who was captain hawk?

Create a game based around RP, tell players they have to drive the RP, punish them when they try to drive the RP, punish OOC coordination, restrict OOC knowledge of the game, and finally allow certain players with OOC connections to staff to create staff-assisted characters with tremendous OOC knowledge of the game due to those staff connections for the purpose of driving the game world. Yeah, I wonder why that bothers people.  


That being said, I think there is a misconception over the way staff pets behave. Some staff pets are the sort who rise quickly to a clan leadership position and, mysteriously, rules that applied to prior leaders don't apply to them any longer. It's not hard to think of a time where a clan's recruitment cap vanished when a new leader came in, or where certain PCs seemed to be completely immune to the mindbending powers of Lirathans. These stand out because they're so flagrantly, publicly stupid, but they're the minority of staff pets.

Most staff pets are lower-key characters, even the ones with abilities no player would be allowed to have, that attach themselves to good RPers. They have inside knowledge of who is doing what and can drop a character with just the skills you need in your path so that they're integrated into your plot. And, over time, they sloooowly make your plots about them, or direct you and your plots toward staff plots so that they get integrated into what staff wants to happen. 

In some ways this is worse than the flagrantly OOC staff pets at clan heads, because it creates a group that is perpetually insulated from all of the shitty, dull RP that staff policies create. They never actually experience their own game. Even the Shadowboard doesn't seem to notice when it happens because someone who OOCly knows the de-facto leader speaks out to say that they're not a staffpet, and so the group is legitimate. It's almost always the people surrounding the leader who are the staffpets, and actively sought out that leader via OOC knowledge about what's going on.

In all seriousness, there is a lot of truth to this post. Staff-alts, staff pets, etc...They're very rarely Plainsman-esque. They're most often parasitic, attaching themselves to whatever fresh blood is making a lot of creative stuff happen at any given time, or can best entertain them. Most of these people (keeping in theme with staff laziness) are not so much looking to entertain people, as Plainsman was...but looking to be entertained.

one thing i remember about hawk is he always carried like 4-5 bags on him at all times.

People are too focused on them being a nilazi. I doubt we'll ever hear the true story unless the player him/herself comes to the boards and shares with us.