VA Misterfour: Iconian Knights

The Iconian Knights were, and still are, a whup-ass clan. In the day, before ND, VA, Neechi, New Republic and the rest, they were just about the only clan, with only The Bora Coalition and The Royal Guard to share the Tachyon Arena with.

As I had mentioned before, I kind of joined the clan at a bad time, what with the controversy over Zajj hacking, and such.
Right after Zajj, another controversy ensued.
Decon Frost had accepted a proposal by UFO to join IK as a wing within the clan.

IK, back in the day, was divided into wings. I can’t remember all of their names, but I do remember that I was a part of the Ghostriders, led by Rabid Chicken, I’m pretty sure.
UFO, back then, was comprised of three legendary pilots, the three being Werewolf, King Dano, and Aelogic.

From a tactical perspective, it was a brilliant maneuver. As I’ve said, those three pilots were already legends when I joined, and together they would have made a force that could have soundly trounced 98% of the pilots around, at the time. Imagine a force of Tachyon pilots entering the Arena in a roster that was made up of Storm, Bloodstar, CyKill, Rabid Chicken, Powersurge, King Dano and Aelogic, all in their prime? Whup-frikkin’-ass, for real.

And wars were very real, in Tachyon. If you entered the Arena, by yourself, and were suddenly confronted by 6-8 players from a clan that simply did not like you, you would find yourself bombed into Jurassic Era with such alarming frequency that your computer would crash. While there was no real point system, in the Arena, except for the high scores that appeared after every round, you kind of new who had lost that particular battle. I’ve fought in enough wars and serious engagements…IK, DF, DAB, and some of the help I gave VA when I was a part of IK to tell you that there comes a time when the opposition just gives up and trickles out, and your side wins.
Your blood just pounds through you, in a serious war. Every shot, maneuver, missile and torpedo suddenly has a serious depth to it, more so than just your vanilla free for all. It’s a good, alive feeling to be involved in such a conflict, although in wars, things could get very ugly, when it came to Tachyon.

Like I said, Decon had a good idea, but most of the Overlord council, who were all old and experienced members, didn’t like UFO. Aelogic was suspected of being a hacker, and using the infamous Vorpal Blade trainer. Werewolf was a confessed, reformed hacker, and King Dano had a serious attitude problem. For these reasons, the Overlord Council was completely against the issue, and dropped their tags, in protest.

You could imagine my confusion, as a total rank noobie in this legendary clan. All of these old skool types, flying around as if they had quit IK. Some welcome.

Decon quickly apologized to the clan, and told UFO that they couldn’t join. Sure, they were sore, but the clan was saved, and Decon had once again proven to be a capable and democratic leader.

Decon Frost was IK, period. It was his designs and policies that shaped the clan, even today. He could be quite eloquent and diplomatic, when the topic warranted, but once he decided to fry somebody, he let ‘em have it with both barrels and a reload, and didn’t apologize or change his mind. We were ridiculously loyal to the guy, for good reason. He was an intelligent and capable leader, and that doesn’t always happen, in real life or in online gaming. The guy had a sober and mature perception of events in the clan, and it was quite often that a single post of his observation would cause the entire group, as a whole, to pause and reconsider the situation, and then go a different route.

Decon Frost was backed up by the Overlord Council, each of which could vote on certain decisions that required a democratic discussion. Of course, the clan as a whole often voted in crucial matters, but there was still a definitive rank structure, which gave IK enormous resilience.
This rank structure started with a temporary position of Lance, during which the applicant could be dropped at will. After that, you were a Knight, and could only be ousted by a vote from the clan, as a whole. Typically, a vote regarding the future of a member had a selection of choices. In most instances, a member could be kicked out, have his rank reduced, or be completely reduced to a Lance.

Rank was a serious issue, in the clan. A person of higher rank had the authority to request you to do quite a bit, during game play. No one person was a jerk about this, though. Typically, a higher ranked member asked you to blast the person you were fighting, which was something you were probably doing, anyways.

While the rank structure could have felt prohibitive to most, people generally joined IK because of its rock-solid order. Decon felt that a system based on rank structure, where you moved up at a rate of 1-3 months, kept the wrong people from ending up in charge.

He one time confided in me, during the months when I was running the first Dead At Birth, trying to find out who had infiltrated the clan, that he really didn’t care about spies, too much. Sure, we had methods of weeding them out (usually just running their IP both on the Fringe boards, or in the Arena server, a method that Razor’s Kiss would eventually utilize, himself), but really, a spy in IK could not hope to accomplish much. We didn’t really discuss highly secretive things, on the private boards, except maybe who had a KOS on them, or which clan we were going to seriously go after. In order for anyone to have any real clout, they would have to move up in the rank structure, and by the time you were an Overlord, you were probably a member for two years, or so, which is how long it took me. This system kept rank from becoming a shoddy affair, where just about anyone was suddenly a captain or admiral or whatever, like other, lesser, fly-by-night clans.

IK was extremely loyal to its members, even if you were not exactly correct, from an ethical point of view. There were many times that I was clearly in the wrong, regarding an argument or conflict, and Decon just told ‘em to @#%$ off. There was a clear and definite mindset, in the clan. This social order, while almost xenophobic, in regards to other clans, was also a comfort, if you were a member. It was a hell of a thing to witness, when the clan backed you up. A person would post that you were a jerk, you would post back, saying you weren’t, and 78 people from IK would post on the topic, telling the first person who called you a jerk to @#%$ off, unconditionally. Then, Decon would close the topic. It was nice to have on your side.

I spent a large part of my early membership in the clan just shutting up and staying out of the way, doing my best to promote the party line of the clan, which I did with great zeal. For the first three months, I just flew around in the Arena, blowing up people and sending possible new recruits to the IK website. It was really cool to be in a clan that was so feared and respected.

At this point, I don’t want to confuse the reader, too much. Once I get to parts that deal with The Devil’s Fist (which I was also a member of, at the very time I started in IK) and Dead At Birth, I will flash forward, because I am more interesting in discussing the event in reference to the IK clan. Both DF and DAB will get their own chapters.

Back to our regularly scheduled program.

The clan was small, back then, and mostly isolated to Tachyon, although most of the Overlord Council, as well as the older members, would eventually migrate to Delta Force, another Novalogic game.

It was a different vibe, then. The whole Phoenician Republic thing was in the past. The clan was small, but solid, and MW4 wasn’t even out, yet.

I remember the old skool crowd: Merlin, Maverick, Irish Dragon, Rabid Chicken, Powersurge, Storm, Argentum Draconis, Cykill, Bloodstar, Stryder, Kaylin Silver, Decon Frost…it was before I wrote anything, before my friends knew what I was doing, online, before Vorpal Bunny, the rise of The Devil’s Fist, The Voice War, The VA/IK War, and both Dead At Birth Wars. Tachyon was still new, and still had that magic. I was in IK for nearly two years, and as much as my memories are jumbled, I can still remember some things with incredible accuracy, even though I can’t remember in what order the memories should be.

I do remember one thing, though, specifically. When I first started, I usually got kicked around quite a bit by King Dano, Werewolf, and a few others, even after I stopped being a fuckin’ big mouth. Later, after I had been in IK for a month, I went into the Arena, and one of the people in there said something to the equivalent of, “Hey, there’s Four, let’s go smash him up for old time’s sake.”
So I started to fight about three good pilots at a time, and eventually started to really wear out the Esc button, you know what I mean?

Then, one of the anonymous pilots disappeared (he was probably Rabid Chicken, under alias) and came back with about five IK. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was actually witnessing Team Rail, an organization in IK, kind of like Animal Farm, who would make a contest of hitting one target with as many rails as they possibly could, so with five Cutlasses, that’s fifteen rails. Those IK pilots wiped the stars with those three pilots who were pickin’ on my slow ass in my Warhammer (nobody, believe it or not, used Warhammers, back then. They all used Pegasus Interceptors or Archangels). Afterwards, when two of them had left, the last of the three typed, “Enough, already!” Then, he got shot up. It was really funny. After that, one of the Team Rail pilots, Powersurge, typed, “Don’t @#%$ with an IK.”

Now, pause a moment and analyze that. Not, “Don’t @#%$ with IK,” but, “Don’t @#%$ with an IK.”

I found out later that Rabid Chicken had jumped out, got onto a chat program, and called up backup, to help me out.

I was part of the team, then. I rarely got screwed with, in the Arena, from that moment on.

In that precise moment, sitting in front of my computer, I realized that this was something that could not be purchased nor manufactured, even if it was entirely just a digital and sociological construct, largely existing online, independent of my real world life, and it was better than any movie, TV show, or single person vid. I didn’t buy another game, for nearly three months, until Mechwarrior 4, Vengeance, and I think you know why.

I got into the mode of online gaming because I was, for the most part, flat broke, and sometimes all there was to do was drink coffee/coca-cola/alcohol and play vids. I hated TV, and I hated the monotonous plotlines of most movies, and quite suddenly IK, as well as Tachyon, had become my creative outlet. Here it was, in pixels. Drama, revenge, hate, madness, weirdness, politics and comedy. Why deal with anything else?
Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t some sort of living room troll, who couldn’t talk to people, and couldn’t get chicks, I just went through a mode where I was either/or, when it came to the social scene.
I was 25. Most of my old friends had disappeared or died. Huge cliques of social circles had suddenly gone the way of the Dodo, for me, and my night job at the local café, serving coffee to middle class punkasses who didn’t tip had pretty much killed off my going out and doing things mentality. Besides, going out sometimes reminded me of the faces of people I had known who I would never see, again. Maybe I just wanted to work out, write, and play an online space combat sim. Hell, at least I wasn’t face down in a dumpster with a syringe half-full of heroin, in my arm.
…
There was a pretty cool time where my day started out with a cruise through the boards, first IK, then the private boards, then DF, then RG, and finally, over to the DF private boards. After that, I would play some serious Tachyon.
…
Tachyon became a pretty serious art, to me. You’d think I would have gotten better, with all the playing I did. I blame rails. It’s too easy to steal kills, with rails.
Little things could throw off my skills, though. Getting a new mouse, changing vid cards, even switching chairs. Your reflexes get so damn precise that it goes beyond physical, but to a weird sort of mental mode, where you are in the game, so much that when you quit playing there really was a feeling of coming out of the screen, and suddenly being back in your room.
…
I certainly didn’t tell my immediate friends what in the hell I was doing. What would they say? Would they think I had become some sort of online video game lusting goblin? That I wasn’t always Jasen T. Davis, but that sometimes I was MisterFour, Templar Knight of IK, and that I was busy putting together a treaty with RG in case PR came back to kick all of our butts? I mean, that’s certainly not a topic you discuss with your parents over Thanksgiving dinner. You certainly didn’t tell any girls something like that. No f*ckin’ way, you don’t.
…
I went through the early ranks fairly quickly. One day, I blinked, and I was either Darth Knight or Templar Knight. I can’t remember.
…
One day, I realized that some new clans had popped up, but I already told you that. Funny thing is, I can’t remember which came first, ND or VA. I know ND probably came first, because Twilight Jack and Moone weren’t part of VA, yet.
…
One day, John Nyman, an old friend of mine from way back when, came back down to Cali from where he was living in Seattle, Washington. We’d spend hours kicking back and talking smack, because both of us were damn poor. I told him, “Hey, I’m into this online thing you should check out.” I turned on Tachyon, and we started taking turns playing the game.
This was shortly after I started writing fiction for the boards.
John Nyman chose the name SuperFurryAnimal, and eventually joined IK. He didn’t post often, but he played a lot, even more so when he finally moved into my apartment.
I talk about gold and silver ages, but the really golden age came when a friend of mine, Sean Ulum, started joining me every Friday and Saturday afternoon for Tachyon. He started using a Pegasus, and then he started posting from his house, although he couldn’t play vids, from there.
It was fun, kicking back, like that. Suddenly, there were people to discuss Fringe related things with. Sean got his friend Jeremy into the whole thing, and that’s where Twilight Jack and Griffin Moone came from.
I know that I was right there, looking over Sean’s shoulder, when VA was formed, and he was one of the original eight members. By then, IK had kind of faded. Oh, we’d get the occasional member, but there just wasn’t the following that there used to be. IK had started to drift into Jumpgate, Delta Force, and, oh yeah, Mechwarrior 4!!!
…
I am the Mechwarrior 4 motherf*cker, you know that? Damn if that game hasn’t just been the love of my life, since I was a wee little junior high rat, rolling ten sided dice and moving little cardboard cut outs across a hexagonal map. Years later, and I was playing the online vid, like God meant it to be, and stacking up quite a collection of skulls. Decon was quite impressed by my zeal, and awarded me with the leadership of the Mechwarrior section of IK. I was still playing Tachyon, though.
…
A few months later, most of the old guard of IK had kind of dropped out of Tachyon, for various reasons. Oh, Ghostrider and TygerBlueEyes would show up out of the blue, occasionally, but there was a kind of feeling in IK that Tachyon was no longer worth playing. We’d still get the occasional new member, and I actually started to fly around with a few more IK in the Arena, but most of the old guard had departed for different vistas.
…
New clans started to form. Those were the days of The Void Alliance, The Royal Guard, New Dawn, Star Magi, New Republic, The Devil’s Fist, The Den of Devoted Deviants, Neechi, and the last of The Bora Coalition (who, by then, were heading off to Jumpgate). There was also some of those other clans, whose names I can’t even remember, by now, Fringe Pirates being one of them that just started and then, well, stopped.
…
I remember our clan, as well as other clans, being very tight, back then. That is, everyone knew each other, well. This was before clans starting dividing themselves into sections, based on game they played. While appreciate the logic in this, that you have to eventually expand into new game, with more members, I don’t like it too much, because you end up not knowing everyone in the clan. Back in the day, when IK was just about exclusively Tachyon (whether the Overlord Council would still admit to it, or not) I knew just about everyone in the clan. By the end of my run in IK, I didn’t know 75% of the clan, because they were all in other games that I wasn’t. You also end up with a very small participation in a game that a clan is in, compared to their members.
Think about it. If you have 75 guys in a clan, but they are divided into 10 games, that’s only 7-10 members running around in a game, at a time. Divide that by the ability for a person to show up for a game (given real-life scheduling) and timezones, and you end up with three people in a game, at a time, for such a large clan. You could see why I just couldn’t get IK’s MW4 division to hip-hop into the high times, just like VA. I would go to a clan of 200 exclusively MW4 members, and apologize that I couldn’t do a match, because I could only get three other people from my clan to join in, and the other clan wouldn’t believe it.
…
I can only remember a few noticeable events, back then.
…
First was the RG/IK war. It went two weeks, it was pretty badass, and we won, overall, when you calculate how many times we actually got to war. It was a friendly bout, though, with no bad blood between the clans, at the time. If anything, RG was our sister-clan all the way up until Devil left to join us. Good times.
…
The other was the Captain Atom incident.
Basically, a young kid, probably 10, named Captain Atom (or some such name) asked to join IK on our boards, in really lousy English.
When Decon Frost turned him down, because he was no longer allowing younger members to join, the kid got all broken up (he must not have had much of a social life) and his dad actually posted on our boards, asking why the heck Junior couldn’t join the video game club.
Decon, to his credit, was pretty diplomatic about the whole event, but I seriously flipped. This was all far too surreal. I mean, what the hell was going on with those people? I hid from the entire scene inside the private boards, my sanctum from all the sordid weirdness, and ranted about how this all stank of something seriously David Lynch.
Decon passed that rule sometime in= No kids. He simply stated, “I @#%$ hate kids!”
I could understand the logic. People from 10-18 can have their associated drama that comes from being young and enthusiastic, but I always felt that “kids” were the rank and file of any healthy clan.
To me, it was raw numbers. Out of fifty people in any given clan, only half can participate at any time. After that, out of 25, only half could be truly active in a game, given time zones, so breaking it down again, you could still have some decent participation in any give genre, once the numbers had dwindled to 13, or so.
Kids were different. Kids had oodles of time, and serious dedication, to vids. Ten 14 year olds will whip the snot out of ten 25 year olds, mostly because the 25 year olds have too many damn real-life problems to play. Also, kids are just plain damn better at vids. They just have the drive to play for hours on end. Some of the best ass-whippings I ever got was from some 14 year old half a continent away.
I felt that a clan needed kids, because kids played games, and I was seriously beginning to figure out that clan participation was hard to come by, in Tachyon. I kept my mouth shut, though.
Finally, the kids dad got the damn message, and never went to our boards, again. The ten year old, all shattered to pieces because he couldn’t join IK, probably got into hard drugs, skateboarding, and punk rock, and eventually dropped out of high school to pursue alcoholism, full time. I don’t know.
…
Next was the Kith Draconis incident.
IK didn’t like General Phoenix, founder and leader of the Phoenician Republic, and he didn’t like IK, and that was that.
What are you going to do? The Middle East doesn’t like the US, and we don’t like them, so we blow them up, and they blow us up. Israel doesn’t like ‘em either, and they don’t like Israel.
Cats don’t like dogs. Republicans don’t like poor, inner-city black people. George Bush doesn’t like the environment, and he doesn’t like poor people, either. On the other hand, I have never met a black guy that liked ultra-conservative right wing Republicans.
So, we didn’t like GP, and he didn’t like us.
We figured the guy was hiding under every rock, in every server, trying to sneak in and unleash his ultra-evil master plan that would decimate IK, and scatter us to the outer electronic reaches of the internet.
Well, not really, but to read posts back then, you’d think that GP was the equivalent of frikkin’ Omhar Kaddafi during the height of the 80’s.
Well, one day GP came back to our boards, and discovered that he was no longer banned.
Y’see, we generally banned GP because ultimately, five posts in, the relationship just hit the basement and kept on going, and we were all bad mouthing each other.
I had been to his boards, and read his posts, and had never been too impressed by the guy, or his style.
First off, he never came in the Arena to fight. How can you like a person who talks all that mad smack about Risen Empires and Armageddon and The Fall of Iconia, and he won’t come in and shoot at you? What kind of war mentality is that?
Hell, at least Razor’s Kiss would inform you of what an insufferable prick he figured you were, and how wrong you were, and then come in and die like a man under your guns. Even Super Bad, Vorpal Bunny and Scadian Wrath would spout their vicious, hate-driven manifestos on the boards, and then walk in the Arena and stomp you to Human McNuggets. But not Phoenix. I never got to shoot at him, once.
But then, I never really knew why IK didn’t like him. You never got a straight answer, when you asked any of the Overlord Council.
…
AUTHOR
MISTERFOUR
COMMENT
QUESTION ABOUT GP.
Hi, guys, what’s up. Hey, I was in the Arena, and someone told me that IK didn’t like General Phoenix. Now, why is that? I wasn’t around then, so I don’t really know. Why don’t we like him?
Thanks.

AUTHOR
TYGERBLUEEYES
REPLY RE: QUESTION ABOUT GP.
And he will come, the Risen Beast, and his name shall be Funkytits. His breath shall smolder and burn, and his eyes will be like green death beams. And a third of Babylon will fall!
Risen, is the Monster of All Space and Time! God will come, and smite our tits right the f*ck off, and we shall wander in the Deserts of Hate, drunk and titless, until IK is nevermore, so sayeth the LORD.
I saw Jesus, and his skin was brass, and his mouth had a sword, and he smited GP, and so shall we be smited, evermore, Amen!!!

AUTHOR
MISTERFOUR
COMMENT
REPLY RE: QUESTION ABOUT GP.
Huh?
…
Yup, it kind of went something like that.
I kind of decided that the guy was creepy, and we didn’t like him because we had to not like SOMEBODY, ya know. The mere notion of General Phoenix joining IK caused every member of the Overlord Council to seriously f*ck the flip out, you know.
Honestly, though, it did get to the point where I liked his writing, so I stopped haunting him. However, when GP came back, as a member of some clan called Kith Draconis, a Mechwarrior 4 clan, he kind of got into some words on the IK boards, and I blasted him, accusing him of skullduggery, being in cahoots with the Hottentots, hacking, and doing whatever the hell he did with all that soda pop, and enormous quantities of Pez. In short, I just kind of ranted at him, making little sense, but it flipped him the Hell out. So, yeah, it was my fault.
Suddenly, this guy claiming to be the Leader of Kith Draconis posted on our boards, taking enormous offence that a member of HIS clan had been accused of hacking.
This was all quite spooky, to me.
Remember, in a clan, it’s a big bozo no-no to start a war with another clan. So I was kind of guilty on that one, because I really couldn’t back up my claim. I just kind of blasted GP because, well, I was in IK, and he was Hitler, ya know?
Decon handled this one fairly well, and I just kept my mouth shut while him and the Leader of Kith Draconis (who was probably just GP, since their writing patterns were strikingly familiar) went back and forth about hacking, IK, our history with GP, the moon, the stars, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and whatever the hell leaders of big clans talk about. It had the feel of two Poobahs smokin’ a peace pipe outside of a tent, with the whole place going to war if someone farted in the wigwam, and it was just that weird sort of culture you had, in online gaming clans. That we were all IMPORTANT PEOPLE planning BIG THINGS and the clan was a BIG DEAL.
In the end, the leader of KD picked up his marbles and went home, and I never really understood what all of that talking was about. I was bored, KD should have just come into the Arena and fought us. We’d of torn him to giblets, after all.

By the way, Lords and Ladies, methinks it is doth time for another disclaimer:
        This is the History of Tachyon, according to myself. That means that I am bound to make mistakes, remember things incorrectly, or straight up not know what was going on, at the time. I will do my best to recall things with as much accuracy as possible, but there are times when I will simply fall short. Hopefully, this will inspire a dialogue with other members of the Tachyon community, so we can get a hopefully more complete picture of past events and times.
        Also, I am one opinionated S.O.B., so there are times when I will state things like I'm seein' 'em, and I could be flat wrong. You will notice that I often say, "This is how I felt, then, but I was wrong, so this is how I feel, now." What can I say? People change.
        Alright, enough of that, here we go.
        ...
        I have this theory. It’s called, “Reference Point.”
        Wanna hear it? Well, you can’t, you have to read it. But this applies to everything written in this hysterical historical, before and after the period of this sentence.
        Here it is= we’re bored.
        Our lives are measured at our births, and one day we’re gonna die. At the end of every one of our life’s journeys, there’s a hospital gurney and an ass-load of morphine to be injected in your veins, while you die slowly in a hospice, usually of cancer, but nowadays of Alzeimers, since no one want's to admit it's really Mad Cow Disease, thanks to the lobbyists for the meat packing industry. How do I know this? I was in the Boy Scouts.
        No, really. A scout is trustworthy loyal helpful friendly courteous kind obedient cheerful thrifty brave clean and reverent. I got quite a few merit badges, in the scouts, but I also got a little bit of philosophy.
        I ended up volunteering to work in a hospice to get some sort of rank, I can’t remember, and that’s what made me quit the scouts. Maybe it was the revelation that we all get old and die, hopped up on endorphins, but it was also the mentality that those who die violently and young are the lucky ones, in some warped way.
        Oh, don’t get me wrong, life is sweet, and truly more interesting that a box with 6’ of dirt piled on it, but that isn’t the point. The point is that every person I worked with, at the hospice, had a drama, a life, a story, and then, that was it. They ended up in a hospice.
        Here I was, 16-and-a-half, suddenly witness to a lot more death than any person should be, at that age. But what shook me up the most was what the people were looking at, as they sat in that hospital bed, staring out at a movie screen only they could see; their lives.
        That was it, I realized. Their lives were over, and they were watching their lives, like a movie.
        You don’t get a lot of life. You really don’t. Your first ten years, while formative, are largely spent drooling, and learning to use the restroom. After that, there’s being young, and then you have about thirty years, before it’s the countdown to yet more drooling, followed by the morphine-drip.
        Or, you die young. That’s a kicker, because suddenly, you get drama. You get glory. You die in a car crash, or from a drug overdose, or you’re shot, and suddenly, you are dead, and people see your life as being this magnificent story that was, and at the same time, could have been, get it? You were so young, with your whole life ahead of you! The tragedy! Call Oprah!
        Consider the story. It’s so rote you can barely stand it, even as you rent that flick at the local Blockbuster. There’s the intro, the rising action, the climax, and the resolution, however brief. It’s called plot, and it includes characters and settings, and after you’ve read enough books and seen enough movies and written enough stories, you kind of get this weird sense of rhythm about what plot, and good plot, is.
        But, people don’t really always get good plot. Sometimes, we just get snuffed, with no character development, or we have a really boring story, that no one would ever read, with an absurd ending that Samual Beckett would appreciate.
        So here’s my theory on Reference Point.
        Remember the fairy tales? The one’s you grew up on?
        “Cinderella,” “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” “Hansel and Gretal,” etc, ad infinitum, ad redundum.
        Ok, well, since all of our lives, from the very moment we can almost understand language, we are given plot. Intro/Rising Action/Character Development/Climax/Resolution, and the we live our lives, and watch movies, T.V., hear stories, talk to our friends, read books, yeah, you get it.
        So how can we NOT think our lives are stories? That we are characters in some drama, a movie starring us.
        That was a thing I learned in an acting class, a trick to flesh out a character in any play that you perform in, to imagine that your character is always the main character, and to imagine a play based on your character, no matter how minor.
        My theory finally ended up, as I cleaned out my last wastepaper basket and walked out of that hospice, and the scouts, to become that we think we are all characters in a story, because we have been given that as a paradigm all of our lives. How can we think of that, otherwise? And what a horror life is, if it isn’t a story? I mean, after all of that 80+ years of life (if you’re lucky), as you sit in that bed, with a needle going into your arm to give you all the morphine you’ll need for the rest of your life, wouldn’t you have to believe that it meant something?
        My point? Well, according to my theory, everyone in the drama that was the Fringe just kind of ended up treating it like a drama, and acted the character that they were given (or gave themselves) as the story went on. People do that, in groups. They assume roles, and proceed to act out the story. ‘Cause life is boring, so people dress it up to make it seem more like it meant something, so they can stare at the wall at 80+ and watch that movie, before the Final Trip.
        So, in that context, it’s easy to think of this history as a story, because every history ends up being a story, by default, because it’s all we know, thanks to our parents, who read to us “The Three Little Pigs” when we were so young and impressionable. At that veal-soft age, we were instructed, indoctrinated, and brainwashed, and all of us in the Fringe ended up in some literary dance, because we had very little choice, even if you do take into account free will.
        So, if your life was made into a movie, would people rent it?
        Anyways, whenever someone on the boards would indicate that their Fringe persona was “this way,” as in, Darkheyr’s indicating that his persona, Darkheyr, was a cat-like alien (was that a Man-Kzin wars reference?) or Argentum Draconis was the burned up, haunted Vietnam veteran, I got a laugh, because I figured they got it, the joke. Which is probably why I dug Twilight Jack as a character, so much. He had a role that made a joke of getting the joke. Get it?
        …
        At one point, General Phoenix left the Fringe.
        Everyone was leaving the Fringe, back in the day. I read an announcement like that, and I stifle a yawn.
        “Everybody, I am leaving the Fringe. Kneel at my grave, you will never read my words, again. I am gone, like Ajax, like some mourned, mythical hero, and I will never return. Oh, days of yore, oh, drama, oh, aching ass-monkeys…”
        You get it. They make an announcement, like it’s a big damn deal. And then, what do they do? They come back and read what everybody wrote, in response. It gives their ego this big helium lift, and then they come back to the Fringe.
        The people who truly move on just never post again, like King Dano.
        General Phoenix left the Fringe nearly seven times, from what I can remember. The fourth or fifth time he did, Bloodstar jumped him, on the boards.
        Now, the science of letting someone have it on the boards is profound, and deep, but it boils down to just either A= making more logical sense, in your argument, B= talking a lot of mad smack, or B= having more people on your side than the other schmuck.
        So, Bloodstar ripped into Phoenix with the passion of all the drama a human could withstand, and Phoenix took it like a man, who had been beaten into hamburger. So, Ice Fox of The Void Alliance defended GP.
        You have to understand that the new players in Tach had never even heard of GP. They weren’t there, when PR fell, and IK emerged victorious. They didn’t know his personality, so, to more than a few, Bloodstar seemed a little abusive.
        Ice Fox and Bloodstar argued for one hell of a word count, before Bloodstar finally just got pissed and left. That is, he announced he was leaving the Fringe.
        Bloodstar was very good at this. I can actually count quite a few times that he just announced he was leaving Tachyon and The Fringe, only to return, as redoubtable as ever. How can I blame him? He’s just playing the role. Let’s hear it for Jesus Christ and The Brothers Grimm.
        But oh-man-diggity was I pissed. IK had just lost an Overlord, and quite a gun, to boot! I mean, Bloodstar was one of the few IK that still played Tachyon, and quite suddenly I was more alone, than ever. What a biz-nitch.
        I assaulted, on those boards. I defended Bloodstar, I called GP every dirty name in the canon, and I threatened hot death to anyone who had sided against Bloodstar that stepped into the Arena.
        Oh, it was quite a fight, me versus everybody, but what really mattered was that Bloodstar had kind of quit Tachyon. IK really took a hit, in that one, and all GP had to do was be quiet. Good strategy.
        Later, though, Bloodstar would return to the Arena, off and on. But it was still full of sound and fury, at the time. And if you guys get the quote, you all know what it signified (my anger included)= nothin’.
        …
        Right after that, though, IK hit the Arena, hard.
        Y’see, I’m in a clan because of the camaraderie and nothing amplifies that feeling of camaraderie more than blasting other people to pixels in a game setting, alongside your clan.
        IK had this thing where every member was assigned an additional, secret call sign. I still remember mine= Ghost19.
        I can’t remember whose idea it was, probably Decon’s, like all of the good ideas, but it was perfect for when we wanted to hit the Arena hardcore, without disturbing things, politically.
        It made for some really intense black-ops style moments. We’d all gather on a password protected server, and then fly into the Arena and blast everyone who wasn’t IK.
        Sometimes, this led to a small war, with everyone in there fighting back. Other times, we’d smoke ‘em so bad that Rabid Chicken would switch over to the other side in an alias, and smoke us. Finally, there were times when everyone just fled, period, because they couldn’t take us. LOL!
        However, after that whole deal, IK officially “left” Tachyon, whatever the hell that meant. Opinions of Tachyon, and everyone involved in it, really went through the floor, with the Overlord council pretty much shunning the game, in a big way. At that point, there were only about six members of IK who still played Tachyon, myself included. Of course, no one ever leaves Tachyon.
        ...
        The next event that comes to mind is the fallout of most of the Overlord Council.
        Bloodstar, as I have spoken of him before, was an incredible personality. In dialogues with him, both email and in forum posts, I always felt that I was conversing with a guy with an I.Q. high enough to boil lead. The guys was just that sort of caliber, straight up, but he also had a bit of an ego.
        But don't all the greats? I have quite an ego, for sure.
        There is an Eastern concept that calls for the abandonment of ego. By abandoning the ego, the small Self, you can embrace the greater Self, and promote the Universe.
        Well, that's good for Japan, China, and everything in between, but here in the West, the concept of ego gets things done. Quite often, in pursuit of excellence, and in striving to become our true Selves, ego can bolster your will, and so what if you are just a little arrogant? If your intelligence is sharper, if you are not a fat @#%$, loading up on chips and ice cream while believing everything Fox News tells you, and if you have pursued excellence in some chosen field, to give yourself a right to feel confident in your self, than by all means, ego on!
        Besides, don't tell me that there weren't times in the life of Buddha where he didn't stop and think that he wasn't the Man. Miyamoto Musashi sure seems to believe he is quite a badass, and I am sure all of those military Generals in Asian history, each of them devout Buddhists and practitioners of Zen, didn't have an estimation of themselves that was bigger than the planet Earth.
        I actually came upon this revelation, that a little big ego can go a long way in the right direction, when I was reading "On Fencing," by Aldo Nadi, a book the Italian master wrote about how to be good at fencing.
        At one point, while en guarde, Mr. Nadi tells his students to raise their back heel off the ground, just a bit, a stance that Bruce Lee later adopted for his own form in Jeet Kune Do.
        Mr. Nadi points out that this heel raising routine is not approved of my most modern day fencing masters, but he advises it, declaring that he has five Olympic gold medals, and they don't, so funk 'em.
        Arrogant? Yup. True? Yup. Good advice? I dunno, worked for me. Have you ever fenced?
        Just the same, you get my point about ego.
        Yeah, I know, "All is vanity." Let's move on.
-But, before we know, mark these words, true believers. The above couple of paragraphs wasn’t just me talking hype about fencing, but to make you understand that everyone in the Fringe was interesting because our Fringe personas were Ego. Those egos all bouncing about, like pool balls on the green felt, to be pushed on by some cosmic cue ball, that was the drama of the Fringe. Sure, Bloodstar was an ego, but so were we all.
…
        Among his many talents, Bloodstar was damn skippy at Photoshop, something Griffin Moone and Nastbutler possess quite a bit of skill in, which I am always respectful of. I wish I could do that.
        Two other Overlords were running around in IK, then, and they were also people who had been there at the start of the clan, Argentum Draconis and his wife, Kaylin Silver.
        I liked Argentum so much that I made him the main character in "Burning Void." He was cool people.
        At one point, Kaylin had posted a picture that she had worked on as a sig for her Ezboard account, and Bloodstar took it, worked it a little, and gave it a little more of that ILM zip, ya know? He would take the pretty, and make it sparkle to new heights.
No big deal, but later, Kaylin was posting about some subject, hell, I don’t know, and she mentioned her Photoshop ability, which she was proud of.
Bloodstar kidded with her, a little, in a rather benevolent way. Something to the effect of, “Yes, but I’ll always be there to help you with your pictures.” I can’t remember precisely, but it was rather good-natured, in a loving uncle way.
Kaylin flipped. She blast Bloodstar for all she was worth, more indicating that she didn’t want his help, and he shouldn’t be so arrogant.
Now, that can all be attributed to just a bad day at work. We’ve all had that. Game life hits real life head on, but real life has more fuel in the tank, that day, and one extra gear, so it knocks game life all the way back into the Delta Quadrant, and before you can say “What the hell is the big deal, really?” Bloodstar cold-stone left IK.
Leaving a clan, or the Fringe, has a lot of motivations.
On one hand, it could just be a desperate attempt at pity and attention. “Hey, I’m leaving, but I’m going to come back and count the posts under mine, to see who cares.” It’s the virtual equivalent of faking your own funeral.
It could also be just an honest admission that real life has gotten big, but you still care. “Hey, everyone, I will get back to you.”
People leave the Fringe, folks. In some way, I like that there is a final farewell, with a little ceremony, rather than the guy just never posting again. Gives you a chance to mourn and reflect.
Bloodstar took the seppuku route, where you quit as a final sort of deliberate protest. In this case, he was protesting the fact that he felt that Kaylin didn’t respect him, so the clan didn’t respect him, so he was outta there.
Storm, a good friend of his, left, too. He later came back, though.
Kaylin left because she felt the clan hated her, now (not that I hated her, but Bloodstar, in terms of sheer involvement in Tachyon, was a hell of a loss, and I wasn’t none too pleased, dagburnit), so she left. Then Argentum Draconis, that bloke I wrote a bloody novella about, left, since Kaylin, his real life girlfriend, left.
It was a heck of a one-two right cross-left cross-uppercut. We had just lost three members, and they were OG, right?
Decon was plenty pissed, and the other OL’s weren’t exactly bacon-and-eggs about the whole affair, either. But there was nothing really to do about it. We emailed Bloodstar, and tried to persuade him to join, but he just wasn’t doing it, citing that he had to get back into real life, anyway.
What a bitch. IK had even fewer members in Tachyon than before, and I began to wonder if I liked being there. But, stay there, I did, because you don’t bug out when the travel gets tough, right?
It got lonely, in the Arena, though. I was still enjoying the game. New faces were showing up. New clans were forming, and pushing their guns around. The Devil’s Fist was still burning bright, and I had a whole lotta plans for shakin’ up the Fringe.
Every once in a while, one of the older Tach members would take five seconds to bash Tachyon, or the Fringe culture, in general. I specifically remember hosting a game of Tachyon, and having a few of the Overlord council who still played show up, see other people from other clans, and leave, because they didn’t want to have anything to do with “those people.” What a drag.
Still, the game was cool. I even began to screw around with Bora Heavy Lasers, and Spire rockets. I was damn good, and all of the new clans still had new guys, so I could get to the top of the charts, as long as Val, Witchking and Captain Scarlet weren’t in (Heero Yuy could really mess me up, though). With 13+ in the Arena at any time, the house was still rockin’, why roll out for the Drive In when the maltshop still had chicks, fellas, fights and tunes? You don’t ditch the cool when the cool is still cool, daddy-o.
Was that some weird 50’s reference? Am I weird? Maybe so, but this a damn video game, we are talking about here, folks.

Although it stands as only a footnote in the History of Tachyon, the IK versus DA war, as short-lived as it was (a few rounds) was still important, because it revealed a few fundamental concepts within IK. Those concepts being that there was certainly a definitive chain of command, within the clan, and that we were always ready and willing to go to war, period.

Decon grasped this concept, and constantly mentioned it. “Why should we have peace in a combat sim? So what if they threaten to fire on us? Anyone who isn’t IK is fair game, period.”

I loved Decon’s way of doing things. Later, when idle-killing would become such an issue in the Arena, Decon would always defend IK members, when people came to our boards, complaining that an IK had shot them when they were idle.

Decon also possessed a truly brilliant tactic: he would wait until board posts had gotten quite grisly, and then erase them, citing that they were wrong and offensive. He would then blast the other side over things they had written in their erased posts, whether they had said them, or not. It was a ruthless tactic, and hard to defend against. How in the hell do you prove that you didn’t say something that’s been erased? But, it worked.

As I have said before, in IK there is a definitive chain of command, and technically, someone higher in rank than you could order you to fire on certain targets, in-game, and you had to do it, period.

This chain-of-command made perfect sense. For a person to go up in rank, in IK, they had to spend long hours in the clan, and they had to participate in clan affairs. They also had to contribute to the clan, as a whole. After a while, you went up in rank, based on your experience and years.

I had become either a Templar Knight, or a Darth Knight, I can’t remember, and by then IK had actually got new members from Tachyon. Even after we left the game, we still got people from Tachyon. Go figure.

By then, a new clan, DW (I think it stands for Deathwing) had come around. I am pretty sure that Bonejammer was a member of DW, originally.

I have to mention that I tended to be a pretty rowdy punk, in Tachyon. I got to a point where I was damn good, I was in a truly whup-ass clan that could still call upon 10+ members to fight the good fight, and I had the view that new clans weren’t as good as older, respected clans, so they best show some respect, lest they get a mean dose of ACME WHUP-ASS opened up on them.

At one point, I flew in, and there was three new IK, and a whole mess of DW’s.

We started to fight, and then I noticed that I was constantly being railed by several DW’s, one of which was idle. So, I blew up the idler, and then turned and fought the other DW’s.

They started to really beat me up, though, so I finally decided to pull rank, and I ordered the new IK pilots to attack DW, period.

So, well, they did.

DW took some offence to this, seeing it as a declaration of war, of sorts, and apparently went on ICQ to call more members. Pretty soon, it was 8 DW’s versus 4 IK’s. Pretty petite plantains, compared to the monster-mosh that was the VA/IK war, but it was still the most action the Arena had seen, in quite some time.

We started to lose, but that was ok, because I was having a good time. I was in charge, the younger IK were learning how to fight, and some other clan was hating my ass. Hell, yes!!!

But then Rabid Chicken appeared, quickly figured out IK was fighting against a clan, and started to rip them to pieces-parts. He must have been in heaven.

Now, you have to understand that while I was pretty good, the new IK’s in the fight were just sort of good, and DW was ok-good…but Rabid Chicken was DAMN GOOD. He had been playing for a long time, and was legendary. The only ones known to take him were Red Storm and Aelgoic. This was before Switch.

So, Rabid Chicken pulverized them. After DW kept losing, he left, switched tags to an alias, and came back to fight for DW and pulverize us. Hilarious.

But, eventually, DW left, and it was just us. LOL!

Of course, I was a little nervous. Sure, the fight was fun, but what I had done was kind of declare war, right? So I felt a little sheepish, and decided to post on the subject, to cover my ass.

By the time I got to the IK boards, a few DW’s had already posted about the affair, complaining that I had unfairly declared a conflict between our two clans, blah blah blah.

Rabid Chicken posted, and talked about how much fun he had, that night. I don’t even think he read their posts. He just congratulated them on a good fight.

The new IK posted about how I had ordered them to go to war, so they had to.

But Stryder’s post, next, was pretty moving. He told DW to go to Hell, and that in IK, if a superior rank tells others to do it, that’s that, so I was right, and besides, it’s a combat sim, so get over it, already.

So, after that, there was really nothing more to be said. Stryder had defended me, and the clan, and I was quite grateful. Good times.
…
Decon, as well as most of the Overlord Council, possessed one good trait that I always admired. On a public level, they always backed up another member of IK.
In real life, I tend to follow this policy, when it comes to friends. If you are my friend, you are right, and the other party is wrong, period. You always back up the home team. What’s wrong with that?
So, even if you did something that wasn’t really on the up and up, IK would tell the other side to go pound sand. Then, on the private boards, they might let you have it, and ask what in the hell you were thinking?
It was a good policy, though. It kept IK together. When you entered the private forums of IK, you always knew that you were on home turf…safe. If someone flamed you on the public boards, it was only a matter of time before the whole clan responded with a little white phosphorous of their own.
…
Of course there’s a lot of the stuff I did with IK Dominion…
…which I’m not going to talk about. No, I’m not delusional, I haven’t forsaken my grasp of the real world for an adherence to some weird personal video game ethic, but I don’t know if IK still does the same things that I used to do in Dominion, so why give it away? I’m cool, like that. Some secrets are just fine being secrets, and I'm not about to sell out on old oaths, virtual or otherwise. It was sure a lot of sneaky fun, though. Like ninjas in a chop-sockey flick.
…
It was only a matter of time before the IK/VA war broke out.
The Void Alliance was finally coming into it’s own power, and they were the heir-apparent to IK when it came to completely dominating Tachyon. After things were a little too boring (the frikkin’ Arena was starting to feel like some damn chatroom, or an exercise in over-politness…”Shall we duel, old boy?” “We shall, old chum.” “Go then, fine chap.” “After you, dear boy.” “No, after you.” “No, after you.” “By all means, after you…” You get it.
So, I cleared it with the higher-ups. How ‘boutta war?”
Oh, yeah, it’s worth mentioning that Bloodstar was still a member of the clan, at this time. So it was before the whole Kaylin Silver thing. Bear with me, I have mental problems. It’s the metal plates in my skull.
Yeah, so, after I got the ok from IK I went over to the VA boards and chucked down the gauntlet.
They were only too happy to except. Two weeks of war. Whoo-pee!
So, war we did.
…
Who can remember, with perfect certainty, the sheer amounts of awesome firepower that lit up the public Arena like the 4th of July, or some sort of flaming Christmas Tree? Who can calculate the rails, torpedoes, rockets, Sols, kitchen sinks and other ordinance that went back and forth between VA and IK? Who can, really?
It felt like a real war, seriously. The first battles were pretty small, 3 vs. 3 affairs, but when the weekend came the OL council returned in force, and it got real, G.
…
I specifically remember having nine IK versus six VA, in the first big battle. I also remember specifically targeting Skaare, because he pounded the protoplasm out of me in a duel a few months before. I still think VA was a little shocked that IK actually had that many people flying around in the Arena.
Death’s Claw (or was it Shepiroth?) had come out with his custom maps, by then, and we really kicked the stars around in those bad boys, for sure.
The second big battle, which happened the first Saturday of the first week of the war, was pretty damn equal, with nearly 11 members on each side, blasting away at each other. I mean, this was some serious action, and the most combat both clans had seen, in a long time.
All of the greats got into that one, in particular, Captain Scarlet. I mean, funk, a lot of pilots were good, but Captain Scarlet was GREAT!!! At one point, when there were only 2 other VA, plus him, he still fought all eight of us. After that, Bloodstar referred to him as “The Lion of VA.”
A week passed, with little action from each side, but the last weekend of the war was when both sides really threw away the brakes. At that point, everyone pretty much knew that this was the best of the best and the last of the last, that we would ever have to really fight a serious war, so no one wanted to miss it.
Now, while there was some controversy, later on, I have to say, even though it’s been years (and I’m now with VA) IK, for the most part, came out on top in the war. However, in the last battle, that Sunday long ago, VA knocked our damn skulls off.
There was quite a few reasons we didn’t do to well in that last blast. First off, Bloodstar and Rabid Chicken couldn’t make it. We also lost Powersurge. I had horrendous problems, mostly because my mouse decided to wear out (this was before I got tired of buying a new roller ball mouse every week, and get an infrared mouse) right then. Bad news.
        So, yes, truthfully, we took quite a bludgeoning, because VA was finally able to get enough pilots to kick the dust off their ships, and join in. It was a hard, bloody fight, and damn good fun. The real jolt of adrenaline kicks in when desperation is fueling your every move, in the thick of it.
        So, in the end, while IK performed well throughout the war, VA certainly won the last battle. What do I mean? It was a lot of fun, and a bit of a tie. But it hardly matters, when the war was fought for fun, right?
        Right?
        Wrong.