[Complete] Report (Cpt_Noobman, Squakhawk)

[Cpt_Noobman 1954]

Player(s) Being Reported

Squakhawk

 

Rule(s) Broken

Player guidelines, Harassment/Slander and Falsification

 

Player(s) Involved

Cpt_Noobman, Squakhawk

 

Explanation

 

Report on ST Admin Squakhawk for Player Conduct Violations:

 Harassment/Slander and Falsification

 

Harassment

 

Harassment occurs when someone incessantly attacks or targets a player or group with the intent to insult, intimidate, upset, or defame them.

Harassment can also occur when someone tries to contact/proposition another player (either directly or through a proxy) when they have been clear they do not wish to be contacted by them.

Any form of harassment immediately warrants admin intervention.

 

Slander and Falsification

 

Publicly making false, unfounded, or baseless statements about a member of our community with the intent of affecting their reputation, and/or falsifying evidence in reports warrants admin intervention.

 

Preface and Personal Pain and Suffering

 

This first paragraph is not directly related to the report, but I am including it to establish the headspace I’m in right now. 

 

My next door neighbors have been having loud arguments and fights on and off for the past two weeks between the hours of midnight and 5:00 AM, so I haven’t been getting much sleep. Early this morning (24 November 2025) I was woken up at 3:00 AM by screaming, slamming doors and smashed furniture. At around 4:30 AM, the man in the apartment began sobbing and crying for help through the wall, so I called 911. Before the police could arrive, he frantically began knocking on my door and begged for help. He said his girlfriend was attempting to commit suicide. Eventually the police arrived and tried to get her to leave the room she had barricaded herself in, but she refused to come out. With nothing they could do, the police left and told the man that if she exhibited signs of overdose, then to call them back. 

 

By the time the police left, it was 5:30 AM and I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I just stayed up and got ready for work. I bought a large coffee from Dunkin to try to stay awake and went into work at 8:00 AM. I had just settled into the day by 10:00 AM when I started receiving discord notifications on my phone. Two of my friends on LoTC, Noobli and Tabby64 messaged me and asked if I really abused staff permissions. I was confused by their questions.

 

By this point, I had heard through a third-party that Squak said in an ST staff chat that I had abused staff permissions to “mine nodes in vanish” and that all I ever did was shit-talk the ST. That was about four weeks ago now, when Squak removed me from the ST. He never told me the reasons why I was removed, but I had a hunch it was because of the heated arguments that I engaged in with members of the ST during 10.0 map development, namely Bobox. I didn’t particularly care that I was removed though, the ST is Squak’s team and he is allowed to manage it however he wants, so I don’t begrudge him for removing me for whatever reason he wanted, or no reason at all.

 

I asked Noobli where he heard that I abused staff permissions, because up to this point I only knew of Squak discussing that possibility in a staff chat and a one-off forum reply by GundamEngineer to Islamadon’s Auction House post. Noobli said it was all over the forums, so I opened the LoTC forums from my phone at work and saw dozens of players, many of which I’ve never heard of or interacted with, insulting me, accusing me of abusing staff permissions, and in one case saying I should be beaten with hammers. The combination of a lack of sleep, high caffeine, and stress from last night’s incident coupled with this mess on the forums pushed me over the edge. I started having heart palpitations. I wasn’t able to focus so I took a half day of sick leave from work and came home to write this report.

 

I did not abuse my staff permission.

 

Exonerating Evidence

 

https://imgur.com/a/kT4XFYC

 

To get this question out of the way, no, I did not abuse my staff permissions for my own benefit. I was falsely accused of warping and flying to nodes and harvesting them in vanish. On the forums, players specifically accused me of flying to and harvesting alchemy nodes.

 

I have not harvested a single alchemy node since 10.0 launched. I helped build many of them, and it did not feel fair to harvest them as a staff member with meta knowledge of their locations. This is easily verifiable with a simple omni check of my logs.

 

The only nodes I have mined since map launch were:

1. The Urguan netherite node;
2. The Urguan coal node;
3. The Urguan iron node;
4. The gem node, next to Urguan;
5. The copper nodes, next to Urguan; and
6. The Koyo-Kuni copper node.

 

What I did do was /warp to Urguan after I completed my mining runs.

 

The only locations I ever /warped to were:

1. Urguan (available via realm soulstone);
2. The Empire (I never mined any nodes in the empire);
3. Petra, once (I never mined any nodes in Petra); and
4. Cloud Temple.

 

I have soulstones bound at all of those locations.

 

Warping to locations with available soulstone pillars is not considered staff abuse, to the best of my knowledge. Every staff member with permissions to use /warp uses it frequently, and they often even use it to teleport their friends around (which I never did). I am confident that my use of /warp was far below that of the average staff member.

 

If I mined any nodes in vanish, it was entirely by accident and may have happened only once. I use the word, if, because I do not remember a single instance of doing it, but it is sometimes difficult to tell when you are in vanish so I cannot definitively say that I never did it by mistake.

 

I believe that Squak has so far withheld any evidence against me because it either:

1. Doesn’t exist; or
2. Is so De Minimis in scope that it refutes Squak’s claim of abuse and instead reflects an accident or honest mistake.

 

I would also like to make the point that even if I had staff abused, it does not justify the onslaught of harassment and abuse I have had to endure at the fault of Squakhawk and his team leaking information with malicious intent.

 

Why I was Actually Removed From ST

 

As I said earlier, the ST is Squak’s team. He could have removed me for any reason or no reason at all. In the interest of transparency however, I will let everyone know that on 24 October 2025, we had a heated exchange in the 10.0 Map Development chat. We were discussing resource balancing and the state of ST materials. It is my opinion that I was removed from ST because I stepped too far out of line with Squak’s vision of the server.

 

I suggested several buffs to resource gathering, Bobox engaged me with hostility, so I responded with hostility. Squak didn’t like it and that week I was removed from ST. I was never given a reason until I confronted Squak weeks later on 12 November 2025, after GundamEngineer out of the blue said I abused my permissions on the forums.

 

You don’t need to agree with my opinion, I know it is not popular, but for Squak and the ST to have falsely pointed the server’s ire at me for expressing it is unjust.

 

Chat logs are from the 10.0 Map development discord. On 24 October 2025 at 7:22 PM, Squak said he would “do what I can”. That week I was removed from ST.

 

In the second set of chat logs at 8:02 PM, Unwillingly deleted a message where she referenced the Ferrymen ST material vault. I’m not sure why she deleted it.

 

https://imgur.com/a/fGz6JL1

 

https://imgur.com/a/OrZgCOs

 

(the reason there is a gap in the logs is because I only included excerpts I participated in)

 

Why Squakhawk?

 

The first inkling that I knew there was a problem was GundamEngineer’s reply to me on the forums (linked above). He said that I was “flying around to all the nodes impeding player roleplay for your own benefit.” There is nobody who could have credibly started that rumor except Squak. He was the one who removed me from the ST and he was the only one (that I know of) who would have even had the permissions necessary to check my logs and verify whether or not I abused staff permissions.

 

Accusing me of abusing staff permissions for my own benefit at the expense of others is an allegation that transcends the server. It is an attack on credibility and character. I reiterate, I never abused my staff permissions, and as a staff member, I always acted with integrity and the players’ interests in mind. 

 

Secure in my knowledge that I never did the things which Gundam had accused me of and that the information could have only originated with Squak, on 12 November 2025, I messaged Squak on Discord and confronted him about it. I asked him why people were saying I abused my pex. Squak did not reply, so I messaged him again the next day and asked why he wasn’t answering. I told him that he was the only person who could have credibly started that rumor. 

 

Squak claimed to have evidence, which I asked him to share with me. He said he would share the evidence that weekend when he got off work. Squak never shared any evidence of staff abuse with me.

 

On the evening of 23 November 2025 (last night), just before I went to bed I told Squak that I still wanted to know why he told people I abused my permissions. I made it clear that I was not trying to escalate tensions or antagonize Squak, I wanted answers, and if possible an apology and clarification to his team that I never did what I was accused of.

 

I don’t think it is a coincidence that the very next day after my message, after weeks of the issue remaining dormant, the forums exploded on me with hatred, vitriol, and false accusations. Although dozens of players have peppered me with public targeted harassment and abuse, the information they used to assail me could have only originated with Squak. I believe Squak intentionally disseminated falsehoods and exaggerated claims to his team with the intent of slandering my character and reputation as a person and that he and his team members spread the falsehoods to the forums, without evidence, where they inflamed public opinion and irreparably destroyed my reputation as a player and staff member.

 

This situation has completely eroded my already sour opinion of the ST, ruined any good memories I had of 10.0 map development, and the willingness of certain players to accept false claims with no evidence has completely shattered my faith in the server’s integrity. 

 

Squak’s willingness to promote falsehoods, failure to produce evidence, refusal to provide clarity and inability to control the dissemination of information out of his team is inappropriate for an administrator and a violation of the server’s player conduct policy. 

 

I demand accountability.

 

Evidence

 

https://imgur.com/a/qtPlbOw

 

 

Relevant Material

Evidence

https://imgur.com/a/squak-report-evidence-qtPlbOw
https://imgur.com/a/i-did-not-abuse-staff-position-kT4XFYC
https://imgur.com/a/systems-chat-logs-1-fGz6JL1
https://imgur.com/a/systems-chat-logs-2-OrZgCOs

 

(x, y, z)

11/24/25

 

Evidence of uncooperative conduct.

Evidence

I asked Squak on several occasions for clarity on his claims against me and to date have not received a satisfactory response.

 

Desired Result of Report

A public apology and/or refutation of and/or clarification of the claims against me, or, a ban of Squakhawk from the server.

---

 

Before posting on this thread, please review the Report Rules.

[Coronate 5519]

I feel compelled to say that "I got into a fight with Bbox and Squak didn't like that" is definitely not the reason you would have been removed.

 

 

Not that I dislike Bbox, but I've gotten into numerous arguements with him (many in which I have been very hostile for various reasons such as: being upset with management, anger at server rules, or just flat out being tired.) Never have I even thought that I'd be removed over that; it is a pretty blunt team. I believe there is an underlying reason, neither stated here nor otherwise, as to your removal.

 

 

I haven't spread nor spoken, or even heard about PEX abuse relating to you. In full transparency, I didn't even know you were on the team to begin with until today. I am just adding this context because I feel you should know that most likely it isn't the reason.

[Nooblius 7965]

flashbanged reading through logs to see bobbox so annoyed with noobman that bobbox calls noobman "noobli". R-I-P.

 

Since my name was mentioned I'll also comment some perspective: I have left pretty much all LOTC discords and acitivites, yet this sort of subject of 'staff drama' kept coming up in any lotc-related conversations I had. It makes me quite sad, as I actually quite like a lot of the involved parties. I think clarity and humility could go a lot way in communication. It reminds me of the situation where my friend BDanecker was piled on by a ton of people tangential to certain staff circles with 100% confidence of his guilt, despite there being zero evidence that he had X-rayed on Almaris, and in fact there was evidence overseen by both mod managers and then mod admin Cookie (who had looked through his logs to prove he had not used any resource packs for Almaris) to attest to his specific innocence that certain staff circles refused to look at out of spite, and continued to slander his name. There was no justice for BD, just a silent removal of his blacklist a year afterwards.

 

but it's not so big a deal, we can all learn to take a step back and just communicate. as far as I understand, Noobman understands well that they don't even need a reason to remove him, and if they just found him annoying it would be fair enough to say that. There's no need to exaggerate rumors, if what Noobman claims is true (as it stands, it would be remarkably easy to prove this, no?). Outside of staff, or at least the SECURITY CLEARENCE level of upper staff, I think we can all stand to be a bit more charitable to our fellow players (myself, no doubt, just as guilty of being so scrutinizing in the past). 

 

edit:

#SAYHISNAME
#JUSTICEFORBDANECKER
#SUNSTONESCANTMELTGOLEMRUNES

[Unwillingly 18103]

1 hour ago, Cpt_Noobman said:

In the second set of chat logs at 8:02 PM, Unwillingly deleted a message where they referenced the Ferrymen ST material vault. I’m not sure why they deleted it.

okay come on lol. I deleted it because I didnt want it to be treated like a serious thing I was somehow complicit in and I don't know what you're getting at by citing a joke as inconsequential as this in ur BR, let alone ending it with something as indicative as "I'm not sure why they deleted it o_o" 

[squakhawk 14038]

I'll bite

 

 

I'll respond first with a total timeline of what occurred. 

 

10/24/25 - A disagreement in mapdev discord was verbalized, not after you graciously offered changes to the node system (you suggested breaking up nodes in half so it felt like gathering more even if it was the same amount), where then Bobbox and I (To an extent river, but he moreso made commentary on the system as a whole being flawed - though this was the same argument both bob and I were making) raised concern about nodes at large being tedious, frustrating, and taking away from the experience. People were still (and are still to be fair) short on kits, and you stated this before it delved into a grating conversation of talking about how carbarum could be used to purchase nations, players should not grind because they dont actually have to and it's their own self imposed misery (your words), and that alchemy/st nodes impose artificial suffering. After this conversation, including tactful dunking on people who worked very hard on mapdev throughout it's entire process, I spoke with management on what to do about a team member who blatantly disrespects, discredits, and devalues both the team as a whole and it's members (not to mention the work they put in). Bobbox mentioned how you did one buildreq in two years for ST, and I said eh its no excuse given I have someone like Bathrug who hasn't even logged on in two, in hopes he'd just come back to the server as one of my favorite builders. I'll think about it.

 

I decided to stew a few days on it despite management agreeing it was immediate clause for removal. I said it would likely happen, but I don't want to give a kneejerk emotional response (Logic, or something).

 

 

11/02/25 - Early in the AM, I was curious on if this preaching you practiced of the gathering really was in good faith. I was, after a broad search omni on your pex use, indeed concerned with the excessive use of vanish, warp, and teleport. I went to a single node (The coal node, iirc) in the alpine region and found logs of you not only warping to it, but actively using vanish around the node. While the omni trigger that alerts staff when a staff member gathers in vanish has been disabled, or at least not updated, I truthfully had no 100% way of knowing the exact thing that happened, but I did have two subcategories of what it could be.

1. You gathered in vanish

2. You flew to the node/walked to it (take your pick) in vanish, then unvanished.

 

Frustrated, I mentioned in text to my managers how you had the audacity to do this, and that I was settled on removing you, and thus you were. I did not send a message because I anticipated snarky remarks I'd gotten in the past from you for disagreements (And I was not wrong, when you then regailed your friends with tales about "being removed because I made bobbox cry"). I was talking in a VC later that night and offhandedly mentioned how I removed an ST for gathering nodes in vanish. This is as far as the """""rumor""""" went, there was no disseminated spread of information or mill I ran, there was no further details, but an ST I just removed (Likely some could deduce it was you, if they kept keen tabs on whoever would bark about being removed) was to my degree, pex abusing. I believe this was later misinterpreted to gathering HERB nodes in vanish, rather than material nodes (Though, keep reading on).

 

Sometime early this week josh, daisy, and I had a meet regarding some changes requested by KaiserThoren and Riverbird regarding reducing material costs, doubling node drops, and bringing back nation mines. This was implemented shortly after. 

 

11/12/25 - You dm'd me in the evening requesting an answer to why people said you were pex abusing. I did not answer because I do not believe I have to justify myself to you, because I personally do not think you seek to be justified. Particularly when you messaged me the very next day in the early AM asking why I didn't answer your question. I then said I had logs, and you said show me because I don't believe you. Believing you would just move goalposts, I decided it wasn't worth the time and thus just moved on.

 

11/20/25 - Josh3738 requests logs of him being removed. I said lookup commands around the nodes, I am not home because no relief for the trauma bays was showing up because someone called out, so I was staying at work. I then explained how I was more concerned about his chronic inactivity and combativeness with people (and players), and how even when a CT admitted on the forums to flying around nodes I didn't particularly care (given its not my team), but this was absolutely just a final shot because I had already given him such chances. Josh then replied thirteen minutes later saying he didn't find anything so to send him the logs.

 

11/22/25 - You are readded to staff

 

 

 

 

Here are some screenshots on logs below. This i'm sure is not comprehensive, and I'm sure I missed things out. There's more weak correlative evidence of you warping and teleporting to places near nodes, and gathering recently after, but I have no earthly idea on if you warped with intent on going to those nodes or were just warping in the area. This does not include the warping from nodes constantly (which you admit yourself to doing in this post, but every trip I could find was succeeded by warping out of the area. 

 

Pay close attention to the timestamps of using vanish, teleporting, warping, etc. so close to the nodes. Account for a 1-10minute time discrepancy because omni takes time to load logs and I can't look it all up in one search.

 

Coal node in central SE alpine (vanishing right before gathering)

----------

 

 

Gem node in central SE alpine (vanishing right before gathering, in two separate instances two days apart)

-------

 

Warping directly to the exact coords of herb node (I searched through a few days of teleport logs to various coordinates, but most were just going to RP hubs. There were some in the middle of nowhere, but none within 50 blocks of a node.). This was one I found incidentally today, when I thought before I'd done a comprehensive search. I am standing off center to the node for display purposes so the coordinates are like 3-4 blocks off from the teleport.

-----

 

Raw iron node in far west of SE alpine (Vanishing right before gathering)

 

 

 

I'll finish with stating that with the hard, direct evidence above (Somehow invisible to anyone who looked, except me?), paired with the fact of knowing that it is physically impossible to track someone flying around in vanish, gathering in vanish, travelling in vanish, etc. - I held little faith that these three instances of gathering in vanish were isolated. Again, no proof that that could be, but with the above, with my managements blessing, with the two otherwise reasons to remove you, and with the authority my position as ST manager and ST admin brings me, I removed you for it. With the fact I was already inclined to remove you for those reasons, this was just the ace in the hole. Even if it is just these instances, or if they were just misunderstanding, I'd give leniency to someone on staff who contributed or collaborated - but to someone already worthy of removal, it was more than the final straw. 

 

Offhandedly mentioning a member got removed for pex abuse I apologize for pseudo-publicizing your reason for removal, even if it was just mentioned to a friend in passing. But given you were, within 24 hours, gloating about your removal (And then joked about it when readded to staff), I hold little faith in good argument brought by you that it would have been anything elsewise. Egg on my face for assuming, even if it turned out to be true. 

 

 

I am sorry for mentioning details that ultimately could have been traced back to you for your removal. I am sorry the issues it may have caused between you and your friends. It is not my intent to damn or condemn you (it's just pex abuse, as zhulik said, everyone does to some degree), but the facts are there plain and simple that you had multiple reasons to be removed, and thus were removed. 

 

Halt gave permission to post a reply, so I've posted a reply.

[Halt 3021]

Spoiler

Disclaimer: I spoke to @squakhawk and provided him with minimal but essential instruction for how to proceed with the report, with the additional request to offer me no bias or prior information relevant to this. He complied. We came to the mutual conclusion this report would be handled with him considered to be a regular player (otherwise it would be hidden and made into a private staff report per existing protocol, and I'd have no prerogative to check his logs). Squak mentioned wanting to wait for Josh's blessing to post his reply to this thread; I waived it on Josh's behalf unbeknownst to him.

I spoke to @Josh3738 later regarding this and told him the same. I was offered a narrative and insight by Josh, to which I declined and we mutually agreed it was better I approached this blind. Later, we discussed a good bit of alleged "metaplay" in contemporaneous discussion, during which Josh saw alongside @Spoopy_Ducka very incomplete draft of what I am posting below. Just barely a drawing board.

I am positing the idea now that my findings are open to clerical error to a degree, and that nobody is perfect. Please read with that understanding, but also that I took a few steps to be diligent about how this report was handled. It's the sort of transparency the community deserves—so, I hope it is up to par. This is being posted at about 3:44 A.M., PT—so pardon any typos or anything like that. I wanted to get this out.

 

Preliminary Thoughts from Me
 

It's essential to be precise and to stay within the actual scope of this report, so I want to start by outlining my understanding of what is being alleged. I think Josh has an obvious conflict of interest in handling this report; and in some ways Squak has a similar animus. The difference is, it's not Squak's job to moderate this. As I see it, in light of the Player Conduct Policy excerpts cited above, SquakHawk is being accused of three main things:
 

• Harassment
• Slander/libel (i.e. publicly making false, unfounded, or baseless statements with reputational impact, with or without prejudice)
• Falsification (i.e. falsifying or materially misrepresenting evidence / information, with or without prejudice)
   

I'm going to break down my thought process on each.

In practice, I think harassment is better understood as aggressive pressure or intimidation, rather than any and every unpleasant or otherwise negative interaction. The phrase "any form of harassment immediately warrants admin intervention" is, in my view, overly aspirational and broad. It reads like something @Telanir wrote; I believe it is.

@Cpt_Noobman I understand your citations and that they come from existing policy, but they read more as esoteric admin guidance rather than as a precise, consistently enforced thing. I don't think the phrasing is directly or literally applicable to every conflict, and each deserves nuance. As it stands, you posted this as a moderation report, so it'll be handled under that purview (moderation forum reports and precedent). If you want this as an admin matter under those admin-level definitions, you can appeal/report to Max/Telanir directly rather than quote him.

About slander: I'll note that I have personally been made aware of this situation with prejudice, which lends some credence to the concern that a particular narrative was being pushed about you. From what I have seen, I do believe that SquakHawk contributed to spreading or allowing a narrative to spread about alleged “staff abuse” in chats I have seen and, very likely, in chats I have not. There is a lot more to this, but it's not my job to speculate. It is my job to remind you that it's only slander if it's false. 

I do think administrators should be held to a higher standard than regular players when it comes to how they speak about others. If conduct meets the bar of the policy definition—i.e. false, unfounded, or baseless statements made with reputational impact—then it should be actioned accordingly. I believe there's a lot of literature about how administrators intended to act/present themselves ... once again, written by Max.

Lastly ... I've separated the claim of "falsification" because, it's not clear to me what you mean. Did you mean fabrication? If what was meant is closer to fabrication, then for the purpose of this report I’m treating "falsification" as: falsifying or materially misrepresenting evidence or information. Terms like fraud (which falsification leans closer to), malice, and negligence belong to real-world punitive damages; here I take them as implied concerns about intent. Right—Squak's undertone implications? I hope I'm understanding this correctly.

That there's an implied malice, and ostensible negligence?

 

---

 

Omniscience and My Findings

 

There's a bit of grace here, and I'm rather trigger happy about posting logs. Omniscience, or "omni" is our logging plugin. Full disclosure, I have a lot of logs I'd love to post on the forums that would flip the script a lot of people are sold on (about other things). I don't feel it's necessary here, and I spent a long time combing through them and aggregating data. I also drew conclusions around it—I think they're self-evidently honest. There's room for the aforementioned clerical error.

Did you have permission to leak those privileged map-dev chats, Noobman?

SquakHawk:

In the last 180 days, or at the beginning of map start ... he began running queries ~33-32 days ago? SquakHawk gave cpt_noobman 850 mina total (600, then 250) and checked when he was last online. Around 31 days ago, he began with a very cursory check: just two /o search queries over the last 7 days—one looking at warp-related teleports/commands globally, and one looking at gather + command logs within 50 blocks of his position—so again ... more of a quick spot-check than a full audit. This is important.

About 22 days ago, after that first check, he stripped cpt_noobman of the story, staff-prebuild, and story-builder groups and then confirmed which groups Noobman had remaining via LuckPerms. In the last 6-7 hours (from the time of my post), he did a more thorough investigation, running many /o search queries over 30-48 days (and earlier). Now with multiple ore/node filters, seemingly ... mapping out cpt_noobman's teleports, vanish/warp usage, and apparent mining runs? The same commands Squak shows us, more or less.

Redacted ST Manager:
 

By the time this individual (under the same scope of my 180 days) starts looking ... it's about 11 days ago?

Squak had already started (~31 days ago) and had removed cpt_noobman’s story/build permissions (~22 days ago). What this individual does is a brief, and overly clumsy pass. ONE solid query checking 30 days of warp-related commands, followed by a handful of malformed or under-specified searches that likely didn't even run? And a single /seen to confirm when cpt_noobman was last online.
 

Where Squak's involvement reads as initial discovery, then a demotion, and lastly (likely as consequence of this post) a more complete audit, this ST Manager's role is ... insignificant? Seemingly? A quick, partially broken look at best. Ask @wowjfor some help—you know who you are.

Daisy:

Daisy ran a few commands on cpt_noobman. For the sake of posterity and adherence to protocol, I'm redacting my findings here. I don't have the warrant to look really, nor the permission to discuss what I found. It's for any admin, not exclusive to Daisy. What I can say is this: she (Daisy) was looking at Noobman's recent history and other "individual's" commands referencing him (Noobman). A few hours before Squak's larger audit, but seemingly irrespective of the ST Manager's queries.

 

---

Addendum for SquakHawk's Response

I imagine Noobman will have a rebuttal or two prepared; I'm not sure about Squak. Josh may also want to comment—who knows, maybe Daisy too. To me, it seems the meaningful, holistic audit appears to have happened after some reputational damage was already well underway, not before.

Objectively, Squak's description of events mostly matches what I saw in the logs: a short, cursory glance at things, a removal of Noobman from ST shortly after, and lastly a more thorough, audit only much later, when the issue was already live in people's minds and now the forums (as I guessed, and reasonably confirmed). The specific node examples he posts also line up with what I'd expect to see given the timestamps and locations, for what little that is worth.

In other words: I do not think he "fabricated" the existence of those instances. Squak left little room for interpretation in his logs.

Where we diverge is on interpretation and in weight?

 

• The decision to remove Noobman from ST clearly rested on a mixture of factors—prior conduct/attitude in map-dev, inactivity, and then this log of evidence as what he himself calls the "ace in the hole."
• The phrase/logic he used often was: "removed an ST for gathering nodes in vanish." This is much more confident and absolute than the other "reasons" can carry themselves to be. Or, so I think. Meaning: it's easier to say that, rather than that he had poor interpersonal staff conduct or that he's "inactive."
• It was foreseeable (and maybe intended, given all of the drama) that this would become the narrative others repeated. The one about abuse of permissions. Maybe this calls to my gesture of negligence earlier?

 

So, nothing in his post "overturns" my earlier findings?

 

---

 

Early Conclusions

Bit of an oxymoron, and I expect more stuff will come to light. His (SquakHawk's) conduct, is Max's thing to police if he feels the need to. Per what I can see, as a moderator ... for right now ...

 

For: @Cpt_Noobman

Given the level of forum melodrama and the sheer volume of speculative opinions bouncing around, I think it would be unfair and frankly dishonest to dismiss everything you have said. You did experience very real upset about all of this, and some of that clearly flowed from how SquakHawk's removal of you and the "pex abuse" narrative were talked about in staff channels. Ultimately, this conversation ended up echoing more broadly outside of them. Your frustration is understandable.

 

So is your abuse of permissions (pex). It's not only understandable, it's demonstrable and pretty clearly done. With or without malice isn't for me to say. Frankly, there are people on the ST/other teams that abuse their permissions in a worse way by my estimate.

Frankly, by these definitions and (even more blatant/common ones) I abuse my permissions too.

I'm not going to comment on your extenuating circumstances IRL. I find them appreciable, and have offered pardons for things like that in the past when dealing with other situations (mostly against Josh's wishes). For the record, disregarding them is a Josh policy—not mine.

For: @squakhawk
 

You do not need a reason to remove someone from your team. ST, like the rest of the staff, is a volunteer position, not a paid job with just-cause protections. By multiple accounts and the surrounding context, there were already "grounds" for removal—namely attitude in map-dev, clashes with ST, inactivity—enough to decide that the working relationship had broken down. Be that as it may, within the current rules and practice of the server, this determination falls squarely within your prerogative(s) as ST admin.
 

With regard to the report: harassment from you in the more narrow, "direct and incessant targeting" sense is not substantiated. The harassment Noobman faced came/comes primarily from other players reacting to your narrative, not from you repeatedly engaging him. Directly, anyways ...

Slander/libel in the strictest sense, is also not substantiated. Your allegations appear to be true. It seems there's a factual and evidentiary basis for suspicion in the logs we both found. A.K.A., it's a fair conclusion to draw in that there was abuse of permissions, and there was some level of diligence afforded to the timeline. The degree or egregiousness of the "pex abuse" is a separation question.

I guess we'll see what the community thinks.

[Daisy 9732]

I did want to comment on what queries I ran and what my findings were for this situation. Prior to posting this report, Noobman had told me he never abused his staff permissions, so I wanted to get a picture of what evidence Squak had. First, I queried the commands Squak had run on Noobman, finding the same thing Halt said, a search for all teleport / warp commands done, followed by a query at the Alpine SW 3 gem mine for gather events, done on Oct 24th at 8:30 PM ET, which was in the evening after the discussions in Map Dev chat earlier that afternoon. I re-ran the same queries and found quite a bit of warping and vanish use by Noobman, nothing too unusual for staff, then went to the mine and ran the query Squak did, as well as more broad queries on everything Noobman did to paint a clear picture of events. From what I can tell:

1. Noobman did not warp to the mine.
2. Outside the mine, he ran /vanish twice within a couple seconds, suggesting he vanished then unvanished. 
3. After mining the nodes, he warped to Urguan.

I asked Noobman about this, who indicated that after a mining run he would either soulstone or warp back to Urguan. Checking other logs of him mining, this appears to be true.

 

And I do fully agree with Halt, no admin needs any reason to remove someone from their team, it is up to their discretion. I didn't search these logs to try to do a "gotcha" on Squak or anything, at the time I ran the searches Noobman was on my staff team, so with the accusations going around and his claims of innocence, I wanted to understand the full picture myself. Personally, I did not plan to remove Noobman for this, I did not think there was solid evidence of him using perms to get to nodes, only to go home after a mining run, though that is a bit speculative as the logs only show command use, not explicitly if they enter/leave fly, god, vanish, etc -- moving forward I will be adding these events to Omni to avoid ambiguity in future investigations.

 

I did want to address the comment "While the omni trigger that alerts staff when a staff member gathers in vanish has been disabled, or at least not updated" that Squak made, this hasn't ever been part of Terra, there was some logging if staff members killed a mob in god/vanish/fly back with Vortex hunting specifically. Looking at the archived code we never had alerts for node gathering in vanish etc.

[Cpt_Noobman 1954]

 

First, to address @Halt's questions about the definitions for harassment and slander that I chose, you are correct that I lifted them directly from the Player Conduct guide under the Policies section of the forums. The reason falsification is included in my report is because the two are paired in the official documentation.

 

For your questions in regards to implied malice, and ostensible negligence, yes, I believe both Squak’s actions and his inactions meet those definitions, which I will get into below.

 

 

Rebuttal

 

Thank you, Squak, for finally producing evidence so that I can properly defend myself. You have presented four pieces of evidence, three that you say indicate my abusing vanish to mine ore, and one piece of evidence of me teleporting to an alchemy node which you claim constitutes abuse. I will refute your claims about all four evidences below:

 

Evidences 1-3

 

For the sake of brevity I will address the first three pieces of evidence together, since you claim they are all indications of harvesting nodes in vanish. 

 

As per Daisy’s post in announcements, Azuras launched on Friday, October 17th. Since launch, I have completed a mining run of Urguan’s nodes almost every single day. Sometimes my route varies, but usually I start either at the coal node, the iron node, or the netherite node, and work my way from one end of Urguan’s territory to the other. This mining run yields 8 of each resource, and every other day or so, a mixed amount of gems. Every day, this mining run takes me less than 6 minutes. On the days I don’t mine the gems, it takes me less than 4 minutes. That is less time than it takes to cook instant ramen, or wait for a soulstone to recharge.

 

Mining run

 

I did not abuse my pex to speed up the harvesting process, because put simply, I didn’t need to. Flying to a node would have shaved less than 30 seconds off of my route time. To actually make a difference in the speed of my collection, I would have needed to fly to each node. The logs to reflect such activity would have required me to  /vanish, fly to a node, /vanish, mine, /vanish again and fly to the next node, /vanish, mine, /vanish again and fly to the next node, etc. The harvest time between each type of node would have been seconds, instead of minutes, and the use of commands would have lit up omni like a Christmas tree. The only logs you have of me vanishing which correlate with me mining a node all happened days apart.

 

What you observed in the evidence you presented, you misinterpreted. They reflect me approaching a node, realizing I was in vanish, running /vanish to leave vanish, then completing the entirety of my run unvanished. As @Daisy attested in her reply, I ran /vanish twice in one instance. That night I was drinking, got confused and thought I was in vanish, ran /vanish as I approached a mine, realised I wasn’t in vanish to begin with, then unvanished to do my mining run.

 

By @Halt's estimation, I was on the ST on Azuras for 16 days before Squak removed my permissions and to the best of my memory I completed this mining run every day. You provided only 3 alleged instances of staff abuse, despite me completing the same mining run every day during that time period. 

 

If I had really been abusing my permissions, you would have observed this activity occurring daily, not just every once in a while as I realized I was in vanish as I began my route.

 

Evidence 4

 

This one had me scratching my head, as for the life of me I did not remember teleporting to an herb node. As @Daisy has already verified, I have never harvested an alchemy node on this map, so it made no sense. Then, I remembered.

 

Towards the end of map development, on 27 September 2025, you posted the build requests for the alchemy nodes. In the build request, you said that the herbs did not need to be directly on top of the warps, and that they could be spaced 30-40 blocks away from the warp. 

 

As I stated previously, and as you know, I helped to build many of them. After many of the herbs were completed, on 28 Septemhber 2025, @Islamadon submitted a request that many of the herb builds be redone as they did not meet his vision, including many of the ones I worked on. I warped to some of the nodes I had worked on to redo them, and saw they had already been redone (probably by mayios since they did a ton of nodes), so I stopped.

 

It did not occur to me until after the map launched that some of the original node builds I had started working on but not completed may not have been destroyed. So, I teleported to a location near where an uncompleted node that I worked on was. I saw that my old, unfinished build had in fact, been destroyed and replaced, so I assumed that the remainder of my unfinished builds had been removed and didn’t check the rest.

 

In this instance, you have put me on blast for actually performing my duties as an ST builder.

 

Summary

 

What the first three evidences you submitted actually show is the opposite of what you claim. They show me exiting vanish to start and complete my mining runs on foot, at risk of banditry and rp scenarios without the protection of pex.

 

Evidence four is a log of me verifying that an unfinished build I had worked on had been destroyed, not scouting out herbs or harvesting for nefarious purposes.

 

This entire situation could have been avoided if you had just spoken to me, or confronted me about the suspicious logs instead of jumping to conclusions. 

 

Jumping to conclusions is actually a generous interpretation of your actions, because in fact, as your own testimony verifies you began fishing through my logs for evidence of wrongdoing with a conclusion already in mind. You wrongly interpreted what you found, spread falsehoods to your team, whether knowingly or not, and whether intentionally or not, set dozens, if not hundreds of LoTCers (if the upvotes are reflective of public opinion) against me in the most devastating slew of verbal abuse I have ever had to endure on this server. Particularly from @Smmer, who has been absolutely vicious and as of this morning has continued making up false scenarios to target me.

 

What is the absolute peak, the pinnacle of irony, which you and Daisy have revealed with your statements, is that if I had abused my pex as you claimed, if I had flown around and harvested nodes in vanish, the logs which you turned against me wouldn’t even exist, as up until this point Omni had no way of checking.

 

Instead, you saw evidence of my integrity and commitment to fair play as I unvanished to mine, misinterpreted it as abuse, and maliciously spread unverified information about me without checking it first.

 

@Halt, as you said, admins and staff should be held to a higher standard. I believe my claims of Slander stand as Squak had multiple opportunities to confront me about the evidence he gathered, but instead chose to keep it hidden and tell his team that I abused my permissions, when in fact, as the evidence shows I did not.

 

Additionally, Squak could have easily kept his reasons for removing me from his managers and team members, or corrected them when they ran away with the narrative that I was harvesting alchemy nodes in vanish. I tried to rectify the situation with Squak multiple times before the situation got out of hand. Instead, Squak kept quiet, and I’m sure he would have stayed quiet had my initial report not forced his hand.

 

I also think it is indicative of negligence and malice that Squak did not do a full audit of my logs until yesterday, as per @Halt's checks of Squak’s logs. Squak started these rumors and removed me from the ST with even less evidence than he provided in this report.

 

With all that being said, as I wrote in the original post, Squak being banned is the least desirable outcome that I want from this report. I don’t even want an apology.

 

What I want is a public acknowledgement from Squak that he misinterpreted the evidence and that the evidence is in fact, not indicative of staff abuse. If Squak can provide such a statement to clear my name and help undo this fiasco, then I would be comfortable dropping this report.

 

Inactivity on the ST

 

Although not directly related to the report, I would like to use this opportunity to once again defend my public image, as the narrative on the forums has now shifted from saying I abused pex, to saying that I was an inactive ST.

 

If you had claimed I was inactive on ST two years ago, you would have been correct. For most of Aevos, I did very few build reqs, and though I was on standby to help with the Azdromoth v Xan event, my services weren’t needed.

 

However, since map dev began just over one year ago, I have never been more active on staff. I attended almost every 10.0 map development meeting, helped with creating biome concepts, developed assets for the map which are currently being used in certain biomes, and I even took Islamadon and Fishy’s side in an argument in their favor against Fimlin in regards to the outcome of one biome.

 

Once ST build requests opened up during the map development cycle I helped build alchemy nodes, built the Goldleaf Gap soulstone pillar, built an event area for Squak in the Southern Alpine Valley, helped build the Boreal valley road, I’ve done dozens of unlogged terrain fixes/road fixes, and at the time of my removal I was actively developing build concepts for GundamEngineer’s event sites in the Geyserlands. @River and @Fimlin can both testify that I was excited about that project and looking forward to working on it, despite my issues with the ST.

 

I may not have been in the top percentage of ST builders in terms of output, but to say I was inactive now is laughable. This is the most active I have been on LoTC in six years, and unfortunately, it appears to be to my detriment. 

 

LoTC in general, and the ST specifically, are institutions that do not reward your passion, or your time. The more you put into it, the faster it chews you up and spits you out. 

 

[Cpt_Noobman 1954]

Internally resolved with Squak

[squakhawk 14038]

no more squabbles we have settled our differences