A little known fact is that the great browser based game TDZK that flourished during the years 2001-2007 was created by 2 members of the House Forsaken multi-game clan, Jerle & Hotaru. Both of these worthies had been members of the House Forsaken alliance in Space Merchant that played under the name of the "Trex Mercenaries." TDZK was inspired by Space Merchant and was soon a much better game than what SM ever was. However, there was a problem: getting their follow HF members into the game. Back in the Fall of 2001, in one of TDZK's earliest rounds, if not in fact its very first round, there was a Top Ten ranked HF alliance under StormFire aka the longtime #3 guy in all of HF. HF then failed to maintain an alliance in TDZK for over a year.
Finally, after some prodding from Jerle & Hotaru I decided to take HF into TDZK. To do that I first had to resign as the in-game leader of the HF alliance in SMR and hand over the position to my talented protege there, Omega Renegade. Then I posted to both the HF Browser Based Gaming (BBG) Realm & the General Discussion Forum (GDF) about taking HF back into TDZK. Posting on the GDF proved to be a mixed blessing since while it attracted a number of talented players to the game, it also attracted the interest of a senior HF member named Jewel who proved to be both a cheater as well an incredibly ineffective alliance leader and an idiot to boot.
However, the HF alliance initially thrived. For instance it moved up in the alliance rankings from #49 to #39 in just one day. Meanwhile, our close allies the Shadow Knights (SK's) under Malhavoc also moved up the alliance rankings from #65 to #42 in just about one day was well. Recruiting went so well that we set up a new alliance, House Forsaken 2, that served as a recruit/training alliance. I decided to make myself the leader of HF2. I still remained the overall leader of the HF forces in TDZK. My preference for the leadership of the main HF alliance was an experienced veteran of BBG's such as either DarkFlare or DracoLichB, however both declined the honor. Since Jewel really wanted that position and his shortcomings were not yet apparent, he was picked.
Both of the House Forsaken alliances along with the SK's rapidly became a force to be reckoned with. According to my notebook from this time (Yes I still have my gaming notebooks from such games as Diaspora, Dominion, Merchant Empires, Planetarion, Quest for Yap, Solar Empire, Space Merchant & SM's wretched "close clone" SMR & SpaceDog's unsuccessful Trade Wars like BBG The Merchant among others. Do you?), the main HF alliance ranked #19 while HF 2 ranked #22 and the SK's ranked #28. However disaster struck in mid-March, 2003, Jerle informed me on ICQ (In a conv that I inexplicably failed to cut & paste to email) that he had, and not for the first time, caught both Hyperion & Jewel running multi's. On top of that, he also caught Hyperion right in the act in some other act of something even worse than mere cheating: Hyperion was using his multi-account in a childish attempt to start a war between the HF/SK forces and a powerful alliance called Iron Ring. And this despite the fact that we were already in a war with the powerful Dark Realms alliance.
It was at precisely this point that everything went to Hell.
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