age 13. Talk about a scarring experience.
The title of my book, "Never Enough," pointed to your endless drive to prove your superiority, which, ironically, led to bankruptcies, divorces and legal defeats. It's likely these failures provoked the same sense of shame and humiliation that you must have felt as a rejected child. You once told me you hated to reflect on the past, but in refusing to do this, you were bound to repeat your mistakes. No matter how much you achieved, it was never enough. And so, you went too far. (For more on this see what your psychologist niece, Mary Trump, wrote in her 2020 book, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.")
As President, your weaknesses posed terrible threats to the country. Your many failures at running businesses such as casinos or the airline Trump Shuttle showed that you were not a nimble thinker capable of leading complex operations. The Covid-19 pandemic has only made this glaring incompetence crystal clear -- and despite your efforts to deflect the blame, the country's death toll speaks for itself. More than 400,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the United States -- more than any other country in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Having seen your inability to recognize others as human beings, I have not been shocked by your indifference to the deaths of your fellow citizens. Nor have I been surprised by your encouragement of violence. Violence was what I always expected from your presidency. I just didn't know what form it would take.
The power of your methods was obvious during your 2016 campaign, when you lied in a way that separated your most ardent followers from reality itself. You promoted many of your old conspiracy theories about 9/11 and climate change and added new ones on the fly. (When an attendee asked -- after first stating as fact that Obama was Muslim and not American -- about the wildly untrue idea that Muslims were running secret training camps in the United States to kill people, you refused to shoot down his claims, promising instead to "look at that."
You also whipped people into a frenzy of hatred by describing opponents, critics and the free press as enemies. I recalled reading how your first wife, Ivana, had said you kept a book of Hitler's speeches near your bed. You once corrected a reporter, telling her it was "Mein Kampf" instead (though Marty Davis, who gave Trump the book, told Vanity Fair it was a book of speeches).
For four years in office, you functioned as a kind of anti-President, inflaming rather than calming passions and attacking rather than negotiating, all while demanding adoration from your Cabinet and constant attention from the media. Having ordered aides to think of each day as an episode in a TV show before you even took office, you tried to gin up as much drama as possible.
As President, you used the authority of your office to spread baseless claims about voter fraud, former President Barack Obama and even of a friendship between former President Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sexual predator who was your Palm Beach neighbor and friend, to name a few. Many of your followers abandoned reason and dove headfirst into the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, which reveres you as a savior and regards the government and much of the news media as evil. Many of those who attacked the Capitol brandished Q symbols along with Trump flags, Jesus banners and the Confederate stars and bars -- a mix of powerful symbols that shows the breadth of your influence.
Before the attack, you were among many who called for a big crowd of protesters to stop the Congress from affirming your election defeat. After your lawyer Rudy Giuliani, your namesake son ginned up the crowd, and they heard you call for them to march on the Capitol.
"You have to show strength," you said, "and you have to be strong." You promised to go with them but chose instead to view the destruction on TV. I wondered if you understood that the violence that unfolded was real, and not something made for television. Did you order Cokes as you watched? Did you eat popcorn?
I can imagine you snacking because you have played with violence, both real and imagined, for so long that you must be inured you to it. It all started back in the 1970s when you began employing armed guards-chauffeurs, for no apparent reason. I think it was because you enjoyed the sense of menace they added to your presence.
During your 2016 campaign one of your security guards roughed-up a picketer outside Trump Tower in New York, while another physically forced reporter Jorge Ramos out of a news conference in 2015. At one rally you told followers, "If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them." When a loud protester disrupted one of your other campaign rallies, you said, "I'd like to punch him in the face."
Your tough guy image was embraced by followers who traded memes in which you were drawn to look like a superhero or shown brandishing weapons Rambo-style. Your avatar punched out a figure labeled with the CNN logo. Add this to the bigotry you expressed in words and images, which you shared with millions of people on Twitter, and a combustible mix was created. (Remember posting an image of Hillary Clinton, along with a Star of David set against dollar bills, brandishing her the "most corrupt candidate ever?").
The atmosphere of bigotry you helped create exploded in Charlottesville in 2017 as men chanted "Jews will not replace us" before a White supremacist murdered a counterprotester by running her down with his car.
Heather Heyer was one of the first civilians to die in this charged political context during your presidency. It did not change your behavior. Instead, you declared there were "very fine people on both sides." By delaying your condemnation of her attackers and resisting efforts to remove monuments to those who fought against the United States to preserve slavery, you sent clear signals about your views on race and violence.
With Charlottesville, questions about your bigotry grew louder. You made your stance clear when you reportedly said Haitian immigrants "all have AIDS" (though the White House denied it), and that people were entering the US from "shithole" countries. Add your vicious comments about Black athletes calling out police brutality, your penchant for slamming individual Black women, and your fearmongering about low-income housing, and everyone understood your perspective. Three years into your presidency, 65% of Black Americans said it's "a bad time to be a Black person" in the United States, according to a Washington Post/Ipsos poll.
It would have been bad enough if your bigotry had been confined to words, but you enshrined it in policy by restricting refugees from entering this country. This led to a sharp decline, from about 85,000 refugees admitted to the United States in 2016 to about 12,000 in 2020. If the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" didn't get the message, then they could consider the way you cozied up to strongmen, the likes of which many of them were fleeing. From Kim Jong Un of North Korea to Russian President Vladimir Putin, you showed a consistent admiration for dictators who jail and kill their critics.
Along our border with Mexico, you began separating children from parents who arrived seeking asylum. By May 2019, six children had died in federal custody. In June of that year, Americans were shocked by the photo of a father and child who had drowned attempting to cross the Rio Grande. In December, a surveillance video obtained by ProPublica showed a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy was left alone in his Border Patrol cell in Texas for hours before he died on the floor, of complications from the flu.
How many minors died in Border Patrol custody during the four years prior to your administration? Zero, per FactCheck.org.
The deaths were just one measure of the suffering your harsh policies inflicted on asylum-seeking families. New data from June 2019 reveals there were around 5,500 known cases of children, from infants to teens, being separated from their parents and placed in facilities ranging from foster family homes to cells made out of chain link fencing.
Amid all this pain, it seemed you still weren't satisfied. You asked about building anti-immigrant moats to be stocked with alligators. You wondered whether soldiers could shoot immigrants who threw rocks. Those ideas were nixed, but the crisis continues. Because of inept recording-keeping, your administration has not been able locate the parents of at least 545 children, according to court documents from last October.
Refugee families, stuck in limbo while waiting for asylum in the United States, are still filling squalid camps on the Mexican side of the border, many of them fearing for their lives -- particularly in the midst of a global pandemic.
You got away with cruelty in part because you conditioned many Americans to believe that brown-skinned, undocumented immigrants constituted a criminal horde that required a draconian response.
You promised to build a "beautiful" concrete border wall along 1,000 miles of the frontier and force Mexico to pay for it.
Only about 452 miles of tall steel fence has been completed as of January 5, 2021, according to a Customs and Border Patrol Report, and instead of the $8 billion you estimated for 1,000 miles, $18 billion dollars have already been devoted to the work because -- surprise! -- Mexico is not paying for it.
Hyping the wall was just one example of the exaggerations, false claims and lies that came out of your mouth in such a torrent it was nearly impossible for anyone to react properly. You combined this strategy with denigrating the media as "enemies of the people" and purveyors of "fake news" with such consistency that facts seemed to lose their power. You added an Orwellian flourish when you said, "What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."
What has been the effect on journalists? Threats became a part of our daily lives and the lives of our family members. (One of your followers found my wife's business phone number and called to say that he had located our address and to suggest we be careful.) A "press freedom tracker" run by the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Freedom of the Press Foundation has counted 421 attacks on journalists during your time in office.
Far worse than the impact on journalists is your effect on Americans' ability to agree upon an established set of facts as they consider critical issues. You are not solely to blame for this problem. However, you have both contributed to it and exploited it. You have made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims, according to The Washington Post, which have landed with the authority that comes with the presidential seal.
The easy way out for someone mired in disinformation is to pick a person to believe and go all in. Many of those who doubled down on their support for you found a sense of belonging amid the slogans, regalia and fervent rallies. They felt they were right. Those who disagreed were not fellow citizens but enemies who, some concluded, should be defeated by violent means.
The loyalty of your followers meant that ordinary politicians feared provoking the ire of your base. When it came to light that you were trying to coerce Ukraine's President into helping your reelection effort, you were impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. But this fear helped keep the Republican-controlled Senate in line, and you were acquitted. Afterward, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine defended her vote to acquit you, saying you had learned "a big lesson." What you learned, it seemed, was that you could get away with anything. Even before you were elected, you claimed you could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody," and not lose voters.
Shortly after the impeachment trial wrapped up, you proceeded to mislead the American people about the novel coronavirus. You downplayed the dangers of the virus so that the vibrant economy, the main bragging point of your presidency, would continue to hum. In late February, at a White House coronavirus task force briefing, you said "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for." But you told journalist Bob Woodward weeks before that the coronavirus was "more deadly than your -- you know, your, even your strenuous flus." Nevertheless, you declined to organize a true national response and undermined public health officials who urged everyone to wear face masks.
You also held mass rallies where people were infected. On May 8, when the death toll was more than 77,000, you continued this charade, insisting, "This is going to go away without a vaccine." To say that people died as a result of your posture is not mere speculation. Families have told stories of those who followed your lead, got sick and died. Harvard epidemiologists estimate that thousands have died as a result of your example.
Today the Covid-19 pandemic continues to ravage the country. The death toll is now roughly equivalent to a 9/11 each day -- but many of your acolytes, even in Congress, still refuse to protect themselves and others with facemasks. Meanwhile, millions are turning to food banks. Mass evictions loom.
When I consider the hungry, the infected, the traumatized and the deceased and hold in my mind the images of the deadly mob at the Capitol, I hear your voice summoning the worst in my fellow citizens. With those words you truly established yourself as the anti-President, a distinction that cancels any claim you might make to the respect normally accorded the office.
When we met you told me to call you "Don," as if we were friends. You also invited me to examine your hair. I didn't do either because I sensed that you wanted to establish a bond that you would eventually try to corrupt. This was confirmed when you hinted that my book could make me rich if I abandoned my professional duty and wrote it to your liking.
Thankfully, enough Americans recognized your immorality and incompetence and lack of human feeling so profound that the suffering and death so much a part of your presidency didn't appear to affect you at all. They chose Joe Biden in November, making you truly accountable for perhaps the first time in your life.
After four years of your chaos, what's left is a wounded country grieving for its dead and for its innocence. But we will recover, and you now face criminal and legal threats in state courts, along with the harsh judgment of history.
As you desperately summon the remains of your following for comfort and fundraising, your disgrace is growing with the mounting evidence that your words motivated the mob that attacked the United States Capitol. This incitement may be the single worst thing a president has ever done, and it will define you for centuries to come.

Joka Room Vip - Gambling Online

Leonel Pontes revisits his time with DVSC

Why the Legion is Doomed to be Destroyed in a Total War with the NCR.

Even if the Legion were to win the Second Battle of Hoover Dam and conquer the Mojave Wasteland, they'd merely be buying themselves a little extra time and simply stall their inevitable demise. Note that the following analysis assumes that the Legion won the Second Battle of Hoover Dam and that the Courier died in Goodsprings.
To start off this analysis, let's begin with a run-down of the respective weapons, equipment and gear of the respective ranks of the NCR and the Legion going into the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. Beginning with the NCR garrison at Hoover Dam. The NCR Trooper comprises the core of the Republic's colossal armies and is the prime component of the NCR Army. A superb combination of volunteers and conscripts whose degrees of training, motivation, combat experience and access to equipment vary across the ranks, they're some of the most disciplined, most professional soldiers in all of the Wastes.
They're outfitted with modern military-grade ballistic vests that offer excellent protection against small arms fire, shrapnel and melee weapons alongside steel helmets. The NCR Army battalion that's stationed at Hoover Dam in particular is fully comprised of battle-hardened, fully-trained volunteer veteran NCR Troopers that are armed with 5.56 × .45mm NATO Marksman Carbines, 5mm Assault Rifles, 12-gauge Riot Shotguns and .308 Sniper Rifles to supplement their standard-issued 5.56 × .45mm NATO Service Rifles.
The NCR Patrol Ranger is one of the finest, most elite warriors in both the NCR military and the Wastelands, overall. Having survived a brutal training regimen that's so ludicrously difficult that 8-out-of-10 aspiring recruits wash-out, these purely volunteer harbingers of death have little to no equals in terms of skill, fighting prowess and strength.
They're outfitted with a suit of hand-made First-Generation Combat sporting a knife sheath, a hydration pouch and spiked spurs for unarmed combat that is impervious to any and all small arms fire, shrapnel and melee attacks. They're armed with 5.56 × .45mm NATO Marksman Carbines, .308 Sniper Rifles and .44 Magnum Trail Carbines.
The NCR Heavy Trooper is not only the elite heavy shock infantry of the NCR Army, but is also the proverbial sledgehammer through which the Republic may crush its enemies and obliterate all that may threaten its values.
Having earned their distinctive armor through immense sacrifice in blood, sweat and most of their young lives, they're the absolute best-trained, best-equipped, most battle-hardened, most professional, most skilled, most fanatically-devoted warriors in the whole of the NCR Armed Forces (rivaled only by the legendary NCR Veteran Rangers). Warriors that are more than willing to fight to their absolute last breath in defense of the Republic and all that it represents.
They're outfitted with NCR Salvaged Power Armor, suits of T-45d Power Armor that were captured from the Brotherhood of Steel during the Brotherhood War that have had their joint servomotors removed and their back-mounted power cylinders replaced with custom-built energy modules and built-in air-conditioning units so that Power Armor Training wouldn't be needed to wear them.
And while they're no longer legitimate suits of Power Armor in that they're no longer powered, they're still some of the absolute best and most protective suits of armor within the Republic's entire mammoth arsenal. Completely invulnerable to all but the most powerful conventional firearms, highly-advanced energy weapons, specialized ammunition and high-powered explosives, they can truly absorb Hellish amounts of punishment. They're armed with 5.56 × .45mm NATO Light Machine Guns, 5mm Miniguns, Heavy Incinerators, Flamers and Missile Launchers (albeit rarely).
The NCR Veteran Ranger is a living, breathing legend walking amongst the ruins and ashes of the Old World, drawing inspiration and hope from soldiers and citizens of the Republic as well as fear and terror from enemies and all those who dare to oppose the NCR.
Fabled for their unmatched fighting prowess, envied for their flawlessly unequalled marksmanship technique, feared for their unrivaled warfighting skills, awe-inspiring for their unsurpassed pugilist talent and legendary for their innate mastery over hardcore survivalist skills, the NCR Veteran Rangers are the absolute finest, best-trained, most battle-hardened, most professional, most skilled, most-elite and all-around most bad-ass warriors in not only the entire history of the Republic military, but also the whole of the Western Wastes, as well.
Centurions and Praetorian Guards of Caesar's Legion, Knights and Paladins of the Brotherhood of Steel and even the Republic's very own NCR Heavy Troopers have learned to shudder in terror and fear at the mere mention of the mythical phenoms of the Wastelands that are the NCR Veteran Rangers
These fabled guardian angels of the Republic are outfitted with the equally legendary Black Armor, a hyper-advanced suit of Third-Generation Combat Armor consisting of a highly-flexible vest of incredibly-rigid high-impact armored plating with adjustable straps on both the sides and the shoulders and a built-in throat protector that's mounted on the vest.
Combined with the state-of-the-art rounded-shell ballistic helmet sporting built-in lamps and infrared/visible light projectors as well as the complimentary highly-sophisticated armored mask with built-in low-light optics, an incorporated locking mechanism that joins the mask itself with the helmet shell, ear covers with built-in membranes that confer additional protection without inhibiting the wearer's hearing and built-in air filters, the mythical Black Armor is well-deserving of its stellar reputation.
As you can see, the NCR's forces are extremely heavily-armed, well-equipped and armed to the teeth with the absolute latest in top-of-the-line, high-powered firearms and state-of-the-art, highly-sophisticated energy weapons as well as superbly well-protected with an abundance of different varieties of military-grade body armors with varying degrees of effectiveness and even Salvaged Power Armor.
Now it's time for an evaluation of the Legion's weapons and technology. The Recruit Legionary is the primary foot soldier of Caesar's army and comprises the vast majority of the Legion's ranks. Trained and conditioned from before they could walk to become the perfect warriors, Recruit Legionaries are incredibly well-conditioned and in phenomenal physical shape, owing to a savagely intense training regimen that even the NCR Rangers would envy. Despite said conditioning, however, they're still the equivalent of literal cannon fodder with little-to-no actual skill in firearms usage and maintenance.
They're outfitted with a suit of makeshift featherweight armor that consists of sports equipment with bits and pieces of scrap metal atop a cloth tunic that's all lashed together with leather straps. An armor that's so weak that it couldn't even protect its wearer against the likes of a straight razor.
They're armed primarily with a "Machete" (what's really a lawnmower blade that's lashed to a stick) and "Throwing Spears" (what's really even bigger sticks with pieces of sharpened scrap metal fastened and jabbed into the tips), though they can rarely get their hands on firearms (albeit damn near broken ones) such as .357 Magnum Revolvers, .357 Magnum Cowboy Repeaters, 9mm Pistols, 20-gauge Single Shotguns, 20-gauge Caravan Shotguns, 5.56 × .45mm NATO Varmint Rifles and 10mm Pistols.
The Prime Legionary is the centerpiece of the Legion's fighting force and the core component of any Legion formation. Having survived 5 years in Caesar's forces, a remarkable accomplishment in and of itself, Prime Legionaries are no longer mere cannon fodder but are now the main frontline fighting force of the Legion. With the accompanying improvement in weapons and equipment as well as adequate firearms skills to make the promotion that much sweeter.
They're outfitted with the exact same armor as before, only with a slight improvement in protection. It still can't protect the wearer from shit, however. They're armed with the standard-issued "Machetes" and "Throwing Spears" though they also have much better access to more advanced weapons than before.
Melee weapons, such as Machete Gladius', Power Fists and Chainsaws, and firearms (of decent quality), such as 10mm SMGs, 12-gauge Sawn-Off Shotguns .44 Magnum Revolvers and .308 Hunting Rifles are all available to them in significant quantities.
The Veteran Legionary is the oldest, most experienced, most elite warrior within the lesser ranks of the Legion and is also the precise scalpel to the blunt, destructive warhammer of the Recruit and Prime Legionaries.
Having survived a full decade in Caesar's service, a monumental achievement in its own right, Veteran Legionaries are the elite rapid reaction force of the Legion that's tasked with neutralizing particularly tough adversaries that their lesser counterparts can't defeat and typically remain in reserve until otherwise needed for tipping the scales of a pivotal battle or campaign in the Legion's favor.
As they're the oldest Legionaries (a lot of whom have been with Caesar since day 1), they're also the most experienced, most capable Legionaries who are in their absolute prime in regards to martial prowess and physical resilience. They're second only to Centurions in terms of skill and experience, which is reflected in their improved access to superior weapons and equipment. They can also use and maintain firearms with frightening levels of efficiency.
They're outfitted with the same armor as before, though with even better protection. Still couldn't protect you from anything meaningful, though. They're armed with the usual standard kit in addition to melee weapons such as Fire Axes and Power Fists as well as firearms (of mint condition and with virtually unlimited access to) such as .44 Magnum Revolvers, .308 Hunting Rifles, 5.56 × .45mm NATO Marksman Carbines and 12.7mm SMGs.
The Decanus of the Legion is the lesser officer beneath the Centurion and is responsible for tactical small-unit operations and squad-level leadership. While not too different from ordinary Legionaries in terms of skill, equipment and even appearance, they still have slightly better access to weapons hence they deserve a separate segment.
Recruit Decanii can get access to 9mm SMGs and 10mm SMGs unlike Recruit Legionaries, Prime Decanii aren't any different from Prime Legionaries and Veteran Decanii can get access to 12.7mm Pistols unlike Veteran Legionaries (not a real improvement, I know). Everything else is exactly the same.
The Centurion is the absolute apex of the Legion's strength and the top field commanders of Caesar's armies, second in authority only to Legate Lanius and Caesar himself amongst a tiny select few of other superiors.
Having survived 15-20 years of a long, arduous life of fighting in Caesar's name (a completely unimaginable phenomenon, indeed) before finally earning the treasured armor of the Centurion (which they can decorate with the trophies of their fallen enemies at their leisure), Centurions are the absolute most elite, most skilled, most battle-hardened and ultimately the most dangerous warriors in the entirety of the Legion.
To even BEGIN to qualify for Centurion status, one must have fought in and survived numerous Legion campaigns as well as slain countless opponents in battle alongside the time requirement. All to ensure that only the finest of Caesar's warriors ever reach that level of authority in his Legion.
As the oldest, most experienced warriors in Caesar's army, the Centurions comprise the old guard of Caesar's army, most of them having served their lord since the very beginning. Their status all but ensures that they're reserved for only the absolute deadliest, most lethal of assignments that even Veteran Legionaries can't handle. They're ultimately only deployed if absolutely necessary.
In order to ensure that his Centurions can both accomplish their missions without even the slightest chance of failure and protect themselves without difficulty, Caesar has granted them unlimited access to the absolute finest weapons in his Legion's arsenal and has seen to it that they have acquired the absolute sharpest firearms skills that money can buy as a corresponding reward for their reaching Centurion status.
They're outfitted with Centurion armor which, while legendary amongst the Legion, really isn't that special. It's actually just Veteran Legionary armor with some cool decorations on it at the end of day.
Pieces of T-45d Power Armor on the right arm, the sleeve from a suit of NCR Ranger Patrol Armor and the pauldrons from an Armored Vault Suit on the left arm, the boots and shin guards from a suit of First-Generation Combat Armor on the lower legs, the crotch/thigh guards from a suit of NCR Ranger Patrol Armor on the upper legs, gloves from a suit of Leather Armor on the hands and a Super Mutant Brute chestplate on the torso, to be exact.
Realistically speaking, Centurion armor would be just about useless against virtually any weapon in the NCR's arsenal. Even a single 5.56 × .45mm NATO round fired from a basic Service Rifle would most certainly do the job, flawlessly.
They're armed with basic melee weapons such as Machete Gladius' and Chainsaws as well as high-tech melee weapons such as Thermic Lances (which are actually just repurposed metalworking tools) and Super Sledges in addition to powerful firearms such as .308 Hunting Rifles, 12-gauge Hunting Shotguns, 5.56 x .45mm NATO Marksman Carbines and even .50 BMG Anti-Materiel Rifles (albeit rarely).
Now we must now examine what will inevitably be a huge problem for the Legion even if they were to win the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. The Legion, even though it does in fact have access to some top-of-the-line weapons, only has them in an extremely limited capacity and strictly reserves them for only the highest-ranking, most elite Legion forces and field commanders.
The overwhelming bulk of the Legion's troops have little-to-no real firearms and what pitifully little that they can get their hands on are in extremely piss-poor condition. Not that it would matter, considering the fact that they don't have the proper training that's necessary to actually use them, much less maintain them.
The vast majority of Caesar's troops rely almost entirely on primitive makeshift melee weapons and their own martial prowess to fight their battles, which inevitably means that the Legion has to avoid direct engagement with NCR forces, instead relying on subterfuge and guerilla warfare to combat the Republic.
And it gets even worse for the Legion when one considers that the higher that its troops advance up the totem pole, the fewer Legionaries that it finds at the higher levels. A direct consequence of the Legion's overprioritization of quality and individual skill in combat is that it inevitably results in an extremely small cadre of elite warriors and field commanders surrounded by a sea of lesser soldiers and officers.
Combined with the fact that the Legion is only 34 years-old by the events of F:NV (meaning that even if one were to ignore things like inevitable attrition all throughout the Legion's war-filled history of expansion and conquest, they still wouldn't have that many Veteran Legionaries/Decanii and Centurions) as well as the fact that attrition over the years must be taken into account (the First Battle of Hoover Dam and the Legion's invasion of Colorado alone absolutely devastated their elite ranks), it's only obvious that the Legion's elite forces are relatively puny.
Furthermore, we know for a fact that there's enough Veteran Legionaries/Decanii for them to form a few of their own exclusive Centuria (a Century is 80-men-strong, I might add), with the Red Okie Centuria being a prime example of this. This definitely suggests that the Legion has at least a couple hundred Veteran Legionaries/Decanii at its disposal. As for Centurions, it's a little known fact that they're so incredibly rare in the Legion that they're actually explicitly ordered to not enter combat until absolutely necessary (i.e self-defense or if they're ordered into battle by a superior).
This, along with the fact that they're never really seen in any meaningful numbers in-game until the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, strongly suggests that there might only be at most several dozen Centurions in the whole of the Legion (there definitely wouldn't be over 100 of them). Either way, however, the Legion's elite forces are so pathetically tiny that they couldn't possibly justify the Legion having any meaningful amount of high-end weaponry.
The NCR, on other hand, doesn't have these problems as 1. the NCR prioritizes protection and firepower above all else for their forces and 2. even their most basic troops have exclusive access to essentially unlimited supplies of all manner of firearms and explosives as well as highly superb protection in the form of military-grade body armor.
Meaning that the NCR not only has a hopelessly insurmountable edge in firepower, technology and protection over the Legion, but that soldiers of the NCR also have a far higher life expectancy than their Legion counterparts, as well. All but ensuring that the NCR has a vastly higher volume of surviving battle-hardened combat veterans relative to the Legion that enables for the Republic to easily distribute extremely invaluable, ultimately irreplaceable combat experience and lessons learned in battle across the entirety of their military to a far greater extent than the Legion.
Scores of battle-hardened NCR Troopers that distinguish themselves on the battlefield go on to enlist with the NCR Rangers upon receiving an invitation to do so (fun fact: the vast majority of NCR Ranger recruits and even NCR Rangers themselves are/were NCR Troopers who earned their new status while serving in the NCR Army), earn the coveted Salvaged Power Armor and become NCR Heavy Troopers or earn promotions to positions of authority in the NCR Army (prime examples being Colonel Cassandra Moore and Colonel James Hsu). All of the above information will have colossal long-term consequences for the Legion, at the end of the day.
With that out of the way, let's move on to the main argument itself. The most positive estimates of the Legion's total numbers and military strength would be at best 5,000-8,000 troops. Then we must take into account the fact that the Legion is going to suffer massive losses (easily numbering into the thousands) taking Hoover Dam from the NCR as the NCR garrison here is extremely well-defended, well-supplied and heavily-fortified by both an entire battalion of elite, battle-hardened NCR Troopers and God only knows how many NCR Patrol Rangers, NCR Heavy Troopers and NCR Veteran Rangers.
Combined with the fact that General Oliver's Compound is extremely well-defended with force fields, a turret system, NCR Veteran Rangers, NCR Heavy Troopers, elite NCR Troopers and an absolute labyrinth that's filled to the brim with all manner of booby traps ranging from rigged shotguns, bear traps and mines of all types to grenade bouquets and overhanging objects (and given that you see a pile of fresh Legionary and Centurion corpses at your feet whenever you enter the Compound during the "Veni, Vidi, Vici" quest it's more than safe to assume that Legion casualties will be extremely massive just securing this area alone), this only serves to bolster my claim that thousands of the Legion's troops will perish at Hoover Dam even if they were to take it.
With only a mere fraction of their original number (that 5,000-8,000 will have been massively depleted after the Second Battle of Hoover Dam), now the Legion has to set out and secure the rest of the Mojave Wasteland, which will prove to be completely impossible over time. The Legion will find next to no tribes to assimilate as they exterminate the Powder Gangers, Fiends, Vipers, Jackals and the Kings in all of their endings.
And while the Legion still has the Great Khans and the Boomers, they won't help much. The Great Khans are down to little more than a pitiful rag-tag band of holdouts after both their ass-whipping at the hands of Mr. House and their decimation at Bitter Springs by the NCR. A fact that only gets worse when we subtract the women and female children (breeding stock), the elderly, the sick and the disabled (killed off immediately) as well as mention the fact that the Frumentarius Karl does say in his journal that the Legion would have to decimate most of the tribe, anyways. Meaning that the Legion will at most get a couple paltry handful of warriors from them.
As for the Boomers (assuming that the "Volare!" quest isn't completed) will prove to be more than a huge cost than a real benefit to the Legion. The Boomers' artillery alone would kill hundreds, if not thousands, of Legionaries with the Boomers themselves, armed to the teeth with Missile Launchers, Fat Mans, Grenade Machine Guns, Grenade Launchers, Grenade Rifles, 5.56 x 45mm. Marksman Carbines and 5mm Assault Carbines in addition to Mr. Gutsy combat robots and Sentry Bots, killing hundreds and even thousands more before the Legion finally conquer them.
Also consider that the Boomers, who worship their artillery and weapons with a near religious reverence, will by no means let their weapons fall into the hands of savages. Thus we could easily see them sabotaging their artillery (how hard would it be to load an artillery shell and lob a frag grenade down the barrel, after all?; and given that the Boomers only have 3-4 artillery pieces it wouldn't take long to do) and munitions stockpiles (just a few bricks of C4 could easily destroy all of the Boomers' weapons and ammunition supplies) to keep them out of Legion hands, which only adds insult to injury.
Even worse for the Legion is that when we subtract those Boomers that died in battle (most likely all of the adult males), the women and female children, the elderly, sick and disabled the Legion will have only a handful of male children to their name (remember that the Boomers are a really puny tribe that depend entirely on their firepower to survive) which means that they will have achieved nothing despite their massive losses incurred from conquering Nellis Air Force Base.
Then we also consider the fact that the Legion doesn't enslave civilized communities or Independent Towns unless under extraordinary circumstances (as evidenced by Siri over at the Fort who hailed from an Independent Town in New Mexico and was a medical student there prior to its destruction by the Legion).
Of course, it wouldn't matter as even if they did, the entire New Vegas area is completely evacuated by the NCR in the event of a Legion victory at Hoover Dam as evidenced by Arcade Gannon's Legion ending where he's convinced to remain in Freeside (all of Freeside, North Vegas, Westside, East Vegas and the Strip, which is really just a resort for NCR tourists rather than an actual community, are evacuated with those few that don't make it out, Arcade included, being killed by the Legion).
And when we consider that Nelson was butchered, Camp Searchlight irradiated and Nipton destroyed by the Legion with Goodsprings being left alone and Primm just falling under Legion authority (no point in enslaving the town anyways considering how it's just one big retirement home alongside Goodsprings which is also evacuated by all save a few old, stubborn folks) then it's blatantly clear that the Legion will have very few civilized people left to enslave.
With an even smaller fraction of survivors thanks to their conquest of Nellis AFB (in addition to hundreds more casualties against the Mojave Chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel, the Kings and what's left of House's Securitron police force and the Chairmen) the Legion will soon realize its folly and discover that both holding the Mojave Wasteland and continuing their advance West is literally impossible.
The Legion's logistical situation and acquisition of supplies will soon prove to be an insurmountable nightmare within mere weeks of their occupation of the Mojave. The loss of Nipton, Camp Searchlight and Nelson will serve to severely hamstring the Legion's logistics with the eventual deaths of New Vegas, Primm and Goodsprings only complicating the Legion's supply lines even further.
As 99% of the Strip's revenue comes from NCR tourists and soldiers on leave and given how the Legion will most likely tear down the casinos and ban whores, booze, chems and gambling under Caesar's law, the Strip will eventually shrivel up and die due to loss of revenue. North Vegas, East Vegas, Westside, Freeside, Primm and Goodsprings, which are entirely dependent on Republic trade and commerce for survival, will eventually suffer the same fate as NCR trade and business abandon the region out of both fear and hatred for the Legion.
Especially after the Legion's successful assassination of President Kimball which will see him martyred and ensure that the NCR will cut off all ties to the fallen Mojave Wasteland. With all of the Mojave's communities and towns dying off, the Legion's supply lines will crumble and face imminent collapse within only a few months time (Hoover Dam isn't a viable supply route as while it does allow the Legion to cross the Colorado River in force it's just too far to provide adequate, long-term support) which will only serve to doom the Legion's occupation of the Mojave Wasteland.
We must also take into account that the Legion will need every last man, Denarius and resource at its disposal if it so much as hopes to hold the region and continue the advance West. Which will force Caesar to relinquish the Legion's entire empire East of the Colorado in order to do so. In Legate Lanius’ own words, the Legion's expansion campaigns in the East have been faltering badly as Caesar's obsession with Hoover Dam, New Vegas and the West has seen the Legion's full strength syphoned off towards Hoover Dam as part of Caesar's plan to overrun Hoover Dam, conquer New Vegas and eventually invade the West.
Imagine the Hell that the Legion will have trying to secure the Mojave Wasteland, which will prove to be so bad that the Legion heartlands will have to be left defenseless, lawless and chaotic just to even begin to make such an ambitious feat even remotely feasible. Some would probably argue that Caesar would surely never abandon the East just for the tiniest, southernmost tip of Nevada and just one little city but I'd advise you to reconsider.
Caesar explicitly states that while the Legion does have their own cities back East, NONE OF THEM are ANYTHING like New Vegas. Why is that such a big deal, one might ask? It's simple, really. While the Mojave Wasteland was relatively untouched by the nuclear holocaust that was the Great War, thanks to the quick and decisive actions of Robert Edwin House, New Vegas is at best a total dump and at worst an absolute shithole.
Filled to the brim with disease, essentially overrun with Raiders, bandits and common criminals of all stripes, absolutely crushed beneath the iron heel of a colossal drug-addiction crisis, bursting at the seams with abject misery and poverty and rampant with starvation, New Vegas is without a doubt little more than a massive dumpster fire.
Things are so bad in that cursed place that you actually have children chasing rats in the streets just to survive, locals constantly complaining about hunger pains and withdrawals and scum ranging from the Fiends to random little hooligan punks constantly ransacking the place.
Westside, the South Vegas ruins, East Vegas, North Vegas and Freeside are all Hellish nightmares that are almost completely hopeless causes, at the end of the day. Even if one takes into account the diamond in the rock, the New Vegas Strip, you still wouldn't find many reasons to be impressed.
What you have is a tiny wealthy resort community that still looks like a dump (though it's still a major improvement from the rest of New Vegas), has highly dilapidated infrastructure (the Tops Casino still has a giant hole on the side of the building) and is surrounded by a wall that's held together with spit, grit and a whole lotta' duct tape.
And while the Strip is safe, orderly and prosperous by the standards of the Mojave Wasteland (a very shit standard, I might add), it's ultimately a very terrible place by the standards of the rest of the post-apocalyptic world (i.e. NCR territory and lands under Legion control). If Legion cities can't even match the standards of that shithole, what does that say about Caesar's willingness to hold them? Especially in light of what he'd be gaining in return?
Furthermore, Caesar often tends to view himself as a mere barbaric king of the Gauls, with his Legion being nothing but one big nomadic tribe of savages without a true home or purpose in his eyes, which is extremely depressing. Caesar sees New Vegas as a true city, a true capital, a true home for both himself and his Legion, a true Rome that he can rule over and could preside over a true empire in. And the West as that very true empire that he so desperately relishes.
Do you honestly believe that Caesar wouldn't trade his current empire (which he clearly holds in very low esteem and almost regrets ever conquering it) for his new Rome and a stepping stone towards eventually conquering his new Roman Empire (the stepping stone being the Mojave Wasteland)? He'd trade the whole of the East for New Vegas and the Mojave Wasteland in a heartbeat and in doing so will seal the Legion's fate and imminent doom.
With the Legion having completely relinquished the East (and therefore cutting themselves off from their resource base, source of revenue/income and escape route, in the process) their supply lines and logistical network in chaos and having absolutely no source of replenishment and reinforcements for their ranks, the Legion will slowly but surely disintegrate, trapped in a permanent holding pattern in the Mojave that'll bleed them dry and drain them of all their resources.
The NCR, meanwhile, will have simply dug in at the Mojave Outpost and fortified their defenses there. They'd have most certainly brought in the 3 VB-02 Vertibirds (which are armed with Gatling Lasers, Missile Launcher racks and Mini Nuke Launchers and outfitted with heavy armor) that were conducting combat air patrols of the NCR military base just a few miles away from the Mojave Outpost.
Far from stopping there, however, Colonel Royez (who's outfitted with the Scorched Sierra Power Armor which is a fully-operational suit of heavily-modified T-45d Power Armor upgraded with onboard medical systems capable of healing any injury and an improved back-mounted power pack from a suit of T-51b Power Armor that will be capable of resisting nearly all of the Legion's weapons and armed with a Plasma Caster chock full of overcharged Microfusion Cells so incredibly strong that it can kill a lvl. 50 Courier in Power Armor with just 2-3 hits!) and his men (NCR Heavy Troopers armed to the teeth with Gatling Lasers, Plasma Casters and Tesla Cannons as well as NCR Troopers armed with Tri-Beam Laser Rifles, Multiplas Rifles, Laser Rifles and Plasma Rifles) will also redeployed there from the same military camp, as well.
Republic artillery pieces can also be deployed there to help bolster the outpost's defenses, as well. A massive network of bunkers, pillboxes and trenches all along the hill below the outpost as well as machine gun nests, sniper nests, minefields and razorwire can also be established to further enhance the impregnable defensive perimeter of the new frontline. Once all of this is done, the NCR will then proceed to flood the outpost with tens of thousands of NCR Troopers, NCR Heavy Troopers, NCR Veteran Rangers
And when coupled with the fact that the Mojave Outpost is atop a high hill, is flanked by mountain ranges on both sides (which will completely prevent the Legion from attacking its flanks and rear), is right on the border with fully-controlled Republic territory (which will make it impossibly easy to keep well-supplied and will also ensure that Republic reinforcements are plentiful and easily available) and the fact that one could see everything up to Primm and Nipton from the Mojave Outpost (that particular area is also wide-open, completely exposed and lacks any real cover which means that any Legion force of any meaningful size would be spotted from miles away day or night which in turn will prevent Legion surprise attacks), the Mojave Outpost will truly become a 100% impregnable fortress.
To make things even worse for the Legion, there's absolutely no bypassing the Mojave Outpost either as the only areas that can allow such a short cut around the Long 15 are completely and literally impassable. The Big Empty is often described as a wall to any living thing approaching it, the Divide is little more than a death trap and is completely avoided by the Legion for obvious reasons and Death Valley is so inhospitable that even the NCR, with its fleet of military cargo trucks and Vertibirds, flat out avoids that area out of habit.
Any army stupid enough to try and cross through these areas will not return alive under any circumstances. Which in turn ensures that only through the Long 15 can the Legion hope to invade the West and given that the Mojave Outpost is purely impenetrable and that the Mojave Wasteland is completely entrapped with mountains and the Colorado River, the Legion will be completely trapped in the Mojave Wasteland and will never be freed from their holding pattern there.
The NCR simply bides its time and let's the Legion wear itself out and tear itself apart trying to hold the Mojave Wasteland, occasionally fending off Legion assaults on the Mojave Outpost whilst inflicting heavy losses on the Legion, launching several limited-scale offensives here and there so as to deplete the Legion's ranks even further and deploying NCR Veteran Rangers into the Mojave Wasteland so as to ambush Legion supply caravans and patrols to worsen the Legion's logistical nightmare.
After almost a year, the Legion will finally be vulnerable, it's forces stretched absolutely thin down to their absolute breaking point, their supply lines and logistics completely exhausted and expended alongside their supplies as a whole, the Legion's ranks reduced to little more than a tiny skeleton crew, the Legion completely scattered across the entire Mojave Wasteland unable to guard it or defend it any longer and the Colorado River at its back, with absolutely no way of escaping their inevitable demise.
At this moment, the NCR finally attacks with a full-scale assault across the entirety of the Mojave, completely and utterly destroying the Legion in its entirety and killing/capturing Caesar himself as Republic forces swarm across New Vegas and wipe out his Legion all around him within mere hours, days if the Legion is lucky. And so the NCR-Legion War finally draws to a close, with the back of the Legion broken forever and ceasing to exist.
Either way the Legion is fucked with a Legion defeat at the Second Battle of Hoover Dam being a mercy killing at best for the Legion.
(Sources are down below in the comments section).

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