Valandes [2023976] —
Original article
Find out what happened to Torn Medical, where this faction came from, and who is leading it now in this exclusive report from its former leader Valandes.
Torn Medical has made the headlines lately following its purchase in full by JFA leader Stretch. This faction of revivers was previously part-owned by Meanmike of Chain Reaction, who eventually agreed to sell his shares when news of CR's involvement in an anti-JFK alliance was announced. JFA are themselves allied to JFK, and this meant that a continued partnership between the two men was deemed untenable.
However, this transaction and its aftermath were far from straightforward, as I, Valandes, the former leader of Torn Medical will now explain.
First, I must agree with some commentators that Torn Medical was never a proper faction. TM was more like a sub-faction, or a medieval vassal, in that it always served the purposes of others ahead of its own. I was installed as leader by Meanmike when I was a 500-day old member of Chain Reaction, and my initial task was to assert CR's control. Upon attempting this, I immediately encountered resistance by the incumbent co-leader Reaper.
His coup was unsuccessful. Meanmike helped me to suppress the unrest with a persuasive newsletter followed up by Crazedone sending over a considerable amount of supplies. We received meds, boosters and other resources from CR, while JFA, who were allied to CR at the time, helped us to fight against invaders and acquire new territory.
These things were much needed by a weak reviving faction who could not protect themselves. Our sponsor factions helped to build Torn Medical way beyond what we could have been alone. However, this assistance came with certain expectations. Occasionally, members of JFA would force us to break reviving contracts with factions they were warring with, and oftentimes they would only notify us of this demand after the fact.
Furthermore, JFA's aggressive warring tradition also gained us mass hospitalizations from their own enemies from time to time, despite our links to JFA not being made public. Meanmike intended to keep this information on the down-low as he worried about retaliation from JFA's rivals - something Stretch was decidedly less bothered about, as one might expect.
Despite these troubles, overall, we were given an acceptable amount of autonomy in exchange for our servitude. We were allowed to make revive contracts with other factions so long as they were not directly warring JFA. And, to Meanmike and Stretch's credit, we were sometimes allowed to take paid jobs from JFA's potential competitors, such as their current rivals Relentless.
Torn medical was, therefore, a small haven for revivers sandwiched in between these two giants. With a consistent stream of revive contracts providing 100% payment for its members, TM attracted a large number of Hall of Fame revivers, growing rapidly during this period to surpass Emergency Room as the largest reviving faction in Torn.
Sadly, that progress was curtailed on 1st of December 2018, when Torn Medical saw all of its faction members kicked, its territories abandoned, forum threads deleted and its profile and bank balance cleared. The partial erasure of TM was conducted by its now former leader Frostyboy, who left the following message behind before his departure.
Frostyboy replaced me as leader when Stretch and Meanmike decided a change at the top was necessary, with the latter telling Sugarvalves that this decision was due to him having to become more involved in the faction's daily workings than he would have liked. Indeed, I have been informed that both Stretch and Meanmike harbour reservations about my writing of this very article due to this fact.
I bear no ill will towards Torn Medical, though, nor Stretch or Meanmike. For the few months he was in charge, Frostyboy proved himself a talented leader, until the faction's ownership changed hands against his wishes. At this point, there was nothing he could do. At least, that's what everyone thought, until Frostyboy brought Torn Medical to its knees.
TM was sold by JFA to CR for $4 billion, but I feel a top reviving faction with more than 25 Hall of Fame revivers means this was an extremely low price. Meanmike told Sugarvalves that he sold the faction to Stretch for $1billion less than he himself had offered for it, as while both leaders were determined to own the faction, Meanmike felt guilty that it was his side which had broken up their alliance with JFA.
After the transaction, Meanmike admits things began to get ugly.
"In our attempts to sway TM leadership to tell the other guy they wanted to come to us, Stretch and I, being the driven, goal-oriented dudes that we are, went a little too far and ended up alienating both leads...add in our neglect to inform them of what was happening until it happened, and they both basically told us to self-fornicate."
"Sucked for me because I lost two friends that I respected as players, leads and people...We both should have handled it better, and I fully get why we are no longer on Embyr or Frostys Xmas card list."
Meanmike was adamant that neither he nor Stretch required the approval of Torn Medical's members or leaders to buy the other out. Nevertheless, he regrets not communicating with the faction more during negotiations. And far from standing up for Torn Medical's rank and file members, Meanmike feels that Frostyboy's actions merely compounded their misery.
"Frosty hijacked the faction, and kicked everyone out with the intention of deleting it, just out of spite, which struck me as odd, considering that he based his entire anger on his members getting screwed over, then turned around and kicked them out of their own home and tried to delete it. After being there for only 172 days, I felt that was out of line."
In the immediate aftermath of TM's sale, Frostyboy claims that members of Chain Reaction were required to target Torn Medical, despite the fact they were just close allies minutes before."I do not feel comfortable with this arrangement, as I do not wish to fight my former comrades, and they have endured far too much for the drama between larger factions" said one anonymous member of CR to Frosty. Several members of Torn Medical feel the same way, and I have been led to believe that half of their revivers left in just two days following the sale.
Eva-mancini, a member of Torn Medical for some 224 days, shared the reason why so many have left the faction in a few days:
"Not sure about the background politics but other than that a big motivating factor seems to be 'big war coming'. I'm just a poor reviver and don't want to spend all day in hospital, I'm offski!"
It should be noted, however, that Eva-Mancini remains a member of Torn Medical at the time of writing. Indeed, the current TM leader Four confirmed that while most of the players who departed the faction were kicked out by Frostyboy without warning, some have now returned. And with more former members heading back home each day, Four confidently states his faction's plans for the faction as follows:
"Torn Medical takes in contracts and the crew revives. We are trying to bring back Torn Medical leadership to continue running the faction as they had a good system before. The price is still $1m/revive standard, including JFA. I have heard that HeLa will be asking their revivers to assist their owners for $500k/revive during the war, we will not do that."
Pictured: A doctor with a megaphone, because why not?
Four's confirmation of payment for revives is interesting. One of the reasons Frostyboy did what he did was the purported demand from Stretch for Torn Medical to revive JFA and its affiliates for free during the coming war. This decision has now seemingly been reversed, although there is no evidence it was actually ever taken in the first place, with several players backing up Stretch's assertion he never demanded free revives.
Still, Frostyboy remains aggrieved that he was not consulted on any of these matters before everything came to a head. Frostyboy thankfully stopped short of deleting the faction altogether - something Meanmike praised him for, despite the likelihood that he was only prevented from doing so by a bug. Not that this restraint has saved him from retribution, mind, as Frostyboy claims that JFA has targeted both him and former Torn Medical members since the incident, despite his claims that they knew nothing of what he planned to do.
"Some very angry JFA members...they have made it clear thanks to a "loyal" torn med member who has fed them info on our former members movements. So, despite publicly claiming they are not bullies, they are now hunting former torn med members to try and punish me."
"Zipp was the torn med member, currently residing with Lawless. JFA have informed Killer-For-Hire that he is now a target as he took in some TM members when they left torn med. Again, stressing, that not one TM member knew I would close the faction down. All this does is make my resolve stronger, to see this monumental tantrum - forcing my spouse to divorce me or they would be permahosp'd too."
Torn Medical's SCP-001 seems to believe that Frostyboy brought much of this ire on himself, though, especially considering the Killer-For-Hire issue. He told me that many TM members went to guest in KFH's faction to help it reach 25 energy revives, only for Frostyboy to cancel the contract after many had put in both game resources and real-life sleepless nights to help them achieve it. Thankfully, Four and KFH are on good terms, and KFH has paid out up until the point Frostyboy cancelled the contract. KFH is reportedly no longer being targeted, according to Four.
Thankfully, if this screenshot and this screenshot are to be believed, the anger towards Frostyboy now seems to have subsided - from JFAs side, at least. It is uncertain whether Torn Medical will recover so quickly after such a devastating incident, though, as the damage inflicted will be tough to repair before hostilities with the Insurgency alliance begin.
Mangosta is a top 50 ranked reviver and one of the few former TM members who are yet to rejoin the faction. He spoke out against the politics which forced him from his home and expressed his regret at losing its associated perks.
"Apart from the obvious such as losing the perks - 75e per revive? :( - it was a really great faction to be part of. Well organised, well run. I didn't say much in the chat but I always enjoyed keeping an eye on it."
"Now I roam the wastelands a ronin, a masterless samurai. Which is a rather flowery way of saying I'm keeping out of factions until such time as TM rises from the ashes as I'm sure it will!"
Pictured: Mangosta, roaming.
The famous hitman Kapten_Klitoris was somewhat less understanding.
"It's very sad to see this happen, I can understand that revivers are cowards by nature but this doesn't help anyone. Maybe someone bribed him into doing it. We can't see that yet since he can hide his networth. But it would be quite funny if Meanmike made him do it."
So where do we go from here? Well, for a start, the flow of active revivers coming out of Torn Medical might prove a blessing to the smaller reviving factions, but many will also undoubtedly lose their dream of becoming HOF revivers. I suspect Stretch may also harbour some regret at pursuing the faction so hard given everything that has happened.
As the former head, with Torn medical falling under the firm grip of JFA's hand, I feel emptiness in the wake of these events. It's like when you finished reading an immersive story and you have to go back to reality. I hope that Torn Medical can rise again, but right now, the following Paul Sweeney quote seems to sum things up nicely.
"You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend."
However, this transaction and its aftermath were far from straightforward, as I, Valandes, the former leader of Torn Medical will now explain.
First, I must agree with some commentators that Torn Medical was never a proper faction. TM was more like a sub-faction, or a medieval vassal, in that it always served the purposes of others ahead of its own. I was installed as leader by Meanmike when I was a 500-day old member of Chain Reaction, and my initial task was to assert CR's control. Upon attempting this, I immediately encountered resistance by the incumbent co-leader Reaper.
His coup was unsuccessful. Meanmike helped me to suppress the unrest with a persuasive newsletter followed up by Crazedone sending over a considerable amount of supplies. We received meds, boosters and other resources from CR, while JFA, who were allied to CR at the time, helped us to fight against invaders and acquire new territory.
These things were much needed by a weak reviving faction who could not protect themselves. Our sponsor factions helped to build Torn Medical way beyond what we could have been alone. However, this assistance came with certain expectations. Occasionally, members of JFA would force us to break reviving contracts with factions they were warring with, and oftentimes they would only notify us of this demand after the fact.
Furthermore, JFA's aggressive warring tradition also gained us mass hospitalizations from their own enemies from time to time, despite our links to JFA not being made public. Meanmike intended to keep this information on the down-low as he worried about retaliation from JFA's rivals - something Stretch was decidedly less bothered about, as one might expect.
Despite these troubles, overall, we were given an acceptable amount of autonomy in exchange for our servitude. We were allowed to make revive contracts with other factions so long as they were not directly warring JFA. And, to Meanmike and Stretch's credit, we were sometimes allowed to take paid jobs from JFA's potential competitors, such as their current rivals Relentless.
Torn medical was, therefore, a small haven for revivers sandwiched in between these two giants. With a consistent stream of revive contracts providing 100% payment for its members, TM attracted a large number of Hall of Fame revivers, growing rapidly during this period to surpass Emergency Room as the largest reviving faction in Torn.
Sadly, that progress was curtailed on 1st of December 2018, when Torn Medical saw all of its faction members kicked, its territories abandoned, forum threads deleted and its profile and bank balance cleared. The partial erasure of TM was conducted by its now former leader Frostyboy, who left the following message behind before his departure.
Frostyboy replaced me as leader when Stretch and Meanmike decided a change at the top was necessary, with the latter telling Sugarvalves that this decision was due to him having to become more involved in the faction's daily workings than he would have liked. Indeed, I have been informed that both Stretch and Meanmike harbour reservations about my writing of this very article due to this fact.
I bear no ill will towards Torn Medical, though, nor Stretch or Meanmike. For the few months he was in charge, Frostyboy proved himself a talented leader, until the faction's ownership changed hands against his wishes. At this point, there was nothing he could do. At least, that's what everyone thought, until Frostyboy brought Torn Medical to its knees.
TM was sold by JFA to CR for $4 billion, but I feel a top reviving faction with more than 25 Hall of Fame revivers means this was an extremely low price. Meanmike told Sugarvalves that he sold the faction to Stretch for $1billion less than he himself had offered for it, as while both leaders were determined to own the faction, Meanmike felt guilty that it was his side which had broken up their alliance with JFA.
After the transaction, Meanmike admits things began to get ugly.
"In our attempts to sway TM leadership to tell the other guy they wanted to come to us, Stretch and I, being the driven, goal-oriented dudes that we are, went a little too far and ended up alienating both leads...add in our neglect to inform them of what was happening until it happened, and they both basically told us to self-fornicate."
"Sucked for me because I lost two friends that I respected as players, leads and people...We both should have handled it better, and I fully get why we are no longer on Embyr or Frostys Xmas card list."
Meanmike was adamant that neither he nor Stretch required the approval of Torn Medical's members or leaders to buy the other out. Nevertheless, he regrets not communicating with the faction more during negotiations. And far from standing up for Torn Medical's rank and file members, Meanmike feels that Frostyboy's actions merely compounded their misery.
"Frosty hijacked the faction, and kicked everyone out with the intention of deleting it, just out of spite, which struck me as odd, considering that he based his entire anger on his members getting screwed over, then turned around and kicked them out of their own home and tried to delete it. After being there for only 172 days, I felt that was out of line."
In the immediate aftermath of TM's sale, Frostyboy claims that members of Chain Reaction were required to target Torn Medical, despite the fact they were just close allies minutes before."I do not feel comfortable with this arrangement, as I do not wish to fight my former comrades, and they have endured far too much for the drama between larger factions" said one anonymous member of CR to Frosty. Several members of Torn Medical feel the same way, and I have been led to believe that half of their revivers left in just two days following the sale.
Eva-mancini, a member of Torn Medical for some 224 days, shared the reason why so many have left the faction in a few days:
"Not sure about the background politics but other than that a big motivating factor seems to be 'big war coming'. I'm just a poor reviver and don't want to spend all day in hospital, I'm offski!"
It should be noted, however, that Eva-Mancini remains a member of Torn Medical at the time of writing. Indeed, the current TM leader Four confirmed that while most of the players who departed the faction were kicked out by Frostyboy without warning, some have now returned. And with more former members heading back home each day, Four confidently states his faction's plans for the faction as follows:
"Torn Medical takes in contracts and the crew revives. We are trying to bring back Torn Medical leadership to continue running the faction as they had a good system before. The price is still $1m/revive standard, including JFA. I have heard that HeLa will be asking their revivers to assist their owners for $500k/revive during the war, we will not do that."
Pictured: A doctor with a megaphone, because why not?
Four's confirmation of payment for revives is interesting. One of the reasons Frostyboy did what he did was the purported demand from Stretch for Torn Medical to revive JFA and its affiliates for free during the coming war. This decision has now seemingly been reversed, although there is no evidence it was actually ever taken in the first place, with several players backing up Stretch's assertion he never demanded free revives.
Still, Frostyboy remains aggrieved that he was not consulted on any of these matters before everything came to a head. Frostyboy thankfully stopped short of deleting the faction altogether - something Meanmike praised him for, despite the likelihood that he was only prevented from doing so by a bug. Not that this restraint has saved him from retribution, mind, as Frostyboy claims that JFA has targeted both him and former Torn Medical members since the incident, despite his claims that they knew nothing of what he planned to do.
"Some very angry JFA members...they have made it clear thanks to a "loyal" torn med member who has fed them info on our former members movements. So, despite publicly claiming they are not bullies, they are now hunting former torn med members to try and punish me."
"Zipp was the torn med member, currently residing with Lawless. JFA have informed Killer-For-Hire that he is now a target as he took in some TM members when they left torn med. Again, stressing, that not one TM member knew I would close the faction down. All this does is make my resolve stronger, to see this monumental tantrum - forcing my spouse to divorce me or they would be permahosp'd too."
Torn Medical's SCP-001 seems to believe that Frostyboy brought much of this ire on himself, though, especially considering the Killer-For-Hire issue. He told me that many TM members went to guest in KFH's faction to help it reach 25 energy revives, only for Frostyboy to cancel the contract after many had put in both game resources and real-life sleepless nights to help them achieve it. Thankfully, Four and KFH are on good terms, and KFH has paid out up until the point Frostyboy cancelled the contract. KFH is reportedly no longer being targeted, according to Four.
Thankfully, if this screenshot and this screenshot are to be believed, the anger towards Frostyboy now seems to have subsided - from JFAs side, at least. It is uncertain whether Torn Medical will recover so quickly after such a devastating incident, though, as the damage inflicted will be tough to repair before hostilities with the Insurgency alliance begin.
Mangosta is a top 50 ranked reviver and one of the few former TM members who are yet to rejoin the faction. He spoke out against the politics which forced him from his home and expressed his regret at losing its associated perks.
"Apart from the obvious such as losing the perks - 75e per revive? :( - it was a really great faction to be part of. Well organised, well run. I didn't say much in the chat but I always enjoyed keeping an eye on it."
"Now I roam the wastelands a ronin, a masterless samurai. Which is a rather flowery way of saying I'm keeping out of factions until such time as TM rises from the ashes as I'm sure it will!"
Pictured: Mangosta, roaming.
The famous hitman Kapten_Klitoris was somewhat less understanding.
"It's very sad to see this happen, I can understand that revivers are cowards by nature but this doesn't help anyone. Maybe someone bribed him into doing it. We can't see that yet since he can hide his networth. But it would be quite funny if Meanmike made him do it."
So where do we go from here? Well, for a start, the flow of active revivers coming out of Torn Medical might prove a blessing to the smaller reviving factions, but many will also undoubtedly lose their dream of becoming HOF revivers. I suspect Stretch may also harbour some regret at pursuing the faction so hard given everything that has happened.
As the former head, with Torn medical falling under the firm grip of JFA's hand, I feel emptiness in the wake of these events. It's like when you finished reading an immersive story and you have to go back to reality. I hope that Torn Medical can rise again, but right now, the following Paul Sweeney quote seems to sum things up nicely.
"You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend."
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