The short, unlikely looking basketball star slumped dejectedly in the back of the North Carolina team bus as if wound its way over country roads back from Winston-Salem. The Tar Heels had been beaten, trounced, and humiliated in a game by their fierce in-state rival, the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. It wasnt so bad that they had lost, the player thought, it was the fact they had lost to an inferior team. North Carolina simply put more talent on the floor that night, and just as simply lost. Typically, when that scenario occurred, fans and the media pointed at the coaching as the reason for the loss. While it was true that North Carolina had a young, inexperienced head coach, and Wake Forest had an old, wily, master of the sidelines, the player couldnt honestly say that the coaching staff didnt prepare for a win. The player remembered the pre-game meeting, the halftime conference, and all the time-outs in the game where the coach had patiently explained again and again, what the team needed to do to beat an outclassed, but proud and determined Wake Forest team. The player also remembered the eye-rolls behind the coachs back; the insistence of some of the players, including himself, to do it their way; and the general lack of respect for the coach, who was after all, barely older than his players and replacing a legendary, Hall of Fame coach. What made it worse was the coach didnt call them on it. He didnt act mad or upset at them. Their old coach would have torn the doors off the bus with his language after a loss like that, but the new coach was sitting in the front of the bus, determined not to quit on a team that had almost quit on him.
Silently looking out the window as the bus rolled into Chapel Hill, the player saw a crowd of students, chanting and waving signs, demanding the coach be fired. The player loved the passion of the North Carolina fans, but seeing its ugly side made him sick to his stomach. Then, as the bus stopped in front of Woolen Gym, he saw it. It was stuffed scarecrow with the distinctive features and three-piece suit of their coach. The player looked, horrified, as he saw the coach see his likeness in effigy, and turn away, reminding his players that he expected them all to be in class in the morning and he would see them at practice in the afternoon. Then the player saw Sammy Rosen, the assistant sports editor of the student newspaper and outspoken critic of the new coach. Sammy threw a rope over the old oak tree in front of Woolen Gym, fastened a hangmans noose around the stuffed figure of the coach and hung it swaying in the night breeze as the players and coaches disembarked the bus.
Suddenly furious, the player muscled his way past the players and coaches still on the bus and ran to Rosen. Take that thing down Sammy, right now!
Screw you Billy, said the student, we have to send a message to the University that this coach is in over his head and he is driving this basketball program into the ground.
That is a load a crap Rosen, yelled the player you didnt even watch the game; you have no clue as to what really happened, but I tell you it wasnt the coachs fault!
Whatever Billy, yelled the student right back, Ive been a fan of North Carolina basketball since before your Yankee butt even knew where Chapel Hill was! That coach of yours wont win another game in college basketball and Carolina wont either if he is still here. Im not taking the effigy down!
The rest of the student crowd and the players all stopped and watched in fascination the shouting between the two. Nobody could remember the star player being this angry over anything. Snarling, the player ripped down the effigy and then turned on a suddenly frightened Rosen.
The incident could have ended there, but in the players anger, he called out half forgotten words of his childhood; words that had been bequeathed to him by his great-aunt, the daughter of an Iroquois shaman. With the words came the arcane power that was his by birthright. Years later, the man would be able to use that power to benefit people, becoming Philadelphias first modern super hero, The Kangaroo Kid, but this time, the first time he tapped those powers, he used them for a far darker purpose.
In a language only he and his victim were able to understand, the player shook the effigy at Rosen and spoke, You are cursed Samuel T. Rosen. For every win the coach gets, you will spend a year suffering in a dark and loathsome hell. You, Carolinas biggest fan, will beg every god you know for them to lose.
With that a blast of dark energy swirled out from the effigy and wrapped around Rosen. Shaken and frightened, the student ran off into the Chapel Hill night. You had better be right Rosen! yelled the still furious player. You had better be right and coach will never win another game!
The players anger now turned to his teammates. Now, we are the ones who just lost this game. Maybe coach is right and maybe not, but from now on, we are going to give him a chance! Every one of us is going to do exactly what he tells us to do. Anybody have a problem with that? The players, cowed by the display of their stars power, and their own guilt, shook their heads. Good! Ill see everybody at practice an hour early tomorrow. We have some things to work on!
That team did come together and put together a few more good wins for their young coach that year. After the first win by the team, Rosen found himself sucked down strange dark portal that appeared in his dorm room. Rosen spent a year in a dark and horrible hell where he was subjected to unspeakable horrors. The dark masters of that hell knew that their torture would be more exquisite were Rosen allowed to leave their care for a time, and then forced back for another year of his curse. Rosen was released, and indeed spent months in dread at being called back. After several months, he was again summoned to the dark pit to serve another year of penance.
After his third year in his dark hell, after his release, Rosen tried to thwart the curse and leapt into the path of a Chapel Hill city bus, killing him instantly. The curse however, would not be denied. When the dark hell called again, Rosens dead body clawed his way out of the Orange Co. grave and disappeared into the dark dimension. Now when he was released, he walked the mortal world as a rotting corpse, and, as the years passed, merely a skeleton.
More years passed, both in the pit and in the mortal world, and Rosen discovered that the dark energies of his hell had penetrated his dead body and gave him a deadly power. During his months in the mortal world, Rosen began to use those powers to attack and brutalize innocent students. Finally driven out of Chapel Hill, Rosen wandered the country before being captured by heroes in Paragon City. Rosen was brooding in a cell in the Ziggurat when the coach that he had hung so many years before finally retired, and Rosen knew the total extent of his curse.
The coach was Dean E. Smith, and he retired with the NCAA Division 1 Mens Basketball record for coaching victories 879.
Upon hearing that news, Rosen began again muttering to himself the mantra that he had said for so many years. I was a Tar Heel Born, I was a Tar Heel Bred, and now Im cursed, a Tar Heel Dead.
EveryNighters:
Tar Heel Lvl 50 Inv/SS Tank
Knight of Purgatory Lvl 50 Fire/Ax Tank
Kilmainham Wall Lvl 50 Stone/Stone Tank
Re-Fridgerator Lvl 50 Ice/Ice Tank
Yankee Doodle Dandy Lvl 50 Will/Eng Tank
Teen Tar Heel Lvl 50 MA/SR Scrapper
Tar Heel Dead.
The short, unlikely looking basketball star slumped dejectedly in the back of the North Carolina team bus as if wound its way over country roads back from Winston-Salem. The Tar Heels had been beaten, trounced, and humiliated in a game by their fierce in-state rival, the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. It wasnt so bad that they had lost, the player thought, it was the fact they had lost to an inferior team. North Carolina simply put more talent on the floor that night, and just as simply lost. Typically, when that scenario occurred, fans and the media pointed at the coaching as the reason for the loss. While it was true that North Carolina had a young, inexperienced head coach, and Wake Forest had an old, wily, master of the sidelines, the player couldnt honestly say that the coaching staff didnt prepare for a win. The player remembered the pre-game meeting, the halftime conference, and all the time-outs in the game where the coach had patiently explained again and again, what the team needed to do to beat an outclassed, but proud and determined Wake Forest team. The player also remembered the eye-rolls behind the coachs back; the insistence of some of the players, including himself, to do it their way; and the general lack of respect for the coach, who was after all, barely older than his players and replacing a legendary, Hall of Fame coach. What made it worse was the coach didnt call them on it. He didnt act mad or upset at them. Their old coach would have torn the doors off the bus with his language after a loss like that, but the new coach was sitting in the front of the bus, determined not to quit on a team that had almost quit on him.
Silently looking out the window as the bus rolled into Chapel Hill, the player saw a crowd of students, chanting and waving signs, demanding the coach be fired. The player loved the passion of the North Carolina fans, but seeing its ugly side made him sick to his stomach. Then, as the bus stopped in front of Woolen Gym, he saw it. It was stuffed scarecrow with the distinctive features and three-piece suit of their coach. The player looked, horrified, as he saw the coach see his likeness in effigy, and turn away, reminding his players that he expected them all to be in class in the morning and he would see them at practice in the afternoon. Then the player saw Sammy Rosen, the assistant sports editor of the student newspaper and outspoken critic of the new coach. Sammy threw a rope over the old oak tree in front of Woolen Gym, fastened a hangmans noose around the stuffed figure of the coach and hung it swaying in the night breeze as the players and coaches disembarked the bus.
Suddenly furious, the player muscled his way past the players and coaches still on the bus and ran to Rosen. Take that thing down Sammy, right now!
Screw you Billy, said the student, we have to send a message to the University that this coach is in over his head and he is driving this basketball program into the ground.
That is a load a crap Rosen, yelled the player you didnt even watch the game; you have no clue as to what really happened, but I tell you it wasnt the coachs fault!
Whatever Billy, yelled the student right back, Ive been a fan of North Carolina basketball since before your Yankee butt even knew where Chapel Hill was! That coach of yours wont win another game in college basketball and Carolina wont either if he is still here. Im not taking the effigy down!
The rest of the student crowd and the players all stopped and watched in fascination the shouting between the two. Nobody could remember the star player being this angry over anything. Snarling, the player ripped down the effigy and then turned on a suddenly frightened Rosen.
The incident could have ended there, but in the players anger, he called out half forgotten words of his childhood; words that had been bequeathed to him by his great-aunt, the daughter of an Iroquois shaman. With the words came the arcane power that was his by birthright. Years later, the man would be able to use that power to benefit people, becoming Philadelphias first modern super hero, The Kangaroo Kid, but this time, the first time he tapped those powers, he used them for a far darker purpose.
In a language only he and his victim were able to understand, the player shook the effigy at Rosen and spoke, You are cursed Samuel T. Rosen. For every win the coach gets, you will spend a year suffering in a dark and loathsome hell. You, Carolinas biggest fan, will beg every god you know for them to lose.
With that a blast of dark energy swirled out from the effigy and wrapped around Rosen. Shaken and frightened, the student ran off into the Chapel Hill night. You had better be right Rosen! yelled the still furious player. You had better be right and coach will never win another game!
The players anger now turned to his teammates. Now, we are the ones who just lost this game. Maybe coach is right and maybe not, but from now on, we are going to give him a chance! Every one of us is going to do exactly what he tells us to do. Anybody have a problem with that? The players, cowed by the display of their stars power, and their own guilt, shook their heads. Good! Ill see everybody at practice an hour early tomorrow. We have some things to work on!
That team did come together and put together a few more good wins for their young coach that year. After the first win by the team, Rosen found himself sucked down strange dark portal that appeared in his dorm room. Rosen spent a year in a dark and horrible hell where he was subjected to unspeakable horrors. The dark masters of that hell knew that their torture would be more exquisite were Rosen allowed to leave their care for a time, and then forced back for another year of his curse. Rosen was released, and indeed spent months in dread at being called back. After several months, he was again summoned to the dark pit to serve another year of penance.
After his third year in his dark hell, after his release, Rosen tried to thwart the curse and leapt into the path of a Chapel Hill city bus, killing him instantly. The curse however, would not be denied. When the dark hell called again, Rosens dead body clawed his way out of the Orange Co. grave and disappeared into the dark dimension. Now when he was released, he walked the mortal world as a rotting corpse, and, as the years passed, merely a skeleton.
More years passed, both in the pit and in the mortal world, and Rosen discovered that the dark energies of his hell had penetrated his dead body and gave him a deadly power. During his months in the mortal world, Rosen began to use those powers to attack and brutalize innocent students. Finally driven out of Chapel Hill, Rosen wandered the country before being captured by heroes in Paragon City. Rosen was brooding in a cell in the Ziggurat when the coach that he had hung so many years before finally retired, and Rosen knew the total extent of his curse.
The coach was Dean E. Smith, and he retired with the NCAA Division 1 Mens Basketball record for coaching victories 879.
Upon hearing that news, Rosen began again muttering to himself the mantra that he had said for so many years. I was a Tar Heel Born, I was a Tar Heel Bred, and now Im cursed, a Tar Heel Dead.
EveryNighters:
Tar Heel Lvl 50 Inv/SS Tank
Knight of Purgatory Lvl 50 Fire/Ax Tank
Kilmainham Wall Lvl 50 Stone/Stone Tank
Re-Fridgerator Lvl 50 Ice/Ice Tank
Yankee Doodle Dandy Lvl 50 Will/Eng Tank
Teen Tar Heel Lvl 50 MA/SR Scrapper
EvilNighters:
Tar Heel Dead Lvl 50 DD Brute