The black nobility is the base of the global crime syndicate that controls this planet. The black nobility or black aristocracy are the aristocratic families that sided with the papacy under Pope Pius IX after the army of the Kingdom of Italy led by the Savoy family entered Rome on September 20, 1870, overthrew the pope . and the Papal States, and took over the Quirinal Palace, and the nobles later ennobled by the Pope prior to the Lateran Treaty of 1929. Any family that produced popes for the Vatican is royalty. Most of the black nobility are Vatican royalty. The black nobility consider themselves sovereign princes. These families earned the title of "black" nobility for their relentless unscrupulousness. They used murder, rape, kidnapping, robbery and all kinds of deception on a large scale, without resisting the achievement of their objectives. The black nobility were the families that financed and created the holy corporation of the Vatican with the aim of imposing world slavery as a necessary institution, with the sole belief that some are born to rule and others to be ruled. The idea that certain families were born to rule as an arbitrary elite, while the vast majority of a given population is condemned to oppression, servitude, or slavery became the theological position of this elite. The "New World Order" is an attempt to take control of society by these fascist families with the purpose of the total slavery of humanity.
The Vatican is an imperial nation and is the largest empire in this world. The Vatican City, or the Holy Vatican Corporation, officially the Vatican City State, is a nation that operates as the largest intelligence network in the world. The Holy See is the "All-Seeing Eye" in society and a corporate entity connected to many other corporations and governments through papal and royal statutes. Archbishops and high-level bishops are the overseers of society within their districts and oversee politics, police, business, and organized crime. The same year that the professor of ecclesiastical law and practical philosophy at the University of Ingolstadt, Adam Weishaupt, created the Order of the Illuminati, was the same year that they created the United States as a corporation to run it as their private army and lead I dig the agenda of a "New World Order" for the elites, mainly, thanks to the infiltrated Freemasonry and directed by the Jesuits.
The New World Order is a conspiracy of lineage at the top. They are ancient and evil bloodlines that build and destroy empires for control through an order out of chaos. Royal and noble houses are corporate entities and claim to rule and own land, resources, and people. Landlords have always been the dominant owners of gold and precious metals. They empower and finance bankers and entrepreneurs to work for them through their corporate homes. They authorize and issue the creation of laws, agencies, the military, companies, and universities. They create and run religions and secret societies. They also finance and organize organized crime syndicates as if they were commercial enterprises. Some of the major royal bloodlines include Savoy, Bourbon, Medici, Glücksburg, Wittelsbach, Nassau-Weilberg, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Romanov, Grimaldi, Orleans, Braganza, Habsburg, Hannover, Windsor, Saud, Thani, Khalifa, Alouwite , Zogu, Hohenzollern, Orange-Nassau, Bonaparte and Bernadotte. Many royal bloodlines still rule their nations as heads of state such as the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Monaco, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Morocco, Sweden, Norway, and Luxembourg. The Vatican City State is also a kingdom with the Pope of Rome as its monarch. The Black Nobility are the ancient bloodlines of the Papal States and they own the Holy See and the Vatican. They produced the first popes of Rome and held leadership positions in the Vatican from its inception. The Colonna and Torlonia still hold the hereditary positions of the Assistant Princes to the Papal Throne. The black nobility consider themselves sovereign princes. The Vatican is used as a central point of control and the Holy See is one of the oldest and most criminal corporate entities in existence. The Spanish Catholic Church is immensely rich, it has not suffered the crisis and also enjoys a true tax haven, being free to pay taxes, such as the IBI, works, companies, etc. The vast majority of the assets in their possession and on their accounts are completely opaque. This situation is illegitimate, unfair and presumably illegal, and this occurs with the complicity and consent of the public powers.
The Erlach and Brandi families are Swiss tax advisers who enable corruption, bribery, criminal financing, and money laundering. The Swiss Guard is the one that protects the Vatican City State. The Swiss cantons have been in contract with the Vatican for centuries and Switzerland is basically a papal state with the noble Roman saints claiming partial ownership. The German house of Baden-Zahringen founded Bern, in Switzerland. The House of Savoy ruled the regions of Switzerland for hundreds of years. Some of the most important bloodlines of the Black Nobility are: Massimo, Colonna, Pallavicini, Odescalchi, Ruspoli, Orsini, Aldobrandini, Sforza-Cesarini, Boncompagni-Ludovisi, Chigi-Albani-Della Rovere, Doria-Pamphilj, Rospigliosi, Giustiniani , Torlonia, Corsini, Borghese, Del Drago, Lucchesi-Palli, and Gaetani. The Pecci and Pacelli families are more recent bloodlines of the Black Nobility. The black nobility share ownership over the Holy See, which is a corporate entity based in the Vatican City State that was established as a nation in 1929 under Benito Mussolini, who was put in power by the House of Savoy. The Mussolini and Franco families became nobles after their fascist regimes. The Black Nobility also owns the Knights of Malta, the Jesuits, and the Cosa Nostra. The Black Nobility established branches in southern Italy and married Sicilian-Campanian nobles such as the Lanza di Scalea, Adragna, Sanseverino, Tomasi di Lampedusa, Paterno, Cattaneo, Serena di Lapigio and Rocco di Torrepadula families. Many Italian crime families were Sicilian nobles like the Bonanno and Bellomo families. Both the mafia bosses and the Italian and Spanish nobles call themselves Dons, which is the equivalent of Boos (boss) of crime. The Savoy, Savoy-Aosta, Medici, Borbon-Dos Sicilias, and Borbon-Parma families are members of Italian royalty and are married to various European royal bloodlines and Black Nobility. Most of the monarchs are members of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Prince Carlo Massimo has been overseeing the Sovereign Military Order of Malta as President of the Italian Association of SMOM. The Knights of Malta have an undercover operation at the Jesuit School of Foreign Service in Georgetown, run by Joel Hellman. The Jesuits and the Knights of Malta basically run the Defense Department alongside British Crown agents and high-level Freemasons. Prince Carlo de Borbón-Dos Sicilias is a high commander of the Society of Jesus through his Sacred Constantinian Military Order of Saint George. The Jesuits were authorized by Pope Paul III of the Farnese family. The Bourbon-Dos Sicilias and Borbon-Parma families are the continuation of the Farnese family, the name Farnesivs is engraved in the Jesuit headquarters called the Church of Gesu in Rome. The Farnese family lived in a pentagonal fortress called Farnese Villa Caprarola, which is the basis for the design of the American Pentagon. Jesuits are involved in education, politics, banking, science, law, and especially military intelligence. The Italian Bourbons have established residences all over the world, including Florida. Jesuits need to be investigated and banned, they have rightly been expelled from almost every country in the world, but they always end up coming back. In Spain three times, his last return was at the hands of General Franco.
The Holy See is a corporate body that issues laws and bills, such as the Golden Bull, which claims ownership of the Kingdom of England and identifies the emperor as the sovereign of the only legitimate universal empire, directly chosen by God. The Pope claims temporal power or ownership over the Earth and also claims Papal Supremacy or Papal Rule and Papal Infallibility. Infallibility means incapable of being wrong. The Roman Curia or Papal Court is the highest organized council in society and is directly supervised by the two “Assistants of the Prince to the Pontifical Throne”, these two positions are held by the princes of the Colonna and Torlonia families. They work with a higher level princely council of the Italian nobility that works with another council made up of the Roman nobility. The Italian and Austrian nobility are married to each other and work closely together leading the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which is a sovereign entity equivalent to that of a sovereign nation. The Italian Nobility, La Cosa Nostra and the German and Austrian Nobles, run the Jewish Mafia. Royalty and nobles have massive amounts of wealth in private bank accounts in Switzerland. They use the Nazi-founded Bank for International Settlements to steal wealth from central banks through fraudulent tax contracts and then launder and hide the wealth in private bank accounts in Switzerland. The main Italian lineages still active include the Massimo, Colonna, Pallavicini, Torlonia, Aldobrandini, Ruspoli, Orsini, Gaetani-D'Aragona, Borbón-Parma, Odescalchi, Borghese, Adragni, Chigi, Medici, Borromeo, Doria-Pamphilj, Sacchetti, Savoy, Grimaldi and Bourbon. These bloodlines oversee the various specters of society. Outside of this power structure is the Committee of 300 with an inner circle made up of the leading monarchs and princes of Europe and the former Holy Roman Empire with members from Windsor, Spencer, Cecil, Percy, Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Habsburg, Bonaparte, Orleans, Bernadotte, Lagergren, Glucksburg, Hannover, Furstenberg, Austria-East, Hohenberg, Hesse, Nassau-Weilberg, Habsburg-Lorraine, Saxe Coburg and Gotha, Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach, Saxony-Meiningen, Braganza, Orange-Nassau, Hohenzollern , Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Liechtenstein, Rothschild, FitzJames, Lobkowicz, Ligne, Merode, Romanov, Thurn and Taxis, Schwarzenberg, Orsini-Rosenberg, Windisch-Graetz, Esterhazy and other families. Many members who do not have noble status on the Committee of 300 are representatives of the royal families.
These families are all enemies of humanity and have conspired to enslave the world for centuries. They authorize and create corporations and billionaires, run religions, states, secret societies, the mafia, and organized crime syndicates. Royal families in Europe are mainly divided into two factions, and this dates back to the Guelph merchants and Ghibelline landowners. All other groups like Bilderberg, CFR, and the Trilateral Commission are lower-level organizations. All roads lead to Rome, which is the basis of its control system. The European Constitutional Monarchies are branches of the corporate empire of Rome. Constitutional Monarchies are ruled by blood-appointed heads of state and serve Rome through the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. The Pope claims temporary or physical ownership of the Earth. The Pope claims to be infallible of error. The Pope claims ownership over all souls through the papal doctrine of "Papal Supremacy." The Pope is a leader for the Black Nobility of Italy.
The Jesuits are a military priesthood officially established by Pope Paul III A.K. to Alessandro Farnese of the Farnese family. The Jesuits were officially established under the Papal Bull called Regimini Militantis Ecclesiae, which means Military Regiment of the Church as the continuation of the Templars. The Black Nobles are the true owners and controllers of the Vatican and maintain their control throughout the centuries by installing their relatives as high-level popes and bishops. At present the Torlonia and Colonna families who have the hereditary positions of Prince Assistants to the Papal Throne are those who supervise the pope. In turn Pope Francis supervises all members of the Catholic Church and also supervises the various secret societies that are connected with the Church.
The Jesuits are also a Masonic order and were the continuation of the Templar orders when they were banned. The Roman Catholic Church mocks Christians by performing rituals where they pretend to drink blood and eat human flesh known as the Eucharist, also called Holy Sacrifice. The New Testament did not exist until about 1600 and the Old Testament is even more recent than the new. It was the Vatican and European monarchs who created both the New and the Old Testaments. The last official version of the bible was published in 1777.
The bishops and priests operate as supervisors and the Jesuits function as spies trained in deception and are infiltrated everywhere. The Pope claims temporal power or ownership over the Earth and also claims Papal Supremacy or Papal Rule and Papal Infallibility. Infallibility means incapable of being wrong. Archbishops are the overseers of society within their districts and oversee politics, police, business, and organized crime. The Latin phrase Novus Ordo Seclorum means New Order of Ages (or Ages), or also "New World Order", and is on the US dollar bill and Great Seal of the United States.
The Vatican uses Latin as an official language and for documents. America is named after the Italian Americo Vespucci who worked for the Medici family of Florence and Rome. Vespucci created the term New World for America. The Bank of America was originally called the Bank of Italy and was founded by Amadeo Giannini, who was financed by Italians. Nations were formed as companies or corporations to exploit their citizens as merchandise. Corporations are fraudulent constructions because they are considered a person with rights under the law, and because the owners and controllers of the corporations can disregard responsibility for crimes committed by the corporation. That is fraudulent. Corporations are not people and therefore cannot have rights. Corporations are also monopolies that use subsidiaries to hide their dominance over industry. Private companies cannot compete fairly with corporations. Citizens are also classified as legal persons (companies), robbing them of all their human rights. Corporations shouldn't exist.
Royalty and nobles issue charters establishing representative covert property agents controlled by corporate households or crowns of royalty and nobles. They claim to own foreign governments in this way. Royalty and nobles claim to own the United States as a continuation of the Virginia Company. Roman royalty such as the Hanover, Hesses, Wurttembergs, Hohenzollerns, Glucksburgs, Orange-Nassaus and Saxe-Coburg and Gothas claim a share of ownership over the British Crown. This is why the British royal family has so much German ancestry. The United States is defined as a federal corporation under US code 3002. Section 15. Most of the founding fathers were Freemasons and worked for the British Crown and German royalty. American political families, such as the Bushs, Clintons, Romneys, and Kennedys, take their names from European noble families that still exist. The Von Dem Bussche family are German nobles and relatives of the Bush family. The Clintons and Romneys are also British nobles. The Kennedys are Scottish-Irish nobles and an American political family involved with the Democratic Party. Mars, Walton, Rockefeller, Guggenheim, Getty, Hearst, Sackler, Lauder, Sachs, Busche, Johnson, McMahon, Forbes, and Cox are some of the billionaire American families that work with royalty and nobles in Europe. The Mars family is worth about 70 billion and works with the Windsor, Savoy, Thurn and Taxis families. The Waltons are worth around 130 billion and work with German nobles like the Württemberg, Baden, Hohenzollern and Isenberg families. The various Johnson families in the United States are collectively worth tens of billions and serve as agents for the House of Hannover. They own Johnson and Johnson and Fidelity Investments. The Hanovers are powerful royals and merchants who established the Hanseatic League. The Hearst family is worth more than 25 billion and several members were educated at Harvard University of the British Crown. The McMahon family is a billionaire and owner of the WWE and works under the Bonapartes and Savoys as their noble ancestors who were served militarily by the MacMahons during the Second Italian War of Independence. Today there are MacMahons in France with Italian and French titles of nobility. The Lauder family works for the House of Esterhazy in Austria and the House of East in Austria and Italy. The Guggenheims have assets worth hundreds of billions and are married to the House of Stuart. The Getty family are billionaire American oil merchants and are married to the Italian House of Ruspoli. The Forbes family are billionaires and American descendants of Scottish nobles who still exist.
All gang stalking and cult organizations are owned and controlled by members of royalty and nobility. Criminal organizations such as Royalty itself, Royal Institutions, The Company of Jesus, The Black Monks, The Hellfire Club, The Templar Orders, Freemasonry, The Grand Orient of France, The York Rite, The Scottish Rite, Prince Masonry of Prince Hall, Shriners International, The Royal Order of Jesters, The Cabal Society, Chabad, Scientology, Skull & Bones, The Boulé Society, The 5% Nation, The Nation of Islam, Black Israelites, The Ordo Templi Orientis ( OTO), The Temple of Set, The Church of Satan, Rosicrucian, Golden Dawn, Opus Dei, Mormons, Knights of Columbus, The Bohemian Club, Knights of Phintias, Ancient Order of Druids, Wicca, Santeria, Obeah, Voodoo, Sufism , Greek Fraternities and Brotherhoods, New Age and Gnostic Cults, Nazi Cults, KKK, Mafias, Prison Gangs, Biker Gangs and Street Gangs. The Rockefeller family uses their charitable foundations to fund harassment gangs and bribery in the United States, as well as globalization agendas and vaccination programs. The Rockefeller Foundation funded Almighty Vice Lord Nation, which is an organized crime group, and also funded the Tavistock Institute.
Hollywood, the Church of Scientology, and Silicon Valley are military operations like the US DARPA agency and run by European royalty and nobles like the Oettingen-Spielbergs, Schaumburg-Lippes, Anhalts, Hanovers, Windsors, Passi di Preposulos, Ruspolis, Torlonias and Odescalchis. The Ferragamo family is also involved in the management and financing of corruption in Hollywood. The House of Nassau-Weilberg, which is married to the Torlonias, funds human trafficking and human sacrifice in Hollywood. Idols in the entertainment industry are a dangerous cult with leaders who have access to electronic weapons. Most of modern electronics is being broadcast covertly with GENISIS and NEURON bio-piracy software controlled by Kabbalists and Scientologists. European monarchies function as extensions of Rome and run secret societies that infiltrate government agencies and run corporations for monarchs. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta is the main military council and works closely with the Orders of St. John administered by Protestant royalty such as the Windsors and the Hohenzollerns. The Order of Malta and the Order of Saint John are Masonic organizations with grand masters and titles for initiation. The royal and noble bloodlines are all working together as a global crime syndicate and part of a modernized Roman corporate empire. They also have several competing factions that create the illusion of division. The British crown and Scottish nobles such as the Bruce, Stewart, Sinclair, Campbell, Montagu, Scott, Hamilton, Percy, Boyle, Bowes-Lyon and Sutherland families administer a large part of Freemasonry. All of these families produced Grand Masters of the Grand Lodge of England. There are thousands of Masonic lodges in Europe and in the United States. Freemasonry must be investigated and outlawed. The Greek-German Royal House of Glucksburg directs the Greek fraternities and brotherhoods and uses initiates as its agents. Glucksburg nobles and Italians run the Boule Society, Boule is a Greek fraternal society for African Americans. Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson have been members of Boule, among many other high-profile, successful, and wealthy blacks, including Barack Obama, Bill Cosby, Al Sharpton, and Thurgood Marshall. The Glucksburg family rules Denmark and Norway and recently ruled Greece. Among its members are the ex-queen Sofía of Spain and Duke Felipe de Edimburgo. Former Greek nobility and royal merchants such as the Mavroleon, Onassis, and Niarchos families are billionaires who have a monopoly in the shipping industry and work with British nobles. The Greek royal family currently lives in London from where many Greek consignment merchants operate. The British Crown authorized and controls universities such as Yale and Harvard which are used to recruit Crown agents through fraternal orders such as Skull & Bones and Book and Snake. Royal and noble families also do undercover business in the City of London Corporation, which dominates global markets. Some of the major London merchant families include the Goldsmith, Stuart, Rothschild, Grosvenor, Sassoon, Barclay, Sutherland, Montagu, Bailey and Guinness families. The Sutherland family created the HSBC bank that has a long history of financial scandals around the world (Emilio Botín, Fernando Alonso, Mohamed VI, Jorge Trías and Jordi Pujol Jr. had accounts at HSBC when it was chaired by Stephen Green, Baron Green of Hurstpierpoint). The Bailey family is co-founder of Janus Henderson through a merger. Janus Henderson manages around 190 billion in assets. The Stuart family owns the Hudson Bay Company and has an alliance with the Bavarian House of Wittelsbach, which is the covert owner of some of the Hudson's Bay Company subsidiaries, which were founded by Bavarian merchants. HBC has approximately $ 12 billion in assets and has had fiscal contracts with the United States through the Organic Law of the District of Columbia of 1871.
The Orange-Nassau family are influential traders through the Netherlands Trading Society and have a large number of shares in Royal Dutch Shell, Philips Electronics and ABN AMRO Bank. The Orange-Nassaus and their Dreyfus agents run the Rand Corporation, which has a contract with the US military. Rand's founder was a Dutch gentleman. The Orange-Nassau family also runs the Loyal Orange Institution in Ireland, which has infiltrated the police, justice and politics. The Luxembourg Nassau-Weilburg family are international bankers connected to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The royal families of Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands have shares in the European Investment Bank and all of these royals are recently married to Italian nobles. The Ligne family from Belgium are wealthy diamond and gold merchants. The Belgian Crown and its nobles are stealing wealth from the United States through fraudulent tax contracts established through the Organic Law of the District of Columbia of 1871 and continue to do so through the Bank for International Settlements. The Barons Strange heads the Masonic Order of Oddfellow. The Russell family are the Marquesses of Tavistock and they run the Tavistock Institute, which is an organization involved in mass mind control. The Russell family also co-founded the Yale University and Russell Trust Association, which is named after the New Haven, Connecticut company based on the Skull & Bones secret society.
Skull & Bones is a death cult military complex run by the Bush family from the USA who are like a European royal family in the USA. The Furstenberg family runs the Royal Order of Jesters who wear a jester on their coat of arms. The Clintons work closely with the House of Furstenberg, who have residences in the United States. The Italian Orsini family and the Holy Roman Rosenberg family lead the Rosicrucian Order of alchemists who infiltrate food and drug companies for chemical warfare. The Medici family, who have a statue of Hermes (Mercury) in their palace in Rome, administer the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an alchemical secret society. The Medici were architects of modern banking. The Pierleoni family of Rome and the Spanish House of Bourbon-Anjou run the Kabbalah Society, which uses the Spanish lion for its logo. The Pacelli family of Rome and the Crescenzi family of Italy administer the Wiccan witchcraft cults. The Bavarian Wittelsbach family from Bavaria created the Bavarian Illuminati and administers the Benedictine Monks and is also part of the Jewish Mafia in the United States who are white collar criminals. The Pecci family of Italy also owns the Jewish mafia in the United States through their marriage to the Blumenthal family. The House of Wittelsbach is involved with Zionism, Nazism, Freemasonry, and the Society of Jesus. The Jesuits function as Roman intelligence and infiltrators and use their universities to recruit and train agents for Rome. Jesuit agents dominate leadership positions in the United States military and intelligence and especially in the CIA. The Knights of Columbus are owned by the Casa de Colonna. Christopher Columbus was Pedro Madruga, the Count of Caminha, a relative of the Colonnas who settled in Pontevedra at the time of the Romans. Many Knights of Columbus are police officers, mayors, lawyers, and judges, protecting the Italian mob while targeting free-thinking people. The Knights of Columbus are heavily involved in gang harassment.
Court Jews such as the Rothschild, Warburg, Goldsmith, Oppenheimer, Walton, Sassoon, Kadoorie, Lewis, Javal, Lauder, Sackler and Dreyfus families work through the Roman Curia or royal courtrooms such as Buckingham Palace. The French Rothschilds work for the Black Nobility of Rome and the French House of Orleans. The British Rothschilds work for the British Crown. The Sassoon and Kadoorie families work for the British Crown and oversee banking and business in China and India. The Swiss Rothschilds work for the House of Habsburg and the House of Hesse. The Oppenheimers work for the German House of Wurttemberg and the Cologne Oppenheim branch. the Austrian House of Habsburg granted them titles of nobility. The Warburgs work for the Italian House of Borghese and the German House of Hesse and the House of Hannover. Warburg Pincus had a contract with Unicredit that merged with the Borghese Family's Bank of the Holy Spirit. The Warburgs were Venetian bankers and the Borghese family now hold Venetian titles of nobility. The Warburgs financed the Nazis. The Dreyfus family works for the Dutch House of Orange-Nassau and the French House of Bonaparte. Jewish banking families work for Christian nobles and royalty. These billionaire Jewish bloodlines run many rabbis who run a criminal intelligence network that works with Mossad. The French House of Bonaparte and the Swedish House of Bernadotte control many of the main European companies through their knights of the Order of Seraphim and the Legion of Honor, who are also members of the Round Table of Industrialists of Europe, which it has a great economic influence on the markets. The Wallenbergs run corporations worth hundreds of billions and work for the Swedish House of Bernadotte. The Wallenbergs and the Swedish Crown also work with the Jesuits and the Vatican. The Black Nobility and other royal families have been hiding billions in private banks in Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. The royal families of Luxembourg and Liechtenstein own and run their own national and private banks. Austrian and Eastern European royalty and nobles, such as the Habsburgs, Esterhazys and Schonberg, use private banks in Liechtenstein and also own Israeli and Jewish mafias. The Esterhazy family together with the Lucchesi-Palli family run a faction of the Russian mafia through the mob boss Semion Mogilevich from Budapest. The Torlonia family owns the Fucino Bank in Rome and functions as Vatican bankers and treasurers. The Torlonia family of Rome and the Hohenzollern family of Germany are the main owners and controllers of the Bank for International Settlements which was founded and administered by the Nazis during World War II. The Torlonias are architects of fascism and the Hohenzollerns are architects of Nazism.
The East, Rothschild and Hottinger families are some of the leading Swiss bankers. The Romanian Sturdza family also owns a private bank in Switzerland. The Casanova family of Italy and Spain is one of the leading political families in Switzerland. The East and Savoy families run the Bank for International Settlements, which has a contract with most of the major central banks and is embezzling the wealth of nations through fraudulent loans and contracts. The Savoys live in Switzerland and Prince Lorenz of Austria-Este works at the Gutzwiller bank. The Bank for International Settlements must be investigated and closed. The Gutzwiller family is one of the leading banking families in Switzerland, owning its own private bank and managing 35 other Swiss banks. The Swiss Guard is a military body in charge of the security of the Pope and the Holy See. The ceremonial head of the Swiss Guard is the Pope, sovereign of Vatican City. Italian mafias are Rome's enforcers involved in extortion, money laundering, murder and drug trafficking, and they pay their dues to the Sicilian mafia, which in turn pays them to the black nobility. The mafia channels its earnings and tributes to the Black Nobility through the Vatican charitable foundations and then from the Vatican bank they are transferred to the private accounts of the Swiss Bank. The Savoy’s Genovese crime family specializes in extorting Wall Street. The mafia is rigging professional sports for gambling and they also launder their criminal winnings through the casinos. The Torlonia family owns the Kansas City crime family and shares ownership of the Pittsburgh crime family with the Borghese family of Rome and the Rocco di Torrepadula family of Sicily. The French House of Orleans owns the New Orleans crime family and the Franco-British Beaufort family oversees and owns the Dixie Mafia factions along with other British peers who have French ancestry. Cox's billionaire family is involved in multimedia communications and is part of the owners of the Dixie mob, which is involved in tobacco and ginseng sales as well as arms, drug and human trafficking. The Goldsmith and Sassoon families own Pakistani and Hindu human trafficking networks operating in the United Kingdom. The Imperial House of Brazil, Orleans-Braganza and the Belgian House of Ligne are married and have shares in the Brazilian companies AmBev and Belgian Anheuser-Busch InBev. The House of Orleans-Braganza owns Brazilian drug cartels that are also involved in human trafficking. The Sforza family owns the Stidda Mafia clans operating in the Sforza-Visconti territory in Milan and the Sforza and Visconti families have greater control over the Italian Stock Exchange or the Milan Stock Exchange. Milanese billionaire Silvio Berlusconi works for the Sforza and Visconti families and has a monopoly on Italian media and politics. Berlusconi founded the Forza political party in Italy named after the Sforzas. Some northern Italian nobles such as the Visconti, Borromeo, Este, Gonzaga, Valenti, D’Adda, and Passi di Preposulo families are closely related to billionaire families such as the Rothschilds, Agnellis, Benettons, Armanis, and Ferreros. The Sforza and Visconti families own the Seattle crime family with the Gaetani family as partial owners. The Seattle crime family controls billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos through blackmail. In 2017, Microsoft and Amazon employees were caught in a sex trafficking scandal.
The Colonna family owns the Knights of Columbus and also owns the Colombo crime family and partially owns the Chicago Outfit along with the Capponi and Roselli families of the Florence Turk. Al Capone was an agent of the House of Capponi and John Roselli was an agent of the Roselli del Turco family. Roselli also worked for the CIA. Colonna means column like Colombo and Colón. The Knights of Columbus infiltrate police departments and work with the Italian mafia. The Massimo and Gaetani families own and run the Gambino crime family and the Philadelphia crime family. The Massimo-Brancaccio family also owns and runs the Magliana or Roman Mafia and the Armed Revolutionary Nuclei, as well as the Graviano de Brancaccio crime family in Palermo, Sicily, which is part of the Corleonisi mafia clan. The Massimo family receives tribute from most of the Italian crime families and even from the Russian mafia and Eastern European mafias. The Massimo de Roccasecca family, who live in London, own the Clerkenwell crime syndicate, also known as the Adams Family or the London A-team and are part owners of the Irish Mafia, including the Rathkeale Rovers. The Borghese family is also the main owner of the Sicilian Mafia and the Mafia Magliana. The Lucchesi-Palli and Pallavicini families own the Lucchese crime family to which the Russian mafia in Brighton Beach pays tribute. The Pallavicini family owns the Armenian mafia that operates in Hollywood and works closely with the Kardashian family. The Romanovs are partial owners of the Russian mafia and have established several residences in the United States. The Giustiniani family oversee the Philadelphia Greek Mafia along with some Greek merchants. Royal and noble families finance organized crime. The Jewish Mafia reorganized into a white collar crime and worked with the black hand of the Italian Mafia. The head of the Jewish mafia in the United States is billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Leon Black is another one of the leading Jewish mobsters in New York. The Jewish Mafia participates in professional sports with white-collar mobsters such as Daniel Gilbert, Robert Kraft, Joshua Harris, Tom Werner, Jerry Reinsdorf, George Kaiser, Peter Guber, Joe Lacob, Mark Cuban, and Micky Arison. The European Union is based on the Treaty of Rome that was signed at the Capitol in Rome. The president of the European Central Bank is Mario Draghi, born in Rome and educated by the Jesuits at the Massimo Institute. Mario Draghi is an undercover relative of the Borghese and Del Drago families. The Erba-Odescalchi family with ancestry from Cernobbio, Italy, runs CERN with the Roman Fabiola Gianotti as CERN Director General that is used to generate pressure in the lower atmosphere in order to oppress society. CERN, HAARP, The Church of Scientology, Chemtrails and electronic devices are being used to covertly oppress society. The US military administers a HAARP electronic harassment system in Puerto Rico that is controlled from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, which is under the command of Captain David Culpepper. The CIA and the Italian Mafia have a large criminal operation in Cuba. The CIA and Cosa Nostra work closely to this day.
Islamic royal families were named after European royalty in the 19th and 20th centuries and especially after the First World War. Middle Eastern royalty run the oil industry and use their massive wealth to fund globalist agendas that allow them to rule their nations. The house of Saud is worth at least a billion. The House of Thani and the House of Al Khalifa work with the House of Saud and are also wealthy oil traders. Royals from the Middle East run the Muslim Brotherhood and the Five Percent and the Nation of Islam, which are violent mobs of cult and harassment. These organizations need to be investigated and banned. They also own an Arab mob that is based in New Jersey and Detroit. The royal family of Morocco are wealthy merchants and owners of the Abergil crime family of Israel and Morocco. The House of Bourbon and Spanish nobility such as the Osorio, Fitz James, Alvarez (Alba), Pignatelli, Arteaga, Borja, Zuniga, Ruspoli, and Aragon-Escobar families own the majority of the Mexican and South American drug cartels. The Osorio and Borja families own MS-13. The Borgia and Borja families are also partial owners of the Mongels motorcycle gang. The Bourbons own the Gulf Cartel and the Lating Kings. The Ruspolis are partial owners of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Primeiro Comando da Capital in Sao Paulo, where their Matarazzo cousins ​​reside. The FitzJames and Alvarez families own the Los Zetas Cartel. The Álvarez and Osorio families also own the Bandidos motorcycle gang. The House of Bourbons are the founders and owners of Banco Santander. The King of Spain has the official right to the throne as King of Jerusalem.

How Iceland, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands became a haven for cyber-criminals.
We are a group of Russian-speaking independent writers living in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and the United States, writing in the genres of LitRPG, RealRPG, fantasy and science fiction.
We are united by a rejection of piracy and infringement of intellectual property rights. Each of us is an ordinary person who devotes all his free time to his favorite pastime. We are not millionaires or published writers swimming in money. Each of us started from scratch and made our own way by publishing on the Internet.
We are currently publishing our books on Russian literary portals https://author.today, https://litnet.com and https://www.litres.ru. Thanks to these sites, we got the opportunity to sell books without going through publishing houses. This is the main difference between us and Western authors, who have the opportunity to go Indie and successfully sell Kindle/Amazon to a multi-million audience.
Thanks to the readers who support us by purchasing our books. Thanks to them, some of our books have become known not only among Russian-speaking readers, but also in Western countries. Our books have been translated and are being translated into English and German, due to which fans of the LitRPG and RealRPG genres are familiar with our work all over the world.
Nevertheless, for many of us, selling books to Russian-speaking readers remains the only source of income. Book translations can cost up to $10,000-$12,000, and the costs do not always pay off.
None of us make huge amounts of money. On average, our monthly income does not exceed $700.
One of the key problems for Russian-speaking authors is the theft of their books and their illegal publication on pirated resources. Books are stolen at the stage of writing, often depriving us of the opportunity to work fully. Criminals deprive us of the opportunity to receive normal wages for our work. At the same time, the “pirates” themselves earn on advertising posted on their sites. Often this is illegal advertising - on such sites you can find advertising banners of illegal online casinos, services of prostitutes, pornographic services and a lot of other advertising prohibited by law. Some of the criminal resources use Google Adsense at all.
The largest of these sites is https://flibusta.is, with its main mirror https://flibusta.site. On the first, there is no advertisement, but the second is completely filled with advertising banners.
This is a well-known criminal resource, which publishes not only books by Russian-speaking writers, but also books by famous Western authors in different languages. For example:

• Stephen King (translation and original): http://flibusta.is/a/19343
• J. K. Rowling (translation and original): http://flibusta.is/a/10536
• George Martin (translation and original): http://flibusta.is/a/7910
• Cosimo Yap (translation): http://flibusta.is/a/229993
• Michael R. Miller (translation and original): http://flibusta.is/a/223665

In addition, there you can find books by almost any famous writer in his native language. No countermeasures from hosting companies should be followed.
Imagine that Andrzej Sapkowski’s books were stolen at the dawn of his writing career and that they were publicly available. They would refuse to delete them, due to the fact that the writer lives in Poland. Sapkowski himself, in order to feed his family, got a job as a sales manager. The world would lose the famous writer and the world of The Witcher. Because of the greed of the owners of pirate sites and the devil-may-care attitude of hosting companies that refuse to comply with the same laws for everyone.
The “pirate” site https://flibusta.is uses the services of the hosting company Orange Website (https://www.orangewebsite.com) from Iceland, and its “advertising mirror” https://flibusta.site uses the services of the French hosting company Scaleway (https://www.scaleway.com).
The site https://flibusta.is is the base of stolen books and a kind of center around which a huge number of sites of smaller criminal gangs revolve, which automatically download books to themselves.
We have sent complaints to both hosting companies. Scaleway reacted absolutely formally. We had to send several complaints to get our books blocked on https://flibusta.site. And so for each individual book. On average, four requests were required, since after the first, all illegally published books remained in their places.
Orange Website responded that the company does not obey the laws of the European Union or the US DMCA and will ignore any complaints until the Icelandic court is ordered. They know very well that we are not in a position to provide financial support for lawyers and the legal process in Iceland. Therefore, such an answer sounded like a mockery.
Both hosting companies are calmly working with cyber-criminals who caused colossal damage to Russian-language LitRPG-authors. We believe that if it was a violation of the rights of writers from France or Iceland, they would certainly react as required by law. But they don't give a damn about the rights of Russian-speaking authors. These companies seem to care more about money from digital criminal gangs.
Among other hosting companies that support piracy and completely ignore complaints under the DMCA or EU Directives, three can be distinguished:

1. Private Layer (https://privatelayer.com). A Swiss company that did not respond to any of our requests.
2. Zomro (https://zomro.com). A hosting company with an office in Lithuania. Several dozen pirate sites have chosen this hoster's servers as a haven for illegal content. In response to complaints, the company redirects to [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), but there is no response from there.
3. NovoServe (https://www.novoserve.com). The company from the Netherlands hosts a total of at least forty criminal sites. As an example, we can give a small list of similar websites:

• https://fantasy-worlds.org
• https://bukvaved.faith
• https://akniga.info
• https://audiobook-mp3.com
• http://booksonline.com.ua
• https://audioboo.ru
• https://vse-knigi.org

Some of these sites simply publish our books, while others sell them illegally, taking advantage of their complete impunity.
The well-known criminal site https://librusec.pro, which openly sells stolen books, uses Wholesale Internet hosting, hosted in the USA (https://www.wholesaleinternet.net), which also does not respond to our complaints, despite the criminal nature of their clients' work. obvious.
We should also mention the messenger https://telegram.org, the support of which does not even consider it necessary to respond to our complaints. There are hundreds of channels out there where people discuss the best ways to steal books and coordinate their activities there. An excellent messenger has turned into a den of criminals who feel great as the support team takes no action. At the same time, the messenger is registered in the USA and must comply with the DMCA law, but does not respond to complaints. Unfortunately, criminals are more important to them than Russian-speaking writers.
We have exhausted all available methods of influence. Now there is a situation where cyber criminals are destroying modern Russian-language literature and at the same time feel completely protected from any consequences. Hosting companies from the European Union work with them in flagrant violation of DMCA law and EU copyright directives.
The only thing that remains for us is to make this situation public, in the hope of a public reaction and possible interest from the police of the countries in which these hosting companies operate. These types of criminals require more public scrutiny than legal claims. We are asking you to post this open letter, or material based on it, wherever possible.
Our main task is to attract public attention and, if possible, the attention of law enforcement agencies to the activities of hosting companies that condone piracy.
To clarify any information, you can contact us through the writers' profiles on Facebook or by Email.
If you have read to the end and are wondering why all this. We are confident that the LitRPG community is full of smart people with competencies in a variety of areas, including copyright laws. If you can advise which intellectual property protection agency or lawyer we can turn to, that will help us a lot.
In addition, perhaps this case will be of interest to someone from the media who will help us.
The authors who signed this open letter:

1. Vasily Mahanenko (https://www.amazon.com/Vasily-Mahanenko/e/B00VRJS5VY)https://www.facebook.com/vasiliy.mahanenko/ [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
2. Michael Atamanov (https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Atamanov/e/B015JOWILA) https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008056425459, [ataman_[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
3. Dan Sugralinov (https://www.amazon.com/Dan-Sugralinov/e/B07BK7PLSN)https://www.facebook.com/dan.sugralinov, [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
4. Alexey Osadchuk (https://www.amazon.com/Alexey-Osadchuk/e/B01AFCEV5W)https://www.facebook.com/a.osadchuk.a
5. Pavel Kornev (https://www.amazon.com/Pavel-Kornev/e/B01J1ZBNIM)https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100007182854693, [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
6. Dem Mikhailov (https://www.amazon.com/Dem-Mikhailov/e/B082KJ56BD)https://www.facebook.com/demmius
7. Roman Prokofiev (https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Prokofiev/e/B081J6C67Z) https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100049146454801, [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
8. Max Lagno (https://www.amazon.com/Max-Lagno/e/B07JGVWQ5R) https://www.facebook.com/lagno.maxim, [lagno_[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
9. Eugenia Dmitrieva (https://www.amazon.com/Eugenia-Dmitrieva/e/B07BK7RDJ1)
10. Dmitry Bilik (https://www.amazon.com/Dmitry-Bilik/e/B07QXQ5WP2), https://www.facebook.com/dima.bilik.52
11. Petr Zhgulyov (https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B087YTZGFZ)https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100015070037569, [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
12. Paul Kite (https://www.amazon.com/Paul-Kite/e/B07L4GXS8N)https://www.facebook.com/paul.kite.pk, [email protected]
13. Mstislav Kogan (https://author.todayid192064964)https://www.facebook.com/mstislavkog, [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
14. Dmitry Raspopov (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WHLG29M)https://www.facebook.com/dmitriyr2008
15. Pavel Chasovskiy (https://www.facebook.com/pavel.chasovskiy)[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
16. Igor Pol (https://www.facebook.com/josselin333)[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
17. Evgenii Berger (https://author.todayzelcber2016)[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
18. Mikhail Ignatov (https://author.todayid54937541)[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
19. Alexander Kronos (https://author.todaykronos)https://www.facebook.com/alexandr.kronos
20. Sergey Plotnikov (https://author.todaysergeyplotnikov)https://www.facebook.com/plotnikovbooks, [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
21. Koscheev Vladimir (https://author.todayepetuk1727)[eric_[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), https://vk.com/v_koscheev
22. Dmitriy Mazurov (https://author.todaydimm)[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
23. Vladimir Vasilenko (https://www.amazon.com/Vladimir-Vasilenko/e/B07MTMLPLF)https://www.facebook.com/vladimir.vasilenko.71, [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
24. Alexis Opsokopolos (https://author.todayopsokopolos)[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), https://vk.com/opsokopolos
25. Andrey Krasnikov (https://author.todaya_krasnikov)https://vk.com/a_krasnikov [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
26. Ivan Magazinnikov (https://author.todaymagazinnikov) https://www.facebook.com/ivan.magazinnikov,[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), https://vk.com/fabervisum

Since there was a lot of positive response to my comment on the KD thread about The Garden, I floated the idea of a thread, and you all asked for it, so here it is! Here at reddit, there can be a lot of LOL this (Knicks) and LOL that (Knicks again), and while MSG certainly has its own shortcomings to say the least, there is a true story to be told about the buildings and how it came to be where it is today.
Known as ‘The Worlds Most Famous Arena’, MSG played a direct roll in making sports in America what it is today, and while many people criticize the current incarnation of the building, most people don’t know the full story - or that the current one is actually the 4th version (and 3rd location) of the building. The college basketball history at MSG, which I won’t give away yet, is one of if not THE main reason we have our beloved NBA and professional basketball in general today. This is going to be a very long read, like, very very long. But I’m going to try and throw all the really juicy facts in there that I picked up along my years of research from working in the tour department. I thought of splitting it up, but I wanted this post to be a comprehensive history of The World’s Most Famous Arena!
If you’re only concerned with the history of the joint once basketball enters into the picture, skip to MSG III.
If you want the juicy details on the controversy of tearing down old Penn Station then skip to MSG IIII.
If you have any questions on anything or want me to elaborate on anything that I only mention briefly, please feel free to ask! MSG’s history is full of not only amazing moments, but vengeful murders, and a whole lot of sketchy stuff. This is the story of how a small train station on the north east corner of Madison Square Park eventually led to the demolition of an iconic NYC train station some 100 years later. It’s not on Madison Avenue, it’s not square, and it’s not a garden, but there is a good reason for all of this - or at least a good explanation - I promise!
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN I
Ironically, just how this story’s climax involves tearing an iconic train station down to build the current arena, the beginning starts in much the same way. Just with a significantly less iconic train station. In the mid 1800’s there was a small railroad depot on the north east corner of Madison Square Park, occupied by New York and Harlem Railroad on East 26th street and Madison Ave and owned by Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. For those of you not familiar with the city (yes, we call it ‘the city’) that location is pretty central and throughout time has had a lot of important events happen there, which is a thread for another time. The park was named for president James Madison, just like the street, which was very common at the time. People loved that guy.
The railroad opened up another location you may have heard of, by the name of ‘Grand Central Station’ in 1871, therefor leaving the smaller rail depot on 26th street abandoned. After a few vacant years, the building was leased to PT Barnum, who converted it into what he called the ‘Great Roman Hippodrome’. This place was a big open air oval ‘arena’ where he did exactly what you’d expect. Circuses etc. What happens next is where things start getting interesting.
Then the building was leased to a band leader named Patrick Gilmore. Some historians in that field feel like Gilmore is a forgotten guy compared to the likes of John Phillips Sousa, who is really the only person we common modern folk recognize in terms of old timey band leaders. But Gilmore was a very important figure of his day. Gilmore purchased the building and…wait for it…called it Gilmore’s Concert GARDEN. ‘Garden’ was a semi-popular add on to entertainment centers in NY during that era, starting with what I can tell from my research when Castle Clinton (aka, the old fort turned venue turned place you buy your tickets to go out to the Statue of Liberty now) was converted into a venue called Castle garden in the 1820s.
The other notable contributions Gilmore made to The Garden are holding the first Westminster Kennel Club dog show, the longest running garden event obviously still held there today, and even doing the first boxing matches there. I always found this bit fascinating, because boxing matches were technically illegal at the time. He called them ‘illustrated lectures’ and as any good New Yorker trying to make a buck does, found a way around the rules and got away with it. This is a common theme within the history of The Garden as you will see.
The arena changed hands a few more times, first to an administrator with the dog show, who also started to do more sporty things like tennis and installing one of the first ‘indoor’ ice rinks in the US.
The building went back into Vanderbilt control when Commodore died, by his grandson William Vanderbilt. He was the one who decided, the ‘garden’ part was cool, but since it wasn’t leased by Gilmore anymore, he would rename it after the park which it shared a border. Hence the name, Madison Square Garden. He expanded the range of events that were held there including adding bicycle racing. This would be by far the most widely beloved event held at the Garden, including a long running race called ‘Six Days of New York’ where an insane SIX day bike race would be held. These were basically just endurance contests, with a single bicyclist doing as many laps as possible, they could sleep whenever and join back in whenever. This was all the rage, but also dangerous for not only the participants but the spectators. People who wanted to soak up all the action were easy targets for crooks who were also in attendance. These events were so popular nationwide however, that there is even a bicycle discipline called ‘Madison’ named after the OG garden.
The building however ran its course, because of its lack of roof and decaying infrastructure.
What I mean by decaying can probably best be summed up by the disaster which many people now a days don’t know of, when part of the building collapsed falling outward into the street and some of the roof also caving in with 800 people inside. Apparently it was chaos, and 20 something people were killed or injured. It’s pretty brutal, and if you want to know more about that incident you can read the newspaper article from the time here.
Vanderbilt sold the spot to who's who collection of rich white men. JP Morgan, Carnegie, Astor etc. So they decided to tear it down and build a new extremely extravagant arena on the same spot. They got renowned architect Stanford White (more on him later) and they demolished the building in 1889. After spending more than half a million dollars, MSG II was built.
Madison Square Garden II
By this point, MSG was still not the household name it would become in the future. This building was supposed to change that narrative, which is why these rich guys went all in on it. You’ll see, that they were maybe in over their heads. However, this might be the most fascinating of all the MSGs for several reasons.
Firstly, the building was extremely extravagant. That can not be overstated. I would encourage you all to just google pictures of the building, it was massive and you’ll see all the features I’m describing here. It featured a huge 32 story tall bell tower, which was good for the 2nd tallest building in the city at the time. The bellower was topped by a sculpture of the goddess Diana the huntress, which was sculpted by famous artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and was gilt in copper. They moved the statue not soon after, and you can see it today at the Philly Museum of art! It spun around in the wind, and their original brilliant idea was to have an actual cloth scarf draped on it, but since wind exists, it got blown away not too long after its installation.
Its main hall was the largest in the world. It had not only the main hall which sat 8,000 but just like today’s garden, had a small theater which sat 1200, and even another concert hall which sat 1500. Of course they also had the largest restaurant in the city, because why not. And because it is ‘The Garden’ they decided there should be a roof garden cabaret. They thought this would be a landmark the likes of central park, and it was certainly grandiose enough. They had the same kind of events that the first garden did, including sports, concerts, and all the random stuff they found fun before the invention of TV (not to mention radio, or at least the widespread broadcast of radio). But the problem was, the building was so damn extra, that they had a hard time making enough money to upkeep the place.
Now let’s talk about the architect. Stanford White is probably best remembered for designing the Triumphal arch in Washington square, but then closely followed by being murdered in his own building, MSG II, in a lovers quarrel. This was huge news at the time, and so was the trial that ensued, they called it ‘The Trial of The Century’. The building, being as ridiculous as it was, of course housed an apartment for White, and millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw was not too happy with White who apparently had an affair with his actress wife when she was 16. So he came through, and shot him dead in his own building. It’s all incredibly sketchy and simultaneously intriguing, involving major names of the day, which is probably why the trial was so juicy and gripping in the eyes of the general public.
Anyways, the building was ultimately a failure, and didn’t last very long in retrospect. Everyone knew what Madison Square Garden was, and it was a landmark from 1890-1926, but the building failed to live up to expectations, much less make money. A 36 year run is really nothing to write home about, especially with the illusions (or better yet delusions) of grandeur its rich owners had in mind. There were some important sporting events that happened there, but what would happen in the next building would be the reason The Garden is now known as, The Worlds most Famous Arena. Interestingly the building there today, the New York Life Insurance Company, was built on that plot directly after MSG II was demolished. They owned the mortgage on the building, so they just built their headquarters there. It’s an iconic building in its own right, and if you’re on the NE corner of the park, there’s a plaque on the building which notes that it was the location of the first 2 Gardens.
The only thing MSG still had was, well, the name. And in walked Tex Rickard, to seize an opportunity that proved to be golden.
Madison Square Garden III
If you’ve never heard of Tex Rickard, think PT Barnum, Don King, etc. He was the leading boxing (and more) promoter of the day, and was a very successful businessman, operating saloons, hotels, casinos, and the like. He was a country boy, born in Missouri and raised in Texas, but had a knack for business and promotion. Tex saw the opportunity to buy the name, and incorporated the ‘New Madison Square Garden Corporation’ in 1923. It was smart, although MSG II didn't make money, it was still a household name in NYC. The purpose was to build a less extravagant arena, but a place that would be iconic in its own right and host major sporting events, including NHL games. This is where MSG started to make a name for itself as a major player in venues, and eventually THE most famous arena in the world. So Tex bought a big block of land quite a bit of a ways away from the original site of The Garden, on 8th avenue between 49th and 50th street. He basically built a big box, designed by theater architect Thomas Lamb, at the cost of almost 5 million dollars and in a remarkable 249 days. I think it’s sufficient to say that ol’ Tex knew how to get things done. He had a bunch of rich backers, plenty of clout, and he threw his arena up in sharp contrast to the old garden. It did however have a very iconic marquee, and if you talk to anyone who was around at the time they will note that the marquee was the distinguishing feature of the building. The main draw originally was boxing, as that was Tex’s bag. They had major fights, and drew much larger crowds than the older gardens, mostly because they could cram almost 20,000 people in there. The site lines were apparently terrible, but by all accounts the energy that still haunts the current garden, was the main draw.
Then, hockey happened. This was the idea from the start, as fellow sports promoter Thomas Duggan had options on three expansion teams for the NHL, to be established in the US. One became the Bruins, and then one was arranged to be given to NYC’s most-celebrated prohibition bootlegger Bill Dwyer, who arranged with Tex to have the team play at MSG III. Tex had an agreement with the first team they started, The New York Americans, aka The Amerks (ever heard of them?), that they would be the only hockey team to ever play at The Garden. Although there was a clause in the contract that Tex claimed he would never exercise, that claimed if Tex and MSG ever made a bid for a team, the Amerks would support it. Tex kept his word for approximately one year, when due to the American’s success, he went out and got himself a hockey team. The tabloids dubbed this team Tex’s Rangers, an obvious play on words, and you can guess what that team that became today. The Rangers soon eclipsed the Amerks in success, and The Garden’s lore began to grow as the place to be in NYC.
One more note on Tex, and maybe the most important in my biased Knicks ‘no other arena is THE GARDEN’ mind. he started 7 other Madison Square Garden’s around the country. Including ‘Boston Madison Square Garden’ which as you may guess, became known as Boston Garden. Thats right Celtics fans, your building was named after ours. Thanks Tex, for unknowingly providing another iconic building, that the future inhabitants of your NYC building would lose in over and over again! Anyways…now is where basketball becomes the star - so you can all start paying attention!
At the time, nobody thought professional basketball was a viable way of making money. Rickard passed away in 1929, and during the great depression things stayed somewhat status quo, but also there were now a lot of days where the giant arena wasn’t being used at all. Then, in walked Ned Irish, a successful sports journalist who quit his job covering basketball games for the World-Telegram, to start promoting basketball games at MSG III. The Garden let him promote and hold games there, as long as he would just cover the rent, that’s how bad things were economically. To everyone’s pleasant surprise, the college games became a lot more financially successful than anyone had anticipated. Along with making money, these college games were probably the number one factor in growing the game nationwide in general. College ball became the marquee (pun intended) event at MSG III, especially the double headers. This was a time, before the infamous point shaving scandals, that NYC college basketball was a force in the college game. It’s hard to believe now, but teams like NYU and CCNY were the equivalent of today’s Duke and UNC. By 1946, they were selling out the arena, and the city (and country) had fallen in love with the game of basketball. The NIT was started during this time, and even the first televised basketball game happened there in the form of a Fordham-Pitt / Georgetown-NYU doubleheader. The previously mentioned point shaving scandal involving the NYC schools hamstrung Irish’s ability to put on marquee matchups at MSG III, as a lot of the major teams were banned from playing there, and the NCAA reduced its use of the arena as a result.
Ned, being the promoter genius that he was, saw the success of the college game, knew his limitations with that now, and thought…Why can’t we do this with professional athletes and start a league? There had technically been professional basketball being played at MSG III since its inception, but it was traveling teams like the original Celtics, which weren’t associated with a league. People just didn’t think there was enough money in it, or a means and arenas to have such a league. So with other owners of hockey arenas around the US (and Canada!) They started the NBA in 1946. It wasn’t instantly as popular as the college game as you may suspect, with the Knicks even having to play at the 69th (nice) regiment armory when a college game was on that took priority over the NBA. Ironically, the armory was a few blocks away from the original location of MSG I and II, on Lexington between 25th and 26th, it’s still there for those NYers who happen to walk by and notice the building.
There were other major nationally news worth events that happened at MSG III, including a host of politically themed ventures including both a packed Nazi rally (really, and people were NOT happy about it as you may imagine) and an anti-nazi rally. There are some very famous photos and press about the pro Nazi rally, which happened in 1939 and was organized by the ‘German American Bund’. As Nazi's were wont to do, they recorded the thing, and for what it's worth, its some of the best and most crisp footage of the old garden although the Nazi's really spoil it - Here are the receipts. If only they put their efforts into making beautiful videos of basketball games instead of hate. Too bad the guy who charged the stage didn't do any damage, and I hate to think of what they did to him. Anyways before I get too riled up, a few years later this group would be banned, but MSG certainly took some heat for allowing this to go down, and deservedly so. The tradition of MSG doing anything for a buck holds strong!
Probably the most noteworthy event ever held in that venue was also somewhat a political event. The most famous version of ‘Happy Birthday’ ever sung took place at JFK’s birthday party, sung of course by Marilyn Monroe, at MSG III. Most people probably had no idea where this took place, and it may be realistically the most famous moment from any of the incarnations of MSG.
Another one of my favorite stories from that time is when they had first built MSG III there was a boxer, who’s name escapes me but this is the NBA sub so you all don’t care, that didn’t realize there was a new venue, so he showed up at the site of MSG II only to see that it had been demolished. He scooted uptown as quickly as he could, and won his fight. There is a whole host of boxing history that went down there, but I won’t bore you all with the details, just go look it up if you’re interested! The boxing events most of you have heard of, such as The Fight of the Century, would happen at the building that stands today, MSG IIII.
Now, on to the controversy.
Madison Square Garden IIII (current arena)
This is all just fact, and I won’t get into my biased opinion on why or why not this was the right thing to do. I’m going to lay out the full controversy before I get into some fun facts about the current arena…So here goes…
Yes, there was an above ground Penn Station. It was thought of as one of the most iconic and beautiful landmarks in NYC. Look up some pictures, it’s very cool.
In 1959, Graham-Paige bought a 40% stake in MSG for $4 million. Then, in 1960, Graham-Paige president Irving Felt (old NYers will recognize the name, the Felt Forum, which was the original name for the theater under the arena floor) bought the right to Penn Station. The idea was always that he would tear the old station down, and build the sports complex. The Pennsylvania Railroad company sold the air rights to the property because passenger traffic was on the decline after WW2, and they weren’t making enough money to upkeep the station. I’m sure the Penn Railroad company wasn’t too keen on tearing the building down, but Felt made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. In exchange for the rights of a building they couldn’t support anymore, the Penn Railroad company got a brand new, smaller station completely below the street at no cost, and also a 25% stake in the new MSG complex. That probably worked out ok for them. People tried to save the old station, as it was a beautiful and a lot of people were outraged that the city would let this happen. At the end of the day, the city voted to demolish the building in 1963. A lot went into this, it was simply too much for the railroad company to upkeep, and like I said, they got a pretty great offer. Also, they had at first optioned the air rights to William Zeckendorf in 1954, and he had some plans which would reconfigure the train station into several different things including a ‘world trade center’ and a ‘Palace of Progress’. These things didn’t come to pass, again, this was a MASSIVE building. Now it should be noted, if NYC wanted to save the building, they could have saved the building. It would not have been cheap, but they could have done it. However the city thought that since it was originally intended to be a ‘cost-effective and functional piece of the city’s infrastructure’ it was now mostly just a ‘monument to the past’. Pretty cold, but the city had a history of destroying historic buildings to build even more historic ones. A lot of the criticism from people after MSG4 was built, was that this was not the case in this instance, as opposed to say - tearing down the original Waldorf-Astoria to put up the Empire State Building. That one in retrospect, doesn’t have as much contention. The city thought they were being ‘progressive’ and from what I can gather, people didn’t believe they were actually going to tear the building down until they actually started doing it. When they actually started tearing it down, it sparked international outrage. As another user pointed out on the other thread, this led to the establishment of the NYC landmarks preservation commission, which did in fact save Grand Central from demolition in 1968. So that’s a silver lining to all of this. NYC didn’t step up to save the old Penn Station, but its demolition was not in vain. The outrage that it caused has surely saved plenty of other historic buildings from their demise. Like I said, I’m not trying to say it was right or wrong, this post is simply to state the facts on what happened and why it all happened.
(((I realize that I may have been typing hastily and drunk when I responded with why the old landmark Penn Station building was torn down for the new MSG. Admittedly, my timeline was slightly off, as the ‘no property tax’ thing happened afterwards to keep the Knicks / Rangers / MSG in the city. I went back into my research and wanted to make sure I explained what happened 100% accurately. Even though nobody disputed this in the thread, my post may have been confusing and the timeline in my head was a bit skewed, as I said the threat of moving to NJ was a factor in them originally tearing the train station down. This was the reason for the property tax cut, but not the original demo of the train station, as you've just read. I wanted to make sure the accurate story was told. So this should clear up the timeline, and why and when things happened the way they did.)))
The next big controversy is what I had a little mixed up in my original post, as I clumped it together with the original controversy, and that is the threat of the teams moving to New Jersey. This did happen and this is where it gets very, very, VERY sketchy.
In 1982, when Gulf and Western owned MSG, they threatened to move the teams to NJ, as the Giants and Jets had done, and also the Devils although they didn’t come from Manhattan. NJ had proven a more than viable option for professional sports teams, as it was just a short train ride away to the new Meadowlands Sports Complex. The Garden was in need of renovation, so they made then mayor Ed Koch an ultimatum - give us a tax break to help us renovate the arena and add the new fangled luxury boxes that all the newer arenas had. That led to a full property tax exemption for the next 10 years.
Koch ‘didn’t realize’ that no one put in a sunset date for the tax exemption. Some think he confused the clause that stated the teams would be locked in for at least 10 more years, for a clause that said the tax exemption would only last for 10 more years. The first part of that is true, so interestingly enough the Knicks and Rangers are not allowed to play home games anywhere else but MSG, or they would break the agreement, so things like the NHL winter classic that the Rangers play in, even if in NY they have to be the away team. Knicks in London? Away team. Not that those teams would give up a home games worth of revenue, but still they technically have to be the away team. So the garden has saved somewhere around half a billion dollars, yes BILLION dollars in property tax payments. It’s around $50 Million now, and although there have been bills, most notably in 2014 to try and get this changed, so far it’s fallen on deaf ears.
The argument against this is pretty plain to see, the Knicks and the Rangers are the most profitable teams in their respective sports, and that they don’t need this tax break. Let’s make one thing clear, Jim Dolan definitely does NOT need the tax break. Everyone has to pay property taxes. Except, Dolan and MSG. It’s a hard pill to swallow, even as the most diehard Knicks fan. The City Council almost unanimously voted to take it to state legislature in 2014, which has authority over the cities tax rules. There is sketchy stuff all through this, like state assembly leader at the time Sheldon Silver having his daughter and one of his former top aides on MSG payroll. Oh yeah, Sheldon Silver was convicted of federal fraud and extortion charges sometime after that focused on large payments that Silver received for years from Goldberg & Iryami, a law firm that specialized in seeking reductions of New York City real estate taxes for real estate developers. Silver was alleged to have persuaded developers who had business with the state to use the firm, which in turn generated $700,000 in referral fees to Silver. Totally not sketchy at all.
Here’s where it stands today, as controversy will be back to a fever pitch in a few years.
In 2013, the NYC council voted unanimously to give MSG a ten year permit, as opposed to their current agreement which gave them operating rights in perpetuity. This means that MSG’s operating permit is up in 2023. Penn Station is in dire need of renovation. Like, more-so than the Knicks are in need of talent. Dolan also spent a couple billion on renovating the arena into the state of the art facility it is today. He’s not planning on moving it. If the city wants Dolan to move the garden so they can renovate the station, it would be massively complicated, and the city would be forced to offer huge subsidies to get MSG out of the way. So chances are, everything goes on, status quo. Now I will say, from my time receiving internal emails at MSG, Dolan does not want a fight with the city. They realize that there can potentially be a compromise here. Also, he has a ton of money, and politicians tend to respond to that.
One thing that is a step in the right direction, is the massive building across 8th avenue, the iconic post office, which just like the old Penn Station has gone largely unused but BECAUSE of Penn Stations demolition has been protected itself from demolition. It has already begun to be repurposed for the train station, and by 2021 they are supposed to finish the construction on the inside to a huge, new, modern train hub. This will do a lot honestly in reducing the congestion in the old underground station.
The other internal rumblings, were that Dolan was going to let them build into the theater. Cuomo actually announced this plan, which would leave the arena intact. I will explain the layout of the current building later, but underneath the arena floor up on the 5th floor, sits the 2nd largest theater in all of NYC. In my time there it was being used less and less, mostly because the garden also owns Radio City and The Beacon theater, which are much nicer venues. There have been iconic events down in the theater also, including many NBA drafts, and some epic Eddie Murphy stand up specials, but it is in need of renovation. It is the only area that they didn’t touch during the renovation, because the thought process is that they’d just be competing with themselves in Radio and The Beacon. So The idea is that Dolan will throw the city a bone, and let them build up into the theater, in exchange for keeping the status quo, which would give Penn a much larger footprint. Admittedly, I’m not sure what progress has gone into this plan, and if the Amtrak plan for the post office has changed any of that. Basically, we’re just going to have to wait until 2023 to see what the future really holds for MSG, but knowing a bit about NYC politics, I wouldn’t count on anything changing.
Ok, now that that’s all out of the way, lets talk about the fun side of MSG4, if it hasn’t already left too sour of a taste in your collective mouths.
The new building is actually a pretty fascinating piece of architecture in its own right. Some people think the facade is ugly, and that’s fair, but the inner workings are pretty cool. Charles Luckman was the architect, and he also designed the Forum out in LA, owned now by MSG as well. In my opinion, the most fascinating part of the structure is the cable system which supports it. 48 cables connect from the outer circumference of the building, meeting at the middle in a center tension ring. This allows the arena to not have visual support beams, like the arenas before it all boasted. No visual beams means better sight lines, and less obstructions. This is a cool article from the time about it if you care to know more about the actual construction. If you’re ever at The Garden, look for little circular plaques on the wall, numbered 1-48. These mark where the cables line up in the arena, and security can actually use these to dictate where they are in the building. You’ll probably never notice them, unless you’re looking for them.
The other cool thing about the roof, is that if you look closely you’ll see that the actual ceiling which sits between the cables, you’ll see that it has tiny holes all through it. Thats because the ceiling is designed to absorb sound, its filled with sound absorption material so when the sound passes through the holes it helps deaden the room. Usually arenas are the worst place to see a concert, and the general rule of thumb is - the bigger the room, the louder and boomier it will be. It’s certainly not as good sounding as a smaller concert venue but it is better than any arena you’ll find. As opposed to oracle arena, which has a concrete ceiling meant to amplify sound for sporting events etc. Which makes it even more impressive how loud it gets in there, despite the ceilings best efforts.
When the building was built there was a 48 lane bowling alley, an art gallery, a hall of fame, and a 501 seat cinema. Thats right, a 48 lane bowling alley. It closed in the 80s, but had a lot of bowling events including some sort of bowling TV show apparently. I haven’t been able to confirm this, but this was what I was told by a reliable source! Someone older than myself can probably speak to that.
Unlike most arenas, the arena floor of MSG is actually 5 floors above street level, which allows for the theater underneath the arena floor.
Although the Felt Forum Theater at Madison Square Garden doesn’t have as many events as it used to, they still have events and even at the same time that there are events going on up in the main arena. When I was working there, we had plenty of instances where there were crazy concerts or games going on upstairs, and other events going on in the theater. You would have never known the other was going on, and there is no sound transmitted from one venue to the other. Also if you’re familiar with the theater, the rumor is the lights (probably its defining characteristic) that pattern the theater ceiling, equates exactly to the number of seats in the theater. I never was bored enough to count, so that’ll just have to be a rumor for now!
The floor of the arena itself is pretty cool, and if you’re not familiar with how these multi-sport arenas work, the ice lives underneath the court all through hockey and basketball season. It’s pretty remarkable to watch the ice crew make the ice, and pretty sad when it gets melted. The fun fact here is, not only can they switch over in under 3 hours from one sport to the other, but they WILL do it and have to do it several times a year to do a Knicks and Rangers home game on the same day. All four sides of the arena have expandable seating, think high school gym, which allows for almost 2 thousand more seats during Knicks games as opposed to rangers games. They cover the ice with a fiberglass/plastic compound material, and then the floor fits together like a giant puzzle over top of the material. This current material has been used since the renovation, and the ridiculous thing is before the new material, supposedly they had to melt the ice once during the season - to accommodate for the longest running event in MSG history, the dog show. Apparently the dogs could sense the ice! I wasn’t there at that time, but that was what I was told was the scenario.
Another ridiculous thing is seeing them set up for professional bull riding. It’s insane, they bring in literally 20 something dump trucks of dirt and they do a ‘running of the bulls’ where all the bulls run up the ramp that goes to the street, and into their pens. It’s probably the wildest thing you’ll see being set up there, and also leaves the arena smelling like, well, you know, for several weeks. Not as bad as it smells after Phish comes through for NYE, and no I’m not talking about reefer. That would be one thing, but it just smells…grimy.
As much as we all collectively have some disdain for James Dolan, it hasn’t been all bad. He has hosted 3 of the biggest benifit concerts of all time, for 9/11, Katrina, and Sandy. All the proceeds from these shows went towards victim relief. But what people don’t realize is that the first ever benefit concert happened at MSG, in George Harrison’s ‘The Concert For Bangladesh’.
As for the new renovation, they really did a nice job in a lot of ways. It took 3 years, from 2011-13. First of all, if you’ve never sat on the bridge for a game, do it. It’s truly a one of a kind view. If you’re not familiar with the bridge, they are 2 suspended walkways that were added during the renovation, with several rows of seating that stretch across the arena. One side is the ‘Media bridge’ where there are TV’s with full cable, all kinds of plugs for laptops and internet and all that. They will sell tickets to this side when it’s a game that the media isn’t hogging the whole thing. I like hanging up there during games because there are advanced stats on some of the channels, anything you would need to be covering the game from a journalistic perspective, so it’s pretty cool. Also that’s where the radio, and the hockey TV broadcast booths are, since the vantage point is better up there for hockey than on the glass.
Pro tip - sometimes on stub hub or wherever, those seats can be cheaper than the ones further back not on the bridge. This is because they’re the ‘300’ level, where as the seats all the way up on the sides are the 200 level. However there really isn’t a bad seat in the house. And there are bars INSIDE the seating area, so if you’re up in the top of the 200’s, you can hit the bar without ever leaving the arena bowl and missing a single second of that can’t miss Knicks basketball. The 400 level is cool too, that’s the blue seats, which were the original color of all the 400 level seats.
Back in the day, when there were paper tickets, the seats in the different levels were different colors, and the tickets for those seats would be the same color as your seats!
The suite situation is very insane now a days. There are the event level suites, which are 20 suites located literally on the arena floor, underneath the seating. They have no view of the game, but they come with 8 seats each right in the first few rows. It’s the best of both worlds, so you’ll see the first few rows CLEAR OUT during half time to go into their little luxury caves. There are also suites all through the mid level of the arena, and then a 3rd level of suites up on the 9th floor, facing the stage.
There are also luxury clubs, including the Delta Club, which if you’ve never had a ticket with access to it, and can afford it - I highly recommend it. Everything (minus alcohol of course!) is free, and the food is honestly ridiculous. Further down the hall and down the stairs is the JP Morgan club (throwback!) where an even more elite club (closest 100 or so seats) can hang out. And even more so, there is a place called ‘suite 200’. I never knew about this until I worked there. You can only go there if you’re invited, which means you’re very famous. For some reason, my keycard had access to this, and I explored it a few times. It’s ridiculous. Original trophies, huge original paintings, etc.
Speaking of trophies - everyone used to ask me where the Knicks championship trophies are - and the truth is, back when the Knicks won it was so long ago, that the NBA trophy was like the Stanley cup and changed hands every year. So…no Knicks championship trophies. However if you go to MSG you’ll notice the defining moments collection, the top moments in MSG history that line the walls of the 2 main concourses. There is one dedicated to the 1970 championship, and it has the eastern conference trophy in it. Now this I can confirm is true - if you examine the trophy you’ll notice that the little basketball player on top is a different hue than the rest of the trophy. That’s because apparently when they were compiling these displays a few years ago, they found the trophy in storage with the basketball man broken off the top of it, so they had to replace it. That’s why you can visibly tell that there is a difference between him and the rest of the trophy, if you really examine it.
Obviously there have been so many huge events at The Garden, I don’t really need to get into that here.
Also if you ever get the chance, visit the 9th floor where the signature suites are located. The coolest memorabilia in the building is up there, including one of those signed 50 greatest lithographs, Patrick Ewing and Wayne Gretzky’s locker, and even the statue of Joe Gans, a legendary African American boxer. This statue has the patina pretty much gone from his outstretched left arm is it was tradition for boxers to tap gloves with Joe for good luck before they took the ring. Now it sits up there, right next to the scale that was in use during the time of the fight of the century featuring Frazier and Ali. They also have an old school ice resurfacer up there, which is pretty cool.
Well, I’m sure there’s a ton that I left out - If you made it this far, you’re a champ.
TL;DR - Boston Garden was originally called Boston Madison Square Garden and was named after the arena in NY. There is only one 'The Garden' and it's super duper important. ;)
Edit - I should have mentioned wrestling. It’s intimately tied to MSG, but really deserves its own thread and I have no more characters!

The Eyes Of Love
It’s that time of year again where the love and passion on Doki Doki Island runs wild! People from all over the seas come to this island to find their one true pleasure in life. Some people come for the world renowned love hotel called “Apaixonante”, known for their very professional workers of “love” that will fulfill your every needs while others travel to Red Rose Blvd., a huge shopping district filled with tons of different shops and cafes for you and you’re beloved to spend time in while eyeing the beautiful rows of bouquets lined down the streets. There even is a beautiful natural hot spring that is infused with “love energy”, making it appear pink! This place is a wonderland...Right?
“Where is Pan!!! He’s been gone for days!!!” Aphrodite angrily yells towards Freyja as she cowers in fear.
“People have been paying for his work but he’s not here to fulfill the role! He’s the only person that can do it too!!! If we lose him...we lose about 80% of our okama fanbase!!! This is bad!!!” Aphrodite shouts as she tugs her hair, pulling out large chunks of it.
“M-maybe y-yy-you can do it!” Freyja says covering up her face in fear of Aphrodite’s anger.
“Also, I cannot find Qetesh at all!!! She’s not even at the casino so where is she?!?!” Aphrodite slaps Freyja’s hands from her face, grabbing onto the collar of her shirt.
“If you’re gonna be a big useless freak...get out of my sight!!!” Aphrodite screams as her terrifying eyes stare into Freyja’s soul. Tears run down her eyes as Aphrodite drops her, giving her the chance to run away. Flopping herself onto her office chair, she rips open one of her drawers, revealing a stash of lollipops. Quickly grabbing her favorite flavor , cherry , she unwraps it and plops it into her mouth.
“Damn...This job gets too stressful...brother please...” Aphrodite mumbles, staring up into the ceiling as she kicks back upon her chair.

Special Landmarks:

• “Apaixonante” Love Hotel

The largest hotel on the Island, Apaixonante is a wonder straight out of a fairy tale. The Castle like Hotel is made from pink sandstone that is a trademark of Doki Doki Island. The luxurious hotel has over 500 guest rooms and 5 large halls for different events/gatherings. The main floor also includes many bars and restaurants for guests that are in the mood for socializing. One of the most popular features of the Hotel is the many theme rooms available for couples to enjoy. Some of the popular ones include themes such as Polynesian, Roman, Safari and Igloo rooms. However there are many more that are less publicly advertised like the Jail or Dungeon themed rooms. Each room is complete with a King sized bed, Jacuzzi tub and lovers package unique to each room’s theme.

• Heated Desire Hot Spring & Spa

This tourist hot spot for rest and relaxation is a delight for all the senses. From it’s immaculate parlor rooms to it’s awe inspiring private baths this hot spring resort has every comfort or treatment a couple could desire. Enjoy a variety of romantic packages that include Massages, Aromatherapy, Facials and more. Take a dip in a private or public bath fed from the Island’s natural hot springs, the naturally occurring minerals have dissolved to make the water naturally pink and is said to be infused with strong “Love Energy”.

• Red Rose Blvd.

Elegant boutiques line the covered galleries of the Red Rose Boulevard. These shops sell all manner of romantic gifts from the Luxury perfume shop Mon Amour to upscale jewelry boutique the Palace Royale. Chic nooks can be found in every corner of this place where even the cheapest miser or the richest playboy can find a suitable gift for their special someone. The roads are paved with rose coloured stones giving the Boulevard is flowery name.

• Golden Pair Casino & Lounge

The Golden Pair is the premier gambling house on Doki Doki Island, it offers hundreds of table games in separate gaming areas. Gaming options include blackjack, baccarat, roulette, craps, and various others. The most popular game on the Island is Doki Doki Poker, the game is played in pairs with the couples having to combine their cards to make the strongest set. For guests who prefer slot machines, there are more than 500 slot machines to choose from all themed to a romantic atmosphere. Even when the casino is busy, it's large enough that you never feel crowded. The chips are shaped in hearts with the colours denoting the value (Green is 100 Beli, Blue is 1,000 Beli, Pink is 10,000 Beli, Red is 100,000 Beli and Gold is 1 Million Beli.) There's also a romantic lounge with a wide range of performers that will never fail to set the mood. Couples can participate in the weekly Karaoke contest to win prizes. The owner of the Golden Pair Qetesh maintains order and keeps the peace at this establishment. She has trained the staff to fuel romantic endeavors while keeping a sharp eye out for trouble makers.

• Crystal Heart Manor

This Manor is the personal residence of Adonis, the owner of this island and one of the most mysterious individuals on the Island. The building is made of limestone with pink sandstone sculptures decorating the exterior. The entire estate is surrounded by a tall stone wall with elegant iron barbs hanging over the edge, making the only point of entrance the crystal gate located on it’s southern edge. The inside of the mansion is rumored to be even more extravagant than it’s exterior but, only those personally selected by Adonis can enter his personal paradise.

• Lover’s Lake

This uniquely heart shaped body of water is located near the Love Hotel “Apaixonante”. It is surrounded by ever-bloom sakura trees, which are a local variety that blooms year round. This gives the lake an atmosphere that is sure to warm the coldest of hearts. The dock nearby provides two person Swan boats available for rent at a very affordable price, which will assure a romantic voyage. Also unique to this lake is a species known as the Doki Doki Carp. This pink carp is attracted to the “love energy” from couples traveling in the boats, they say the truer and purer the love of the individuals the more carp will follow the boat. The current record for a newly wed couple is approximately 100 Carp however most romantic couples can only attract 10-20 of this sensitive animals.

• Love Love Forest

Surrounding the Lover’s Lake is the Love Love Forest. This forest is full of ever-bloom sakura and is the ideal place for couples to get in touch with nature. The forest creatures have evolved over time to blend in with their surrounding and have all turned a pinkish color to better blend in with the sakura blossoms. A nightly event is held called the “Lovers Trial of Courage” where couples are paired off and have to navigate a spooky path by lantern. The spooky atmosphere allows the couple to get closer as they follow the markers to a cabin at the end of the trail. After the trial they can spend the night warm in the cozy cabins. The Okama Love nurse Pan is often found on in the Love Love Forest and has a habit of kidnapping any particularly attractive younger men off to his love den.
(OOC: Please enjoy yourself on this love filled island! You can enjoy all the beautiful landmarks on Doki Doki Island or maybe even tangle yourself in the love nurses’ fiascoes! Don't forget to tag TempNPC!!!)

NPC-List

Map of Doki Doki Island

Part II: In this half of this article, I discuss generic metal coin manufacturers and other options for adding metal currency to your games. Check out Part I for more info about games that include metal coins and coins designed with a specific game in mind.
Edit: I've fixed the image link for the "new" Terraforming Mars cubes. Thanks to u/halfisglassfull for pointing out the error.
Back in 2016, I posted an article under my other username (u/Luke_Matthews) about my obsession with adding metal coins to board games, which you can read here:
Board Games and Metal Coins, An Obsession
What started as a diversion became an obsession, and since that article bloomed into a full-on compulsion. I’ve upgraded over 60 games with unique metal coins and currency, and I’d like to share the current state of this compulsion and what I’ve learned along the way.
It’s such a strange thing, because metal coinage is a purely aesthetic upgrade. They don’t change game mechanics or offer any extension to the gameplay experience. Even so, deluxe editions have proven there’s a market for aesthetic upgrades, and metal coins have grown into one of the most popular.
I have fallen down the rabbit hole of adding unique, thematic coins for each individual game. This approach is not for everyone. If, instead, you’re interested in adding generic coins you can keep aside and use for multiple games, I’ll talk about what sets I think are the best for that purpose at the end of this article.
For now, let’s get on with the show! GAME TITLES ARE LINKS TO PHOTOS. For a more user-friendly image browsing experience, view this post on my website or on BoardGameGeek.
NOTE: There is no way this will be an exhaustive list of all the metal coins available. I’ll talk about coins I have direct personal experience with, as well as make notes of other coins I don’t have and why I don’t have them. There will likely be a lot of coins not included here, and I encourage you to add your own experiences and pictures in the comments.

FANTASY COIN, LLC

Fantasy Coin is one of the first companies I encountered making a range of different coin styles specifically for gaming applications, without tying them to specific games. Of all the coin manufacturers out there, Fantasy Coin are definitely my favorite. Their coins are thick and heavy with fantastic finishes and colors, and come in a wide array of fantasy and sci-fi themes.
Getting ahold of Fantasy Coin’s products can be a bit fraught, though, as their primary source of income tends to be Kickstarter. Their website frequently sells out, and as their stocks dwindle, they’ll run another Kickstarter to replenish. Once one of their Kickstarters ends and ships, they’ll typically have stock which can be ordered directly from their website, but be warned you might have to do a little research to find out when more are available.
They’ve had some logistical problems with a couple of their Kickstarter campaigns, but for the most part they’re really good at fulfilling them. Their latest campaign was really well handled, and I think they’ve done a great job of addressing their past issues. Some previous backers, IMO, go a little overboard blaming them for mistakes, but forgiveness is not a typical trait of spurned backers.
Don’t listen to the haters. Fantasy Coin’s products are genuinely amazing and come at a great price, especially if you get them in bulk from Kickstarter.

Alchemists

I spent a long time trying to decide what coins I’d get for Alchemists. Since it only really requires one denomination, I had a ton of options (the Charterstone coins are a phenomenal choice, FYI). I decided on these coins from FC’s “Magic” set.

Caverna

Caverna’s one of the first games I upgraded with FC coins, and I have WAY too many coins for the game. They’re real nice, though, all from FC’s “Dwarven” set.

Clank!

Originally, these coins resided in my copy of Lords of Xidit. They’re a great, generic fantasy theme, so can go in many games. Once I picked up the Roll Player coins, though, I thought those were a better fit for LoX, so I moved these over to Clank. And they’re a perfect fit!

Five Tribes

This is probably one of my favorite upgrades using FC coins. I couldn’t find any really good, affordable Arabic- or Middle East-themed coins (at the time, there are some now), so I decided to lean into the fantasy side for Five Tribes. The silver coins are from FC’s “Serpent” set, and the golds are from their “Air Elemental” set. I think both work really well as representations of djinn.
Some people complain, when using coins like this for Five Tribes, you can’t hide their denominations. If it’s important to you to do so, I suggest getting either pouches or player screens to keep the coins hidden. However, I’ve never once found open money to have a significant impact on the game, so we just don’t bother.

Lancaster

I was originally planning on putting the old Brass coins into my copy of Lancaster, but when FC launched their latest Kickstarter and I saw their “Nottingham” set, I just couldn’t resists such a perfect thematic match.

Lunarchitects

Lunarchitects doesn’t actually have currency in-game, but one of the other great uses for metal coins is as victory point chits. Lunarchitects has a LOT of VP chits, and I definitely went overboard here, but it’s such a great game and I love these “Sci-Fi” coins from FC.

Nippon

There are actually several different options for Japanese themed coins, including the Yokohama metal coins and Artana’s Japanese set (which you’ll see in the next section). I chose to go with Fantasy Coin’s “Feudal Japan” coins for Nippon, because I just love the way they look.

Race/Roll for the Galaxy

Here’s another couple of games without currency, but for which I’ve replaced the VP chits with metal coins. In this instance, I don’t think I went overboard at all, and these “Credits” coins from FC are just an amazing aesthetic upgrade for two classic games.

Yedo

Yedo is one of my wife’s all-time favorite games, and ranks high in the worker placement genre for me. So, naturally, I bought the same “Feudal Japan” coins I used for Nippon for my copy of Yedo.

ARTANA

While Fantasy Coin is the company you’d turn to for fantastical and sci-fi-themed coins, Artana’s where you go when you’re looking for something with a more historical bent. While they don’t mimic specific real-world coinage, their designs evoke real-world cultures and time periods, which make them a fantastic choice for your average Eurogame. They tend to be lighter and thinner than Fantasy Coin, but not in a bad way. They also have 5 different sizes and finishes, from “Tiny” – which live up to their name – to “Jumbo” which are larger than a US half-dollar.
Artana’s coins used to only be available via Kickstarter, but they’ve since shifted their model to selling through game-bling websites like The Broken Token and Top Shelf Gamer. Since many coin manufacturers still rely on periodic crowd-funding to release new products, Artana’s consistent availability makes them unique.
I have just as many Artana coins as Fantasy Coin, and for good reason: they’re awesome. I’m primarily a Eurogame player so their coins are a thematic match for a lot of games I own. Their price-point is roughly the same as Fantasy Coin – on the lower end of the spectrum, overall – although because they have five different sizes and styles in every coin set, the price point varies depending on what specific coins you buy.

Akrotiri

I’m still genuinely surprised at how perfect Artana’s “Ancient Greek” coins are for Akrotiri. The specific motif perfectly matches the designs in the game, and I couldn’t ask for more.

Archipelago

For Archipelago I wanted coins fitting a 1700’s nautical aesthetic. These are from Artana’s “Pirate Ships” theme. The other coins in the set were a little too “skull and crossbones” for what I wanted (although colonizers ARE just another form of pirate), but I thought these two coins fit the theme really well.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig

I mean, these “Early English Kings” coins aren’t technically thematically appropriate. But I had them and figured I’d toss them in with a game set in 1800’s Bavaria because… well because the game needed some coins.

Concordia

Got a game set in ancient Rome? Get some “Ancient Roman” coins!

Istanbul

Again, near-perfectly themed coins from Artana’s “Persia & Asia Minor” theme. I really like the way these coins look with Istanbul.

Troyes

Artana’s “Middle Ages” theme is great for a game set… in the middle ages. They’re a little more Anglo-Saxon than Frank or Norman, but no one’s ever really going to notice. Ystari games once made coins for Caylus which were a perfect thematic match for Troyes; alas, they are no longer available.

The Voyages of Marco Polo

These are the first Artana coins I ever picked up, from their “Renaissance” theme, and they couldn’t look better in this game.

Yamatai

Really, any of the Japanese-themed metal coins I’ve seen or owned – from the Tokaido coins to Fantasy Coin’s “Feudal Japan” theme – would work well in Yamatai. But as beautiful as this game is, I wanted something with a bit more variety. Artana’s “Japanese” theme fit the bill perfectly.

Giochix Historical Coins

I’m a little torn on the Giochix Historical Coins. On the one hand, they’re nice sizes and weights, and they feel and sound great. On the other hand, they’re not really filling any sort of necessary niche. Artana has the “historical” space covered pretty well, and Fantasy Coin’s selection of SFF themes is pretty universal. If they were going to create specifically thematic coins, I wish they’d have filled some of the holes in this tiny industry, or just gone completely generic, which actually would’ve fit their physicality a little better.
All that said, Giochix did manage to create a couple of themes I found useful, specifically their “Pre-Colombian” theme, which is an area of the world other companies have neglected. It is, however, pretty niche, and I understand why they chose to make more applicable themes for Eurogames.
I only have two minor gripes: First, the shiny finish – while not necessarily bad in and of itself – does make the denominations a little hard to tell apart at a distance. Second, the relief on the faces of the coins is very shallow, looking much more like modern Euros than anything fantastical or historical. The problem this leads to is making it very difficult to differentiate coins from different themes, but if they’re assigned to a specific game this shouldn’t really be an issue. (It’s only an issue for nutty people like me who have this many different coin sets.)
They’re a good price, coming in at about 24¢ (US) per coin, which is on the low end of the scale. Their affordability goes a long way to ameliorate the complaints I have. Now, it’s just a matter of figuring out their availability outside Kickstarter.

Altiplano

There aren’t many coins out there with a South/Central American theme, so when Giochix made their “Pre-Colombian” set, I knew I had to put some in my copy of Altiplano.

Lost Cities: The Board Game

Uh… same.

Heaven & Ale

Okay, so it’s a bit of a stretch to have Giochix’s “Spanish Colonial” set representing Heaven & Ale, a game about beer-brewing monks more likely set in Germany or Belgium, but there were Benedictine monasteries on the Iberian peninsula, so I’m just gonna run with it.

Isle of Skye

“Celtic Apogee”. Can’t be a better fit. As a side note, the metal coins for Clans of Caledonia would also be a great match for Isle of Skye, but I wanted to differentiate the two.

Lorenzo Il Magnifico

This very Italian game deserved some perfectly-themed “Medieval Italian” coinage.

Roman Coins

Since I got these sets in bulk from Giochix’s Kickstarter, I ended up also getting their “Ancient Rome” set. But I have no game to put it in. I would be suitable for Concordia or Trajan or any game set in Ancient Rome, but I already have coins in Concordia, and no other game with a Roman setting at the moment. Here’s a picture anyway.

REAL CURRENCY

Sometimes, fake coins either aren’t the answer or aren’t available. If you can’t find fake coins for your games, the best option might be actual currency, either historical or current. I’ve used real currency in 5 games, so far.
The real problem with acquiring real currency, especially if it’s historical or foreign (I’m in the US), is availability and price. Most of the time you’re not going to find it any cheaper than fake coinage, and getting enough coins in large enough lots to use for board games can sometimes be a chore. If you’re willing to do the extra legwork, though, you can get ahold of some really nice coins.

Ukrainian Kopiyka/Hryvna

When I published the original version of this article, I saw people shortly after talking about Ukrainian coinage for games. I followed through on picking some up, because they are INSANELY cheap in this context, running about 8¢ per coin. Which, incidentally, is massively higher than the exchange rate for some of them, but still massively cheaper than fake coinage. The design is pretty, and is the same across all the kopiykas, and they come in all the standard European denominations.
There’s a problem, though. The 1s and 10s are extremely small, thin, and light. Smaller and thinner than a dime, and significantly lighter. For me, this is a massive issue, for a number of reasons. They’re so small and thin I actually have trouble picking them up, which makes them frustrating to use. But more importantly, they’re not really an aesthetic upgrade from punchboard coins. Every time I used them, I found myself disappointed and just wanting to go back to the cardboard ones.
There is one MASSIVE exception here: the Ukrainian 1 Hryvna coins, which I’ll detail below under “Village”.

Camel Up

I put a set of these in Camel Up, and that’s what I’m using for the pictures. But, honestly, I’m going to replace them very soon.

Village

The unlike the kopiykas, the 1 Hryvna coins are actually pretty fantastic. They’re a little bigger than a quarter, and they’re really beautiful. You’ll have to cope with a very, very Orthodox design, and they’re obviously only good for games with a single denomination. But all those features make them really perfect for Village, a game with a small number of single denomination coins and a church as a major part of the theme!

Le Havre/Le Havre: The Inland Port

I couldn’t find good, fake coins for Le Havre, so I just bought real ones! These are WWII-era aluminum “Emergency Coins” from France, and they’re absolutely fantastic. They’re a little light, being made from aluminum, but they’re beautiful and thematic, even if the time period is a little off.
Beware, though: There are two different kinds of these coins. Some are from the French Republic, occupied in WWII by the Germans but still opposed to them, and some are from Vichy France, a French state who became collaborationists with the Germans. You can tell them apart (both physically and in ideology) by their mottos: The Republic coins say “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite” (or “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”), where the Vichy coins say “Travail, Famille, Patrie” (or “Work, Family, Fatherland”. YEAH).
Don’t get the Nazi-adjacent coins.

Grand Austria Hotel

Good Austrian coins for games are hard to find at a good price. The thematic ones – especially for a game like Grand Austria Hotel – are prohibitively expensive. Granted, it’s not entirely necessary to replace the money tracks in GAH, but I wanted to anyway.
I ended up picking up a bunch of semi-modern Austrian Groschen. They’re a little small, and they might be too modern for the theme, but they’re Austrian and that’s enough for me.

Great Western Trail

I absolutely can’t take credit for this particular idea. I saw a reply on BGG from user TRONOFOTHEDEAD with the idea of using Indian Head Pennies and Buffalo Nickels for Great Western Trail, and I followed suit. I gotta say, I *love* these coins for this game, especially the 2-cent coin as the round marker.
This is a rather expensive upgrade. The bulk of the coins aren’t too bad. The Buffalo Nickels are actually only about 7¢ per coin, but the Indian Head Pennies run about 60¢ each. The two, together, average about 37¢ per coin, which is on the high end, but not terrible.
It’s the 2-cent coin which really breaks things, though. I paid $14 for the 2-cent coin alone, the common price range is for coins in not great shape. To be fair, when shopping for coins like these, you’re rarely going to get coins in decent shape at these prices. This is the cost for what are called “culls”, or coins collectors have separated out as junk and are selling in bulk because they’re not collectible.
But they’re perfect for board games!
As a side note, the metal coins for Montana: Heritage Edition are a near-perfect thematic match for Great Western Trail, if Big Kid Games decides to sell them at retail.

Russian Railroads

I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect upgrade than these. The included coins are clearly modeled after rubles, so real rubles are a great replacement. This set was comparatively expensive, costing me about $18 for 20 coins, but since I only needed those 20 and they were so thematically perfect, I bit the bullet.
The problem, now, is 90’s era rubles are pretty difficult to find. I tried searching for them on eBay (where I got these) and couldn’t find a decent lot.

OTHER GENERIC COINS

These are a couple of examples of other fake coins not specifically designed for board games, but which work well under certain circumstances.

Pachinko Tokens

Pachinko tokens are an absolutely fantastic option for generic coins, especially if you want something vaguely U.S.A. themed. I originally bought a large lot of them for a planned LARP which never materialized, and have since repurposed them for several different games. Almost all pachinko/pachislo tokens are about the same size and weight as a US quarter, and most of them will come with Japanese, vaguely American, or casino/gambling designs. Mine are mostly U.S.A. themed, so I use them in games with a modern Western theme.

No Thanks

No Thanks doesn’t actually have currency, per se, but it does have a set of tokens used for gameplay. My generic gold pachinko tokens fit the bill very well.

Panamax

Finding modern-themed fake coinage is actually rather impossible, so pachinko tokens work really well in modern western settings like Panamax or…

Suburbia

Again, modern Western setting, and nearly thematic coins to go with it. A great addition to Suburbia. At least right up until I get my copy of the Collector’s Edition, which includes bespoke metal coins!

Pirate Dubloons

“Pirate Dubloon” is probably the most ubiquitous theme in fake coinage, both metal and plastic. I got these particular coins on Amazon, for really cheap. They’re about he same size as a US quarter and come in 4 different finishes.
Note: these are the same coins Eagle & Gryphon Games sells for Empires: Age of Discovery, but they’re MUCH cheaper on Amazon and can be obtained in larger quantities.

Libertalia

I don’t have a hell of a lot of pirate-themed games in my collection, so I found the one game they work really well with.

CUSTOM POKER CHIPS

Some games just scream for custom poker chips instead of metal coins, and I can’t help but oblige. I’ve made custom chips both for currency and tokens for games, but I’ve only included pictures of the currency here. Making custom poker chips is actually fairly easy with a set of relatively inexpensive tools. I’ve created a tutorial on how to do it, which you can find HERE. That tutorial also has links for artwork which can be used for printing your own stickers for the games I detail here.

Capital Lux

The square wood “coins” included with Capital Lux, frankly, baffle me. They neither look like gold coins nor match the theme of the game, and for a card game as beautiful as Capital Lux, with stunning art from the always amazing Kwanchai Moriya, they actually detract. So it was a no-brainer for me to design chips for the game.

For Sale

For Sale could easily have been upgraded with metal coins, but something about the punchboard design just called to me for custom poker chips.

NON-COIN CURRENCY

Sometimes a game has some form of currency that – GASP! – isn’t coins. There are still tons of opportunities to upgrade currency like this, though!

Castles of Burgundy

The “Ore” from Stonemaier’s Treasure Chest is a perfect upgrade for the Silverlings in Castles of Burgundy.📷

Lord$ of Vega$

There’s a chance I may replace these with full-size custom poker chips some day, but for right now I love using these mini poker chips in Lord$ of Vega$. These particular chips aren’t available anymore, as far as I know, which is a shame. They’re the only mini poker chips I’ve found modeled after regular chips instead of the plastic, ridged ones, which I viscerally dislike.

Patchwork

I mean, this one’s just obvious, right?

Terraforming Mars

Okay, there are a couple of different sites offering a metal cube upgrade for Terraforming Mars, to replace the metallic plastic cubes included with the game. The upgrade is phenomenal, and it was one of the first things I ordered after getting the game.
Here’s a pic of that set.
But it’s always bothered me that the “gold” cubes in the set are the gold bars from the Stonemaier Treasure Chest instead of actual cubes. I know it’s a piddling thing, but it just seemed a little off.
A friend of mine, Eric, is the biggest Terraforming Mars fanatic I know. My gaming group plays the game a lot, and Eric plays it even more, with multiple groups he joins to play. So it only makes sense he’d be the one crazy enough to actually requisition a new set of metal cubes for Terraforming Mars, ones better matching the style of the game by a) actually having CUBES for the gold, and b) all being different sizes.
Here’s a pic of these new, awesome cubes.
This set is better, IMO, than the ones you can get from The Broken Token**. Eric** plans to make them available via an Etsy page soon, and I’ll update this article with a link as soon as it’s up and running.

DISHONORABLE MENTION

I know I already mentioned the coins for Tokaido’s Collector’s Edition, but before I bought the CE I had these coins for my retail edition. They’re unmitigated garbage.
They’re thin and flimsy and tiny and they don’t sound great or feel particularly good and they’re really not any better than the carboard coins and they’re Chinese and not Japanese and they’re trash.
A pic of these awful coins
I paid $2.47 for 40 coins, shipped, and I got ripped off, honestly.

COINS I DON’T OWN AND WHY

Obviously I’m not going to go into detail here about games I don’t own which include metal coins. I mentioned several sets in the Bespoke section above. But here are some details on some metal coins made by other companies and why I haven’t added them to any of my games.
The main reason I don’t own any of these is price. I was willing to spend the extra bucks for game-specific coins for LoW and 7 Wonders, and maybe my set of Russian Rubles, because the theming made it (sort of) worth the extra cost (I’ll be honest: I own and love those coins, but probably wouldn’t pay the price again. Maybe. I think?). Most of the coins below cost nearly the same (75₵-$1 per coin), but aren’t specifically themed for a board game.
In a lot of cases, getting enough coins for a board game involves multiple “sets” – as the manufacturers define them – so you don’t run short during play. With these manufacturers, multiple sets just end up being too damned spendy. That being said, the coins they make do look fantastic. The designs are really good, but they’ll need to come down in price before I’d be willing to buy some.

Legendary Metal Coins by Drawlab

The designs here are really great. I contemplated getting a set of their Arabic theme for Five Tribes, but I couldn’t justify the cost. Even in bulk, at their cheapest offering, they’re still 70₵ per coin. Most games, in my experience, require 50-60 coins to ensure you don’t run out at higher player counts, which rounds out to about $35-$48 for a set (depending on how you acquire them). That’s a little above my top end; half-again to double what I paid for the coins from Fantasy Coin and Artana.

Campaign Coins

Campaign Coins are really beautiful, and have the most “high fantasy” feel of any I’ve found. I actually considered getting sets from them for Lords of Xidit, simply because they match better thematically. However, at their cheapest, they’re about identical in price to the Legendary coins, so just out of my range.

Minion Games

Minion Games doesn’t have a wide variety, with only two different themes: “Metal Dragon Coins” and “Futuristic Metal Coins” (the coins for Hegemonic), and they range in price from 70₵ to 90₵ per coin. Which is, frankly, absurd.
They’re cool looking coins, but they’re absolutely not worth the price.

Moedas & Co

The only reason I don’t have experience with Moedas’s coins is because I just haven’t ordered any yet. They have some very awesome bespoke coins for specific games, including the giants like Terra Mystica, Great Western Trail, Lisboa, and more. Their prices are right in line with companies like Artana and Fantasy Coin, and their coins look genuinely great.
They’re a Brazilian company and their website doesn’t handle currency conversion, so to place an order in North America you have to e-mail them directly, which does add a layer of difficulty. It’s not something I’m at all averse to doing – the owner replies occasionally on BGG and other users have posted positively about their products and service – I just haven’t done it yet.

Never Stop Tops & Coins

Again, gorgeous, but expensive. Not quite as expensive as some of the others here, but still just outside what I would consider affordable. And, honestly, I haven’t seen any recent information about this company, so they may not be making coins anymore.

Shire Post Mint

Shirepost’s coins aren’t really viable for this kind of application. They primarily do licensed coins (Lord of the Rings, Kingkiller Chronicle, A Song of Ice and Fire, etc.), and they’re not built for bulk orders. They’re designed to be a novelty, and are wildly expensive, coming in at well in excess of $1 per coin. So, they’re cool, but not really worth it for board gaming.

Rare Elements Foundry

Rare Elements Foundry is one of the first companies I ever encountered making metal fantasy coins. Unfortunately, they are ungodly expensive for the most part. Their coins run around $22-$25 for a set of 10, pushing them up to and even beyond Shirepost’s prices. Their coins are very beautiful, but not feasible in quantity.

BEST GENERIC COINS

Here’s the thing: I love upgrading the coins in my games, and I think metal coins add a genuinely massive aesthetic boost. They’re absolutely my favorite type of upgrade. BUT, I also understand buying separate, thematic coin sets for a ton of different games isn’t for everyone. You might want metal coins, but would rather just have one or two generic sets you can use across multiple games whenever you play. So here are my opinions on the best coins for that purpose:
Honorable Mention – Poker Chips
Poker chips, either generic or custom, are a great option. They’re frequently cheaper than metal coins, and you can get them in a bajillion different styles with or without denominations. But they’re not metal, and that’s an issue. They’re a fantastic option, though.
Honorable Mention – Pachinko Tokens
Granted, pachinko tokens have a weird “theme” and they look more modern than thematic, but honestly they’re great coins and you just can’t find a better deal. They come so cheap and in such large quantities I have to mention them here as an option for the budget-conscious.
Honorable Mention – Scythe Coins
The Scythe coins are absolutely fantastic quality and, as I mentioned before, are almost so thematic they’re themeless. If you want a set of coins with a little extra flair and don’t think their odd theming will clash with your games, you absolutely can’t go wrong here.

BEST SINGLE-DENOMINATION COINS – CHARTERSTONE COINS

Stonemaier does it again with their Charterstone metal coins. You absolutely cannot get a better set of coins for games with a single denomination. Some examples of games these coins would work great in are Lancaster, Russian Railroads, Villages of Valeria, Alchemists, and Village. But, basically any game where you only need 1s, get yourself a set of these.
Charterstone Coins

BEST OVERALL GENERIC COINS – SEAFALL COINS

The clear winner here are the Seafall coins from Plaid Hat Games. They may be rather generic, but their design is beautiful, and they’d make a fantastic addition to any game you’d want to use them with. They’re a tiny bit expensive at about 40¢ per coin, but there’s over 100 coins in the set and if you’re only buying them once, it’s an absolute no-brainer.
They’re a great size and weight, and the colors and finishes are unmatched. I really like how distinguishable the colors are on these coins, and I absolutely love the satin finish because it keeps glare low and amps up the color variance, making the coins easy to tell apart from across the table.

If you can only get one set of coins for all your board games, make it this set.

METAL COINS FOR BOARD GAMES, A GEEKLIST

I acquire new coins as I get new games, and sometimes coins change homes when a game leaves my collection. To track and show these changes, I’ve started THIS GEEKLIST on BGG. Do you have metal coins in your collection? Do you want to show them off? Please add your own pics and descriptions to that GeekList! I know my collection is not comprehensive, and the more pictures and suggestions for coins and they games they work with would be incredible!
Thanks for spending the time to peruse my compulsion for metal coins in board games! I hope you’ve enjoyed the pictures and commentary. If you have metal coins of your own and would like to show them off, I’d love to see them added to the GeekList, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.
If you want to talk about metal coins, or DIY upgrades, or board games in general, you can always find me on Twitter @PixelartMeeple, on Instagram @pixelartmeeple, on BGG at PixelartMeeple, and on my website www.pixelartmeeple.com! You can also hear my (much more succinct) thoughts on games on The Five By podcast.
Thanks for reading, and happy gaming!

Introduction
This article is the first part of a 3-part series. Part 1 will discuss why a man’s purposes are the most important things in his life and why they also bring him the most pleasure. Part 1 also discusses how a man’s confidence pushes him towards his purposes and anxiety pushes him away from his purposes. Part 2 will discuss how relationships are a melding of purposes. Part 3 will discuss how a man can manage his ego to maximize the pleasure he receives from pursuing his purposes and minimize his anxiety.
Purpose and Emotion
The most important thing in a man’s life are the purposes he chooses to pursue, and the key to a successful and happy life is choosing your purposes with your rational mind rather than your emotions. If you do not consciously and rationally articulate your purposes to yourself, your subconscious emotions will determine your purposes, and emotion without rational guidance usually leads to ruin. Worse yet, if you do not consciously and rationally determine your purposes yourself, others will determine them for you, often by manipulating your emotions.
All human emotions and activity can be conceptualized in terms of purposes. Everything you do is directed to some purpose, whether you realize it or not. If you are watching TV, eating Cheetos, and scratching your balls, your purposes are watching TV, eating Cheetos, and scratching your balls. The question is not whether you have purposes, but what your purposes are.
Discussions of “purpose” often become abstract and meaningless, so I seek here to link purpose to fundamental biological emotions. Human evolved to feel “pleasure” and positive emotion to motivate us to seek things that help in our survival and reproduction and “pain” and negative emotions to avoid purposes that will lead to us harm. Positive emotions include the desire for food, sex, and affection, while negative emotions include grief, shame, guilt, depression and anxiety. Positive emotions usually fill us with energy and enthusiasm to motivate us to move, while negative emotions cripple us to prevent us from moving. But every emotion serves some purpose, and the key to a healthy and happy life is not to repress or kill your emotions, but to put each emotion in its proper place so that they work in harmony for your overall good.
Our rational mind is a much weaker than our emotions, and is often overwhelmed, hijacked, and tricked by emotion. The only thing that can defeat an emotion is a stronger emotion, so the primary responsibility of your rational mind is not to conquer your emotions, but to order your emotions properly so that your “higher” emotions predominate over your lower ones.
Positive emotion
The biological systems underlying positive emotion can be summarized using a familiar quote: “life is a journey, not a destination.”
The primary brain chemical that regulates positive emotion is a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Dopamine is released every time we do something pleasurable: when you eat a tasty meal, snort a line of cocaine, or have sex. You also feel dopamine when you experience “higher” pleasures like acceptance by the tribe, love, affection, and the joy of accomplishing a goal or helping somebody. But strangely, most dopamine is released “on the way” to achieving the pleasurable goal, rather than after we attain the goal itself.
Most people think of pleasure as a destination. You see (or conceptualize) a pleasurable goal, you take steps to achieve that goal, and you feel pleasure AFTER you achieve the goal. I call the pleasure you feel after you achieve some pleasurable goal “destination pleasure.”
But the journey to the pleasurable thing is stronger than arriving at the destination. When you see (or conceptualize) a pleasurable goal and take steps to achieve that pleasurable goal, you feel pleasure on the journey to the pleasurable goal. I call this feeling “journey pleasure.” As Artie Lange said, “the best part of doing cocaine is going to your dealer to get it.” The excitement and enthusiasm you feel on the way to something your subconscious thinks will be pleasurable is much stronger and longer-lasting than the destination pleasure you feel when you actually consumer that thing. This is why I consider journey pleasure to be a superior and “higher” pleasure.
The superiority of journey pleasure makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective. Humans need to go get food, find shelter, and have sex, but evolution doesn’t care if we feel pleasure after we achieve those things. Evolution is more concerned with getting us to those things in the first place, which is why we are wired to feel most of our pleasure as we move towards the goal rather than after we get it. We did not evolve to rest on our laurels and celebrate after getting something we want. Instead, we evolved to immediately want to go get the next thing.
We have all experienced this on some level. We have all won some championship, completed some final exam, scored with some hot girl, or achieved some other goal, only to find ourselves underwhelmed and feeling empty after we achieve the thing we thought we wanted. As George Bernard Shaw famously said, “there are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.” This is because journey pleasure is much stronger than destination pleasure, and once the journey is over the destination pleasure feels relatively weak and empty.
But make no mistake: journey pleasure only exists when the journey leads to destination pleasure. If there is no pot of gold at the end of the journey, our subconscious mind will not generate the dopamine necessary to motivate us. Our brain is a pleasure-seeking machine, and if there is no pleasure involved we simply will not pursue something, no matter how noble or important the goal. We are animals, not angels. It is just a happy coincidence that pursuing noble and important goals sometimes brings us pleasure. The brain’s motivation system is somewhat paradoxical: even though we are motivated by destination pleasure, we feel most of our pleasure on the way to that destination pleasure, so we often don’t even care about the destination pleasure once we get to it. Billionaires work 80-hour weeks to make a fortune, only to give the fortune away after they have receive it. They don’t care about the money (they have more than they could ever use) – they love the game. Nevertheless, if there is no fortune or other attractive prize at the end of the journey, billionaires would not be motivated to work 80-hour weeks in the first place.
Human beings will only do something if we feel like there will be some payoff in the end or if we are afraid of some worse outcome. A child will only do his homework if he fears punishment or if he genuinely believes he will receive some worthwhile reward for doing it, either in the short term or in the long term. Similarly, as you move through life, you will only be motivated to work hard if you believe your work will lead to something. That “something” can be money, developing your skills, creating something new and valuable, or helping people. Ideally, your work will pay off in all of those ways.
The difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that successful people see their life as leading towards some higher purpose, even when things are going badly. Even when they do something that sucks, they are building towards something higher: they are building their resume, developing skills, saving money, learning lessons, meeting people, etc… Unsuccessful people feel like no matter what they do, they will never get to the promised land, which is why they are not motivated to work hard today. Successful people run towards a goal; unsuccessful people run on a treadmill.
Journey Pleasure and Emotional Stability
Journey pleasure is superior to destination pleasure because it is stronger, lasts over a longer period of time, and does not require external “things” to be satisfied. Destination pleasure only lasts for the brief moment while you consume the pleasurable thing: you feel destination pleasure while you eat the cake, have sex, or hug your friend, but the pleasure disappears a short time after and you need some external thing to give you pleasure again. Journey pleasure, on the other hand, lasts for as long as you are working towards your goal, so you can feel it anytime and anywhere because it is primarily mental. If you are building your business, you can feel journey pleasure as you work, as you eat lunch, and even as you have a few beers with your friends to wind down, because all of those activities are taking you towards your goal.
Journey pleasure is required for emotional stability and rationality. Humans are pleasure-seeking creatures, and we cannot think rationality if we are chasing one brief pleasure after another. But journey pleasure satiates our desire for pleasure, and once we have a consistent source of journey pleasure we can make rational, long-term plans. Even people that enjoy journey pleasure need to feed their lower desires occasionally, but because their higher pleasures are satiated all of their thoughts and emotions are not directed towards satisfying their lower pleasures.
Purpose routines
Your brain constantly creates maps of the world based on your purposes to determine where pleasure and threat exist, as they are defined by your purposes. Your brain creates a spatial map of your immediate surroundings, coloring what you believe to be indicators of pleasure and threat with emotion so you are drawn or repelled by those indicators. Your brain also creates a more abstract map of your life, marking pleasures and threats that may occur in the future as you pursue your purposes. To see this spatial map right now, just look around – what you see is not necessarily reality but a map of the world that your brain created, with sources of pleasure and threat (as you understand them) emphasized by your brain to draw your attention. Similarly, you can “feel” the abstract map by thinking about your future: if you think about the upcoming week you will feel good about the pleasurable things you think will happen and anxiety about the shitty things you think will happen. Interestingly, your spatial map and your more abstract map are both created by the same part of your brain – the hippocampus.
To navigate these maps, your brain creates what I call “purpose routines.” A purpose routine is a set of procedures and rules designed to lead you to a certain goal, like a computer program. You can learn purpose routines with your conscious mind, but after you do it a few times it becomes subconscious and executable with little to no conscious thought. A simple purpose routine is walking downstairs to get something from the fridge, tying your shoe, or brushing your teeth. Purpose routines can also be more complicated – drafting a routine letter to a client, repairing an HVAC unit, or driving to work. Experienced doctors can even perform delicate surgery almost on autopilot because they have done it so many times. Sometimes your conscious mind even forgets the instructions to a purpose routine, but your subconscious mind can still do it.
We need subconscious purpose routines to function because we cannot consciously think about every single little thing we are doing. Our conscious mind can only process around 5 to 7 pieces of information at one time, but our subconscious mind can process much more. Most of our actions at any time are purpose routines running on autopilot. If we learn to do something in the wrong way, our brain might lock that defective purpose routine away in our subconscious, making it difficult for our conscious mind to reprogram it. The subconscious nature of purpose routines helps explain why sometimes very talented people are terrible teachers – their skills are locked away as purpose routines, so they cannot explain to another person what exactly they are doing. Purpose routines also explain why quack pick-up artist instructors often fail to communicate their abilities to their students – much of what we consider to be charm, charisma, and “alpha” behavior is an automatic expression of our purpose routines, and it is very difficult to consciously articulate what exactly those behaviors are.
Your brain learns to associate purpose routines with pleasure so, for example, if you have enjoyed snorting cocaine a few times, your brain will learn to associate the steps of snorting a line of cocaine with pleasure. Even seeing a line of cocaine or going somewhere you snorted cocaine may cause your brain to release dopamine, because it is anticipating the destination pleasure at the end of the journey it thinks it is on. Purpose routines help explain why addiction is so difficult to overcome – your brain is a pleasure-seeking missile, so whenever it feels bad, bored, or eager to do something (essentially, a lack of pleasure), it will automatically start running purpose routines it knows will lead to its drug of choice without your conscious mind even realizing. This is why addicts often need to consciously and carefully monitor their behavior.
Because your brain relies on your purpose routines to obtain pleasure, it is all the more important to consciously determine your purposes. Most peoples’ subconscious minds’ are littered with garbage purpose routines they automatically run to whenever they want pleasure: video games, drugs, alcohol, wasting time on the internet, etc… Whether we realize it or not, our brain is constantly seeking pleasure, and if we are not directing what pleasure it seeks, it will probably seek the lowest, cheapest pleasures that will ultimately lead us to ruin.
Anxiety
The key to happiness, therefore, seems simple: pick a few good, positive, emotionally attractive purposes, pursue those purposes, collect journey pleasure along the way, and live happily ever after. Why then, are so many people miserable?
The main obstacle to journey pleasure is anxiety, which is a subconscious mechanism designed by evolution to help you pick which purpose to pursue. Animals and humans feel anxiety when 1) the subconscious brain believes there is a threat or anomaly on the way to the purpose it is seeking and/or 2) the subconscious brain is faced with multiple purposes that seem equally appealing. When faced with either of these situations, the anxiety circuit 1) floods you with negative emotion to make you freeze and stop progressing along the path you were on and 2) switches your mind into “information gathering” mode so that you can figure out which purpose to pursue. The more important the goal and the bigger the threat, anomaly, or conflict between goals, the stronger the anxiety. To our brains, a threat or an anomaly is anything that makes us feel like we are on the wrong path, either because it will cause us to not achieve the goal, or worse.
Anxiety is the opposite of journey pleasure. We feel journey pleasure only when we see a clear path to the goal, but we feel anxiety when we see obstacles and threats on the way to the goal. Our anxiety decreases when we feel journey pleasure, and our journey pleasure decreases when we feel anxiety. Both emotions are necessary: we need journey pleasure to motivate ourselves to pursue the things we need, but we also need anxiety so that we don’t run into dangerous situations. When our journey pleasure outweighs our anxiety, we go for the goal, but when our anxiety is stronger, we stay frozen. Journey pleasure is the cure to anxiety, but to feel journey pleasure we must feel like we can overcome the threats and obstacles on the way to our purposes.
Anxiety is generally stronger than journey pleasure, and with good reason. If a mouse sees a piece of cheese guarded by a cat, it should not pursue the cheese because the reward for getting the cheese is a little pleasure, but the consequence of getting caught by the cat is death. Therefore, when weighing the journey pleasure and anxiety of a particular course of action, our brain puts much more weight on anxiety. This means that humans are extremely risk-averse and our default answer to any new adventure is “no.”
Scientifically speaking, anxiety is different from fear. Fear is the “fight or flight” feeling we get when we are actually in the presence of the threat, whereas anxiety is the feeling of paralysis we get when we think there MIGHT be a threat. A mouse who will not walk into a cage because it smells cat odor feels anxiety, whereas a mouse that actually sees a cat and starts running from it feels fear. Anxiety becomes fear if we feel like the threat has actually arrived, and people with very bad anxiety often have panic attacks, which is a fear response. When most people say “fear” they really mean anxiety, but it is important to understand this distinction, because fear is often an important motivator, whereas anxiety is often a hinderance, as I will explain later.
Finally, many kinds of anxiety exist: social anxiety which views high status members of the tribe as a threat; separation anxiety, which views distance from the tribe as a threat; obsessive/compulsive disorder, which views a lack of order and hygiene as a threat, etc… To simplify this article, I simply use the word “anxiety” to refer to all of these emotions.
Anxiety and Purpose Routines
Just as our subconscious mind tags certain purpose routines as “pleasurable” so we pursue them, it also tags others as “threat” or “obstacle” so we avoid them. For example, if you put your hand on a hot stove and burn it, your brain will subconsciously associate “putting your hand on a hot stove” with “threat” and strike you with anxiety if you start to do it again. Even if you consciously decide to put your hand on a hot stove because somebody offered you a million dollars to do it, your subconscious mind will flood you with negative emotion and freeze your muscles so you do not do it. Moving your hand to the stove will feel like swimming through molasses because your underlying biological systems will be doing everything they can to stop you.
Our brain uses anxiety for memory and map building because we need to know where not to go, both spatially in our immediate surroundings and more abstractly in our life. This is partly why drugs that reduce anxiety, like marijuana, alcohol, and Xanax also impair your memory. Anxiety is literally responsible for building the world we experience, but as we will see, anxiety can create a distorted view of the world.
The brain’s process of painting certain purpose routines as threat is useful because it helps us automatically avoid dangerous situations without even consciously thinking about them. We do this every single day with thousands of potential threats. But anxiety tries to do a thorough job of documenting all of our threats so it often registers false positives. These false positives occur when 1) your brain subconsciously thinks something is a threat or obstacle when it is really not, 2) your brain subconsciously thinks something is a threat or obstacle when in reality you have the ability to overcome it, or 3) your brain associates a purpose routine with a threat or obstacle that will not be there in the future. Sometimes your brain does all of this at once.
For example, imagine you go bowling for the first time and get stabbed at the bowling alley. In that case, your brain may associate “bowling” or “going to the bowling alley” with “threat” and make you feel anxiety the next time you consider going bowling, no matter where the bowling alley is or who is there. But getting stabbed is not a regular or inherent part of bowling, so the brain’s association of “bowling alley” with “threat” is wrong and counterproductive.
Now imagine how many false positives your brain has created since your childhood and how many possible paths your brain has subconsciously marked as forbidden without your consent or realization. Most peoples’ subconscious minds are full of paths that have been wrongly labeled as negative, and these paths accumulate to form complex emotional and belief systems that cripple us. This mechanism often operates subconsciously without us even knowing what is happening: we just “feel bad” when we leave our comfort zone, and we don’t know why. Anxiety may manifest itself in many different ways: paralysis, endless rumination that goes nowhere, listlessness, a desire to procrastinate, hesitancy, timidity, laziness, a tendency to become distracted, a “weird” feeling you cannot explain, a feeling of pending doom, “rational” arguments as to why you should do something else, etc… Anxiety will use any trick it can find to make you stop pursuing the goal, including “rational” reasons that you cannot stop thinking about. Sometimes those reasons are laughably stupid, and sometimes they are solid and should be taken into account. It is your job to figure out which is which.
Anxiety does not just try to make us pick a different path than the one we are considering, it often causes us to not consider certain purposes at all. Most people never even consider following their dreams because their brain kills those thoughts before they even make it to their conscious mind. Most people live in a world of invisible walls they create for themselves. Most people never leave their narrow “comfort zone” because their brain subconsciously convinces them they will fail. I strongly suspect this is also partly why people get “stuck in their ways” and more closed minded as they get older: there has simply been more time for negativity to accumulate in their mind.
Modern society exacerbates this problem. The anxiety circuit is a primitive circuit designed to react to simple threats in the jungle, not abstract, complex “threats” like an emotionally unstable girlfriend, a shitty job market, or other complex changes and challenges that we face in the modern world. The media and entertainment industry are also constantly trying to scare us into thinking that everything is a threat. Most people know the media and entertainment industry lie and fearmonger, but if this programming only works 10% of the time on us, that is still a ton of irrational anxieties that are now part of our subconscious programming.
To make matters worse, anxiety often hijacks our “rational” mind and creates false beliefs to match our garbage emotions. The world is infinitely complicated, which means that you can confabulate “facts” to support almost any decision you make or belief you hold, and this is exactly what your mind does when it really wants to pursue a certain purpose (or not pursue a purpose).
For example, imagine somebody grows up in an environment where their friends, family, and society constantly tell them that it is very hard or impossible for the “little guy” to get ahead. That person’s brain will subconsciously associate the purpose routine of “working hard to make money” with “insurmountable obstacles and threats.” If you asked them if it was possible for the “little guy” to get ahead, they would “rationally” explain to why it was not. This person may even use true facts to make their argument, but they would only do so by ignoring all the other facts that contradicted their argument.
Of course, this person will never become rich because every time they do anything to make progress along that path, their subconscious mind will cause them to feel anxiety and do something else instead. Even his conscious mind will often sabotage him, because it has been subconsciously programmed by his emotions to form a series of false beliefs about the world. In this way, his emotions, actions, and beliefs will form a vicious cycle that will make it impossible for him to become rich.
The solution to anxiety and negative purpose routines is not always to ignore them and plow ahead. Anxiety serves an evolutionary purpose, and your subconscious mind can store and quickly access much more information about threats than your conscious mind can. Sometimes you get a “bad feeling” because something really is a threat, even though your conscious mind cannot articulate exactly why. Just because anxiety sometimes produces false positives does not mean that all anxiety is a false positive. Ignoring anxiety will deprive you of an extremely rich source of information and potentially expose you to danger.
Instead of just ignoring your anxiety, you should rationally analyze it and determine whether the “threat” you feel is real or not. If I get a bad feeling about something, I try to articulate to myself in words what is causing that bad feeling. For example, if I feel anxiety about a business deal I try to figure out if there is a real threat, or if I am just afraid of the unknown. Unfortunately, for people with lots of purpose routines that have been polluted negatively, it will take a long time to “clean” your purpose routines that have been wrongly polluted.
Anxiety is not the only negative emotion that colors our thoughts: guilt, shame, depression, jealousy, also hijack our purpose routines and beliefs. These other negative emotions mix with anxiety to create a terrible mixture of false beliefs, falsely tainted purpose routines, and constant negative thoughts and emotions. Cleaning this mess is extremely difficult because our false beliefs and purpose routines layer on top of each other over the course of years, so to “fix” ourselves we must unwind each layer with our conscious mind, reprogram our mind to see it as positive, and then move to the next layer. This process can be very difficult and time-consuming, which is part of the reason you should not bother with damaged women.
The Unknown
As our brain builds maps of the world and purpose routines to navigate those maps, it must deal with the fact that much of the world is simply unknown to us. The unknown contains the two main things which cause anxiety: 1) potentially infinite threats and 2) infinite potential paths. Our brain needs to know which path to take, so it runs the regular anxiety program when faced with the unknown: we freeze and slowly try to gather information so we can figure out which path to follow.
The Bible says that the human desire for knowledge of the universe is a result of anxiety. When Eve was faced with threat for the first time (the snake), she felt anxiety and ate of the tree of knowledge of good and bad (evil is a mistranslation) so she could “become like God.” Eve probably desired to become God because she faced threat for the first time, felt unsafe, and wanted to defeat that threat. She then brought her anxiety to Adam and convinced him to eat the forbidden fruit as well. This was history’s first shit test, which Adam failed. Gaining knowledge of good and bad did not make Adam and Eve gods: instead, they became even more fearful.
Aristotle said that the highest and most noble pleasure for man is the desire for knowledge. But the Bible says that knowledge of good and bad (pleasure and threats) is useless if you do not have the courage to actually confront and defeat those threats. Without that courage, gathering more information will cause you to only become more anxious because now you know about more threats. When Adam and Eve gained knowledge of good and bad, they became afraid of everything. And interestingly, the first “threat” that Adam and Eve recognized was their own sexuality.
I think the Bible is correct. It is true that one of our strongest emotions is the desire for knowledge, but that desire is caused by anxiety. We gather information so we can keep ourselves safe from threat and figure out what to do, but information gathering often just makes us more anxious. Anxiety-induced information gathering is a useful tool for animals exploring a physical environment, but it is less useful for humans trying to navigate the abstract map of their life. If we freeze and try to “gather information” to determine what to do next in our life, we may stay frozen forever because the information we need may never come, and even if it does come, we may not have the courage to actually face the threats on our path. Sometimes in life you need to just go for it and leap into the unknown, and sometimes you need to do so without having adequate information. Many people stricken with anxiety endlessly ruminate and never come to a conclusion because they do not have the information to decide what to do next or because they know the right path but ignore it because they see the threats on the way.
At the same time, the unknown can contain potentially infinite pleasure, so we have a deep and powerful fascination with the unknown and the transcendent. No animal can survive without venturing into the unknown, so we evolved to want to explore the unknown and figure out what is going on in there. We always want to go beyond what we know, make the unknown “known,” and then go further into the unknown. In fact, the journey pleasure we get from venturing into the unknown is the strongest type of journey pleasure possible, because all the pleasure in the “known” world is finite, but the pleasure in the unknown is potentially infinite.
The strongest pleasure a human being can feel is the thrill of venturing into the unknown to create a future transcendent reality. Humans evolved to create things to guarantee ourselves and others pleasure in the future. But once our creations give us an easy path to pleasure, instead of enjoying it, we wish to venture into the unknown again. Humans inherently desire transcendence – the burning desire to go “beyond” whatever we have. This emotion is impetus for the human race’s insatiable desire to explore, innovate, and conquer, but as we will see, this desire is also the death knell for many friendships and romantic relationships.
We must venture into the unknown consciously and voluntarily, so we can create a path through it that reaches the pleasure but keeps us safe. Too much unknown overwhelms and cripples us because we cannot carve paths through it quickly enough to get to our goals. Too much order, we get bored. Humans literally evolved to feel best when exactly on the border of “chaos and order” as Jordan Peterson describes it. Similarly, “flow” occurs when we do something that lies just outside of our ability.
This desire to make order out of chaos is one of the strongest feelings that human beings can have. Humans love to find patterns in randomness, which is why we love music. When we hear a pattern in a song two times, we get a quick jolt of dopamine if we hear it a third time. However, it is also this desire to find patterns that causes people to become addicted to gambling or make stupid investments in the stock market. When the blackjack table or the stock market changes in a way we feel is a pattern, we feel like that pattern will continue, which causes us to bet on it. But casinos and the stock market are not designed to follow a pattern, so betting on the pattern will cause you to lose money. In fact, I strongly suspect that casinos and the stock market are purposely designed to act randomly or in the opposite of the expected pattern, so that sophisticated investors and casino owners can bilk poor saps that feel like they have found a pattern.
Although humans’ strongest desire is to venture into the unknown, most people cannot do so because they are crippled by anxiety. As we will learn later, anxiety is alleviated by the alpha male.
The Dark Side of the Unknown
Although anxiety is always difficult to contend with, anxiety caused by the unknown is particularly crippling because your rational mind cannot help you. Your rational mind is an information processing machine, and can evaluate known threats or obstacles with information it previously gathered. But with no information our rational mind cannot help, which is why our emotions often take over when faced with the unknown. We also have no purpose routines that we can rely on for pleasure when faced with the unknown, so we are at the mercy of our negative emotions.
Most people that have chronic anxiety are generally anxious of the unknown, not specific, identifiable threats. People with anxiety disorders often have too much unknown coming at them from all sides and cannot create paths through it fast enough. Their boss is an unpredictable asshole, their girlfriend is unstable, their friends are shitty, their own behavior creates more problems for them that it solves, and worst of all, they are simply unprepared for all the problems the world throws at them. The more unknown they face, the more they are crippled with paralysis, so the less progress they make, so the more unknown they are faced with. It becomes a vicious cycle.
No situation is ever completely unknown. Most situations we contend with are a mix of known and unknown elements, so our anxiety of the unknown can latch onto real “facts” to justify our paralysis. Anxiety never says “don’t move forward because you fear the unknown and you’re a pussy.” Instead, it says “you should not move forward because of reasons X, Y, and Z,” and those reasons will sound perfectly rational and logical.
Fear
It is important to know the difference between fear and anxiety because fear, if harnessed correctly, can be an extremely powerful motivator.
Our subconscious mind will try to seek the clearest and easiest paths to pleasure, which often lead to things like drugs, pornography, and video games. Almost all higher purposes have at least some threat associated with them, and a purpose tinged with even a little threat may cause our subconscious mind to push us to take an easier path. Negative emotions like anxiety are generally stronger than positive emotions like journey pleasure, so we will give up on a positive reward like journey pleasure if there is even a little anxiety associated with it. This is why most people primarily chase lower pleasures rather than higher ones.
One way to force yourself to take the right path is to use fear. Fear is one of our strongest emotions, if not THE strongest emotion. Fear is even stronger than anxiety because fear indicates there is a currently present threat that will kill or destroy you if you do not immediately fight or run, whereas you feel anxiety when there is a potential, but yet unrealized threat. We will gladly run down a path littered with potential threats if there is an actual threat chasing us down that path. In ancient times the Roman army would punish disobedient, lazy, and timid soldiers so harshly that it was famously said that Roman troops were more afraid of their commanders than the opposing armies, which is why the Roman army was so courageous and successful on the battlefield.
Our motivation is lowest when we see a threat blocking our way to the goal. It is highest when we see a clear path to the goal, and our fear is behind us, pushing us towards the goal. Therefore, if you are feeling unmotivated, or feeling motivated to do the wrong thing, you should create fear for yourself, either by focusing your thoughts and emotions on the consequences of not doing the right thing or by creating an abstract fear for yourself, like the fear of God. Without fear, you are prone to chase lower, easier pleasures rather than higher, more difficult pleasures.
Humans place disproportionate weight on pleasures and pains that will occur in the short term, and we wrongly discount pleasures and pains that may occur in the long term. If I have strong pleasure available to me now, but the pain associated with consuming that easy pleasure will not occur until much later, my emotions will incline me towards the easy pleasure now. This is all the more prevalent when the later pain is abstract and difficult to conceptualize. For example, if ignore my training to chase easy pleasure now, I will not see the pain of that decision until I lose the championship game, which may not occur until many months from now. To motivate myself to train hard, I bring that future pain to the present.
I am not saying that one should constantly feel the emotion of fear. The flight or fight response that fear produces is incredibly damaging and stressful on your body, and evolved to only be invoked in emergencies and for a brief period of time. If you have ever been genuinely afraid, like in a fight or a car accident, you know you cannot sustain that emotion for a long period of time. The fear that motivates is a rational understanding the short and long-term consequences of not pursuing the correct purpose, not an emotional response. For example, my industry is very competitive, and I know that if I do not work hard some upstart will take the top spot from me, just as I took the top spot in the past from the previous winners that became complacent. This is the same “fear” that causes me to not text and drive at the same time.
Arrogance and laziness are the result of too much unhealthy anxiety and not enough healthy fear. Arrogance comes from enjoying the pleasure that high status brings, and laziness comes from fear of the unknown. Arrogant lazy people enjoy feeling high status but fear the unknown, so they lie to themselves and others that their current purpose routines are good enough. But the world is constantly changing and the unknown is constantly encroaching, so you will eventually be defeated if you do not venture into it. A humble person doesn’t enjoy the pleasure of high status – he reaches for a higher pleasure – the pleasure of venturing forth into the unknown, knowing he will have to change his purpose routines to defeat whatever may lay therein.
Fear should not be your greatest motivator. Your strongest motivator should be the journey pleasure that comes from pursuing a grand purpose. But everybody is prone to becoming lazy and arrogant at some point, especially after we have accomplished something, so it is beneficial to have the ability to scare yourself to get back on track when necessary. Threat constantly surrounds us, and anxiety makes us reluctant to face that threat, so we sometimes need a stronger fear to force us to fight that threat.
Most people in the modern world are motivated by fear, not by any grand purpose. They may enjoy some aspects of their jobs, but the main thing pushing them to wake up and go to work in the morning is the fear of losing their job, becoming homeless, and being rejected by their tribe, whatever that is. Journey pleasure is a rare and delicate flower that is hard to cultivate, whereas fear is a more solid and consistent motivator, which is why “self-motivated” people are so rare. In earlier times, people feared their father, their priest, their teachers, their society, their king, and their God, and this fear propelled them to pursue higher purposes. Nowadays, people fear dying and being homeless, and whatever their tribe tells them to fear (in LA, people fear being ugly, in SJW circles, people fear being called racist, etc…), so they are content with living a mediocre existence. The modern world makes a devil’s bargain with us: if we become a conformist slave, we will have nothing to fear. But by giving us nothing to fear, the modern world ensures we stay a conformist slave. This comfortable slave, who had no higher purpose, is Nietzsche’s “last man.”
I am out of space on Reddit, the rest of this article is on my website.