lol sup so don't worry I realized that m previous decisions are shit but I can't post here lmao
don't worry the U.R is dead so you don't have to deal with that boring stuff anymore. Update: Turns out there's a limit so you don't see the disclaimer now. I will be forced to move the short story, by itk be linked and not here, to prevent #SPAM.
Maybe I should stop posting entire books..
nah
Spam is a disgusting food. Probably. Idk.
It is around twenty five thousand years INTO the life of the U.R when this new drive is discovered, capable of accessing a million systems. In the span of about a century, a massive war breaks out, bringing down both the U.R and the accord. As a result, the galaxy is split into hundreds of tiny factions covering a few systems.
The United Republic was mainly populated by Acrinians, although we used to be known as Foxians. Eons ago our ancestors left their home galaxy.
After three hundred years they left the next.
In the long voyage, we accidentally entered the slightly wrong coordinates.
It resulted in us entering a wormhole.
Later, we were dropped out above a small ocean world, around a dying red giant
This will start in the year 2436, up until 2740
Eventually, after thousands of years of conflict, a new FYL system was invented.
During the second and final Republic-National war, the armada suffered no losses, and being constructed with living metal infused in the hulls of the vessels, the two severely damaged Vasa class cruisers had repaired themselves.
The sole Lexington class carrier that was there, had, for its time, extremely advanced shielding, which would rival that of the battleships of 2600.
The amount of minerals churned out every month as well, was spectacular.
The Republics main problem was its economy. To counter this, the Republic drew from its massive stockpiles to construct a new series of habitats. These were dubbed the Potomacs, in honor of the Potomac, the construction vessel that assembled the first one.
Currently, there were three Potomacs, all producing massive amounts of power. A fourth was planned.
These all lied in the Eskellion system, the home of Eskellion Prime, which produced the majority of the energy the United Republic consumed.
A few decades before this, a sole U.R science vessel, charting systems, found something astonishing.
Jumping into a black hole system, they found planets.
But that was not what was of interest.
Far southeast of it, a massive structure, stood ruined.
Upon closer inspection, they found that the station had once been a massive structure devoted to the advancement of the sciences, from a long fallen empire.
A construction ship was dispatched at once, to build a defense system around the station, incase anyone, or anything, attacked it.
The logic behind it was, that if it was possible to build such a massive structure, it would also be possible to repair it, replicate it, and mass produce it.
The Republic, sensing that they would be able to repair the “Science Nexus” as they called it, quickly constructed five new colony vessels. As the mines of Rym were improved, two vessels, bound for a large tropical planet to the south, and another to the north, left the shipyards.
The northernmost planet was first. This one would become a new planet devoted to research.
Second was the southern planet, which would become another mineral planet.
The three others would dock with the Potomacs.
The Potomac series of habitat was a heavily moddable, massive orbital station. The first three were specifically designed to pull the Republic out of the economic hole it dug for itself.
Even then, plans were made, once the crisis was solved, the nation to the west crushed, and the war over, for a new subclass of Potomacs.
These would be the Potomac M class stations.
They were built off the same skeleton, but instead of producing power, they would be fitted with a massive central reactor, and huge mining lasers. Just one was manned by twelve billion people.
This was no worry to the Republic.
The 2300s was a age of expansion in every aspect.
The amount of food produced was much larger than needed, and if they were ever to run out, they could just build a Potomac-F, one designed to produce huge amounts of food.
Most new planets would likely be devoted to mining.
After the war, stellar super casinos became popular.
Despite gambling being illegal, it formed a sense of unification in the UR.
Seeing the.. Somewhat positive effects of gambling on massive scales, gambling was turned legal.
In the battle for the enemies capital system, the sole Lexington present, the FVR September,
jumped early. The shields were overloaded, and her reactor was severely damaged.
The captain ordered a jump ASAP.
After that, until 2346, no one had a clue where it ended up.
There are rumors that she entered a higher dimension of hyperspace to make such a long jump so fast.
Her wreck was found in previously uncharted space, on a small desert planet, a decade later.
Two more decades later and the rights to the wreck flipped holdings, into a family that would, in the 2900s, have a monopoly over the financial portion of the universe.
Before the second National-Republic war even began, plans were being made to turn the five planets obtained into massive mining planets, fueling the bulk of the empire.
Alongside massive updates to the mines of Rym, the engineering department was looking into enhancing the mineral scanners, thus improving total output overall.
The navy, was slowly choking the economy of the Republic.
Expansion was needed, and required for survival.
As a result, the planet Bazkarat, was designated by officials the next planet for colonization.
Until 2600 the Republic did not really expand, just colonizing planets to strengthen the economy.
Around 2520 The beacon collapsed into a black hole.
It was the year 2606 that resulted in a explosion of pure hatred across the Republic.
Millions of high level officials around the galaxy simultaneously received a single report:
The FRV Sojourner, was under attack.
FRV Sojourner was a small science vessel, about a hundred and fifty years old. Alongside the FRV Walter Raleigh, they had paved the course for expansion, becoming signs of peace and power, despite their civilians purpose.
The officials, watched, in relief, as the Sojourner jumped out of there. But this relief was misfound.
The massive relay station in Impan reported a simple message, one that would send shockwaves throughout the republic.
FRV Sojourner, destroyed.
The might of the entire navy was mobilized. Even Crusade squadron was involved. All space Amoebas would be ruthlessly hunted until they were extinct.
This campaign lasted two years.
As it concluded, the battlecruiser FRV Sojourner II was constructed, in honor of those that died in the Sojourners destruction.
It was but a mere few years lated the primitves on Mondaks Retreat, a planet in the same system as Rym, discovered nuclear power.
A prompt response was needed, and sent out.
All nuclear weapons were seized, for their own good, by the Republic.
They were dismantled and repurposed in Croken station.
then taught the secrets of the hyperdrive, gifted a planet, and left alone.
But suddenly they hated us. For no reason. We helped them along, and here they are, insulting us! They called our society,"Flawed and inefficient"
Here we are churning out stations the size of planets, receiving more resources in a month then they could store, with them barely even able to fund a formatiom of Corvettes, and they called US flawed! Pathetic.
In they year 2636 a declaration of war was made. We would seize Mondaks retreat.
One of the most unique engagements in the history of war occuredn. N.
Two massive orbital stations, dueled it out. There was no starships or armies, just two spaceports bqw forrawling.
In the end, our spaceport won, after a week of sucking up salvo after salvo. Simultaneously, our fleet moved on both Mondaks and the planet we gifted them.
As it was bombarded, the gifted planet rebelled. Bombardment concluded at once.
The fleet headed to Mondaks Retreat.
The first Republic-Confederacy conflict concluded in a victory.
We made a offer to preserve their empire.
They took it immediately.
The next ten years started the widespread construction of a line of massive orbital stations, of which most are destroyed, devoted completely to the advancement of the sciences. The rebellion was crushed, and the planet returned into the hands of the Confederacy.
It appears, that the Republic did not want the Confederacy to fall. It seems what they wanted, was for the Confederacy to take Bhudghobbd, in Beta Caeli, one of the far flung, useless colonies, in exchange for total control of Rym and Mondak. Afterall, before seizing the nuclear missiles, which are beleived to have been repurposed for new missileboats, they were seen more as a pet, than anything.
The Republic saw them as a toy. They hated us, we hated them. If they felt they grew to strong, the Republic would declare war, maybe take a few planets, and destroy the enemy fleet.
Meanwhile, a third ringworld was under construction, the one of Halbargaara. Apparently, it would be a massive shipyard. The actualy existence of the Halbargaara ring, however, has never been confirmed. Ever since the massive war that marked the end of the Republic and Rym Confederacy, the location has been lost. There are rumors that the ancient battleship Ghost still roams the galaxy, with old charts showing the state of the Republic at its height.
The Ghost, was, at one point, in 2436, a Lexington class fleet carrier, named FRV September. This specific vessel saw action in the second National-Republic conflict of the twenty four thirties.
When returning to Delta after the conflict concluded, the drive malfunctioned, sending the entire ship into a “Higher Dimension” of hyperspace, beleived to be the one we use in modern times. She traveled across the galaxy, crashing into a desert planet.
In the 2900s the vessel was salvaged, and would see battle as a super laser equipped pirate ship.
The ancient Halbargaa ring, built a hundred years after the first Sterope ring, apparently encompassed a Type G star. (Yellow dwarf) A likely candidate for Halbargaa is located in the sector (X324), (Y639), a Type G with a massive ring of debris, and no planets or asteroids.
Of course, the Sterope and Izta rings are both still used today, even tens of thousands of years after their construction. The massive sensor relay used by the Republic from the 2550s until its demise, was completely destroyed after a dreadnought rammed it at lightspeed in the end of the Republics life.
During the 2660s, another rebellion arose on Bhudghobbd. It was this time, left alone.
Around this time a order of 25 Snappers was thrown out there.
The Snappers design are as follows:
2x Medium Gamma Lasers
3x Large Gauss Cannons
1xTachyon Lance
4x Hyper Sheild Projectors.
The Snapper class was constructed of a mixture of crystal plating and living metal, creating a super heavy metal that both repaired itself and could suck up very heavy punishment. Some of these mass produced dreadnoughts are still present today, with the UNSFF fielding about a dozen for anti pirates.
Each one took 222 days to be churned out. They single handedly could siege a spaceport of their time and come out on top, while the Gamma lasers were good enough deterents to fend off smaller vessels.
The lance was able to wipe out most small vessels in a single blast, completely bypassing sheilding and nearly all armor.
In the year 2670 the Confederacy fell, with Mondak being left with really no purpose, no plans in place, and just left alone. It was mainly used as a pit stop for civilian starships.
In 2672 it was determined that the rebellion that had arisen in Beta Caeli, the one that was left alone, was not to be trusted. The Republic left them alone, keeping a weary eye on them. They were small, but as soon as they got a fleet that could take down a spaceport, they would be a threat.
However, fortunately, their development was capped off. With closed borders, they were limited to the northwestern portion of the accessible galaxy. Alongside this, the quality of the defense stations ordered around starports, and all over the capital system, formed a interlinking network of withering fire, each one being able to take on five Snappers at once, or about eleven early battleships. And with the massive technological leaps the U.R
By this time the first section of the Halbargaa ring world had supposedly come online, and the U.R produced enough minerals in a month to order a Vasa and Snapper class each month, which would, hopefully by the 2730s, be up to two Snappers orderable a month, as the Republic expanded slowly. Nearly two trillion people lived in the Republic by this time. (I count 1 pop as a billion.)
With the presence of a new foe, that had plenty of space to expand, the Sentry array was quickly guarded by a network of interlocking firing zones, to create a absolute deathtrap for any vessel caught in it.
Although with the combination of shipyards, average ship speed, and just age, it would be thought that it would now be defenseless, but that is not the case. The same can be said most likely for the rumored array to the south eastern portion of the galaxy, ancient holopads saying that a ruined array was found a few decades after the first was completed.
Seeing as they already had one, no resources were channeled into restoring it, though it was claimed and fortified in the case another empire ever came onto the galactic stage, they could not take it, atleast not without a fight.
Eventually, a abandoned vessel, seemingly a large yacht, was found in a asteroid belt.
It seems that atleast two of these vessels had been constructed, as one vessel with the exact same design was already in service, from a similar fate. This vessel found now, with the exact same “Super Engines” was disassembled, used for building a unique skyscraper on Delta. The engines were studied, and the knowledge from it was used in improving the Impulse engine design.
The speed of the Republic warships was unmatched.
At this time the Halbargaa ring was, according to records, starting to come online. Though yet to be colonized, there was already a portion completed, and another was being constructed. As well as this, a colony vessel had already landed on a large planet. In the coming decades, this specific system would be one of the most important systems in the Republic, churning out a massive amount of minerals.
But this output came at the price of vulnerability. Though surrounding systems were turned into fortress systems, this area was still but a few jumps from the Gubec Galactic Assembly, the former rebellion in the Beta Caeli system.
Though it would be very long before they could mount a offensive with the capability of taking a system, it was dangerous none the less.
A few years after touchdown on the planet, a new fleet was churned out.
Designated the first strike group, it contained the following:
3 supercarriers, the first off the lines.
5 Vasa class torpedo cruisers.
9 Defender class picket destroyers.
These carriers were extroadinarily fast, able to cross a system at unheard of speed.
This specific group would see intense action in the coming decades, in numerous wars against the Assembly.
The carriers were fast, definitely, but this came with the sacrifice of lacking hull durability.
The fleet was completely done by 2700, the flagship being the battlecruiser Sojourner II.
Their first assignment was to destroy some enemy vessels blocking the assemblies expansion, although soon after they departed the assembly insulted the republic, and the vessels were called back.
In the year 2690, a plan project was made.
The Sterope ring was the first ringworld the republic constructed, and it was completely devoted to technological advancment in all fields.
This plan was to build a third Dyson Sphere, then three more ringworlds.
One would be completely devoted to physics, the second to engineering, and the third to bio.
While the Republic enhanced everything, with super heavy sheilding and vessels, two colony ships touched down on Beta Caeli IV, and a planet on a nearby systems planet, both owned by the Assembly.
The Republic watched warily as they obtained destroyer sized vessels. Meanwhile, the Vasa's were enhanced, and one of them could now take on a old battleship and cruiser. In 2704 a battlecruiser was patrolling near Assembly space, when the array detected a small, unmanned vessel approaching. The array attempted to alert the FRV warships, but to no avail. The battlecruiser exploded and split in half, burnig up in the atmosphere of Sym. The ship that had approached was determined to be a assembly bomb ship. All twenty thousand aboard were killed.
Called a "Blatant act of terrorism" by the first speaker, a pair of Agincourt battleships was dispatched, steamrolling though the assembly as a warning. The capital city of Bhudghobb was leveled completely, along with a billion civilians.
Reeling In shock, they left each other alone.
Those who were related to the people killed aboard the battlecruiser simply had to live with the loss. Meanwhile the new Sphere was nearing completion.
It was the year 2729 when the Second Carrier Sqaudron was assembled, mirroring the first, with three super carriers, two battlecruisers, eight Vasas, and twenty destroyers of varying types.
By 2730 the sphere was finally completed, as well as the superheavy mining station of Rym II.
Across the Republic, massive new generator stations based off of the old Potomacs were constructed, and miniscule enhancements in the plants resulted in a massive amount of power gained overall.
Every two months the Republics massive mines put out enough minerals to build a unequipped massive Potomac sized station, and a corvette.
Construction on the first Ringworld, the frame having long earlier been constructed, finally commenced. This first one would be devoted completely to physics, a field that lagged behind compared to engineering and society.
As well as this, the large station "Defender." Was constructed, in the Fortress system dividing the Republic and the Bebaki. The nearest Beabakan star system being a single jump away, the friction even furtherly negatively impacted the two nation's relationship.
Despite the first wars lessons, the Assembly sent a hijacked cruiser and sent it into the atmosphere of Delta, wiping out a major population center, and killing billions, leading to the second Assembly war.
As the Galaxy heated up from the assemblies terrorism, the first new ring world was being built. As well as this, a series of late stations, the size of moons, although smaller then a Nexus, were being constructed, devoted entirely to research.
The second assembly war lasted half a year. Its main event was the great Terebellium chase.
The First Carrier Sqaudron was already stationed at Revannic, a few jumps from Assembly space. When the war broke out, they were ordered to destroy the remote starbases on the border, and then chase down and destroy the enemy fleet.
The Sqaudron had little problem with the starbases, and was followed by the main army of the Republic. The Accords fleet, a large formation of primitive destroyers and corvettes, completely bypassed the Sqaudron, and attacked the armies, a system behind.
The carriers quickly turned back. It was stressful, but eventually they made it, and though some vessels were heavily damaged, no ships were destroyed. In the battle between the Sqaudron and the Accord, the Kestrel class corvette FRV Zhengsheng was destroyed, and her sister was heavily damaged. A monument to the 578 men on Zhengsheng would be constructed in the 2770s, some of the first Republic casualties in the following wars.
Researchers were held with very high regard in the republic, the few who could lead science vessels or the different divisions, were practically gods in the public's eyes.
The capital city of Delta was dominated with the tips of the Xeno Biology museum, and capital complex super scrapers towers. On the outskirts was a massive research institute, with a massive sentient supercomputer, and logs of all technological advancements. This alone greatly enhanced the speed of research. Of course by now the Republic was in a constant diplomatic fire fight, insults flying over diplomatic lines.
During the construction of one of the rings, the Bebakans requested to send engineers to observe.
Such was promptly denied, for fear of yet another terrorist attack.
It was then that the Republic concluded terraforming efforts on a large tomb world, it had been a success. Radiation was back to the normal background levels for the type of star it orbited, and the planet was now covered with large, deep oceans.
In the 2750s war was once again declared, after the illegal seizing of the large civilian liner RV Velvet Abyss. (FRV stands for Federal Republic Vessel, while RV just Republic Vessel.)
The Velvet Abyss was relatively new, built in 2743. She measured stem to stern, 20 kilometers long, and a tenth that In height.
The seizing of the Velvet Abyss occurred when the vessel came " To close" to Accord space. As a result the vessel was boarded and a small but intense firefight broke out. During so the ship attempted to leave, but was hit by a volley of missiles near the reactor, and the ship, twice the size of a Republic battleship, exploded in a blaze of glory taking six hundred thousand lives. There were no survivors on either vessel. The power of the blast wiped out all station in the system.
All out war was declared. The First and second sqaudrons were in their space before they even knew it. Though it would be to power taxing to activate a hundred and fifty one sensor cloaking devices for the armies, they followed a few jumps behind.
The First Carrier sqaudron, the flag held on Sojourner II, spearheaded the assault, going straight for the heart of their empire, and assaulted the spaceport as well as a pair of small warships above their capital. The Relays reported that the enemies fleet, was now chasing down the faster transports, through the Terebellium system.
The transports were theoretically defenseless, but they were fast. With Impulse thrusters, enhanced from the technology duggen up from the old abandoned star yacht mentioned earlier. It was not hard for them to outrun the fleet. The problem was they could not get over to the next system before being caught. So as a result, they just played a long cat and mouse game that ended next to the hyperlane from Sym.
The turns started to let them catch up with the armies when a gaping rip between dimensions opened up.
Out of it came the Second Carrier Sqaudron. This was its baptism of combat, and it deeply confused the Accord Commanders. What they failed to realize was that the First Carrier Sqaudron, was not, infact, not, the main battlefleet of the Republic. The main battlefleet was actually a hundred times larger then both these fleets combined.
Each carrier sqaudron was composed of three super carriers, two battlecruisers, eight Vasas, twenty various destroyers, and two Kestrels.
It was a single pronged strike that had ended up kebabing the forces of the Accord in mere weeks. As the Accords fleet was crushed like bugs under the Second Sqaudron, the first was a jump away dealing with the spaceport above Bhudghobbd, and getting ready for orbital bombardment.
The two carrier sqaudrons had simultaneously destroyed their only mobile defense against the untouched landing force, and most of their ability to deploy warships.
The two sqaudrons then rendevoused for bombardment, to help along the invasion forces.
But they surrendered
The first section of the Rimmock Ringworld had been completed, the first labs were already under construction. Much to the northwest, nearer the border but yet far behind it, the first portion of the engineering ring was under construction.
This portion was finished and col onized by the 2780s.
By 2790 a new fleet had left the lines, its flagship a new escort carrier type, two Vasas, and a dozen corvettes. This fleet would conduct patrols on the outer reaches of the Republic. The system Rimmock was essential to the Republics security, even without the ring world. If a enemy fleet were to ever push even to the system north of it-
Rimmock would be the final fortress system before they could wreak havoc on the capital. And, it would cut the Republic completely in half if the system was to fall.
Fortunately, this was only a threat in the imminent future if there was ever a mutiny in the battle fleet.
Now it is here I should detail the average Republic capital ship.
By the year 2770 the Republic had about 125 capital ships.
Realistically, this is a very small number considering the massive economy of the Republic. They could, if they wanted to, produced about seventy Orion class battleships a year.
Of course, the Orion did not exist back then.
One U.R battleship could quickly destroy a spaceport, as long as it was not one of their own. They were flying command vessels, a feat of engineering. They only got more advanced as time went on.
The average U.R capital ship had four large Hyper Shield projectors, was made of Crystalline plates, and had a sentient, yes, sentient, super computer directing the fire of the weapons.
The U.R battleship of the 2770s could face a trio of the ancient “Reliant” class fleet carriers.
Though the Reliants had Hypershields as well, their usefulness was limited, for:
They did not have Zero-Point reactors.
The sheilding was not as advanced as the U.R shielding.
The lack of advanced reactors limited how many subsystems could be placed on the ship at once.
This was countered by the fact that the Reliants bombers could completely bypass the shielding, however most U.R capital ships had massive shield buster guns.
One single battlestation could take on 16 of these vessels. That is about half of the total amount of Reliants ever produced.
Two of the battlestations could take on the entire Deltan Republics navy, as of when they departed their second home, although it is likely one would go down.
The Jurii Covenant would be steamrolled, as they could not take to many fortress systems before falling, and would likely be caught by the Republics main battlefleet, which was six times larger then the Covenants fleet as of 2780, while the two carrier fleets could simultaneously conduct invasions.
In 2750 twenty “Snapper” class battleships were ordered from Danube, a portion of the old Sterope ringworld.
The Snapper class, when first designed in the 2360s, was to be the main ship of the line, although this title ended up falling to the older Agincourt class battleships.
The Snapper was expensive and powerful. It had a massive Tachyon Lance, firing particles at FTL speeds, completely bypassing shielding and delivering devastating blows that could wipe out most small ships, and do heavy damage to everything else. Production on the ships stopped completely in the 2450s, and the Snappers, though kept up to date and maintained well, were relics.
This is not to say that they were obsolete. They were far from it. It was actually superior to many of the capital ships in the fleet.
These snappers were the first ones built in three centuries.
In 2765 a new battleship was designed and put into service.
This battleship followed a single strategy.
Heavily armored, single deflector, shield buster ship.
It had a massive gun on the bow, and was loaded with artillery.
It only had a single shield projector, although it had the efficiency of two and a half of the older hypershield projectors.
Originally, the designer wanted to fit it with old chemical engines to lessen the reactor load, but this was thrown out the window, as such a slow vessel would prove more of a nuisance in war time then a actual fighting force, drastically slowing down the fleet, when speed could be a matter of life or death for the far flung colonies.
Originally, few were built, until the introduction of the First Battlefleet, twice the size of the First Carrier sqaudron, (Henceforth the FCS)
in the early 2770s.
In 2780 it was required that at all times, if all Federal ships were to mobilize at once, the Republic should still posess the ability to receive 300 extra energy credits simultaneously, as the Armada was useless, for total mobilization of it would slaughter the Republics economy in mere months.
To prevent this, a new Dyson Sphere was ordered, near Croken Station.
Croken Station was a Potomac R, a Potomac devoted to research only. It housed and cared for twelve billion researchers and their families. It orbited a massive black hole, and was top secret
Two decades later, as the new Dyson Sphere was startin to come
After the conclusion of the Samnivik Fleet Crisis, the galaxy was quiet. Life went on, the Republic continued construction of new research stations.
Finally, after decades of the projects dormancy, construction started on the ringworld that would house the biological labs, although only after the Perqim dyson sphere was constructed.
The massive industrial capacity also endlessly expanded.
In 2825, the main armada reached 700k on the FP scale, while the Confederacy lagged behind at about 7.8k.
In total the navy was at about 820k.
If wanted, the U.R could put out two new capital ships every month.
It was then the U.R looked into a secret base of operations. A secret battlefleet in a secret system, with a spaceport capable of massproducing massive ships.
The systems nearby Jurg Hulaghh, a old planet taken from primitives in a invasion and still far from the Republics main systems, were chosen.
However, this would never come to light.
In 2838 a defence fleet of five new “Galleon” class ships, large, heavily armored vessels with plasma cannons, was constructed for Trophy.
After this, war was declared, where they would make their debut.
They peformed even better then expected, and in a fight against the confederacy navy, wiped out their entire fleet, of which the five enemy battleships had spinal mounted weaponry, which the galleons lacked, on the fringes of Samnivik.
The cry for all galleons to open fire would be stolen by thousands of admirals following.
The five “Grand Galleons” as they were called, would be the main diplomatic escort for the higher ups. Eventually they would get the single “Battle Galleon” a Horizantus class equipped with cannons.
They also softened up the ground defenses of Monument after said space battle, in which the entirety of the Confederacy fleet was destroyed by said galleons. (Not one galleon was lost.)
Very little survivors from the Confederacy fleet were picked up, as most of the crew members were killed in the vacuum when the cannons ate through the hull.
The galleons would be one of the rarer capital ships, although still very powerful. Additionaly, The Armada received five.
In the 2840s it was found that the economy could now support the Armada away from its home of Danube, a portion of the Sterope ring world.
By this point the Armada was at about 760k on the FP scale.
The FBF was lucky enough to receive one of the said galleons, which would become the flagship.
The Galleons played a critical role in the fleets.
They had both heavy armor, and heavy shielding. (Very few of the ships in the Republic had armor.) Additionaly, they used weapons that easily bypassed armor, while the main fleet focused on anti shielding weaponry.
Armor covered 86% of the ship on the first Galleons, later being upped to 90%
They served as the command ships of the fleet, before the Dreadnoughts were introduced.
(One dreadnought had armor, heavy shielding, three gamma lasers, and three gauss cannons, as well as a mixture of a hull that had a mixture of living metal, crystalline plates, and the regenerative hull tissue of the space ameoba, creating the ultimate ship.)
The galleons were cheaper then most of the main capital ships, but never entered true mass production, and compared to most other ships like the Vasa class torpedo cruisers, the Agincourt and snapper class battleships, few were ever built.
The five “Grand Galleons” spent most of their time, when not peforming a task, as a early buffer between the Confederacy and the Republic.
You see, the Confederacy could not be in a worse place.
The main battlefleet was slow and far behind the capital.
The Confederacys main link to the Republic was but a few jumps from Rimmock, the engineering ringworld and the main highway between the Republic and the outer galaxy.
This was because this region of the galaxy, though near completely uninhabited, except for Rovannic, which even then is a stretch, was the quickest link between the core of the U.R and Uva Xavani.
Uva Xavani consisted of thirteen planets, and consisted of all systems once under control of the old National empire, destroyed in the National Republic wars of the late 2300s.
To go to the southern link, you would have most of the megastructures, as this area had a greater concentration of empty systems, completely useless.
If such a empire ever reach Rimmock, the western portion of the galaxy would be cut off near completely, and it would take months longer to reach Uva Xavani.
The only immediately available buffer was a small formation of ancient cruisers, with little shielding and armor, a slow hyperdrive, and a horrible design.
These ships had all been pulled from the gas wells of various gas giants.
It was suddenly when a massive coordinated terrorist attack destroyed the hyper comm forms around the Republic.
Surprisingly, they were not replaced.
About two decades after this event, as a new Dyson Spheres frame was being built, came the Asterion Incursion.
It resulted in the planet of Markaz III to be near completely pulverized, and it was only two years after the start of bombardment, six billion were dead.
In the year 2900 a new dyson sphere was finished. In 2904 , after nearly three centuries of the plan existing, the bio-research ring finally was colonized.
Two years before, in 2902, a new battlecruiser, the “Holy Fire” class,(Ironic, as gods were beleived in by a fraction of the population), FRV Fall Of Pompeii, became the new flagship of the fleet.
In 2915 a new dyson sphere was ordered.
Now, as we all know, today we use credits as currency. This is a development of the “ECU.” The United Republic used a scale of a qaudrillion ECU=1 Energy Credit, with a maximum surplus of about twenty thousand. By this time, if the fleet had not been mobilized, they could produce about 950 Energy Credits a month. The purpose of the newest Dyson sphere was to push economic security. We can see this, as in the 2940s, after said spheres completion, work was commenced on a new ring world, which would become a massive reactor. Although significant measures were taken, in the fortyfour sixties, the ring world would be hit by a massive swarm of advanced Bebaki missiles, quickly taking down the shielding and causing a chain reaction that pulverized the ring, along with a hundred billion souls.
In 2917 a suprise attack by the Armada on Budhghobbd was caried out.
In this war, the battlecruisers FRV Leeroy and FRV Jenkins, jumped ahead of the Armada into Bebaki space, and when the fleet arrived to save them from the onslaught, it quickly evolved into a chaotic fleet battle, with freindly fire claiming seven cruisers, three capital ships, and fourteen destroyers. Additionaly, Bebaki fire claimed the lives of the two cruisers.
FRV Jenkins was also severely damaged in a collision with a freindly armored cruiser of the Tramp class.
The Tramp was relatively old, with multiple missile systems and gauss cannons. It was heavily armored, slow, and lightly shielded, designed to absorb blows and overload point defense systems. It was the workhorse of the FRV until neutron torpedoes were introduced, with the Vasa class. After the introduction of the heavily shielded Vasa, the Tramps were kept in service but production halted on all. The occasional order for one might be sent to a backwater world every few years, but other than that they fell out of the spotlight
This specific Tramp was only mildly damaged, as the collision impacted one of five neutronium armor belts, although multiple plates buckled. Unfortunately, when The Jenkins attempted to go over the ship, the mangled remains of the #2 laser battery, mangled beyond repair, impacted the bridge, causing it to be exposed to the void, the command crew dying of asphyxiation.
The captains of both the Leeroy and Jenkins were court martialed for destruction of federal property, (Up to fifteen qaudrillion ECUs worth, of which a Energy credit is worth half a qaudrillion), mass murder, and extreme incompetence. They were summarily execueted.
FRV Jenkins had to be scrapped from the extent of the damages, and was broken up over Baltris. Her surviving weaponry was sent to weaponry emplacements on various cruisers and frigates.
Four hundred thousand, though miniscule compared to the total fleet, were killed in this engagement. (FRV Ships are kinda crew intensive) I typically count it as 20k per cruiser, 50k per battleship.
The horrific loss had a severe morale impact, and efficiency was estimated to decline by all the way up to 10%.
In the years following the engagement, specifficaly in 2920, a new battleship class entered service and mass production. This new vessel was the best of the best, with three heavy Gamma laser and heavy gauss cannon emplacements each. It had a large belt of Neutronium armor, in which the four hypershield projectors were surrounded.
The main weapons control was in a heavily armored nook between the reactor array, a array of massive zero point reactors, and the engine compartments. It was circular, in the middle of the neutronium belt, split into the laser and Gauss sections, for their weaponry. It was coordinated by a central computer, that ensured the ship was as effective as possible without danger of malfunction, and all weaponry attacked a single target.
The class was named "Successor", and became an icon, the ideal target that any cadet worked up to, to command a Successor class. Additionally, safety measures learned from the raid of Bhudghobd ensured such heavy friendly fire would never happen again. The shells could automatically detonate when it identified a allied ship in it's trajectory of fire. Exactly how they did this we have no clue.
These behemoths quickly replaced the Agincourt class, with fifty being ordered after seeing it's efficiency, ten yards getting five each, initially. They rose the Armada on the FP scale to 1.2 million, up to 1.4. Each was individually around 3.4K FP. Most FRV capital ships sat above this line, but it was only so low because the FP scale tends to favor gunsniber lasers. Who can blame em?

Of course, this is all dead wrong.

Although remotely based in fact, this “History” Of the United Republic, is plain wrong. storeh(was bored):https://www.reddit.com/useTherandomanswerecomments/e5vgw0/short_story/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Hey criminal class. So someone I know, and no,.. let me stop you guys right there, because it's really not me! And though it seems like I'm just diverting my guilt , though in complete and utter obviousness of the perpetration done by, none other than me and assuming guilt onto myself through reasonable doubt that I, in fact, am using a common tactic many many guilt ridden people who have never heard of a search engine use, to find out other people's experience with the crime committed. To help them lessen and usually come to terms with the anxiety of, well, not having done thewrong, BUT GETTING BUSTED BY FEDS,... Also I'll be extremely conspicuous in wording to further back up my previous sentence... , because why would I incriminate myself, though anonymously and with no burden of proof, or even any form of substantial evidence to the contrary of me being completely innocent , or even just the more than likely possibility that I am a pathological liar, or simply put a TROLL, and perhaps in an attempt to shroud my narcissistic mind in the relief from longing about the ever present conceit I crave, to attain clout from people who wont see me for what and who I really am, guilty of stated actions or not...and , well, let's call it that "www cred...world wide web cred"....fits ? Fiiinally its All to an online community of people doing just that? Well, yeah....no shit it's me, ok? Anyways I got carried away with that. The SWIM crap is for people who are going to get caught doing whatever scandalous and unethical or even morally twisted deeds they do to get by. I dont do it just to get by , well at least not at first , I was healthy young and demographically inclined...if you catch my drift, also I was hot. Then crack and cancer hit me, within a 4 year period. Now my death is waiting to catch me as I (currenty) freefall through all my years of tomfuckery , shenanigans, and downright evil acts Iv Imposed onto loved one's and strangers alike for my personal gain or benefit in some way. Lemme include, never have I hurt anyone, I am a nonviolence advocate chairperson for an .org I wont mention here, .. to preserve any involvment of me to them, I wont get them involved if I ever am traced back to this post , somehow... , yes, criminals can have values and beliefs on an altruistic plain too. I'm a person, human, homo sapien , no homo but homologous indeed through the way I do bad shit all the time, comparative to how doctors do what they do. Specialists like me only succeed, yet prepare daily for that knock or bang or kicking down of my front door knowing cops r assisting the feds by guarding the backyard... and perhaps a subpoena for electronics only, if I'm a super lucky dude, or like a warrant for search and seizure , which if it happened on a day like this whole past year, considering the amount of associates who I coexist and share my habitat with, though only my name is on the lease....so I would assume I, me , myself, and noone else hold sole responsibility of what is found in the fucking house regardless of any evidence to the contrary, IF I am correct I'm that assumption cool...but haven't researched that because I am quite frankly scared of the truth since precautionary measures will be hard to take at this point , and if were taken would diminish the very strong trust i perceive to be held by my employer and employees alike towards myself. It's a business I am apart of. The United States secret service hates us and has been most likely trying to track us for the past 3 years we have been in ops. If anyone reports this just know I use a 12.99 dollar monthly (on accounts run by someone completely untraceable in any way to me, a friend who died couple years ago, a street brother, truly a brother. As he lay dying of a gunshot wound in his chest , points to his government phone which is cracked and is missing the back battery cover , and says the numbers of his passcode. Ok, I unlock. and next of his password for his BoA, why I ask? He tells me to collect his current reparations from him being born and raised on a Lacota Sioux reservation and add it to his coin base wallet , and the pass is also to all his accounts both on the clear and dark parts of the internet. Just different variants of the first letter and last letter being either lower or upper case. Ok, I started 2 years ago with no knowledge of the depths of internet, yet I suddenly had a dying brother give me access to 1.8 of his earned BTC through God knows how, told to me in those precious dying words, bleeding alot out of his nose n shit, I was worried he would die before he was finished telling me what to do and how to do it and I was right because he did. Turns out I am good at research. Looked up keywords which lead to .onion use and eventually to the point of activity I partake in now... also 1.8 BTC in early 2017 was like aloooot... was an astronomical fucking awesomely large amount of money to Inherit as a homeless and registered runaway, a 17 year old , yes I am currentyl 19. The beauty of all this is if I do get caught now, which I hope it happens sooner than later as odds will be stacked against me as I grow up and have some possible info on background search sites. Il explain, I have such a clean record that I dont have one. Just hospitalizations for psychiatric dues , about 7 in 2016 and monthly every year before that backing up to my 8th grade year. Unstable child I was.... I have been completely off the grind since I was 17, and have 4 pseudonyms and fake but real IDs to back each up. One is a real person living out of state. I bougjt his info, and since he is same age same height and relatively same weight depending on angles of observation, that is the one i carry, my face is in the place of his, and he is 19 as well, and not yet on any databases or lists... cool. I carry that one... also my tVPN I really hope works well, NordVpn. And I burn my phone every 3rd day. So before I do anythimg, on the third day every 3 days, no matter if I'm spitting up more blood than usual or shitting my organs into collapsing on themselves. I also dont pay a rent like on a normal lease like I previously mentioned something about, there's no point in lying,so I'll say it. I live in section 8 housing , ha. So the problem is my earned income since 2017 has been 0 dollars. According to the IRS and US government at least, because in reality my team has quadrupled our ROI the first year, and after this third years start we are making 28 x ROI as of January, and it went from 14 to 28 ROI in the last few months of 2018, holidays were quite a growing stage, with an eerie and unsettling lack of consequence, mistakes or any growing pains at all really, for that much unprecedented growth and how greedy me and my associates are we handled it like a bomb squad averting every mine in front of them, even ones out of our control because of vision blunders. Luck played a factor in certain cases, like follow ups by small businesses when my persona I play was accused of extortion and blackmail of a company I worked with, a laundromat that actually had a facade of lavenderia, but was really sand electric gambling ring. I sold lots of my counterfeited American bank notes to the manager of operations there, and got the wise idea to extort him and blackmail him simultaneously, by not only threatening to report anonymously, but if he managed to not get busted, I would personally destroy his reputation and rapport as I knew his identity and where he and his family lived. Thanks truthfinder.com and spokeo.com as well as other public data archives, u help me do crime research for my actions against other criminals. Anyways, he said the owner of the building found out and is having him arrested within the week, so he will just turn himself in, he has warrants for a ponzhi scheme or some MLM bullshit as well that generated so much cash from lottery fraud it is being prosecuted by the Federal Government, he told me he was the first person he was going to out. And since I divulged in good faith certain bits of info about my whereabouts and minor activities or services I use, I'd be able to be found within a week. So shit, I'm going down I think, we move the operation to a storage facility that doesnt have cameras because it is really an abandoned building in the heart of the unincorporated community of the impoverished part of industrial San fransisco. Yes I'm located in the bay area. Lcation doesnt matter there are many people doing what I'm doing here, but even worse! Anyways never got found out, and didnt stop my frequented locations because I need meth, crack and hookers, and my habits are very set . I buy from the same dealer every other day. I would buy more but that's dumb, PROP47 HAS DECRIMINALIZED POSSESION OF ALL DRUGS EVEN SCHEDIE FUCKING 1. Yup, iv been handcuffed and searched after being witnessed injecting cocaine and heroin into my arm at a moderately trafficked bus stop in the Tl in the City, . So I gave them my doppelganger's ID and the lazy police simply ran it, saw I was not a CA citizen , and thanks to Obama, like really tha I you Obama, and prop 47, gave me back the bag of crack I still had left and my paraphernalia, as well as my phone they didnt go through though I was panicking about bcuz it was actually unlocked for some reason when they searched me, since it was sitting on the chair..,, and with my whole past day and a half of extremely incriminating text messages, so now I have better quality burners I can activate anytime for me and the whole office , so I have like 12 for the next few days or next week, and we used messaging sites like kik who aren't USA based, who claim to not store messages for more than 7 days except pictures and other multimedia. But we figured foreign companies are prone to forced subpoena, since the company doesnt have measures set in place to protect the citizens of the USA, and the govt doesnt set in place those measures for foreign companies. We use strictly deepweb messengers, I take half a day every week to set up the phones for TOR use, also the messages go up in flames every time the screen is locked or changes tabs, so my colleagues best write that shit down! keep all documents for tracking (only vauge descriptions of management of time and certain resources expended so we ar not to go back to use certain services we burnt out. Basically where and when we commit each act of passing off our counterfeit bank notes, where we placed one of our skimming wares, who we contracted eith to sell our product and services to and any description of all of these activities, . A gold mine for feds? Were a step ahead,, in a coded and hard to detect form of South Dakotan Indian unwritten folk language. Yes its unwritten, but only by American and western scholarly knowledge. like really America you haven't translated the written languages of the people who were here before any euro WASP imperialist delusional freedom seeking yet freedom taking hypocritical scum dumplings washed ashore the Americas like 6 to 5 hundred years ago? ? That sounds like a basis for subsidizing the winners mentality of dominiance America has had for hundreds of years against all of these poor men women and children with blatant behaviors of pseudo nationalism (america to me is an illusion, one of grandiosity too, because to be American means to have had family migrate here in this generation or the last for OPPURTUNITY, yet it's extremely saturated, so much that crime is an only option for many, for most, yet people will argue that but there aren't statistics on unreported crimes are there? What have you done today?) And muting of a broken society , one that suffered loss of land , independence in all ways and self sufficiency as a tribe, all forms of culture WASPs didnt find pleasing to the eye, including the languages apparently, and also loss of the way they gathered knowledge of the material and existential world, their natural resources, the way they grew society, the fabric of these peoples existence and other things like basic human and civil rights, even the Fucking MAGNA CARTA was implemented, so why did it not apply to these imperialists when they left the United kingdom? Wow, such integrity, no wonder political entities are all scumbags, they are decendants of criminal genocide, a genocide that isn't completely finished yet, and nobody cares enough to do a thing about it...,they are subjugated as a group of people , who are dead as a culture and own entity or unit, they dont have a sense of identity as the people of Lacota Sioux, and they all resent america and every citizen in it according to my firsthand sources and secondhand experiences with their struggles daily.. ,and for supplying the reservations with enough reparations to become alcoholic druggies who get discounts at casinos that are built to exploit them furthermore, and drive complacency to a severe and epidemic proportions... the youth always introduced to forms of violence unbeknownst to many outside the reservation my street brother lived on and escaped from, seeking political asylum at age 13 in America's foster system which turned out that in his luck was just a bit worse. He, who shouldn't be named for my own protection, is dead at age 26 now. He had been homeless since the age of 14. He has a child in the foster system he didnt have contact with the last year of his life, and the 3rd and last year of me knowing him. He got progressively more mentally unstable causing nervousness in myself. He got shot because he robbed a relatively well known drug dealer in the area, who found out about it because of a tip off , so there is a rat in my circle, and iv effectively closed myself off to any possibility or manifestation of this person in my life which has led me to be in my operational headquarters alot, while everyone elese comes for the nighttime shift. I am there all day, vulnerable to warranted searches anf swats... but fuck it ? ,. But To just not record a language of a large group of people is extremely evilish and wicked, bigoted and very very inherently and not even just fundamentally or systematically racist, but racist on a whole societal level I feel, ...why did no one even far outside of the government construct of America and friends, including the remaining Sioux people of south Dakota who aren't to blame, but have no pride except for the facade of the pride and haughtyness they often display as the Sioux people are known to be arrogant and full of themselves, this is obviously an overcompensating of the inferior complex felt on the level of tribal and ancestor values, they dont see themselves as important but want others to. And its specifically the elders alive within the generation now who were passed doen the language nonchalantly . My street brother didnt learn it until he went back to visit his uncles in 2007 or 2008, in which he took a year of mentorship from the principal of his reservations highschool, he had never attained education, or developed reasonable emotional and logic based skills, it was hard dealing with him sometimes, but he no MATTER WHAT always helped me before himself for no reason other than to see me do ok, ..he helped me to the point of where I could take advantage, and many people did, I got to know him right as he was cutting everyone off from his help. But I soon proved to be a person who gave all of what he gave right back at some point in a reasonable and timely fashion. It was all necessity based yet very superficial and primitive , so carnal things we helped eachother with... we helped eachother get high and eat, and sleep safely as one of us safeguarded. No growth ever commenced. So when I began working with small white collar intellectual criminals of a higher playing field he alienated himself from me. On the last day of his life, I was was last person to see him alive, and i was the last person he would ever see as the incarnate of himself ... very sad. He earned a place within myself as a brother, but deeper than blood, a street brother. He was the cause of me learning how to survive so quick. He schooled me on his over 12 years of experience being on the street of SF . RIP my dude... I know u aren't in heaven because you rejected the westernGod, I know you are right where u wanna be wherever the fuck it is, you nevertold me what you believe happens to people's anything as they die. Hm...well since we're on the topic ofthat, I'm Suprisingly to most I know , fucking Buddhist. Yes I know I'm not a good one nor do I claim to be , I dont believe in accumulation of merit and karmic consequences of any future life. I am strictly what Buddhists were before Sidhartha Gotama had a following, teaching or any sort of recognition. The buddhism of the rudimentary pali canon, part of theravada tradition. One person I know asked me recently, yesterday actually, how I handle being condemned constantly by myself for not adhering to my core values and fundamental and crucial principles of my system of belief. I responded , well I dont think one rotten Buddhist is going to spoil the entire barrel, such as the inbred people of CERTAIN fanatical, dogmatic and oppressive sects of Christianity Judaism and Islam,. Monotheism is a very cool idea at its core I think, its just been perverted as what started as a figurative fundamentalism based on a core text of messages ,meant to invoke character and hope in the people it was written by, and for each demographic of people's experience at the time, and it was a humanizing experience of morals value and discipline n discernment of good and evil , like a book on HOW TO BE GODLY HOW TO BECOME GOD 101 , all orated from a creator in which to place FIGURATIVE faith in,a creator I have interpreted as a maladjusted mentally disturbed entitled teenage boy who has a near geniusIQ, its 135, I have interpreted creator in any monotheistic religion to be, well, me and you, us, both independently and as a collective at the same time and when we are alone. .,on the flipside , how many and most sects of the 3 main monotheistic world religions I HAVE PERSONALLY studied for years of seeking truth, , the side of non god like human behavior. It all has a decent analogy I compare to it, and one analogy I used before my current line of work, ironically,. So we use bank notes, or any form of paper and metal money for that matter. We understand that it doesnt really exist except for the tangible , completely useless (except conductor metals but irrelevant) materials it is comprised of (the church the preachers and breeders the teachers and the likes of the church involving itself in state affairs where it holds more ground and leeway into its interests based on manipulative machivellianistic leaders) as an inherently valuable commodity or sort of an onformation or anything. but it does play a determining role in society , as faith based and omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. It rules. So , This tangible object made of relatively easy to dupe or manipulate fabric and materials will shape the quality of life for everybody who understands how to use it efficiently or not. It's a multi tiered hierarchy of who can have the most of it as well, just as God of certain religions in certain bibles favors the peoples of that region. Why does the God of the univers in the jewish Torah favor a minority demographic of Israelite tribes, who have suffered endlessly before and after , as well as during the intervention of this divine whereas those not favored by God live posh lives of pirates and pleasure! Sound familiar . Corporate and non corporate elite are condemned by the majority of anyone who not exclusively insider , they are considered so evil that we cannot see them or touch them in any way, because they have capes that make them invisible or they are vampires who only come out at night. Regardless, they control what, like 90 percent of the wealth, in like 10 percent of the pop. of America and its direct interests not involving anything international iv read and domt cite me because I'm not sure, but I think somrthimg like 1 to5 percent of the 10 percent of these elite families control another vvast 90 percent of that 90 percent of wealth ! So, me defacing the God who doesnt favor them to the point of depriving them of complete attention and accountability has caused them to go rogue and exploit us God like pacified pacifist masses , where residing here, some of us see a great subsidization of wealth with poverty and slave trade, both physical slavery and modern disguised physical slavery as what is called debt and loans, amd we domt want to partake in this! We want out of the forcefed archetype of capitalism that's not practiced in a free market, look st government bailouts to companies like AIG in 2008 , yes it was going to compromise the whole process and system of finance. Rendering the God of our understanding being the dollar bill yall, fucking and wholly fucking useless. I am an anarchist. Ok , why do I capitalize on illegal production of defaced government notes i add value to? Well what's better than rejection is fighting the enemy with it's own weapons . Perhaps he knows how to use it to every degree so its futile in the end. But at least he will know and worry about the massrs becoming better equipped at some point to use the weapon harnessed for themselves. In and of itself a new society would br created, a changing of the hands, but then again out of chaos arises order, except in countries where the united states of Americas government and foreign policy is applied. Well, south east Asia cuz who wants to have a holiday in Cambodia? And we cant forget Iraq, we wonder why the middle east hates us to the point of the jihad era of suicidefighting. It is difficult to surmount enemies who not only want to die for religious incentive of better life after honorable death , holy war, but these people have a real world reality based incentive as well. For starters .the Amiriyah shelter bombing in early 90s killed around 500 innocent civilians. US sent a couple bombs , I think on purpose to send a message, because our society is based on the premise of ends justify means..... also the highways of death and rampant and recorded torturing of high ranking and low ranking Iraqi army officials and soldiers. Ok,I'm not sympathizing with Saddam or his cruel and oppressive regime, I'm sympathizing with the people of Iraq who have suffered , mainly due to ancient religious queries of opposing tribes, due to a split over a thousand years ago when the prophet n leader of the Islamic religion died not appointing asuccessor. Thanks Mohammed, . People who belong to Sunni’s believe the Prophets’ trusted friend and advisor this fuckin guy named Abu Bakr i think was the first rightful leader of Muslims or self proclaimed caliphate, while Shias believe that Mohammed’s blood cousin and son-in-law, which is fucked up on a moral and even scientific level because if your blood cousin is your son in law as well, the implication of one of your female (orMale, I'm progressive), cousins being wedded to him is outstanding, and kind of hot. Just kidding, I think even consensual incest amongst adults who didnt even grow up together whith often thwarts attraction all together, who also understand completely the impact of what they r doing is gross not because of prudence or societies standards, really people upload "so called" incest porn for a reason, taboo is held at a certain level of secret reverance,but really only since it leads to a high high high chance of mutated Genes at some point down the line, usually immediately, creating sufferers of mood disorders and mental maladaptive or straight up complete mental disability , and physical disorder and often painful and very life reducing diseases of the body... it doesnt appeal to me even sexually because of this, not becusde I think nothing sexually of my cousin because truthfully she is hot, and I wouldnt ever fuck her even if she offered and I was on high dose of meth and haven't jacked it in about 3 weeks or had sex ever in my life. Also note physical n mental malody are categorized I'm a bunch of subtypes of each gene pairings and have high chances of making quality of life for offspring very very very low at SOME point, and will have introduced more fallacy to human health and mental faculty for generations to come. What if a person like me was running for office? and won? My family was incestuous on both sides, mom and dad, in the 1800s and late 1700s , yes its recorded on ancestry, gr8 website btw. 60 percent of every member on my momds side of the family has a mental disorder diagnosed as mood based or neurological, whereas 100 percent , yes, every single member who is alive today on my dad's side (48 people of direct bloodline, being my great great great great grandfather and mothers offspring withim 33 percent of relative blood stream I guess , as well as 2 concubines which are half as related to me, and that includes another 60 something presently alive, and they show excellent signs of proof that it was my great ggg grand mother who was the catalyst to my gggggrand father's faculties vice versa in destroying my bloodlines mental health) all of the extended family is diagnosed or suspected of by officials or doctors of at least one occurence of at least one diagnosable trait of that disorder . poly substance drug use and alcoholism, usually in conjunction with mood disorders ranging from bipolar and other manic depressive disorders like Cyclothimea, to things like psychopathy , as well as anxiety related disorders like OCD or panic and body dysmorphic perception. Even severe neurological problems that are embedded and present before they rear their hethings like Tourettes syndrome, any motor and vocal tics, even motion disorders I found prevalent after the 6 marriages within first rate family in czhecoslovakia 1800s..talking siblinging and parent child sick shit . Only after the 100 years of familial marriage reproduction on 2 sides of my retraceable lineage does mental fallacy seem to take off with presice and consistent worsening of volume and individual severity. This Shia cousin fucker is named Ali and he was supposedl chosen by Allah to hold the title, according to Shias .looping back a bit. to deface its intended and totally arbitrary value is fighting the ooppressive industrial regime of the west world. A rich white council of nuts said what has value to all, and in that benefit the reaps of the rest of tthe sycophants. I wont bpart of ideas like " it does for I say it does" . And higher authority began exploiting us from b4 America, ...the nowadays diluted culture of monotheism is very ritualized and empty of meaning to newer generations of western and mideastern kids , like me, it's become a cycle of what is now like a kind of GOD-INIZING of HUMANS to the point of immunity impunity and extreme hedonism, and ability of socially tampering with the world ,, I guess the Sioux weren't always allotted even the desolate land now have,because calvinist scum fuck predestination delusional manifest destiny (they were right tho) preachers, they converted many Sioux and other people's by force, and whipped and caned and mutilated their bodies when the language of their folk was spoken.... What they do have now, and its valuable but not visible is a rudimentary and obviously diluted and broken language. It can b repaired, revised, refined. No clear boundaries around certain aspects of its fundamental properties like homonyms, this problem especially written down. It's written in English as well, sort of ironic, no? Anyways , yes I also use the clearnet services too, just using different persona and subtracting any form of monitoring from Google or third parties I can, anyways I domt want borderline homosexual BDSM porn cartoon games advertised to me all the time....like thanks Google, I appreciate the ssentiment but hey, my friend saw all the ads I get recently by shadowing how i use certain plstform to scam ppls and, and well he does targeted marketing himself on social media, freelance funnel ads, he now gets my phishing domains of mock sites into sight of prospective victims. So , he fucking knows....everything....also including but not limited to all of my activities mentioned here as well as skillset - myj mathematical comprehension skills are on an unbelievably dramatic lower playing field than my inclination towards literature and the likes of management , proactivity, reading people's emotions and still not feeling empath or any sort of even slight sympathy, unless I see them being physically exploited as the weaker or more vulnerable party, and I love them, (i am diagnosed to have both highly evolved sociopoathy as my therapist described it, the reason is of me not being delusional and completely opposed to the true nature of my darkened and mental twists, which developed most likely because of trauma I experienced as an early teen. Saw the deaths of 3 people I cared about so much my perception was altered, eventually developed into complete apathy and resentments, guiding me down the path of least resistance when coming to yield my every craving ! I am horrible....also the fucked up addon of the love-to-control and often less common , rare, dare I say unique? , less commonly known, and undocumented almost completely out of history , ...the merger and blending of machivellianistic narcissism, usually ppl who have this mentality are never exposed. by ignorance or knowledge and sense of godlike superiority withheld 100%. I am a fucking sociopathic machiavellian who displays a multitude of a subtype of narcissism that curtails anyone from realizing the nature of my truest intentions. Simply put, I'm so good at being bad nobody knows I'm bad in the ways I am at all, occasionally I will even get carried away with my fantasy I project. I do everything based on self preservation AAnd self benefit. I won't snitch once I do go down, whenever that may be , because it would benefit my extreme ego of grandiose things to not do so. If I were to snitch, I just couldnt. Really, simply because my true identity which is in constant crisis, and inferior complex I hold onto that is extremely over compensated for in other ways, wouldn't allow me to rat , unless I'm wrongly accused or framed, no associates will ever go down with me. And since all current ties n connections I have are equally CULPABLE in our collective efforts to jeopardize banking, 1 dollar padded with +99 at a time, no leaders r here. Only captains go down with ship, though countless others r CULPABLE morally and legally. I'm better than that, we have decentralized egalitarian ideals at my company...yet I have lots of warped values. I steal from sick people and small businesses, i scam in many other ventures like ID theft and vending to deep web clients cloned CCs skimmed from businesses both corporate and not. I'm a hypocrite, a pathological liar who for the first time can remember told a completely truthful account anything consisting of more than one minute of my all too jaded human experience.....

This is my first reddit post, so please excuse the length, as well as the quality. I’m currently struggling with a gambling addiction that I’ve had for around four years and find that nothing I do has succeeded in helping me overcome this addiction. I figured that other people have experienced a gambling addiction and have successfully overcome one, so I would love to hear anyone’s thoughts, advice, or comments on my situation, as well as gambling addictions in general.
As a kid, I’ve always had an addictive personality. I remember when I was younger, I would play video games for hours on end non-stop. One of my biggest regrets to date is not reading more as a kid. The cognitive ability of reading is one of the most underrated skills in life and my peers and friends who read for fun growing up are not only fast readers, but generally do well in school and life. At the time, I didn’t think much of my video game addiction as it was not harming myself or others. Little did I know, this small addiction would serve as a gateway to a larger addiction that would bring a lot of stress and problems in my life.
Fast forward to the summer after graduating senior year of high school. Growing up, I’ve always been really into soccer, playing competitively on a traveling club team since I was eleven years old. By my senior year of high school, I was committed to a prestigious university to play collegiate soccer. During my high school soccer season my senior year in the spring, I broke my foot in the league championship game against our rivals (which we won). This was the first time in my life that I’ve ever suffered a serious injury and let me tell you, I was not ready for the setbacks that I would face from it, both physically and mentally. For those of you who have never broken a bone, it is one of the most debilitating physical things that can occur to someone, especially if it impairs daily, routine activity. I had to use crutches or a knee scooter to get around everywhere and could not exercise, which caused a great deal of anxiety and jitteriness for me given that I’ve grown up living an active lifestyle. Around the same time, I had some friends who were talking about a casino that was only 15 minutes away from where we lived and it was also an 18+ casino. Given that I couldn’t really do much with a broken foot, I decided to make a trip to this casino to find out what people were talking about. Little did I know that this innocent, first trip to the small casino near my house four years ago would take me down a dark path of gambling.
I remember on my first trip to the casino, I was so excited that I grabbed a handful of cash (I think around $100) and drove as quickly as possible to the casino. When I tried to enter the building, a security guard stopped me and asked for my ID. Amidst my excitement, I realized I forgot my wallet with my driver’s license at home, which led me to speed home to grab it. On my way home, I was stopped by a police officer for going 15 miles per hour over the residential speed limit. The officer was nice enough not to penalize me for not having my ID, but I still received a $140 ticket. After that happened, I was in a pretty bad mood, but still determined to find out what it was like to wager money on a bunch of cards. I remember the first trip to the casino, I actually lost my $100 in about 15 minutes playing blackjack, which should’ve discouraged me from setting foot in a casino ever again. However, me being someone who thinks that they’re smarting than the average gambler, I went home that night and practiced memorizing basic strategy (a strategy that minimizes the house edge in blackjack), as well as studied card counting, specifically the Hi-Lo method (wagering more money when the remaining cards are favorable for the player).
Armed with this new knowledge, I was determined to beat the game and make money from my local casino, after all, it did cost me $240 the first time I went. The few trips after my first, I was making money pretty consistently. I remember there was one time I turned $60 into around $600 and other times where I would walk away making a couple hundred dollars. I didn’t think that gambling was a problem during this time as I was going with my friends, making money, and getting a crazy amount of adrenaline from the casino runs. Being at the blackjack table allowed me to forget about my anxiety and depression that gradually compiled due to my broken foot and the inability to exercise. It provided an escape from the limitations that my broken foot had instilled on me.
At the same time, I was working at Domino’s as a delivery driver, and remember taking the cash from the tips I earned each day that I worked (ranging from $60 to $200) and drive over to the casino to test my luck for that day. For those of you who don’t know, gambling is dangerous because winning money is really not that difficult; however, walking away with the money is a completely different story. A majority of times I went to the casino, I was up from my original buy-in at some point; however, that meant nothing considering I didn't walk away winning most of the time. I started spending more and more time at the casino, and eventually started losing money, including all the money I had previously won from the casino. The problem started getting particularly bad when I started lying to my friends about going to the casino. I even remembered multiple times where I would go with friends (who had more self-control than I did), and would stay longer than them (losing my ride) and resort to calling other friends to pick me up or taking a cab home.
To make matters worse, one of the things I’m most ashamed of to this day was gambling on the birthday of my girlfriend at the time which caused me to be late to her birthday dinner with her family. To make matters worse, I remember taking my girlfriend to dinner near the casino, stopping by the casino to redeem one of the bonus coupons they give you to entice you to visit more frequently, and having her wait in the car for an hour while I played blackjack. Despite having nights where I won over two grand in a matter of a few hours, I still ended up losing at least $3,000 that summer. Luckily, I was going off to college in St. Louis, far away from my hometown casino in Kirkland, Washington, which should have prevented me from gambling during my four years at college.
My Freshman year of college was rough, my foot hadn’t fully recovered so I was not able to play soccer to my full potential. On top of this, I had a difficult time making friends, and was in an unfamiliar, uncomfortable environment. I was surrounded by extremely wealthy, privileged kids from the Northeast, who grew up going to private school. Most of these kids have never worked a job in their lives. This made it a much more difficult time getting accustomed to my new school having grown up on the West Coast, going to public high school, and working throughout high school. Additionally, the way the social scene at my school works is through Greek life, as the population of social, normal people is pretty small. To make matters worse, as a guy, one of the only ways to have a good social life is joining a fraternity; however, since the fraternity houses are pretty small relative to state schools, many kids who rush don’t receive bids. I was unfortunate to be a part of that group when I rushed Freshman year. On top of this blow to my self-esteem, I underwent foot surgery since my foot was not making any progress healing. This caused me to have to rely on crutches and a knee scooter again for the next couple months. I was legitimately depressed and at the lowest low point of my life. I was not doing well in school, didn’t have a girlfriend, and felt like I didn’t have any close friends in general.
This was around the time that I discovered the realm of online gambling, a path that would unfortunately be worse than live casinos. Online casinos make it extremely easy to deposit real money into them, and coincidentally, pretty damn difficult to withdraw money. I remember visiting a casino called Bovada and making my first $100 deposit with my debit card. This deposit quickly lead to more $100 deposits, until I had lost around $1,000 playing online blackjack and poker in a matter of hours. At this point, I didn’t have a job so I was essentially gambling away money my parents had given me to spend on food and necessities. I was too ashamed to tell my parents about this problem, as they were extremely disappointed after I told them at the end of the summer after senior year of high school. Luckily, at this point in my life, I didn’t have too much disposable income to gamble away so the damages were minimal.
The next few years in college got better, I quit soccer and got into lifting, got into a fraternity, and made a lot of new friends, who I’m still close with to this day. Aside from getting into sports gambling for around a month and losing $1,000, I would lose between $1,000 - $2,000 whenever I would go home for winter break at the original casino I went to. Although this was a decent amount of money, I was still able to allocate some of the money that I earned from my college job towards personal spending and was just happy that I had the self-control to ration out a percentage of it that I was comfortable losing when I did gamble. The good thing was that I did not gamble too consistently my sophomore and junior year of college and more importantly, I was not obsessively thinking about it every day.
Now senior year of college was where everything took a turn for the worse and led me to all-time lows in my life. I remember playing poker for $25 buy-ins with my friends at my apartment every night for the first half of the school year. This wasn’t a problem financially since losing $25, was not a big deal to my financial health. Additionally, it was more of a social activity where most people weren’t too concerned about the money and were playing for a good time. This did negatively impact me; however, as I was constantly thinking about poker and gambling in general, all the time.
Around the same time, I got my signing bonus from the company where I will be working at in a couple months and started heading to the nearby casinos with my roommate to play blackjack. I remember the first night we went, I won $2,000 and he won $500 and that immediately hooked me back into the whirlpool of blackjack. I started going at every opportunity I got, which also led to the revival of my online gambling addiction. I remember specifically, one time when I was playing online blackjack, I turned $200 into $4,000, submitted the withdrawal request, but since online casinos take a long time to process the requests (intentionally as they want you to gamble the money away), I ended up losing the $4,000, along with another $1,000 or $2,000 on top of that as I was chasing my losses. I was actually making money at live casinos, but losing double the amount that I made online. This gambling ended up coming to a brief stop when I had lost my signing bonus and all the money in my bank account and I took a break for around a month or so.
The addiction started back up when I received my next paycheck from my college job. The instance, the check was deposited into my bank account and cash was available, I would race over to an ATM and withdraw money to gamble with. I quickly lost $1,000 of it back home when I took my friend who visited to a nearby casino. It was around this time he told me about an app where you can invest in stocks called Robinhood, so I put around $5,000 of that paycheck into stocks on the app. When I put the money in my stock account, I remember making a pact to myself that I would never touch a table game again. I mean “New Year, New Me” right? As you can guess, my pact didn’t last very long as I started playing live poker in the casino. I was so drawn to the appeal of winning money by making the right decision. I was actually profiting from playing live stakes poker, as I studied the game and had sound strategy. The dangerous part about playing live poker for me (I personally don’t consider poker as a complete gamble as there is skill involved), was that whenever I went to the casino to play poker, there were temptations awaiting me (table games). After a month or so of playing strictly poker, I started getting back into blackjack again, along with baccarat, and went to the casino 4-5 times a week. After draining all the money from the stock account, I started borrowing money from my friends as I knew I would get a big paycheck from my job at the time at the end of the school year. Additionally, I started dating my current girlfriend in January of that same year (whom I am currently dating) and love very much. I can regretfully say that gambling has not positively impacted my relationship with her in any way.
When my girlfriend and I went to California during spring break, I remember staying up all night on an online casino playing poker, blackjack, and baccarat after she fell asleep. I exhausted all my money in my bank account including maxing out my credit card, during that trip, and had to borrow money from my girlfriend, one of the most shameful things I’ve done to this date. Additionally, I remember one night where I promised her that I would meet her at a party my fraternity was hosting after I went to the casino to play poker with some friends. I drove two of my friends over, and one of my friends left for the party with my car, while me and my other friend stayed. We ended up playing poker the whole night, and despite being up a couple thousand dollars from blackjack, I missed the party and really disappointed my girlfriend. Some of the biggest fights that I have gotten into with my girlfriend were fueled by gambling. The monetary gains that result from the casino are always temporary because at any point in time, you can lose all the money in your bank account if you spend enough time playing games that are specifically designed to make you lose.
Additionally, my addiction has caused me to disappoint my parents and family. No matter how successful I become, I know they will always be worried about me since they know that this dangerous addiction can ruin my life at any moment, without giving any warning signs. I’ve read so many different stories about how this addiction leads to one of the highest suicide rates when people gamble their life away and feel like there is no way of recovering. I would really like to put an end to this problem, at an early age, before I allow it to affect my relationships with my friends and family.
I started skipping out on social events, and hanging out with my friends in general due to my addiction to gambling. All I thought about 24/7 was all the money that I would make playing poker and blackjack. At one point, I was betting 3 black chips like they were worth a few cents as opposed to one hundred dollars each on table games. I had to lie to my friends about going to the casino because I was embarrassed about that side of my life.
The summer after my graduation, I just continued to dig myself into a deeper hole. I would win money in real life, while losing money playing online poker and blackjack. After the big paycheck from my college job came in, I stored away a decent amount of money in my Robinhood stock account to invest, but in a matter of a few short months, I had gambled away most of that money. I’ve borrowed money from multiple friends, even my girlfriend, and have also exhausted my credit card on several occasions. The loss of money started affecting my play in live poker. I ended up losing $5,000 playing live poker, along with $15,000 online, and at least $20,000 in casinos. Even though I graduated from a prestigious university, and I have a solid job lined up in the fall, I battle constantly with this addiction and the urge to gamble with the hopes of earning all of my money back and being done with gambling once and for all. What started as a spark of curiosity turned into an escape from emotional pain and eventually into a lifelong attempt to break-even.
I've tried many things to overcome this addiction, but nothing has worked successfully. I'm posting on here today because I want to end this addiction once and for all. I figure if I post on reddit, I will at least have written down this commitment in a publicly available space.
TL;DR: What started as a curiosity about what gambling was turned into a four year struggle with this addiction that has led to financial distress, relationship problems, and unproductive behavior. Wrote this reddit post to seek advice on overcoming a gambling addiction, and would love to hear any thoughts, comments, or concerns.

(With apologies to Uncle Steve)
Jay Everett stared up at the towering Twin Pines Hotel, one of the largest buildings this side of the Las Vegas gambling strip. It was a jutting structure built entirely out of steel beams and black glass. The Hotel was surrounded on all sides by the flashing neon lights of Casino Row, which danced across its glossy surface like the ghostly imprints of colored flames. Apparently this place offered some of the swankiest penthouses in the entire city, but Jay wasn’t here for a room. He’d only come here to gamble.
He pushed through the front doors and entered the lobby, a spacious room with potted plants crawling up the walls like ivy. The place was packed with men in tuxedos and women in loose evening dresses. Jay felt smothered in his own suit, and he tried easing up the collar with one finger. It didn’t help much. He still felt like he was being throttled by his tie.
Most of the crowd was moving toward the check-in desk, but Jay snuck his way through until he could see the flashing lights of the casino. A large metal beam stretched across the entrance. Beneath it was a sign that proclaimed TWIN PINES CASINO in bold, electric blue letters. A bear and a turtle and various other forest animals gamboled across either side.
He managed to slip through the bustle without being too pushy, and then he was in. Light background jazz swept across him as he stepped into a world lit up by colored bulbs and strips of eerie black light. The casino actually wasn’t too crowded this early in the night. He almost had the entire place to himself.
He stopped before a large, circular game machine emblazoned with the words GOLD KING. The game itself was nothing more than a large spinning disc divided into colored slices. Most of the sections were given small monetary values, but there was one tiny sliver that had been painted a solid gold.
The game itself didn’t get too much activity, but the large statue perched above it could be seen from anywhere in the casino. It was a cartoony sculpture of a king wearing red robes and a golden crown. In his hand he held a royal scepter, which would flash brightly and let off a chorus of clanging bells whenever anyone hit the jackpot. Right now he was silent. His blank eyes stared out at the crowd, his mouth open in a creepy cartoon smile.
You have until the Gold King goes off to make $19,000. Otherwise…
Jay shivered. He couldn’t get Farrow’s threat out of his head; it echoed in his ears like the growl of a distant animal. Farrow himself was nowhere to be found, but Jay knew he’d stationed his cronies in every corner of this place. Some were probably disguised as security guards, others as bartenders or casino patrons. He couldn’t trust anybody. Any one of these people could be waiting to turn him in to Farrow the moment he backed out of this job.
So he did what he was told to do. He took a deep breath, let his eyes sweep over the casino, and strode over to the game that stood out to him the most. He had a lot of money to win and not much time to do it. This was a world ruled by chance, where the simple roll of a die could decide a person’s fate, and any ordinary man would have been sweating in his suit by now.
But Jay Everett was no ordinary man.
Jay had always known how different he was, even as a kid. It wasn’t that he looked or acted stranger than other people. He was just perceptive. He knew the answers in class before his teacher even finished speaking, although he quickly learned to keep this to himself. He could find things too. When little things went missing around the house, Jay always knew just where to look. He couldn’t explain how. He just did.
He also had an uncanny skill with numbers. He’d never used a calculator in his entire life and he couldn’t understand why his classmates were so helpless without it. By the time he’d reached 9th grade, he was already taking the highest level math courses his high school could offer. It wasn’t long before he caught the eye of several prestigious business schools, which practically tripped over themselves getting him to apply. He never had to worry about his future. Jay ended up leaving high school early and heading to Stanford, where he started down the fast track to a career in finance.
He was snatched up by Tony Salvatore right after graduation. Salvatore was a business tycoon who’d left his footprint in every major city across the country, and he was eager to take Jay on board as his new head of finance. “I’ve been waiting for a kid like you,” he’d said, clapping Jay on the shoulder. “Someone who knows how to crunch the numbers and keep his mouth shut.”
It was true that Jay hardly ever talked; it was a habit from his youth that he hadn’t yet outgrown. He just didn’t trust himself to speak. He knew things about Salvatore, things he couldn’t possibly know – like how he came in late on Mondays because he’d spent the night before drinking and hitting his wife, or how he’d gotten bite marks under his collar from a violent fling with his receptionist. Tony would walk into the room and the knowledge would hit Jay in the face like a foul stench. He valued his job, so he kept quiet.
He discovered Salvatore’s biggest scandal completely by accident. Jay had stayed late at the office that night to finish up one of his revenue forms, which kept coming up $100 short. It was baffling to him. He’d never had an issue with numbers before, not even a minor issue like this, and he didn’t understand why he kept finding the same inconsistency. So he pulled up some other forms to see if he could trace the cause of the missing hundred.
It would have been a cold trail for anyone else, but Jay was good at finding things, and he managed to dig up an encrypted file with a bunch of forms that had never made it into the system. He set up a program to decode the files and discovered that they were all bank deposits – deposits of exactly $100. The missing money was being funneled into an account under the name “Enrico Balazar.”
At first Jay didn’t know what to do with the info he’d dug up. This was fraud, fraud of the highest degree, and Salvatore had to be turned in. Jay had no desire to defend the crooked son of a bitch. But he wasn’t stupid – he knew Salvatore had connections in low places, and if Jay made this information public, he’d have a target on his head. He sat in the dark for a while and cycled through his options.
When Salvatore showed up for work the next day, Jay intercepted him right outside his office. “Sorry to bother you, sir,” he said. “I was just about to send the tax forms to our Boston division when my computer crashed. Is there any way you could send them out for me?” The bit about the computer was true; he’d just neglected to mention that he’d crashed it himself.
Salvatore stared at the papers in Jay’s hand with bleary, reddened eyes. He just had a shot of whiskey in his car. As usual, the thought hit Jay completely out of the blue. Salvatore eventually reached out and took the papers, crumpling them a bit in his fist.
“Hold on a sec,” he grunted. He took the papers into his office and set them on the desk, then leaned over to type his password on the computer. Jay’s eyes followed him carefully. Then Salvatore placed the forms in his scanner and began the uploading process.
Jay stayed late again, waiting until the last of the workers had left the office before typing a quick command on his keyboard. There was a brief popping sound. The power in his part of the building flickered for a moment, and Jay knew the cameras were disabled. He had a good hour or so before they came back on again.
He’d kept a pair of gloves in his briefcase all day, and he slipped them on now as he headed to Salvatore’s office. The tycoon’s personal computer sat in the corner, its screen flashing with an insistent message: PASSWORD?
Jay leaned forward and typed it in, his fingers copying the same pattern Salvatore had used this morning. A quiet beep, a loading bar, and he was in. He got to work immediately.
When Jay arrived at work the next day, a police car was parked outside the building, lights flashing and everything. He arrived just in time to watch the cops shoving a handcuffed Salvatore into the backseat. Jay made sure to keep his face hidden, just in case, but Salvatore had his eyes turned to the ground.
“What happened?” Jay asked one of his coworkers.
“You’ll never believe it, man. Some kind of virus got into Salvatore’s computer and made all of his private files go public. It turns he was channeling a big chunk of his clients’ cash to this mob boss in New York. Balthazar or something.”
“No kidding,” Jay replied. He watched as the car carrying Tony Salvatore turned the corner and disappeared down 5th Avenue.
It was then that he noticed a figure who was standing at the edge of the crowd, his face hidden by the brim of a dark baseball cap. Everyone else was staring down the street, but this man was facing Jay instead. He had his hands tucked into the pockets of a black leather jacket and a thin layer of dark stubble on his face. As soon as Jay noticed him, he lifted a hand from his pocket and gestured for Jay to come over.
Jay was hesitant, but it was broad daylight and he was surrounded on all sides by people. It was safe. He circled around the crowd and approached the dark stranger.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
The man didn’t answer right away. Instead, he reached out and slapped something small and square into the palm of Jay’s hand. Then Jay finally got a glimpse of his eyes beneath the cap. They were shrewd and calculating, a glassy blue that made Jay think of the surface of a frozen pond.
“I saw,” he said. “And if you’re interested, I could use your kind of expertise.”
Jay glanced at the object in his hand. It was a business card, nothing but a name and a set of digits. He frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t –” But when he looked up, the man had already disappeared.
That was the first time Jay met Rick Farrow.
Jay sipped from his wine glass and watched as people tried their luck on the Twin Pines slot machines. In theory, the outcome of these games was completely random. But Jay knew that most of these machines cycled through a random number sequence, and unless it had been rigged to prevent this issue, one could theoretically spot a pattern. The casino owners needed to make sure that some people walked away winners, after all. Not everyone. Just enough to keep people playing.
There was a pattern, but it was so subtle that the average person would never have noticed it. 19 pulls got you three cherries and a decent amount of cash. 95 pulls got you a row of three gold coins. And after 171 pulls of the lever, three 7s would plunk into place, bells would go off, and the ring of bulbs around the game would burst into life. Jay watched the colored lights dance across the face of each excited winner.
So he sat at the bar, ordered another wine, and waited. He made a mental check mark every time someone new stepped up to play the game. And when the 170th person walked away, he set down his glass, strode over to the machine, and played.
The wheels whirled for a good few seconds before settling on the jackpot. The lights flashed, the bells rang, and a flood of coins spilled out of the machine.
He collected his winnings without a smile.
Now that Tony Salvatore had been removed from his position as CEO, his offices in New York got shuttered. Jay suddenly found himself jobless and in desperate need of cash, as Salvatore had been paying for him to live in a nice apartment on the east side of town. Despite his impressive work history, he seemed to carry with him a kind of stigma for being even somewhat associated with the Salvatore name.
So, with no other options, Jay contacted Rick Farrow. The mysterious man arranged to meet with him at once. He conducted Jay’s interview in a rented office space not too far from the old Salvatore building. Farrow asked most of the questions, and he nodded along pleasantly as Jay talked about his passion for numbers and his experiences studying at Stanford.
Farrow was a curious character. He never seemed to take off his black leather jacket, which looked slightly too big for his slender frame. His cheeks were sharp and bony and his facial hair was carefully trimmed. It was a fairly imposing look, but when he smiled it completely transformed his character. He was a charismatic individual. One way or another, he seemed capable of winning anybody over.
Farrow was impressed by Jay’s experiences, especially by the way he had so cleverly exposed Salvatore, although he refused to tell Jay how he’d seen that particular bit of espionage. In any case, Farrow thought Jay’s skills were perfect for the job, and he told Jay he would take him on immediately. Housing would be provided in one of the apartment complexes near their base of operations. Payment was substantial and would come in on a monthly basis. Jay hardly heard any of this; he was just excited to be welcomed into such a secretive underworld.
The weeks passed by quickly as Jay got initiated into his new life. Farrow explained to him that Salvatore had just been the tip of a very large and very dangerous iceberg. CEOs all over the state were funneling illicit cash to various crime bosses in the city, and Farrow had made it his goal to cut off the head of the snake. Multiple snakes, in this case. That was where Jay and the rest of the tech specialists came in. They had an eye for the little details that could bring a corrupt CEO down from the inside.
To accomplish this, Farrow and several of his associates went around the city and placed cameras in strategic locations. Sometimes they even hacked into company networks so the tech-heads back at the base could break through any encrypted files. It was tireless work, but Jay loved it. He had never felt more in his element. It gave him a thrill to think that he was doing something with his life, that he was using his knowledge to make the world a slightly better place.
Most of the time they operated out of an abandoned warehouse in one of the emptier sections of the city. Farrow had the whole place rigged up with state of the art security systems and a few dozen computers. Jay and the other tech-heads spent most of the time cracking codes and analyzing the footage from Farrow’s secret cameras. If they found any incriminating evidence, they were to report it right away. Then Farrow would take some of his cronies and disappear into the city for a few days.
In very rare cases, Farrow would ask one of the tech-heads to come with him on an assignment. This only ever happened if the job required hacking skills that Farrow himself didn’t possess. Jay was fairly new to the whole game, so Farrow usually passed him up for one of the more experienced techies. He didn’t mind; in fact, he was nervous about returning the field. The Salvatore affair seemed like it had happened ages ago. He wasn’t quite sure he was ready to sneak around in gloves and a ski-mask again.
Jay was busy scanning footage one evening when he heard the slam of a door and the sound of muffled shouting from below. He frowned and took off his headphones. It was definitely Farrow shouting – Jay would have recognized that gravelly voice anywhere. He just couldn’t make out any of the words. Placing the headphones gingerly on the monitor, he got out of his seat and tiptoed over to the door.
The main operations room was on the second floor, so Jay peered over the railing on the catwalk to see what was happening below. Farrow and a few of his masked associates were gathered around one of the other tech-heads. Jay thought it looked like Bruno, the guy who worked with him on Tuesdays. He had his back against a drainage pipe and was holding his hands up helplessly.
“You took off your fucking mask! Do you know how serious this is?” Farrow was yelling. Even from this high up, Jay could see the angry crease in his eyebrows. “They’ve got your face now. It’ll be all over their security cameras. Your stupid slip-up could have put our entire operation at risk!”
“I-I-I’m sorry,” Bruno stammered. “It won’t happen again, I promise!”
“You’re damn right it won’t,” Farrow growled. Then he drew a gun from inside his jacket and shot Bruno in the head.
Jay clapped a hand to his mouth to stifle a scream. Half of the techie’s face was missing, bits of his skin and brain tissue spraying out onto the warehouse floor. His blood splattered across the drainage pipe and trickled to the ground. Jay could hear the steady drip all the way from the catwalk.
He ducked back inside the operations room before Farrow could look up and see him there. His heart was pounding out an erratic beat on his ribcage. As quickly as he could, he slid into his seat and stuck the headphones back over his ears. He hummed a senseless little tune under his breath, trying to make himself look as carefree and oblivious as possible. If Farrow knew what he had just seen… he held back a shudder.
Farrow appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, the specks of blood completely wiped from his face. He’d changed into a cleaner jacket too. As Farrow walked past the row of flashing computer screens, Jay tried to calm his racing pulse.
“Any good news?” Farrow asked. He placed a hand on Jay’s shoulder, peering down at the monitor.
They shoved his body in the wood chipper. The knowledge hit him like a jolt of lightning, clear and strong. It took every ounce of his willpower to force a smile.
“Nothing so far,” he said. “It’s pretty quiet tonight.” He was amazed he could keep his voice from trembling.
Farrow stared at the screen for a few painfully long moments, then coughed. “Keep up the good work,” he said. He let go of Jay’s shoulder and drifted toward the exit. The masked associates followed him like obedient dogs.
When Jay was finally sure he could breathe easy again, he wiped a line of sweat from his brow. He was badly shaken, and not just because he’d seen his coworker shot in cold blood. He was questioning himself now, questioning the whole purpose of this assignment. If Farrow could do something so cruel and violent in the walls of his own compound, what was he doing out in the real world?
After making sure the coast was clear, Jay opened up a web browser and began searching for names. He’d been so busy working this job that he’d never bothered to check the papers, to see what was really going on outside the compound. All the news about the crooks they’d toppled had come through Farrow himself. But the search results Jay found online painted a very different story.
Farrow had said that the elderly Mitch Cullum had been arrested for siphoning funds to a New York crime syndicate, but Jay managed to dig up the old man’s obituary. Cause of death: gunshot wound. Nancy Deepneau, a leading member of a dental corporation in New York City, had gone missing three months ago. And David Tassenbaum, a prominent figure in the computer business, had been mugged to death in an alley, his body so beaten it had been almost impossible to identify. Jay found a dozen more examples of the “corrupt CEOs” Farrow had supposedly brought to justice. The only thing they had in common was that they’d all been very rich, and there had been discrepancies in their corporate funding following each death or disappearance. The police were unable to track down any leads.
His fingers trembling, Jay shut down the browser. For a moment he could only stare at the screen in front of him. What the hell could he do? It wasn’t like he could play dumb forever. He was an expert at staying strategically silent, but a secret this huge would find its way out eventually. His body language would betray him first. The moment he started fidgeting too much, Farrow would know the truth.
So he did the only thing he could think of. He disappeared.
Erasing yourself from existence is next to impossible. You would have to delete every record of your birth, your social security, your education, your medical insurance, your credit card accounts – any and all places where your name could be found in writing. But Jay was persistent, and he knew things. He accessed every database he possibly could and systematically wiped himself off the map. There were some records he knew he could never touch, but if they were out of his reach, the chances of Farrow finding them were slim to none. He was an invisible man now.
Once he was done, he put down the headphones, shut off the monitor, and strode out the front door of the warehouse. It was only a matter of time until Farrow noticed his absence, but he planned to put a few thousand miles between them before that happened.
He was free. He’d been shaken to his core, but he was free, and that was all that mattered. He’d have plenty of time later to think about the horrors he’d seen. And who knows? Maybe this was it. Maybe this whole affair was behind him, and one day it would just become a ghastly dream, a nightmare from someone else’s reality.
But deep down, he knew it wouldn’t be that easy.
“Red 38,” Jay stated. He handed his chips to the croupier, who stacked them on the side of the table with the bets from the other players. Then he gave the roulette wheel a spin. Jay watched as the colors bled together, streaking in an ugly smear of crimson gray. After a few seconds, the croupier tossed the ball down the spinning track. It bounced and rolled every which way before coming to rest in one of the 38 slots. Red 38 exactly.
“Damn, you’re on a roll,” the croupier said. He handed Jay his original chips plus the payout. “Sure you want to keep going? This luck of yours can’t last forever.”
“I’m sure,” Jay answered. He took a deep breath, waiting for the answer to wash over him like it always did. Then he placed his chips back down on the table and stated, “Black 13. Last bet.”
The croupier shrugged and took the chips. They went through the same routine. The roulette wheel spun in its blurry circle, and the ball bounced around for a while before plunking into its final slot. Black 13.
Jay ignored the astonished remarks of the croupier and accepted his winnings silently. He couldn’t stay at this table forever, so he turned away from the Rose Bowl Roulette and cast his eyes across the casino. The night was lengthening and the room was filling up with players, most of them clutching thin glasses of cognac and laughing with their friends. He searched for any sign of Farrow’s men, but it was useless – he’d never find them in this crowd.
He didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t help glancing at the Gold King’s looming statue. It was still dark and silent. Now that the place was getting busy, though, the chances of someone winning the jackpot had risen significantly. Time was running out.
Jay hated using what he knew to win games. It was one thing to find the pattern of outcomes for a slot machine; anyone with half a brain and enough time on their hands could do the same. But what he could do was cheating. No one could ever catch him at it, which somehow made it worse. He’d decided a long time ago that he’d never do exactly what he was doing now.
But he didn’t have a choice. He was over halfway to his goal, closer to three-fourths, really, and he couldn’t afford to waste time now. If he had to cheat, then so be it. Too much was at stake tonight.
The years following Jay’s escape passed in a dreamlike sort of blur. He moved out west, hopping briefly from town to town and spending his nights in cheap hotel rooms. He had to pay in cash, of course, since his credit card account had recently ceased to exist. Luckily he had plenty to go around. He had a natural talent for hustling, and he won most of his money by playing pool games or dealing hands of poker in the back of shady bars.
He never stayed with the same car for too long. He always knew when some idiot driver had left their keys in the ignition, and he took every opportunity to hop in a new vehicle and continue the journey west. He felt a little guilty about hijacking so many rides, but it never bothered him for long. He was far more afraid of Farrow catching up to him.
Occasionally he would seek out some underground sources who had a reputation for forging documents. He needed a new identity, which meant a new birth certificate and social security card and everything. He eventually settled on the name Jay Everett – “Jay” after the first letter of his old name, and “Everett” after a small saloon he’d passed through in Denver. He didn’t get all his documents forged in one location. He staggered them, picking up a new one every few stops to try and throw Farrow off his trail.
By the time he reached Nevada, he figured he’d placed enough distance between himself and Farrow to finally settle down. He got a low-level office job and rented out a tiny apartment at the edge of Boulder City. As the years passed and his stint with Farrow faded from his memory, he finally began to live a normal life again.
He fell in love. He married a beautiful girl named Marcia Thorne who knew nothing about his past, and they had a son together. Trace Everett. He grew up like any ordinary boy, kicking soccer balls around the yard and playing hide-and-seek with the other kids in the neighborhood. When he turned seven they even bought him a small black-and-white dachshund that he affectionately dubbed “Billy.” From that point on the boy and the dog were inseparable; they often went on walks together before his parents called them in for dinner.
Jay was happy. He’d gotten away from his past; he’d moved on from a life he thought would haunt him forever. He made love to his beautiful wife and watched cartoons with Trace on Saturdays. It was a perfect routine, and he never wanted it to end.
Then one night, ten years after Jay had made his escape from Farrow’s compound, a power surge went through their entire house. The Everetts had been enjoying their Sunday dinner when it happened. The bulb above the kitchen table gave a loud sputter before dying out completely. Billy gave a loud bark and began running in circles around the table.
“Calm down boy, it’s just a blackout,” Trace said. He got out of his chair and restrained the dog before he could knock into any of the table legs.
“That’s funny,” Marcy said, peering out the window. “The neighbors’ houses still have power.” Jay joined her by the window, frowning.
“Hmm. Must be something wrong with our circuit breaker,” he said. “You two go look for some flashlights. I’ll see if I can fix the problem.”
The three of them wandered off, stumbling their way through the dark. Jay found the door to the basement and began climbing downward, clinging carefully to the railing. He knew the breaker was located at the bottom of the steps, right next to the garage. He reached the end of the stairs and fumbled in the gloom for the circuit box.
To his surprise, the door to the box was already wide open. As Jay’s eyes adjusted somewhat to the darkness, he saw that every single wire in the box had been snipped cleanly in half. Shit, he thought, oh shit, I should have known. But it was too late now. He felt the muzzle of a gun dig into his shoulder blades.
“I’ve been looking a long time for you,” Farrow said. His voice floated through the darkness in a soft, amused sort of growl. “You’re the one that got away. Isn’t that cute? You wouldn’t believe how many goddamn hoops I had to jump through just to track you down. But now I’ve got you.”
“It’s been ten years,” Jay hissed. “Ten fucking years. What could you possibly want?”
Farrow made a disapproving sound with his tongue. “We’ll get to that in a moment,” he said. “First, we have some introductions to make.”
Right on cue, Billy began barking furiously in the kitchen. Jay could hear Trace’s high-pitched voice trying to shout over him. “No, no, what are you doing, stop, he’s just a dog HE’S JUST A DOG STOP IT –”
Then a gunshot, a muffled whimper, and a shriek that could only have been Marcy. “Jay!” she screamed. “Oh god, oh god, there’s men in the house, they’ve got guns! They shot Billy!”
“Time for our big entrance,” Farrow laughed. He shoved Jay in the back with his pistol, forcing him up the basement steps. Jay plodded forward, hardly able to feel his feet. This must be a nightmare, he thought. I’m going to wake up any second now. But he knew that wasn’t true, the same way he knew so many other impossible things.
When Farrow pushed him into the kitchen, four dark shapes were waiting for him there. Two of them were Trace and Marcy, their hands behind their heads, their entire upper bodies trembling. The other two were some of Farrow’s masked associates. Each one held a pistol to the head of the prisoner beside them.
Marcy let out a sob when she saw Jay climbing up the steps. “Oh god, Jay, not you too?”
“Quiet,” one of the masked figures ordered. His voice sounded strangely distorted, like he was speaking through a filter. Marcy drew in a shuddery breath but stayed quiet.
“So, the gang’s all here!” Farrow exclaimed. “Wonderful.” He performed an exaggerated bow, his gun still nestled in the small of Jay’s back. “I’m Rick Farrow, a man of many trades. Right now I’m a man with a gun. Funny how that gives you so much power, doesn’t it?”
Jay said nothing. In his mind’s eye he could see the gun Farrow was holding, a thin barreled pistol that looked like something out of a Western. A Colt Paterson revolver, his brain spat out uselessly. As if it mattered. It would put a large hole in his chest no matter what type of gun it was.
“It appears you folks have already met my men,” Farrow went on. “They’re pretty low on the corporate ladder, but they do what they’re told, and what more could a man ask for?” He lifted the gun from Jay’s back to do a mock sort of clap with both hands. Jay wasn’t fooled; he didn’t move an inch. He was still Farrow’s prisoner, even if he was no longer at gunpoint.
“What do you want with us?” Marcy asked. Her face was damp with tears, but she’d managed to steady her breathing. Trace leaned against his mother’s legs with a scrunched up expression of anger in his eyes. He was trying so hard not to cry. Jay did his best to look away from the furry mass on the floor that used to be Trace’s beloved dog.
“What do I want?” Farrow said. “Ah, therein lies the question.” He turned his attention back to Jay, his eyes still bright and glassy blue in the darkness.
“So, you go by ‘Jay’ now, do you?” He said it again, slowly this time, as if to savor its taste. “Jay. I like it. Nice and low-key. It suits you well.” He gave Jay a casual tap on the shoulder with his pistol. A toothless smile appeared on his face when he saw Jay wince.
“You were good, Jay,” Farrow said quietly. “You were one of my best, actually. When you took off like that, I knew it wouldn’t be easy to find you. But I kept trying. The other tech-heads made stupid mistakes, botched their missions; they were disposable. But you. You were the grand prize, the golden fleece. I needed you back. You did stuff with numbers that could make a fella’s heart sing.”
Here Farrow paused. His glassy eyes were staring more intently at Jay this time, a careful sort of scrutiny that made his skin grow cold.
“But it’s not just numbers, is it? You see things. Patterns, clues, tiny details other people would miss. That’s what makes you so special. That’s why I need you.”
“Just tell me,” Jay spat through clenched teeth. “Tell me what you want to do. I’ll do anything.”
This time the smile that creased Farrow’s bony cheeks was wide and toothy. “Now that’s more like it,” he said. “Have I got a job for you, big boy. This one’ll be right up your alley.”
Jay said nothing, waiting for Farrow to break the silence first.
“Here’s the thing,” Farrow said at last. “There’s a man out in Las Vegas by the name of Jonas Carver. He runs a big casino in the heart of the city called Twin Pines. My men and I have been eyeing the place for years and we’re just about ready to strike him where it hurts.” He pointed an enthusiastic finger at Jay. “What I want you to do is take a hefty chunk out of this man’s wallet. Let’s say… $19,000. Enough to make him question the security in his casino. Afterwards, when he’s checking for cracks, we’ll sneak in and do our part.”
“Are you going to kill him?” Jay said. His voice came out hoarse and weak.
Farrow grinned. “Don’t worry about Mr. Jonas Carver. He’ll be in good hands. You just focus on playing the right games and making the most moolah.”
Jay’s neck felt stiff as a board, but he nodded. “I’ll do it,” he insisted. “Just let them go.”
“Ah,” Farrow said. “We’ve reached that little snag.” He began pacing the kitchen floor in front of Jay, swinging his revolver like a baseball bat. “See, the thing is, I can’t do that. I need a little insurance here. If I let them go, what’s stopping you from running off to the West Indies for another ten years or so?”
“I won’t,” Jay managed to choke out. “Listen to me, goddammit. I won’t run. Just let them go.”
Farrow pretended to think about it for a second. “Nah,” he decided. “Tell you what. Let’s play a game instead. Inside the Twin Pines Casino, there’s a wheel-of-fortune type game called Gold King. You can’t miss it. It’s got this ugly fucking statue of a cartoon king on top. Every night, without fail, someone wins the jackpot and bells go off and that statue waves its flashing staff at everyone. But only once. For the rest of the night it’s just a statue.”
When Farrow turned to Jay again, his eyes were icy. “Tomorrow night,” he said. “You have until the Gold King goes off to make $19,000. Otherwise your family gets it.” He made a careless gesture at them with his pistol. “One shot each, right in the head. Boom. Boom. And you have to watch.”
“I’ll do it,” Jay repeated. “I’ll play your goddamn game the way you want. But unless I fail, you’d better not lay a finger on them.”
Farrow was examining something under one of his fingernails. “Done,” he stated. He waved his hand absently toward the door. “Take them away, men. You know where to go.”
The two masked men dragged Marcy and Trace out the back door, both of them crying out and struggling to get free. “Be quiet,” the first masked figure said in his distorted voice. “If you don’t shut up, we’ll make you shut up.”
Both of them immediately quieted down, but they couldn’t hide the expressions of pure fear that were plastered across their faces. Jay felt blood pumping furiously through his veins as he watched his family getting dragged away. Farrow lifted his hand and gave them a pleasant wave as they disappeared out the back door.
In the side window of the kitchen, Jay managed to catch a glimpse of Marcy’s face for what he hoped wasn’t the last time ever. He blew her a kiss with trembling lips, but the masked men shoved her and Trace into a waiting van before she could see it. Then the two of them were gone.
Jay was in the middle of a poker game when the Gold King bells went off.
He’d managed to keep his cool throughout the entire night, but the blood drained from his face when he heard the loud clanging noise echoing through the casino. He turned to see the cartoon statue gamboling in place, flashing its toothy smile at the surrounding players. The scepter in its hand was dancing with flecks of neon light.
No, he thought in disbelief. No, not yet! I was almost there!
He’d been so close to the $19,000 mark that this poker game would probably have pushed him over the edge. The Gold King had gone off just as he was about to play his final hand. Now he watched the statue spin in lazy circles, its hideous bells still ringing in his eardrums.
“Hey,” a voice said suddenly. It was the dealer, trying to get Jay’s attention. “Hey buddy, this is the last hand. Are you calling or folding?”
Jay looked at him in surprise, then down at the cards in his shaky fingers. He hadn’t even bothered to look at them yet. What was even stranger, his usual powers of perception were failing him. He knew what all the other hands looked like, he knew who was bluffing through their teeth and who posed a legitimate threat, but he didn’t even know what cards he was holding.
He wondered how long it would take for Farrow’s men to cut through the crowd and take him away. He figured he had about thirty seconds, a minute at most. Was it possible? Could he make enough off this hand to complete Farrow’s sick challenge? The Gold King hadn’t finished its death knoll yet when the final hand was dealt. It was a technicality, but he was banking on it. It might just save Marcy and Trace’s lives. Now it was up to these last five cards to decide if they saw the light of another day.
He offered a quick prayer to a God he never believed in. Then he turned the cards over and stared down at the hand he’d been dealt.

Which cities would you like to see in GTA's future?
I have a couple cities/extensions that I'd love to see Rockstar add.
San Francisco.
I'd love to see San Fierro make a comeback, in more detail, with a slightly modern twist, (or a mid 90s to mid 2000s twist). A laid back, northern California vibe. A lot of focus on the Bay Area. I'd love to see smaller surrounding cities like Oakland, Berkeley, San Mateo, Palo Alto, Fremont, and San Jose added, too. It'd be cool to see Rockstar's take on iconic surrounding areas like Silicon Valley, and the likes. Although San Fierro is part of San Andreas, I think it's a city big enough, at least culturally speaking, to warrant it's own game, similar to Los Santos. If Rockstar was really feeling adventurous, they could extend the map way out east to include Yosemite, or as far up north to include Sacramento.
Las Vegas
I'm getting the obvious cities out of the way first. I'd like to see Las Venturas return as well. Preferably as it's own title game. Maybe with a late 80's to mid 90's theme going on. Think Ocean's eleven. Big casino heists, huge emphasis on gambling and casino games with other people online. 8-man heists, huge takes, vice, and unconventional sights. Think mob controlled Vegas. Doing work for wealthy mob-connected families in Vegas giving you orders poolside in their mansions in their pajamas robes smoking cigars! The map could extend to Arizona and include great sights like the Grand Canyon. Rockstar should also try to find a way to remove Las Venturas from San Andreas (that always confused me).
New Jersey
This would be a great city to include in any upcoming GTA game. Maybe Early 90's. Think Sopranos. Revisiting that east coast Mafia theme from GTA 3. The game could include places like Atlantic City revolving around a slightly smaller gambling culture, albeit still there -- plenty of opportunity for storyline there. Newark, and New Jersey City - corrupt politicians, mob bosses, crime, and even opportunity to tie the storyline into nearby Liberty City! Since the state is so small, you could even include cities like Trenton.
Chicago
I'd love to see this city added in. It's the only city next to NYC that I think could revisit that busy city hustle and bustle vibe. Picturesque skyline. Include wealthy north Chicago suburbs, include a lake and harbor culture along Lake Michigan and Lake Shore Drive, include heavy gang culture in south and west side Chicago, you could even include western Chicagoland suburbs as well. This would make a great location somewhere down along the line.
GTA V extension - Orange County/ San Diego
I'd love to see a game based in southern California really feel like a game based in Southern California. Los Angeles is obviously integral in that, but what about orange county? The map should extend further down south. Include wealth, seaside resort beach cities like Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, and Dana point. Perhaps even inland to include big cities like Anahaim or Aliso Viejo.
San Diego would've been nice to include as well. I think the city could be integrated into a GTA series one of two ways:
a.) It could be part of a GTA V extension, which would REALLY be pushing the limits, along with Orange County.
b.) It could be included in it's own title. San Diego as it's own city with locations inland featured as well, along with a much anticipated inclusion of Mexico. There'd be no excuse not to include Mexico if San Diego was ever included in a GTA game! This would be amazing. Think Miami, but west coast. Think Mexican Cartel drug cartels.
Miami
This is another obvious one. We should add a modern twist to it, though. Revisiting Vice City with an 80s theme again would be overkill, in my opinion. I'd like to see modern day elements included. A Cuban cocaine/drug smuggling culture, nightclubs, exorbitant wealth, displays of new money, yachts, beaches. The map would have to be extended into surrounding cities as Miami would be too small to include by itself in a modern day GTA game. What did I have in mind? An extension to cities up north like Boca Raton, West Palm Beach, and Jacksonville. to the west, include a natural scenic spot - like the Everglades national park (swamps!) and cities like Tampa (including the bay) or Sarasota. So the south, you could include the Florida Keys (islands connected by small, narrow highways)
Washington D.C.
For some reason, I REALLY want to see this city included. It honestly feels like it'd make a great location for a GTA game, just because of all the cultural content that could be packed into the game. Modern twist and time period for sure. Imagine House of Cards. Doing work for corrupt politicians, political scandals, big government agencies, the feds. It'd be a great opportunity to finally include a president of the GTA universe's president of the U.S. Think of the amount of satire, jokes, and references Rockstar could address in a game like this. It would be a goldmine for sure. Rockstar would have to be careful about the political lines they decide to cross, but it'd be amazing. The map could include the national mall, of course, but also surrounding areas and cities like Baltimore, Maryland, since it's so close, and even Virginia, for a nice suburban portion of the map, or even Delaware for rural.
Philadelphia
Another great choice for a big city with unique areas of it's own. Great second choice to Chicago, although I'd be stunned if this was included before Chicago. Because of it's proximity, I'd ideally just include this city in a title game with New Jersey.
Boston
This city could definitely work. A classic American city. Gritty working class crime, wealthy New England elite, and everything in between. Imagine something equestrian. Horse riding, sailing, rowing. Imagine a red-brick city. Irish Crime families. Remember the Irish crime twist in GTA IV? Imagine magnifying that into a game of it's own. McReary crime family. Irish Crime families at war with Italian crime families in Boston. Racketeering, drug trafficking, money laundering and everything else.
Salt Lake City
How neat would it be to have a small city included into a GTA game? Something laid back, but with a small crime element. Imagine finding our protagonist in a location - a snowy location. Think snowy mountain tops, think cabins, think snowmobiles. Maybe we're introduced to a protagonist who's laying low from crime in another major city in the GTA universe (reminiscent of San Andreas). Doing small odd jobs to make a living. A breath of fresh air.
New Mexico
This is my last choice for a location in the U.S. It'd be cool to include a city close to the southern border. Think Breaking Bad. Modern day desert towns, a Spanish element, cactus! Desert living, there's definitely a criminal element down there. Mexican drug cartels, and hot air balloons (Albuquerque). I think that'd be really neat.
My city choices are only limited to places in the U.S. but I'd like to hear locations you guys would be interested in for upcoming GTA titles and what kind of theme would go alone with it (time period, criminal elements, storyline, etc.)?

Sunday:
NORTH:
·1. Teen shot in the chest near intersection of Lyons Street, Ashland Avenue in Evanston (Chicago Tribune)
·2. While on domestic-battery call, Waukegan police sworn, shot at; three men in custody (CBS 2)
·3. Waukegan Yacht Club celebrates 50th anniversary of Junior Sail Program (Chicago Tribune/Lake County News-Sun)
·4. Woodland Elementary School District 50 foundation to put on golf outing July 22 at Lake Geneva, Wis., to raise funds for schools (Daily Herald)
·5. Diamond Lake Elementary School District 76 providing breakfast for students Monday through Thursday throughout the summer at West Oak Middle School, Gurnee (Daily Herald)
NORTHWEST:
·6. Father, owner of Bartlett-based Sebert Landscaping, and son, field supervisor for Marengo-based Bluestem Ecological Services, team up to bring more native plants to landscaping (ABC 7)
·7. Statue of Donald E. Stephens unveiled in Rosemont (ABC 7)
·8. Online survey drums up 'The Bradley,' ROSY, The Black Pearl, Runaway as possible names for new hotel in Rosemont (Daily Herald)
·9. Mount Prospect promotes senior village planner to assistant to village manager (Daily Herald)
WEST:
·10. Couples celebrating 60th wedding anniversaries serve as grand marshals in Elk Grove Village's annual Hometown Parade on June 18 (Daily Herald)
·11. West Chicago Elementary School District 33 program encourages fathers to read with their children every day (Daily Herald)
·12. Geneva's Swedish Day celebrates Midsummer, Swedish heritage (Daily Herald)
SOUTHWEST:
·13. Republican U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, of Channahon, says he wouldn't vote for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, were the election held today (Chicago Sun-Times)
·14. Former Cubs great Andre Dawson gives advice to Joliet Slammers players, signs autographs for fans (Chicago Tribune/Daily Southtown)
SOUTH:
·15. Calumet City bank robbed (Chicago Sun-Times)
NORTHWEST INDIANA:
·16. Family of man living in Hobart group home sues over alleged assault by employee from Chesterton (Chicago Tribune/Gary Post-Tribune)
·17. Chicago woman killed in car crash near Horseshoe Casino in Hammond (Chicago Sun-Times)
·18. Judge dismisses manslaughter charge again LaPorte County man, saying police, prosecutors bungled case of wife's shooting death (Chicago Sun-Times)
REGIONAL
·19. Cook County Jail locked down after hundreds of workers call in sick on Father's Day (NBC 5)
Monday:
NORTH:
·20. McHenry County woman, Mount Prospect truck driver taken to hospital after car-vs-tractor-trailer crash on Route 173 in Newport Township, Lake County (Chicago Sun-Times)
·21. 85-year-old Deerfield woman killed, man and infant injured when woman tried to make a left-hand turn onto 137 from U.S. 45 off ramp into oncoming traffic (Chicago Sun-Times)
·22. Construction begins on 18-store Kildeer Village Square mall on Rand Road; opening expected in 2017 (Daily Herald)
·23. Two armed robberies in Waukegan happen four hours apart on Sunday; police uncertain whether they were related (Chicago Sun-Times)
·24. Chicago restaurateur, partners plan Mediterranean-style restaurant for downtown Libertyville (Daily Herald)
NORTHWEST:
·25. Evanston police probe shooting that wounded three teens (Chicago Tribune/Evanston Review)
·26. Arlington Heights Memorial Library ties together summer reading program, Fan Con comic convention (Daily Herald)
·27. Chicago man wounded in shootout with Palatine police on June 16 charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, unlawful delivery of cannibis (CBS 2)
·28. SUV driven by minor crashes into front entrance of IHOP at Norridge Commons, sending one person to the hospital, injuring six others (Chicago Tribune/Norridge-Harwood Heights News)
·29. Chicago Aviation Department submits 9-month 'Fly Quiet' plan to FAA; proposal would to rotate takeoffs and landings at O'Hare International Airport, designed to reduce noise issues (WGN TV)
·30. Wheeling Township Elementary School District 25 board member among 1,000 school officials that lobbied Congress on equity in education (Daily Herald)
·31. Streamwood-based Elgin Toyota pitches plan for repaidetail shop along Lake Street in Bartlett (Daily Herald)
WEST:
·32. 4-year-old girl drowns at Downers Grove Swim and Racquet Club; facility closed during investigation (ABC 7)
·33. 48-year-old man dies after car he was riding in during driving lesson flips over into Aurora retention pond; driver still hospitalized (FOX 32)
·34. nursing homes from Naperville, Westmont sue rival company over plans for facilities in Aurora and Lisle (Chicago Tribune)
·35. Oak Park police look into drive-by shooting between vehicles on Sunday night on Austin Boulevard at Interstate 290; driver of a vehicle not targeted suffered minor injuries (Chicago Tribune/Oak Leaves)
·36. 78-year-old man struck, killed in Elmhurst by Metra train on Union Pacific-West line (Chicago Sun-Times)
·37. Lombard fire chief to retire on 30th anniversary of his full-time employment with department (Daily Herald)
·38. Morton Arboretum launches $63 million conservation program to preserve and improve 1,700-acre property (Crain's Chicago Business)
REGIONAL
·39. Pew Research: High school and college students finding less summertime work available (Chicago Tribune/Buffalo Grove Countryside)
Tuesday:
NORTH:
·40. Gas station, car wash pulled from proposed development at Route 22 and Quentin Road in Hawthorn Woods (Daily Herald)
·41. Lake County Sheriff's Gangs Task Force arrest two men after stop in Waukegan; one was wanted on a warrant for a long list of felonies (Chicago Sun-Times)
NORTHWEST:
·42. Woodstock woman who helped fight legal battle with Rohm and Haas chemical company over cancer clusters in McHenry County succumbs to brain cancer (Chicago Tribune)
·43. Metra Union Pacific Northwest Line train strikes pedestrian near Woodstock (Chicago Sun-Times)
·44. Hoffman Estate board hires consultant to look into TIF refund for 185-acre development, provided the developer reimburses the village for the $28,500 cost (Daily Herald)
·45. Superintendent of Schaumburg Township Elementary School District 54 to get 10 percent pay raise, two years after DUI incident (Daily Herald)
·46. Arlington Heights Village Board approves 15-house development on former Robert J. and Lorraine Henry family estate near downtown (Daily Herald)
·47. Elgin Water Department combats musty, moldy smell in water following algae bloom in Fox River (WBBM AM 780)
·48. Officials at Hersey High School in Arlington Heights warn parents about companies offering fee-based financial aid and college scholarships (Chicago Tribune/Arlington Heights Post)
·49. Palatine woman sentenced for five years in prison for DUI-related crash that killed one person and seriously injured another; her BAC level was 0.24 (Chicago Tribune)
·50. 25-year-old Pingree Grove man charged with sexual abuse of a teen (Chicago Sun-Times)
·51. Des Plaines Elementary School District 62 appoints new board member (Daily Herald)
·52. Sleepy Hollow Village Board creates trust fund to address lack of affordable housing stock (Daily Herald)
WEST:
·53. TFC Bank branch in River Forest robbed at gunpoint by three people (Chicago Sun-Times)
·54. St. Charles changes massage-business ordinance to reduce likelihood of more problems with illegal activities in massage parlors, following a number of busts for prostitution (Daily Herald)
·55. Engineers: Expect a lot of noise during construction of pedestrian tunnel along Glen Ellyn's Taylor Avenue (Daily Herald)
·56. Berwyn uses billboard campaign to try to draw young adults to the suburb; target is Chicago's River North population (CBS 2)
·57. Downers Grove village officials concerned about pension obligation and its effects on property taxes (Chicago Tribune)
·58. Bolingbrook restaurant owner urges wider celebration of Juneteenth (Daily Herald)
·59. Illinois Toll Highway Authority approves Lee Street exit off I-90 in Rosemont (Daily Herald)
·60. Naperville man who taught at Wilmington High School pleads guilty to sexual abuse of student, child pornography charge (Daily Herald)
SOUTHWEST:
·61. 17-month-old boy found unresponsive in Homer Glen pool (Chicago Tribune)
SOUTH:
·62. Lincoln-Way High School District 210 removes plaques dedicated to embattled ex-superintendent Lawrence Wyllie (Chicago Tribune/Daily Southtown)
·63. Judge gives Calumet City man to two consecutive life sentences for 2009 double murder during confrontation at bar (Chicago Sun-Times)
NORTHWEST INDIANA:
·64. Diocese of Gary to shut down St. Mark's Catholic Church rather than spend money to renovate 95-year-old building (Chicago Tribune/Gary Post-Tribune)
REGIONAL
·65. Cook County Health and Hospitals executive director: Gun violence 'a public health crisis' (WBBM AM 780)
Wednesday:
NORTH:
·66. Waukegan School District 60 to provide breakfast, lunch to children ages 2 to 18 at five locations (Chicago Tribune/Lake County News-Sun)
·67. North Shore School District 112 delays planned school closures, giving citizens committee time to work out solution to prevent closures (Chicago Tribune/Highland Park News)
·68. Glenview Park District investigating 65-year-old woman's claim that she got hit by a golf ball that sailed through open car window from nearby golf course (Chicago Tribune/Glenview Announcements)
NORTHWEST:
·69. Man tried to lure 12-year-old girl into car near Oakton Street and Western Avenue in Park Ridge (Chicago Sun-Times)
·70. Barrington Area Unit School District 220 plan would shift middle-school boundaries, probably move 160 students from one building to the other; plan is part of potential change in start times (Daily Herald)
·71. Wauconda officials consider reinstalling red-light camera at intersection of Bonner Road, U.S. 12, citing safety concerns (Daily Herald)
·72. Bartlett resident starts group pushing to allow chickens in residential areas of the village (Daily Herald)
WEST:
·73. Elk Grove Village to spend $1 million over next five years replacing trees felled by emerald ash borer (Daily Herald)
·74. Wheaton resident creates online petition to lower Wheaton's citywide speed limit on residential streets to 20 mph in wake of 6-year-old's death after being hit by a van (Daily Herald)
·75. Naperville City Council approves placing two non-binding referendum questions on November ballot which would ask about futures of Naperville Township, road district (Daily Herald)
·76. Proposed Longview Parkway tolls in Kane County expected to be between 50 and 75 cents (Daily Herald)
·77. Two boys report being robbed of iPhone by two teenagers in LaGrange (ABC 7)
·78. Schiller Park woman pleads guilty to aggravated battery to a child for 2015 incident in which she forced her two children to drink apple juice mixed with an antianxolytic medication to try to kill them, then tried to commit suicide (Chicago Tribune)
·79. Oak Brook couple that owned First Mutual Bancorp of Illinois in Harvey indicted on charges of concealing millions of dollars in cash, assets after defaulting on $40 million personal loan (Chicago Tribune/The Doings (Oak Brook))
·80. Aurora man charged in Tuesday-afternoon shooting of two people following argument on city's southeast side (Chicago Sun-Times)
·81. Northlake woman charged with reckless homicide, DUI, driving without insurance in death of 46-year-old man in Melrose Park (Chicago Sun-Times)
·82. Donkey gets party for 50th birthday at Field of Dreams in Maple Park (Daily Herald)
SOUTHWEST:
·83. 23-year-old Yorkville man charged with sexual assault of juvenile at Newark motel (Chicago Sun-Times)
SOUTH:
·84. Clerk at Park Forest gas station shot, wounded during robbery (Chicago Sun-Times)
NORTHWEST INDIANA:
·85. Lake, Porter sheriffs displeased with U.S. Congress's failure to pass any gun-control legislation (Chicago Tribune/Gary Post-Tribune)
·86. Police arrest 20-year-old in connection with drug ring operating at Crown Point High School (Northwest Indiana Times)
·87. Truck with trailing carrying cars overturns on I-80/94 at Indianapolis Boulevard in Hammond (Northwest Indiana Times)
·88. Chicago man found guilty of reckless homicide in crash of Gary church bus in Indianapolis while he was high on cocaine (Northwest Indiana Times)
REGIONAL
·89. Lack of regulations means individual towns can charge whatever they want for liquor licenses and that cost is passed on to the customers (Daily Herald)
·90. Illinois signals intent to move ahead with Chicago-to-Quad-Cities high-speed rail line as deadline for federal funds draws to close (Crain's Chicago Business)
Thursday
NORTH:
·90. Deerfield teen sings duet with her Broadway idol at Chicago Symphony Orchestra performance (Chicago Tribune/Deerfield Review)
·91. Doctors from Highland Park (with office in Buffalo Grove) and Skokie among 301 people caught in federal Medicare-fraud sweep (Chicago Sun-Times)
·92. Ela Township buys 10-acre property for $490,000 with plans for athletic fields just outside Lake Zurich village limits (Daily Herald)
·93. Camp I Am Me lets burn survivors enjoy summer camp, therapy at Camp Duncan near Fox Lake (WGN TV)
·94. Lake County Sheriff's police catch Kenosha man who carjacked a vehicle with a child inside it, after stopping the vehicle on I-294 near Des Plaines (Chicago Tribune/Lake County News-Sun)
·95. Federal Securities and Exchange Commission accuses Lake Forest-based The Ticket Reserve Inc. of Ponzi scheme that defrauded professional athletes out of $30 million (Daily Herald)
·96. Village of Lincolnshire sues Skokie-based North Capital, saying the owner of the former Purple Hotel property hasn't cleaned up the site following demolition a month ago (Crain's Chicago Business)
NORTHWEST:
·97. Woman accused of drug-fueled crash that killed Woodstock nurse is arrested in Las Vegas, Nev. (Chicago Tribune)
·98. Flash floods inundate Arlington Heights businesses, streets during Wednesday night storms (Chicago Tribune/Arlington Heights Post)
·99. Palatine Township Elementary School District 15, park district considering Osage Park property as location for new school, abandon plans for Falcon Park (Daily Herald)
·100. Harper College officials sign off on agreement to build health-and-wellness center with Palatine Park District that would mean indoor pool for residents, students (Daily Herald)
·101. Alan Bombeck, architect and member of Arlington Heights Design Commission since its formation in 1995, dies from cancer (Daily Herald)
WEST:
·102. Guitar virtuoso Fareed Haque to headline Jazz It Up Glen Ellyn festival on July 16 (Daily Herald)
·103. Elk Grove Village mayor 'offended' by 'inappropriate' comments by residents opposed to proposed Islamic prayemeeting center (Daily Herald)
·104. Neighbors of new Naperville Mariano's complain about all the noise caused by refrigerated trucks brought in to store excess commidities (Daily Herald)
·105. Aurora officials: Water safe to drink despite strange taste, odor linked to Fox River (Chicago Tribune/Aurora Beacon-News)
·106. Two teen boys charged with burglarizing vehicles on South 19th Street in St. Charles (Chicago Sun-Times)
·107. Enthusiasts of antique bicycles to have event on July 8 on Prairie Path and in downtown Wheaton (Daily Herald)
SOUTHWEST:
·108. Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigating death of man pulled through machinery at Coilplus Inc. in Plainfield (CBS 2)
·109. Ohio man killed after falling from under-construction asphalt tank at International Tank Services in Willow Springs (Chicago Sun-Times)
SOUTH:
·110. Sunnybrook Elementary School District 171 raises lunch, activity and technology fees (Northwest Indiana Times)
·111. 14-year-old boy shot in back while in a car stopped at Rose Plaza in Matteson; alleged shooter had followed their vehicle on Lincoln Highway (NBC 5)
NORTHWEST INDIANA:
·112. Gary unveils new handicapped-accessible boat/kayak launch at Marquette Park (Northwest Indiana Times)
·113. 'Visions of Sand and Steel: Visions of Our Indiana Shore' show runs through Aug. 28 at Southshore Arts Centre in Munster (Northwest Indiana Times)
·114. Chicago Cubs extend contract with Class-A affiliate South Bend Cubs through 2020 (CBS 2)
·115. 76-year-old Porter woman dies after being struck by train in Chesterton (Chicago Tribune/Gary Post-Tribune)
·116. Dallas, Texas-based Which Wich to open first store in northwest Indiana with sandwich shop in Schererville (Northwest Indiana Times)
REGIONAL
·117. Atlanta, Ga.-based Turnstone Group puts 3,000 residential lots, 581 acres undeveloped land in the suburbs on the market (Crain's Chicago Business)
·118. Author of 'New Suburbanism: Sustainable Tall Building Development': Arlington Heights, Evanston provide models for what Chicago's suburbs should look like (Crain's Chicago Business)
·119. Storms touch off fire in Evanston, topple gas-station canopy in Mount Prospect, flood Taco Bell in Palatine (WGN TV)
Friday
NORTH:
·120. Island Lake trustee creates 'Irises of Island Lake' project to decorate, add color to village (Daily Herald)
·121. Pharmaceutical company Abbvie, volunteers fix up North Chicago buildings to make homes for veterans (WGN TV)
NORTHWEST:
·122. 9-year-old Norridge boy left at Hanover Park water park while on field trip from Norridge camp; parents learned about situation when he called from a lifeguard's cell phone (CBS 2)
·123. Chicago to renovate O'Hare Hilton, add two new hotels, including one along Mannheim Road (ABC 7)
·124. Harvard man charged with sexual abuse of a minor in Antioch (Chicago Tribune/Lake County News-Sun)
·125. Palatine Village Hall to reopen Monday, June 27, following renovations (Daily Herald)
·126. British press blaming meeting at O'Hare pizzeria for BRexit referendum (Chicago Tribune)
·127. One man dead following five-vehicle crash at Dempster Street and Harlem Avenue on Morton Grove/Niles border; victim likely suffered medical issue that led to crash (FOX 32)
·128. Des Plaines Park District works on acquiring vacant lots at Center Street and Oakwood Avenue for new park (Daily Herald)
·129. 17-year-old Kianna Gavin of South Elgin still missing; police still investigating disappearance (Daily Herald)
·130. Teenage Rolling Meadows girl charged with molesting female friend who slept over at her house (Daily Herald)
·131. Bartlett High School to get new stadium scoreboard after receiving grant from Bartlett Rotary Club (Daily Herald)
WEST:
·132. College of DuPage board votes for budget that keeps tuition and property taxes at same level as previous year (Daily Herald)
·133. Elderly Bellwood woman dies from carbon monoxide poisoning, smoke inhalation in house fire (Chicago Sun-Times)
·134. St. Charles Community School District 303 board decides against middle-school referendum this fall, after $12,000 poll shows only 40 percent support (Daily Herald)
SOUTHWEST:
·135. Bolingbrook police end probe into murder-suicide of sometime-business partners from Aurora, Naperville, with no motive behind the crime (Chicago Tribune/Naperville Sun)
SOUTH:
·136. Matteson man with the surname Gambles wins lottery second time with same numbers (WGN TV)
·137. Park Forest nail technician/caterer finds getting bumped from 'MasterChef' leads to many new opportunities in culinary world (Chicago Tribune/Daily Southtown)
·138. Crete man sentenced to four months in jail, 30 months intensive probation for 'revenge porn' incident involving his ex-girlfriend (Chicago Tribune/Daily Southtown)
NORTHWEST INDIANA:
·139. Schererville buys former Illiana Speedway; town president says its racing days are over (Chicago Tribune/Gary Post-Tribune)
·140. Chesterton, Portage, Valparaiso fire departments combine to hire, test firefighter applicants (Northwest Indiana Times)
·141. Munster residents object to Town Council's adoption of wheel tax, but president says state law won't allow the town to make exceptions for anyone (Northwest Indiana Times)
·142. 36-year-old Lake Station grandmother, 17-year-old East Chicago father charged in armed kidnapping of 15-month-old boy from foster home (Chicago Tribune/Gary Post-Tribune)
·143. South Dakota woman with outstanding warrant arrested after being found asleep in the back seat of a stolen car parked behind an abandoned gas station near I-65 and State Route 2 in Hebron (Chicago Sun-Times)
·144. One East Chicago Public Works employee fired in April, another resigned in May as city undertook investigation into alleged thefts of oil, tires (Northwest Indiana Times)
REGIONAL
·145. Illinois Secretary of State's Office rakes in $5 million in late fees for license-plate renewals after it stopped sending out reminders to motorists (Chicago Sun-Times)
Saturday:
NORTH:
·146. Divers find body of teenage boy who swam into harbor channel next to Waukegan Municipal Beach and disappeared under water (CBS 2)
·147. Leaders of Long Grove, Hawthorn Woods ask governor, Illinois State Toll Highway Authority to abandon proposed Route 53 environmental-impact study (Daily Herald)
·148. Island Lake officials have eye on 2-acre site inside Converse Park for village's first dog park (Daily Herald)
·149. Lake Zurich issues proclamation joining National Wildlife Federation's efforts to save the monarch butterfly (Daily Herald)
·150. 10 Round Lake Beach police officers sue village over body cameras that continued to record after they were turned off, including while officers were using the bathroom (WGN TV)
NORTHWEST:
·151. Illinois Attorney General's Office settles ethics-violation/workplace-retaliation lawsuit stemming from incident while U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth led the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs (NBC 5)
·152. Shakou Asian restaurant to open new location on Prospect Avenue in Park Ridge on Monday, June 27 (ABC 7)
·153. Shots reported fired on Route 53 near Jane Addams Tollway (I-90); Illinois State police investigating incident (WGN TV)
·154. Elgin police officers to get 2.5 percent pay increase following relatively short negotiations with the city (Daily Herald)
·155. Woodstock police searching for three men accused of armed robbery of Shell gas station (Daily Herald)
·156. Des Plaines aldermanic committee favors adopting 'City of Destiny' slogan, interlocking 'dP' logo (Daily Herald)
WEST:
·157. McHenry County Sheriff's Office charge Kane County Sheriff's deputy with possession of controlled substances after finding Modafinil, Zolpidem, Tapentadol during search of her Woodstock home (NBC 5)
·158. Downers Grove man accused of raping two Indiana University students gets plea deal, one year of probation (Chicago Tribune)
SOUTH:
·159. South suburbs see large increase in subsidized housing in wake of Chicago Housing Authority's move to demolish high-rise housing projects (Chicago Sun-Times)
NORTHWEST INDIANA:
·160. Munster police seek information on man believed to have stolen cartons of cigarettes from a Speedway gas station at knifepoint twice (Northwest Indiana Times)
·161. Hobart residents concerned about flooding related to proposed development at 83rd Avenue and Grand Boulevard (Northwest Indiana Times)
·162. Marketing company SERA Solutions Inc.'s move to Michigan City a boon for staff, from LaPorte County, helps poise organization for growth (Northwest Indiana Times)
·163. South Haven woman's push for safe passage along McCool Road north of U.S. 6 leads Porter County to install new path along roadway (Northwest Indiana Times)
·164. Hobart firefighters called twice to Southlake Mall for fire in Wet Seal store, Cooper's Hawk Winery & Restaurant (Northwest Indiana Times)
·165. Owner of Hill's Haunted Hospital, City of Portage reach agreement allowing him to move haunted house to former U.S. Steel Training Center near Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk (Northwest Indiana Times)