The first real faction I ever joined was Recruiters, an effort by Mordor (led by cawknose) to recruit new players. In Recruiters I met kebabtent, i360gfx, chris752w, j2thearrin and many others. Few of us had any idea how to live on a hardcore server and as a result we were constantly raided and always in a state of rebuilding but we stuck it out.

The following map (3), we started to get better but still struggled. We formed an alliance with Hypnotoad and were eventually betrayed by both Hypnotoad and our own member, Ivan_drago. Ivan was bored of things in Arksmith and decided to betray his friends and declaim our base for c0wman and Jeh of Baddies near the end of the map. The remaining members fractured off and were in low spirits for the rest of the map. Many of us joined with NorthKorea for end of the world, where ~50 of us were slaughtered by ~10 members of Absolution in one of the greatest displays of skill in the entire history of Minecraft PVP.

Inspired by this, the core members of what was Arksmith decided to get together and try things again for map 4. Map 4 was a turning point for us. Within 15 minutes of the new map, we secured a stronghold that we held for the entire map. Despite their efforts, neither Baddies, Absolution, or anyone else on the server could move us from that spot. We even survived a weak betrayal attempt from Niblic for his friends in Hypnotoad.

The sting of betrayal once again led to us success. To retaliate, we hatched a devious plan with Pikaoku to betray Hypnotoad. Together with our new friends in Absolution, we put our plan into motion and held onto Hypnotoad's base for over a week while fighting Hypnotoad and Strawhats. We came very close, but were unable to claim the base. Instead, we caused most of them to quit and eventually caused the admins to intervene and create new rules to make us leave Hypnotoad's base. However, not before LazersMyName and I could claim every chunk around Hypnotoad's base and build a giant wall.

Redemption was so rich in this map, mostly due to our star miner, Senj, that when Absolution was betrayed by Spurion we were able to gear them up and put them back on their feet. This relationship would go on to form the second best faction to ever form, Absolution 2.0, but this entry in the HCF history books is about Redemption.

I will always remember the awesome times playing with LazersMyName, Pikaoku, jappaj, Senjutsuka, kebabtent, j2thearrin, chris752w, i360gfx, SmiggyBalls, SarcasticCreeper, and the others who stayed loyal and contributed to Redemption. Except tehsamace. Fuck tehsamace. Seriously, that kid would log on, take 7 stacks of enderpearls, 2 health pots, and go out and pvp and die.

I now invite the older players on this server to share their memories of being dominated by Redemption.