The Midnight Hour

I wrote the following for the “about” page at hushedcasket.com [linked here]. Rapture added links, made some edits, and expounded on portions applicable to him, so I cannot take 100% credit for it.

What is The Hushed Casket (THX)? The Hushed Casket is a group of people from all over the United States, but principally from Huntsville, Alabama, who share a common interest–gaming. Functionally, THX can be considered a gaming community that participates in recreational and competitive gaming in such games as Halo 1, Halo 2, Gears of War, and a variety of other shooter, RTS, action/adventure, RPG, and even MMORPG games. But since being rooted in Halo, we have grown to be more than gamers. We have grown to be friends doing many non-gaming related activites such as rafting, caving, eating, disc golf and more. You may be asking yourself, “If THX is so large, murky, and hard to define, how did such a group start?” The not-so-simple answer follows. My name is Midnight, and this is the story of THX.

“You’ve gotta play Halo,” FoulBreed said to me. The time was spring 2002, and both of us were attending the University of Alabama in Huntsville and working part-time for UAH out of Von Braun Research Hall (then called Research Institute). FoulBreed was much more of a gamer than I was, but he had introduced me to Quake III Arena a few months earlier and knew I was a fan of shooters. Finally, one day he brought his Xbox to work and we went to my apartment and hooked it up to my TV. By the end of the week we had beaten the game on Legendary difficulty and were exploring multiplayer. Very soon after I had purchased an Xbox and Halo, the only Xbox game I would own for a very long time.

Being veterans of Quake III Arena, our next move was to attempt to play online, but Halo had no intrinsic online capability. Through some research we discovered that you could use computer applications to create “tunnels” between different LANs and trick the Xbox into thinking it was connected to another Xbox on the internet via a LAN. This enabled Halo to use its “system link” multiplayer feature, designed for connecting multiple Xboxen on a LAN, for gaming across the internet. The only catch was that it required a computer on the LAN to run the program (no problem) and high-speed internet (big problem). Yep, it was 2002 and we were poor college students–no high-speed internet at home.

But wait…UAH has a T1 line. Our office is relatively private. The building doesn’t really close…we can game in our office after work! And that’s what we did. Evening after evening, weekend after weekend we loaded my RCA 27” CRT TV into my S10 Blazer, drove to work/school, and carried it into our office in what looked like some type of strange reverse-theft maneuver. First we tried a program called Gamespy Tunnel, but its interface was very cumbersome and because of that coupled with relative youth of Halo, I couldn’t imagine more than eight people used it. We soon discovered Xbox Connect, and that was the ticket. I can still see the TV sitting on FoulBreed’s desk against the window, contrasting sharply to the darkness outside where all normal people had finished school and work for the day.

As we would tell people about this we slowly recruited our friends into playing Halo with us after work. Two of our first catches were Skorned and Celery/XXX, fellow students who we talked into coming by our office after an evening class. Next came Convict, whom FoulBreed and I talked into buying an Xbox and Halo (a $349.98 purchase) without having ever seen the game. After that we had enough friends with Xboxen that we began to LAN. FoulBreed’s brothers were active members from the start: XRay, Prey, Shyzza, and Hubcap. Then the momentum really picked up with Ciguatera, Ace, and Hollywood just to name a few. Finally, after it was apparent she could either play Halo and get in on the fun or sit at home and do nothing, my wife, BattleBitch, picked up a controller and never looked back.

One day at work FoulBreed pointed out that the company who made Halo, Bungie, had a fan website called “The Seventh Column,” and that you could create “chapters” of people who played Halo together. It looked like a useful tool for organizing LANs and a fun way to further explore our hobby. We debated on a name for weeks, and after almost a month had passed and we had still not created the chapter, I had an idea and pitched it to FoulBreed. I remembered the phrase “Unseal the Hushed Casket” from the opening of the Halo campaign and thought it struck the right balance of relevant, unique, and geeky. He agreed it was a suitable name, performed the requisite mouse clicks, and The Hushed Casket was born as a Halo chapter on The Seventh Column. (Early version of website from archive.org - here. Later version from archive.org - here) We had trouble thinking of a motto (part of the required entry to create the chapter on Bungie.net) so we used a line from a song that was popular with us at the time “Blessed with a heart, but it’s cold as ice.” The origin of our association with the phrase “undead” comes from a fusion of our name “The Hushed Casket” and the song from which we derived our motto, “We Don’t Die” by Twiztid.

A little known fact is that concurrent with this, Ciguatera, trying to be proactive about the matter, created a chapter for our group called “Huntsville Hustla Halo” with the motto “Why even try? Hustlas always win.” Needless to say, we never supported that venture, although he did recruit at least one member who he later promoted to staff, a gamer who went by “Dildo Saggins.” Ciguatera did come up with the abbreviation “THX.” The “X” stands for the Greek letter Chi, which makes a similar sound to “C,” references our college origins, and absolves us of using the acronym “THC,” the psychoactive chemical in a popular drug.

This is the part of the story where I’d like to write “And then THX exploded, enveloping the gaming scene in north Alabama,” but that’s not exactly true. We continued to play Halo together, and gradually picked up friends, classmates, and friends of friends. Soon Reverend, Brick, and Rapture were on the THX roster—if there was such a thing. Through them came Hawgdaddy, Insane, JDogg, and Sparda. We went to LANs at the UAH University Center game room and met Diesel and HolyShit. We found a chapter called the Rogue Spartans in a neighboring city and began to LAN with them on a semi-regular basis, including 24-hour LANathons with Kush, Odysseus, and Ruiner. Shyzza and Hubcap brought Slayer on board. KillerD and 123 even started playing because their roommate, Ace, was driving them insane with the Halo campaign. Soon our chapter website on the Seventh Column became the most popular chapter in Alabama and one of the most popular chapters in the southeast US.

One day, rapture introduced us to a Halo clan from his hometown outside Chattanooga, and they introduced us to a gas station semi-streaking prank involving a thong and a Halloween mask appropriately titled “Red Devil-Purple Thong.” “No, officer, I haven’t seen anyone in a devil mask wearing only a thong, but I’ll keep an eye out.” We’ll never forget that one.

THX then broke into the competitive Halo scene by attending tournaments in Nashville, TN; Chattanooga, TN; and Atlanta, GA. Tournament participation culminated in taking second place at the regional level of the first ever national Halo tournament. THX lost the final match to Team ATL, but picked up some cash, games, t-shirts, and some great memories.

In August 2003 we celebrated THX’s first birthday with, did you expect anything else, a monster LAN. To this day the THX birthday LAN remains as the largest LAN I have ever attended. At its peak hour there were more than 30 gamers present. Ten Xboxen and ten TVs networked on three different LANs (4+4+2) adorned a makeshift shelf constructed of cinder blocks and 1”x12” lumber in Ace’s basement. A huge birthday cake, complete with Halo graphics, was served upstairs along with mozzarella sticks, pizza, chips, and enough caffeinated beverages to send a Mormon straight to hell. It was…glorious.

Soon after the birthday LAN big changes came to THX. In October of that year I entered officer training in the Marine Corps, and would be out of touch with THX for the better part of a year. Rapture spearheaded the migration of THX’s website from the then antiquated chapter on the Seventh Column to a totally independent site with a powerful discussion forum and other features. FoulBreed and his father started their own business, and a lot of other THXers graduated college, got married, had children, or otherwise had large disruptions in their lives. Until November 2004 THX dwindled to a few dedicated guys speculating about Halo 2. A large LAN at FoulBreed’s house during the holidays would mark one of the last mega-LANs for months, when such used to be commonplace every other weekend.

After the release of Halo PC Rapture started a venture called the cooked Gamers that culminated in a 2nd place spot at the national CPL tournament. To this day PC gamers spoof and imitate the names of cooked Gamers. This project resulted in several of cG’s members playing Halo 1 (and later Halo 2 and Gears of War) with THX. jayWHY remains an active THX member brought on by rapture during the days of Halo PC. rapture and jayWHY also administrated several Halo PC dedicated servers, including HBO-COERCE, which was arguably the most popular Halo PC server of its time. Of note, rapture partnered with synide and created haloTV.net where they later streamed the world’s first video of a live multiplayer Halo match. synide is now the media director at Major League Gaming.

The launch of Halo 2 rekindled a fire for gaming in many THXers, specifically because of its Xbox Live capability. Now THX was reconnected and gaming together again, even though some of us were across the country. The ability to game together from home provided many THXers with new families the opportunity to jump back in. An unfortunate side effect is that Xbox Live may have killed the traditional LAN party forever. The momentum from Halo 2 carried THX to another holiday LAN in December 2004 and on to the launch of the Xbox 360 in November 2005. By this time THX had expanded to the workplace of all its members and recruited such personalities as Oculus and Rayne. Mintz also made his first appearance during this time.

The increased Xbox Live functionality of the Xbox 360 was another stepping stone for THX, propelling many arcade titles to popular party-games. THX began to play games such as Project Gotham Racing 3, Call of Duty 2, and arcade titles such as Geometry Wars and Hexic HD. In February I deployed to Iraq and rapture set me up with a blog I titled “Midnight in Iraq.” I wrote stories about normal everyday life and it became pretty popular, attracting the attention of the New York Times, Birmingham News, Military.com, Wired.com, BoingBoing.net and others. Meanwhile, Mintz debuted HaloPortable.com and after getting some attention online he’s now a verified uber-geek and has a quote printed in the Halo Graphic Novel. Mintz even got a community spotlight on Bungie.net. To round out the Hushed Casket network, Rapture started Halo2PC.org to publish the latest news for HALO 2 for Windows Vista. Now, if only there were some news.

Now the THX website is on its third independent iteration after migrating from the Seventh Column and looking better than ever. New faces have appeared and old ones disappeared, but we are stronger than ever. We continue to game, LAN, joke, and infuriate each other via Xbox Live daily. We are currently playing Gears of War and compete on the Team Warfare League Power Ladder and have a team registered for the 4v4 MLG tournament later this month. We are planning yet another monster holiday LAN on January 6th, and if you’re interested in LANing Halo 1 with 15-20 THXers then you should stop by.