Multiple questions: Yii1 -> Laravel

Hey everyone. I have some questions to ask. :3 I come from using Yii1, and I have a rather big project in development in which I originally had planned to use Yii1. But, as the issue of Yii1 being discontinued soon arose, I found myself realizing that I was about to sit in a dead boat...! So I wanted to change that. And what I did was to look at PHP framework comparsions - only to get overwhelmed by how STRONG Laravel wins these competitions, one after another O.O. So that is why I decided to switch from Yii1 to Laravel! But there are a few things that are crucial in this case.

My app, named BIRD3, currently uses a self-made PHP integration for NodeJS. In a nutshell, this means that an Express route / calls a RPC system called hprose, and asks PHP to send back a result. Now, this is very simplified indeed, because the setup is quite complex. But it works wonderfully! Well, that is, if I ignore my hacks. In order to properly pass request data, the request object is serialized and sent to PHP as an argument to the remote YiiApp::run(...) method, and a new response is returned. However, as you may guess, you'd normally use PHP's header() and cookie functions to tweak the response. But since the PHP-CLI SAPI is not very happy about headers - its a header-nazi, in fact - I am using the runkit extension in order to overwrite these functions and basically "remap" them. This is a snippet:

<?php
runkit_function_redefine("headers_sent", '', 'return false;');
runkit_function_redefine(
    "header", '$to,$replace=false,$status=200',
    'return HttpResponse::header($to);'
);
// We have a custom handler.
runkit_function_redefine(
    "setcookie",
    '$name,$value,$expire=0,$path="/",$domain=null,$secure=false,$httponly=false',
    'return HttpResponse::setcookie($name,$value,$expire,$domain,$secure,$httponly);'
);
// Because...
runkit_function_redefine(
    "session_regenerate_id",
    '$deleteOld=false',
    'return bird3_session_regenerate_id($deleteOld);'
);

Just from looking at this, you surely can realize what i'm talking about: The HTTP response is all jibberish! the hprose protocol can only capture the output that is returned to it - NOT the actual HTTP response that is generated. So, here is my question: Can I tell Laravel to use my custom functions to set headers, session data, cookies and that stuff?

Next question: When an Exception occurs and it is not being caught, does Laravel have a custom Exception handler or do I handle these on my own?
The Quickstart guide showed the usage of Blade. Due to Yii1, I am more familiar with using PHP as my templating engine - that goes as far as using PHP to generate a view from Markdown. Can I use plain PHP in Laravel too, or am I forced to use some kind of templating engine?
In Yii1, there is a theme/ folder. I only have one theme with one main template and such. So, do I just put the "main template files" into the view folder, and are they automatically loaded? I mean, in Yii1, if UserController->actionList() is called (which lists all users on the site), then we call $this->render("list", $allUsers); and the view in protected/modules/user/views/user/list.php is used. The result from that template is then inserted into the base theme theme/mytheme/views/layouts/main.php. How is this stuff handled in Laravel?
In order to build my front-end, I use WebPack to bundle my files together. In Yii1, I have CClientScript to add script segments or links to some to the output site. How do I add JS stuff in Laravel? I do have a Redis server, from which I would pick up the current WebPack hash in order to load the right file. In WebPack, the output is set to always be: [hash]-[name].js. For instance: SOMEVERYLONGHASH-main.js.
In my current situation, the Yii1 way of authentificating a user is totally confusing. You have a User class extending CWebUser, and a UserIdendity extending CUserIdendity. Its...awkward. On top of that, Yii1 uses a HAMC (i hope i got that right) prefixed to a serialized object that is then saved into a cookie, to store user's login. As in, this is the user's session, in a cookie. How is this stuff in Laravel? I do use SocketCluster, which understands JWT cookies, and I would like to use the both together in one way or another. Is Laravel able to dump user's cookie data into a JWT? Or, how is it handled alltogether?
The first time I looked into Laravel, I was floooooooooooded with Illuminate-like names. I can't memorize them at the moment, but holy beep there were a LOT of them in a config file. How often do I have to type out a full namespace in Laravel, and, am I able to alias classes? I.e., have Some\very\long\namespaced\class\Foo become just Foo? So I can do class Bar extends Foo {}?
Since I use a custom HTTP server and PHP integration, I would like to be able to make that look as native as possible to Laravel. For instance, I can pass all kinds of information from NodeJS to PHP - route name, and parsed stuff and what not. What is the best way to modify the Router and response handling in Laravel, in order to tighten the integration between the two systems?
Out of curiosity, is there a laravel supported Redis extension?
I use Phinx for my DB migration. Do I HAVE to use Artisan in order to do my migrations, or can I keep using Phinx?
The all-global configuration for the entire app is an INI file. What would be the most recommended way to tell Laravel to load stuff from it?
What global functions does Laravel install into userland? I saw some stuff like env() or response()... I have a DB structure with a few 1:n and n:m relations. In Yii1, I had to define 2 models for 1:n/n:1 and 3 for n:m. Within each, there was a relations()-method. How do I tell Eloquent to understand these relations?

I know, this is a TON of questions and even more to read. My english is not the best, but I would like to change frameworks at this moment, since my app is only halfway done at the moment and migrating to a new framework does not seem all that hard right now.

Hopefuly I can find some answers here! ^__^

BIRD3 is open sourced, even in its development stage: https://github.com/DragonsInn/BIRD3

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