Well boys and girls.. another year in the books, and another vote tallied up. Six new entries will be forever emblazoned into the halls of flood history. And though this year was more than a little short on the quality shenanigans this forum has become accustomed to, we still had a few good laughs, made some new friends, and move forward to our next chapter together. As always, this edition was created with the help of previous efforts by [url=http://www.bungie.net/en-US/Forum/Post/2044154]Squirrel Dude[/url], the Flood community, and the [url=http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/11025/History-of-The-Flood/]Flood timeline.[/url] This thing is huge and will span several posts, so bare with me. [b][u]For best viewing, switch your comment sort to “Oldest First”. [/u][/b] [b]Birth of the Flood April 15, 2004[/b] Discussion of an Off Topic forum can be traced to as far back as this point. When proposed by a member(now unknown), Stosh informed him that Sketch had begun to think about the creation of an Off-Topic forum. Members had called for it because of the spam and off-topic threads that had become so common in other forums, especially The Underground. Sketch predicted that if this off-topic forum did materialize that it would "turn into a spam pit the likes of which no website has ever seen before." Also, the phrase "spam pit" seems to have originated from this thread. There will never be another thread like Laser Wars. [b]Laser Wars 2004 - 2006[/b] The exact start and end points of this even are not known because of how widely spread the phenomenon is. It was at one point a pinned topic, and then it spread into its own group and countless other threads. Laser wars was simply a forum game based on building armies and fighting other players. Its popularity was massive, greater than any other singular trend in forum history. [b]Twitch 2005[/b] Twitch did a whole bunch of spamming, trolling, flaming, and beyond, but he was still a major part of the community, and had himself a fanbase. The fanbase would eventually coin the phrase "Twitch for pres." He felt that the "spam was tha -blam!-," and that "it just need to be said." If he hadn't said it he "would be doing the world a disservice fo real." He would also target a group run by Gold Templar II. He was a character that Twitch found odd so naturally he "-blam!- with him... a lot." His fan group launched a spam attack on his group, while Twitch created an alt that looked very similar to Gold Templer ll, and would spam the forums. Gold Templar told the mods that he had been hacked by Twitch, and that was all they needed. He has since been permabanned, but it is rumored he still posts on alts, like almost everyone does. People don't like to talk about Twitch for fear of it still upsetting moderators. [b]The Flood-Zanzibar War Summer 2005 - May 2006[/b] In the summer of 2005, the forum Zanzibar tried to blitzkrieg the Flood Forum by flaming and spamming the forum into submission. The resulted in a full-out flame war. Floodians started flaming and spamming the forum Zanzibar in retaliation, until late in 2005. The Flood halted the flaming and spamming, and the Zanzibarians claimed a victory for themselves. However, in the late spring of '06, the Floodians won, as the Zanzibar forum was deleted to make room for the Halo 3 forum, merging with New Mombasa. [b]Glory Days of Forum Fiction June, 2005- October, 2008[/b] During this point in time The Flood experienced a wealth of talented writers, as well as a fanbase that was will to read more than 4 paragraphs in a single post. Among the Floodian writers that it would produce were Douglas Brown, Sniper McGee, bacon greese1521, Mabian, Commander Locks, Tartan 118, GameJunkieJim(Yes, the moderator), Colonel Corbec, and the Laureate of The Flood, Halifax. Multiple members would write for years, and even create fan groups, to themselves which became quite popular. Halifax is easily the most voluminous writer of them all at this point, even after many of his works were lost one Day After Bungie Day. There was even a point in time where writers were treated like rock stars when they announced that they were going to do a story. However, many like Sniper McGee and squirrel dude only got through the first couple of chapters and then simply didn't have the energy to continue with their work. The Golden Age is marked at ending on 10/26/2008, when Halifax posted his final story, but it had been falling off long before that. Although Mabian was writing a very popular story called The Floodiad, many other authors were no longer receiving the attention they used to, the attention that was often the reason for their writing. This, combined with a resurgence of The Gallery forum has limited Floodian forum fiction since. [b]The Flood Nightbar August 14, 2005[/b] bacon greese1521 created The Flood night bar. It is important in that is laid the template down for what every following forum bar. The first few posts are the ordering of drinks, with the OP serving as a bartender. Within a few pages, however, the bar quickly devolves into barfights, card games, and shenanigans of every kind. Flood Bars of this template are now opened on every holiday(that extols drinking) from January 1rst to December 31st. [b]Shiska is a Pegboy August 16, 2005[/b] A spammer named Watermelon King created at least 15 pages of nothing but "Shishka is a Pegboy" as the title and body of each thread. It is believed that it was because Shiska had called him a Pegboy, and that he did not take very kindly to this comment. At this point in Bungie.net's history, there was not post limit or cooldown; so he was able to create that many threads fairly quickly. Floodians, and Shiska, look back and laugh at the event. [b]The Halo 3 Forum War May 2006 - November 2006[/b] Although Floodians had defeated Zanzibar, the wars for supremacy were not over. The attention of the forum shortly turned to a new rival: The Halo 3 forum. As soon as the forum was released, the H3 Fanboys ignorantly started to spam the Flood with their theories and ideas for H3. In response, the Floodians flamed these members who spammed. The Fanboys retreated and started to stop spamming in October, but started back up again in November . This time, Floodians started to spam the H3 Forum with very stupid ideas, to see how the fanboys would act in response. The battles have halted since November, although contempt is still held by The Flood for The Halo 3 forum, and their regulars. [b]One Day War Mid-August 2006[/b] A thread in late summer reported that the moderators created a thread in HCFS, it was titled "We will attack at dawn, leave no Floodian standing." However, the contents of the thread is unknown, because any non-moderator b.net member who even attempts to join the group will be in some pretty big trouble, or so says the group's motto. Anyway, the Floodians decided to be prepared for an attack from the mods(For mods, forum attacking is the act of locking threads for no apparent reason). Unfortunately, the next day, the thread was locked by a moderator. It is unknown if the moderators really were planning a surprise attack, but stopped because some bold Floodians found out, or if they are still planning for a surprise attack on The Flood to this day.. [b]hotpink - gu3do Marriage August 31, 2006[/b] Don't let the title fool you, these two aren't married, even tough it says in her signature that they were on 12/22/2006. They didn't actually talk online until 8/31/2006, and didn't visit each other until 7/13/2007. They do still have a relationship to this day, and do plan on getting married when the time is right. They are pretty much the only Floodians to form a romantic relationship, and for it to then succeed after they met in real life. The only ones to do the former even, I think. That said, not every member was happy for them when they were still dating and getting married and having babies and growing old. In fact, quite a few Floodians got damned tired of hearing all about their lives, and how awesome they were, and how great a photographer gu3do was, and how pretty hotpink was. It wasn't that hotpink only wanted to write threads that were gushy blogs about how happy she was, she openly admitted that every thread she made simply became a blog out of habit. Eventually they both stated posting in groups more often so that members and moderators wouldn't get mad that they were posting lovey dubby blogs all the time. [b]The Flood Becomes a Monarchy October1, 2006[/b] There was a poll made about who should become the queen of The Flood. The winner of the poll was Jannelle4Now. It turned out that Jannelle4Now was actually an alternate account of the male member "L8teRunner (or something like that)." Cortana 5 was named Princess of The Flood as the runner up of the election, and with Jannelle/L8te forced to step down on account of not being the necessary amount of female required to be a queen, she took over as Queen of The Flood. Cortana 5 holds onto that title to this day.