I've seen previous posts here recommending against living in the loop, but I'm wondering if that still holds true and if there are benefits to living there as well?
As someone who doesnt have a car, works right on the loop, and has no issue using public transit to get around, the loop area sounds really appealing to me. Especially since the prices are actually somewhat lower than gold coast/river north. Does anyone have similar experiences?

TLDR: My 39 y/o ex is dying of liver failure, has no medical and I don't know how to help her. It sounds like she's near end stages. Ascites, fluid build-up and liver spots on lower legs. Seeking help and advice. Anyone??
I had a feeling this day would come and I have spent years avoid this hard truth. My ex (not divorced yet) has been dealing with cirrhosis of the liver for over 8 years.
Her BF when she was 15 injected her with a dirty needle and unbeknownst to her, had Hep C. She didn't find out she had Hep C until she was in her early 20s and she had little understanding of it and quiet honestly probably didn't care because it wasn't harming her in the moment and so did nothing about it.
She told me she had it when we first got together and I told her she needed to get on medication but she was scared because she thought it would make her sick. She was a heavy drinker too which I was able to help her cut back dramatically but after we married, she ended up in the hospital with a swollen belly - I'd never seen anything like it and was horrified.. Turned out her liver function was diminishing and they had to drain her stomach.
After she left the hospital, we went out to eat and she ordered a drink and I got angry and told her I couldn't do it anymore - I couldn't watch her kill herself. I ended the relationship and she moved to New Mexico.
We have loosely kept in touch because I care about her and I'm scared for her wellbeing. New Mexico has got to be one of the worst states to get care. Idk but her belly is swollen again and she has painful liver spots on her legs. She quit drinking about a year ago but it's too late. I'm terrified she won't live to see next year.
She needs a liver transplant and because of fraud with her identity being stolen, someone was received state benefits in her name in Pennsylvania. New Mexico will not allow her to get on medicade and she can't get any care.
I don't know what to do or where to turn. I feel helpless. If anyone out there has any advice or where to start first - I'd truly appreciate it.

I'll start by saying I'm not new to mushrooms, but it's been a pretty long time since I've had an even moderately strong trip. Probably my last "real" trip was back in college, 20 years ago. Due to circumstances in my life, not the least being my gender identity and trying to navigate that, a pending divorce, suffice it to say I've been stuck in an existential crisis/void for the better part of a year now. I decided to take another look at psychedelics for spiritual healing as opposed to recreation and started to grow them.
I used GordoTek and the spores he sent me were the Pan Cyan TTBVI strain. While I didn't lab test mine, Gordo tested his and they're upwards of 5% active alkaloids by weight. These are not like cubes and Gordo's claims that they're 3-4 times more potent than most mushrooms floating around out there is not an exaggeration. After my first flush I took a 0.6g test does to see what they were like. Shockingly I had moderate visuals and light "trippyness" for a good 3 hours. I was shocked that just over a half a gram would even be a threshold dose.
Fast forward my soon to be ex wife (we love each other and it's amicable, but she didn't sign up to be with a trans person) and kids are away for a week and I planned for yesterday to be the "big day". I spent some time getting in the right head space and was pretty nervous before starting my journey. The plan was to take 2 grams, which for Pan Cyans is a pretty heavy dose. Now, I haven't yet powdered and homogenized/capsulated them, so the potency between flushes is obviously varied. After 1.5 hours on 2 grams I was a bit disappointed in the strength so I said fuck it and went back to my original flush jar of dark blue mushrooms and downed another 3 grams.
20 minutes later....lift off. It came on like a freight train. As I sat on my front porch bench smoking a cigar, waves and patterns flashed across my lawn. I could see "networks" of patterns connecting everything. Living in SoCal, the neighborhood is flush with colorful flowers, swaying palms, wildflowers on the hills. They visuals got stronger and stronger. Looking across the street at my neighbor's garden, her bright red tree came alive. The leaves getting 4-5 times bigger, then smaller, then opening up and reaching out seemingly halfway across the street. Things were really starting to get intense and at this point the visuals were significantly stronger than anything I've ever experienced in my life. And I've eaten an 8th of P. Azurescens back in the day which were truly insane. Already, a half hour into this second dosing I had drastically exceeded my previously strongest trip.
I went back inside and looked in the mirror. half of my face turned into my deceased father's face, the other half still me. My face flashed from one face to the next, a skull, my own face melting off, another skull bit different, rot and decay, death, extreme sadness in missing my dad, I broke down into a blubbering sobbing mess. Reality was slipping away and I had no grip on it. I remember telling myself to let go and surrender.
I phoned my brother, who lives back on the east coast to try to get grounded. He knew what I was up to and told me he'd be available. It helped talking to him but as we talked my ability to discern reality completely vanished. I slumped over the ottoman in my living room and melted into it, a complete puddle. I was drooling, snotting, sobbing, laughing hysterically, crying again, laughing. I was incoherent but I remember my brother saying, "if there was a venn diagram of you and an infant, it would be one circle". I asked my brother if my eyes were open or closed and he laughed saying "how the fuck would I know lol".....I kept asking him if it was dark or light out. I had no idea.
I couldn't formulate any words or thoughts, only groans, moans, jibberish, slobbering and drooling all over the place, calling out colors and shapes that I could hear and taste. Fairly certain my eyes were closed at this point I entered a realm of never ending impossible fractals. I remember purple being a dominant color and then I saw her. I've heard of people meeting entities on DMT and on extreme doses of mushrooms but I was dubious until I met her yesterday. Without word being spoken she showed me everything. I knew everything there was to know. Not in any sort of granular way. I didn't know astrophysics equations, I simply didn't even need to know that math. My knowledge of reality and the universe transcended all of it. "I" was gone. Completely. There was no Jamie anymore. I was the air, the ether, the beings I saw. I was my dog, the galaxy, my deceased father.
A demon arose in the fractal world but rather than run from it I ran into it and understood it was only serving a purpose. It dissipated and any fear of it was gone. The purple goddess returned, sitting in a lotus yoga pose made out of endlessly impossible changing fractals. It was like this for a while. An hour? A day? A year?
I regained a bit of my ego, and remember calling out "everything is perfect and exactly as it should be".
As I slowly became aware of my existence as Jamie again the trip entered another difficult stage. I knew I was in my living room, but everything looked so extremely distorted and strange. I watched my dogs eyes pulsate to the size of silver dollars and his jowls seep into the hardwood floors joining the woodgrain that flowed like rivers. Mentally, I was on a higher plane. I knew everything but started to feel like I wanted to stop. Knowing it doesn't work that way I tried to keep calm but I was pretty certain it would just never end. I did the same thing a thousand times, but I'm not sure if I did. I lived the same 20 minutes over and over and over again in a seemingly hopelessly endless time loop. I was certain I died, perhaps overdosed on mushrooms and that I was now stuck in this house like it was an island. I knew I couldn't OD on mushrooms. I must have choked to death on them then. Either way, I was dead. I'd never see my wife or kids again. If they did come home from their vacation, I wasn't sure they'd be real. I figured, most likely, as soon as they'd come home I'd restart this trip all over again. I'd live in this purgatory forever. I thought once I come down and go back to the office and get back in my routine, I'd never be able to trust it. If you've ever seen the move "1408", this was my new reality.
I went back into my bedroom to try to relax. I have a really big beautiful abstract painting and phillips Hue lights all over the room. I watched my painting dance, the colors and patterns changing, blending in a visual display that was breathtakingly gorgeous. Still, I thought it would never end. I was mixed between enjoying the color show and wanting my mind back. Slowly over the next few hours things came back together.
A few hours later after the trip stopped I was watching TV and got a sudden second onset of fairly strong visuals, but with little to no mind games. This afterglow lasted a while and I felt intensely comfortable and relaxed, happy.
All in all, the only way to describe this experience was that it was the absolutely most extreme experience of my life. It was profound, deep, beautiful, a bit scary, challenging. Overall I'd say I got exactly what I needed out of it.
I hope you enjoyed reading about my experience. The universe is nothing but pure love and beauty and it's in all of us. Journey on, fellow travelers, perhaps we'll meet on another plane.

Updated May 2023
I recently changed Reddit accounts and it's been about a year, so it seemed prudent to repost this for visibility. :)

Link to the Below Zero guide

https://subnauticamap.io/ - This is an interactive map of the crater. However, be warned that it will show the general location of things you need to find. This can be toggled but if you have zero point of reference for the places mentioned in this guide, this map should provide one.

General tips are at the bottom, however, they rely on you having played at least part of the way through the game so I don't recommend checking them until at least part 3, AKA "Going Traveling"

Subnautica is a game primarily about exploring your environment while overcoming the trepidation that the game sets up in you over doing so. Although there isn't a perfect guide to being able to clear the game, there also isn't an unambiguous path of progression for the player, either.
Consequently new players often find themselves at an impasse in terms of progression and where to go. The following is a no-nonsense, straight to the point guide on how to progress, but it's not a bible. You can do most of this just by exploring and wandering around.
A blind playthrough is critical to the first time player experience. This is often true of every game but for Subnautica it makes or breaks the whole story - you need to have no idea what the hell is going on the first time you clear the game. If you spoil it for yourself you will regret it, please believe me in this. This guide is meant to give you a nudge when you find you don't know where to go next, it's not really meant as a walkthrough, even though it can be used as one. Do yourself a favor friends, don't go wandering /subnautica or the wiki too much and this guide will not lead you astray. It is written specifically for brand new players.

The Beginning

When you first arrive on 4546b, you find yourself with basically nothing. You're hungry, thirsty, your lifepod is broken and your cookies are gone. The Aurora is burning (and you nearly did too) but despite all that, you're alive and this planet is about to get some Ryley in it.
The environment around you has most of what you need to get started. The metal scrap strewn around the shallows provides an easy source of Titanium while you can break limestone and sandstone to get the minerals you need for your starting tools. You'll want the quartz you find for glass.
Although you have a number of options for making equipment, at this stage I don't recommend using resources for the air pump or pipes. Truth is they don't really have much use; they create a breathing line from the surface for when you're diving, but they're expensive and there's better alternatives in your near future.
Once you have a scanner and knife, take the time to scan everything you can. All the local wildlife can be scanned and most of the flora.
Your objective at this point is to build a repair gun, knife, seaglide, flashlight and scanner.

Branching Out

Now that you've got your basic tools and you can get around a little, it's time to begin exploring. At this point you've seen the deeper waters on the edges of the kelp forest.
It's time to go take a look.
The red grassy plains have what you need to progress to deeper waters. You'll want to explore the wrecks there. There are four grassy plains surrounding the shallows at compass points and cave systems exist in three of them which will become relevant later, but are largely out of your reach for now. It is out here that you will find fragments necessary for an important task you must complete soon. Raiding the aurora will require the laser cutter you learn to make here. You'll also want a propulsion cannon, which you can find the fragments to near the side of the Aurora. DO NOT GO AROUND THE BACK OF THE AURORA. SERIOUSLY. You are not prepared for that level of giggling insanity yet.
By now you've fixed the radio and may have triggered the sunbeam event, in which case you will want to go follow that. Give yourself the full span of time to go to the island and explore unless you'd prefer to explore after the event, but don't let yourself get distracted by what you find there and miss the ship arriving. The signals you've been getting are important prompts and need to be checked out when possible, so make sure you take the time to do that. Also, when you go to either island DO NOT PARK YOUR SEAMOTH NEAR THE BEACH. DO NOT PARK YOUR SEAMOTH NEAR THE BEACH. There is a real risk of it phasing through the ground and becoming inaccessible and then you'll end up on this subreddit asking how to get it back like the other 5 guys a week. Seriously.
Also note that bringing an ion cube to the top of the mountains caves will let you do something interesting up there, but I won't be specific. A scanner room at this spot is ideal not just to track the reaper leviathan on the eastern side of the island but there is quite a lot of shale and lithium here as well, which is probably something you're gonna want.

Going traveling

At this point you should have a seamoth, your basic tools, a laser cutter, propulsion cannon and lead suit. You are prepared. It's time to go to the Aurora... but only if you've gotten the communication from Alterra with the captains door code. Otherwise, you must wait for that radio event. You can go explore the ship anyways of course, but not having the code means you can't get into the captains room, requiring you to go back and get it later. So it's up to you. You can open the door anyways if you get the code off the internet or something but since the game gives it to you anyways, you can always wait for the prompt. If not, the door code is 2679
If you have a cyclops I don't recommend taking it, since reapers hang out at the front and back ends of the ship. However, a seamoth is small enough to fit through the broken superstructure of the ship at the front and thus avoid this danger. There are two ways to access the ship and although it seems impossible, you CAN in fact climb up to access the open one. Otherwise, you can use the prop cannon to move the debris out of the way of the door near water level. Be sure to take the time to explore inside and use the carry-all bags to leave stuff you want to keep from the ship out the front so you can come back and pick it all up later. There's lots of useful stuff in there.
As a side note here, the leech-like things that annoy you in the reactor room are called Bleeders. I hate Bleeders personally, but I noted that if you grab one with the propulsion cannon and fling it into the wall out of sheer spite then other bleeders will be attracted to the body, which makes grabbing and doing the same to them quite easy. Clearing the entire room of those little #*([email protected]'s only takes a couple minutes.
You can get the codes for various rooms inside from the PDA's you find. Also note that some doors can only be opened once you repair them. Sometimes the Aurora glitches and these repair sections don't work but because the ship has two entrances, you can always go around the back to clear the whole thing, which is... annoying. If you don't mind being patient, leaving the Aurora and doing other things for awhile will reset the wreck, allowing you to come back later and potentially be able to repair the doors then.
The codes for the ship are:
Cabin No. 1: 1869
Captain's Quarters: 2679
Cargo Bay: 1454
Lab Access: 6483

Time to go down

With the Aurora repaired you have the ability to wear things other than the lead suit, so it's time to chuck that in the trash 'cuz you won't need it again. It's time to get the outer wrecks in the zones beyond the shallows and hoo boy ain't that gonna be an experience.
The cyclops is your friend here. But what's this, you don't have a cyclops? Well, that's okay. You may have found one of the engine fragments on the aurora in the cargo bay but if you missed it, it's not really a big deal. Your next objective to build one is to go explore mushroom forest and the underwater floating islands for the fragments you'll need. If you've been following your radio signals you've probably been to the aurora rendezvous point by now, but if not, take the time to go thoroughly explore that island. One of the PDAs you need to find the next place is not at the degasi base, but on one of the paths of the island near an arch of rock. You'll need to explore the island thoroughly to find it. Make sure to scan everything and bring back plant samples if you have a seabase. You can use plant pots to keep food trees on your cyclops for easy access to food without worrying about curing everything all the time.
Once you have the cyclops, you need to take the time to upgrade your seamoth to depth so you can explore the various wrecks, supplement your PDA database and establish yourself properly for long-term operations. At this point in the game you should be aiming for or already have:
A seabase, even a basic one. A couple corridors with lockers are invaluable for storage and operations and the scanner room is MISSION CRITICAL. If you haven't built one yet, get on that!
A seamoth, either at or being upgraded to 500m depth
Knife, flashlight, repair gun, seaglide, scanner, laser cutter, propulsion or repulsion cannon, rebreather
Be sure to check everything, then check it again! It's easy to miss things on the island. Be sure to check the buildings on the tops of the hills there too. Although it would be nice to be able to plant land beacons (hint hint, Unknown Worlds), it's not feasible for marking out the precursor gate on the floating island so unfortunately, it's not of much use unless you have your base on one island or the other. I don't recommend the floating island for this for reasons which will become apparent later in the game.

Looking into the abyss

If you've explored most of or all of the wrecks and no longer have missing technology, it's time to go deeper. If you've been following your PDA signals you need to check out the degasi bases and follow their story, as they lead you to a large, deep cave which is the path to deeper places you need to explore.
There are several inlets to the place you need to reach. Northern Bulb Zone where it meets Mountains has a large entrance. Blood Kelp Zone and Trench both have entrances. The last one is in deep grand reef, where the final Degasi base is. I personally recommend either Deep Grand Reef or Bulb Zone but the latter has the most accessibility.
Raiding the final Degasi Base before exploring this cave system will get you the orange precursor key which you'll need to access something hidden at the southern end of the caves near blood kelp trench's entrance. While working down here I strongly recommend making liberal use of beacons as navigational guides if you're new to this place. It is VERY confusing and looks very same-y if you haven't spend a lot of time here.
Deep inside the caves you'll come upon a chamber with a massive skull sitting on a chunk of land in the middle and access to a slightly lower part of the cave system which is not green. This is the Cove Tree Cave and the brine there will not hurt you the way the green brine does. This leaves you able to free dive there to gather materials without needing to rely on your prawn.
This chamber with the skull is, in fact, the central chamber of Lost River. It is an excellent place for building a scanner station and the entire area is ludicrously rich in resources. It's a perfect place to stock up and catch up any upgrades, tools or devices you may be lacking so far. You'll want the resource stocks for later and honestly, it's just a really cool place to have a base in general.
The Disease Research Facility is in the north-eastern arm of Lost River, accessible through the Bulb Zone entrance. A juvenile ghost leviathan guards the path but as with most leviathans, operating in silent running and staying above or below it while sticking to the cave walls will get you by without any issue. If they do notice you, just pop a decoy, go full speed for about 5-8 seconds and then drop the engine to low and stay in silent running until you get far enough for the big ugly to stop bothering you.
The southern part of Lost River holds a large chamber with a ghost leviathan juvenile and houses another rather large skeleton. This area in particular is rich in large ore deposits and crystallized sulfur that you'll be needing for some big upgrades.
By the way, remember the cyclops shield? By now you're probably noticing that using the auxiliary functions on the cyclops eats a lot of power. Redundant power cells are your friend and if you feel you're worried about power costs while exploring, you lose nothing by having a buttload of spare power cells. It can pay off, being able to spam the shield for awhile and run away.
You'll want that shield for what's coming next.

Once More Unto The Deep

By now you've probably explored Lost River a bit and you're wondering where to go from here. If you've built a scanner room in the central chamber, you'll have noticed that the scanner, when at full range, shows a chamber below Lost River.
This is the inactive lava zone and it is here your answers lay.
You have two access points to reach this chamber. The North-east arm past the disease research facility and the cove tree caves. Both entrances are equally difficult to get through but the first one feels more open, if you don't mind the ghost leviathan circling around above the opening.
This chamber is rich with even more valuable resources, if you somehow haven't got enough already. The cove tree cave entrance leads to the western part of the ILZ chamber. The North-east entrance leads to the north edge of the chamber. The chamber itself is rather oval-shaped, with the western edge of it relatively empty and the eastern part containing a massive lava bubble.
If you wander around down here long enough the PDA will prompt you to take a look at that bubble a bit more closely. You will need two purple precursor keys to access the facility inside. Now that you're down here you'll notice there's a fair number of warpers, crimson rays (who are harmless) and leech-like things which will attach to the hull of your ship and drain power. That sounds like a problem, doesn't it?
Don't worry though, we got you covered. Once you're down here, go grab some kyanite and you can build the cyclops thermal reactor which pretty much eliminates the whole running out of power problem. The shield is a great way to get the leeches off your hull at the same time.
As for the leviathan, the sea dragon isn't actually a whole lot of threat. It might spit fire at you and is capable of picking up and biting the prawn but will mostly ignore you if you don't go hanging out in front of it.
With that said, treat it like any other leviathan while in the cyclops. Drive slow, keep an eye on it and if it gets curious, drop a decoy and move away ASAP. Cutting your engines once you've gotten a little distance will almost always make them lose interest.

But Wait, There's More!

If you've explored the inner depths of the lava bubble, then you have the blue key, ion battery plans and have opened the portal to the QEP. Great! Now coming down here in the prawn isn't a big deal and you don't have to drive the cyclops all the way down here to go grab resources. A small scanner base down here would be great for quickly finding what you need.
As you can probably guess, there's an even deeper chamber than this, which is the active lava zone. You can find the entrance by following the lava flows around the ILZ and keeping an eye on the floor. You'll find a large space big enough for the cyclops to lower down into.
Down here you'll find 2 sea dragons to avoid, so don't you get conservative with your power. By now you'll probably have built ion power cells and those can run your shield and sonar together for a full 5 minutes with silent running going so don't be shy about using them!
Getting into the alien base down here will require two blue keys, one for accessing the facility, the other for accessing the inner facility. It is here you will find the ion cube fabricator which requires the prawn. You can use this to open the warp gates in the facility. Six ion cubes in total are required for this. Four for the warp gates on the upper floor and two in the Sea Emperors tank. One of these leads back to the upper floor, if you find you're struggling to get back out. This gate in particular is about halfway up the tank at the back and sits on a large ledge. An ion cube is provided to activate it, giving you a way to walk out of the tank if you find you're struggling to get out.
And... that's pretty much it, really. After that encounter you'll know where to go and what to do. The paths laid out for you in the final facility lead you to the places you need to go to find the things you require.

Tips and tricks

• Keep floaters in your cyclops. When you're operating above 500m, running out of power, floaters will allow you to passively bring your ship to the surface without power expense so that you can resupply it. This is pretty much a last ditch move but it never hurts to be prepared.
  
• You can fit up to 8 basic plant pots in an observatory, which will grant you twice the amount of growing space as an indoor grow bed for the same amount of floor space while also making the crops more easily accessible.
  
• The engine comparment of the cyclops has a lower deck behind the vehicle bay which everybody ignores, but it's a great spot for plant shelves and marble melons for food security.
  
• Load your vehicles. Dedicate storage in them to supplies. Water, food, medkits, beacons, flares (bonesharks and crabsquids react to them) and spare power supplies for the vehicles. Keep this kit supplied and you will never be caught unprepared for an 'oh crap' situation.
  
• Okay, so you don't want to give up inventory space for your vehicles. The next best thing is then to fill a watertight locker or two with food, water, medpacks and maybe a couple spare batteries and power cells, then drop them someplace with a beacon next to them. Do this a dozen times in random spots around the map as you travel and now you have emergency caches you can access if you get into trouble.
  
• When you reach the point where materials gathering is easy, consider creating vehicle-creation drop points. 2-3 spots on the map with a mobile vehicle bay, a couple lockers with everything you need for a new seamoth and some basic supplies. If you lose your vehicle, it's a lot easier to make a replacement and get the mats than to get the mats to make a replacement.
  
• The propulsion gun is your friend. Use it to grab items to pick up, use it to grab cave crawlers and yeet them into low orbit, use it to pick up rocks and fling them at things you particularly don't like. Use it to collect gas pods from gasopods without getting hit by the cloud. Use it to move debris in wrecks. Bring a spare battery specifically for it because flinging things around uses a lot of power but the sheer utility of the tool makes it worth the cost.
  
• You'll be tempted to deck your seamoth out with all the toys but the truth is once you have the prawn, it's obsolete. Don't fall into the temptation of continuing to build tons of upgrades for it unless you plan to use it for a fast-fetch vehicle for things you need from far away. However, with that said, the seamoth is really the superior vehicle for wreck-diving.
  
• Keeping a second air tank in your inventory and swapping them mid-dive is a perfectly viable option. However, the tanks only refill when wearing them, so make sure to switch again once you're back in breathing space. This can and will save you when wreck diving and two ultra high quality tanks equals 450 seconds of air in total, or 7m30s of air.
  
• Speaking of air, you can use the air bladders alternate use key (F on PC - the same button for self-scanning) to get a few seconds of air out of it into your tank. It's not much - 20 seconds or so - but sometimes, that little bit extra can save your life if you're just out of reach of your vehicle.
  
• You can collect flora and fauna samples as you progress through the game and have a garden base specifically for growing plant samples from around the crater. Obviously this looks really nice (creepvine in an alien tank under the floor provides the room in your base with a nice golden glow) but is also useful later.
  
• SCANNER ROOMS. SERIOUSLY PEOPLE. If you're struggling to find the magnetite, go to Jellyshroom. If you're struggling to find Jellyshroom, always remember that lifepod 17 is directly next to one of its exit points. The range upgrades are incredibly important and the HUD chip makes the whole thing work.
  
• Farm supplies! You don't need to work or power anything to grow crops. Consider dropping a foundation with some growbeds, a beacon and your farmables (gel sack, creepvine seeds, creepvine samples, acid mushroom, blood oil and deepshrooms). Now you can stock up on things like batteries, rubber, lubricant, benzene, polyaniline. Keep a few of these crops in your cyclops for planting in new spots and never run out of the stuff you need while keeping your home base nice and lag free.
  
• Creature decoys can be deployed both by hand and by prawn propulsion arm, which lets you pull items out of your inventory to 'throw'. You can also do this with the propulsion cannon by using the F key (the alternate tool use button, the same one you use to self-scan, for all you console folks).
  
• Turning off your engines greatly reduces the chance of a leviathan damaging the cyclops, even if it's right on top of you. Moving is what gets their attention. If one is swimming near the sub, cut all engines and just wait patiently for it to get a little distance, then silent running and max speed for a few seconds. Pop a decoy for good measure if you want to make absolutely sure.
  
• You can access the right side of the Aurora relatively safely by going south to Crag Zone and then banking east into the deeper parts of crash zone. Most of the reapers are up by the ship, sticking to the bottom will keep you relatively safe and net you as much titanium as you will ever need.
  
• Blood kelp zone, the sea treader wreck and the meteor crater in Dunes all have secrets that you may find interesting.
  
• Remember the Bleeders in the reactor room of the Aurora? Bring a grav trap along - they're cheap, it's disposable - and enter through the top door by climbing along the wreckage up there. Pop the grav trap in the reactor room and kill one of them with the propulsion cannon - the others will come for the body and be stuck in the trap, making picking them off much, much easier than it would be trying to find them all individually. You can just leave the trap behind. If you have the stasis gun, you can wait for them to stack up in the grav trap, stun them, then drop gas pods amidst the several bleeders and watch them get bodied.
  
• Gas pods 'o doom also work against leviathans. They work against EVERYTHING. You just need a lot of them, but getting a lot of them is really easy with the propulsion cannon (which can fire them too, by the way).
  
• Reefback barnacles are a good source of copper and silver, but beware the tiger plants on their backs. If you have a reinforced dive suit, tiger plants can't hurt you, but without one they're a pain. You can yeet them with the propulsion cannon. That trick works for drooping stingers too.
  
• Beacons everywhere. No seriously, everywhere. You'd be amazed how few people use them as much as they ought to be used.
  
• Eastern red grass plains has deep caves with a type of plant which can only be found in a few select spots on the map. Bulb Zone's lifepod has caves with some nearby and the Dunes also has some, but a Reaper is guarding them. If you do manage to find the spot though, it's GREAT for rubies!
  
• Scanner room cameras are a good way to keep track of nearby leviathans. They also force the terrain to load, which is required for the scanner room to actually pick things up. Stalkers will snag the cameras and move them around, but they're pretty useful for quickly getting the scanner room working right. The wildlife ignores the cameras too, so if you want a really nice picture of some creature you really hate getting close to, they're a great way to get it.
  
• Breed some stalkers, release them outside your base next to a pile of metal scrap and never worry about finding teeth for glass again. Barring that? Drop a random beacon in the kelp forest and wait for a stalker to collect it, follow it back to their stash and drop a grav trap.
  
• Light sticks can be good for wreck diving, as are flares. Flares provide much better lighting in large open spaces than the flashlight or seaglide. It makes them a good alternative to the flashlight in the early game.
  

• DO NOT PARK YOUR SEAMOTH NEAR THE BEACHES. DO NOT PARK YOUR SEAMOTH NEAR THE BEACHES. DO NOT PARK YOUR SEAMOTH NEAR THE BEACHES.

• The following is a list of zones where one can find particular ores. It isn't a complete list, but will allow you to find everything you need in a timely fashion:
  

Lithium - Jellyshroom, Bulb Zone, Mushroom Forest, Lost River
Loose Lithium - Mushroom Forest, Mountains, Grand Reef, Shale, lost river
Magnetite - Jellyshroom is the only biome with large nodes
Loose Magnetite - Jellyshroom, mountains, cove tree cave, blood kelp zone, lost river
Rubies - Dunes, Spare Reef Caves, Lost River, Grand Reef, Underwater Islands
Diamonds - Lost River, Shale, Inactive Lava Zone, Sea Treader Path, sometimes caves
Table Coral - Shallows, Lost River
Copper - Mushroom forest, blood kelp zone, bulb zone, lost river, limestone, Inactive Lava Zone
Silver - Crag Zone, Mountains, Lost River, sandstone, Inactive Lava Zone
Gold - Jellyshroom, Blood Kelp Zone, Lost River, sandstone, shale
Lead - Sandstone, mountains, crash zone, lost river, Inactive Lava Zone
Titanium - Crash Zone, Dunes, Limestone, Lost River, Inactive Lava Zone
Metal Salvage - Crash Zone, Crag Zone, Kelp Forest
Kyanite - Inactive Lava Zone
Crystalline Sulfur - Lost River
Nickel - Lost River
Uraninite - Blood Kelp Zone, Blood Kelp Trench, Lost River, Inactive Lava Zone, Grand Reef
Quartz - Dunes, Crag Zone, Lost River, Inactive Lava Zone, Red Grassy Plains
If you're reading this guide and have any suggestions for additional information, feel free to share them for the next iteration.

Good luck, survivor!

New member here, just really wanted to share my ideas with you after finishing Legends: Arceus. I really enjoyed the lore that it built, so I thought to myself: what if Hoenn had it's own history?
*English isn't my first language so I hope you bear with any inconsistencies. Also, I'd really appreciate it if you can add any suggestions or discussion to this. It would really brighten up my day!
POKEMON LEGENDS: HOENN
HOENN is a supercontinent (Pangea) consisting mainly of 8 tribes (or clans, whatever you prefer). These tribes are governed by a council of elders worshipping the Sky God. Player is picked by his/her tribe to compete for the 8 Hoenn challenges (Gym Leaders) and earn the right to be the region's champion. The region champion is then tasked by the regions council to stop an ominous threat. Player is competing alongside 7 other side characters, all with the same goal (think of it as 7 rivals, only some of them you will get to interact and battle). Each character, including the player, progress differently throughout the story.
(The ominous threat is hinted throughout the game. Examples are violent weather changes, A group of bandits constantly harrassing the player, and the council being a little vague with their intentions).
After the player passes his 8 challenges, The council lets the 6 remaining challengers compete with each other (since the player is one of the challengers, this is basically their version of the elite four & champion).
SIDE NOTE: 2 challengers went missing after straying near 2 ominous areas, prompting the council to proceed with the elite four+champion format. (Had no other idea how to get rid of them lol)
After beating 4 of them, the 5th challenger revealed itself to be the leader of a 9th tribe. The exiled leader's main goal is to prevent the council from finding a champion who can stop his mission. It is said that he hopes to awaken the deity that can reshape the world. Player then challenges the exiled leader.
SIDE NOTE: the leader and his tribe are seen throughout the game, but are vaguely referenced. the exiled tribe members act like bandits in the game, constantly distracting the player from his challenges, their reasoning only revealed after the exiled leader's appearance.
After the final battle, you are crowned as champion. A fissure then hits the arena, then followed by a thunderstorm, prompting the exiled leader to disappear. Player needs to follow the exiled leader to the 2 ominous areas.
(This is where the whole game location transforms from a supercontinent to the current Hoenn Region due to the violent weather caused by the deity)
PLOT TWIST: the 9th tribe (Current located Pacifidlog) is actually trying to contain the deity, which are revealed to be 2 pokemon (Groudon & Kyogre) located in the 2 ominous areas. Their mission is being rejected by the council simply because they believed the exiled leader's polytheistic blasphemy is the reason of the violence of the weather.
Context: The 9 tribes originally believe in 1 deity (Rayquaza/Sky God), explaining the snake/dragon theme symbols throught the region. But upon sensing the severe changes in the weatheterrain/sea currents due to the incoming awakening of another deity, the exiled leader rebelled & sought to find a solution on his own. This angered the tribe councils, who believed the exiled leader to be blasphemous and delusional of the existence of another deity, prompting to issue the tribe challenges and stop the exiled leader.
When player arrives to the ominous locations, kyogre and groudon are already released, proceeding to the then-existing pacifidlog lands to battle. The skirmish re shapes the once pangeatic region into the hoenn that we know in gen 3. Groudon isolates Upper Hoenn, draining the lakes and rivers in the process. Kyogre slowly sinks Lower Hoenn, which turns mountains into islands.
The council, now witnessing & realizing their negligence, as well as seeing that the deitys that they were worshipping are legendary Pokemons, asissts the exiled leader & the player to the sky pillar, the nearest location near Pacifidlog. Rayquaza appears upon sensing the might and passion of both the player and the exiled leader. After a fight in which the player assists Rayquaza by riding the pokemon throughout pacifidlog, they separate kyogre/groudon back in to the ominous locations, to which the player then proceeds to battle the respective pokemons. Once defeated, the 2 legendaries return to their slumber & Hoenn is finally saved. Rayquaza heads back and rests at the sky pillar. The exiled leader disappears, as he develops hatred for the rest of the tribe due to his land becoming collateral damage. He is now believed to be studying the land through meteorites and stones, hoping that one day he could restore pacifidlog back to the surface. The council dedicates their lives in to restoring peace and harmony to Hoenn, in hopes of owning up to their mistakes.
NOTES:
• I wanted this game to really be hard just because the Volo/Giratina fight inspired me (had to redo the Volo fight several times lol)
• The exiled 9th tribe is said to be located in the current area of pacifidlog town, the battleground for Kyogre/Groudon/Rayquaza for this game. The Corsola infested land not only veered away from the continent, but it also subsided on the seabeds.
• The whole region is a pangea (supercontinent), with only lakes/rivers/streams separating the tribes. There's still water pokemon here, dont worry lol
• Tribe locations based on current Hoenn Map are in Dewford (Where you start), Sootopolis, Mossdeep, Pacifidlog, Slateport, Lavaridge, Fallarbor, Lilycove, & Petalburg
• the ominous locations are in Sootopolis (Kyogre), and Lavaridge (Groudon)
• The sky pillar is located on the southern edge of the Hoenn Pangea and acts as a place of worshipping Rayquaza
• The exiled leader is an ancestor of Steven Stone
• An ancestor of Wallace is one of the final challengers
• 2 of the councils are ancestors to both Team Magma & Aqua Leaders
• Instead of the gym challenges being based on typing, they're based on the animal that represents their tribe. A gym leader can have a roster full of dog pokemon representing loyalty (ex. Growlithe, Houndoor, Manectric, Granbull), or Bird pokemon representing liberty (ex. Natu, Murkrow, Swellow, Skarmory). This way, the gym leaders get to be more of a challenge.
• Gen 1-3 Pokemons only (or whatever you can suggest, I don't want to be criticized lmao)
• I based Hoenn on the Pangea (Supercontinent) mainly because i see a lot of memes about Hoenn being full of water areas.
I think I went too religion based on this one, so feel free to comment if you made it this far. Thank you!

I would love to see Toasty to return on the latest Mortal Kombat game coming later in September. If Toasty triggered by performing a particularly vicious uppercut in MK1, Dan Forden appearing in the lower-right corner of the screen, and saying "Toasty!" in a falsetto voice. It can be triggered at any stage at anytime.

New member here, just really wanted to share my ideas with you after finishing Legends: Arceus. I really enjoyed the lore that it built, so I thought to myself: what if Hoenn had it's own history?
*English isn't my first language so I hope you bear with any inconsistencies. Also, I'd really appreciate it if you can add any suggestions or discussion to this. It would really brighten up my day!
POKEMON LEGENDS: HOENN
HOENN is a supercontinent (Pangea) consisting mainly of 8 tribes (or clans, whatever you prefer). These tribes are governed by a council of elders worshipping the Sky God. Player is picked by his/her tribe to compete for the 8 Hoenn challenges (Gym Leaders) and earn the right to be the region's champion. The region champion is then tasked by the regions council to stop an ominous threat. Player is competing alongside 7 other side characters, all with the same goal (think of it as 7 rivals, only some of them you will get to interact and battle). Each character, including the player, progress differently throughout the story.
(The ominous threat is hinted throughout the game. Examples are violent weather changes, A group of bandits constantly harrassing the player, and the council being a little vague with their intentions).
After the player passes his 8 challenges, The council lets the 6 remaining challengers compete with each other (since the player is one of the challengers, this is basically their version of the elite four & champion).
SIDE NOTE: 2 challengers went missing after straying near 2 ominous areas, prompting the council to proceed with the elite four+champion format. (Had no other idea how to get rid of them lol)
After beating 4 of them, the 5th challenger revealed itself to be the leader of a 9th tribe. The exiled leader's main goal is to prevent the council from finding a champion who can stop his mission. It is said that he hopes to awaken the deity that can reshape the world. Player then challenges the exiled leader.
SIDE NOTE: the leader and his tribe are seen throughout the game, but are vaguely referenced. the exiled tribe members act like bandits in the game, constantly distracting the player from his challenges, their reasoning only revealed after the exiled leader's appearance.
After the final battle, you are crowned as champion. A fissure then hits the arena, then followed by a thunderstorm, prompting the exiled leader to disappear. Player needs to follow the exiled leader to the 2 ominous areas.
(This is where the whole game location transforms from a supercontinent to the current Hoenn Region due to the violent weather caused by the deity)
PLOT TWIST: the 9th tribe (Current located Pacifidlog) is actually trying to contain the deity, which are revealed to be 2 pokemon (Groudon & Kyogre) located in the 2 ominous areas. Their mission is being rejected by the council simply because they believed the exiled leader's polytheistic blasphemy is the reason of the violence of the weather.
Context: The 9 tribes originally believe in 1 deity (Rayquaza/Sky God), explaining the snake/dragon theme symbols throught the region. But upon sensing the severe changes in the weatheterrain/sea currents due to the incoming awakening of another deity, the exiled leader rebelled & sought to find a solution on his own. This angered the tribe councils, who believed the exiled leader to be blasphemous and delusional of the existence of another deity, prompting to issue the tribe challenges and stop the exiled leader.
When player arrives to the ominous locations, kyogre and groudon are already released, proceeding to the then-existing pacifidlog lands to battle. The skirmish re shapes the once pangeatic region into the hoenn that we know in gen 3. Groudon isolates Upper Hoenn, draining the lakes and rivers in the process. Kyogre slowly sinks Lower Hoenn, which turns mountains into islands.
The council, now witnessing & realizing their negligence, as well as seeing that the deitys that they were worshipping are legendary Pokemons, asissts the exiled leader & the player to the sky pillar, the nearest location near Pacifidlog. Rayquaza appears upon sensing the might and passion of both the player and the exiled leader. After a fight in which the player assists Rayquaza by riding the pokemon throughout pacifidlog, they separate kyogre/groudon back in to the ominous locations, to which the player then proceeds to battle the respective pokemons. Once defeated, the 2 legendaries return to their slumber & Hoenn is finally saved. Rayquaza heads back and rests at the sky pillar. The exiled leader disappears, as he develops hatred for the rest of the tribe due to his land becoming collateral damage. He is now believed to be studying the land through meteorites and stones, hoping that one day he could restore pacifidlog back to the surface. The council dedicates their lives in to restoring peace and harmony to Hoenn, in hopes of owning up to their mistakes.
NOTES:
• I wanted this game to really be hard just because the Volo/Giratina fight inspired me (had to redo the Volo fight several times lol)
• The exiled 9th tribe is said to be located in the current area of pacifidlog town, the battleground for Kyogre/Groudon/Rayquaza for this game. The Corsola infested land not only veered away from the continent, but it also subsided on the seabeds.
• The whole region is a pangea (supercontinent), with only lakes/rivers/streams separating the tribes. There's still water pokemon here, dont worry lol
• Tribe locations based on current Hoenn Map are in Dewford (Where you start), Sootopolis, Mossdeep, Pacifidlog, Slateport, Lavaridge, Fallarbor, Lilycove, & Petalburg
• the ominous locations are in Sootopolis (Kyogre), and Lavaridge (Groudon)
• The sky pillar is located on the southern edge of the Hoenn Pangea and acts as a place of worshipping Rayquaza
• The exiled leader is an ancestor of Steven Stone
• An ancestor of Wallace is one of the final challengers
• 2 of the councils are ancestors to both Team Magma & Aqua Leaders
• Instead of the gym challenges being based on typing, they're based on the animal that represents their tribe. A gym leader can have a roster full of dog pokemon representing loyalty (ex. Growlithe, Houndoor, Manectric, Granbull), or Bird pokemon representing liberty (ex. Natu, Murkrow, Swellow, Skarmory). This way, the gym leaders get to be more of a challenge.
• Gen 1-3 Pokemons only (or whatever you can suggest, I don't want to be criticized lmao)
• I based Hoenn on the Pangea (Supercontinent) mainly because i see a lot of memes about Hoenn being full of water areas.
I think I went too religion based on this one, so feel free to comment if you made it this far. Thank you!

After several years, the Eastern Europe Rework is complete, as the release of the Ukraine rework signals the end of an era for Kaiserreich. We learned a lot from the development process, with the Eastern Europe Rework being released incrementally, unlike the single large update that gave much of the China rework. With each successive release, we try our best to reach new heights with the mod, and to build on the work that was done beforehand, and both of these aims particularly apply to the Eastern Europe Rework. Our efforts remain ongoing on the reworks of all European majors, and the team members who worked on Ukraine have already moved on to work on Russia, Spain and Austria-Hungary. But for now, we are pleased to bring you our latest release, and we hope you enjoy it!

• The KR4 team

Changes
Notable Additions

• Updated the format of the Country Selection screen.
• Added new introduction screens for several countries, including the majors and notable minors.
• Removed the cap on the war support debuffs that is present in vanilla HOI4, applied by casualties, bombing and lost convoys, and decreased the rate of the war support decay.
• Countries now will lose 20% war support if at war, regardless of it being a defensive or offensive war.
• Reduced the Chinese “Unequal Treaties” resource export malus to 60%.

Reworked/Expanded Focus Trees

• Ukraine

Tweaked Focus Trees

• Lebanon - overhauled political and military trees
• Ottoman Empire - added four new national foci for NatPops

New Events

• Added new alerts informing the player of impending declarations of war.
• Added events alerting the player when the AI has given them land in annexation events.
• Added annexation events for the Northern Caucasus, Corsica, the Kuban, Nice, Savoy and Syrmia.

New Decisions

• Added a new “Ostpolitik” decision category for Germany, detailing their relations with their eastern allies.

New Custom Country Paths

• Cuba (expanded current options)
• Ukraine
• West Indies Federation (expanded current options)

GFX

• New portraits
  • American Union State: Robert Melville Danford
  • Australasia: Henry Douglas Wynter
  • Bharatiya Commune: Madhav Sadashivrao Golwalkar, Madan Mohan Malaviya, Sarojini Naidu, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
  • Union of Britain: George Nathan
  • Bulgaria: Manol Vasev
  • Cambodia: Son Ngoc Thanh
  • Chile: Oscar Escudero Otárola
  • Cuba: Juan Blas Hernández
  • Combined Syndicates of America: Edward Allen Carter Jr., William Edward Foster, Daniel Webster Hoan, Campbell Carrington Johnson, James Kelly Parsons, Hyman Godalia Rickover, David Monroe Shoup
  • Commune of France: Henri Adeline, Florimond Bonte, Jean-Édouard Verneau
  • El Salvador: Salvador Castañeda Castro, Maximiliano Hernández Martínez
  • French Republic: Paul Reynaud
  • Germany: Wilhelm II, Wilhelm III (civilian & military)
  • Greece: Georgios Papandreou
  • Illyria: Stjepan Radić
  • Latvia: Constitutional Assembly
  • Lebanon: Anthony Peter Arida
  • Kurdistan: Bakr Sidqi
  • Malaya: Zhuang Mingli
  • Mountain Republic: Ali Mitayev
  • Ottoman Empire: Abdülmecid II
  • Papua New Guinea: Sumsuma
  • Paraguay: Higinio Morínigo Martínez
  • Russia: Pavel Milyukov
  • Serbia: Petar Zivkovic
  • Shandong: Wu Huawen, Lu Jin
  • Siam: Phraya Phaholponpayuhasena, Rama IX, Paribatra Sukhumbhand, Sarit Thanarat
  • Slovenia: Leon Rupnik
  • Kingdom of Spain: Emilio Mola Vidal
  • Taiwan: Lin Xiantang, Lin Xiongzheng, Xie Xuehong
  • Tripolitania: Ahmad Faqih Hasan
  • Ukraine: Marko Bezruchko, Roman Dashkeyvch, Petro Diachenko, Opanas Fedenko, Oleksii Federov, Vasyl Fylonovych, Nykyfir Hryhoriiv, Yevhen Konovalets, Isaak Mazepa, Mykhailo Omelianovych-Pavlenko, Vsevolod Petriv, Kostiantyn Prisovskyi, Sviatoslav Shramchenko, Oleksandr Shulhyn, Oleksandr Shumskyi, Leonid Stupnytskyi, Mykola Stsiborskyi, Yurii Svirskyi, Yurii Tiutiunnyk, Oleksandr Udovychenko, Omelian Volokh, Vasyl Vyshyvanyi, Oleksandr Zahrodskyi
• Tweaked portraits
  • Argentina: Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, Isaac Francisco Rojas
  • Bohemia: Viktor Hoppe
  • Commune of France: Aubert Frère
  • Galicia & Lodomeria: Hnat Stefaniv, Dmytro Vitovskyi
  • Liangguang: Li Zongren (changed uniform)
• New advisor portraits
  • Germany: Reichskolonialamt
  • Lebanon: Khayreddine al-Ahdab, Rashid Baydoun, Michel Chiha, Philibert Collet, Jacob of Ghazir, Selim el Khoury, Rose Shahfa
  • Princely Federation: Council of Princes
  • Russia: Aleksandr Novikov, Mikhail Yangel
  • Somalia: Assembly of Clans
  • Syria: Army Air Command / Army Naval Arm
  • Taiwan: Chen Fengyuan, Lan Gaochuan, Jian Ji, Cai Peihuo, Riad el-Solh, Jiang Weishui, Liao Wenkui, Liao Wenyi, Lin Xiantang, Lin Xiongzheng, Xie Xuehong
  • Ukraine: Asan Sabri Aivazov, Rostyslav Bereziuk-Voloshyn, Petro Bolbochan, Mykola Boretskyi, Mykhailo Bilynskyi, Volodymyr Chekhivskyi, Ivan Cherniakhovskyi, Dmytro Dontsov, Dmytro Doroshenko, Oleksandr Dovzhenko, Solomon Goldelman, Oleksandr Hadd, Borys Homzyn, Oleksandr Hrekiv, Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, Hryhorii Hrynko, Borys Huber, Andrii Hulyi-Hulenko, Dzhambulat Kanukov, Pavlo Khrystiuk, Andrii Khvylia, Mykola Khvyliovyi, Ihor Kistiakovskyi, Volodymyr Kedrovskyi, Mykola Kochubei, Vasyl Kochubei, Serhii Koroliov, Volodymyr Korostovets, Mykola Kovalevskyi, Levko Kovaliv, Oleksii Kozlovskyi, Ahatanhel Krymskyi, Andrii Livytskyi, Yurii Lypa, Ivan Lytvynenko, Mykola Maksymov, Arnold Margolin, Borys Martos, Andrii Melnyk, Mykola Mikhnovskyi, Zinaida Mirna, Yakiv Moraleyvch, Kyrylo Moskalenko, Vasyl Murashko, Andrii Nikovskyi, Oleh Olzhych & Olena Teliha, Kyrylo Osmak, Serhii Ostrovidov, Yurii Otmarshtain, Viktor Pavlenko, Anatolii Pisotskyi, Andrii Pokrovskyi, Mykhailo Poloz, Viacheslav Prokopovych, Serhii Rudenko, Volodymyr Salskyi, Volodymyr Savchenko-Bilskyi, Fedosii Shchus, Pavlo Shandruk, Oleksandr Shapoval, Serhii Shemet, Oleksandr Skoropys-Yoltukhovskyi, Zakhar Sliusarenko, Olena Stepaniv, Fedir & Mykhailo Tereshchenko, Vasyl Tiutiunnyk, Stepan Tymoshenko, Metropolitan Vasyl, Mykhailo Volobuiev, Serhii Yefremov, Maik Yokhansen, Vsevolod Zmiienko
  • United Baltic Duchy: Baltische Landeswehrkommission
• Added some new generic American, British and German general portraits.
• Added a generic “Council of Advisors” advisor portrait.
• Added new national spirit icons for Chinese splinters, Ethiopia and Ukraine.
• Updated the Irish national focus icons for their army, navy and air force.
• Updated several Indian national focus icons.
• Added new national focus icons for Ukraine.
• Added new flags for the Bharatiya Commune, RadSoc Centroamerica, Hindustan, Madagascar, socialist Ukraine, Taiwan, Transamur and native-led Zimbabwe.
• Tweaked the flag for the West Indies Federation.
• Updated the flag render of Kolchak-led Transamur
• Fixed NatPop Egypt using the wrong flag.
• Updated the icons for the Artillery traits for commanders.
• Moved and resized the paper clip icon used in all event pictures.
• Added and tweaked the icons, names and models for the tanks and planes used by multiple countries across the mod.
• Added some custom infantry weapon icons for Austro-Hungarian constituents and White Ruthenia.
• Fixed a Mongolian leader being used as a generic leader portrait.
• Removed the Blackshirt insignia from a vanilla division icon.
• Updated Ireland’s event pictures.
• Updated the resolution and colouring on an old loading screen.

Music Mod

• Reconfigured the Music user interface and reformatted the track titles to ensure they fit into the interface properly.
• Added “Mars Genderang Kemenangan (March to the Sound of Victory)” for Insulindia.
• Removed “Rayuan Pulau Kelapa (Love of the Coconut Island)” for Insulindia.
• Added “Two Brothers Were Going There” for Russia.
• Added “Black Clouds Cover Over the Ruins”, "Cossacks Were Riding", “Ked my pryishla karta (This is the Map)”, "Long Live, Free Ukraine", "Oh, Grow You Dry Oak“, “Oh, On the Mountain the Reapers are Harvesting”, “Oi, vydno selo (Oh, You Can See the Village)”, "There's a Willow in the Field" for Ukraine.
• Fixed music not playing correctly for Azerbaijan, Madagascar, Mali and Zanzibar.
• Fixed “Protect the Yellow River” playing for non-Chinese countries.
• Fixed several tracks from vanilla HOI4 not playing, tweaked when some tracks from vanilla are likely to play, and renamed several vanilla tracks to more Kaiserreich-appropriate titles.

Mapping

• Added more naval bases to the Bharatiya Commune and Princely Federation.
• Added Bastogne as a victory point.
• Fixed the French city of Verdun being too close to the German border.
• Adjusted the shapes of Dalmatia and Syrmia.
• Tweaked Morocco’s provinces.
• Fixed an invalid Moroccan railway.
• Added Terneuzen as a victory point.
• Increased the Infrastructure level in India.
• Updated the eastern Ottoman railway around Kars.
• Re-added the Sea of Marmara as a strategic region, to fix issues with AI pathfinding in the Aegean due to the blocked straits.
• Fixed Iquitos’ location to Peru from Ecuador.
• Improved supply situation in and around Transamur.
• Increased the supply availability between Crimea and Kherson.
• Removed the strait between Courland and Saaremaa.

Other Changes

• North America
  • Rebalanced American war support and stability.
  • Reduced the amount of military factories given by the factory conversion decisions, to avoid hobbling the AI.
  • Increased the priority given by American civil war participants to building military factories during the Second American Civil War.
  • Revised the combat AI for the participants of the Second American Civil War.
  • Replaced the American Union State general Jacob Devers with Robert Danford.
  • Buffed Canada’s starting army and war support.
  • Canada’s NatPops no longer make John Diefenbaker their leader, as Henry Herbert Stevens stays in the position.
  • Adjusted several Canadian and Combined Syndicate character names to include the nicknames they are most commonly known as.
  • Renamed William Zebulon Foster to William Edward Foster, as he was never actually named Zebulon.
  • Nerfed the Combined Syndicates of America commanders Robert Sharon Allen, Smedley Darlington Butler, Evans Fordyce Carlson, Benjamin Oliver Davis Sr, Herbert Charles Heitke, Campbell Carrington Johnson, Robert Hale Merriman, Maurice Rose and David Monroe Shoup, each by one skill level.
  • Nerfed the military advisor traits of the Combined Syndicates of America’s Smedley Darlington Butler, Evans Fordyce Carlson, Bessie Coleman, William Rea Furlong, Eddie August Henry Schneider and David Monroe Shoup.
  • Added Jacob Loucks Devers, from the American Union State, and Campbell Carrington Johnson, as generals for the Combined Syndicates of America.
  • Removed George H. Cannon as a general for the Combined Syndicates of America.
  • Added a Chief of Army role to the Combined Syndicates of America’s commander James Kelly Parsons.
  • Removed Robert Sharon Allen’s Chief of Army role for the Combined Syndicates of America.
  • Added the Armour Officer trait to Robert Sharon Allen, the Organiser trait to Robert Hale Merriman, the Cavalry Officer trait to Benjamin Oliver Davis Sr and the Chief Engineer trait to Hyman Godolia Rickover.
  • Removed the Reckless trait from the Combined Syndicates of America’s Maurice Rose.
  • The Combined Syndicates of America’s naval advisors are now available from either of the “American People's Navy” or “New Naval Plan” national foci, instead of just the former.
  • Nerfed the initial “Red Guards” national spirit for the Combined Syndicates of America.
  • Improved the effect of the Combined Syndicates of America’s “Roll Out The AO-2” and “The Red Dragon” national foci.
  • Increased the duration of the “New European Military Schools” national focus for the Combined Syndicates of America.
  • Revised the AI’s logic in supporting or abandoning Hawaii.
  • Hawaii’s faction-joining decisions are now quicker.
  • The American Union State now leaves any factions if couped by Pelley, and a player-led leader of the Entente can choose to attack him in return.
  • The United States now starts with medium tank designs.
  • Player-controlled United States can now decide whether or not the assassination attempt on Huey Long or Jack Reed is successful.
  • Removed “Canberra” from the America ship name lists, due to its presence being an OTL reference.
• Central America & the Caribbean
  • Added a unique flag for Augusto César Sandino’s Centroamerica.
  • Removed “Fulgencio Batista” from Cuba’s ship name lists.
  • Added party descriptions to Cuba.
  • The Dominican Republic’s Trujillo now loses his advisor roles after being fired.
• South America
  • Demoted Argentina’s Pedro Eugenio Aramburu from Field Marshal to General.
  • Tweaked the map colour of NatPop Brazil.
  • Brazilian puppet Patagonia (the Kingdom of Araucania) now starts with a core on Neuquén.
  • Releasing Brazil now retains Acre and the borderlands for separate decisions.
  • Added a Head of Army role to Brazilian Field Marshal Eurico Gaspar Dutra.
  • Nerfed the Head of Army trait belonged to Brazil’s Euclides de Oliveira Figueiredo.
  • Removed the option to create a puppet Ecuador on the Galapagos Islands, as it resulted in Ecuador getting too many volunteers in subsequent wars.
  • Updated and standardised the names of many Paraguayan characters.
• Western & Southern Europe
  • Added Breton endonyms.
  • Replaced the Union of Britain’s George Sutherland Aitken with George Nathan.
  • Decreased the skill level of the Union of Britain’s Thomas Jacob Hutton.
  • Added Henri Adeline, Florimond Bonte, Georges Revers and Jean-Édouard Verneau as generals to the Commune of France.
  • Added Henri Adeline as a military advisor to the Commune of France.
  • The Commune of France’s Maurice Gamelin is improved to a level 3 field marshal, with a different Chief of Army trait, but now has the Old Guard trait.
  • The Commune of France’s Clement Blanc now has the Artillery Officer trait, Charles Delestraint now has the Armour Officer trait, Diego Brosset has swapped Infantry Officer for Engineer, and Raoul Magrin Vernerey has swapped Adaptable and Infantry Officer for Commando and Harsh Leader.
  • The Commune of France’s Marie-Pierre Koenig now has a Chief of Army role.
  • Increased the army experience reward given to the Commune of France’s “Communal Army” and “Grand Army Reform” national spirits.
  • Countries can no longer choose not to attend the Internationale Congresses.
  • Moved the general Aubert Frère to the Commune of France, from the French Republic.
  • The Commune of France’s Jacques Sadoul is changed from a general to a political advisor.
  • Removed colonial names from the Commune of France’s submarine name list.
  • Added Alessandro Sardi as a general for the Italian Republic.
  • AI-controlled Socialist Republic of Italy will now attempt to perform naval invasions on the Republic of Italy.
  • The Canadian decision to support the Orange Order in socialist-controlled Ireland now spawns Northern Irish units rather than Irish ones.
  • Portugal will now actively try to annex the Congo in peace conferences.
  • Portugal can now intervene in the Third Boer War.
  • Halved the political power cost in the United Kingdom’s reconstruction decisions.
  • The United Kingdom can now ask for the return of Canadian and Australasian fleets.
  • The United Kingdom’s naval national foci have been considerably nerfed.
  • Added the option for a player to refuse handing over the leadership of the Entente to the United Kingdom, while playing a country other than Canada.
• Central & Northern Europe
  • Revised the frequencies at which Austria goes each of its three paths.
  • Pluralist Austria can no longer integrate any parts of Germany.
  • Non-pluralist Austria can now core all of Germany.
  • Austria can no longer potentially integrate the German-speaking part of Switzerland, unless they have reformed the German Empire.
  • Austria and Germany now start with medium tank designs.
  • Austria now retains south Germany when releasing the German Empire, to be decided in its own annexation event.
  • The Austrian-led German Empire, and German splinters, can now integrate German border regions, and no longer get instant cores.
  • Added new descriptions to the late infantry technology for Austria-Hungary and its constituents.
  • Denmark now starts with a core on Greenland, which no longer causes resistance for any other occupying power.
  • Added English translations of Finland’s party names.
  • Lwow is now not automatically given to Poland in the latter’s annexation event, unless its controller chooses to give all of Galicia & Lodomeria to Poland.
  • Updated the events surrounding the division of Galicia to Poland and Ukraine.
  • Germany’s integration of Austria, Slovenia and Switzerland is now compliance-based.
  • Improved Manfred von Richtofen’s unique trait.
  • Added air bases as rewards to German aviation national foci.
  • Improved Germany’s AI at defending from naval invasions.
  • Expanded the release of the North German Federation to match the standard of the other three German splinters.
  • Germany now starts with interwar anti-tank technology.
  • Germany’s “Anti-Russian Foreign Policy” national spirit is now removed from countries that join Russia’s faction.
  • Replaced the news event picture from the “Fall of Amsterdam” event.
  • The Netherlands’ integration of Flanders is now compliance-based.
  • Decreased the war-related stability debuff given to the Nordic Federation by the “Nordic Neutrality” national spirit.
  • The Nordic Federation will now send volunteers to Finland and Germany in the Weltkrieg.
  • Reichspakt Poland will now get kicked from their faction, should they declare war on a Habsburg-led Austria during the Weltkrieg.
  • Republican Poland having a failed nationalist coup will now prevent the nationalist uprising from occurring.
  • AI-controlled Republican Poland will now have a nationalist coup less often.
  • Increased Poland’s priorities in completing its economic decisions.
  • Poland can now only complete Operation Parasol if it has less than 20% surrender progress.
  • Poland will now lose some monarchy influence when the King appoints Studnicki after the election, even if the Circle won the election.
  • Tweaked the AI’s event choice priority in Poland’s Clover Revolution.
  • Changed the icon for Poland’s “20th Century Cavalry Tactics” national spirit.
  • Releasing the Rhenish German splinter state now requires control of Cologne or Essen.
  • Added Bogumil Vošnjak as the NatPop leader of Slovenia.
  • Added Leon Rupnik as a general for Slovenia.
  • Increased the amount of steel that Sweden gains in Kiruna.
  • Updated several of Switzerland’s national focus icons.
  • The Kingdom of Two Sicilies Confederation now gives annexed territory to its Italian puppets.
  • Added two starting military factories to the Kingdom of Two Sicilies.
• Eastern & Southeast Europe
  • The AI will now prioritise giving lands in the Balkans to an ally, rather than releasing puppets.
  • Added an alternate description Bulgaria’s “Anti-Belgrade Pact”, should the Belgrade Pact be already defeated.
  • The Estonian admiral Johan Pitka no longer starts in the United Baltic Duchy.
  • Added party descriptions to Latvia.
  • Latvia can now organise a state visit to NatPop Russia, so long as the latter is Realpolitik.
  • Buffed several Latvia traits, national spirits and national foci.
  • Added more trains to Latvia’s starting stockpiles.
  • Added air bases to decisions and national foci rewards for Lithuania and the United Baltic Duchy.
  • Added option in Macedonia’s annexation event, for it to be offered to Bulgaria or Serbia in exchange for an alliance.
  • Increased the amount of war support drain that Romania receives from integration of Transylvania.
  • Halved the maluses incurred by Romania’s “Great Game”.
  • Romania can now attack Austria immediately if Austria is at war, ignoring normal revolt preparations in Transylvania.
  • Romania is now able to core Bucovina without owning Transylvania.
  • Romania will now no longer try to join Russia’s faction if they previously were at war.
  • Russia’s annexation event can now result in the release of the Mountain Republic, made up of part of the Northern Caucasus under Russian control
  • Made multiple tweaks to Russia’s political power, stability, and war support situation.
  • Expansionist Russia can now invite Romania to the Moscow Accord, so long as Germany has been beaten and Serbia is also in the faction.
  • Moved Russian military advisors Sergey Korolyov and Sergey Rudenko to Ukraine, replacing them with Aleksandr Novikov and Mikhail Yangel.
  • Added a volunteer limit bonus to the “Twilight Struggle” national spirit, associated with the Russian/Entente event against the Internationale.
  • Imperial Russia can now choose to just empower the Hohenzollerns for a puppet German Empire, instead of a Romanov.
  • Socialist Russia now uses a slightly different green.
  • Socialist Russia will now declare war on Central Asia before joining the Internationale.
  • Nerfed Socialist Russia’s war support and starting stability.
  • Added more AutDem party popularity for Russia’s Wrangel path.
  • Serbia will now keep its core on Montenegro, if it loses the Fourth Balkan War.
  • Added a two year truce and non-aggression pact to the Belgrade Pact’s Treaty of Budapest with Austria.
  • Added generic Ukrainian name lists.
  • Tweaked costs of several Eastern European Defence Cooperation decisions.
  • Replaced the consumer goods cost from Eastern European Defence Cooperation contributions, with a political power cost.
  • The United Baltic Duchy’s integration of Latgale is now compliance-based.
  • Decreased the weekly stability loss from White Ruthenia’s “Solidifying Our Identity” national spirit.
  • Added a new description a White Ruthenian upgrade to the infantry weapon technology, featuring Najman’s hand mortar.
• Africa
  • Adamawa and Cameroon can now claim and integrate Ubangi-Shari on their own during the annexation event, not just when granted by their overlord or ally.
  • Removed Cape Verde-Guinea as a releasable puppet, as Cape Verde remains an integral part of Portugal.
  • Adjusted the starting borders of the Manikongo’s secession from Mittelafrika.
  • Added additional outcomes for Ethiopia’s DKAEB event chain.
  • Changed some Ethiopian national spirit icons.
  • The French Republic’s “Indestructible Bonds” national focus now gives claims on the states changed between the French Republic and the United Kingdom.
  • The French Republic’s “Expand Communications in the Colonies” national focus now gives a bonus to the Psychological Warfare agency upgrade, if the “La Résistance” DLC is enabled.
  • Changed the French Republic’s starting occupation laws, to match the in-game lore.
  • The French Republic now gets a compliance bonus on Chad, after the completion of the “Fate of Equatorial Africa” national focus, and the merging of the area’s administration with French West Africa.
  • The French Republic can now no longer call its allies in to help with the native revolts, unless facing three or more at once.
  • The French Republic no longer uses African-style generic commanders.
  • Increased the weekly stability debuff and decreased the party popularity stability modifier applied to the German Government in Exile’s “On Borrowed Time” national spirit.
  • Removed Katanga’s national focus to integrate itself into Südwestafrika.
  • Tweaked the visibility of some Katanagan national foci dependent on availability.
  • Adjusted the conditions for Mittelafrika’s collapse. It will now only happen as a result of von Göring’s failure to quell the revolts against his rule, and for the German Government in Exile.
  • Added leader descriptions to Mittelafrika.
  • Replaced the stability bonus in Mittelafrika’s “Spirit of von Lettow-Vorbeck” national spirit with a war support bonus.
  • Kenya and Nigeria are now allowed to secede during the Mittelafrikan collapse, if not previously subjugated.
  • Von Göring’s Mittelafrika can no longer become free before dealing with its revolts.
  • Added a tooltip for Mittelafika’s von Göring resigning, so that it's clearer this is what is happening, and removed its associated extensive stability and political power penalties.
  • Rewrote several Mittelafrikan events, including the setup for the Kikuyu uprising. Also removed several outdated events.
  • Removed Ludwig Bockholt and Theodor von Hassel as potential replacement leaders of Mittelafrika.
  • Added party names and leaders to Nyasaland.
  • South Africa’s Third Boer War peace now only requires a 180 day stalemate, instead of an entire year.
  • Added bypasses to two of South Africa’s Nuweveld national foci.
  • Rebalanced much of the Third Boer War.
• Caucasus & Middle-East
  • Alash Orda, Bukhara, Khiva, and Turkestan can now claim and core Ashkhabad.
  • Tweaked the map colours for Alash Orda and Khiva, and updated it entirely to Turkestan.
  • Georgia can join the Reichspakt when World Tension is over 75%.
  • Iraq’s Yusuf Salman Yusuf no longer uses a picture of a living person.
  • Added several new political advisors to Lebanon.
  • Tweaked multiple Lebanese events, modifiers and traits.
  • Added more content to Lebanon’s war with Syria, and its build-up.
  • Added an option for player-controlled Najd & Hasa to leave the Cairo Pact.
  • Removed a reference referring to Mustafa Kemal as “Atatürk”, which he would not be called in the Kaiserreich timeline.
  • Decreased some of the political power gain for the late-game Ottoman Empire.
  • NatPop Ottomans will now also have Azerbaijan rebel against them, during their large revolt.
  • Removed the ability of the NatPop Ottomans to join the Moscow Accord after defeating their large revolt.
  • Added Turkish endonyms for Albania, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Greece, Western Persia and Tunisia.
  • Decreased the cost of several of Turkey’s expansion decisions.
  • Updated the icon of Turkey’s “Turkish-Iraqi Economic Accord” national spirit.
  • Tweaked the effect of a few of Yemen’s national foci.
• East Asia
  • Added a description to Anqing’s Sun Liren.
  • AI China will now always annex Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang.
  • Removed the “Autonomy” puppets of the above Chinese conquests.
  • Chinese concessions will always be returned by socialist countries, if they are requested.
  • China can no longer declare unification if a neighbouring country is still hostile.
  • Clarified the requirement of the Northwest War being over, for China’s decisions to ally with the Kumul Khatate, Ma Clique and Xinjiang.
  • Wuhan now merges from its constituent parts, should it be made the capital of China.
  • An AI-controlled Chinese splinter that controls Beijing will never now accept a submission demand.
  • Adjusted East Turkestan’s national foci to account for potentially being a puppet.
  • Fengtian can now be invited to the Japanese economic sphere.
  • Japan’s “Operation Ichi-Gou” now bypasses if the strongest Chinese splinter is defeated.
  • Japan’s peace with Germany will now result in all German allies being removed from the Legation Council.
  • Japan’s “Fading Sun” mission will autocomplete if Japan is directly invaded successfully.
  • Japan will now remove countries from the Co-Prosperity Sphere economic bloc if they are puppeted by another country.
  • Japan will now add non-aggression pacts and truces upon peacing out with European countries, and mutual wargoals will be removed.
  • Removed land-based carrier planes from Japan’s starting air force.
  • Renamed Liangguang’s HH Kung to Kong Xiangxi.
  • The Nanjing clique now doesn’t lose the “Conspicuous Kleptocracy” national spirit until it completes the “Government by Coercion” national focus.
  • Manchu Qing will lose the general Sun Liren, if he is with them and they adopt a pro-German outlook.
  • Merged Qing’s “Demand Warlords Bend the Knee” national focus into the “Pacify the Nation” national focus, to avoid them having a focus with potentially no effect.
  • Russia can now choose whether to retain Port Arthur or not when releasing Manchuria.
  • Added Wu Huawen and Lu Jin to Shandong as generals and Military High Command advisors.
  • Changed the Military High Command trait of Shandong’s Jin Yune.
  • Shanghai now turns PatAut or NatPop if puppeted.
  • Rebalanced some of Shanxi’s Balance of Power mechanics to have a more even outcome.
  • Sichuan is now set as a potential government when Chen Jiongming arrives.
  • Sichuan’s Tian Songyao is now retired if Liu Wenhui loses the “Two Lius' War”.
  • Added descriptions to Taiwan’s new puppet leaders, and changed the name given to the island depending on its ideology.
  • Added seconds-in-command and political advisors to Taiwan.
  • Added a division limit bonus to Transamur’s “Greater Transamur Ambitions” national spirit.
  • Yunnan’s Zhu De can now align with Chen Mingshu, if the Left Kuomintang are defeated in the League Collapse War.
• South Asia & Oceania
  • AI Afghanistan will now always accept Russia's demand of subjugation if isolated.
  • Added Henry Douglas Wynter as a general for Australasia.
  • Increased the level of Australasian generals Horace Clement Hugh Robertson and Iven Giffard Mackay, adding the “Desert Fox” trait to the former.
  • Renamed the Bharatiya Commune’s Sardar Patel to Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel.
  • Renamed several of the Bharatiya’s political parties.
  • Removed the delay in uprisings involving the Bharatiya Commune and Princely Federation.
  • Increased the starting stability and war support for the Bharatiya Commune.
  • Moved the commanders Kodandera Madappa Cariappa, Jayanto Nath Chaudhuri and Satyawant Mallanna Shrinagesh to the Bharatiya Commune, from the Princely Federation, Madras and Mysore, respectively.
  • Removed the Bharatiya Commune’s commanders Naseem Haider and Mahendra Pratap.
  • Burma now starts the game with cores on Kachin, Upper and Lower Shan.
  • Expanded Cambodia’s annexation event options to now include the country being released as a republic, or a kingdom with one of two different dynasties.
  • The Dutch East Indies accepting the Congress of Batavia now causes them to be instantly annexed by the Netherlands.
  • Fiji is no longer given back to Australasia, if puppeted.
  • The Dominion of India is now known as the “Republic of India” if it leaves the Entente, rather than just “India”.
  • The Dominion of India no longer renames itself to just "India" after reunifying India.
  • Increased the starting army and stockpiles of the Dominion of India and Princely Federation.
  • Improved the starting “Rifle Division” template for the Dominion of India.
  • Added three starting offmap military factories to the Dominion of India.
  • Added a tooltip to let the player know which states will be transferred upon India seizing Ceylon.
  • Added an option for India to be declared on by Germany, should the former seize Ceylon.
  • Replaced the manpower requirement in Indian national focuses with a World Tension level requirement.
  • Added Hindustan as its own releasable, separate to the Bharatiya Commune.
  • Indian splinters now get a claim on Sikkim upon releasing Bhutan or Nepal.
  • Each Indian splinter will now try not to pursue territorial claims until after reunification.
  • Renamed several Indian national foci.
  • Added Sarojini Naidu as SocLib, Madan Mohan Malaviya as SocCon, Madhav Sadashivrao Golwalkar as AutDem/PatAut and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar as NatPop puppet leaders of India, respectively.
  • Replaced Chin Peng with Zhuang Mingli as the leader of socialist Malaya, due to the former only starting secondary education in 1936.
  • Moved the commander Akbar Khan to Pakistan, from the Bharatiya Commune.
  • Added party descriptions to Papua New Guinea, and a socialist leader and second-in-command.
  • Increased the Consumer Goods debuff for the Princely Federations’ “Backwards Economy” national spirit.
  • Replaced the free unit spawn from a Princely Federations’ event, with a minor war support bonus.
  • Removed the Princely Federations’ “Pact with the North” national focus, since that will now always happen by necessity.
  • Removed the initial division recovery rate bonus in the Princely Federation’s “Decentralised Rule” national spirit.
  • Replaced the division recovery rate malus with an organisational malus in the Princely Federation’s “Rebellious Princes” national spirit.
  • Improved the AI for the revolters against the Princely Federation.
  • Nerfed the Princely Federation’s starting stability and equipment.
  • Added some Operation names to Siam.
• Miscellaneous
  
  • Added an option to the in-game start menu, linking to the page where a player can report a bug directly to the Devs, allowing them to be fixed more quickly.
  • Enabling integration mid-game now applies the correct resistance and occupation law.
  • Increased baseline unit limit bonus to +8 from +5.
  • Added two new Ukrainian quotes for the loading screen.
  • Replaced a Boris Savinkov quote with one that was said by Boris himself, instead of a character in a book he had written.
  • Renamed the “Artillery Specialist” trait to “Artillery Leader”. Made “Fortress Buster” trait now available to commanders holding either “Artillery Leader” or “Engineer” traits, and the Artillery Military High Command role is now unlocked by “Artillery Leader” instead of “Fortress Buster”.
  • Buffed the effects of several political advisor traits.
  • Overhauled the tank design templates and armour division composition, and number of tank divisions that the AI will try to research and create.
  • Tweaked the AI’s air production priority between close air support and fighters.
  • Decreased the cost of awarding medals to division commanders by 50%.
  • Increased the AI’s priority in circumstantially defending their allies’ borders.
  • Generic advisors no longer have the “Ideological Crusader” or “Quartermaster General” traits.
  • Increased the AI’s priority in hiring a Chief of Army, in comparison to Chiefs of Navy and Air Force.
  • Improved the AI’s decisions in choosing the Army Academy spirits.
  • Added generic Arab name lists.
  • Increased the AI’s willingness to perform naval invasions against enemies with a larger navy.
  • Multiple typo corrections and text inconsistency removals.
  Change notes continue in the comments due to Reddit's character limit.
  

We hope you enjoy playing Kaiserreich as much as we did making it!
- The KR4 Team: 84F8D8, Alpinia, Arvidus, Augenis, Blackfalcon501, Carmain, Chazem, Chiang Kai-shrek, Chiron29, Cody, Conchobhar, DuoDex, El Daddy, Fedex, Flamefang, Gaboemi, Gideones, Hamfast, hildagrim, Ido, Igor050301, JazzyHugh, Jeankedezeehond, Jonny BL, Juliet Wehrwolf, Kano, katieluka, Kennedy, kergely, KFateweaver, Klyntar King, Krčo, Luwofe, Matoro, McOmghall, ~mw~ // miwaco, NukeGaming, Owenomaly, PPsyrius, Pelmen, RagnoStrangeros, Rnk, Shiroe, Sonny O’Cad, SuperGreenBeans, suzuha, The Alpha Dog, The Irredentista, The Italian Jojo, Vidyaország, and Zimbabwe Salt Co.

Our home game has been playing with a bombpot button where when the dealer and this button eclipse, there is a dealer's choice bombpot. After about a year of this, I wanted to share our favorite format, Zombie.
Zombie is a split pot game that is derived from PLO where each player gets 5 cards and one community board is dealt (3 card flop, 1 card turn, 1 card river). Each player must play exactly 2 cards from their hand for these community boards, same as PLO. HOWEVER, if a player folds, their hand becomes an additional board, with their hand exposed to match stage of the original community board (i.e. if on the turn, 4 cards from the folded hand are shown). Additionally, on the river, folded hands do NOT become another board, as we have found this to be too chaotic (though, there is a variation where river folds do become a board, we call this Ultimate Zombie). edit: the 2 card combination does not have to be the same for all boards, the best possible 2 card combo is played for each board.
So in a hand, the action starts as such: there is one board worth 100% of the pot, but if a player then raises on the flop and a player folds, their hand is immediately laid out like a board and three of the those cards are exposed and each board is now worth 50% of the total pot. Action then resumes on the player to the left of the folder, who can then raise/call/fold. On the turn, 1 card is exposed for each of the community boards. If a player then folds on this street, their hand becomes another community board, with 4 cards immediately exposed. At the end of the turn, it is then known how many boards are being played, and how much of the pot each board is worth.
It sounds confusing, but the action this game generates can pretty easily result in multi-way all ins.
There is also another variation called Muck Card Zombie, where each player gets 6 cards and discards one to create a second board to be used at the start of the hand.

Hi, just wanted to start by saying that this post is a little... disjointed as I'm really confused about stuff and don't know what needs to be mentioned and what isn't. It also is sort of a rant so I apologize for that. I'd really appreciate your patience!
I'm 20M, a college student who lives in a dorm. I didn't really want to at first, but then again, I didn't prefer staying at home because my parents are a little obsessive when it comes to me- kinda feels like I was a rat who ran away from a trap only to dive headfirst into another. Anyway, I think I've had social anxiety since before I was 10, but its just kept getting worse. Sometimes I surprise myself by asking the professors a question in class or taking initiative on some activity, but I usually shy out of one on one confrontations with people I don't really know. Recently I'd attended a debate contest which I spent quite a lot of time preparing for, only to get stage fright and almost pass out (along with trembling, sweating, losing focus, forgetting what I was supposed to say). Luckily my teammate carried me through it lol. We lost because of me though, which sucks.
My dorm situation is horrible, and I can't move out to live in an apartment because my family can neither afford it (I've tried to earn online but barely get 3 dollars a month, as part time in my country isn't realistic while studying full time) and my college doesn't allow students to work or live on their own unless its with their parents or a guardian who can vouch for them. I have neither of those benefits since my home is 600kms away :/
I have to share a room with two other guys who keep to themselves for the most part, except for when it comes to noise. They usually keep their phones playing music or watch IG reels on pretty high volume while I constantly listen to music with my earphones to counteract that (I often have trouble sleeping because I'm a really light sleeper, and they don't seem to care about others while I make sure to be quiet when they sleep). The music they listen to almost grates on me and while I ask them to lower the volume or use their earphones, they find it a chore and think they can trick me by lowering it and later increasing it -_-. I've already changed roommates once because of this exact same problem, but it seems like playing stuff loudly on your phone is common and normal to everyone. I don't want to appear as someone who can't adjust although that is exactly what I am. Telling the people in charge will make me appear as a snitch who didn't try to work it out with my roommates. I'm scared of my current roommates because they can make my life harder if I talk about a problem I didn't appear to have before (I've stayed silent too long). My previous roommates saw me as a nag, because I actively argued for my sake then but they didn't seem to understand or even want to compromise. That and the food situation being like a cafeteria thing (like, I couldn't focus on what I was eating when I felt judged all the time), I was constantly surrounded by people for over a year and a half and I never got used to it. I feel like it might've worsened my social anxiety because I never got time to myself. My grades have dropped (I used to be really good at studying but trying to study in my room is a nightmare) and my self confidence is in hell. I'm also gay and in the closet so worrying about being punched to death is on my everyday list of worries :D
I don't understand why I'm not getting used to constantly being around people. Maybe its because I'm introverted and never get time to myself? So is it really social anxiety or me being burnt out?
I've started doing this CBT thing for social anxiety on YT, though I don't know how much this might help. (I'm currently at home, which is allowing me to focus on trying to take measures) Because I think the problem might be that I'm introverted, and being extroverted instead might help better?
I really really enjoy being alone, but that is not an option I can have. There aren't any private quiet spaces near my dorms, and the nearest libraries aren't anywhere I can walk to. (The college library closes at 4 PM.)
Any advice would help!

The problem
I am designing a procedural terrain system for a large, but fixed size, open world game. I've been writing software on and off professionally for ~8 years, but I have only been working on games for about 3 months, and I am new to C#.
The terrain scale is 1 vertex per meter at max LOD, desired world size is approximately 3-5 square km.
The goal is to statically generate the world ahead of time - this was chosen because I wanted to place water features, such as lakes and streams, in a somewhat "authentic" (as opposed to realistic) manner. EG, water is allowed to "disappear" into a sufficiently large lake, not every stream needs to necessarily find an off-map outlet, but I don't want streams to just vanish into local depressions in the terrain, and if I have a great deal of water flowing into a lake, that lake should probably have an outlet.
I am generating some source data from a hydrological erosion simulation - basically I am tracking the errosive 'droplet' positions and volumes over time, and using that as a baseline data source to decide where to place rivers, lakes, etc.
Unexpectedly, (at least for me) drawing lakes has proven to way more challenging than drawing streams/rivers - "settling" the volume to a given level has been giving me some serious headaches. Conceptually, the problem isn't super hard - water volumes move into open volumes and can't move up-hill - but although I've come up with several implementations that yield promising final results I have been struggling with anything that completes in a sensible amount of time (my tentative target here is sub 5 minutes, which should give you a solid idea of just how poorly this has been going for me).
What I've done to address it so far
So far, my implementations have been based around either flood-fills with a volume budget (this gave great results but took FOREVER) or a cellular automata style approach wherein each grid cell pushes water to lower height neighbors (gives decent results, much more performant, but still nowhere close to where it needs to be, and has some predictable trouble settling at a fixed height for a given lake boundary).
Where my head is at currently
My two "big ideas" so far to try to scrape better performance out of this process are, in brief, "do it in parallel" and "get better data locality" - but both of those are butting up pretty strongly against the nature of the problem.
Big fundamental issue #1 - everything cares deeply about the water level of neighboring cells, and volumes have arbitrary and expensive-to-identify boundaries. EG, I can't figure out a good way to partition operations so that threads wouldn't step on each-others toes or so that I can partition smaller areas to process to keep stuff cache local. Like, I can split stuff up, sure, but I have to consolidate across areas where work was done, and how do I do that and know when I'm done without "being able to see" the whole state.
Big fundamental issue #2 - The map is too ****ing big. If I did make copies of the state to work on in chunks and have a consolidation pass for at some point, I'm liable to run into OOM challenges. This feels solvable - like for example I could stuff the world data into an MMAP'd file - but I'm not sure how to dial in reasonably sized "chunks" to pull out of it or to try to enforce how much "standing memory" I'm allocating when I pull stuff out of storage to work on it. EG, what patterns do I use to make sure I'm disposing of stuff when I'm done with it and ensure I only spin up N threads at once, etc.
The question
What techniques or technologies do the Unity developers of Reddit suggest as strong candidates to address this?
Should I use unity's job system, or is this a better fit for C#'s native threads?
Is this a point where I should be considering looking outside of C# for additional performance? I have strongly considered falling back to Rust, but as much as I like finding excuses to write in Rust introducing a second language to a project also introduces a metric ***ton of incidental complexity I'd rather avoid.
Is there another way to frame this problem space algorithmically that could elide some of these issues?

This post is part of a series looking at the massive amount of 'rhyming' (and occasionally rhyming) recursivity I believe exists between (a) the homecoming of Petyr Baelish to the Fingers and (b) the homecoming of Theon Greyjoy to Pyke.
While this series/post can be read simply as a study 'for its own sake' of the curious recursion between these storylines, it is my belief that the 'rhyming' explored here between the stories of Petyr and Theon exists (at least in part) to foreshadow that, like Theon, Petyr Littlefinger, is (among other things) a scion of ironborn kings, because Petyr is Hoare-ish: I.e. because Petyr's blood is (in some part) the blood of the ironborn kings of House Hoare of Orkmont and, later, Harrenhal.
You can find an index of every post I've made on the topic of a Hoare-ish Littlefinger [HERE].
Even if I'm wrong about Littlefinger's lineage, the 'rhyming' recursivity between the homecomings of Theon and Petyr detailed in this series remains, and certainly merits attention.
NOTE: In what follows, all uncited quotes are from ASOS Sansa VI, which describes Petyr's homecoming to his "Drearfort" tower of the 'Smallest Finger', or ACOK Theon I, which describes Theon's homecoming to "drear" Pyke.
As in past posts, I sometimes use "→" as shorthand for "prefigures" and/or "informs" and/or "is reworked by" and/or "finds a recursive 'rhyme' in".
As in: ACOK Theon I → ASOS Sansa VI.
This post picks up straight-away from where Part 6 left off. You can read Part 6 [HERE].
If you want to begin at the beginning, Part 1 is [HERE]. The other posts in this (sub)series are indexed at the link.

Theon's First Sight-Seeing Trip To The Deck of the Myraham → Petyr's Sight-Seeing Trip With Sansa

When Petyr and Sansa go on a sight-seeing tour of his lands, we read:

When the rains let up, Petyr walked with her around his holdings, which took less than half a day. He owned a lot of rocks, just as he had said. There was one place where the tide came jetting up out of a blowhole to shoot thirty feet into the air, and another where someone had chiseled the seven-pointed star of the new gods upon a boulder. Petyr said that marked one of the places the Andals had landed, when they came across the sea to wrest the Vale from the First Men.
Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog. "Mine own smallfolk," Petyr said, though only the oldest seemed to know him. There was a hermit's cave on his land as well, but no hermit. "He's dead now, but when I was a boy my father took me to see him. The man had not washed in forty years…

To me, much of that language from Petyr's 'sight-seeing tour' feels immediately like a kaleidoscopic, 'rhyming' recursion of what he read when Theon is standing on the deck of the Myraham in order to take in the sight of castle Pyke as the ship sails by:

The point of land on which the Greyjoys had raised their fortress had once thrust like a sword into the bowels of the ocean, but the waves had hammered at it day and night until the land broke and shattered, thousands of years past. All that remained were three bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water like the pillars of some sea god's temple, while the angry waves foamed and crashed among them.

In an appendix, I attempt to map out in detail how this 'rhyming' works, but it's my hope that having read those passages, you can already 'smell' the 'rhyming', such that the appendix is skimmable overkill underlining a mostly-obvious point.
Here I'll just note a few highlights (all of which are further explained in the appendix):

• "bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water" [on which the Greyjoys and their servants live] ➔ "Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog"
  
• three bare and barren (as in infertile) islands in the sea → a blowhole where the tide "came jetting… to shoot thirty feet into the air", like a sperm whale
  "three bare…" → "thirty feet…" [see: 'bare feet']
  
• "the angry waves foamed and crashed among them" → "the Andals… came… to wrest the Vale from the First Men"
  

  Even the ironborn—the fierce, sea-roving warriors who must have at first thought themselves safe upon their isles—fell to the wave of Andal conquest. (TWOIAF)
  

• "the angry waves foamed and crashed among… a dozen towering stacks of rock… like the pillars of some sea god's temple" created when those "angry waves… hammered at… the point of land… thousands of years past" → "the Andals… came across the sea [and] landed… [and] chiseled the seven-pointed star of the new gods upon a boulder", thousands of years past
  

All That Remained

We're told that three rock islands and twelve stacks of rock, likened to "some sea god's temple", were "all that remained" of Pyke's sword-shaped penisula after the angry waves "hammered" it:

All that remained were three bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water like the pillars of some sea god's temple, while the angry waves foamed and crashed among them.

This 'rhymes' first of all with Petyr's boulder "chiseled [with] the seven-pointed star of the new gods" being all that remains to "mark… the place… the Andals had landed" with their steel swords.
But it also 'rhymes' with and prefigures the "hermit's cave" (another rock formation!) being all that remains of the hermit that used to live on Petyr's land:

There was a hermit's cave on his land as well, but no hermit. "He's dead now…."

Notice that the Greyjoy rock formations (a) number three and twelve, which are highly significant numbers in Christianity (twelve apostles, holy trinity), and (b) are likened to "some sea god's temple". Petyr's hermit's cave thus 'answers' Pyke's 'temple', because hermits are traditionally associated with religion, especially Christianity. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermit.)

Remained → Rained?

Consider also the lines that set the stage for the sight-seeing 'field trip' Petyr takes Sansa:

It was eight long days until Lysa Arryn arrived. On five of them it rained, while Sansa sat bored and restless by the fire, beside the old blind dog.

Compare with the line about the sea god's "temple":

All that remained were three bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water like the pillars of some sea god's temple, while the angry waves foamed and crashed among them.

• Three barren islands remained → On five days of eight it rained (such that three rain-free — i.e. 'barren' — days remained)
  
• Angry waves foamed and crashed → days of rain + (mad, angry) Lysa Arryn (and her "storms") arrived
  
• structure: "while the angry waves foamed and crashed among them" → "while Sansa sat bored and restless by the fire, beside the old dog"
  "foamed and crashed" → "sat bored and restless"
  "among them" → "by the fire, beside the old dog"
  
• numbers: three, twelve → eight, five
  

Sight-Seeing At Lordsport

After Theon takes in the sight of castle Pyke from the deck of the Myraham, he goes below deck, where he makes the captain's daughter swallow his "seed". He then tells her he'll be leaving her behind when they reach shore and goes back up on deck to take in the sight of Lordsport:

She looked at him stupidly, so he left her there.
The Myraham was rounding a wooded point. Below the pine-clad bluffs, a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets. The big cog stayed well out from them, tacking. Theon moved to the bow for a better view.

Notice that Theon is pretty much explicitly sight seeing there (inasmuch as he "moved to the bow for a better view".)
Where Theon leaves the captain's daughter, whom he's grown bored of, to (in effect) go sight-seeing (which causes her to start crying), Petyr relieves the Hand's daughter's boredom by taking her sight-seeing (after it stops raining):

When the rains let up, Petyr walked with her around his holdings, which took less than half a day. He owned a lot of rocks, just as he had said.

Theon's view as he comes on deck to survey the approach to Lordsport seems to (further) inform some of the things Petyr sees when walks around his rocky holding holdings with Sansa. Compare this—

The Myraham was rounding a wooded point. Below the pine-clad bluffs, a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets. The big cog stayed well out from them, tacking.

—and this:

Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog.

I'll detail this 'rhyme' in an appendix, but I hope you can already smell it. The bottom line(s):

• "The Myraham was rounding a wooded point" → "Petyr walked with her [i.e. Sansa] around his holdings" (where his holding are a rocky point)
  
• "Below the pine-clad bluffs, a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets. The big cog stayed well out from them, tacking." → "Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog."
  tacking (cog) → tacky → sticky → peat bog (sticky place to get stuck)
  

Lords Botley & Baelish

Theon then sees the castle of Lord Botley:

He saw the castle first, the stronghold of the Botleys. When he was a boy it had been timber and wattle, but Robert Baratheon had razed that structure to the ground. Lord Sawane had rebuilt in stone, for now a small square keep crowned the hill. Pale green flags drooped from the squat corner towers, each emblazoned with a shoal of silvery fish.

The sight of the stone castle causes Theon to remember something from his boyhood that isn't there anymore (i.e. Lord Botley's old timber and wattle tower), much as the sight of the hermit's cave reminds Petyr of the hermit from his boyhood. And just as Petyr's hermit is missing, so is Lord Botley, who Theon think might come to meet him—

As the Myraham made her way landward, Theon paced the deck restlessly, scanning the shore. He had not thought to find Lord Balon himself at quayside, but surely his father would have sent someone to meet him. Sylas Sourmouth the steward, Lord Botley, perhaps even Dagmer Cleftjaw.

—but who does not.
Where Theon's sight-seeing entails a keep "rebuilt in stone" that triggers memories of Robert Baratheon's invasion, Petyr's sight-seeing entails a chiseled boulder that marks the spot of the Andal invasion of the Vale.
Where the first thing Theon sees as he approaches port is a "small" stone keep with "squat" towers, the first thing Petyr points out to Sansa as they approach land is his own "small", three-story stone tower.
It also 'just so happens' that Lord Botley's sigil—

a shoal of silvery fish on pale green

—prefigures both Petyr's current sigil—

a field of silver mockingbirds on green

—and, by virtue of being "pale green", the "light green" of Petyr's grandfather's sigil as well.
Lord Botley's name, "Sawane", reads almost like a phonetic spelling of [Samhain]. Given the 'rhyme' between the Botley and Baelish arms, this simply piles more fuel on the fire of Littlefinger being involved in some kind of religious heresy. (See my Littlefinger is Hoare-ish series.)
Finally, I wonder whether this line re: Botley's tower—

Robert Baratheon had razed that structure to the ground.

—may have informed this description of Baelish Tower:

A handful of sheep were wandering about the base of the flint tower, grazing on the thin grass that grew between the sheepfold and thatched stable. Sansa had to step carefully; there were pellets everywhere.

Dubious Protection, Animal-Ridden, Aswarm With Sh__.

The next line of ACOK Theon I continues the prefiguration of Petyr's homecoming — including quite specifically those "pellets everywhere" — in all kinds of ways:

Beneath the dubious protection of the fish-ridden little castle lay the village of Lordsport, its harbor aswarm with ships.

Where Lordsport is "aswarm with ships", the Drearfort's yard is aswarm with shit, so to speak. (Sheepshit.)
Where Botley's is a "fish-ridden little castle", the Drearfort has recently been rid of six of its sheep—

How many sheep do I have at present, Kella?"
… "Three and twenty, m'lord. There was nine and twenty, but Bryen's dogs killed one and we butchered some others and salted down the meat."

—and it's a 'dog-ridden little castle' for certain:

Each floor was but a single room. The servants lived and slept in the kitchen at ground level, sharing the space with a huge brindled mastiff and a half-dozen sheep-dogs.

Where Botley's stronghold offers "dubious protection", "guard" duty at the Drearfort is carried out by the 'dubious' tandem of an eighty-year old man and his dogs—

He looked to be at least eighty, but he wore a studded brigantine and a longsword at his side. …
"…Bryen—didn't I name you captain of the guard the last time I was here?"
"You did, my lord. You said you'd be getting some more men too, but you never did. Me and the dogs stand all the watches."

—dogs who are 'dubious protectors' of the very thing they're supposed to protect most: Petyr's "vast herds" of sheep:

"There was nine and twenty [sheep], but Bryen's dogs killed one…."

Invasions & The Faith

As Theon's sight-seeing continues, we are told all about Robert's invasion:

When last he'd seen Lordsport, it had been a smoking wasteland, the skeletons of burnt longships and smashed galleys littering the stony shore like the bones of dead leviathans, the houses no more than broken walls and cold ashes. After ten years, few traces of the war remained.

The reference to "leviathans" (i.e. whales) on "the stony shore" prefigures the whale-like "blowhole" on Petyr's (verbatim) "stony shore".
And where "few traces" of Robert's invasion "remained… after ten years", after thousands of years, "few traces" remain of the Andal invasion: just the boulder "chiseled" with "the seven-pointed star of the new gods" on Petyr's own bleak, desolate, unpopulated shore.
That chiseled holy boulder is prefigured by what Theon sees next: "cut stone" and the foundation of an abandoned sept.

The smallfolk had built new hovels with the stones of the old, and cut fresh sod for their roofs. A new inn had risen beside the landing, twice the size of the old one, with a lower story of cut stone and two upper stories of timber. The sept beyond had never been rebuilt, though; only a seven-sided foundation remained where it had stood. Robert Baratheon's fury had soured the ironmen's taste for the new gods, it would seem.

Just as the Faithful of the Seven have abandoned their sept, so have the holy warriors who chiseled the "star of the new gods" on Petyr's boulder long since moved on. (Nor is there any sign of the Faith at the Drearfort nor once Littlefinger accedes to rule the Eyrie.)
(Do the "hovels" of the smallfolk here presage the "huts" of Petyr's smallfolk, as well? The "new hovels" being "built… with the stones of the old" 'rhymes' with the "huts" on the Smallest Finger being made of "piled stone". And the "fresh sod" on their roofs 'rhymes' with the "peat bog" beside the Baelish "huts".)

Spiraling Recursion

Yes, I know: I'm pointing out multiple prefigurations and resonances for many things. E.g. Theon sees his dozen stacks of rock, then his dozen fishing boats, and both vignettes resonate with Petyr's dozen families and their huts, as do the hovels of Lordsport with their fresh sod roofs, perhaps. But that's the point, I think. The books are constantly recursive. Spirals upon spirals! There's a reason the triple spiral of House Massey — a house with almost no role in the story prior to ADWD — is singled out as "an ancient sigil for an ancient house" in TWOW Theon I. I suspect spirals are where it all began, in a way, in that recursivity is the core of GRRM's project in ASOIAF. The Song is all about 'rhyming'.

END

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 8: Sylas Sourmouth & Silas Marner; Theon's Uncle & Petyr's Hermit; Petyr Pan & Wendamyr Darling

APPENDIX TO MAIN POST

Appendix

This appendix will further breakdown and detail a few major 'rhymes' between Theon's sight-seeing trips to the deck of the Myraham and Petyr's sight-seeing tour of his lands, as mentioned in the main body of the post. It's hopefully superfluous overkill as regards establishing the general resonance between the passages in question, but it may nevertheless be of interest to those interested in going down the rabbit-hole, so to speak.

Theon's First Sight-Seeing Trip To The Deck of the Myraham → Petyr's Sight-Seeing Trip With Sansa

When Theon is standing on the deck of the Myraham in order to take in the sight of castle Pyke as the ship sails by, we read:

The point of land on which the Greyjoys had raised their fortress had once thrust like a sword into the bowels of the ocean, but the waves had hammered at it day and night until the land broke and shattered, thousands of years past. All that remained were three bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water like the pillars of some sea god's temple, while the angry waves foamed and crashed among them.

When Petyr and Sansa go on a sight-seeing tour of his lands, we read:

When the rains let up, Petyr walked with her around his holdings, which took less than half a day. He owned a lot of rocks, just as he had said. There was one place where the tide came jetting up out of a blowhole to shoot thirty feet into the air, and another where someone had chiseled the seven-pointed star of the new gods upon a boulder. Petyr said that marked one of the places the Andals had landed, when they came across the sea to wrest the Vale from the First Men.
Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog. "Mine own smallfolk," Petyr said, though only the oldest seemed to know him. There was a hermit's cave on his land as well, but no hermit. "He's dead now, but when I was a boy my father took me to see him. The man had not washed in forty years…

In what follows, I'll map some ways in which the bolded language from Petyr's homecoming feels like it could be a kaleidoscopic recursion of the bolded langauge from Theon's homecoming.
(Again, in what follows, "→" means "prefigures" and/or "informs" and/or "is reworked by" and/or "finds a recursive 'rhyme' in".)

A Dozen Stacks of Rock, A Dozen Huts of Piled Stone

"bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water" ➔ "Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog."
How so?
Consider…
bare and barren islands → farther inland

• islands → inland
  
• bar- and bar- → far-
  
• bare and (furthermore a.k.a. farthermore) barren → farther
  
• thus: bare and barren islands → farther inland
  

towering stacks of rock → huts of piled stone

• towering ≈ towers → huts
  
• stacks of rock ≈ piles of stone → piled stone
  
• thus: towering stacks of rock → huts of piled stone
  

a dozen towering stacks of rock → a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone

• a dozen → a dozen
  
• towering stacks of rock → huts of piled stone (see above)
  
• families (Greyjoy and servants) live on those towering stacks of rock
  
• thus: a dozen towering stacks of rock → a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone
  

the stacks of rock rose from the sea → the huts of piled stone rose by the peat

• the "stacks of rock that rose from the water" ≈ the stacks of rock rose from the sea
  
• "huts of piled stone beside a peat bog" ≈ the huts of piled stone rose by the peat
  
• thus: the stacks of rock rose from the sea → the huts of piled stone rose by the peat
  

And thus…
"bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water" ➔ "Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog."

The Stacks of Rock Come Round Again

• "towering stacks of rock" (where 'stacks' connotes money/wealth and where it sounds like rocks are stacked like coins) → Petyr "owned a lot of rocks"
  
• "a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water" → "the tide came jetting up… to shoot [as if fired from a gun] thirty feet into the air"
  "dozen" → "thirty"
  "rock" & "water" → (implied) fire & "air"
  "rock that rose from the water" → "tide came jetting up… into the air"
  

Three & Thirty

• "three bare…" → "thirty feet…"
  three → thirty
  bare → feet [as in 'bare feet']
  
• three bare and barren (as in infertile) islands in the sea → a blowhole where the tide "came jetting… to shoot thirty feet into the air", like a sperm whale
  

Angry Waves & Andals

"the angry waves foamed and crashed among them" → "the Andals… came… to wrest the Vale from the First Men"
How so?
Consider…

• "the angry waves" → the Andals… came across the sea"
  confirmed by the wave of Andal conquest in TWOIAF:
  

  Even the ironborn—the fierce, sea-roving warriors who must have at first thought themselves safe upon their isles—fell to the wave of Andal conquest.
  

• "foamed and crashed" → "to wrest"
  
• "them" = Pyke's "towering stacks of rock" on which ironborn kings live → the mountainous Vale in which First Men kings lived
  

And thus…
"the angry waves foamed and crashed among them" → "the Andals… came… to wrest the Vale from the First Men"

Angry Waves & Andals 2

"the angry waves foamed and crashed among them" → "the Andals had landed, when they came across the sea … [and] chiseled the seven-pointed star of the new gods upon a boulder"
How so?
Consider…
"the angry waves foamed and crashed" → "the Andals… came across the sea [and] landed"

• "the angry waves" → the Andals, who "came across the sea"
  
• "crashed" → "landed" ('crash-landed')
  
• thus: "the angry waves foamed and crashed" → "the Andals… came across the sea [and] landed"
  

Consider also…
"the angry waves foamed and crashed among them" = the angry waves crashed among…

…a dozen towering stacks of rock… like the pillars of some sea god's temple…

…created when the angry waves…

…hammered at… the point of land… thousands of years past.

• the angry waves "hammered" → the Andals "chiseled"
  
• "point of land" → "pointed star"
  
• Pyke's "point of land" was "hammered" into a dozen stacks of rock → Petyr's boulder was "chiseled" with a seven-pointed star
  
• "some sea god" → "the new gods"
  
• "some sea god's temple" → the sign "of the new gods"
  
• one (point), three (islands), a dozen (stacks) → seven (sacred numbers)
  
• thus: "the angry waves… hammered… the point of land" into "a dozen… stacks of rock… like the pillars of some sea god's temple… thousands of years past…" ➔ "the Andals… chiseled the seven-pointed star of the new gods upon a boulder", thousands of years past per ADWD Jaime I:
  

  Only no one knows when the Andals crossed the narrow sea. The True History says four thousand years have passed since then, but some maesters claim that it was only two. (ADWD Jaime I)
  

And thus…
"the angry waves foamed and crashed among them" → "the Andals had landed, when they came across the sea … [and] chiseled the seven-pointed star of the new gods upon a boulder"

Sight-Seeing At Lordsport Redux

In the body of the essay, I talked about how this bit of Theon's approach to Lordsport—

She looked at him stupidly, so he left her there.
The Myraham was rounding a wooded point. Below the pine-clad bluffs, a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets. The big cog stayed well out from them, tacking. Theon moved to the bow for a better view.

—prefigures in particular two passages from Petyr's sight-seeing tour:

When the rains let up, Petyr walked with her around his holdings, which took less than half a day. He owned a lot of rocks, just as he had said.
Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog.

Consider:
"The Myraham was rounding a wooded point" → "Petyr walked with her [i.e. Sansa] around his holdings" (a rocky point)

• The Myraham carries Theon and the captain's daughter
  
• Theon & the captain's daughter (child-groomer and his prey) → Petyr & Sansa (child-groomer and his prey)
  
• thus: The Myraham → Petyr & Sansa
  
• "The Myraham was rounding…" → "Petyr walked with her [Sansa] around…"
  
• Petyr's "holdings" ≈ "He owned a lot of rocks" ≈ rocky, and…
  
• Petyr's "holdings" ≈ the Smallest Finger, and…
  
• the Smallest Finger ≈ a point of land, and fingers point, so…
  
• Petyr's "holdings" ≈ a rocky point
  
• a wooded point → a rocky point, so…
  
• "a wooded point" → "his holdings" (a rocky point)
  
• thus: "The Myraham was rounding a wooded point" → "Petyr walked with her around his holdings" (a rocky point)
  

And consider:
"Below the pine-clad bluffs, a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets. The big cog stayed well out from them, tacking." → "Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog."
There's a fair bit of overdetermination here.

• a dozen fishing boats → a dozen families
  
• pulling in their nets → liv[ing] in [their] huts
  
• a dozen fishing boats pulling in their nets → a dozen families living in their huts
  
• "huts of piled stone" ≈ piled stone huts, so…
  
• pine-clad bluffs → piled stone huts
  
• a dozen fishing boats pulling in their nets below the pine-clad bluffs → a dozen families living in their piled stone huts
  Given that "Bog devils" are fishing geniuses who wield nets…
  
• fishing (boats) and/or nets → peat bogs
  
• pine-clad bluffs → peat bog
  
• thus: "a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets… below the pine clad bluffs" → a dozen families were living in their piled stone huts beside a peat bog
  But also re:
  

  The big cog stayed well out from them, tacking.
  

• big cog → peat bog
  
• b-ig c-og → bog
  
• tacking ≈ tacky ≈ sticky ≈ getting stuck
  
• bog ≈ place to get stuck:
  

  Sansa shuddered. They had been twelve days crossing the Neck, rumbling down a crooked causeway through an endless black bog, and she had hated every moment of it. [I]f you were stupid enough to leave the causeway to pluck them, there were quicksands waiting to suck you down…. (Note the literal rhyming wordplay: pluck/suck.) (AGOT Sansa I)
  "The bogs here are impenetrable, full of quicksands and suckholes (lol)…. To assault any of the towers, an army would need to wade through waist-deep black muck…." (AGOT Catelyn VIII)
  

• so: big cog tacking → peat bog
  
• the big cog tacking "stayed well out" from the fishing boats → the peat bog being "farther inland"
  but also…
  
• The fishing boats being perforce well in (toward land) from the big cog → the families huts lying "farther inland" besides the peat bog
  Thus we might say…
  
• Well in from the tacking big cog, "a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets… below the pine clad bluffs" ➔ Farther inland, beside the peat bog, a dozen families were living in their piled stone huts
  and/or…
  
• The big cog stayed well out from the dozen fishing boats pulling in their nets below the pine clad bluffs ➔ Farther inland, a dozen families were living in their piled stone huts beside the peat bog
  

Anyway, however you care to slice it, this—

"Below the pine-clad bluffs, a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets. The big cog stayed well out from them, tacking."

—can be read as 'rhyming' with and recursively prefiguring this:

"Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog."

END APPENDIX

This post is part of a series looking at the massive amount of 'rhyming' (and occasionally rhyming) recursivity I believe exists between (a) the homecoming of Petyr Baelish to the Fingers and (b) the homecoming of Theon Greyjoy to Pyke.
While this series/post can be read simply as a study 'for its own sake' of the curious recursion between these storylines, it is my belief that the 'rhyming' explored here between the stories of Petyr and Theon exists (at least in part) to foreshadow that, like Theon, Petyr Littlefinger, is (among other things) a scion of ironborn kings, because Petyr is Hoare-ish: I.e. because Petyr's blood is (in some part) the blood of the ironborn kings of House Hoare of Orkmont and, later, Harrenhal.
You can find an index of every post I've made on the topic of a Hoare-ish Littlefinger [HERE].
Even if I'm wrong about Littlefinger's lineage, the 'rhyming' recursivity between the homecomings of Theon and Petyr detailed in this series remains, and certainly merits attention.
NOTE: In what follows, all uncited quotes are from ASOS Sansa VI, which describes Petyr's homecoming to his "Drearfort" tower of the 'Smallest Finger', or ACOK Theon I, which describes Theon's homecoming to "drear" Pyke.
As in past posts, I sometimes use "→" as shorthand for "prefigures" and/or "informs" and/or "is reworked by" and/or "finds a recursive 'rhyme' in".
As in: ACOK Theon I → ASOS Sansa VI.
This post picks up straight-away from where Part 6 left off. You can read Part 6 [HERE].
If you want to begin at the beginning, Part 1 is [HERE]. The other posts in this (sub)series are indexed at the link.

Theon's First Sight-Seeing Trip To The Deck of the Myraham → Petyr's Sight-Seeing Trip With Sansa

When Petyr and Sansa go on a sight-seeing tour of his lands, we read:

When the rains let up, Petyr walked with her around his holdings, which took less than half a day. He owned a lot of rocks, just as he had said. There was one place where the tide came jetting up out of a blowhole to shoot thirty feet into the air, and another where someone had chiseled the seven-pointed star of the new gods upon a boulder. Petyr said that marked one of the places the Andals had landed, when they came across the sea to wrest the Vale from the First Men.
Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog. "Mine own smallfolk," Petyr said, though only the oldest seemed to know him. There was a hermit's cave on his land as well, but no hermit. "He's dead now, but when I was a boy my father took me to see him. The man had not washed in forty years…

To me, much of that language from Petyr's 'sight-seeing tour' feels immediately like a kaleidoscopic, 'rhyming' recursion of what he read when Theon is standing on the deck of the Myraham in order to take in the sight of castle Pyke as the ship sails by:

The point of land on which the Greyjoys had raised their fortress had once thrust like a sword into the bowels of the ocean, but the waves had hammered at it day and night until the land broke and shattered, thousands of years past. All that remained were three bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water like the pillars of some sea god's temple, while the angry waves foamed and crashed among them.

In an appendix, I attempt to map out in detail how this 'rhyming' works, but it's my hope that having read those passages, you can already 'smell' the 'rhyming', such that the appendix is skimmable overkill underlining a mostly-obvious point.
Here I'll just note a few highlights (all of which are further explained in the appendix):

• "bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water" [on which the Greyjoys and their servants live] ➔ "Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog"
  
• three bare and barren (as in infertile) islands in the sea → a blowhole where the tide "came jetting… to shoot thirty feet into the air", like a sperm whale
  "three bare…" → "thirty feet…" [see: 'bare feet']
  
• "the angry waves foamed and crashed among them" → "the Andals… came… to wrest the Vale from the First Men"
  

  Even the ironborn—the fierce, sea-roving warriors who must have at first thought themselves safe upon their isles—fell to the wave of Andal conquest. (TWOIAF)
  

• "the angry waves foamed and crashed among… a dozen towering stacks of rock… like the pillars of some sea god's temple" created when those "angry waves… hammered at… the point of land… thousands of years past" → "the Andals… came across the sea [and] landed… [and] chiseled the seven-pointed star of the new gods upon a boulder", thousands of years past
  

All That Remained

We're told that three rock islands and twelve stacks of rock, likened to "some sea god's temple", were "all that remained" of Pyke's sword-shaped penisula after the angry waves "hammered" it:

All that remained were three bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water like the pillars of some sea god's temple, while the angry waves foamed and crashed among them.

This 'rhymes' first of all with Petyr's boulder "chiseled [with] the seven-pointed star of the new gods" being all that remains to "mark… the place… the Andals had landed" with their steel swords.
But it also 'rhymes' with and prefigures the "hermit's cave" (another rock formation!) being all that remains of the hermit that used to live on Petyr's land:

There was a hermit's cave on his land as well, but no hermit. "He's dead now…."

Notice that the Greyjoy rock formations (a) number three and twelve, which are highly significant numbers in Christianity (twelve apostles, holy trinity), and (b) are likened to "some sea god's temple". Petyr's hermit's cave thus 'answers' Pyke's 'temple', because hermits are traditionally associated with religion, especially Christianity. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermit.)

Remained → Rained?

Consider also the lines that set the stage for the sight-seeing 'field trip' Petyr takes Sansa:

It was eight long days until Lysa Arryn arrived. On five of them it rained, while Sansa sat bored and restless by the fire, beside the old blind dog.

Compare with the line about the sea god's "temple":

All that remained were three bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water like the pillars of some sea god's temple, while the angry waves foamed and crashed among them.

• Three barren islands remained → On five days of eight it rained (such that three rain-free — i.e. 'barren' — days remained)
  
• Angry waves foamed and crashed → days of rain + (mad, angry) Lysa Arryn (and her "storms") arrived
  
• structure: "while the angry waves foamed and crashed among them" → "while Sansa sat bored and restless by the fire, beside the old dog"
  "foamed and crashed" → "sat bored and restless"
  "among them" → "by the fire, beside the old dog"
  
• numbers: three, twelve → eight, five
  

Sight-Seeing At Lordsport

After Theon takes in the sight of castle Pyke from the deck of the Myraham, he goes below deck, where he makes the captain's daughter swallow his "seed". He then tells her he'll be leaving her behind when they reach shore and goes back up on deck to take in the sight of Lordsport:

She looked at him stupidly, so he left her there.
The Myraham was rounding a wooded point. Below the pine-clad bluffs, a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets. The big cog stayed well out from them, tacking. Theon moved to the bow for a better view.

Notice that Theon is pretty much explicitly sight seeing there (inasmuch as he "moved to the bow for a better view".)
Where Theon leaves the captain's daughter, whom he's grown bored of, to (in effect) go sight-seeing (which causes her to start crying), Petyr relieves the Hand's daughter's boredom by taking her sight-seeing (after it stops raining):

When the rains let up, Petyr walked with her around his holdings, which took less than half a day. He owned a lot of rocks, just as he had said.

Theon's view as he comes on deck to survey the approach to Lordsport seems to (further) inform some of the things Petyr sees when walks around his rocky holding holdings with Sansa. Compare this—

The Myraham was rounding a wooded point. Below the pine-clad bluffs, a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets. The big cog stayed well out from them, tacking.

—and this:

Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog.

I'll detail this 'rhyme' in an appendix, but I hope you can already smell it. The bottom line(s):

• "The Myraham was rounding a wooded point" → "Petyr walked with her [i.e. Sansa] around his holdings" (where his holding are a rocky point)
  
• "Below the pine-clad bluffs, a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets. The big cog stayed well out from them, tacking." → "Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog."
  tacking (cog) → tacky → sticky → peat bog (sticky place to get stuck)
  

Lords Botley & Baelish

Theon then sees the castle of Lord Botley:

He saw the castle first, the stronghold of the Botleys. When he was a boy it had been timber and wattle, but Robert Baratheon had razed that structure to the ground. Lord Sawane had rebuilt in stone, for now a small square keep crowned the hill. Pale green flags drooped from the squat corner towers, each emblazoned with a shoal of silvery fish.

The sight of the stone castle causes Theon to remember something from his boyhood that isn't there anymore (i.e. Lord Botley's old timber and wattle tower), much as the sight of the hermit's cave reminds Petyr of the hermit from his boyhood. And just as Petyr's hermit is missing, so is Lord Botley, who Theon think might come to meet him—

As the Myraham made her way landward, Theon paced the deck restlessly, scanning the shore. He had not thought to find Lord Balon himself at quayside, but surely his father would have sent someone to meet him. Sylas Sourmouth the steward, Lord Botley, perhaps even Dagmer Cleftjaw.

—but who does not.
Where Theon's sight-seeing entails a keep "rebuilt in stone" that triggers memories of Robert Baratheon's invasion, Petyr's sight-seeing entails a chiseled boulder that marks the spot of the Andal invasion of the Vale.
Where the first thing Theon sees as he approaches port is a "small" stone keep with "squat" towers, the first thing Petyr points out to Sansa as they approach land is his own "small", three-story stone tower.
It also 'just so happens' that Lord Botley's sigil—

a shoal of silvery fish on pale green

—prefigures both Petyr's current sigil—

a field of silver mockingbirds on green

—and, by virtue of being "pale green", the "light green" of Petyr's grandfather's sigil as well.
Lord Botley's name, "Sawane", reads almost like a phonetic spelling of [Samhain]. Given the 'rhyme' between the Botley and Baelish arms, this simply piles more fuel on the fire of Littlefinger being involved in some kind of religious heresy. (See my Littlefinger is Hoare-ish series.)
Finally, I wonder whether this line re: Botley's tower—

Robert Baratheon had razed that structure to the ground.

—may have informed this description of Baelish Tower:

A handful of sheep were wandering about the base of the flint tower, grazing on the thin grass that grew between the sheepfold and thatched stable. Sansa had to step carefully; there were pellets everywhere.

Dubious Protection, Animal-Ridden, Aswarm With Sh__.

The next line of ACOK Theon I continues the prefiguration of Petyr's homecoming — including quite specifically those "pellets everywhere" — in all kinds of ways:

Beneath the dubious protection of the fish-ridden little castle lay the village of Lordsport, its harbor aswarm with ships.

Where Lordsport is "aswarm with ships", the Drearfort's yard is aswarm with shit, so to speak. (Sheepshit.)
Where Botley's is a "fish-ridden little castle", the Drearfort has recently been rid of six of its sheep—

How many sheep do I have at present, Kella?"
… "Three and twenty, m'lord. There was nine and twenty, but Bryen's dogs killed one and we butchered some others and salted down the meat."

—and it's a 'dog-ridden little castle' for certain:

Each floor was but a single room. The servants lived and slept in the kitchen at ground level, sharing the space with a huge brindled mastiff and a half-dozen sheep-dogs.

Where Botley's stronghold offers "dubious protection", "guard" duty at the Drearfort is carried out by the 'dubious' tandem of an eighty-year old man and his dogs—

He looked to be at least eighty, but he wore a studded brigantine and a longsword at his side. …
"…Bryen—didn't I name you captain of the guard the last time I was here?"
"You did, my lord. You said you'd be getting some more men too, but you never did. Me and the dogs stand all the watches."

—dogs who are 'dubious protectors' of the very thing they're supposed to protect most: Petyr's "vast herds" of sheep:

"There was nine and twenty [sheep], but Bryen's dogs killed one…."

Invasions & The Faith

As Theon's sight-seeing continues, we are told all about Robert's invasion:

When last he'd seen Lordsport, it had been a smoking wasteland, the skeletons of burnt longships and smashed galleys littering the stony shore like the bones of dead leviathans, the houses no more than broken walls and cold ashes. After ten years, few traces of the war remained.

The reference to "leviathans" (i.e. whales) on "the stony shore" prefigures the whale-like "blowhole" on Petyr's (verbatim) "stony shore".
And where "few traces" of Robert's invasion "remained… after ten years", after thousands of years, "few traces" remain of the Andal invasion: just the boulder "chiseled" with "the seven-pointed star of the new gods" on Petyr's own bleak, desolate, unpopulated shore.
That chiseled holy boulder is prefigured by what Theon sees next: "cut stone" and the foundation of an abandoned sept.

The smallfolk had built new hovels with the stones of the old, and cut fresh sod for their roofs. A new inn had risen beside the landing, twice the size of the old one, with a lower story of cut stone and two upper stories of timber. The sept beyond had never been rebuilt, though; only a seven-sided foundation remained where it had stood. Robert Baratheon's fury had soured the ironmen's taste for the new gods, it would seem.

Just as the Faithful of the Seven have abandoned their sept, so have the holy warriors who chiseled the "star of the new gods" on Petyr's boulder long since moved on. (Nor is there any sign of the Faith at the Drearfort nor once Littlefinger accedes to rule the Eyrie.)
(Do the "hovels" of the smallfolk here presage the "huts" of Petyr's smallfolk, as well? The "new hovels" being "built… with the stones of the old" 'rhymes' with the "huts" on the Smallest Finger being made of "piled stone". And the "fresh sod" on their roofs 'rhymes' with the "peat bog" beside the Baelish "huts".)

Spiraling Recursion

Yes, I know: I'm pointing out multiple prefigurations and resonances for many things. E.g. Theon sees his dozen stacks of rock, then his dozen fishing boats, and both vignettes resonate with Petyr's dozen families and their huts, as do the hovels of Lordsport with their fresh sod roofs, perhaps. But that's the point, I think. The books are constantly recursive. Spirals upon spirals! There's a reason the triple spiral of House Massey — a house with almost no role in the story prior to ADWD — is singled out as "an ancient sigil for an ancient house" in TWOW Theon I. I suspect spirals are where it all began, in a way, in that recursivity is the core of GRRM's project in ASOIAF. The Song is all about 'rhyming'.

END

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 8: Sylas Sourmouth & Silas Marner; Theon's Uncle & Petyr's Hermit; Petyr Pan & Wendamyr Darling

APPENDIX TO MAIN POST

Appendix

This appendix will further breakdown and detail a few major 'rhymes' between Theon's sight-seeing trips to the deck of the Myraham and Petyr's sight-seeing tour of his lands, as mentioned in the main body of the post. It's hopefully superfluous overkill as regards establishing the general resonance between the passages in question, but it may nevertheless be of interest to those interested in going down the rabbit-hole, so to speak.

Theon's First Sight-Seeing Trip To The Deck of the Myraham → Petyr's Sight-Seeing Trip With Sansa

When Theon is standing on the deck of the Myraham in order to take in the sight of castle Pyke as the ship sails by, we read:

The point of land on which the Greyjoys had raised their fortress had once thrust like a sword into the bowels of the ocean, but the waves had hammered at it day and night until the land broke and shattered, thousands of years past. All that remained were three bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water like the pillars of some sea god's temple, while the angry waves foamed and crashed among them.

When Petyr and Sansa go on a sight-seeing tour of his lands, we read:

When the rains let up, Petyr walked with her around his holdings, which took less than half a day. He owned a lot of rocks, just as he had said. There was one place where the tide came jetting up out of a blowhole to shoot thirty feet into the air, and another where someone had chiseled the seven-pointed star of the new gods upon a boulder. Petyr said that marked one of the places the Andals had landed, when they came across the sea to wrest the Vale from the First Men.
Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog. "Mine own smallfolk," Petyr said, though only the oldest seemed to know him. There was a hermit's cave on his land as well, but no hermit. "He's dead now, but when I was a boy my father took me to see him. The man had not washed in forty years…

In what follows, I'll map some ways in which the bolded language from Petyr's homecoming feels like it could be a kaleidoscopic recursion of the bolded langauge from Theon's homecoming.
(Again, in what follows, "→" means "prefigures" and/or "informs" and/or "is reworked by" and/or "finds a recursive 'rhyme' in".)

A Dozen Stacks of Rock, A Dozen Huts of Piled Stone

"bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water" ➔ "Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog."
How so?
Consider…
bare and barren islands → farther inland

• islands → inland
  
• bar- and bar- → far-
  
• bare and (furthermore a.k.a. farthermore) barren → farther
  
• thus: bare and barren islands → farther inland
  

towering stacks of rock → huts of piled stone

• towering ≈ towers → huts
  
• stacks of rock ≈ piles of stone → piled stone
  
• thus: towering stacks of rock → huts of piled stone
  

a dozen towering stacks of rock → a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone

• a dozen → a dozen
  
• towering stacks of rock → huts of piled stone (see above)
  
• families (Greyjoy and servants) live on those towering stacks of rock
  
• thus: a dozen towering stacks of rock → a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone
  

the stacks of rock rose from the sea → the huts of piled stone rose by the peat

• the "stacks of rock that rose from the water" ≈ the stacks of rock rose from the sea
  
• "huts of piled stone beside a peat bog" ≈ the huts of piled stone rose by the peat
  
• thus: the stacks of rock rose from the sea → the huts of piled stone rose by the peat
  

And thus…
"bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water" ➔ "Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog."

The Stacks of Rock Come Round Again

• "towering stacks of rock" (where 'stacks' connotes money/wealth and where it sounds like rocks are stacked like coins) → Petyr "owned a lot of rocks"
  
• "a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water" → "the tide came jetting up… to shoot [as if fired from a gun] thirty feet into the air"
  "dozen" → "thirty"
  "rock" & "water" → (implied) fire & "air"
  "rock that rose from the water" → "tide came jetting up… into the air"
  

Three & Thirty

• "three bare…" → "thirty feet…"
  three → thirty
  bare → feet [as in 'bare feet']
  
• three bare and barren (as in infertile) islands in the sea → a blowhole where the tide "came jetting… to shoot thirty feet into the air", like a sperm whale
  

Angry Waves & Andals

"the angry waves foamed and crashed among them" → "the Andals… came… to wrest the Vale from the First Men"
How so?
Consider…

• "the angry waves" → the Andals… came across the sea"
  confirmed by the wave of Andal conquest in TWOIAF:
  

  Even the ironborn—the fierce, sea-roving warriors who must have at first thought themselves safe upon their isles—fell to the wave of Andal conquest.
  

• "foamed and crashed" → "to wrest"
  
• "them" = Pyke's "towering stacks of rock" on which ironborn kings live → the mountainous Vale in which First Men kings lived
  

And thus…
"the angry waves foamed and crashed among them" → "the Andals… came… to wrest the Vale from the First Men"

Angry Waves & Andals 2

"the angry waves foamed and crashed among them" → "the Andals had landed, when they came across the sea … [and] chiseled the seven-pointed star of the new gods upon a boulder"
How so?
Consider…
"the angry waves foamed and crashed" → "the Andals… came across the sea [and] landed"

• "the angry waves" → the Andals, who "came across the sea"
  
• "crashed" → "landed" ('crash-landed')
  
• thus: "the angry waves foamed and crashed" → "the Andals… came across the sea [and] landed"
  

Consider also…
"the angry waves foamed and crashed among them" = the angry waves crashed among…

…a dozen towering stacks of rock… like the pillars of some sea god's temple…

…created when the angry waves…

…hammered at… the point of land… thousands of years past.

• the angry waves "hammered" → the Andals "chiseled"
  
• "point of land" → "pointed star"
  
• Pyke's "point of land" was "hammered" into a dozen stacks of rock → Petyr's boulder was "chiseled" with a seven-pointed star
  
• "some sea god" → "the new gods"
  
• "some sea god's temple" → the sign "of the new gods"
  
• one (point), three (islands), a dozen (stacks) → seven (sacred numbers)
  
• thus: "the angry waves… hammered… the point of land" into "a dozen… stacks of rock… like the pillars of some sea god's temple… thousands of years past…" ➔ "the Andals… chiseled the seven-pointed star of the new gods upon a boulder", thousands of years past per ADWD Jaime I:
  

  Only no one knows when the Andals crossed the narrow sea. The True History says four thousand years have passed since then, but some maesters claim that it was only two. (ADWD Jaime I)
  

And thus…
"the angry waves foamed and crashed among them" → "the Andals had landed, when they came across the sea … [and] chiseled the seven-pointed star of the new gods upon a boulder"

Sight-Seeing At Lordsport Redux

In the body of the essay, I talked about how this bit of Theon's approach to Lordsport—

She looked at him stupidly, so he left her there.
The Myraham was rounding a wooded point. Below the pine-clad bluffs, a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets. The big cog stayed well out from them, tacking. Theon moved to the bow for a better view.

—prefigures in particular two passages from Petyr's sight-seeing tour:

When the rains let up, Petyr walked with her around his holdings, which took less than half a day. He owned a lot of rocks, just as he had said.
Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog.

Consider:
"The Myraham was rounding a wooded point" → "Petyr walked with her [i.e. Sansa] around his holdings" (a rocky point)

• The Myraham carries Theon and the captain's daughter
  
• Theon & the captain's daughter (child-groomer and his prey) → Petyr & Sansa (child-groomer and his prey)
  
• thus: The Myraham → Petyr & Sansa
  
• "The Myraham was rounding…" → "Petyr walked with her [Sansa] around…"
  
• Petyr's "holdings" ≈ "He owned a lot of rocks" ≈ rocky, and…
  
• Petyr's "holdings" ≈ the Smallest Finger, and…
  
• the Smallest Finger ≈ a point of land, and fingers point, so…
  
• Petyr's "holdings" ≈ a rocky point
  
• a wooded point → a rocky point, so…
  
• "a wooded point" → "his holdings" (a rocky point)
  
• thus: "The Myraham was rounding a wooded point" → "Petyr walked with her around his holdings" (a rocky point)
  

And consider:
"Below the pine-clad bluffs, a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets. The big cog stayed well out from them, tacking." → "Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog."
There's a fair bit of overdetermination here.

• a dozen fishing boats → a dozen families
  
• pulling in their nets → liv[ing] in [their] huts
  
• a dozen fishing boats pulling in their nets → a dozen families living in their huts
  
• "huts of piled stone" ≈ piled stone huts, so…
  
• pine-clad bluffs → piled stone huts
  
• a dozen fishing boats pulling in their nets below the pine-clad bluffs → a dozen families living in their piled stone huts
  Given that "Bog devils" are fishing geniuses who wield nets…
  
• fishing (boats) and/or nets → peat bogs
  
• pine-clad bluffs → peat bog
  
• thus: "a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets… below the pine clad bluffs" → a dozen families were living in their piled stone huts beside a peat bog
  But also re:
  

  The big cog stayed well out from them, tacking.
  

• big cog → peat bog
  
• b-ig c-og → bog
  
• tacking ≈ tacky ≈ sticky ≈ getting stuck
  
• bog ≈ place to get stuck:
  

  Sansa shuddered. They had been twelve days crossing the Neck, rumbling down a crooked causeway through an endless black bog, and she had hated every moment of it. [I]f you were stupid enough to leave the causeway to pluck them, there were quicksands waiting to suck you down…. (Note the literal rhyming wordplay: pluck/suck.) (AGOT Sansa I)
  "The bogs here are impenetrable, full of quicksands and suckholes (lol)…. To assault any of the towers, an army would need to wade through waist-deep black muck…." (AGOT Catelyn VIII)
  

• so: big cog tacking → peat bog
  
• the big cog tacking "stayed well out" from the fishing boats → the peat bog being "farther inland"
  but also…
  
• The fishing boats being perforce well in (toward land) from the big cog → the families huts lying "farther inland" besides the peat bog
  Thus we might say…
  
• Well in from the tacking big cog, "a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets… below the pine clad bluffs" ➔ Farther inland, beside the peat bog, a dozen families were living in their piled stone huts
  and/or…
  
• The big cog stayed well out from the dozen fishing boats pulling in their nets below the pine clad bluffs ➔ Farther inland, a dozen families were living in their piled stone huts beside the peat bog
  

Anyway, however you care to slice it, this—

"Below the pine-clad bluffs, a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets. The big cog stayed well out from them, tacking."

—can be read as 'rhyming' with and recursively prefiguring this:

"Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog."

END APPENDIX & END POST

Update 4.2.5 is now live on Steam, Paradoxplaza and ModDB.

Major Features

- Restored Lone Star’s Hand Warband path’s previously incomplete Legion events and decisions. The additions from this include access to a small number of wargoals, a modest branching chain of new events and decisions for marching to Castra Sol Rubrum, the alternate ability to join Lanius’s Horde should Lanius form the Eastern Legion and the choice to serve as a subject rather than being annexed into Lanius or the Legion proper should Lanius be alive and loyal to Caesar.
- Made a round of touch ups to tech balance. More significant changes include melee equipment buffs, Knight and Scribe changes, small adjustments to many industry techs. The full details can be found here: https://pastebin.com/aUdD7DPU
​

Added

- Added several new character bios to Baudelio Ranchers, Guardians, Iron Alliance and Slags
- Added unique pictures to some downfall events
- Added 2 achievements “Judgement Day” and “Through the Fire and Flames”
- Added Mojave Territories back to the West Coast bookmark
- Added a leader description to Jack Vickers in Baudelio Ranchers
- Added 2 additional crossings between Rapids and Tohono Nation
- Added starting coastal forts, outposts and bunkers to parts of southern NCR and western Legion states
- Added a line of forts to NCR’s focus “The Crimson Caravan Routes” and two different lines to “Protecting the Boneyard”
- Added a line of forts to the Legion’s focus “Uniting the Wastes”
- Added a starting debuff to Washington BoS and The Cause lost when one annexes the other
- Added an army buff spirit to Hand Warband’s “The Masters of Texas” focus
- Added a spirit to the Legion’s “Legionary Training”
- Added a tech reducing Infantry Combat Width to the Legion’s “The Tip of the Spear”
- Added a starting timed debuff for Vault City tied to the 2275 Selection
- Added 10% starting stability to Vault City to partially offset the above
- Added a starting idea debuff for Shi which is gradually lessened by and related to the debates
- Added a temporary idea given to Shi by their early Navarro news event
- Added war support to the options for Shi’s Navarro Intervention event
- Added starting -10% Construction Speed to the NCR Economy modifier in exchange for -1% Consumer Goods
- Added 5% starting war support to TV Town
- Added 5% starting stability to Nuevo Aztlán
- Added 5% starting stability and war support to Tlaloc
- Added 5% starting stability in exchange for 10% war support to Shi
- Added 15% starting war support in exchange for 5% stability to Petro Chico
- Added starting Tool Procurement, Resource Production and 5% war support to Stormmongers
- Added more building slots and resources to a handful of Legion states
- Added a starting radar station to Weather Monitoring Station
- Added starting ports to: Ocotillo in Rapids; Needles in Mojave Territories; Dry Wells, Kingsman and Poston in the Legion; Tacna in Tohono Nation; and Santa Rosa plus both islands in Valle Bandits
- Added Reservation to the Legion research group at gamestart
- Added 1 military and civilian factory; 5% war support; and slightly more resources, infrastructure and building slots to Baudelio Ranchers at gamestart
- Added 1 starting civilian factory and slightly more resources, infrastructure and building slots to Cowboy Country and Tohono Nation
- Added 1 starting dockyard to Cowboy Country
- Added 1 starting anti-air and radar station to Rusty Hooks
- Added 1 more level of Air Base to Flagstaff, North/South Phoenix and San Antonio
- Added 1 starting outpost to New Canaan and New Jerusalem
- Added 1 starting outpost to Arroyo’s victory points
- Added more starting forts to Monterrey
- Added starting Scout Kit and Anti-Tank Rifle tech, 5% war support, +10% trade opinion,
Wasteland Militias law and 250 manpower to Arroyo
- Added additional influence and coercion for Arroyo as AI
- Added starting Anti-Tank Rifle tech and 3 more Naval Module techs to Gente Del Sol
- Added Asymmetric Warfare tech, Assault Canoes and a Spec Ops template to Navajo at gamestart
- Added Industry Planning, Construction Basics, Crowd Gear, the Wasteland Survival Training law, slightly more building slots and 10% stability to Iron Alliance at gamestart
- Added Mobile Maintenance Crews and more fuel to Two Sun at gamestart
- Added starting Power Armour Frame Hardening tech to Heaven’s Gate
- Added starting Lightweight Metals tech and more energy to Eagle Rock
- Added starting Caravan tech to Standing Rock
- Added 1 military factory, 10% war support and 450 manpower in exchange for 8% stability to Mad Trains at gamestart
- Added 1 starting military factory to Two Sun and Withered Dogs
- Added 1 division, full division equipment and the Funding the Army law to Scorpion’s Bite at gamestart
- Added starting Slashing Melee to Cypher’s Warband
- Added a scientific tech research bonus to NCR Hayes’s first expansion focus
- Added starting production to Californian Way and Baudelio Ranchers
- Added descriptions to Ejército Mexicano’s Cartel and Militia Blues spirits
- Added positive AI strategies for Arroyo and the choice in their 3rd event
- Added AI scripting for Mojave Territories to prepare for the First Dam Battle better
- Added localization for “Anti Air Weaponry Research Speed”
​

Changed

- Changed the icons for vehicle techs Mobile Assault Weaponry and Improved Turrets
- Changed the localisation and icon for Wasteland APC’s to Great War APC’s
- Changed the localisation and icon for Wasteland Bus to Wasteland APC’s
- Changed maximum and minimum opinion from +/-100 to +/-200
- Changed high stability factory and dockyard output from up to +12% to up to +15% and mobilization speed from up to -20% to up to -15%
- Changed high war support mobilization speed from up to +100% to up to +50% and Core Attack and Defense from up to +8% to up to +10%
- Changed base monthly population gain from 0.016 to 0.015
- Changed base suppression needed per 1% resistance from 0.38 to 0.35
- Changed the wartime building destruction cooldown from 25 to 20 days
- Changed the scale of land unit experience gain from 0.07 to 0.06
- Changed the maximum shore bombardment bonus from 0.25 to 0.3
- Changed base damage output in Air Combat to be 25% higher
- Changed maximum planes in air combat simulation from 500 to 750, making the peak lethality of air combat higher
- Changed enemy bombing war support penalties to have a lower cap (60% to 50%), but scale 33% faster
- Changed the base enemy air superiority penalty from -18% to -20%
- Changed outpost and coastal fort construction cost from 700 to 800
- Changed Naval Base construction cost from 3000 to 2500 and added a per-level cost of 500
- Changed the modifiers on some industry techs slightly
- Changed the base coring cost from 25 to 30
- Changed “Large Territorial Administration” factory output from +10% to +5%
- Changed Trade Law levels to give +5% less Trade Tariffs
- Changed decision State Funded Radio Programming’s effect slightly
- Changed the start caps for established organizations from 50k to 25k
- Changed the AI to produce more aircraft under some conditions
- Changed the Scorched Earth operation to be cheaper
- Changed Reno and Vegas tourists to add 1k more caps and 2k more bonus
- Changed traits Fortification Expert and Fortification Engineer to be weaker
- Changed trait Armaments Organizer to be stronger
- Changed effects of some Settler and Raider start events to be weaker
- Changed NCR, Shi, Valle Bandits, Three Rivers, Vault City and Washington BoS starting resources to be slightly lower
- Changed some Arroyo crisis events to occur slightly sooner
- Changed Tlaloc and Diana’s “God from the Machine” to be slightly weaker
- Changed Lost Hills’s Knight and Scribe intros to grant a stronger final modifier and be auto completed soon after “The Paladins” rather than requiring manual completion
- Changed Lost Hills Training Facilities to now affect all units
- Changed some Lost Hills decisions to last longer
- Changed Lost Hills’s “Council Reforms” and “Preparing for the Ceasefires End” to add 1 more Administration Center capacity
- Changed Lost Hills’s “Our Right” branch to have more flexible prereqs
- Changed Lost Hills’s NCR cooperation decision to cost 100 less
- Changed Lost Hills’s Paladin Sway idea to add +5% more political power
- Changed some Lost Hills foci in the NCR War, WMD and Scavenging branches to be stronger
- Changed Lost Hills’s starting resources to be higher
- Changed two Lone Star advisors and some Hand Warband foci to be slightly stronger
- Changed the shared Attis Army capstones to be slightly stronger
- Changed Cerberus’s resistance and compliance bonuses to be in their modifier--rather than traits--alongside added -50% trade opinion
- Changed Cerberus’s Attis and Shale Traits to grant supply consumption -15% and production efficiency base +15%
- Changed Ironmongers’s Mastersmiths law to grant 1% less conscription and its starting debuffs to be slightly higher
- Changed The Cause’s ATA focus to also upgrade Glorious Purpose and changed other foci very slightly for balance
- Changed Washington BoS starting -20% compliance and +10% war support modifiers to -5% political power and +10% war stability
- Changed some Washington BoS foci to be weaker
- Changed a Washington BoS unit to start on Capitol Hill
- Changed Ejército Mexicano’s Cartel and Militia Blues ideas to be added at gamestart and changed the events that start their branches to add 5% stability or war support
- Changed Ejército Mexicano’s Zapata Alamo Chapter event to be 40 days later
- Changed Ejército Mexicano’s “Superior Mechanization” and “The Liberation of Texas” foci to be weaker
- Changed Ejército Mexicano’s Ironmongers wargoal to be locked till Tlaloc’s death
- Changed some Standing Rock foci to be stronger and added intermediate electronics and construction tech to the tree
- Changed Shi’s starting production and templates to be slightly better
- Changed some Shi foci slightly for balance - Changed Shi’s “Big Trouble in Little California” to need 2 prereqs instead of 1
- Changed Two Sun’s vehicle bonuses to be stronger
- Changed Legion AI to be far more likely to avoid the civil war for a leader with max glory rather than choosing randomly
- Changed the Legion’s “Raider Rumble” to only raise resistance temporarily
- Changed the Legion’s Dam Loss branch to be much stronger and have some added effects
- Changed the Legion’s Legion Training spirit to no longer buff speed in exchange for buffing all special forces rather than only spec ops
- Changed the Legion’s autonomy laws to reduce license cost more
- Changed the Legion’s “Commercial Dock Development” to reduce invasion penalty more
- Changed the March West event to make any subject of Lanius’s be Caesar’s rather than being freed and removed from the faction
- Changed the Lanius Caesar’s Warden trait to be weaker
- Changed Lanius and Vault City to get the “Prioritize Consumer Technology” decision instead of “Basic Hygiene Education”
- Changed some Vault City pre-election and Lynette foci to be slightly weaker
- Changed some New Mexico states to have slightly less water
- Changed Lynette’s “The Patrolmen” recovery rate buff to infantry defense
- Changed TV Town’s starting infantry and militia templates to have 2 more battalions
- Changed TV Town’s “Stopping the Sandman” to take 15 less days
- Changed TV Town’s starting spirit to add -15% lack of resources penalty and no longer add -15% division experience
- Changed New Vegas’s Jewel of the Mojave spirit modifiers slightly and changed its percentual conscription malus to be flat
- Changed New Vegas’s Robotics Genius to grant 10% less fuel capacity in exchange for -2.5% securitron cost
- Changed New Vegas’s starting securitron template to be better
- Changed New Vegas’s starting event factories to be slightly less
- Changed NCR AI to pick Kimball 5% more (now 40%) and Hayes 5% less (now 20%)
- Changed NCR Dollars to give +5% less Trade Tariffs
- Changed NCR’s Self-Sacrifice Myth to be weaker
- Changed NCR’s Military Complex debuff event option somewhat
- Changed the NCR’s Hub crisis debuff to be slightly higher
- Changed NCR’s “The Sentries of Shady Sands” to grant a stronger, more specific fort line
- Changed some NCR government laws; some Moore spirits, traits and expansion branch foci; and some Hayes expansion branch foci to be slightly weaker
- Changed NCR’s Dornan general and advisor, Oscar Stone advisor and Admiral Doherty advisor to be slightly weaker
- Changed some NCR Hayes main branch foci to be stronger or shorter
- Changed NCR’s “Roaring Economy” to take 60 days and add 5% less war support
- Changed NCR’s “Retool the Ranger Corps”, “Denounce Kimball’s Rhetoric” and some post-election Kimball and Allgood foci to be slightly weaker
- Changed NCR Moore’s BoS decisions to cost more
- Changed the NCR Civil War “Ranger Divide” idea to grant more debuffs and be removed in Calhoun’s main tree instead of the expansion tree
- Changed Californian State and Californian Way to get -10% stability at the Civil War’s start
- Changed Californian Way to get slightly more of the NCR’s units and stockpile in the civil war
- Changed Mojave Territories’s starting spirit to add 5% less war support
- Changed some Mojave Territories’s civil war branches to be slightly weaker
- Changed some NCR puppet tree shared and country unique foci to be weaker
- Changed MacArthur’s upgraded Salvatore advisor to be slightly stronger
- Changed MacArthur’s Chicago foci to bypass if a people nation
- Changed some MacArthur advisors and lower foci to be weaker
- Changed MacArthur’s APA/Vertibird stockpile from 50 and 20 to 30 and 15 respectively
- Changed some MacArthur focus prereqs slightly
- Changed MacArthur’s APA purchases to cost 2 more energy
- Changed MacArthur’s starting Outsider Law to add +1% more resistance target
- Changed some The Last Patrol foci to be slightly stronger
- Changed the TAA’s Rio rebellion branch to add 5% less net war support
- Changed some early Texan BoS ideas slightly for balance
- Changed Alamo Chapter’s Emergency Production spirit to be slightly stronger
- Changed Alamo Chapter’s Alamo Defenders to have less battalions but more support companies
- Changed Alamo Chapter to have 300 less extra guns
- Changed Alamo’s “United Texan Front” focus to require all 4 of its prereqs rather than only 1
- Changed some Reservation Willem main path foci to be slightly stronger
- Changed New Canaan’s Defender Priest advisor to be stronger
- Changed some later White Legs foci to be slightly weaker
- Changed Mojave Chapter’s starting research speed bonus from 5% to 2.5%
- Changed Mojave Chapter’s “Raw Poseidon Energy” and “Walking Artillery” to give 1 less factory
- Changed Mojave Chapter’s Aggressive Policy buff to be for Hardin rather than Veronica
- Changed Mojave Chapter’s manpower from Veronica’s path to be lower
- Changed Mojave Chapter’s “Victory at Sunburst” focus to add 5% less stability and war support
- Changed some of Mojave Chapter’s weaker post-sunburst foci to be shorter or stronger
- Changed Mojave Chapter’s “Enlist the Families” to add 3 less civilian factories
- Changed Mojave Chapter’s Securitron Vault decision to have higher cost and duration
- Changed a small number of Mojave Chapter’s strongest Big MT and Sierra Madre foci to be slightly weaker
- Changed Montana Chapter’s post Fort Verity foci to take 5 more days
- Changed Montana Chapter’s “No Problem is Too Great” to add less infrastructure
- Changed some Montana Chapter foci to have slightly more prereqs
- Changed a few Eagle Rock industry and blimp bonuses to be slightly weaker
- Changed Eagle Rock’s starting blimp stockpile from 24 to 15
- Changed a few Shale’s Army foci to be slightly stronger
- Changed Three Rivers’s “Buy The Latest Model” to add sophisticated power armor tech and APA schematics rather than free APA
- Changed two Three Rivers doctrine buffs to be smaller
- Changed Hangdogs’s “Open The Box” to take 40 less days
- Changed Hangdogs’s “Big Wrenches” and “The Army of Denver” to be slightly weaker
- Changed many Desert Rangers NCR foci and Snake Vargas’s leader trait to be weaker
- Changed Desert Rangers’s capstone to take 30 more days
- Changed some Maxson Chapter advisors and foci to be weaker
- Changed Maxson Chapter’s Vault 0 capstone effect to be smaller
- Changed some Gente Del Sol advisors and early ideas slightly for balance
- Changed Gente’s 3rd event to add 1 less arms factory in one option
- Changed two Gente research bonus foci to be weaker and two weapons foci to be stronger
- Changed the strength and order of Eighties’s “Life is a Highway” branch foci slightly
- Changed “The Devils of Utah” for Eighties and “The Eternal Quest of the Pure” for Rotpurgers to grant -5% more Trade Opinion
- Changed start spirits for Baron’s Eyrie, Bismarck, Coal Consortium, Metal Mouths, Niitsitapi and The Pursuant to be weaker
- Changed Max Sec’s tiered NCR spirit to be weaker
- Changed Overwatch Tock’s description to be shorter
- Changed the NCR Baggers unique puppet branch to be disabled
- Changed the Snowmads and Mad Trains formables to have slightly weaker effects
- Changed the New Mariposa formable to add compliance and reduced resistance rather than coring every respective state
- Changed the Legion’s Phoenix branch tithe foci to add more caps - Changed some top-half Navajo foci to be slightly stronger
- Changed Snowmads’s leader trait to be weaker
- Changed Iron Alliance’s formables to grant stronger, slightly altered effects
- Changed Lanius’s focus “A False Goddess” giving wargoals on Twin Mothers even after they’ve fled to Paradise
​

Fixed

- Fixed the assign medal unitview GUI quick button not being visible
- Fixed the retain cores popupwindow GUI checkbox for releasing countries not being visible
- Fixed sphere state ownership checks for subject countries not accounting for the state being owned by another subject with their same overlord
- Fixed an error leading certain coring related modifiers to have been dramatically increase
- Fixed the Steal Army Supplies operation not rewarding equipment properly
- Fixed the NCR getting locked into the Bull’s Demesne if the Legion Civil War occurs and they are unable to capture all of Caesar’s core territory
- Fixed Culto Al Sol having no advisors and no caps income
- Fixed some Reno/Vegas tourism localisation
- Fixed Mojave Chapter’s Legion targeted defense modifier not applying due to a coding error
- Fixed some Mojave Chapter foci having lower durations than intended
- Fixed Gente Del Sol’s 3rd event having an option with no effect
- Fixed an exploit where Troll Warren could take its Bone Dancers and Chemult Station wargoals despite taking the non-aggression pact
- Fixed the Lone Star and Hand Warband theorists having swapped bonuses
- Fixed various NCR, Caesar’s Legion, Standing Rock, Stormmongers and Montana Chapter foci and decisions which lacked wargoal alerts/triggers or proper state control triggers
- Fixed some compliance or resistance effects which mistakenly used decimal values
- Fixed Honduras’s AI Defense Focus being erroneously high
- Fixed an oversight which made AI weights for certain sets of manpower laws too high or low
- Fixed a bug that led certain nation AI scripts for diplomacy or armies to malfunction
- Fixed the Hand Warband focus “A Slave To Be Admired” not giving a commander
- Fixed the NCR being able to try and push investments on the Mojave Territories
- Fixed Troll Warren being unable to progress in their tree if the Marrow Drinkers annex the Carcass Walkers before they do
- Fixed Eclipse Uprising receiving generic advisors
​

Removed

- Removed 5% starting stability, 2 military factories and 1 civilian factory from MacArthur
- Removed starting Automation tech and 1 infrastructure from Vault City
- Removed starting Ohm’s Law from Ejército Mexicano
- Removed 1 starting infrastructure in 10-Signs for the Legion and Fort Lyon for Maxson Chapter
- Removed 1 starting infrastructure and 1 of each factory from a Manitoba state
- Removed 2 starting infrastructure from Los
- Removed 1 starting infrastructure and military factory from Bitter Springs in Mojave Territories
- Removed 1 starting infrastructure from: Eden, Ashton, Hopeville, Arroyo and some states for Shi and Sky Reavers
- Removed 1 of each starting factory from Timberline
- Removed 1 starting civilian factory from Navarro Territories, Sky Reavers, TAA, Stormmongers, Rupertsland Trading Co. and Old Believers
- Removed 2 starting civilian factories from Batford Brigade
- Removed 1 starting military factory from Hangdogs, The Pursuant, Baron’s Eyrie, Three Rivers and Whitecourt
- Removed 5% starting stability from Vault City and Whitecourt
- Removed 5% starting war support from Mojave Chapter and New Vegas
- Removed 3% starting war support from Lanius
​

Technical Changes

- Added more AI event choice scripting for NCR, MacArthur and Texan BoS
- Added a debug decision to spawn Alamo Chapter for Texan BoS
- Changed Alamo’s AI focus plan to be more optimal
- Changed minor parts of some nation starting production for quality of life
- Changed minor parts of AI army composition and research behaviors to be more optimal
- Fixed misc. localisation errors for many nations
- Fixed missing bypasses for select wargoal foci
- Fixed some unused and inaccessible NCR focuses still being enabled in the code
- Fixed missing localisation for certain modifiers

reposted over at UnresolvedMysteries
On February 14, 1975, a teenage body was found dead in Belle Chasse, Louisiana. He committed suicide by hanging himself with a bed sheet from a persimmon tree. He was about 16 or 17 years old and wore yellow and maroon shirt, blue pants, mismatched socks and no shoes. Leaning against the tree was a jar filled with papers.
A couple driving through the woods on a farm road between Highway 23 and the Mississippi River, found the body of the decedent hanging from a limb of a persimmon tree, a bedsheet tied around his neck.
Against the tree was a jar full of note paper. Inside was a suicide note addressed to his parents:
"Mom and Dad, You have provided be excellent advantages and privileges and experiences. I am extremely grateful for all of your sacrifices, time and support. I am now repaying you with an arrogant act. In this light, I do see it as criminal. I can only hope that you see that it was me who caused it.
I never did develop into a real person and I cannot tolerate the false and empty existence I have created.
It is best if I cease to live, quietly, than risk that later I will break and shatter by violence or linger years under care. I implore you to see a psychiatrist in order that you might understand my death and my life. Ask thoroughly about what I was and you will see that it is not tragic that I am gone but more natural than if I continued.
I was born with a definite pervasive melancholy. What frustrated me most in the last year was that I had built no ties to family or friends. There was nothing of lasting worth and value. I led a detached existence and I was a parody of a person-literally and figuratively. I didn't tell jokes-I was a joke.
I am a bomb of frustration and should never marry or have children. It is safest to defuse the bomb harmlessly now. I do not want to bother with being a "reformed and cured" person limping through life. I am this self-centered.
I am no longer interested in the world and know that it is not interested in me. When you stop growing you are dead. I stopped growing long ago."
The decedent cited the writing of Emile Durkheim, a philosopher and psychologist. He also added this aside to authorities:
You are bound to preserve domestic peace and order. If you pursue who I was (and spend hundreds of dollars) you will accomplish little. There are no legal consequences of my death or any kind of entanglements. All that can happen is that you will shatter the domestic peace and order of two innocent lives. Do not deprive them of the hope that their "missing" son will return. Let me be, let it be as if I wasn't ever here. Simply cremate me as John Doe."
There are no surviving reports/records from either the Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Office or Coroner's Office. At the time of discovery, the decedent's fingerprints had been circulated to police across the country.
Unfortunately all records to his case have been lost in the 90s due to a hurricane. There is a theory that the John Doe is that of Bayard Cousins who went missing on February 1, 1975.
https://www.crimewatchers.net/threads/plaquemines-parish-john-doe-wm-16-17-found-suicide-by-hanging-himself-from-a-persimmon-tree-in-belle-chasse-la-14-feb-1975.364/
https://doenetwork.org/cases/3832umla.html