CRAZEN MARKAY’S MADMEN

(A retrospective, compiled by Charbroiled and the Crazen Markay crew, with slight editing by Chubbles.)

 

 

WHO IS CRAZEN MARKAY? (A legend.)

As the story goes, the now deleted character, Crazen Markay, grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and spent his days farming goats in the Goatlet. Looking out across the Kingdom from the side of the mountain one day, Crazen Markay cackled wildly. His secret plan for assembling a devastating goat army had finally come to fruition. The goats would swarm the town, giving Crazen Markay the power to rule the entire Kingdom of Loathing. With a scream of “Crazen Markay Say We Eat You!”, he sent the goats thundering down the mountain and attacked the town. Unfortunately, the goats had no weapons and a severe lack of intelligence going against them. They were promptly slaughtered, and turned into currency. Crazen Markay stared at the massacre. He was now penniless, and goatless. He hurled himself from the top of the mountain and was never heard from again. One day, a wandering Accordion Thief named Mixel was walking through the plains and discovered a blood-faced volleyball. He picked it up and was amazed to hear it speak. It said “I am the spirit of Crazen Markay and May Crazen Be Madness That Markay Maynayseed From Unto Time Immemorial.” It had begun.

 

THE BEGINNINGS

Crazen Markay’s Madmen was created by Mixel (#56918) and joined by a few close friends in real life (Mattyacid (#56914) and Charbroiled (#56895)).

 

From Mattyacid: There's the origin...charbroiled, mixel and I, new to the game. Mixel deciding to make a clan. Suggesting that one day we would be the number one clan. Me (and maybe you too, Char, can’t remember) suggesting that it couldn’t hurt to try, but that surely we could never really be the number 1 clan, not with Warclan as powerful as they were. Mixel disregarding the nay-saying as Mixel so often does and it paying off in the end. Funny to remember what a financial effort it was at the time just to get the meat tree. We had that rule that we had to always have at least 50,000 in the clan coffer so we could all get 500 meat per day. Which I guess we still get, huh? Ha…

 

The three of us spent our early days PvPing each other and gathering up as many items as we could afford. Asking “Hey, what’s a Mr. Accessory?” and the like. We convinced other friends to join who were instrumental in building a strong foundation of leadership. Sadly, some of those friends are no longer with us in the game, but without them we could never have become the clan we are today; shout-outs go to Ichbald Hyzart (#99117), Eisenstein (#87426), and Azacharyg (#100162). One of the primary leaders in negotiations was HeWhoIsShort (#102433), a guy who was truly good at this game…there were late night chat meetings and phone calls to discuss our master plans and build a foundation for the rules of our clan. Lettuce Entertaiegnue (#87439) emerged as another key real-life friend who was instrumental in recruitment and extreme kindness to other clan members. If I’m not mistaken, I believe that Jessfish (#91822) was the first person accepted who we did not know in real-life. McMerlin (#124431) was another. McMerlin is a great fellow…trustworthy, intelligent and giving. Frood (#104051) and Jaypooner (#102378) were the next, along with devilish_demonica (#98330) and Presto Ragu (#77470). These were the original Madmen.

 

THE MIDDLE

WhatTheDeuce (#48549), his brother PsycicPsyco (#48630), and SnorkOutQueen (#125453). What can I say? WhatTheDeuce and Psyco are great morale boosters. I tip my hat to them. Because of those two, we have our own clan forum. SnorkOutQueen is a number whiz and has been a key factor in many clan discussions. Then there is Muefigilo (#89367), the former leader of Kingdom of Clothing; a clan notorious for always smashing down our defenses with random attacks. From Muefigilo: “I, the great ruler of the KoC, decided that the war which had ravaged both our lands must come to a stop for the good of the people, and agreed to join the forces of Markay so that the war might end.” And we are a better clan for it.

 

THE PROFESSOR AND MARY ANN

Crazen Markay accepts people only through references of other people. Spies and looters plague the game; we have been looted 3-4 times in our history and it has not been pleasant. The last one, Sharpie (#84567), took a huge beating by the Penguin Mafia and bounty hunters. The one thing that I’ve learned about our clan is that its members are always there to defend the honor of the clan….

 

Many of the names listed above were influential in bringing the markets down on Hell Ramen and Mr. Accessories. A good portion of our clan money has gone to warfare……there has been a great, great deal of effort and thought put into devising a manageable army. Believe me when I say we have people who get a lot of meat and burn it in the coffer. A concerted effort was made to donate materials for food and drinks for the clan stash. Many of our members have spent much time helping to build the clan stash…when we were looted, there was no panic or despair. Instead, everyone bonded together and rebuilt…as we always seem to.

 

 

 

REGARDING CLAN WARFARE:

In the beginning (i.e., May and June, 2004), the clan rankings were dominated by Warclan, 1337 sl4x0rs and 1337 sn4x0rs. All the other clans were struggling for a position in the rankings. Mixel guessed that clan warfare was the way to go and he was correct. We were aware that it was a long-term project, knew patience was a virtue and began building our army.

 

We arrived on the goodie bag scene fairly early, climbing as high as 4th place every now and then and being knocked down occasionally by other clans. After building up our army and being fairly strong, we were decimated by Warclan, led by Boozerbear. A message to Boozerbear was followed with this response:

 

“You are aware that this is called clan WARFARE, right? Nothing personal.”

 

Those words inspired us to research and gather information as to the best way to build a strong army and stay near the top of the rankings. Our clan grew in numbers as we brought in more and more players…. We began to find ways to stabilize our position…all the while knowing we were vulnerable to the top three clans and their giant armies. Never once did we bother to attack any of those clans…we knew it was a pointless effort. 4th place was good enough…for now.

 

We recruited a network of spies who branched out into other clans. They began feeding us information on clan armies to see what we were up against.

 

Some interesting things happened. First, Boozerbear handed Warclan over to Inari, who promptly took out the 1337 clans, leaving Warclan as the ultimate goodies-rich clan. We began our climb to the top again… tensions were high among our clan leaders as we waited to see what would happen.

 

While this was going on, our clan was looted for the first time. The player was removed from our clan and began a personal war against Mixel which continued for some time. Revenge is a dish best served cold, and Mixel would get his.

 

Other tensions began to arise, none of which involved CMM…An offer went out from Boozerbear that 1 billion meat would be awarded to any clan that could take down Warclan and keep the goodie bags. Alliances were formed and the Markay began talking to other clans active in warfare, to see if a joint effort could work.

 

Then the Kingdom Erupted. Black Sunday. Bugs were found in the game giving people near-unlimited amounts of meat and also bringing in millions of duped items. Clans began pouring money into their armies and war broke out. Warclan was toppled and many large clan armies began battling for position atop the rankings. We held our position beneath Warclan for approximately two days until the larger clans broke our defense for good. We laid low and began dumping meat into the clan coffer…billions and billions…

 

Oatmeal was instituted to feed the armies and large clashing clans began to realize their days were numbered due to heavy daily expenses. We managed to climb again to second place, behind the new #1…the Knights of Minus Tirith…who established complete dominance, yet stopped attacking to allow other clans a chance to build. The Madmen settled into second place and waited. Celfious proved to be a worthy clan leader and his clan stayed true and defended against the return of the previous top clans involved in warfare. He is a man of his word.

 

A mysterious thing happened. A phantom clan arrived on the scene (rumored, but never confirmed, to be HotStuff) and wiped out the two top clans and then deleted the goodie bags. The Knights and the Madmen were destroyed and the goodie bags burnt.

 

CMM rebuilt and jumped directly to the top of the clan rankings, where we stayed for quite some time.

 

We discovered that our clan looter friend (the one who warred with Mixel) had popped up in Mandraclan. A clan war ensued after talks broke down and the demand to remove that player was defied….after a few days, he was removed from Mandraclan and a truce was issued….

 

Time passed.

 

We again caught the attention of Boozerbear, who had since formed the one-man clan, Mahi. Mahi began an assault on CMM. Our second major clan war had begun. Once again, our defenses were destroyed after days of warfare, but we held our own. Boozer gave up his attacks, burnt the goodie bags and Mahi was no more.

 

For the third time, Crazen Markay’s Madmen rose from the ashes, rebuilt the army and moved back to the top of the clan leader board, where we have stayed ever since…of course, there have been many clan armies that have been able to steal goodie bags (The Goddess’s Knights being the most recent).

 

IN CLOSING

CMM has been warring since the get-go. We have worked hard to maintain our position and are proud of our status. We attack any clan we are not allied with that possesses goodie bags. However, as one can see by the win rankings, we attack much less frequently than other clans, even though our defenses are constantly besieged by other clan armies. Because, after all, ““You are aware that this is called clan WARFARE, right? Nothing personal.”

 

 

Side Note, by Chubbles

Because this entry does not follow my usual format, and for the sake of maintaining the flow of the narrative, I am separating this portion from the rest of the entry. However, a few more words about WhatTheDeuce are in order.

Late in June 2004, WhatTheDeuce and his real-life brother, PsycicPsycho, uncovered a bug that allowed for mass item duplications. As he writes, “One person put an item into the clan coffer. Then, two people (me and my bro) took the item out at the same time. If it was timed right, you both get it.” The hole was left open for several days, and once it was patched up, Deuce set up a riddle contest, similar to HotStuff’s SoberPill contest, to distribute some of the meat and items he had acquired.

In the first week of August, 2004, just before Black Sunday and in the midst of the Hell Ramen wars, Deuce and PsycicPsycho found another bug, this one much more serious. Deuce would offer an item (say, 50,000 hell ramen) for trade to PsycicPsycho; then one player would accept, and one would cancel the offer. Again, if timed right, both players would receive the items. Using this hole, WhatTheDeuce duped several hundred thousand of a number of items, most notably Hell Ramen, Gourd quest items, and Rolls in the Hay. They then flooded the Hell Ramen market, putting 600,000 ramen each in their stores at 15,000 meat. No one could buy them out; they had temporarily accomplished the essential mission of the Warehouse23 ramen bot. The next day they dropped prices to 12,000 meat. The next day, someone opened up a meat vortex, and the ramen storehouse disappeared almost immediately.

Deuce was awarded a Bugfinder Blade for reporting the loopholes. Since then, he has been a familiar face in all the forums, and regularly weighs in on issues of importance.