Gaztons the Commander
Gaztons the Commander or simply Gaztons is a former host and head admin best known for his role in i35 and initiating the Jester's Game larp. He was also notoriously blamed for the Razzcraft IP Leak and ensuing doxxing plague, of which he was viewed as the primary architect. He is also known for hosting Intcraft adjacent server Crusalis and for the creation of a formerly secret group known as the Gaz Cabal or the Jesters that would shadow-host i36 and i38 and is currently responsible for Crusalis.
Table of Contents
Pre-I34
Gaztons originally found int through a /his/ eu4 server i28 was being advertised on. He would join Crippo's faction in Spain before going dormant for the next few iterations, barely interacting with the community. He would return in i31 once again joining ncordo's nation as an officer. He would briefly play with ncordo in i32 before quitting the server. Following a brief entourage into TaP with the rest of Crippogang Gaztons would once again go dormant for the duration of i33.
I34 and tenure in SpookyGang
During i34 and after the seemingly permanent retirement of Crippogang as an active meta group on int Gaztons would attempt to set up a faction in Greece with some Crippogang and LoftusGang remnants. Said efforts would swiftly come to an end following the eruption of e-drama between Loftus and Crippo people on the matter of an e-girl being present in the nation. With his group in tatters, Gaztons would resort to merging Greece into TheSpookyBone's serbia further north and serving as a co-leader of the amalgam nation for the rest of the iteration. He was most active on the realm of diplomacy negotiating several times with the Swiss to acquire their mercenary services during war periods and attending the nation conference in Vienna on behalf of TheSpookyBone.
After i34, Gaztons would rejoin spooky as an officer in 4craft. Later he would emerge as essentially the group's leader during the intcraft spinoff server, Epochcraft 2, recruiting several people to the meta group and organizing it only to be unavailable during the war period and have it all fall apart.
Beef with Spooky and Return to Crippogang
Following the group's failure to win Epoch 2, Gaztons would grow disillusioned with Spooky's leadership and decide to rejoin a resurgent Crippogang for TaP in the summer of 2021. As a joke, he would leak a message sent by GallonmanTDM in Spooky's officer chat in which Gallon was warning him not to join Crippogang over some doxxing incident. Spooky permanently banned Gaztons from his group over this leak leading to prolonged rivalry between the two that was exacerbated by Spooky's less than ceremonious exit from Crippogang a year before that, essentially birthing what was to be a short-lived but intense meta-group rivalry between Crippogang and Spooky's Bvlls.
I35 and The Jester's Game
One of the handful of players that broke with Spooky during Gaztons' inglorious ousting from the SpookyGang, was Razz. In early fall 2022, Razz would approach Gaztons along with several other community figures, including DavidGaf and Viceroy as well as Strongduke, with the intent of hosting the much joked-about Razzcraft. Gaztons' role would be bankrolling the server with his abundant Greek blood money (rich parents). Sometime during the development of i35 Razz would solicit the services of an old /r9k/ contact of his TriageOne. Triage would offer to host the server for the measly price of 20 dollars, which Gaztons would pay him shortly after the server would launch.
Crippogang would make a return to intcraft under the leadership of Ncordo (Kipse) to play Japan. Throughout the week and a half or so, the server was alive, Gaztons would regularly admin abuse to assist his meta group, spawning hundreds of stacks of valuable resources and providing information on rival factions. These actions, though known to Razz would go unpunished, allowing Japan to operate with impunity. Gaztons would play a key part in the Doxxing and public humiliation of Chris Druo the underage owner of EarthCraft, who he and Triage would chase back to his home community, temporarily killing off the EarthCraft project.
Gaztons would also shield Ncordogang from consequences after they publicly and rather brutally doxxed Strongduke, a known and respected figure in the community, responsible for the iteration's map, over what they labeled “a shitty map.” He prevented their ban and assisted with the proliferation of the dox. Strongduke would disconnect completely from the intcraft community giving rise to the Jester's Game philosophy Gaztons would embrace from that point forward.
Come war day, Triage's 20-dollar box began to implode under the strain of 100 players logging on, and an emergency meeting was called. With the entire team present Gaztons would suggest that Triage leak all the IP logs since the server was clearly unsalvageable. Razz, by that point, too disappointed to raise an objection, referred to himself as “a pawn of the jester,” while DavidGaf's staunch argument against the leak led only to his group being spared from the IP leak. Gaztons would remove his group members' IPs from the “mega dox” as it became known along with those of some others before Triage leaked around 150 IPs on the discord. For the next day or two Gaztons would “jester-post” ceaselessly on the discord while other actors used the leaked IPs to dox community figures, such as TrenchByte, leader of TrenchGang and his officers Korcz and CzarWave. TrenchGang, a group in tight alliance with Spooky would abandon the server and have not been heard from since. Soon it was clear the doxxes mainly targeted known Spooky affiliates, and it became evident this targeted harassment aimed to remove Spooky's influence from the community. Culminating with the doxxing of Spooky himself. Under Gaztons' ownership (Razz had transferred ownership of the i35 discord to him after the leak), the discord server became a platform for all these doxxes to be spread on.
Post-I35 Collapse and the Gaz Cabal
Following the collapse of i35 and the conclusion of the Jester's Game, Gaztons and his associates would be banned from most intcraft adjacent discords in an effort to contain the fallout on an already, by that point, dying community. Several community figures would come out in condemnation of the Jester's Game and Gaztons' actions, most prominently Roguelich, Voth, and TheSpookyBone himself. Realizing his image was beyond repair, Gaztons would go underground, assembling a secret group that would come to be referred to as the Gaz Cabal. Members originally included TriageOne, Crippo, Ncordo, and Razz, with VivianJames joining shortly thereafter. Gaztons, after failing to acquire the nodes plug-in from Xeth, would have Triage begin developing one for the purposes of a Rennaisance/EU4-inspired server.
Given the community's climate towards him at the time, Gaztons would begin collecting doxxable information on his team members as an insurance policy to prevent leaks. While also threatened to dox DavidGaf and Viceroy if they kept working on what he viewed as a rival server Epochcraft 3. According to some reports, these threats resulted in Epoch 3 being delayed by several months. Sometime in winter 2022, Rurik would join the Gaz Cabal in order to assist with the Renaissance project. Shortly after, Vivian, no longer willing to put up with Gaztons' paranoid antics, would leave the group avoiding leaking any sensitive information for a time.
Shadow Hosting I36 and involvement with Fleepers
With the Renaissance project perpetually being delayed, Rurik would take the initiative to host a new intcraft iteration set in Sengoku Japan. Gaztons decided to support said iteration by bankrolling it from the shadows while implementing Triage's nodes plugin “ApexNodes” as a stress test for later servers. Triage would make an alt, the now infamous KuromChan, who he would use to larp as an e-girl developer who inherited ApexNodes. Gaztons would unassumingly join a relative newcomer meta group, briefly affiliated with ncordogang/crippogang during i35 when they played Laos, the Fleepers. Throughout i36, Gaztons would minimally abuse his position as shadow host to spawn some resources for the Fleepers and shield some of their numerous hackers from being banned. Arguably these admin crimes contributed to Miyoshi's (Fleeper Nation) resounding success during the first two war periods. It was not comparable, however, to the scale of abuse in i35 by any stretch of the imagination. The iteration would end a relative success with ApexNodes being proven stable and intuitive enough to carry the Cabal's future projects.
Post I36
The Gaz Cabal would play a part in the i37 boycott and Onions' ultimate downfall by leaking evidence of his involvement in the Razzcraft IP leaks. Slowly rumors of the Cabal's existence would emerge to the point it became common knowledge, primarily through VivianJames. Gaztons would then move the Cabal's activities outside the immediate intcraft sphere, partnering with another team behind a server called “Crusader Universalis”. Following a hostile takeover, under nebulous circumstances, of the Crusader Universalis community, Gaztons would rebrand it to Crusalis. Since then, Crusalis' community has interacted immensely with that of intcraft, most notably during i38 when more than half the playerbase was comprised of Crusalis groups. Gaztons briefly attempted to lead Germany during i38 with the Fleepers; however, he had to abandon it because of IRL issues.
Interestingly i38 was hosted on the same box as Crusalis, paid for by Gaztons and operated by Rurik, in a sense meaning the now defunct Gaz Cabal has hosted every iteration from i35 onwards.