Curse of the Ancient Mariner

The Curse of the Ancient Mariner is the curse placed upon the Seattle Sneakers after they shot Gilbert the Albatross in Game 1 of Season 1 of the Hellmouth Cup.

Origins

On the very first day of Golly, in the very first game ever played by the Seattle Sneakers ( 14d8af13-a6aa-4c50-895d-a098ee47f6f6), something happened that would come to haunt the Sneakers for the rest of their existence. And that was the shooting of Gilbert the Albatross.

	'God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends, that plague thee thus! - Why look'st thou so?' — With my cross-bow I shot the ALBATROSS. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

Sometime during that match between the Seattle Sneakers and the San Diego Balloon Animals , the Sneakers were at a critical point in their formation, when a rare, benevolent pattern known as Gilbert the Albatross formed on the grid. Gilbert was a neutral, distinctive oscillator rarely found in the wild: mathematically perfect, and a signal of a "good south wind" (strong momentum carrying a team to victory) in the simulator.

Rather than let the pattern pass, or using its wake to build a stable defense, the Sneakers - aggressively living up to their Sine metu (without fear) motto - targeted the anomaly, firing at it with a glider from a cross-bow. Gilbert the Albatross was rapidly dismantled into spare cells to fuel a temporary rush, and Seattle won their match - but inadvertently killed the luck that made the breeze blow. Killing Gilbert the Albatross marked the Sneakers team with a curse, that whenever they would reach the precipice of a championship, the wind beneath their sails would mysteriously die, their patterns would stagnate, and they would slowly twist in the wind until the inevitable decay of their patterns.

By the end of the Hellmouth Cup, the Sneakers had lost both of the two Hellmouth Cup series they had reached, and had made several early exits from the postseason, despite high hopes and expectations. Their Cup loss to the Orlando Business Majors in Season 22 led the team to do some soul-searching. It was then, in the aftermath of their second Cup loss, while reviewing footage of past matches in the film room, that they first came across the footage of Gilbert the Albatross being cut down, and realized the source of their postseason woes: they had been cursed by Gilbert.

	Instead of the cross, the Albatross About my neck was hung. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"