Final conceptualized insignia of the Red Talons before dissolution ca. 2016
The Red Talons emerged in the PC Grand Theft Auto Online Community in Summer 2015 as a response to the challenges faced by casual players in organized groups. These groups were often difficult to join due to strict rules and rules enforced by the active and effective communities. The Red Talons were created accidentally when two players team up as random during a cooperative heist plagued with common issues around playing with strangers and having no communication.
Gobblerm8 introduced DefiantDucky to a teamspeak group with friends, including Miles, Cousin, and KoreanJesus. After success with the heist, the Red Talons began forming and communicating to complete missions. This provided a stable foundation of which quickly grew, yielding great results in heists, missions and free-mode activities.
First conception of a graphically designed logo for the Red Talons, motto: "percute ut pervincere conquer - Strike & Conquer" ca. 2015
The Initial stages of the Red Talon Community where underdeveloped and hard to organize. The original Member count consisted of 5 people who primarily did heists and missions. Originally KoreanJesus, Miles became friends through a Lithuanian Group calling No Fucking Clans. As they despised regulated and controlling communities having prior experience been in them. Gobblerm8 met the later through World of WarCraft and Cousin is Cousin.
The first baby steps would be a name, logo and a method of communicating, which Teamspeak was a favorite and then would begin the process of finding people who may be interested in the style of community on offer.
The Red Talons, an international community, faced significant prejudice during its early stages. Despite their acceptance of anyone, regardless of race, gender, or nationality, they were blocked from recruiting and promoting themselves on sites like GTAForums and Reddit. They used terms like "freedom of speech or expression" to describe their non-policed behavior and labeled the community as racist due to their humor and promotions.
An individual contacted DefiantDucky, claiming his group was watching the Red Talons, particularly a group that pretended to be ethnically Chinese and part of the RP group called Cheng Triads. DefiantDucky responded, "If you are Chinese, how can you see?" This overreaction led to the imminent war called "The war against autism" by Red Talon veterans. The original message no longer exists, but the individual in question's message remains relevant.
Youtube video of Red Talons during the War Against Autism, ca. 2016
The War Against Autism, which the conflict between the Red Talons and four other known communities was called by Talon members, consisted of an over-the-top pursuit of the Red Talons, limiting or restricting their recruitment, and spreading as much against the Red Talons as possible. As gathered by the Red Talons, the predominantly agreed-upon objective of these communities was to remove The Red Talons and prevent them from playing the game, recruiting, and in hopes of removing The Talons from the game entirely.
The known factions involved:
A Cheng Triads account of a battle on 21st February 2016
Around February 2016, a small group of Cheng players found a group of Red Talons and began to launch straight after Red Talon players.
'The Red Talons had invented a system for call outs in game using the code words: "Ethnic Cleansing" This being announced on Teamspeak, steam or Discord essentially was a call to arms, as it the time of it's prime The Red Talons could populate a full public lobby at a moments notice and the tactic of Ethnic cleansing was to cause all the other players and groups to leave; when they did more Talons would take the place of the leaving players and eventually take full control of the lobby'
An Ethnic Cleansing was announced once Triad members made their presence known and so began the fight. From the Talon interpretation of the Battle: There was no real win or lose system in place, providing we held our ground and caused the other group to quit and being replaced.
They had started to get more people in over the course of the battle of which in their accounts lasted around 5 hours. The battle for the most part concluded of heavy weapons and singling out lone or small pockets of players and obliterating them with overwhelming firepower of which using numbers worked in the Talons favor.
Another Cheng Triads account of a battle of the Talons using Suicide Bombers on 21st February 2016
As mentioned in the transcript above, Cheng would bring more friends and players from other communities, which in turn saw more tanks and hardware brought into the fight.
'One tactic that was extremely effective was the use of car bombs, as one car set with C4 charges was guaranteed to kill a full tank compared to 10 rockets. Smart cars, hybrids, and priuses were used for their quiet engines. Our suicide warriors would scream "Allahu Ackbar" before sending armored targets to the mercy of Allah. We believe the confusion and surprise caught many combatants off guard in the initial waves'.
Eventually, over time, the battle wore down to small pockets of shootings and killings as the hours clocked for both sides. Instead of weapons, both sides resorted to the keyboard as their weapon for fighting. Many European members had left, whilst Americans had replaced the tired Talons, and other groups were filling into the Chengs, leaving members until eventually they all left for another server.
Cheng Triads Website claiming Victory (22nd February 2016)
In all honesty, GTA Online has no real way of claiming 'victory' for battles and fights between crews in free mode. The Cheng believe they did the math and calculated kills and accuracy, which determined their victory. which the Talons could not really have a say on since recording kills and statistics of all 20 to 30 players involved would be highly impossible without the use of software. Also, bias does come into play for who won against who.
The Talon's position on this is the following:
'Cheng Triads and respective groups claim they won over kills and scores, yet for GTA, this is impossible to keep track of clearly or completely determine the outcome one way or another. The Talons would like to state that the initial objective of the opposing front was to remove Talons from the lobby by force and prevent any game activities from being completed. On this alone, technically, this would be a failure for the attacking side. However, if you disregard this and stick to Cheng's claim score, Then the Talons held out for 5 hours against 5 other groups in session, bearing in mind that these groups religiously train on the game to perform the way they do. Then this is a notable achievement for The Talons and the teamplay involved. The Talons had fun, worked together, and did not train or use military-style tactics, just basic team play and casual play style'.
However it is perceived to this date this was one of the largest PVP battle that any community member has had the pleasure to be apart of. The onset did help Talons to gain some media and support from recruitment sites and players looking for groups as Cheng would often harbor forums and posts using the name and crew to express their hatred towards us.
There was a large amount of accusations of cheating from both sides of which neither side can really prove the accuracy of these claims. As a lot of 'Bullshit' Moments were experienced by both sides.
The Community being banned from GTAForums accusing The Talons of Nazi Propaganda. Even after many years, mentions of Talons or Ducky will result in bans, The Red Talons and DefiantDucky's Account have received a lifetime ban. ca. 2016
The Red Talons enjoyed their first year and had some success, making some great friends and memories. Eventually expanding and finding more members with it's recent popularity after the War Against Autism Eventually, Grand Theft Auto Online began a steady decline in 2017 as modding, hacking, and a lack of content began to slowly drain away players. After the War Against Autism, the community enjoyed some peace time and was able to complete missions and heists.
However, the GTA Online Community would continue to cause The Talons problems going into the new year. Our primary recruitment site at the time was GTAForums, which decided in April 2016 to permanently ban the Talons. On top of this and a pursuing interest in other games, the loss of interest in GTA Online and developing into a multi-gaming group put the Red Talons to rest, and a new, reformed community would emerge from its foundations.
"I would personally like to thank all members of The Red Talons for making GTA an amazing place over the year. We proved that a casual gaming group could exist and still have fun, and the humor and banter were second to none. If you are a previous Talon member reading this and you left in good graces, our community will always remain open to you should you wish to reconnect."- DefiantDucky
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