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| ABOUT: Warclan, as Giboc once noted, "is, was, and always has been, BoozerBear's clan." It has an early history, from the days before BoozerBear joined 1337 sn4x0rs, and continued to exist during his stint in the 1337 clans, but very little information about it survives in the Dustbins of Loathing. It appears that its emergence as a clan familiar to all of KoL came only after an amicable competition between two of the game's most respected players turned the Kingdom upside down. At the end of the film "Men In Black", the camera pans back from a crowded New York City street to show the city, the continent, the world, the galaxy. As it zooms further back, the entire universe as we know it is revealed to be nothing more than another masher in a sack of marbles, thrown about by gargantuan beings for sport. We like to think of the Kingdom as a vast community, an entire world with its own markets, ecosystem, and sociopolitical divides. But when looking at ******Warclan******, the analogy of the Kingdom as a rusted tin in a giant's game of kick-the-can seems somewhat more appropriate. As the story goes, Boozerbear, by this time a famed 1337 sl4x0r, mall manipulator and bughunter, added a few new items to his store on June 23, 2004. Players visiting the Casbah found one million of each clan stat booster selling for one meat above autosell value; Boozer was using some of his vast net worth to bring cheaper Elixirs, Jugs and Suntan Lotions to the masses, as he had done before with Salty Dogs. For the next day or so, stat hounds rejoiced, until about 2 a.m. on June 25, when a newbie named Qrrbrbirlbel (#80009) stepped into the Casbah. With about 2 or 3 million meat on hand, he successively bought and autosold bulk suntan lotions until he had bought Boozer out. 900k poorer, but now infamous, Qrrbrbirlbel had launched a career, and Boozer set about rectifying the situation by purchasing tons more and pricing them a bit higher. Pimonkey (see 1337 sn4x0rs) bought him out almost immediately. A debate ensued; Pimonkey, who was, for all intents and purposes, a clanmate of Boozer's, noted, "BoozerBear is bringing billions of bug-wrought meat back into circulation, and I am taking it right back out, with a detriment to myself. I helped bring a lot of that meat into the game, too, so I feel that I am further responsible for its existence." Boozer replied that he was all for burning bugmeat, but why ruin the fun of cheap stat boosters? He suggested an alternative: "Maybe we should take this into the clan war arena, and speed the process of clearing out cheatmeat up a bit? Choose your weapon, good sir knight: Mall or Clanwar. I'll have at you in the field of battle and we can burn up a trillion meat or so in gratuitous clashes of grunts and lay-z-archers! What say thee?" An hour later, it was on. Boozer hung up his shoes with the sl4x0rs, returned to the 12 asterisk'ed clan, and challenged the 1337 clans to a friendly game of all-out war. After a week or two in the clan by himself (or in the company of his multi, BoozerBot), Boozer began recruiting help for the war room. His choice to replace him as leader was Inari, who was young both in years and in start date, but who had quickly acquired the favor of many of the elites of the game. According to Inari, Boozer had mistakenly (and bizarrely) confused her with Mick (#4590), and decided to stick with his instincts. Armed with Boozer's billions, Warclan staked out a spot at the top of the Goodie Bags boards and rarely encountered serious competition. The 1337 clans couldn't be faulted for lack of trying, however. Neither could Hatred, an ancient titan of clan war, or the Knights of Minus Tirith, who would be swept up in the rivalry of giants without at first understanding what they were getting into. On July 21, Boozer announced, in response to some light jest in the forums about Warclan's power, that he was declaring war on all clans in the Kingdom, and dared anyone with meat aplenty and balls of brass to knock Warclan out of the top of the Goodies list. It took four whole days, but on July 25th, the 1337 sl4x0rs managed to make off with the goodies (though they didn't make much of a permanent dent on Warclan's defenses). In the meantime, Boozer had taken leave of Warclan, handed the reins over to Inari, and set up (on 7/22/04) in his own private cave called Mahi. Inari invited a number of additional players to Warclan, including Virgo and theitsybitsyspider, who served as a sort of "cabinet of advisors" that contributed to warroom management. Celfious, leader of the clan Knights of Minus Tirith, had been elbowing his way into clan war as July came to a close, and on August 1 posted the first of a series of forum threads concerning Warclan's dominance. Boozer and Pimonkey faded from the fight, and the war of words became a standoff between Celfious (who argued that bugmeat had essentially ruined clan war as a worthwhile part of the game) and Inari (who maintained she was respecting Boozer's vision, that no clan would get too powerful). Two days later, however, a wildcard would enter the fray, one of the most hated characters ever to play the game. Xkript (#98700) was a notorious spammer/flamer who was widely loathed for his frequent derailing of forum topics and in-game scamming, including his exploitation of a mall pricing bug that made him rich. Sick of his antics, the members of Coffee Love, the KoL AIM chat room, hatched a plan. Virgo, one of Inari's inner circle of Warclan hawks, curried Xkript's favor, and began selling him false information about Warclan's war room and stats in exchange for meat. Virgo and several of the Coffee Lovers, including Inari, Balex2290, gutterking6 (#55073), Gnilrets2 (see Goddess's Knights), Skatje, Itsy, and TechSmurf (see Philanthropists), snuck multis into Xkript's clan. (he was the head of a clan apparently called The Legion of Supervillains). Gnilrets2's multi converted all his clan coffer meat into goodie bags, and attacked with Warclan's army, effectively bankrupting him. Xkript pled his case to the forums, but found few friends; however, in Xkript's thread, Itsy and Inari announced that they would not attack any other clans, except 1337 sn4x0rs, for the next 15 days. To top it all off, BoozerBear announced on August 5 that he was offering a 1 billion meat prize to any clan who could take down Warclan and keep the goodies for a day. Since the announcement of the bounty was buried in a bizarre thread about the relationship between clan war and anarcho-syndicalism, on the morning of August 7, Trog Dor (see Warehouse23) created a new thread to trumpet the bounty, and called for action. Warclan would not last the day. There were two reasons for this, and they are possibly related. First, Six hours after Trog Dor's thread, a clan called ******Peaceclan******, led by the level 7 character Peacemaker, took Warclan for every goodie bag they had. Within minutes, Warclan would reclaim the entirety of the loot, but this attack was the first serious challenge Warclan had had to its dominance since the attack by the sl4x0rs on July 25. (More to come on this; Peacemaker's identity is still unknown, although speculations abound..) Second, August 7 was Black Sunday. Or, more precisely, it was Saturday afternoon, at least in America, and as bugmeat began pouring into the KoL economy by the hundreds of quintillions, anyone with a clan and a meat vortex could buy themselves a war room to die for. In the days following Black Sunday, it was not at all uncommon to find, on a clan message board, a post from one's clan leader, begging her war room captains not to attack at all. Every clan with goodie bags could afford to buy themselves cinder blocks and archers enough to withstand any onslaught. Many well-intentioned players thought to burn their bugmeat by dumping it all into their clan coffer, thus removing it from circulation; however, this left many clans with absolutely astounding war chests, and some clans to this day still run their clans on bugmeat-rich coffers that contain billions more than the per-player limit. As for Warclan, it is perhaps best to quote Inari herself: "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I said that Warclan was built with bugmeat, and it if was destroyed, I wouldn't rebuild it." Itsy announced to the forums on Black Sunday that, henceforth, Warclan would retire from the fray, and when Minus Tirith made a colossal attack on Warclan just after the bugmeat explosion, there was no retribution. Itsy left Warclan to join the sn4x0rs, Boozer more or less withdrew from management of the clan, and the behemoths of clan war stepped down for good. Warclan's still around today; throughout 2004, many of its members (or their mains, at least) were regulars in chat channels. But though it was still spoken of with reverence, or derision, whenever clan warfare came up, its in-game presence waned. After Inari's account was hacked and deleted on October 7, 2004 (the culprit was rumored to be hAvAAck (see Warehouse23), but this has not been substantiated), Warclan went into a sort of limbo, as it was then leaderless, and would remain so until Inari's account was partially reinstated by Jick on November 29. | MAJOR MEMBERS: *BoozerBear (#4576) - See Mahi. *Inari (#83048/#249330) - Chat moderator; clan leader after Boozer. First known to KoL as Komadori (#5XXXX?). Later a member of The NinjaPirateZombieRobot clan. Inari's account was hacked in October 2004; more information forthcoming. *Birdy (#37689) - Birdy was briefly the leader of Knights of Minus Tirith before joining Inari's Warclan, and was a member there for most of summer and fall 2004. He is a top powergamer, having, at this point, reached the Top Ten Players board on the login page. Some of this is definitely attributable to his access to large amounts of sober pills, just after they were duped and before they were stolen by the Penguin Mafia in August 2004. He is also a very well-known rares hawker, particularly of Mafia-related wares. Birdy was a chat moderator from August 2 to November 2, 2004; the reason for his de-modding is still hazy, although it stems from some sort of disagreement between he and Mr Skullhead. Late in 2004, he joined Philanthropists/Noblesse Oblige. *Theitsybitsyspider (#121084) - Itsy was an inside man and warmonger for Warclan; after Black Sunday, he joined 1337 sn4x0rs. See 1337 sn4x0rs. *virgo (#41148) - noted forum poster; later leader of Outworld, a short-lived power clan which counted among its members P4UL (see Aflubadubdub!), jet_the_prince (see w00t Angels) and t3h1337n00b (#150536). Virgo was a point man in clan war and spying tactics for Warclan. Later a member of Tempest Fugit. *Skatje (#5367) - Information forthcoming. *Jacka18l (#60852) - One of the better-known whitehat bugfinders in the game. In June 2004 he was awarded a Bigger Bugfinder blade, in connection with a bug he discovered that allowed him to hack his way into any player's account. He has also patched up numerous other bugs, the details of which are not well known to the author. In the process, he has become extremely wealthy and the possessor of many ultra-rare items; it is quite probable that he, at one point, had more clan karma than any other player in the history of the game. Later a member of The Rye. Jacka18l artificially inflated the yeti market on July 30, 2004, just after Protest Signs started dropping on the Icy Peak. He managed to push the prices up from 200 to 10,000 meat, in a whirlwind panic that wreaked about as much havoc on the KoL community as anything would before Black Sunday. *Prima Vera Angelhair (#144394) - chat regular and, as Wind, a well-known forum poster. Later a member of Noblesse Oblige. *ThaBeave (#145480) - former war monger (in late 2004), and Villa regular. In the spring of 2005, when Villa's membership was flagging and the chat in danger of petering out, ThaBeave gave out well over a dozen Villa documents that he had bought or stockpiled, and gave them to people he thought would improve the atmosphere. (The author was one.) *Jonac13 (#49013) - formerly a well-known trivia hoster. *Mystical (#23871) - Mystical served as a surrogate mod while Inari's account was in limbo. She was originally a multi of the mod Elven_Princess (#12625). *Alpaca (#206662) - See Church Of Reset. *Balex2290 (#24693) - See Philanthropists. *G_God (#133777) - see Alliance From Hell. *DaPunisher (#81380) - See Alliance From Hell. *BittyBaby (#54827) - see Hatred. *CheekyJez (#99052) - See The Rye. *P4ul (#9446) - See Aflubadubdub. *Sandrylene (#30839) - see Warehouse23. *Philanthropist (#43632) - Briefly a member. See Philanthropists. |