User:Ch4zm/October 2025/Ground Effect Crown

These fragments are intended for both teams' pages

Hellmouth

Formation of the Ground Effect Crown

The rivalry between the Salt Lake Turbulence and Long Beach Flightless Birds began almost the moment that Salt Lake joined the league in Hellmouth/Season 16. The rivalry was a natural one: the Turbulence, an Air-element team, are analytical, mathematical, and elegant, while the Flightless Birds, an Earth-element team, are chaotic, unpredictable, and instinctual. Whereas the Turbulence live their motto, Inveniam viam aut faciam (I find a way, or make one), by overcoming adversity and finding ways to rise above any challenge, the Flightless Birds motto, Omnia adscendentia convergunt (Everything that rises must converge) serves as a direct threat to the Turbulence - a promise that gravity will always overcome and pull high-flyers back to earth. The matches themselves were ugly clashes between patterns from the Turbulence, based on complex, elegant equations of fluid dynamics, and patterns from the Flightless Birds, hare-brained brute-force schemes that would come together in the end more often than not.

The Inversion Layer

In the Hellmouth Cup, the Long Beach Flightless Birds represented a frustrating gravitational barrier for the Salt Lake Turbulence . The Flightless Birds, Masters of the Ground, had no business obstructing the Masters of the Air, and yet they consistently and effectively held the Turbulence back, and just like a cold layer of air trapping the smog and pollution of Salt Lake on a winter day, the Birds smothered the Turbulence with exhaust from their own patterns.

In Season 18 of the Hellmouth Cup, their first postseason faceoff, the Long Beach Flightless Birds managed to overcome the Salt Lake Turbulence 3-2 in a brutal, ugly League Championship Series that truly set the tone for the rivalry going forward - a titanic clash of order versus chaos, with the winner taking everything. Long Beach knew better than to try and outmaneuver Salt Lake in the air. Instead, they dragged them down into a chaotic tussle in the dirt and the mud, clogging Salt Lake's perfect patterns with grit and unpredictability. The Turbulence were humiliated, grounded by a team of Flightless Birds, and were sent packing at the end of that LCS with a chip on their shoulder that would never disappear.

In Season 21 of the Hellmouth Cup, the Long Beach Flightless Birds and Salt Lake Turbulence were set for a League Championship Series rematch, with the Turbulence desperate to prove themselves to the fan base after being bested by the Birds in the Season 18 LCS. Salt Lake adapted the second time around, proving the superiority of their analytical approach. In another 3-2 series that was another ugly brawl between the forces of order and the forces of chaos, the Turbulence held tight, emerged victorious, and went on to bring the first ever Hellmouth Cup to Salt Lake.

Toroidal

War of the Suburbs

The "Birds" vs. "Burbs" nickname confusion between the Long Beach Flightless Birds and Salt Lake Turbulence boiled over into a full-blown psychological conflict during the Toroidal Cup era, inadvertently sparked by the radio announcer for the Elko Astronauts , Mission Control - a cold and detached chorus of engineers making observations on ongoing matches. In an inadvertent mixup, Mission Control began to refer to the Turbulence as the "Birds" (rather than the "Burbs"), and refer the Flightless Birds as the "Burbs" (rather than the "Birds").

The irony of the mix-up was particularly delicious because of how cold and clinical the incorrect nicknames were as Mission Control called the games. Clips of the mixed-up nicknames made the rounds on social media and went viral. The two teams had very different reactions to the whole affair:

• The Long Beach Flightless Birds found it hilarious, leaning into the absurdity and irony of the nickname. Fans began to show up to matches with lawn chairs, plastic flamingos, and portable ovens for baking apple pies, mocking the idea of their dense industrial port city having a suburban core.

• The Salt Lake Turbulence were incensed by the mix-up, which they considered a case of stolen identity. That their stolen identity was handed to their chaotic, jobless, and beach-dwelling rivals was an unbearable insult. In the leadup to the Toroidal/Season 11 LCS (the first half of the DPRR), the Burbs announced the start of the War of the Suburbs, dramatically increasing the stakes of the LCS faceoff.

Newton's Third Law

In Golly lore, the Long Beach Flightless Birds became famous for the Double Pennant Revenge Reversal (DPRR) in Toroidal/Season 11 thru Toroidal/Season 14. Sure enough, the team responsible for the first half of the DPRR was their Ground Effect Crown rivals, the Salt Lake Turbulence .

• The Action (Toroidal/Season 11): Newton's Third Law stipulates that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The action, in this case, was the Toroidal/Season 11 drubbing of the Turbulence in the League Championship Series. The Birds bested the Turbulence 3-1, clinched the Cold League pennant, and won the Toroidal Cup. They asserted that the "ground effect" was inescapable, even on the looping topology of the torus. The Turbulence, meanwhile, began thinking of the Birds as a physical force whose grip, like gravity, couldn't be loosened.

• The Reaction (Toroidal/Season 12): The equal and opposite reaction happened the next postseason, Toroidal/Season 12, as the Turbulence swung the pendulum back in the other direction, riding out the chaos and defeating the Birds by the same margin, 3-1, before going on to win the Toroidal Cup themselves. It was a perfect, equal, and opposite reaction, and was a testament to Salt Lake's ability to analyze a problem and engineer a solution. As the Turbulence would say, the equations were balanced.

Rainbow

Mutually Assured Obstruction

In the multi-team chaos of the Rainbow Cup, every rivalry was forced to adapt, and the Ground Effect Crown was no different. The flame of the rivalry burned bright, with each team accumulating a lot of scar tissue from regular season chafing and repeated Championship Series reversals. In the Rainbow Era, the rivalry naturally evolved into a fight to ensure the other team failed - and that often meant losing sight of the higher goal (winning the Rainbow Cup) in pursuit of the lower aim (knocking out their rival).

In Rainbow/Season 7, a chaotic West League Championship Series saw the Salt Lake Turbulence focus on creating a spoiler vortex, distracting from maximizing their own score but aiming to knock the Long Beach Flightless Birds out of the postseason. The gamble worked - the Birds were knocked out, and the Turbulence advanced to the Rainbow Cup series - a victory born of pure mathematical spite.

Nine seasons later, in Rainbow/Season 16, the roles would be reversed. The Flightless Birds, embodying their motto, "EVerything that rises must converge," entered the LCS with a singular goal: bury the Turbulence, deep in the earth, as deep as they could go. The Birds used ugly, inefficient, HEAVY patterns that created stagnant zones on the grid ("gravity wells") that disrupted the airfoil formation of the Turbulence, sending them into a tailspin and crashing into the heavy Birds formations. The Flightless Birds barely clawed their way into the Rainbow Cup (finishing a forgettable 4th place), but their real victory was exacting revenge on the Turbulence by grounding them.

Klein

Symmetrical Annihilation

The unusual and non-orientable topology of the Klein Cup had its impact on the Ground Effect Crown: it led to wild swings, back-and-forth crushing victories answered kind.

The Anomaly (Klein/Season 3): the Flightless Birds, through sheer chaotic instinct, accidentally mastered the grid's bizarre physics to achieve a humiliating 3-0 sweep over the analytical Turbulence.

The Correction (Klein/Season 6): the Turbulence, having studied the anomaly, delivered a mathematically perfect and equally brutal 3-0 revenge sweep.

This established a trend: a coin toss for total victory.

Hellmouth II

The Ganja Gambit

After being swept by the Salt Lake Turbulence in their first Hellmouth II encounter (Hellmouth II/Season 1), the Long Beach Flightless Birds were forced to evolve. The two teams met again in 19 seasons later, in the League Division Series matchup in Hellmouth II/Season 20. It was the usual brutal neck-and-neck affair, par for the course for the Ground Effect Crown, taking the series to the maximum 5 games.

The Ploy: Frustrated that their usual antics weren't enough to break the stalemate, the Birds resorted to a trick learned from their East Coast rivals, the Jersey OSHA Violations. The night before the decisive Game 5, they invited the Turbulence to a mandatory inter-team "Safety Meeting." The literal-minded Turbulence, assuming this was a formal discussion of grid protocols and safety compliance, attended with notes and binders. The "Safety Meeting" was a Jersey Safety Meeting - meaning it was a massive hotbox session. The Burbs and Birds both got so thoroughly baked, the Birds were certain there was no way the Burbs would be able to see straight the next day.

The Backfire: The next day, the Turbulence arrived at the match not dulled, but enlightened. Far from hindering their analytical minds, the cannabis had unlocked a new level of mental performance. For the first time, they could see and feel the div, curl, and grad of their patterns instead of just calculating them. Their formations became terrifyingly fluid and intuitive, weaving with a creativity they never knew they possessed. They fused mathematics and fleeting form like jazz. The Flightless Birds were dismantled in Game 5 by a beautiful, unpredictable, giggling opponent. The Birds' attempt to turn their rivals into "dopes" had backfired terribly, giving Salt Lake a 3-2 series victory and and a glimpse of Enlightenment.

Hellmouth III

The Ground Effect

True to its name, the Ground Effect Crown in the Hellmouth III Cup became all about being stuck on the ground, unable to take off.

After granting their rivals the Salt Lake Turbulence a brief and accidental victory-through-enlightenment in Hellmouth II/Season 20 thanks to the Ganja Gambit, the Long Beach Flightless Birds were anxious to re-establish themselves as the relentless agents of gravity, keeping the Turbulence from getting TOO high.

Hellmouth III/Season 3 saw the Birds snatch the division title from the Turbulence (having the same win-loss record, but winning the tiebreaker), plus the Turbulence losing two more tiebreakers to teams with identical win-loss records, in heartbreaking fashion, to leave them eliminated from the postseason while three other teams with the same win-loss record popped champagne). This event, together with the Ganja Gambit, would eventually lead to the Great Salt Lake Civil War.

Hellmouth III/Season 14 saw the first postseason meeting of the Hellmouth III Cup between the Birds and Burbs, and Long Beach delivered a thunderous smackdown of the Turbulence, in a series that seemed a lot less close than the final 3-1 series tally would suggest. The Birds reasserted their role as Masters of the Ground.

Hellmouth III/Season 21 saw another decisive smackdown of the Turbulence by the Birds, this time a 3-0 series tally, giving the Birds a clean sweep. The Turbulence seemed stifled, their normally eloquent equations failing to find any traction against the dominant ground game of the Flightless Birds.

Hellmouth IV

(Taking a brief break... look at regular season outcomes)

Hellmouth V

The dormant rivalry roars back to life...

Miracle of Synthesis (Hellmouth V/Season 12): The Burbs somehow managed a brief respite in the internal fighting between factions. The Great Salt Lake Civil War was paused for a moment, and the Orthodoxen and Enlightenmen factions were able to achieve a temporary, and highly successful, synthesis. The team unlocked a new state of being, which they dubbed Calculated Serenity. The patterns were mathematically flawless, intuitively fluid, and highly controlled. The brutal 4-0 sweep of the Birds in the League Championship Series was dominant - so dominant, some people whispered of a resolution to the Civil War.

Memetic Corruption (Hellmouth V/Season 20): Seeing that their major rivals, the Turbulence, were on the verge of stabilizing their internal infighting and bringing about a resolution to the Great Salt Lake Civil War, the Birds decided it was time to resurrect the War of the Suburbs. This time, it wasn't mere trolling with lawn chairs and lawn flamingos - it was memetic cellular automata patterns that flashed images of picket fences, clu-de-sacs, and lawn gnomes with mocking grins.

The Memetic Corruption (Hellmouth V/S20): Eight seasons later, LBFB returned with a masterstroke of psychological warfare. Unable to defeat Calculated Serenity head-on, they sought to shatter it. They resurrected the War for the Suburbs. This time, it wasn't just trolling with lawn chairs. The Birds deployed memetic patterns—cellular automata configurations that explicitly generated images of picket fences, cul-de-sacs, and mocking, pixelated lawn flamingos. This was a direct, memetic assault on SLC's core identity, an insult so profound it shattered their fragile truce. The Orthodox faction, incensed by the mockery of their suburban heritage, could no longer synthesize with the Enlightened. The Flightless Birds' 3-2 Division Series win was a triumph of memetics, proving you can defeat a higher state of consciousness by appealing to a baser state of indignation.