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.