Faction Focus: Memento Mori
Memento Mori - once an up and coming faction. What went wrong?
Welcome back to yet another faction focus article! For this one, we’ve picked Memento Mori aka MM.
Memento Mori was a promising faction back in the day, it was even called ‘a faction to keep an eye on’ in this newspaper article five years ago. To find out what exactly led to and how this faction disappeared, I sat down with; Tascon, the Leader, sparkyMarky, Donandres, and OC Manager M3G47HR0N of the faction.
The original faction (Faction ID #8706) hasn’t disappeared per se, it is still alive and kicking as UnLeashed. However, the faction’s timeline is pretty fascinating. Check out the fancy timeline graphics below!
Memento Mori was originally named “The Little House on the Prairie,” and was founded by two good friends of mine back then - Whiterose (may she rest in peace), and UnFairlane, a good Danish (not the food) friend of mine with similar interest in online games. We wanted to have a cozy little place we could retire to - to sit and grow old with no pressure, no wars or issues, just laid back training for years to come…
Whiterose had an illness in real life and knew her time was coming to a close which was her reason for getting in on our plan for a sanctuary.
I was a bit more active and social then, and formed many relationships along the way. I have always wanted to help new people with the game - and help them grow. The big factions controlled the game, and it was difficult for anyone to get into a good faction without the right contacts to progress their gameplay.
Tascon realized by this point that faction members liked the way he managed the faction, and he personally wanted more action. Hence, through the assent of the members and leaders, Memento Mori was born.
We ran speed chains and competed against teams within the faction to get the best score. We had an amazing team with great activity, which meant that we actually had good hard-fought wars against top factions. Many thought we were a slow, mediocre faction because we ranked low. We kept up that appearance in order to make the most respect while climbing the ranks (respect gain was different back then). We ended up beating far bigger fish due to the stamina of our team, which was of course a great boost to the overall team morale across the ranks.
(Faction ID #8706 Timeline)
A long time ago, Memento Mori merged with Forged Through War (FTW) to form Forged Memento. I was in MM when the merger happened, before moving on to FTW when the merger failed without a clue as to why. Either way, this short-lived failed merger had set a precedent for us, not all mergers are successful.
I engineered the merge with FTW as a last ditch effort to have the faction live longer. I have personally been running a faction for many years, and I’ve had good co-leaders help me with the job but the leader always has work to do. At some point, I came to the realization that the time I spent in the game was affecting my real life and simply took too much of my time. As such, I wanted to try and have a larger leadership team to split the work with.
However, for Tascon, things don’t go very well.
I ended up running FTW and MM by myself for the most part briefly. Until I had to back out and so, I reversed the merger. To me, it was better run one faction well rather than two Average Factions.
Hence, I was back to square one and desperately wished to lighten my work load somehow.
I didn’t want to abandon all our members and what we had built, but at the time we had no one stepping up to take the torch and lead us onwards.
So, when a good offer on the faction came along, I took it and sent much of it back to the core of our faction. Now, I live my TORN life as a normal citizen with none of the burdens of leadership and can play whenever I feel like it, or have the time for it.
Rhino Reached out to mention JFA (Just Fer Assholes) offered in the ranges of 80B for the faction but it was eventually sold to Saltama/Egypt a well-known faction flipper for a sum close to $87,000,000,000.
I was offered a generous price - 87B, I think was the number on the table. It was the entirety of their networth and I was told they just wanted a faction with good perks to sit in, train and grow old. A final spot and a crowning achievement on their list of things to do. It was all their account had in the way of assets, meaning mostly stocks. The stocks lost a lot of their value sometime after the trade but I was lucky to sell of at an okay-ish price after keeping them for a bit, so the deal was alright for me. I was dealing stocks anyway, and would have invested the cash in stocks if that were offered instead. So, I’m not complaining.
While working on the article, VitaGreta mentioned something about the company Tascon is holding being a reminiscent of the faction.
I founded the company with MM funding, that being said - it was a way for members to get a huge interest on their TORN savings, I gave all members an option to buy-in to my investment plan. Each share was sold for 1b, with an interest payout of 6% each month.
Tascon used the funds to buy and run the Oil Rig, and he also invested some cash into items and stocks.
Members were offered good solid pay, no matter their work stats. If they took a spot in the rig.
You could always sell your share and get your 1b back at any time.
It worked as an investment fund, you could say - boosting members networth and helping them progress in the game. I covered the expenses and even when at a loss, I made sure members always got their returns.
(A MM member got this tatoo on their arm.)
Donandres08, another MM Members jumped in and shared his personal experience being in the faction and told us how he and his five friends ended up in MM.
We were all Danes and had a small faction called the Royal Danish Army. We were all new players, so we didn’t really have anything.
Tascon reached out to me and the other leader, Ceberix, and we talked back and forth. Until at one point we decided to join MM and that was the best-TORN move we’ve made.
MM was not, by any means, a faction that had many trolls or a super active chat but, as Tascon also mentioned, we did this thing where we made chaining teams - one for each day, and some people signed up to be team leaders and make sure their team was full. Chaining was so much different back then and that was the way we made much of our respect.
Donandres08 tells us a little about the wars they fought.
We had some great wars with JFA and some other factions of similar size. What we lacked though, were their strong guests - which often decided the close wars. Tascon had a few really big hitters, but it wasn’t enough. Regardless, we always fought hard and if you look at Natural Selection and some other factions, many old MM members are now in the upper tier in regards to not only stats but also chaining.
We tried really hard to teach people how to chain properly and not waste hits.
Tascon was a great leader because he always wanted to help out. He has a strict moral code - don’t cheat or be a dick! I think that was what made the core of MM so solid, and also why old MM members still reach out to me and say stuff like “I wish MM was still around.”
(MM’s Currency)
Donandres08 also mentioned about how they had to get rid of some members.
We had to get rid of some strong members sometimes because they did not live up to what Tascon (and the core of MM) wanted for our members to be like. I remember that it was always those who were so close to getting into the upper tiers, when they did stupid stuff that saw them kicked. Marshmallow was one of them.
sparkyMarky who currently resides in Natural Selection (NS), shares his pleasant experience being in MM.
I think I joined around 2011/2012. I remember dragging a chain through the London 2012 Olympics Games’ opening ceremony. We had a few formative fights with closely matched factions. Little Stompers is the only one among them that still remains today. King_K carried us hard through the early days. Always rescuing us when our chains were near dying.
Second2none was a good organizer but left later on. M3G47HR0N organized our OCs for ages.
There were a lot of wars but MM had a core of active players and was confident if they could withstand the first onslaught, then they could grind down most factions.
I think we hit our peak around 2016 when I believe we were reasonably, a top ten faction. There was an incident where someone got banned (possibly insulting/aggressive forum behavior or scamming) and their leaving dragged away 4-5 of our newer, more active people.
He also mentions their beef with Just Fer A**holes (JFA).
We scheduled an organized war with them. A little before we started to run a chain and it managed to get to exactly 4000. The faction was a bit burnt out, so we canceled the scheduled war.
JFA was a bit butt hurt and declared on us anyway and won with little opposition. I believe we fought back later on but I’m not completely sure. There was much forum trash talking. Ironically, a good amount of us left for JFA. Including me, after we disbanded.
One of our last wars was a suicide rush at JFK. Sadly, I missed it but I always had the most fun being a soldier in the fierce fights. No matter whether we won or lost.
M3G47HR0N, the Official OC Manager of MM, who till this day still has a copy of the OC Rankings shares his experience in MM.
I started playing TORN much earlier but I was too noob to survive and make good progress back then. Like most people with old characters, I quit for many years. Then only came back playing in early 2012. Still very noob to the game, with very low stats for my character’s age and level, I decided to give it another try.
M3G47HR0N was then approached by someone from MM, he’s unable to recall who exactly.
I joined MM with my shitty stats and grinding my way as I learned the game properly from Tascon. So, that’s how I joined MM, and stayed with it for many years until it got sold and changed hands.
Personally, I really liked being in MM because of the friendly atmosphere - where everyone helped and respected each other.
On top of that, we had good leadership and Tascon was always very helpful to everyone back then, including me.
So, as the faction grew over the years, so did our members. Over time, I gained trust from leadership and Tascon offered to put me in charge of OCs.
M3G47HR0N didn’t know much about OCs but he still accepted the role.
Originally, we had only 1 Presidential Assassination (PA) team back then, and the rest were your typical Planned Robbery teams, and some teams on Robbing Money Trains.
Figuring things out by trial-and-error was quite fun and interesting for me. Especially about CE, and other factors that seem to affect OC outcomes.
So, over the years, I managed OCs and set everyone to be in the best possible OCs based on their NNBs to help them improve their NNB.
This was done through careful planning and discussions with Tascon, and I recorded most OC related stuff in my spreadsheets and also in faction forums.
At our peak, we had 4 stable PA teams (which was a lot back then for a faction), 2 PH (Plane Hijacking) teams, a bunch of teams on robbing money trains, and a few planned robberies.
The PA teams grew either from having new PA leaders from new members, or some old members gaining enough CE from being in PH for many years. Needless to say, I learned a lot about OCs, PAs, CE, and managing members.
At the same time, he helped the faction gain respect and money.
I was also helped by a few others in managing OCs (like Tonia, Bovy, etc). I also shared my knowledge on OCs and taught some people, like CloudJumper. Basically, I knew the NNBs for all members. I record them both in forums and in my spreadsheets and because of that, I basically had the list of all members that have ever been in MM while I was OC Manager. So, over the years, I saw people come and go, and some names I still recognize today from MM. Including ORAN himself!
Where are the original MM Members now?
(Tascon proudly sporting his Chain Reaction (CR) badge.)
Most of us are in NS now (Sparky, Don, Flander, Ceberix, CloudJumper, Rhino, etc), and some are in other factions (Tascon, Crayfish, Suneo, Tonia, Bovy, Slothex, KmKid, herself, etc). Even though some of them are in ‘enemy’ factions, we still consider each other friends apparently. I do chat with some of them from time to time. MM really was our home back then, with its friendly atmosphere. Most of us MM cores helped build the faction, from the ground up - taking it from an underdog, barely known faction to quite a formidable name over the years, and later to be recognized even by some HoF factions.
It was really shocking and sad to see it was sold but it was already done, so it was best to just start moving on back then. Besides, MM had a very good run and it was quite fun while it lasted.
On top of that, it was quite liberating to no longer an OC manager, as it was quite hard for me to maintain when RL became really busy with work.
I think that’s good enough from me. Thanks for this opportunity remember and tell of the good old days.
Thanks to Tascon, sparkyMarky, Donandres and M3G47HR0N for sitting down with me for the interview and Confused_Edd for editing.
If you know a faction you’d like to see in our faction focus, please drop a mail to ORAN. You will be shortly contacted for an interview or join our Discord and post in an appropriate section.
Learn more about Tornhub here.
Disclaimer: quotes have been refined for grammatical and accuracy purpose.