BEL Clan was started in the dark ages of computer gaming (e.g. before any of the current members were in the clan). Early in 2001, four of the current members were employed in the same department at Bell Labs, including Ripley, Spacey, PAINkiller and RAFster. As is common with technical people, we started playing computer games during our lunch. Then during the last few months of 2001, Ripley joined BEL clan, after playing on the UT server the clan had at that time. Soon, Spacey started playing on that server, and joined sometime in the next month or two as well.

In December 2002, the original BEL clan broke up, apparently as a result of some disagreements between the Clan General at the time and some of the members. However, the breakup was never ``officially'' announced. Instead, word was passwd from person to person, sometimes going through folks who were not a member of the clan. In retrospect, the problem was probably not helped by the fact that the clan was entirely focused on the Last Man Standing (LMS) game type, and the small group consisting of the best players would gang up on the lesser players and once they were knocked out, would proceed to play amongst themselves. The fact that original BEL clan was rather large, while only a small handfull of persons were allowed to play in matches probably did not help.

After the original BEL clan breakup, three of the original members decided to keep the clan going in some form, even though real life was impacting their ability to play. It was agreed that Spacey, having the idea to keep things alive, if catatonic for awhile, would become the new Clan General, that Ripley would remain the second in command, and that Spammy would be the third member of the leadership team. However, given how PAINkiller and RAFster, who were coworkers of Spacey and Ripley, would often play on the same servers, they soon joined the clan early in 2003.

Since that time, real life kept things mostly catatonic for nearly a year, but things are coming back to life. The four members who used to work at Bell Labs no longer work there, just like over 100,000 others who have been forced to leave Lucent since its peak around early 2000. Ripley was a contractor, and was not renewed when her contract was up in September 2002. RAFster was next, getting cut in the downsizing which occurred around April 2003. Finally, both PAINkiller and Spacey were cut in the downsizing which occurred between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2003. Their old department is now a shadow of its former self, with less than 30% of its original number of employees. However, the one good thing which has come out of all this is the progress on reviving both this web site and the clan.

In February 2004, the first two truely new members were recruited. These two members, Dirty_Deeds and Spincycleus, played quite frequently on the Magical Consequences server where Spacey played and the others would occasionally hang out. They completed their probationary period in April 2004.

In July 2004, the clan held a new round of nominations and completed a poll which nearly drove Spacey, as the leader of the Clan, out of his mind. A total of eight players were on the ballot, as well as the question about whether or not we should recruit two, three or possibly more players from this list. Instead of giving giving an orderly list of players from which a few folks might be selected, every response gave each candidate an equal number of points. So, all of the following nominees were invited to join the clan.

• Druid
• Shantara
• biceps1
• bigbobz
• chameleon
• chankie
• llachor
• stealthbob

As of this writing, many candidates are still deciding whether or not to join, and those who have decided to join are in their probationary period.