UPDATE – 26 January 2021
COVID has been in Canada for one year now.
The strange case of the CEO in disguise to get vaccine for himself.
COVID-19 tax tips.
COVID-19 and the world of work – the International Labor Organization.
A breakdown of cases among healthcare workers.
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If you’re having trouble regulating life while working from home, the fake commute might be for you, have a look: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/18/success/fake-commute-meaning-benefits-pandemic-wellness/index.html
“For the many who have been doing your part, you may be asking, what more can I do? Be the voice of support and encouragement for those who may be wavering in their resolve.” – Dr. Bonnie Henry.
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LOCAL:
· 82 cases among New West residents in the previous week.
· No new school exposures in New Westminster since that of the Queensborough Middle School on January 11th.
· Current outbreaks: Royal City Manor, declared Jan 21; Royal Columbian Hospital, declared Jan 20.
· The Rio Theatre in Vancouver has converted into a sports bar.
· The theatre is dealing with a full closure of movie theatres. But as restaurants and bars can remain open with safety protocols, the theatre is seeking other ways to do business. The move does show that the Rio cannot do business as a theatre right now, but can meet the safety requirements to operate as a sports bar.
· There are differences though. The theatre has to actually meet the requirements for a bar, such as taking orders from people’s seats rather than allowing a line-up at the concession.
· The move has stirred controversy, with some decrying the Rio as finding a loophole while the basic lay-out is still that of a theatre, with narrow entryways and tiny washrooms. Others welcome the move as innovative, a way for a theatre to survive during the closure.
Sources: CBC, Global News, Fraser Health
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PROVINCIAL:
· The strange case of the CEO in disguise.
· Vancouver couple Rod and Ekaterina Baker were fined $575 after sneaking into the Yukon to try to get the vaccine for themselves.
· The couple posed as local motel workers.
· The clinic at Beaver Creek normally has one nurse and a receptionist, but a team of six was flown in to do vaccinations. Beaver Creek was chosen because “of its remoteness, elderly and population, and limited access to health care,” said Chief Angela Demit of the White River First Nation in Beaver Creek.
· The story of the wealthy executive trying to get vaccine intended for remote elderly First Nations people has not gone over well.
· Rod Baker is the Chief Executive Officer of Great Canadian Gaming, since 2011, where he earns $900,000 per year as salary, but last year also made $45.9 million from company stock options.. The company announced his resignation yesterday. The gambling company cited it’s “core values.” Ekaterina Baker is an actor, but not apparently a good enough one to fool Yukon officials. The couple chartered a flight to the Yukon.
· “We had not been imagining that someone would go to this length to mislead or deceive.” John Streicker, Yukon’s Minister of Community Services.
· The manager of the 1202 Motor Inn, where the couple claimed to work, was also rather upset. “That’s a risk (serving travellers) that we take – not a risk that somebody enforces upon us because they are too ignorant.” Staff at the Beaver Creek clinic found the couple suspicious, and phoned the motel to check on their story. While at the clinic and pretending to live and work in town, the couple rather oddly asked if anyone could drive them to the airport afterwards.
· Story from the Globe and Mail: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-great-canadian-gaming-ceo-resigns-after-being-charged-in-yukon-ove?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Coronavirus%20Update&utm_content=2021-1-25_19&utm_term=Coronavirus%20Update:%20Great%20Canadian%20Gaming%20CEO%20resigns%20after%20alleged%20botched%20disguise%20as%20Yukon%20motel%20worker%20in%20attempt%20to%20get%20COVID-19%20vaccine&utm_campaign=newsletter&cu_id=czq7hF%2BueFDcmmCKozRUQ1bduJl6paGe
· Ekaterina Baker is known for acting in productions such as Chick Fight, Fatman, The Asset, and The Comeback Trail, and as producer of Big Gold Brick.
· IMDB page: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9698063/
· BC has adopted a four phase vaccination plan.
· Phase 1, December to February: Residents, staff, essential visitors with long-term care and assisted living; people waiting for long-term care; people in remote Indigenous communities and hospital workers caring for patients with COVID-19.
· Phase 2, February to March: Seniors over 80; Indigenous seniors over 65, Indigenous elders; more health-care workers; vulnerable populations and nursing-home staff.
· Phase 3, April to June: Members of the general public aged 60 to 79.
· Phase 4, July to September: Members of the general public aged 18 to 59.
· Premier John Horgan says the plan is based on those who get most sick, and those most likely to die, so priority goes to the elderly and vulnerable, and those who work around them.
· The Premier said multiple groups argued that they were front-line workers and so should get priority. But with vaccine supply limited, it didn’t seem to make sense to vaccinate people on the basis of their job, like being a front-line worker, ahead people ahead of seniors or those more likely to be hospitalized or to die. Health care workers are not only the most likely to be exposed, but they also work with and have direct contact with patients and the vulnerable.
· Here is a good article with the numbers and the rationale behind the priorities: https://www.newwestrecord.ca/local-news/opinion-elderly-should-get-covid-19-vaccine-before-bc-teachers-3291898
· The dates might vary, depending on supply.
· Covid cases in BC have plateaued to an average of 500 per day.
· Dr. Bonnie Henry said that the number is still dangerously high. “For the last few weeks, we have plateaued at 500 new cases. This is too many. We are at a precipice. The virus continues to circulate in our communities. We are at the threshold of where we were in late October and November when cases started to rise.”
· “Over the next two week, I believe we can bend our curve. Not just plateau, but bend it back down…. More than you’ve done before, stay home, stop social interactions.”
· B.C. will receive no new doses of vaccine over the next two weeks. It is not sure how much will be received in February.
· Over the past three days – Saturday, Sunday, Monday:
· 1,344 new cases. 618 of those in Fraser Health. 527 reported on Saturday, 472 on Sunday, 346 on Monday. 64,828 cases to date.
· 26 new deaths. 1,154 total.
· 4,392 active cases.
· 57,831 recovered.
· 11 outbreaks in long-term care declared over.
· 6 cases of the UK variant in BC, 3 cases of the South Africa variant. No community transmission of the UK variant, but the South Africa variant cases are not connected to travel and are being investigated. Dr. Henry: “I’m very concerned. I’m concerned that if those variants start to spread, it’s just going to make our job that much more difficult.”
· 119,850 doses of vaccine administered to date.
· New numbers for Tuesday:
· 14 new deaths. 1,168 total.
· 407 new cases. 65,234 total. (Comparison: a high of 911 cases happened for Nov 27).
· 313 hospitalized, 71 in intensive care. (A high of 381 were hospitalized on January 6th).
· 4,260 active cases.
· 6,450 in self-isolation.
· 58,352 recovered.
· 122,359 doses of vaccine administered to date. 4,105 are second doses.
· No new outbreaks, one outbreak declared over.
· Dr. Bonnie Henry: “For the many who have been doing your part, you may be asking, what more can I do? Be the voice of support and encouragement for those who may be wavering in their resolve.”
· New restriction may be necessary if the number begins to climb again.
· 4,850 cases among health care workers, from January 2020 to 15 January 2021. About 8% of cases.
· From January to December 17th 2020, care aides had the highest number of cases among healthcare workers at 1,193 or 24.6%. Nurses were second at 833 or 17.2%. Below are the ten highest number of cases by healthcare worker category.
· 1,193 – care aids.
· 833 – nurse.
· 304 – licensed practical nurse.
· 280 – administration.
· 177 – housekeeping.
· 156 – dental professional.
· 151 – physician.
· 149 – kitchen staff, dietary aid, food services.
· 91 – occupational therapist, physiotherapist, respiratory therapist.
· 75 – student.
· The document is here: http://www.bccdc.ca/Health-Info-Site/Documents/COVID_sitrep/COVID19_healthcare_workers_2021_01_15.pdf
· BC has has opened 3 clinics for people with longer term Covid symptoms.
· Located at St. Paul’s Hospital, Vancouver General, and the Outpatient Care and Surgery Centre in Surrey.
· Some people still have symptoms months after the start of the disease. Of patients who were hospitalized in BC, after three months half still had breathing issues. About 20% have permanent lung scarring.
· The St. Paul’s clinic already has 160 patients.
· Nanaimo Regional Hospital has had an outbreak.
· Two staff and a patient tested positive.
· Limited to the 4th Floor on the east wing.
· A homeless shelter in Surrey has had an outbreak.
· 2 staff and 24 clients test positive.
· The Surrey Emergency Response Centre was set up to make more shelter available to homeless people during the pandemic.
Sources: CBC, New Westminster Record, Globe and Mail, BC Centre for Disease Control.
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NATIONAL:
· Worked from home during Covid-19? Be sure to check out these tax tips: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/accountants-break-down-tips-for-working-from-home-expenses-1.5872477
· Covid has been in Canada for one year now, starting back on the 25th of January, 2020, with one case in Toronto.
· Long-terms care homes are particularly hard hit, and it continues to be so that care homes are getting outbreaks.
· From the CBC, “What we’re seeing in the long-term care facilities just demonstrates, unfortunately, years and years of neglect.” https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-ontario-canada-first-case-one-year-1.5884630
· In those early days, the public was generally told in Canada that the risk was low, and that people should not wear masks, and emphasized into March that there was no community spread.
· In late February, community transmission was evidenced in the U.S., and people returning to Canada from the U.S. began to show Covid. The halt to non-essential travel, on the land border, came on March 20.
· Canada is considering more travel restrictions, says the Canadian government.
· 143 flights have arrived in Canada in past two weeks with confirmed Covid cases. Deputy Prime Minister Freeland has assured, “We are considering the issue very, very seriously.”
· In this story, you can see where Canadians are flying during the pandemic. There sure seems to be a lot of urgent need to travel to places that happen to be warm vacation spots: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/freeland-travel-restrictions-1.5887163
· There is an 8 p.m. curfew in Montreal, and that is hard on the city’s homeless people.
· Homeless people have seen a dramatic reduction in help since the pandemic began. Shelters have to have social distancing, if they are safe to open at all.
· The province has refused to exempt homeless people from the curfew. People who break the curfew are subject to fines that start at $1,000 and can go up to $6,000. Premier Legault says making an exception for homeless people could cause people to pretend to be homeless.
· Some shelters have been forced to close altogether, because they can’t meet the requirements.
· Story: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-homeless-covid-curfew-1.5880946
· 90 “adverse events following immunization,” 0.015% of the 601,901 doses administered as of January 9th 2021.
· 63 were non-serious, 0.010%. This includes things like a skin rash.
· 27 were serious, 0.004%. In Canada, this includes a wide range of symptoms from headache to nausea to anaphylaxis.
· Learn about the Canada Adverse Events Following Immunization Surveillance System (CAEFISS) here: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/immunization/canadian-adverse-events-following-immunization-surveillance-system-caefiss.html
· Here is where the numbers are updated every Friday (but not consistently): https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccine-safety/#seriousNonSerious
· Manitoba is now requiring a 14 day quarantine for non-essential travel from other parts of Canada.
· The move is being made to attempt to prevent new variants of Covid-19 from entering the province.
· Applies to air and land travel.
· Includes Manitobans who are returning to the province from elsewhere.
Sources: CBC, Toronto Star, Public Health Canada
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INTERNATIONAL:
· The world is experiencing Covid-somnia – an epidemic of insomnia.
· Insomnia is now at one-quarter of the population in the UK, and at 40% in Italy and Greece.
· There is concern that this is affecting people’s health in other ways.
· Work productivity is also affected.
· A University of Ottawa study of health care workers in 55 countries and 190,000 people showed that depression, anxiety, and PTSD have all risen at least 15% since the start of the pandemic. Insomnia has risen by over 23%.
· People are advised to seek help, which many are not as people avoid medical services, or those services are unavailable. Seeking help is important, because sleep issues over time can become and ongoing sleep disorder. “Tele-health” now makes treatment more available despite the pandemic.
· Working and using screens in bed is a big part of it. The recommendation is to use your bed only as a place of sleep.
· Full article: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210121-the-coronasomnia-phenomenon-keeping-us-from-getting-sleep
· Vaccine delays are happening around the world.
· Canada is receiving zero doses this week.
· Health workers who were scheduled for vaccination were mostly notified by email of their cancellations.
· In Canada, 50% of doses will be delayed for up to four weeks, up to 400,000 doses delayed.
· Restoration of supply will happen in the European union before it happens in Canada. Pfizer explained this as differing contract deals but did not reveal details. Europe has also threatened to sue Pfizer for breach of contracts, and threatened to abandon Pfizer altogether as a supplier, perhaps in doing so catching the company’s attention.
· Pfizer and AstraZeneca say they will catch up to their commitments in the Spring. Pfizer says their delay is due to changing production systems, so a short-term shut down for a greater number of people vaccinated more rapidly overall. Pfizers says that they are upgrading to be able to produce 2 billion doses per year, from the current 1.3 billion. AstraZeneca has not given details.
· UPDATED: The Pfizer production facility in question is in Belgium. The European Union has threatened to ban exports of the vaccine if commitments to Europe are not met. The company is attempting to distribute the problem in the world somewhat equitably. If Europe followed through on the threat, that could mean delays for other countries would be longer, including Canada, which is served by the Belgium facility.
· The UK, having had Brexit and pulled out of the European Union, has realized that they, too, would be one of those outside countries. The UK, somewhat ironically, is now arguing against nationalism as government policy, referring to what they called “the dead end of vaccine nationalism.”
· The World Health Organization’s Covax program, to distribute vaccine around the world fairly to low-income countries, has not been affected, some good news in the mix. The Covax problem is still on schedule, as its vaccine supply is produced in India and South Korea. The program has also received a substantial boost, following US President Joe Biden’s decision to contribute $4 billion to the program.
· The CDC in the US says that allergic reactions to the vaccine are extremely rare.
· Out of 4 million given the Moderna vaccine, 10 had severe allergic reactions.
· Moderna – 2.5 per million doses have severe allergic reactions.
· Pfizer – 11.1 per million.
· Normal flu vaccine – 1.3 per million.
· Allergic reactions begin quickly, at a median of 7 and a half minutes, so people are able to be supported through it. The majority were known to have severe allergies in advance. In the US, all vaccination sites must have people trained in responding to anaphylaxis, or severe allergic reaction.
· Story: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/22/health/moderna-severe-allergic-reactions-rare/index.html
· A doctor in Texas has been arrested for stealing vaccine.
· The doctor stole 9 doses to give to his friends and family, authorities allege.
· A man lived in the Chicago O’Hare airport for three months because he was afraid to fly. Story: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55702003
· Los Angeles has lifted its air quality limitations for cremations. An emergency order was issued so that crematoriums can catch up with the number of bodies. One person every eight minutes was dying from Covid every 8 minutes. The rate of death in LA county is double the norm from past years. 13,800 deaths in the city, 7,400 currently hospitalized, and 23% of those in intensive care.
· Over 200 incidents with plane passengers over the wearing of masks have been reported in the U.S.
· The behaviour has included refusal to wear masks once onboard, shouting abusively at flight attendants, and even physical assault.
· On Thursday, President Biden issued an executive order requiring the wearing of masks across transportation, a move welcomed by flight unions.
· The FAA, Federal Air Administration, has introduced fines up to $35,000 and potential jailing for abusing aircraft personnel, a move made in December after two flight attendants were assaulted.
· One person has been fined $15,000 after hitting the flight attendant, and grabbing her phone away from her while she was notifying the captain of the problem. Another passenger was fined $7,500, who when asked to wear a mask approached other passengers without a mask and sexually harassed a flight attendant.
· Some airlines are banning passengers from their flights who refuse to follow the rules. United Airlines has banned 615 people from flying on the airline since June, Delta Airlines has banned 700.
· There is a lot of news about variants of the virus.
· New variants have appeared in Britain, South Africa, and Brazil, all countries that have had high rates of Covid.
· So, what about vaccines? Scientists have actually expected that vaccines would still work against the variants. Moderna says that antibodies triggered by their vaccine works on new variants in lab test results. More study will be needed of people who actually have been vaccinated and who had the variant. The study so far was a small sample of eight people. Early results with the Pfizer vaccine also show that it works against variants.
· Moderna is also studying to see if there is a benefit of giving a third booster shot.
· Reports vary almost daily about if the variants are more deadly or not. The truth is that data is too limited and it is too early to really tell.
· Covid job losses have been four times worse than in the financial crisis in 2009.
· That’s according to a report by the International Labor Organization.
· The report estimates that 8.8% of the world’s work hours were eliminated. The ILO looks not only at those who have become unemployed, but those who have had reduced hours of work as well. That loss is equivalent to 255 million full-time jobs, or $3.7 trillion dollars of income.
· Press release: https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_766949/lang--en/index.htm
· Study: COVID-19 and the world of work. Seventh edition. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/documents/briefingnote/wcms_767028.pdf
· What’s the latest with the Tokyo Olympics?
· The government of Japan wants to go ahead with the Olympics that were delayed last summer.
· The Olympics are planned to start on July 23, and the Paralympics on August 24.
· The International Olympic Committee is currently planning on proceeding, but has not made a final decision. Efforts are underway to have Olympics that are Covid safe. That might mean no audiences, athletes restricted to their accommodation areas, and each sport would have to have protocols around training and competition areas.
· “We need the vaccine to come to Africa.” A note about Grandmothers in Zimbabwe. I encourage you to read this one: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55726054
Sources: BBC, Toronto Star, International Labor Organization, CNN, Los Angeles Times.
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STATS (as of end of Monday)
CANADA
· 144 new deaths. 19,238 total.
· 5,628 new cases. 753,011 total.
· 1,222 fewer active. 62,446 total.
· 849 in critical care.
· 6,706 new recovered. 671,327 total.
USA
· 1,887 new deaths. 431,392 total.
· 152,244 new cases. 25,861,597 total.
· 9,812,845 active.
· 26,259 in critical care.
· 207,426 new recovered. 15,617,360 total.
WORLD
· 2,149,496 deaths.
· 100,286,772 cases.
· 72,315,474 recovered.
Sources: www.covid-19us.live/, https://www.covid-19canada.com/
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Pandemic updates provided on a voluntary basis as a community service, on Tuesdays and Fridays unless circumstances do not allow (currently dealing with an injury that limits my typing).
To provide accurate and timely information, locally, provincially, nationally and internationally, all in one place.
Feel free to share.
With love and hope,
Jaimie McEvoy, City Councillor, New Westminster, B.C.

A batch of information regarding Drift Nations in the Time of the Red, to be used as hook or locations in your games if you feel so inclined. The second part is already being worked on.

10 Drift Nations Peppered Across The Globe In 2045

The Centino Flotilla (Nomad Family) Area of operations: Northern and Southern Pacific Numbers and leadership: 40,000+ members, ~8,000 vessels (of various size), led by Allegria Chung
The Centino Flotilla is one of the few good things finding their roots in the Fourth Corporate War, some would say. After only months of bitter fighting between Arasaka and Militech, everyone had but forgotten the two corporations, OTEC and CINO, responsible for kicking-off the conflict. Equally, no one was surprised to hear that the two companies ended up bleeding each other to death during the Sea War, mostly in the Pacific.
As with many others, the destruction of Arasaka's headquarters in Night City by a nuclear detonation came as a wake up call. But the situation was already past the return point for both corporations and, as the commercial entities teetered over the edge, their maritime forces came to an uneasy stand-off in the Pacific. It took all the diplomatic skills of one of CINO's captain, Grant Chung, to reach over the divide and bring the two parties together. Bound by years of mutual bloodletting and tragedies, they decided to merge forces and survive together against all odds.
After pooling their last resources together, the two parties spent the next year building their flotilla and roaming the Pacific Ocean. Determined to never be a tool of corporate greed ever again, they brought their skills to help rebuilding many of the Pacific Island nations, as well as other Drift Nations such as AquaDelphi or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Now led by Grant's daughter, Allegria, the flotilla is a force to be reckoned with, its vessels flying the teal wave emblem being seen all over the Pacific. Specialized in reconstruction of seashore communities and shepherding Ghost Fleets toward places where they could be recycled, they are one of the new binding links of the Pacific ocean nations.
AquaDelphi (Fallen Coporate Dream) Location: South-West of Hawaii Estimated population and leadership: 30,000+, organized in guilds with a Central Council of 5
AquaDelphi's project came out during the corporate golden years, sprouting off OTEC's board of director's collective hubris. Not unlike Night City, AquaDelphi was designed to serve as the new standard by which future cities would be built. And no one ever blamed the OTEC heads for lack of ambition.
Mobilizing all the resources from their conglomerate, the maritime corporation set their view on a territory close to Hawaii. Buying the ownership from the fallen US federal government was a piece of cake at the time and construction began quickly. Centered around the company headquarters, the city was to hold the largest library humankind ever put together, a massive seaport complete with dry docks, and utopian housing for the corporate families among other pharaoh-like projects. The whole place was powered by harnessing geothermal energy and run by the in-house AI, Pythia.
Unfortunately, as Fate is wont to, AquaDelphi was still under construction when the Fourth Corporate War came knocking. The green spaces of the housing district and the ancient white stones of the library were the first to go when the bombings started, then it was the turn of OTEC headquarters. As long as the monstrous steel towers stood upright, most of the population tried to keep the dream alive despite Pythia's more and more frequent erratic outbursts; but it was only delaying the inevitable exodus toward Hawaii.
Nowadays, AquaDelphi is slowly being rebuilt, thanks mostly to her massive sea port becoming one of the major places for ship breaking. Refugees gradually return to a place the Kress administration would not touch with a ten foot pole and dream of renaissance, but many are wary of the corporate nightmares lying in wait, among which Pythia...
New R'lyeh (Reckoners Cthuluny) Location: South Pacific Estimated Population and Leadership: 6,000+ under the leadership of the Dunwich Congregation
A decade ago, nobody had heard of the Dunwich Congregation. Only specialist were aware of this reckoner cult, led by austere people in outmoded black suits. Anyone would have told you that their idea of a cosmic entity with far too many tentacles and consonants in its name was never going to appeal to the masses. But the community endured, centered around their faith in Lovecraft's writings.
The news then dropped one day, six years ago: the congregation had purchased a rotten weather outpost in the empty corner of Southern Pacific. Reports of a growing shanty town came back, brought by passing ships and still no one expected them to survive once again. But they did, sending more missionaries across the world, armed with the Cthulu Mythologies; and their numbers grow steadily if slowly. Their declared goal in establishing New R'lyeh is to find old R'lyeh, a sunken city supposedly holding either a sleeping Cthulu or a way to connect with them. No one will speak openly about life in New R'lyeh but rumors of cultural segregation, weird rites and human sacrifices are legion. Whatever the truth, they are there to stay and never relent.
Their deep sea explorations and general presence are not to the taste of the European Space Agency (ESA), whose Deepdown outposts have been established there for decades in order to retrieve low-orbit material brought back to Earth in the area. The assaults led by ESA's underwater elite troops, the Nemos, stay fruitless as the cultists proved to hard to remove from the area. With number swelling steadily every year, New R'lyeh keeps growing weirder and is not going anywhere.
Cape Horn Wreckers (Scavvers Union) Location: Cape Horn area Numbers and Leadership: Up to 500 members. Leadership unknown.
Many places still struggle with the aftermath of the last Corporate War. Take Cape Horn, for example. The southernmost end of South America was for centuries the standard against which sailors measured their abilities and, more recently, a strategical passage to control for commercial and military purposes. Needless to say the place saw bitter fighting during the Sea War.
Which is why everybody started clapping when Argentinians and Chileans publicly decided to put their differences aside and find ways to clear up Cape Horn for maritime shipping once peace returned. Weary of corporate task forces, they decided to hire a multitude of small operators with designated areas to work on, in exchange for advantageous prices buying back salvaged material, as well as a share of any reclaimed equipment. Little did they know this would help turn their myriad of contractors in the now infamous Cape Horn Wreckers.
After only a couple of years, the small contractor crews started to work as a cooperative, granting them better negotiating power when selling back salvaged materials; while limited oversight allowed them to keep for themselves smaller ships and various pieces of armament at they saw fit. When the shipwrecks became too scarce and maritime shipping sputtered anew, the Wreckers naturally started using scramblers to lure passing vessels aground and pillage them.
By the time Chile and Argentina decided to intervene, it was too late. The Wreckers could stand on their own against national armies and navies. The international community obligingly looked aside for years but recent incursions in the Drake Passage forced foreign powers to start face the problem more directly. As a start, a series of bounties were set for anyone able to help identify and capture the Wreckers' leaders ...
North Atlantic Trade Hub (High Seas Trade Post) Location: Midway between the Azores and Ireland Population and leadership: 127,520 under joint Corporate-European Council oversight.
It took decades in the making for this trade platform to come out of the waves two years ago in the middle of Northern Atlantic. Decades of negotiations between Kaerms, the European maritime shipping titan, and European Council representatives during which American and Asian competitors took the lead. The North Atlantic Trade Hub is supposed to the European answer to this situation. Fearing Europe loss of speed in the maritime shipping and shipbuilding areas, N.A.T.H (as most familiarly call it) was conceived with the dual purpose in mind.
NATH is in reality an atoll of starfish-shaped platforms working in close relationship. On one side you will find the state of the art Noatun shipyards, pumping out small or medium trade vessels at an increasing rhythm and with a focus set on affordability and durability, the "sea mules" of the reborn sea trade. Paired with this, you will find a constellation of piers and decentralized trading centers, hosting a wide variety of small corporation and independent traders.
To keep their edge sharp, the European Union agreed to let the platform become a de facto city state with a policy of "high wages - low taxes" for five years granted to any worker, engineer or researcher choosing to migrate there; under the condition that they move to Europe and naturalize at the end of their contract.
As for now, the NATH managed its primary objective of becoming Europe's gateway for Northern Atlantic trade. The sea mules sell decently enough but are yet to threaten the Asian shipyards, the real mastodons of the industry. In the meantime, slack standards benefited many of the grey economy operators: if you need European gear, for cheap, then head on over before time's up and the forces of regulations start to crack down!
The Nansen Nation (Stateless Society) Area of Operations: Mediterranean Sea Estimated numbers and Leadership: ~200,000 citizens; 60,000+ vessels; led by the council of 500
Saying the Mediterranean sea has a millennia-long history of serving as the interface for human commerce and migrations comes to no surprise for anyone. If commerce was said to tighten the bonds across the sea, migrations became an increasingly divisive subject for trans-Mediterranean summits during the 20^th century. Many ventured off the Mediterranean shore and tried to immigrate to Europe, often risking their lives in the process; while "Fortress Europe" focused inwardly on its own success and only offered token help to the migrants if they returned home.
The situation became a nightmare during the Middle-East meltdown of the late 90's. Hundreds of thousands of humans ended up stranded at sea, roaming the Mediterranean as ghosts, stuck between war-torn countries on one side and a paradise out of reach on the other. And Europe kept letting only a few in, openly picking and competing over whichever individuals they thought could benefit their countries the most.
By the time African states managed to open their door more widely and benefit from the influx of population, many refugees then refused to return to land. Living for many years at seas, they had learned to make a living off of the waters and to navigate the inland sea like no other nation; turning them into peerless transporters and smugglers with a central role in the Mediterranean.
After electing a council of 500 hundred captains, the multi-cultural community chose their name from the Nansen passport delivered to stateless individuals a century before that. Their counters can be found in any major port of the inland sea, under the purple Phoenician letter N, offering their services to anyone looking to move someone or something discreetly over the sea. Europeans pay double, it goes without saying.
Safaniya-Zakum (Oil Extraction Complex) Location: Persian Gulf Estimated Population and Leadership: 80,000+ inhabitants and workers led by local royals
"A technological prowess" is what the Safaniya-Zakum complex is often described as. Both proponents and opponents of the project do tip their hat to its execution. Using a blend of time-proven and cutting edge technologies, a network of oil rigs, fishing piers, gas ducts and housing blocks is now stretching out above the waves of the Persian Gulf, all the way from Kuwait to the Hormuz Strait.
Proponents of the Saf-Za complex call it "the phoenix chant of a reborn Middle-East". Many put forward the accent set on sustainability and multi-cultural society, overcoming the ancient divisions. Not only the complex's only operator, a state-run company, manages to extract oil and gas from the sea bed again, but the ancient traditions of fishing and pearl culture are brought back. Considering the desolated lands of Iran and United Arab Emirates on both coasts, it is hard not to perceive the Saf-Za network as a cry of defiance against defeatism and a sense of doom.
Opponents call it "the swan song of a dying industry", preferring to point at the predominance of CHOOH² and deploring the refusal to let go of antiquated technologies. Others underline the complex's authoritarian regime and omnipresent police. Any visitors hoping to set a foot in will have to provide a full genetic profile and suffice to say that anyone even remotely affiliated to PetroChem or SovOil will never have a chance to peek inside.
With the extremely high level of difficulty regarding the obtaining of any information from inside the complex, experts are left wondering if the Safaniya-Zakum structure will hold long enough between intern fracture lines and outside pressure; long enough to recreate the major center of trade between India and the Eastern coast of Africa the region once was.
Deep Level Recovery HQ (Artificial Corporate Island) Location: Bay of Bengal Estimated Population and Leadership: ~7,000 employees led by D.L.R CEO and Face Kanchan Bonse
When the first Deepdown bubbles experimentation appeared decades ago, nobody expected any one else than military actors or some of the largest mega-corporations of the time to take the industry's lead toward expansion into civilian markets. But during the late 2020's, such actors had their compass set on rebuilding their power and returning to pre-war balance. Which suited someone who had been swimming under the radar for a bit.
Kanchan Bonse grew up following her corporate executive mother along a wide variety of postings. She emerged from her childhood with two passions: wreck diving and corporate power play. In the following years, she worked along the Indian coastlines on maritime salvage projects or post-disaster rescue operations. During those formative years, she lost nothing of her passions but gained a thick address book filled with talented if disgruntled, under-payed workers and engineers. Deep Level Recovery had all the ingredients to come to existence.
After building the core of her future corporation using her personal fortune; Bonse focused on developing proprietary designs for underwater habitats and workshops, allowing her technicians too work longer underwater. Spending many years experimenting and enhancing their techniques during humanitarian crises in South-East Asia, DLR took no side during the Fourth Corporate War but only gained power in the aftermath by landing many lucrative contracts all over the world.
Decades later, their glass bubble headquarters sit on waters granted by the Indian government as a thankful gesture. Visitors can admire there both the company's humanitarian projects and Deepdown habitat designs destined to the richest fringe of the planet. It is said that Kanchan Bonse only dives for pleasure these days but seems to be keeping tabs on elite divers across the world.
Far Yue City (Modular Floating City State) Location: South China Sea Estimated population and Leadership: 750,000 to 1,000,000 with a Central Representative Council
The fate of Hong Kong is one of the many tragedies of our times. After years of inner fighting and outside influence, the vibrant city was trying to recover when the Fourth Corporate War hit the world. A tragedy that climaxed with a biochemical attack for Hong Kong, closing that chapter on an abrupt end and leaving the rest of the wold with nothing but the Ghost World for memories. But that was without taking in account those who had to run prior to the events...
Since 2027 it has been noted that many members of the diaspora converged towards the Spratly islands to reunite with refugees from the Fragrant Harbour. Many former cargo vessels were bought as well as the maximum amount of TEU's they could get their hands on. In a matter of years a medium size fleet assembled with its inhabitants carrying their whole lives and families aboard, amidst a tangle of TEU's whose assembly became reminiscent of Kowloon's Walled City.
Early on, the ensemble stuck together giving life to a vivid culture of community and ingenuity. Workshops found new ways of extracting the most out of their minimal space and reduced resources. Personal networks connected and shared outside connections. The place became known as Far Yue City. By that time it was already able to travel as a group, approaching the coast of neighbouring countries, engaging in trade and knowledge sharing in exchange for protection.
Nowadays Far Yue city is able to criss-cross the whole South China sea as a whole, but more often fragmented; bringing city-sized dense assemblages of shops, schools, apartments, workshops and other gambling halls to various neighboring countries despite some local grumblings. For there is no better place in the region to obtain rare information, enjoy Dim Sum, place a bet, get a light-tattoo or learn hacking techniques than one of those floating districts sporting the white orchid emblem.
Ivory Sails (Free Navy) Area of operation: Worldwide Estimated numbers and Leadership: ~20,000 troops, ~2,000 boats, led by Ian Sharpgrove
The history of the Ivory sails is a tale of danger, daring actions and glory. Or it is a litany of war crimes, greed and ruthlessness. It usually depends on which side of the conflict you were. The Ivory Sails came to the world during the harsh days of the Sea War. As Militech and Arasaka were trading blows on land, sea, in the air, and in the cyberspace; their allies and subsidiaries destroyed each other; creating opportunities for professional outfits. Some of them at sea.
In came Ian Sharpgrove, raising out of obscurity at the tail end of the conflict and bringing with him a highly-specialized crew tailored for special operations. There was no raid the Sharpgrove Unit would fear to undertake, no desperate rearguard action they would not fight, no mission dangerous enough for them. Eventually managing the dubious feat of selling their services to most of the actors on both sides of the conflict, Sharpgrove and his troops made a name for themselves and soon enough everyone was ready to pay them so they would not fight for the other side.
This "sense of realpolitik winds", as he puts it himself, was what permitted now admiral Sharpgrove and his faithful troops to emerge rich and powerful out of the conflict. But their reputation was forever stained with infamy. In a transparent laundering effort, the group was re-named Ivory Sails and oriented themselves toward "peacekeeping" and "police actions", with a sprinkling of highly-publicized humanitarian stunts to seduce the medias.
Nowadays the Ivory Sails can be found anywhere across the globe training coastguard navies, securing areas for corporate clients, escorting refugee convoys and other such actions. Each time extracting a true ransom in exchange for their presence. But Sharpgrove knows the new golden age of privateers is reaching its end and takes every opportunity to line his pockets, mercilessly resorting to piracy if needed, before someone finally "retires" him once and for all.

Feathers over Arretia is an indie RPG dealing with the most serious criminal elements threatening society: smol birbs. The game takes place in the fictional city of Arretia, a modern setting with some minor fantasy elements.
HISTORY
PART I
THE FOUNDING MYTHS
All great cities of the Ancient World have foundation myths, Arretia is no different. There are competing stories that claim legitimacy as the “true” foundation myth of the city. Both have considerable academic merit and the debate has continued for centuries as to which is the “true” myth. However recent excavations on the Mount of Cages, which contains some of the most ancient remains of the old part of the city, have revealed a third story in recent years that is as popular as it is fantastic.
Myth 1 – The Aristotelian Connection
334BC
Crowned King of Macedon at age 20 with the death of his father Phillip II, Alexander consolidated power on the Greek countryside, taking on Illyria, Thebes and Athens before continuing his father’s life’s work: the invasion of Persia.
In 334 BC Alexander set foot upon the shore of Asia Minor opposite the Hellespont and claimed the entirety of it’s continent with the ceremonial thrust of a spear into the ground.
His tutor and advisor Aristotle, perhaps the smartest man alive at the time, prudently informed the young conqueror with a whisper that this moment should be commemorated for posterity as generations would want to know where it was the gods themselves acquiesced to his demands for land.
Alexander’s exact response isn’t known but he broadly let Aristotle know that if it was so important, he could do it.
So a small shrine was erected at the spot where the spear lay, consecrated by a priestess of Delphi retained with the party for such events and a plaque was written in Greek and Persian telling all who could read of its history. Aristotle himself dictated the passage and etched his own mark into the bottom with hammer and chisel.
In May 334 BC, when Alexander defeated Memnon of Rhodes in The Battle of the Granicus River, the first blow against the might of Persia, Aristotle recommended a similar monument be made. Alexander was impudent and demanded the tutor just make a sign pointing to the last shrine to save time. A slip of the lip caused that sign to read “Με αυτόν τον τρόπο στην πλάκα του Αριστοτέλη” or “This way to Aristotle’s plaque.”
Some say that this mistake made its way back to the young King who decided to make sure such a mistake could never again occur, founding innumerable cities in his own name from that day forward. Ironically, playing right into Aristotle’s original ploy to get Alexander serious about building a legacy and not just pursuing glory in vanity.
Over decades, the spear was eventually stolen and the shrine looted but the plaque remained stalwart and vivid as the day it was carved, as did the signs directing people to its location.
But “Aristotle’s plaque” became shortened to “Aristotle’s [land]” and eventually was misread as Arretia in a Roman census which stuck around to the present day.
Myth 2 – The Disgraced Commander
323 BC
Even before Alexander’s retreat from India in the final year of his life, the empire he had spent years building was already in danger of crumbling.
Disloyal generals, governors and bureaucrats of the West who once groveled at his feet were no longer cowed upon his departure to lands further and further East. Threats of rebellion simmered and the empire was already being carved up by conspirators in back rooms long before Alexander ever lay upon his deathbed.
Before the Wars of the Diadochi tore this empire asunder a dozen times, one of Alexander’s most loyal allies Antigonus I who had followed him all the way from Greece having served his father Philip II had his son Antigonus II sent in secret back to his holdings in Macedon with a fortune in gold to build support for his claim to the empire once Alexander finally died without an heir.
However his return was slow and exorbitant as the young noble caroused at every city and village on the long journey from Persia and by the time he had finally reached The Hellespont, not only was much of his fortune squandered but his own party betrayed him, throwing him off of the gangway at the last second before boarding ship which sailed towards Crete. Either bad fortune or the very wrath of the gods saw it cast to the bottom of the Aegean where the gold remains undiscovered to this day.
Learning of his son’s incompetent failure, Antigonus I had his name stricken from history and rewrote his family lineage so that Demetrius I was his issue, not Antigonus II. Historians debate how much gold was lost in this event but many agree that had the trip been successful, Antigonus I might have bought-off Ptolemy long enough to keep the empire from falling to civil war.
Yet locals still recall in vivid detail the folly of Antigonus II and took to calling the area where he was betrayed as ανόητος ηλίθιος στη νερό (silly idiot in the water) which was shortened over time to ατοςιος σερό and eventually αρτηρία or Arretia today.
Myth 3 – The First Flight
440 BC
In 1989, a small excavation at the Mount of Cages began as a joint effort by the Committee of Arretian Historical Preservation (CAHP) and the Fine Arts College of Arretia (FACA) to find relics of the city’s past succeeded and may have changed history with its discovery of a plaque far more ancient than any others before it.
On this plaque in worn Copper and Jade was the following: 𒀀𒆷𒀸𒊭𒄠𒈪𒅖𒉺𒋫𒀀𒀸𒉿𒈾𒀜𒋾𒅖 (Wanattis patas Alasammis) along the faint impression of a human foot.
Tests determined the plaque to be authentic, tracing back to the middle of the 5th Century B.C.
The human foot was determined to be that of a young woman.
One enterprising youth working on a PHD in Comparative Linguistic Studies suggested that the engraving might be Luwian Swadesh, a form of ancient Cuneiform thought to be used by the Trojans.
Translated the plaque reads: “[where from] the sea [a] woman’s foot.”
Although the subject on intense debate between Arretian, Turkish and Greek scholars, it is believed by some that this spot was where Helen of Troy first stepped on land after being abducted by Prince Paris in the time immediately before the Trojan War. This theory is buoyed due to Arretia’s proximity to the ruins of Troy and soil erosion patterns suggest that the Mount of Cages was at one time a natural jetty sticking out into the sea.
Now a Professor Emeritus of the Linguistics Department of the FACA, Dr. Merlin Bruce Codlack’s book “Beneath the Mount” maintains that the old form of Trojan gave rise to the common use of the name Arretia for the area over centuries as the spoken language was invaded by Greek cognates which turned “Alsammis” and “patas” to “Arretpatas” by the time of Alexander who adopted the name simplifying it to Arretia in the process.
PART II
ANCIENT HISTORY
The meteoric ascendancy of Greece during the time of Alexander brought prosperity to Asia Minor along with immigration at rates unheard of. Due to its strategic position in a natural harbor, a small trading community sprang up in the region which grew at an accelerated pace due the influx of trade between itself, Byzantium and Rhodes.
Ancient merchants who spoke of the glory of the Colossus as it was being built in the 3rd Century BC made mention of the cheap provisions that could be had a few days sail further along the coast at Arretia which now boasted a considerable farming community lured to the area by cheap land and fertile soil.
Migrating herds of black cattle moving along transits laid by the Hittites 1,000s of years earlier became an increasingly common site in the town. Before long, the citizens had erected crude palisades and a considerable watchtower upon what would later be known as the Mount of Cages where a band of far-sighted archer mercenaries from across the Greek world stood ever vigilant, paid in turn with generous land grants and even more gracious payment than could be found anywhere else in the Mediterranean.
PART III
PRE-ROMAN OCCUPATION
Centuries of good fortune, prosperity and mild weather turned the small town into a bustling city by the time of Rome. Generations of increasingly confident watchmen and prudent city defense planning had turned the once wooden tower into a stone monolith which through the clever use of mirrors and a coal fire was able to light the sea for miles around at night while lenses developed by Archimedes himself at Syracuse were re-engineered to make Arretian scouts unrivaled marksmen capable of sighting fleets days before they would normally be spotted – in no small part egged on by a merchant class of considerable power which gambled heavily and recklessly with commodity speculation. A common phrase at the time was “no grain ship can leave Alexandria for Rome without some Arretian knowing about it, selling and trading its cargo before the sails are even unfurled.”
All of these marvels paled in comparison to Rhodes to the South and Arretians prided themselves on being the underdog rival, resulting in a hundred fortunes lost beneath the soaring arm of the Colossus won back under Arretia’s stone monolith.
Despite most mapmakers placing Arretia firmly within the bounds of the territories of the Seleucid Empire, the only tax ever paid to that crumbling backwater was a single pure silver slug approximately 10 grams in weight paid annually by one of the many merchant families via courier addressed directly to the King of the Seleucids. When this tradition first started with the founding of the city during the days of Alexander, such a payment was a king’s ransom but over time became so much of a pittance that the families boasted decades of “taxes” were pre-paid in their basement next to the cheap wine and how droll it all seemed that some distant king truly needed the money.
In 217 BC, the Selucid King Antiochus III the Great in an attempt to revive the dying empire made war on Egypt and lost at the Battle of Raphia. Though bloodied, the king engaged in a restructuring of his lands which was mostly focused on quelling rebellions and consolidating power in the East while giving up on retaking Syria for the time being. In service to these efforts, he raised taxes and Arretia found itself the subject of an event that has been colloquially known as The Shaming of The King.
The story goes that the Seleucid King’s tax collector arrived in Arretia to find its walls (once wooden now solid stone) manned with troops in full battle regalia and the gate locked. However the side gate (known as the Eye of the Sling) was opened just enough that he might crawl through it and a small banner made of finest silk confirmed that was expected of him saying “για τους φτωχούς (for the poor)” with an arrow pointing down at it. The tax collector humbly crawled down into the gate finding it covered in animal muck and mud along the bottom. When he crossed the threshold the patriarchs of the merchant families stood proud and tall alongside strongboxes arrayed before him. When the tax collector stood up, covered in filth, the men tipped the boxes over, showering his feet in silver coins a hundred deep which sank quickly into the mud before walking silently back to their estates without a word. Tradition states that the tax collector spent days sifting through the muck as it hardened, collecting a small fortune before realizing he had no possible way to carry it back to his King in the East. Legend states that he stole a muck-rakers cart and escaped through the gate which had been left open in the meantime with a pile of silver and dung half a man high. He was eventually able to find passage back in less humiliating fashion but the message was clear: Arretia thought King Antiochus III to be a common beggar, no more.
PART IV
ROMAN INVOLVEMENT
The Vote
By the 1st Century BC Rome’s ascendancy was all but assured. While Carthage remained a valuable trade partner, its destruction in the Third Punic War half a century earlier made even the richest houses of Arretia quake with fear. In 145 BC, exactly one year after her strongest ally was burnt to the ground and her fields salted the great houses organized a plebiscite.
All adult male citizens and freemen or women who owned property were allowed to vote. Voting occurred over a three week period allowing even the most disparate of farmers or merchants out at sea an opportunity to vote.
The vote was simple: shall Arretia resist Rome, yay or nay? Nay votes were symbolized by a feather from a rooster, chosen at random in the market stalls from vendors as part of a lot system while the yay votes came from hens along similar lines. Over three weeks it is said there was not a single unplucked chicken in Anatolia. On the final day it was found that the ‘nays’ had won by a landslide and the great houses debated how best to interpret this matter.
The three richest houses proclaimed they would sign a treaty of friendship with Rome, offering them a similar deal to that offered to the now defunct Seleucid Empire.
Over the Winter a grand ceremony was planned and preparations made for the envoy.
The Landing
Two great ships were built, The Romulus of Apollo and The Remus of Februus, adorned in gold and silver respectively. Carried by sails of silk, rowed by the tallest slaves of Parthia, full of exotic spices from the Far East, captained by men who claimed to have reached the Southern-most Tip of Africa and full of a ransom fit for any three emperors combined, along with a single daughter of each great home trained in Latin, the fleet anchored off Rome’s Portus artificial harbor off the north bank of the Tiber on April 5th, 144 BC on the dawn of the Festival of Fortuna Publica, or the "luck of the people."
The young women approached the senate and handed forth reams of purple vellum explaining the offer of Arretia to the upstart hegemon. Lucius Aurelius Cotta, Counsul a the time and elected during the Fortuna Publica festival in 154 BC coincidentally, accepted the terms: Arretia would provide logistical support, technical expertise and ships to the Roman Navy 10 talents of silver annually paid to the Roman Senate Build a new Pantheon in Arretia for the Roman Gods Rome would exempt her citizens of any taxes or drafts Rome would become her protectorate should any enemies declare war on the merchant republic
The Byzantine Period
While Rome seemed unstoppable, Arretia was a haven of intellectual involvement and oligarchy as the richest men and women of the known world demanded citizenship, if only to avoid the harsh taxation of Rome at home. Soon there was a row of homes, all empty, where dozens of Arretian “citizens” “lived” but even the most fastidious bureaucrat in Italy was hopelessly lost in the ocean of paperwork Arretian civil servants produced daily.
So it was that when Constantine the Great decreed that Constantinople would be the new Capitol of the Roman Empire, the whole of Arretia held its breath. Along with his tax reform and re-issuance of the currency (debasing it with cheaper metals and forcing all Roman citizens to pay in coin for government fees and taxes), Constantine demanded Arretia triple their existing tribute until Constantinople was finished with construction of the Hagia Sophia (Megale Ekklesia or Big Church) Arretian merchants, craftsmen, builders, surveyors and brick layers descended upon the new city like a flock seagulls upon an uncovered market stall, determined to have it finished in record time.
Legend has it that for every brick laid in Constantinople, another was laid in Arretia. The old Pantheon was retrofitted behind closed gates and under grand tents. On February 15th, 360 AD during the reign of the emperor Constantius II when The Hagia Sophia was concentrated and opened to the public. While The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem had more artifacts on display, The Hagia Sophia held the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch and The Pantheon still had the largest dome in the world, The Ecclesiae Baptismate (Church of the Baptism) contained by some estimates nearly 40% of all pieces of the True Cross to exist in the world at the time, ironically making the Cross replica itself nearly 74 feet tall.
The Plague
The Plague of Justinian 541 AD killed untold millions throughout the world, originating in either Asia or Africa, the first documented reports of its involvement according to Byzantine source Procopius was in Egypt’s port of Pelusium.
The Arretians tell a different story.
In 540 AD a sailor from the Far East was found floating in the Indian Ocean 100 miles off the coast of Axum by an unknown Arretian vessel. Its captain recorded in stone tablet (as all wood and papers had dissolved in the salt water) this message. He then scuttled the vessel to the bottom of the sea to protect the world as best he could and forestall the inevitable coming devastation:
The [man] is turning black before our eyes as though some fire burns from within his groin and [armpits]. The spits the most vile [substances] and convulses in the night. I notice [on myself] the same growing painful lumps and it is my duty to stop this [plague] before my crew are infected. May God have mercy on [us].
Spies and merchants (if there ever was truly a distinction to the Arretians) reported on rumors in Pelusium of a sickness that spread like locusts.
The 15 Great Houses of Arretia held an emergency meeting that very night, un-customarially sharing all possible information on the sickness and concluded in a matter of hours that the city must survive, no matter the costs.
In the most Arretian way possible a 2 day state of emergency was declared. Any and all food stores were seized, any and all ship traffic in the harbor was seized, the bowels of all ships emptied while furious captains were silenced with bags of silver too large to carry by any one pack animal, and sent back to their port of call without explanation.
The countryside was picked clean and all foreign citizens warned to not return to the city upon pain of death. The walls were redoubled with temporary wooden facades, the gates sealed shut with leaded locks for which no key was made. From the highest aviaries to the lowest jetties, not an inch of the city went upturned. Every fishing boat was impressed and triple staffed for back-to-back shifts until the sea around Arretia was scraped clean of all marine life.
On the last night, all boats were returned to the harbor where they were dismantled, along with the harbor itself while the stone edifices of the great houses and mansions of the typically unoccupied but ostentatious ‘Roman Quarter’ were thrown into the harbor creating a temporary breakwater which was reinforced with pitch and tar until water sealed and a great fire set ablaze on the shore. Boiling water in so great a quantity bathed the city in salt, collected from windows, walls and the ground itself to preserve every scrap of meat and fish possible.
An especially hardy species of mushroom from far off Gaul of the Grooty Strain (brought over by some trader years earlier) was discovered growing underneath a porch and at once a massive team of laborers set to work retrofitting every basement, vault and catacomb into nurseries for the tiny gray intrusive species.
On the dawn of the third day Arretia had gone from a glittering example of the height of civility into a militarized, insular micro-nation where the rich and poor alike bore the filth of manual labor and the treasures of a dozen generations lay in the hands of foreign nations that had no idea why they had reversed centuries of trade policy on a whim.
Only Justinian’s spies had even a clue and they warned him that the Empire of Rome itself might do the same, a premise shouted down in the Senate a handful of times until bodies started piling up in the street, far too late to matter.
Accurate records are not possible but it is said Arretia lost a tenth of her population to starvation, rioting and disease. But not one single death from plague was ever noted.
By the time the Black Plague entered the world, Arretia had learned from the mistakes of the past and had years worth of imperishable stocked away in hidden caves with secondary and even third basements covered in edible plants that thrived in the dank, lightless environment supplying a grateful populous who still shared stories of the darkest time in her history. The Venetians claim to have invented the Quarantine but in fact, Arretia had perfected the practice while Venice was still flotsam floating in the Adriatic Sea.
PART V – THE OTTOMANS
Almost 500 years of constant war, against the Huns, Cumans, Samaritans, Sassanids, Seljuks and others on just her Eastern borders, the Byzantine Empire strained at the edges and much of Asia Minor was lost to the Turks. In 1071AD a number of very forward-thinking members of the Great Houses of Arretia sent spies along with the Roman Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes in his campaign to once again bring all of Anatolia under Roman rule. At the Battle of Manzikert on August 26, 1071AD two very important events took place:

1. The Emperor himself was captured and would be paraded throughout the Seljuk Empire in chains before ransomed at a price even the Arretians found exorbitant
2. The Arretians returned upon the fastest horses money could buy from dubious mercenary Pechenegs in the middle of the night still drunk on the glory of victory

The Great Houses were divided on whether or not to prop up an Empire that seemed on the brink of collapse who they had sunk mountains of gold and silver into in the hope that they could once again establish themselves in the hinterlands, whether they should take advantage of the weakness of Rome to declare independence and even take Constantinople while it remained unguarded by her legions or bend knee to the Turks. The matter was put to vote, however in order to maintain perfect secrecy only members of the ruling families were able to participate, those that were in the city at the time that is. By a margin of exactly 1 vote which came from what would later be described as “the desiccated corpse of a Pater familias dug up from a catacomb, adorned in sweet perfumes and operated by a series of pulleys and bellows,” Arretia switched sides.
Some say The Cross in The Ecclesiae Baptismate which had towered over pilgrims for hundreds of years was torn down that morning while other historians maintain it was buried under a nearby hill until such time as the city could be returned to its old faith safely. Whatever the case, the building was converted to a Grand Mosque and a procession left a few days later to pay homage to their new suzerain in Isfahan.
A cohort of 400 of the strongest boys Arretia had to offer arrived at the head of the caravan, to comprise the a contingent of troops that over time would come to be the Elite Janissary of the Ottoman Empire. With them came oxen laden with ten years worth of tribute in gold, and the plans for a massive highway to be built along the route to facilitate trade between the new allies.
Sultan Alp Arslan’s Grand Viser accepted the terms as dictated by the Arretians after hardly a glance at the treaty, so great was his desire to impress such a fabulously wealthy nation that came crawling on its knees without the rattle of a saber, they were essentially the same as offered the Romans before him and the Ottoman Fleet quadrupled in size with the flourish of a quill upon purple parchment.
The Arrentians, with the exception of those cohorts they sent every year and what few sailors they could not procure from elsewhere, remained circumspect of their new Ottoman masters and it is often said that even the Imam in the Grand Mosque still wore a cross under his robes. Though coffeehouses, hookah dens and other Near Eastern proprietors were already common in the city, a new flood of Turkish shops came and went as they realized that the Arretians were terribly nepotistic in their shopping patterns and the Great Houses were willing to sell storefronts with one hand while making sure no suppliers or contracts would ever make it through customs with the other. While the flag above the city changed shape and color, its people still walked through Roman style bathhouses and drank wine freely in the plazas and museums.
Over the centuries during the Siege of Malta in 1429 AD, Siege of Rhodes 1522 AD, the Second Siege of Malta in 1565 AD, and Constantinople itself in 1203 AD, 1204 AD, 1235 AD, 1236 AD, 1376 AD , 1391AD, 1394-1402AD, 1411AD, 1422 AD and finally 1453 AD, it is said the families of Arretia wept as openly as their once-bretherin Romans. There stands a plaque in the central plaza listing the name of every Arretian who died in those sieges, to the puzzlement of modern historians it seems that either those commissioning the plaque were unconcerned with accuracy or almost 10% of those three cities were comprised of Arretians. DNA testing of survivors is inconclusive but ongoing.
PART VI – MODERN HISTORY
The Ottoman Empire waned with time, eventually becoming the “Sick Man of Europe” and the West conspired for decades over who would get Arretia for their own like squabbling children looking at the will of a man on life support.
Following the conclusion of WW1 and the imposition of the Treaty of Sèvres on August 10th, 1920 Arretia was nominally under Italian rule for the first time in 100s of years.
In a drunken, semi-coherent speech in April 1923, ‘Il Duce’ Benito Mussolini (having recently succeeded in a coup the year previous and setting about dissolving any political opposition) proclaimed to an audience of fellow blackshirts that “Direct rule from Rome would begin again in Arretia by morning!”
The following morning Moussolini awoke with a hangover and a single feather on his pillow beside him. Thinking nothing of it, as he was used to errant feathers poking out of his pillow from time to time, he simply re-fluffed his own pillow to find it strangely heavy and lumpy.
Opening the case, he found it stuffed full of Italian Lire, exactly ₤ 2,250. The same amount he had mailed to his Mistress for rent that month. In a rush he grabbed a phone and had the operator connect him with her, who answered very surprised as she pointed out he himself had paid her rent via check and spent the night with her before leaving in the very early morning.
It took hours for his bank to confirm the check was genuine and his signature authentic. Moussolini called for Achille Starace, the Press Secretary of the Office of the Presidency of the Council and his brother Arnaldo Mussolini, the editor of the state-occupied Fascist newspaper Il Popolo, to shred any and all documentation of his speech the night before.
In a single night, Italian dreams of returning Arretia to its dominion vanished.
Rumor has it that Carmine Coppola heard the story from a relative who was there that night for the speech and told an impressionable Francis Ford Coppola about it in his childhood, sparking the famous horse’s head scene in 1972’s The Godfather. The Italian government has neither confirmed nor denied the connection.
Arretian pseudo-independence was celebrated by thousands of sailors between 1940 and 1943 who’s lives were protected by their ‘Eagle-eyed guides’ spotting submarines at the last second, steering unarmed convoys away from sea mines or even bad weather long range radar couldn’t pick up. During the Battle of Britain, those same guides filled in gaps left by long-range spotter balloons and rode along RAF Spitfires and P-51s when their own spotters, gunners and even pilots were too tired, wounded or shaken to keep the skies friendly.
Though not formally invited to the Yalta Conference in February, 1945, Arretian diplomats helped steer Marshall Plan funding for years, were instrumental in negotiations for the Treaty of Paris in 1951, creating the European Coal and Steel Community, were the first non-continental member of the EU in 1973, wrote almost half of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, kept the Common Currency negotiations from falling apart in 1999, bought half of all Greek Debt during the European Financial Crisis of 2008 and ironically now own half of all proven European Oil Reserves due to meddling in Brexit Negotiations just two years ago, buying North Sea drilling rights for pence on the Euro. While the EU is ruled from Brussels, most politicians would concede that most legislation is written in Arretia using Arretian ink by Arretian claws and hands alike.

FEATHERS OVER ARRETIA
WORLD BUILDING
Feathers over Arretia is an indie RPG dealing with the most serious criminal elements threatening society: smol birbs. The game takes place in the fictional city of Arretia, a modern setting with some minor fantasy elements.
To read the pitch see:
https://www.reddit.com/illegallysmolbirbs/comments/k0p19n/thanksgiving_announcement_the_illegallysmolbirbs/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=illegallysmolbirbs&utm_content=t3_kexuy4
To read the first dev diary where I go into the characters you can play as see:
https://reddit.com/illegallysmolbirbs/comments/kexuy4/christmas_announcement_dev_diary_1_the_dream_team/
HISTORY
PART I
THE FOUNDING MYTHS
All great cities of the Ancient World have foundation myths, Arretia is no different. There are competing stories that claim legitimacy as the “true” foundation myth of the city. Both have considerable academic merit and the debate has continued for centuries as to which is the “true” myth. However recent excavations on the Mount of Cages, which contains some of the most ancient remains of the old part of the city, have revealed a third story in recent years that is as popular as it is fantastic.
Myth 1 – The Aristotelian Connection
334BC
Crowned King of Macedon at age 20 with the death of his father Phillip II, Alexander consolidated power on the Greek countryside, taking on Illyria, Thebes and Athens before continuing his father’s life’s work: the invasion of Persia.
In 334 BC Alexander set foot upon the shore of Asia Minor opposite the Hellespont and claimed the entirety of it’s continent with the ceremonial thrust of a spear into the ground.
His tutor and advisor Aristotle, perhaps the smartest man alive at the time, prudently informed the young conqueror with a whisper that this moment should be commemorated for posterity as generations would want to know where it was the gods themselves acquiesced to his demands for land.
Alexander’s exact response isn’t known but he broadly let Aristotle know that if it was so important, he could do it.
So a small shrine was erected at the spot where the spear lay, consecrated by a priestess of Delphi retained with the party for such events and a plaque was written in Greek and Persian telling all who could read of its history. Aristotle himself dictated the passage and etched his own mark into the bottom with hammer and chisel.
In May 334 BC, when Alexander defeated Memnon of Rhodes in The Battle of the Granicus River, the first blow against the might of Persia, Aristotle recommended a similar monument be made. Alexander was impudent and demanded the tutor just make a sign pointing to the last shrine to save time. A slip of the lip caused that sign to read “Με αυτόν τον τρόπο στην πλάκα του Αριστοτέλη” or “This way to Aristotle’s plaque.”
Some say that this mistake made its way back to the young King who decided to make sure such a mistake could never again occur, founding innumerable cities in his own name from that day forward. Ironically, playing right into Aristotle’s original ploy to get Alexander serious about building a legacy and not just pursuing glory in vanity.
Over decades, the spear was eventually stolen and the shrine looted but the plaque remained stalwart and vivid as the day it was carved, as did the signs directing people to its location.
But “Aristotle’s plaque” became shortened to “Aristotle’s [land]” and eventually was misread as Arretia in a Roman census which stuck around to the present day.
Myth 2 – The Disgraced Commander
323 BC
Even before Alexander’s retreat from India in the final year of his life, the empire he had spent years building was already in danger of crumbling.
Disloyal generals, governors and bureaucrats of the West who once groveled at his feet were no longer cowed upon his departure to lands further and further East. Threats of rebellion simmered and the empire was already being carved up by conspirators in back rooms long before Alexander ever lay upon his deathbed.
Before the Wars of the Diadochi tore this empire asunder a dozen times, one of Alexander’s most loyal allies Antigonus I who had followed him all the way from Greece having served his father Philip II had his son Antigonus II sent in secret back to his holdings in Macedon with a fortune in gold to build support for his claim to the empire once Alexander finally died without an heir.
However his return was slow and exorbitant as the young noble caroused at every city and village on the long journey from Persia and by the time he had finally reached The Hellespont, not only was much of his fortune squandered but his own party betrayed him, throwing him off of the gangway at the last second before boarding ship which sailed towards Crete. Either bad fortune or the very wrath of the gods saw it cast to the bottom of the Aegean where the gold remains undiscovered to this day.
Learning of his son’s incompetent failure, Antigonus I had his name stricken from history and rewrote his family lineage so that Demetrius I was his issue, not Antigonus II. Historians debate how much gold was lost in this event but many agree that had the trip been successful, Antigonus I might have bought-off Ptolemy long enough to keep the empire from falling to civil war.
Yet locals still recall in vivid detail the folly of Antigonus II and took to calling the area where he was betrayed as ανόητος ηλίθιος στη νερό (silly idiot in the water) which was shortened over time to ατοςιος σερό and eventually αρτηρία or Arretia today.
Myth 3 – The First Flight
440 BC
In 1989, a small excavation at the Mount of Cages began as a joint effort by the Committee of Arretian Historical Preservation (CAHP) and the Fine Arts College of Arretia (FACA) to find relics of the city’s past succeeded and may have changed history with its discovery of a plaque far more ancient than any others before it.
On this plaque in worn Copper and Jade was the following: 𒀀𒆷𒀸𒊭𒄠𒈪𒅖𒉺𒋫𒀀𒀸𒉿𒈾𒀜𒋾𒅖 (Wanattis patas Alasammis) along the faint impression of a human foot.
Tests determined the plaque to be authentic, tracing back to the middle of the 5th Century B.C.
The human foot was determined to be that of a young woman.
One enterprising youth working on a PHD in Comparative Linguistic Studies suggested that the engraving might be Luwian Swadesh, a form of ancient Cuneiform thought to be used by the Trojans.
Translated the plaque reads: “[where from] the sea [a] woman’s foot.”
Although the subject on intense debate between Arretian, Turkish and Greek scholars, it is believed by some that this spot was where Helen of Troy first stepped on land after being abducted by Prince Paris in the time immediately before the Trojan War. This theory is buoyed due to Arretia’s proximity to the ruins of Troy and soil erosion patterns suggest that the Mount of Cages was at one time a natural jetty sticking out into the sea.
Now a Professor Emeritus of the Linguistics Department of the FACA, Dr. Merlin Bruce Codlack’s book “Beneath the Mount” maintains that the old form of Trojan gave rise to the common use of the name Arretia for the area over centuries as the spoken language was invaded by Greek cognates which turned “Alsammis” and “patas” to “Arretpatas” by the time of Alexander who adopted the name simplifying it to Arretia in the process.
PART II
ANCIENT HISTORY
The meteoric ascendancy of Greece during the time of Alexander brought prosperity to Asia Minor along with immigration at rates unheard of. Due to its strategic position in a natural harbor, a small trading community sprang up in the region which grew at an accelerated pace due the influx of trade between itself, Byzantium and Rhodes.
Ancient merchants who spoke of the glory of the Colossus as it was being built in the 3rd Century BC made mention of the cheap provisions that could be had a few days sail further along the coast at Arretia which now boasted a considerable farming community lured to the area by cheap land and fertile soil.
Migrating herds of black cattle moving along transits laid by the Hittites 1,000s of years earlier became an increasingly common site in the town. Before long, the citizens had erected crude palisades and a considerable watchtower upon what would later be known as the Mount of Cages where a band of far-sighted archer mercenaries from across the Greek world stood ever vigilant, paid in turn with generous land grants and even more gracious payment than could be found anywhere else in the Mediterranean.
PART III
PRE-ROMAN OCCUPATION
Centuries of good fortune, prosperity and mild weather turned the small town into a bustling city by the time of Rome. Generations of increasingly confident watchmen and prudent city defense planning had turned the once wooden tower into a stone monolith which through the clever use of mirrors and a coal fire was able to light the sea for miles around at night while lenses developed by Archimedes himself at Syracuse were re-engineered to make Arretian scouts unrivaled marksmen capable of sighting fleets days before they would normally be spotted – in no small part egged on by a merchant class of considerable power which gambled heavily and recklessly with commodity speculation. A common phrase at the time was “no grain ship can leave Alexandria for Rome without some Arretian knowing about it, selling and trading its cargo before the sails are even unfurled.”
All of these marvels paled in comparison to Rhodes to the South and Arretians prided themselves on being the underdog rival, resulting in a hundred fortunes lost beneath the soaring arm of the Colossus won back under Arretia’s stone monolith.
Despite most mapmakers placing Arretia firmly within the bounds of the territories of the Seleucid Empire, the only tax ever paid to that crumbling backwater was a single pure silver slug approximately 10 grams in weight paid annually by one of the many merchant families via courier addressed directly to the King of the Seleucids. When this tradition first started with the founding of the city during the days of Alexander, such a payment was a king’s ransom but over time became so much of a pittance that the families boasted decades of “taxes” were pre-paid in their basement next to the cheap wine and how droll it all seemed that some distant king truly needed the money.
In 217 BC, the Selucid King Antiochus III the Great in an attempt to revive the dying empire made war on Egypt and lost at the Battle of Raphia. Though bloodied, the king engaged in a restructuring of his lands which was mostly focused on quelling rebellions and consolidating power in the East while giving up on retaking Syria for the time being. In service to these efforts, he raised taxes and Arretia found itself the subject of an event that has been colloquially known as The Shaming of The King.
The story goes that the Seleucid King’s tax collector arrived in Arretia to find its walls (once wooden now solid stone) manned with troops in full battle regalia and the gate locked. However the side gate (known as the Eye of the Sling) was opened just enough that he might crawl through it and a small banner made of finest silk confirmed that was expected of him saying “για τους φτωχούς (for the poor)” with an arrow pointing down at it. The tax collector humbly crawled down into the gate finding it covered in animal muck and mud along the bottom. When he crossed the threshold the patriarchs of the merchant families stood proud and tall alongside strongboxes arrayed before him. When the tax collector stood up, covered in filth, the men tipped the boxes over, showering his feet in silver coins a hundred deep which sank quickly into the mud before walking silently back to their estates without a word. Tradition states that the tax collector spent days sifting through the muck as it hardened, collecting a small fortune before realizing he had no possible way to carry it back to his King in the East. Legend states that he stole a muck-rakers cart and escaped through the gate which had been left open in the meantime with a pile of silver and dung half a man high. He was eventually able to find passage back in less humiliating fashion but the message was clear: Arretia thought King Antiochus III to be a common beggar, no more.
PART IV
ROMAN INVOLVEMENT
The Vote
By the 1st Century BC Rome’s ascendancy was all but assured. While Carthage remained a valuable trade partner, its destruction in the Third Punic War half a century earlier made even the richest houses of Arretia quake with fear. In 145 BC, exactly one year after her strongest ally was burnt to the ground and her fields salted the great houses organized a plebiscite.
All adult male citizens and freemen or women who owned property were allowed to vote. Voting occurred over a three week period allowing even the most disparate of farmers or merchants out at sea an opportunity to vote.
The vote was simple: shall Arretia resist Rome, yay or nay? Nay votes were symbolized by a feather from a rooster, chosen at random in the market stalls from vendors as part of a lot system while the yay votes came from hens along similar lines. Over three weeks it is said there was not a single unplucked chicken in Anatolia. On the final day it was found that the ‘nays’ had won by a landslide and the great houses debated how best to interpret this matter.
The three richest houses proclaimed they would sign a treaty of friendship with Rome, offering them a similar deal to that offered to the now defunct Seleucid Empire.
Over the Winter a grand ceremony was planned and preparations made for the envoy.
The Landing
Two great ships were built, The Romulus of Apollo and The Remus of Februus, adorned in gold and silver respectively. Carried by sails of silk, rowed by the tallest slaves of Parthia, full of exotic spices from the Far East, captained by men who claimed to have reached the Southern-most Tip of Africa and full of a ransom fit for any three emperors combined, along with a single daughter of each great home trained in Latin, the fleet anchored off Rome’s Portus artificial harbor off the north bank of the Tiber on April 5th, 144 BC on the dawn of the Festival of Fortuna Publica, or the "luck of the people."
The young women approached the senate and handed forth reams of purple vellum explaining the offer of Arretia to the upstart hegemon. Lucius Aurelius Cotta, Counsul a the time and elected during the Fortuna Publica festival in 154 BC coincidentally, accepted the terms: Arretia would provide logistical support, technical expertise and ships to the Roman Navy 10 talents of silver annually paid to the Roman Senate Build a new Pantheon in Arretia for the Roman Gods Rome would exempt her citizens of any taxes or drafts Rome would become her protectorate should any enemies declare war on the merchant republic
The Byzantine Period
While Rome seemed unstoppable, Arretia was a haven of intellectual involvement and oligarchy as the richest men and women of the known world demanded citizenship, if only to avoid the harsh taxation of Rome at home. Soon there was a row of homes, all empty, where dozens of Arretian “citizens” “lived” but even the most fastidious bureaucrat in Italy was hopelessly lost in the ocean of paperwork Arretian civil servants produced daily.
So it was that when Constantine the Great decreed that Constantinople would be the new Capitol of the Roman Empire, the whole of Arretia held its breath. Along with his tax reform and re-issuance of the currency (debasing it with cheaper metals and forcing all Roman citizens to pay in coin for government fees and taxes), Constantine demanded Arretia triple their existing tribute until Constantinople was finished with construction of the Hagia Sophia (Megale Ekklesia or Big Church) Arretian merchants, craftsmen, builders, surveyors and brick layers descended upon the new city like a flock seagulls upon an uncovered market stall, determined to have it finished in record time.
Legend has it that for every brick laid in Constantinople, another was laid in Arretia. The old Pantheon was retrofitted behind closed gates and under grand tents. On February 15th, 360 AD during the reign of the emperor Constantius II when The Hagia Sophia was concentrated and opened to the public. While The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem had more artifacts on display, The Hagia Sophia held the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch and The Pantheon still had the largest dome in the world, The Ecclesiae Baptismate (Church of the Baptism) contained by some estimates nearly 40% of all pieces of the True Cross to exist in the world at the time, ironically making the Cross replica itself nearly 74 feet tall.
The Plague
The Plague of Justinian 541 AD killed untold millions throughout the world, originating in either Asia or Africa, the first documented reports of its involvement according to Byzantine source Procopius was in Egypt’s port of Pelusium.
The Arretians tell a different story.
In 540 AD a sailor from the Far East was found floating in the Indian Ocean 100 miles off the coast of Axum by an unknown Arretian vessel. Its captain recorded in stone tablet (as all wood and papers had dissolved in the salt water) this message. He then scuttled the vessel to the bottom of the sea to protect the world as best he could and forestall the inevitable coming devastation:

The [man] is turning black before our eyes as though some fire burns from within his groin and [armpits]. The spits the most vile [substances] and convulses in the night. I notice [on myself] the same growing painful lumps and it is my duty to stop this [plague] before my crew are infected. May God have mercy on [us]. 

Spies and merchants (if there ever was truly a distinction to the Arretians) reported on rumors in Pelusium of a sickness that spread like locusts.
The 15 Great Houses of Arretia held an emergency meeting that very night, un-customarially sharing all possible information on the sickness and concluded in a matter of hours that the city must survive, no matter the costs.
In the most Arretian way possible a 2 day state of emergency was declared. Any and all food stores were seized, any and all ship traffic in the harbor was seized, the bowels of all ships emptied while furious captains were silenced with bags of silver too large to carry by any one pack animal, and sent back to their port of call without explanation.
The countryside was picked clean and all foreign citizens warned to not return to the city upon pain of death. The walls were redoubled with temporary wooden facades, the gates sealed shut with leaded locks for which no key was made. From the highest aviaries to the lowest jetties, not an inch of the city went upturned. Every fishing boat was impressed and triple staffed for back-to-back shifts until the sea around Arretia was scraped clean of all marine life.
On the last night, all boats were returned to the harbor where they were dismantled, along with the harbor itself while the stone edifices of the great houses and mansions of the typically unoccupied but ostentatious ‘Roman Quarter’ were thrown into the harbor creating a temporary breakwater which was reinforced with pitch and tar until water sealed and a great fire set ablaze on the shore. Boiling water in so great a quantity bathed the city in salt, collected from windows, walls and the ground itself to preserve every scrap of meat and fish possible.
An especially hardy species of mushroom from far off Gaul of the Grooty Strain (brought over by some trader years earlier) was discovered growing underneath a porch and at once a massive team of laborers set to work retrofitting every basement, vault and catacomb into nurseries for the tiny gray intrusive species.
On the dawn of the third day Arretia had gone from a glittering example of the height of civility into a militarized, insular micro-nation where the rich and poor alike bore the filth of manual labor and the treasures of a dozen generations lay in the hands of foreign nations that had no idea why they had reversed centuries of trade policy on a whim.
Only Justinian’s spies had even a clue and they warned him that the Empire of Rome itself might do the same, a premise shouted down in the Senate a handful of times until bodies started piling up in the street, far too late to matter.
Accurate records are not possible but it is said Arretia lost a tenth of her population to starvation, rioting and disease. But not one single death from plague was ever noted.
By the time the Black Plague entered the world, Arretia had learned from the mistakes of the past and had years worth of imperishable stocked away in hidden caves with secondary and even third basements covered in edible plants that thrived in the dank, lightless environment supplying a grateful populous who still shared stories of the darkest time in her history. The Venetians claim to have invented the Quarantine but in fact, Arretia had perfected the practice while Venice was still flotsam floating in the Adriatic Sea.
PART V – THE OTTOMANS
Almost 500 years of constant war, against the Huns, Cumans, Samaritans, Sassanids, Seljuks and others on just her Eastern borders, the Byzantine Empire strained at the edges and much of Asia Minor was lost to the Turks. In 1071AD a number of very forward-thinking members of the Great Houses of Arretia sent spies along with the Roman Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes in his campaign to once again bring all of Anatolia under Roman rule. At the Battle of Manzikert on August 26, 1071AD two very important events took place:

1. The Emperor himself was captured and would be paraded throughout the Seljuk Empire in chains before ransomed at a price even the Arretians found exorbitant 2. The Arretians returned upon the fastest horses money could buy from dubious mercenary Pechenegs in the middle of the night still drunk on the glory of victory 

The Great Houses were divided on whether or not to prop up an Empire that seemed on the brink of collapse who they had sunk mountains of gold and silver into in the hope that they could once again establish themselves in the hinterlands, whether they should take advantage of the weakness of Rome to declare independence and even take Constantinople while it remained unguarded by her legions or bend knee to the Turks. The matter was put to vote, however in order to maintain perfect secrecy only members of the ruling families were able to participate, those that were in the city at the time that is. By a margin of exactly 1 vote which came from what would later be described as “the desiccated corpse of a Pater familias dug up from a catacomb, adorned in sweet perfumes and operated by a series of pulleys and bellows,” Arretia switched sides.
Some say The Cross in The Ecclesiae Baptismate which had towered over pilgrims for hundreds of years was torn down that morning while other historians maintain it was buried under a nearby hill until such time as the city could be returned to its old faith safely. Whatever the case, the building was converted to a Grand Mosque and a procession left a few days later to pay homage to their new suzerain in Isfahan.
A cohort of 400 of the strongest boys Arretia had to offer arrived at the head of the caravan, to comprise the a contingent of troops that over time would come to be the Elite Janissary of the Ottoman Empire. With them came oxen laden with ten years worth of tribute in gold, and the plans for a massive highway to be built along the route to facilitate trade between the new allies.
Sultan Alp Arslan’s Grand Viser accepted the terms as dictated by the Arretians after hardly a glance at the treaty, so great was his desire to impress such a fabulously wealthy nation that came crawling on its knees without the rattle of a saber, they were essentially the same as offered the Romans before him and the Ottoman Fleet quadrupled in size with the flourish of a quill upon purple parchment.
The Arrentians, with the exception of those cohorts they sent every year and what few sailors they could not procure from elsewhere, remained circumspect of their new Ottoman masters and it is often said that even the Imam in the Grand Mosque still wore a cross under his robes. Though coffeehouses, hookah dens and other Near Eastern proprietors were already common in the city, a new flood of Turkish shops came and went as they realized that the Arretians were terribly nepotistic in their shopping patterns and the Great Houses were willing to sell storefronts with one hand while making sure no suppliers or contracts would ever make it through customs with the other. While the flag above the city changed shape and color, its people still walked through Roman style bathhouses and drank wine freely in the plazas and museums.
Over the centuries during the Siege of Malta in 1429 AD, Siege of Rhodes 1522 AD, the Second Siege of Malta in 1565 AD, and Constantinople itself in 1203 AD, 1204 AD, 1235 AD, 1236 AD, 1376 AD , 1391AD, 1394-1402AD, 1411AD, 1422 AD and finally 1453 AD, it is said the families of Arretia wept as openly as their once-bretherin Romans. There stands a plaque in the central plaza listing the name of every Arretian who died in those sieges, to the puzzlement of modern historians it seems that either those commissioning the plaque were unconcerned with accuracy or almost 10% of those three cities were comprised of Arretians. DNA testing of survivors is inconclusive but ongoing.
PART VI – MODERN HISTORY
The Ottoman Empire waned with time, eventually becoming the “Sick Man of Europe” and the West conspired for decades over who would get Arretia for their own like squabbling children looking at the will of a man on life support.
Following the conclusion of WW1 and the imposition of the Treaty of Sèvres on August 10th, 1920 Arretia was nominally under Italian rule for the first time in 100s of years.
In a drunken, semi-coherent speech in April 1923, ‘Il Duce’ Benito Mussolini (having recently succeeded in a coup the year previous and setting about dissolving any political opposition) proclaimed to an audience of fellow blackshirts that “Direct rule from Rome would begin again in Arretia by morning!”
The following morning Moussolini awoke with a hangover and a single feather on his pillow beside him. Thinking nothing of it, as he was used to errant feathers poking out of his pillow from time to time, he simply re-fluffed his own pillow to find it strangely heavy and lumpy.
Opening the case, he found it stuffed full of Italian Lire, exactly ₤ 2,250. The same amount he had mailed to his Mistress for rent that month. In a rush he grabbed a phone and had the operator connect him with her, who answered very surprised as she pointed out he himself had paid her rent via check and spent the night with her before leaving in the very early morning.
It took hours for his bank to confirm the check was genuine and his signature authentic. Moussolini called for Achille Starace, the Press Secretary of the Office of the Presidency of the Council and his brother Arnaldo Mussolini, the editor of the state-occupied Fascist newspaper Il Popolo, to shred any and all documentation of his speech the night before.
In a single night, Italian dreams of returning Arretia to its dominion vanished.
Rumor has it that Carmine Coppola heard the story from a relative who was there that night for the speech and told an impressionable Francis Ford Coppola about it in his childhood, sparking the famous horse’s head scene in 1972’s The Godfather. The Italian government has neither confirmed nor denied the connection.
Arretian pseudo-independence was celebrated by thousands of sailors between 1940 and 1943 who’s lives were protected by their ‘Eagle-eyed guides’ spotting submarines at the last second, steering unarmed convoys away from sea mines or even bad weather long range radar couldn’t pick up. During the Battle of Britain, those same guides filled in gaps left by long-range spotter balloons and rode along RAF Spitfires and P-51s when their own spotters, gunners and even pilots were too tired, wounded or shaken to keep the skies friendly.
Though not formally invited to the Yalta Conference in February, 1945, Arretian diplomats helped steer Marshall Plan funding for years, were instrumental in negotiations for the Treaty of Paris in 1951, creating the European Coal and Steel Community, were the first non-continental member of the EU in 1973, wrote almost half of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, kept the Common Currency negotiations from falling apart in 1999, bought half of all Greek Debt during the European Financial Crisis of 2008 and ironically now own half of all proven European Oil Reserves due to meddling in Brexit Negotiations just two years ago, buying North Sea drilling rights for pence on the Euro. While the EU is ruled from Brussels, most politicians would concede that most legislation is written in Arretia using Arretian ink by Arretian claws and hands alike.

TL:DR

• This is Part 1 of my two part deep dive on DraftKings (Ticker: DKNG, I will refer to the company as “DK”)
• This first part introduces you to (1) me, (2) the company, (3) my thesis on the company, and (4) digs into how they make money.
• The second part (already released, you can read it here - but get through part 1 first :) ) will go in depth to explore the question “Can we 10x from here?”
• DK is an exciting, disruptive company working to change how we experience watching sports and make it better.
• I am not a financial advisor and this is not investment advice. These are just my opinions to help facilitate learning and discussion.

Hello, welcome to my first deep dive write up.
My name’s Mark and I’m an accountant with a passion for investing. About two years ago, I used to work as an auditor at a public accounting firm and have been behind the scenes at many different publicly traded and privately held companies in the U.S. My goal is to bring my unique perspective from that past experience, my current experience working in a new role at a large corporation, and my understanding of accounting to help break down some of the most exciting growth stocks on the market today.
I’m a long-term investor. I am focused on finding great companies and holding them for a long time. I’m willing to endure volatility, crazy price drops, and everything that comes with this approach as long as the facts that led me to originally invest and believe in that company have not changed. If you want to learn more about this approach. I recommend reading the book “100 Baggers” by Chris Mayer.
Introduction
I think it’s fitting that my first stock pick has to do with sports. Sports has been a part of my life since I could walk at the age of 2. First with baseball and soccer, and then later in my childhood with golf. I’ve always played American football and basketball for fun as well and have always been an avid fan of all the major sports in the US.
I started playing fantasy sports (mostly just fantasy football) about 6 years ago and have always enjoyed it. Traditionally, with fantasy football you draft a team at the beginning of the year and those are your players for the rest of the season. If you have a bad draft, oh well. You can try to improve your team with trades and free agent additions but it is tough. Leagues usually consist of 10-14 teams (each managed by an individual) and there’s obviously only one winner at the end of the season (about 4 months after the draft). This can lead to the managers of the lower performing teams losing interest as the season wanes on. I believe DraftKings’ (DK) founders saw this issue and saw an opportunity. Enter, daily fantasy sports. Now, with the DK platform you can draft a new team every week. Or if you want, every day. This allows fans of fantasy sports to engage at whichever point of the season they want and at varying financial stakes.
The Thesis Statement
For every stock pick I make, I want to provide a quick thesis statement that can serve as a reminder for why I’m buying and holding that stock for the long term. I’ll always aim to make it just a few sentences long so it can easily be remembered and internalized. This helps during times when the price may sporadically drop and you need to remember why you’re holding this position.
The thesis statement I have come up with for DK is as follows:
“DraftKings: The leader in allowing fans to engage financially with their favorite sports, teams, and players. Having money at stake makes the game a lot more interesting to watch. The era of daily fantasy sports games, online sports betting, and online betting (outside of sports), is just getting started and DK is as well positioned (or better positioned) than anyone to capitalize off of this trend.”
Notice how I said “allowing fans to engage financially” as the first sentence and not necessarily “allowing fans to gamble”. There’s a reason for that. According to US Federal Law, Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) contests have specifically been exempted from the prohibitions of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). DK has always been, and I believe will continue to be DFS contests 1st, sports betting 2nd, and other forms of gambling/entertainment 3rd. It is noteworthy that states at an individual level can still deem DFS contests illegal if they so wish, but as of this writing (11/26/20), 43 of the 50 US States allow DFS contests and DK, accordingly, is offering DFS contests in all 43 of those US States.
I’ll try to clarify the difference between DFS contests and sports betting real quick:
DFS Contest – Pay a pre-set entry fee to enter a contest. All entry fees go towards “The Pot”. “Draft” 9 players to be on your “Team” for 1 week. Enter your “Roster” into a contest with other players (could range from 1 other person to 1,000s of people, the DK user can choose). Whichever “Roster” amasses the most points for that week out of all contestants wins. The winner will get the highest payout, and depending on the nature of the contest, other top finishers will receive smaller payouts as well.
Sports Gambling – Team A is considered a 10 point favorite to defeat Team B. This means that Team A is expected, by the professional gambling line setters, to outscore Team B by 10 points. This is known as a point spread. You can bet on the underdog or the favorite. If you bet on the favorite, they have to win by more than 10 points for you to win the bet. If you bet on the underdog, you will win the bet as long as the underdog keeps the game within less than a 10 point defeat.
These are just a couple simple examples to help you see the difference. Sports Gambling (the 2nd priority of DK) is a very lucrative market just as the DFS contests are. However, in the US, Federal Laws and regulations are a lot stricter on Sports Gambling than they are on DFS. As of this writing (11/27/20), 22 states (including the District of Columbia) out of 51 possible allow sports gambling.
DK is still in the infancy stages of getting their sports gambling business going. In the 22 states where they could potentially operate, they currently have a sports gambling offering in 11 of those states. The sports gambling business model for DK can be broken into two main offerings – mobile sports betting, and retail sports betting. Mobile sports betting means you can place a sports bet online from the comfort of your own home, while retail sports betting means you must go to a casino and place a bet with the sportsbook in person. I personally believe mobile sports betting is the real potential cash cow for DK out of the two types of sports betting offerings due to the convenience and ease of access. DK is currently working on and encouraging customers to lobby their state lawmakers to legalize sports gambling in more states.
How DK makes money
At the very least, before you invest in a company, you better understand how they make money. In Chris Mayers’ excellent book, 100 Baggers, that I mentioned above, he continually references top line revenue growth as one of the main common indicators of a possible 100 Bagger. This isn’t to tell you that any stock I pick will be a 100 Bagger just because it has great top line revenue growth, but if I am looking at a growth stock to hold for the long term, revenue growth is one of the first things I look at.
For DK, their means of making money is quite simple. I already went into detail above about DFS Contests and Sports Gambling. In DK’s latest 10-Q filing with the SEC (filed 11/13/20), revenue is broken out into two main streams: Online Gaming and Gaming Software.
Online Gaming (82% of Total Revenue for 9 months ended 9/30/20):
Online gaming is the true core business of DK and includes the aforementioned DFS Contests, Sports Gambling and additional gambling (non-sports) opportunities. DK refers to their additional gambling (non-sports) as “iGaming” or “online casino”.
For the 9 months ended 9/30/20, Online Gaming revenue totaled $239M, up 30% YoY from $184M in the same prior year period. Keep in mind, that this is an increase that happened during a COVID-19 global pandemic that delayed and shortened many professional sports seasons.
Online gaming revenue is earned in a few ways that are slightly different, but very similar overall. In order to enter a DFS contest, a customer must pay an entry fee. DFS revenue is generated from these entry fees collected, net of prize payouts and customer incentives awarded to users. In order to place a sports bet (sports gambling), a customer places a wager with a DK Sportsbook. The DK Sportsbook sets odds for each wager that builds in a theoretical margin allowing DK to profit. Sports gambling revenue is generated from wagers collected from customers, net of payouts and incentives awarded to winning customers. The last form of online gaming revenue is earned in similar fashion to a land-based casino, offering online versions of casino games such as blackjack, roulette, and slot machines.
Gaming Software (18% of Total Revenue for 9 months ended 9/30/20):
While the Online Gaming revenue stream mentioned above is a Business to Consumer (B2C) model, the Gaming Software revenue stream is a Business to Business (B2B) model. The Gaming Software side of the business was born out of the acquisition of SBTech, a company from the Isle of Man (near the UK) founded in 2007 that has 12+ years of experience providing online sports betting platforms to clients all over the world. The acquisition occurred as part of the SPAC driven IPO in April of 2020 that combined “the old DK company” with SBTech so that they now are “the new DK company” listed as DKNG on the NASDAQ. SBTech is a far more important part of the story than just being 18% of today’s revenue. The reason for this is because DK will eventually (planned mid-late 2021) be migrating all of their DFS and gambling offerings onto SBTech’s online platforms. Currently, for DFS, DK uses their own proprietary platform but that will move to SBTech with the migration. Currently, for online gambling, DK uses Kambi, the same online gambling platform that services Penn Gaming (PENN), a DK rival. But that’s enough about the software migration for now, back to the Gaming Software revenue.
The Gaming Software revenue stream for DK is essentially a continuation of SBTechs’ B2B business model. DK contracts with business customers to provide sports and casino betting software solutions. DK typically enters two different type of arrangements with B2B customers when selling the gaming software:

1. Direct Customer Contract Revenue: In this type of transaction, the software is sold directly to a business (casino for example) that wants to use the software for their own gambling operations. This revenue is generally calculated as a percentage of the wagering revenue generated by the business customer using DK’s software and is recognized in the periods in which those wagering and related activities conclude.
2. Reseller Arrangement Revenue: In this type of transaction, DK provides distributors with the right to resell DK’s software-as-a-service offering to their clients, using their own infrastructure. In reseller arrangements, revenue is generally calculated via a fixed monthly fee and an additional monthly fee which varies based on the number of gaming operators to whom each reseller sub-licenses DK’s software.

As mentioned above, SBTech was an international company based in the Isle of Man before being acquired by DK. Thus, the majority of their business in their first 12 years of operating independently has always been international and outside of the United States. This has helped DK, which has historically been US focused, expand it’s international reach.
A perfect example of expanding this international reach occurred recently during October (technically Q4) in which DK’s B2B technology (powered by SBTech) helped enable the launch of “PalaceBet”, a new mobile and online sportsbook offering from Peermont, a South Africa based resort and casino company. The deal was headed by DK’s new Chief International Officer, Shay Berka, who previously spent 10 years working for SBTech as CFO and General Manager. Mr. Berka took on the role of DK’s Chief International Officer upon the merger in April earlier this year. I think this deal shows that DK has integrated SBTech and it’s business very well into the larger business as a whole. They are not wasting any time using their newly acquired resources to expand their reach and bring in new sources of revenue.
This is the end of my first article about DK. My goal is to drop Part 2 later this week. The focus of Part 2 will be an in depth answer of the question – “Can we 10x from here?”
Disclosure: I am/we are long DKNG. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

TL:DR

• This is Part 1 of my two part deep dive on DraftKings (Ticker: DKNG, I will refer to the company as “DK”)
• This first part introduces you to (1) me, (2) the company, (3) my thesis on the company, and (4) digs into how they make money.
• The second part (to be released later this week) will go in depth to explore the question “Can we 10x from here?”
• DK is an exciting, disruptive company working to change how we experience watching sports and make it better.
• I am not a financial advisor and this is not investment advice. These are just my opinions to help facilitate learning and discussion.

Hello, welcome to my first deep dive write up.
My name’s Mark and I’m an accountant with a passion for investing. About two years ago, I used to work as an auditor at a public accounting firm and have been behind the scenes at many different publicly traded and privately held companies in the U.S. My goal is to bring my unique perspective from that past experience, my current experience working in a new role at a large corporation, and my understanding of accounting to help break down some of the most exciting growth stocks on the market today.
I’m a long-term investor. I am focused on finding great companies and holding them for a long time. I’m willing to endure volatility, crazy price drops, and everything that comes with this approach as long as the facts that led me to originally invest and believe in that company have not changed. If you want to learn more about this approach. I recommend reading the book “100 Baggers” by Chris Mayer.
Introduction
I think it’s fitting that my first stock pick has to do with sports. Sports has been a part of my life since I could walk at the age of 2. First with baseball and soccer, and then later in my childhood with golf. I’ve always played American football and basketball for fun as well and have always been an avid fan of all the major sports in the US.
I started playing fantasy sports (mostly just fantasy football) about 6 years ago and have always enjoyed it. Traditionally, with fantasy football you draft a team at the beginning of the year and those are your players for the rest of the season. If you have a bad draft, oh well. You can try to improve your team with trades and free agent additions but it is tough. Leagues usually consist of 10-14 teams (each managed by an individual) and there’s obviously only one winner at the end of the season (about 4 months after the draft). This can lead to the managers of the lower performing teams losing interest as the season wanes on. I believe DraftKings’ (DK) founders saw this issue and saw an opportunity. Enter, daily fantasy sports. Now, with the DK platform you can draft a new team every week. Or if you want, every day. This allows fans of fantasy sports to engage at whichever point of the season they want and at varying financial stakes.
The Thesis Statement
For every stock pick I make, I want to provide a quick thesis statement that can serve as a reminder for why I’m buying and holding that stock for the long term. I’ll always aim to make it just a few sentences long so it can easily be remembered and internalized. This helps during times when the price may sporadically drop and you need to remember why you’re holding this position.
The thesis statement I have come up with for DK is as follows:
“DraftKings: The leader in allowing fans to engage financially with their favorite sports, teams, and players. Having money at stake makes the game a lot more interesting to watch. The era of daily fantasy sports games, online sports betting, and online betting (outside of sports), is just getting started and DK is as well positioned (or better positioned) than anyone to capitalize off of this trend.”
Notice how I said “allowing fans to engage financially” as the first sentence and not necessarily “allowing fans to gamble”. There’s a reason for that. According to US Federal Law, Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) contests have specifically been exempted from the prohibitions of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). DK has always been, and I believe will continue to be DFS contests 1st, sports betting 2nd, and other forms of gambling/entertainment 3rd. It is noteworthy that states at an individual level can still deem DFS contests illegal if they so wish, but as of this writing (11/26/20), 43 of the 50 US States allow DFS contests and DK, accordingly, is offering DFS contests in all 43 of those US States.
I’ll try to clarify the difference between DFS contests and sports betting real quick:
DFS Contest – Pay a pre-set entry fee to enter a contest. All entry fees go towards “The Pot”. “Draft” 9 players to be on your “Team” for 1 week. Enter your “Roster” into a contest with other players (could range from 1 other person to 1,000s of people, the DK user can choose). Whichever “Roster” amasses the most points for that week out of all contestants wins. The winner will get the highest payout, and depending on the nature of the contest, other top finishers will receive smaller payouts as well.
Sports Gambling – Team A is considered a 10 point favorite to defeat Team B. This means that Team A is expected, by the professional gambling line setters, to outscore Team B by 10 points. This is known as a point spread. You can bet on the underdog or the favorite. If you bet on the favorite, they have to win by more than 10 points for you to win the bet. If you bet on the underdog, you will win the bet as long as the underdog keeps the game within less than a 10 point defeat.
These are just a couple simple examples to help you see the difference. Sports Gambling (the 2nd priority of DK) is a very lucrative market just as the DFS contests are. However, in the US, Federal Laws and regulations are a lot stricter on Sports Gambling than they are on DFS. As of this writing (11/27/20), 22 states (including the District of Columbia) out of 51 possible allow sports gambling.
DK is still in the infancy stages of getting their sports gambling business going. In the 22 states where they could potentially operate, they currently have a sports gambling offering in 11 of those states. The sports gambling business model for DK can be broken into two main offerings – mobile sports betting, and retail sports betting. Mobile sports betting means you can place a sports bet online from the comfort of your own home, while retail sports betting means you must go to a casino and place a bet with the sportsbook in person. I personally believe mobile sports betting is the real potential cash cow for DK out of the two types of sports betting offerings due to the convenience and ease of access. DK is currently working on and encouraging customers to lobby their state lawmakers to legalize sports gambling in more states.
How DK makes money
At the very least, before you invest in a company, you better understand how they make money. In Chris Mayers’ excellent book, 100 Baggers, that I mentioned above, he continually references top line revenue growth as one of the main common indicators of a possible 100 Bagger. This isn’t to tell you that any stock I pick will be a 100 Bagger just because it has great top line revenue growth, but if I am looking at a growth stock to hold for the long term, revenue growth is one of the first things I look at.
For DK, their means of making money is quite simple. I already went into detail above about DFS Contests and Sports Gambling. In DK’s latest 10-Q filing with the SEC (filed 11/13/20), revenue is broken out into two main streams: Online Gaming and Gaming Software.
Online Gaming (82% of Total Revenue for 9 months ended 9/30/20):
Online gaming is the true core business of DK and includes the aforementioned DFS Contests, Sports Gambling and additional gambling (non-sports) opportunities. DK refers to their additional gambling (non-sports) as “iGaming” or “online casino”.
For the 9 months ended 9/30/20, Online Gaming revenue totaled $239M, up 30% YoY from $184M in the same prior year period. Keep in mind, that this is an increase that happened during a COVID-19 global pandemic that delayed and shortened many professional sports seasons.
Online gaming revenue is earned in a few ways that are slightly different, but very similar overall. In order to enter a DFS contest, a customer must pay an entry fee. DFS revenue is generated from these entry fees collected, net of prize payouts and customer incentives awarded to users. In order to place a sports bet (sports gambling), a customer places a wager with a DK Sportsbook. The DK Sportsbook sets odds for each wager that builds in a theoretical margin allowing DK to profit. Sports gambling revenue is generated from wagers collected from customers, net of payouts and incentives awarded to winning customers. The last form of online gaming revenue is earned in similar fashion to a land-based casino, offering online versions of casino games such as blackjack, roulette, and slot machines.
Gaming Software (18% of Total Revenue for 9 months ended 9/30/20):
While the Online Gaming revenue stream mentioned above is a Business to Consumer (B2C) model, the Gaming Software revenue stream is a Business to Business (B2B) model. The Gaming Software side of the business was born out of the acquisition of SBTech, a company from the Isle of Man (near the UK) founded in 2007 that has 12+ years of experience providing online sports betting platforms to clients all over the world. The acquisition occurred as part of the SPAC driven IPO in April of 2020 that combined “the old DK company” with SBTech so that they now are “the new DK company” listed as DKNG on the NASDAQ. SBTech is a far more important part of the story than just being 18% of today’s revenue. The reason for this is because DK will eventually (planned mid-late 2021) be migrating all of their DFS and gambling offerings onto SBTech’s online platforms. Currently, for DFS, DK uses their own proprietary platform but that will move to SBTech with the migration. Currently, for online gambling, DK uses Kambi, the same online gambling platform that services Penn Gaming (PENN), a DK rival. But that’s enough about the software migration for now, back to the Gaming Software revenue.
The Gaming Software revenue stream for DK is essentially a continuation of SBTechs’ B2B business model. DK contracts with business customers to provide sports and casino betting software solutions. DK typically enters two different type of arrangements with B2B customers when selling the gaming software:
​

1. Direct Customer Contract Revenue: In this type of transaction, the software is sold directly to a business (casino for example) that wants to use the software for their own gambling operations. This revenue is generally calculated as a percentage of the wagering revenue generated by the business customer using DK’s software and is recognized in the periods in which those wagering and related activities conclude.
2. Reseller Arrangement Revenue: In this type of transaction, DK provides distributors with the right to resell DK’s software-as-a-service offering to their clients, using their own infrastructure. In reseller arrangements, revenue is generally calculated via a fixed monthly fee and an additional monthly fee which varies based on the number of gaming operators to whom each reseller sub-licenses DK’s software.

As mentioned above, SBTech was an international company based in the Isle of Man before being acquired by DK. Thus, the majority of their business in their first 12 years of operating independently has always been international and outside of the United States. This has helped DK, which has historically been US focused, expand it’s international reach.
A perfect example of expanding this international reach occurred recently during October (technically Q4) in which DK’s B2B technology (powered by SBTech) helped enable the launch of “PalaceBet”, a new mobile and online sportsbook offering from Peermont, a South Africa based resort and casino company. The deal was headed by DK’s new Chief International Officer, Shay Berka, who previously spent 10 years working for SBTech as CFO and General Manager. Mr. Berka took on the role of DK’s Chief International Officer upon the merger in April earlier this year. I think this deal shows that DK has integrated SBTech and it’s business very well into the larger business as a whole. They are not wasting any time using their newly acquired resources to expand their reach and bring in new sources of revenue.
This is the end of my first article about DK. My goal is to drop Part 2 later this week. The focus of Part 2 will be an in depth answer of the question – “Can we 10x from here?”
Disclosure: I am/we are long DKNG. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.