#sd on QuakeNet
 
 
  What is this clan thing about, arent you able to play alone ?
    Of course we could play alone. But would that be much fun, playing only FFA and stuff ? Well we think not and therefore founded this clan to have fun playing as a team.    
  What game(s) are you playing ?
    At the moment we play Quake3Arena Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag as well as Counterstrike.    
  How can I become a member ?
    Just write a mail to members@spirit-of-darkness.de including some facts about you (like age, experience and so on) or directly join our IRC-Channel #sd on QuakeNet and ask for Demon or Blade our two instructors. We then will maybe (when you proved your skill and/or talent in play) provide you a testmember status.    
  Who are these weird members in your channel who never answer my questions ?
    Well in most cases that are our channel bots. SD|Buffy for example is our quote (just try and type !quote) and stats (!stats) bot. SD|Live on the other side will only join if we have a war going on. He will then provide you with actual live data about the game.    
  We are a Quake3 clan too, how can we challenge you ?
    You can easily do that by writing a mail to q3@spirit-of-darkness.de with your suggestions about time, place and rules and we will answer quickly.  
  Do you play international matches/leagues as well ?
    Well we played in Eurocup II, but we just got pretty frustrated as the pings were very bad, when we had to play on an non-german server. So as long as the pings to other european countries are as bad as at the moment we wont play any international leagues, because its no fun to play with pings > 100. But if your are a clan from outside of Germany and want to challenge us it really depends wheather both of us can get equal and playable pings somewhere in this world :).  
  What the hell does CTF mean ?
    CTF stands for Capture the Flag and is a Quake3 modification which roots go back to the original Quake times when it was invented by a guy called Zoid. The basic rules are that you got two teams (yeah sounds like normal DM until here:) and each team got a homebase with a flag in it.

The goal ist to steal the opponent teams flag and bring it to your base where you can capture it, but only if your own flag is still at home, too. The team with the most captures after a given timelimit is the winner.
 
  Where can I get this CTF thing, sounds cool ?
    If you did not realize yet we tell you that it is a part of the original Quake3 release. Therefore when you got Quake3 you also have CTF already. Nice thing isnt it ? :)

[Note: It is not included in Q3A.]
 
  Who is your leader ?
    Spirit of Darkness does not has one leader. We never felt the necessity to have one guy in the position to decide about all and everything and therefore every (full)member of us is some kind of a small leader.  
  Do you cheat ?
    Absolutely not! We believe in fairplay and think that everyone should play Quake3 without altered models, graphics or sounds providing them an unfair advantage over their enemy.  
  I saw some X-Files episodes, is their content true ?
    Well, you better want to believe that the truth is out there...  
  Is there a God ?
    Uh oh, tough question. To be serious we dont really know. But why dont you become your own (Quake)-God ? :-)  
  Where is this bloody fuel for the chainsaw [not for kids] ?
    Glad you asked. It's in a locker on mars (easy isnt it ? :-).  


History of Clan Spirit of Darkness
    1st year:

The clan Spirit of Darkness was founded in spring of 1997 (on the 30.03.1997 to be exact) by Snoopy and Demon. The aim was to rule the world and... Oh well thats maybe some other clans aim but not that of SD. The clan was always intended to provide its members as much fun as possible.

Back then we quickly realized that CTF is one of the best modifications (based on normal TP but still more team orientied) ever invented and decided to concentrate on this kind of play.

We fought our first clanwar against the Reaper clan one of the first german CTF clans back then. Of course we (having a quite unexperienced team at that time) lost this game badly, but started to develop skill and were able to increase our teamplay.

Despite the bad pings we participated in the ONCLE league, at that time. This was a scandinavian 4on4 CTF league and although we were playing in the hpb group we were not able to win more but some maps. Later some of us even played in an huge american 2on2 tourney called QuakeWorld Kings of Captures but we were not very successfull there, too (you guessed it! - the pings again :-).

2nd year:

Afterwards we challenged (or were challenged by) some other CTF clans and scored one of our biggest victories in July 1998 against the (until then) undefeated United Clan Force from the Netherlands.

Shortly after -due to a lack of german opponents- we participated in the 3rd season of the UKCTFL . Despite our bad connections to the island we were able to win some (about the half) of our matches and even signed up for the 4th season of the league. Unfortunately the organizers were so kind (thx again) to place us in the 1st division where we were shown what the word 'beatdown' really means, as our connections were not better but our opponents really were.

Because many of our members at that time were a bit frustrated by the situation we even played the 4th season of the DECL for fun (yeah although it was DM :). But as expected it really was not more than fun as we did not reached the playoffs (not that we really tried to...). At least we kicked some (famous!?) butts in our map choice E2M1 which not every clan liked to play... ;-)

3rd year:

At that moment we came to the conclusion that it was time to 'make the switch' as it was totally impossible to play QuakeWorld CTF any longer. We therefore decided to switch to the upcoming Quake3:Arena (which will have CTF included). To celebrate we organized a CTF Memorial Match and invited everyone who was willing to play QW-CTF for (maybe) the last time in Germany. The match was a huge success as we got arround 16 people who really liked it to play CTF again (we also got some dudes who played it for the first time and liked it very much ;-).

In the end of 1999 we played in the first Quake3 season of the DeCL and won our group without loosing a single map. In the playoffs at the Gamers Gathering we unfortunately lost to our friends of clan Bodycount by only three frags or something. We also joined the TDM section of the IGL and again won our group without a map loss.

Due to this results and because we needed some new challenges, at the beginning of the year 2000 the clan decided to officially play both (CTF and TDM) in equal shares.

In the IGL playoffs we were able to reach the semi finals only loosing against the eventual champions Ocrana with a small margin. After that we took the 3rd place by crushing Black Legion in the losers final.

4th year:

[in work and coming soon]

And now, let the story continue...
   
The old times...
    As you may have noticed we didnt always play Quake3 but began with the original and groundbreaking Quake. If you want to see how our clan life was at that time or if you are just searching for some info about our early days try the archive of our old website capturing the first two years of clan Spirit of Darkness.