Buried Bones: A History of the Underdogs. Compiled by BraveSirRobin uDog I tried to keep the history brief, and tried to tone down my subjective judgements. This unfortunately makes it a pretty dry document, but I want it to be fairly short. I tried to avoid mentioning events that concerned individual 'dogs, attempting to limit it to things that affected the clan as a whole. The exception is with projects, where I tried to record the roles that members played, for "posterity." I realize that there's great risk for making fools of myself (and ourselves) here. It's just a TFL clan, after all. One of the main things that I liked so much about the Underdogs when I was joining was their ability to laugh at themselves. I hope we never take ourselves too seriously! Still, these are fun times, and I'd like to remember them. OK, here it is: The Underdogs are a gaming club that were founded on 1 January 1999 by ChrisP. The founding members were ChrisP, Knightmare', Father Merrin and Ned the Wine-o. Several of the early members came from another order, "PoOp", desiring to form a new clan with a different emphasis. Though far from exclusively, the group most often plays the computer game "Myth: The Fallen Lords" by Bungie Software, more specifically, the online multi-player Myth games. With no heirarchy and members literally from opposite sides of the globe, the group has been a fascinating experiment as it overcomes disputes and constantly evolves. And it's been a good time for a group of friends. In late January of 1999 White Rhino and ChrisP developed the Underdogs' web site. Many have contributed to this effort over the years, including Warrior Mouse and Max Rebo. The web site, with its associated public and private message boards, has provided for the communication necessary to keep the group in touch and to accomplish projects that benefitted the clan and the gaming community as a whole. In July of '99 the Underdogs released "Grounds for Assault", a CD-ROM compilation of third-party maps for Myth: The Fallen Lords (TFL). GFA has contributed immensely to the quality of uDog games and, by extension, unranked TFL games in general. (When things get stagnant, remember that GFA CD you have... mix it up, hosts!) GFA contributors included: Gollum, SnowWight (aka Oroboros ), White Rhino, Roshambo, and many others. Several members of the clan came as defectors from the loosely-knit group, "OoO", or, "Out of Order." OoO was formed as a satirical jab at the problems of some clans, but came to be overshadowed by the unstable personality of its abrasive founder, Stickler. Stickler became more and more belligerent over time, clashing with several uDogs and alienating many of the OoO's. xTrooper, Ned Hamfist, BraveSirRobin, and Warrior Mouse (nee Fog), went OoOoO (Out of Out of Order) and became Underdogs. Stickler seemed to enjoy being the victim of the system, and worked so hard at creating that very situation that he was eventually permanently banned by Bungie. In the latter part of 1999, SnowWight pushed the clan towards the formation of a Constitution. Since the Underdogs have no official leader, the Constitution was conceived to relieve ChrisP of being the arbiter of all disputes. Although many dogs bristled at the idea of a formal document such as this, the constitution idea evolved into the Frequently Asked Questions on our website, which compiles a group of principles agreed upon by the Underdogs, without imposing legalistic regulations. The document consists of a 2-part hypertext FAQ, one for members, and one for non-members. Since then, it has largely been neglected, but the fact that it is there as a set of agree-upon guidelines has helped the clan run smoothly. In January and February of 2000 the Underdogs hosted the "Return of the Fallen Lords" (RotFL) tournament, intended as a last great hurrah* for Myth: TFL. The wildly successful tournament featured 16 teams (79 players) and nearly 100 individuals competing 'til the death, painting the landscape with their opponents' blood, until one individual and one team were left standing. Team uSJ (uDogs ChrisP, Sunflower bitch, Snowman, and their SJ allies Losk and Father Merrin) beat Ten Sack in the finals (thanks to some brilliant advance preparation of the dream-stone fuses ;-) in an extremely well-fought final match, coming back from a 0-2 deficit to win 3-2. Deadman of MIA won the won the Free-For-All finals, with Caldazar and "My Modem is on Fire" taking the Silver and Bronze medals. * Note: Several gamers reported hearing muffled cries of "I'm not quite dead yet!" and "I feel happy!" from their TFL CD's, and many still enjoy good competition and new TFL maps to this day. RotFL contributors included: Ned Hamfist, ChrisP, Warrior Mouse, Max Rebo, WhiteRhino, Aragorn, and Nae'blis. In the spring of 2000, the Underdogs, along with their allies the Alkema and the Society of Journeymen, began secretly working on MagMa, a set of Myth 2 maps ported to Myth: TFL. The first wave of maps were released on June 1st, 2000 and included "Gyre / Gimble in the Wabe," "Drowned Kingdom / Empire," "Cracks / Clash in the Cloudspine," "Dead Man's Chest / Float," and "Dead of Winter." Thanks to Losk of SJ, many special M2 units were ported, such as Stygian Knights, Bre'Unor, Warlocks, Myrkridia (and Myrk Giants), and Ghasts. Creative new variations were added, bringing more depth to the M2 maps and bringing more life to Myth:TFL as a whole. MagMa contributors included: ChrisP, White Rhino, Losk, Max Rebo, Warrior Mouse, Doobie, 00Agent23, Ginx, Brave Sir Robin, Oroboros, xTrooper, Ned Hamfist, Coggs, Pacopicasso, Version, Anarchy, Father Merrin, Aragorn, Your Kids, and Snowman. On June 19, 2000, Bungie Software was purchased by Microsoft. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth was done. Halo, Bungie's pre-hyped and eagerly anticipated multi-player combat game, was one of the main reasons for MS's move. Halo's release was delayed until the launch of the X-box, MS's planned video game console. In February 2001 the MagMa group released the second wave of maps. A port of the "Lands" maps continued MagMa's project to bring the best of Myth 2 to TFL, with some new twists. Bringing Myth 2 units and new life to TFL co-ops, the Alliance Collection included "Flight from Covenant 2", "Forest Heart 2", "Ambush at Devil's Overlook 2", and "Shadow of the Mountain 2". Finally, "Unity3" is a collection of maps in the tradition of Clan of the Bear's Unity series. Yielding a huge bang for the buck, Unity3 provides a huge assortment of different meshes with innovative units and new combinations of units. Major contributors to this release: ChrisP, Losk, and Oro (There are probably many more... tell me. -BSR) In the spring of 2001, Bungie.net for TFL went down. Bungie has promised to migrate it to another server, but that effort appears to be extremely low-priority. In response, project Magma created BattleWatch, a dynamic database that facilitates the gathering of players for IP (Internet Protocol)-based TFL games. The response was amazing; the virtual battlefields of Myth were once again littered with the corpses of TFL fans once more. BattleWatch contributors included: Oroboros, DeadMan of MIA, Losk, and Doobie. In celebration of this revival of TFL, the Magma team threw a party: the tournament called RotFL2. With more than 100 warriors from 28 different clans competing for an unprecedented array of prizes in six rounds of the tournament, much fun was had. Furthermore, the tournament introduced the Magma map collection "InCarn8," a new twist on the classic Carnage map with 8-player games and innovative combinations of new units. RotFL2 contributors included: ChrisP, Gil, Woof, Coggs, Doobie, UndeadEd, Oroboros, and many others. During the summer of 2001, Connor and Marius of Clan Plaid reverse-engineered Bungie.net, creating Marius.net, a true replacement server for Myth:TFL games. And there was much rejoicing. Team Magma continues to innovate on the mapmaking front. Proving/Killing Grounds has been ported from M2 to TFL, with several new twists. Several more maps are in development-- stay tuned! Today, the Underdogs live on, and even if some day the last dog tag is cast into a drawer and lost, the cameraderie and good times that were the essence of the clan will not be forgotten. ChrisP 1/99 Knightmare' 1/99 Father Merrin 1/99 - 3/99 Ned the Wine-O 1/99 - 8/99 THORN 1/99 Sunflower Bitch 1/99 (became Fighting Weiner Dog) Anarchy 1/99 - 8/00 Lil' Goblin 1/99 - 3/99 White Rhino 1/99 - 4/00 Aragorn 1/99 Nae'blis 2/99 Snake-Eyes 2/99 GoatT 2/99 Frost 3/99 Hanged Man 3/99 - 8/99 |S|c|a|r|e|c|r|o|w| 3/99 Losk 3/99 - 8/99 Snowman ? - 9/00 Version 3/99 Gollum 3/99 - 3/00 SnowWight 4/99 - 10/99 (became Oroboros) Omen 4/99 Roshambo 6/99 - 8/99 Zoid ? Ginx Zorro Osprey Max Rebo 7/99 - ?? xTrooper 7/99 Your Kids ? Ned Hamfist 8/99 BraveSirRobin 9/99 One-Eyed Cat 9/99 Buff A Lo 9/99 Warrior Mouse 10/99 Doobie 2/00? pacopicasso 2/00 Coggs 4/00 00Agent23 4/00 Dank Rider 7/00 Aaron Wolf 7/00 BloodThirster 8/00 (became Kira-Baka) Grignard 10/00 Mister Pornstar 12/00 Sir Loin 1/01 Blessed 1/01 UndeadEd 7/01