tpk i call on u now

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Gather around children. TPK has a tale for you.

Compilation of recent TPK Tribes stuffs:

1) Write-up and profile of the "jerry," created upon request:

Cyanide, AKA "Jerry" or his more effervescent nickname "Magic Jerry" is one of the original members of the Starsiege:Tribes community, and is as "oldschool" as they come. He engaged in Tribal combat in many competitive matches during the golden age of Tribes and was a very worth adversary to any opponent he might have faced. Due to his high level of accuracy with weapons and his fierce fighting ability, he was desired by many teams, and thus was swiftly recruited by anyone sampling his skills.

At the time Jerry was young and had a very potent personality that was not highly cohesive to teamplay and tended to create a lot of problematic friction amongst his teammates, which caused him to get "the boot" at what is possibly the highest rate of any well-known player. Thus he was labeled a "Tribe Hopper," and was featured on countless famous up and coming competitive teams such as Core, Doctors, Tsunami, and a long list of others.

Cyanide was a lone shark, deadly while standing on his own, and someone you generally wanted to avoid in battle, as no matter how good you were, it was risky to engage him. His talents rested mostly in the light armor set, with scary discs and strong evasion that made him challenging to kill.

Cyanide was around to see it all. He knows all of the games best teams, the players that played for them, and what matches they won and lost. All around he is a very cool d00d, nice guy, has a great sense of humour, and can be considered an authority on Tribes in general.

Magic Jerry is one of the best things to ever happen to Tribes.

Also he likes black women with nice booty.

GG

2) TPK talks with Gridlock from Synergy

The Pumpkin King said:
For those who don't know, Synergy was one of the very first elite Tribes and they were at the absolute top of the food-chain way back in the day.

They had superior teamwork and worked as a complete unit during an era of the game where people were still running around to pew pew pew.

I eventually recruited one of their players for my arena team because he was at the highest tier of dueling and had a very powerful and versatile ability overall that made him a valuable asset. Also cus he could kill people with the blaster 4 cereal, which got major swag points from me.

Basically, Synergy owned.
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GR|DLOCK said:
Yeah, that's pretty much the story. I've lost touch with everyone, unfortunately. I met a few of the others way back when. A whole bunch of awesome folks. We were all a bit older than your average player I think. I was one of the younger ones at the time. I'm not even sure the oldest members are still alive.

After a while, we got overtaken by Imperial Elite [IE]. They were a smaller team with only one or two substitute players and outclassed everyone because they were each so good at their specialties. Their capper changed the game, pretty much single handedly. He would release a video of his routes, and everyone would be using them within a week. And this was with a dialup connection. I subbed in for a few games with IE, in the weird game types, especially, and it was amazing to be on a team where someone says over voice chat, "I'll gun down the capper" and actually does it immediately. Playing against them was being totally outclassed. You just couldn't do what you had to do to win. They would stop you at every turn. I met a few of those dudes too, and we were all friends for a time. But T1 died, and we all gave it up, as far as I know.

There were a couple other good teams back then. I think there was one called Wolfpack, or something, which was a supergroup of the best of the top ten teams at the time. I think they were the only ones to beat IE.
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3) Princess Fluffy (SiRoiS), one of the best arena players that ever touched the game talks about Shallah, quite arguably the best 1 v 1 dueler that ever played, invoking TPK to discuss old times:

burtrennalds said:
basically because me and Shallah would duel all the time, too. he would beat me a good amount, but occasionally i would beat him and fry his brain.
it was kinda funny to see him lose his cool bcs not many people could get him

he had a very strange way of interacting online. somewhat.. alien like. the things he would say were like, very deep and ahead of his time.

i saw him once at uvalan but stayed away because he looked like he had a bad case of insomnia rapist.
btw i wrote something good but lost it bcs i pressed back by accident.
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The Pumpkin King said:
Oh yes, he was definitely a highly unique guy. When he did speak, he would speak like a poet pouring his soul onto a page with a feather pen.

I believe that I was the only dueler in the game that broke even and went toe to toe with Shallah. There was a lot of mutual respect there so he never raged when I took duels from him. In contrast, I did see him rage really hard against another dueler one time when he lost duels to some "cheap tactics" aka "skiing away while chain whoring," so I totally believe you.

Shallah was a highly calculated cold blooded killer that was immune to ping influence, and was basically the absolute king of 1 v 1 duels. Your talents lied much more in the free-form team based open arena and I do not believe Shallah could have out ever out performed you in a 4 v 4.

In a 1 v 1 you would get nervous from the pressure, over-think things, and lose a great deal of your potency, but when you played arena you would just let go of all that shit and get into a Zen-like Zone and turn into some sort of unstoppable force of nature. The amount of 3 v 1's you would pull off in arena matches was ridiculous. So long as you were still alive, I knew we had a solid chance of winning the round. You could pull almost anything out of your ass and you had such a unique playing style that fit so perfectly in with the rest of us.

You were the complete package and easily one of the top 3 greatest arena players to ever touch the game of Tribes. Maybe even the best.
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For those who don't know. The Pumpkin King was the member of an elite clan called "The Children." I was the 6th and final child.

The ownage that I dished out using this name created a notoriety akin to "The Dread Pirate Roberts", and later, long after I quit Tribes, the name "The Sixth Child" was used by other highly elite players carrying on the name's legacy.

The reason I tell you this is because Shallah was in the clan too. He was "The First Child".

At the time, Shallah was unstoppable, and nobody had ever seen him lose a duel to anyone.... ever...

Recently after I had been recruited by "The Second Child," I was pitted up against the greatest dueler of all time.

At the time I was very new to the Children, and I was the sort of player that enjoyed relaxing, and having a good time. Immediately I felt an incredible serious atmosphere from both the First and the Second child that made me uncomfortable.

What I didn't know is that it would be the most important duel of my entire Tribes career. It was a gladiator cage match for the ages. I was to face the world's greatest dueler in his prime, and test my might.

In fairness, I was hosting the server, and I had a sweet 42 ping. Shallah was sitting at 130 or something rather high.

The thing was, they all claimed that this didn't matter. Shallah was more or less ping immune, and nobody had ever beaten him regardless of ping disadvantage.

I stood across from him on the bridge of dangerous crossings, and tossed the first hand grenade.

It was on. We were playing to 20 duels. Whoever got 10 wins first was the victor.

The privileged few that were watching our duel were basically shitting their pants. They had never seen anyone take it to Shallah so hard in their lives. I'm assuming they didn't even believe it was possible. I wasn't just taking duels from him and breaking even, I was beating him handily.

The duels were 9-6 in favor of The Sixth Child AKA The Pumpkin King.

For me, it was already over in my mind. I had already made it abundantly clear who had the upper hand.

Instead of closing off the 10th duel, I whipped out my targeting laser and began chasing him around the map while crouching and spinning around to form disco lights. I kept pretending that my targeting laser was a deadly weapon that I was smiting him with.

Basically, I felt that Shallah and everyone watching was taking the game far too seriously, and I liked to joke around. I was trying to show everyone they were being far too serious about Tribes. I wasn't trying to disrespect Shallah, but rather trying to make them all laugh and have a good time, but they did not appreciate my ruse. Shallah took my targeting laser duels as being deathly serious, and crushed me into oblivion 3 times in a row as I shined my glowing green rod of justice at him harmlessly. It didn't matter to him or anyone else that I wasn't trying. They said that "a duel was a duel" more or less. Shallah was a very serious d00d when it came to dueling.

Had they told me before hand that this was a very serious matter, I would not have joked around and thrown duels like this, but it is all water under the bridge

Their opinion that the duels I threw counted was ridiculous to me and really upset me at the time. I had just made it obvious to all of them that I could rip Shallah up, but apparently it hadn't registered in their minds. They were waiting for me to hit the magical number 10 on my wins, and nothing before that mattered to them.

I forgot exactly how it went down, but around the very last duel, the 2nd child told me that this was all very serious, and that I needed to duel seriously. He told me it was all on the line basically.

I put down my targeting laser and dueled for real at 9-9 after throwing 3 rounds in a row.

Had I known that this was the most important duel of my life, I would have never busted out the targeting laser to begin with, but alas...

I threw my hand grenade and dueled him for real.

To be honest, I do not remember who died first, but one of us was still alive, when the other dead dueler's hand grenade went off and killed the other. I believe it was me that had ended Shallah first, but perished by his hand grenade after the fact, further aggravating me that it was deemed a draw, but I'm not completely certain about that.

It was written down in time and space that I had tied Shallah.

The score was considered 10-10.

My 3 targeting laser duels had been counted as fully legit

Looking back on it, I suppose it was fair that he got the 3 extra points, after all my ping was way better than his. With a 42 ping vs a 132, it was hardly fair and hugely weighed in my favor.

I do believe that Shallah was a better 1 v 1 dueler than me all around. It was just that my style was highly effective against his, as it was against many of the games best duelers. I had very awkward and unpredictable movements, special tactics that nobody else used at that time, and my discs hit like a truck.

When you get to the highest tier of dueling, it was very paper scissors stone.

My talents rested more in leadership, arena, and organizing a group of people to come together as a cohesive unit.

My ability was in full effect when I was fighting multiple opponents at once.

Similar to Andre the Giant, I often found it more of a challenge to duel one single opponent than fighting 3 at once. With 2 or 3 guys attacking me, I'd fall into a natural rhythm and played without thinking.

Regardless, after that duel with Shallah, I never had to do anything to earn anyone's respect in Tribes ever again. If I ever had anything to prove in Tribes, I proved on the DX bridge on that day against Shallah.

To this day the people that were there on that day talk about what happened.

In 2013, I heard that Shallah respected me as a dueler so much, that he had refrained from using heavy chaingun against me in that duel, but I'm not sure if that's really true or not. It sounds like it very well could be true, but I have no way of knowing for sure.

All of the people I'm mentioning in this story have my utmost respect, and they know that.

THE END... for now...
 
TPK tells tribe history like a well written book. Often have i found myself skipping lines of text in eager expectation of disclosure, so i had to read it multiple times. Nonetheless it seemed only few minutes because of his smooth narratorial style.

I hope you could find time to write a longer, novella like story about the beginning of tribes, to later - more modern development of the community.
 
Natural said:
I applied to Synergy before forming IE. They rejected me.
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I applied to IE, 5150, FTM, S3, KoV, CoNsT, R&G, Tsunami, and a long list of others.

I was rejected by all of them with no tryout.

It was rather late in the CTF era, and the concept of an "undiscovered player" existing was more or less unfathomable to most everyone I encountered.

Baxter was the only person in the world that believed me when I told him that I could ski base to base in Heavy Armor on Snowblind with a shield pack. He told me that his team had very weak Heavy Offense and that I should send him a demo. So I sent him a demo of me not only skiing it with a shield pack, but doing a second base to base run with a remote inventory station on my back, just to prove a point and guarantee that I'd get a try out.

After watching the demo, I was immediately invited to practice with them.

The first practice I had with Team Fusion on Dangerous Crossing, I did way better than I could have ever expected. I racked up around 58 points playing HO on DX. All I remember from that is mortars, climbing all over their base, and seeing bits and pieces of Team Fusion body parts scattering into the air. I was playing as hard as I could in hopes of joining their team.

I found out years later that everyone on Team Fusion's defense thought I was an IE smurf, and many people asked Baxter if I was Natural or some other IE player. I was not privy to this knowledge until way after the fact because Baxter was a smart guy, and didn't want to boost my already overinflated ego.

Basically, out of the 12 + teams I applied to, Team Fusion was the only one that even glanced in my direction.

Later this became a running joke between me and [FTM]Tequila, as well as between me and [KoV]LordKermit. Their rejection of me plagued them all through until the so called death of Tribes, as every time I bumped into them on the playing field, the pain from my discs hurt that much more because they could have recruited me.

We all became good friends.
 
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