Well, my buddy Beachhead, leader of The Tetragrammaton, was my buddy in real life. He called me up one day and said, "dude, Matrix MMO. Go to Gamestop and preorder, you get a beta key!" So I thought wow, an opportunity to get into an MMO based on an awesome IP, a real-life friend to play with, and the thought of hundreds of hours of in-depth roleplaying? So win-win. We leveled up some, recruited a few competent players, and no sooner than a week into playing, we had enough members to start our faction. Some of these people would be with us all the way-- through thick and thin.

I remember when I went with Beachhead to Comic-Con in 2007, we met up with faction member Mithuial. We all bought black fedoras (part of our faction's required outfits) at a hat store. It was this really awesome feeling for us all to be tooling around San Diego in a black Charger, wearing our fedoras. I got a real kick out of that.

At the very end of the game, I spent the last few moments with six friends-- RedLeopard, Cadasuane, Eleutherobia, Beachhead, Mithuial and Sykin-- reminiscing about our times together. At the very end, we stood in a circle atop the Ascension Monument in Roger's Way, crumpled just like we lived-- as friends.