origins of virus.23  

[Editor's note: virus.23 is a Quake3 Capture the Flag clan]

        Like many other clans, the origins of virus.23 are rooted in the falling of another. Crooked Edge (cXe), Rest in Pieces (RIP), Lammas on Ridilan (LoR), Vangaurd (V), Red Dragons (RD), are a few of the clans where virus23 members came from. Storming the Q2CTF scene, and not looking back. To this day, we still hold personal relationships (read: REAL LIFE) with most members, and look forward to continue to raise hell among the community, and dance all night on drugs meant for animals.

   about our names  

        Now I'd like to go into a little side story about the names, which have probably become the defining characteristic of virus.23 ("We don't need no stinking names!"). The initial reasoning was twofold. First off, while we still respected and still do respect those that we played with beforehand, that we did not invite to join virus.23, we felt that if we came right out and started a new clan with them still around, etc, it might lead to some awkward situations. Therefore, like real men, we hid behind aliases ;). Secondly, we thought it'd be real funny when everyone on Springfield CTF got pissed off after getting owned by someone with no name :). To a lesser extent, we also liked the anonymity (albeit short-lived). It basically gave us a chance to let loose and have fun again, rather than living up to the reputation of 'skint' or 'zeke' (me filling up my rep was no problem, I've always sucked). In order to keep this blanket of obscurity, for a while running we were extremely secretive about who we really were. Eventually, loose lips sank ships, and we were found out, but at that point it didn't really matter.

   quake2  

        The original OGL roster for virus.23 was a (action), b (brood - man where are you??!?!), e (skint), t (toadkiller), u (trephine), and z (zeke). We wanted to keep the roster as small and simple as possible. Coincidentally, those letters spelled 'beatzu'. Eventually, availability problems forced us to recruit a couple more, who were o (reddwarf) and y (nafetsman), which kept in the previous tradition ('beatzyou' was the new word spelled...). This original small roster had terrific success running up the OGL CTF ladder and destroying no-name clans with ease. Then again, we too were a no-name clan. This however was soon to change.

   in the limelight  

        Finally, after a long wait, our chance came to challenge for #1. It was a pretty easy victory, seeing as how ES forfeited it and left the ladder, wanting to retire at the top. Gee, thanks guys. We successfully defended the spot for MONTHS, eventually Pm snuck a win in on us, taking the spot for a day or two, before retiring themselves. With them gone it was safe to say we were the kings of Q2CTF.

        After our loss we went on a short-ish break, blah blah blah. We also got ourselves an HPB team, which turned out to be kinda messy. Ever since the beginning of virus.23 we had been in touch with bee (of m0b), and when the time came that we wanted to add a gimp squad, he, and a lot of his former m0b teammates seemed like a good choice. Unfortunately, horrible holyier-than-thou attitudes and dissension between LPB and HPB (read: they thought we were conspiring against them), led to the eventual break-up of the HPB's, and some bad blood to this day.

   quake3