This guest article comes to us courtesy of Choto at Clan Quest. Choto is Clan Quest’s lead editor the Questaholic monthly magazine.

Imagine this situation: Shane comes forward, and asks me if I want to write an article for Informer.

-Why of course, mate!– I said. What am I writing about?

-The Hoodian Faith.

To be honest, I…I didn’t expect that. Not because it’s an illogical request, but because I’m still wondering what the hell the Hoodian Faith is.

Let’s rewind a bit.

Hoods everyone! I’m Choto, Content Editor of Clan Quest. You might have had the fortune (or disgrace, whatever you prefer), of listening to my lovely voice talking about luck in a RSBandBUpdate! episode. If you haven’t, maybe keep it like that and avoid the pain, Argentinian accent isn’t that nice. Anyway, stop distracting me, I’m here to talk about the Hoodian Faith.

It’s still a mystery for me how something like this comes to life. I am however certain that it was born because every single planet in the universe aligned. It was the exact time, at the exact place, and read by the exact people. It took a mere typo, a mere mistake for the Hood revolution to take its first steps.

-Wait, a mistake? – You are certainly wondering.

Well…yes. I tried to say “Good morning”. Take a look at your keyboard. Focus on the “G”, ignore the dirt. If you are a perceptive person, you’ll notice the “G” is next to…the “H”. Congratulations, you just created a cult.

You’re still wondering if that was a solid argument. I see. And I here hoping you’d get it and I could go to bed.

Don’t you see? In any kind of community where people like me (I’m not a serious person at all) are not allowed to join, probably no one goes beyond the idea that “Hood morning” was just a typo. Maybe even the sender just edits the mistake. Maybe if someone hadn’t just woke up, I wouldn’t have tried to answer with a “Good morning”. But no sir, nothing like that happened. I wish I could throw you some enlightening statistics, but I don’t have them. All I can tell you is that one day I woke up to see a great deal of people hooding each other. But that’s not the (most) amazing part of it all.

When playing RuneScape, I’ve relentlessly tried to inject the “Hoods” in other clans and friends chats, but to no avail. For you see, the planets will never align the same way they did almost two years ago. Maybe someone says “morning” and I answer with “hood morning”, but there won’t be someone to notice the typo. Or maybe someone answers with “food morning”, and we now could have the Foodian Faith in one community and the Hoodian Faith in another one. And that’s the amazing part. It was something that not only will never happen again, but that wouldn’t have happened in different circumstances.

When I put some actual thought to the matter at hand, I believe there is virtually no way that the Hood meme spreads to other clans or games, even if I pray for it day and night. And I also realize that it would’ve been impossible for it to originate anywhere else. You know Cireon, right? Well, when he wrote a 2017 review back in January, he said “Partly thanks to this [the clan Discord], 2017 gave birth to some authentic Clan Quest memes, like the Hoodian Faith, wishing Sirapyro good night, and Xenon.” As I said before, planets just aligned in an unpredictable way, a one-in-a-billion-years moment, if you want, and the Hood was born .

-Ok so it’s just a clan meme, where’s the “Faith” in it? – You probably want to ask me.

Imagine Clan Quest as a democracy. You have the Clan Council, which is the legislative body, the Guild Council (executive), and the Honour Council, which acts as the judicial branch. Those have been the three councils for almost 9 years. We now have 4, because the Hoodian Council has joined the party. Yes, it’s unofficial. Yes, not even the councilors know what they are supposed to do. Yes, it makes no sense at all. But it exists. And there we find the “Faith” in this whole nonsense.

The Hoodian Faith, the Council, the Hood, and everything that was born from a typo, exists because there are people that believe in it. Not literally, because no one really thinks there’s a big Hood in the sky. It’s the same sort of belief that gives power to Clan Quest’s councils. If nobody believed in them, they wouldn’t adhere to the decisions made by those bodies. The Hoodian Council doesn’t serve any actual purpose, but it’s about as realistic as any of the councils, since all are just fabricated groups made by people of Clan Quest on RuneScape. And if you go full philosopher mode, you can even say the same for governments, religions, societies and so on. Yes, it’s true, governments have real power, but only a bunch of them can enforce it outside the nation’s frontiers. The very same analysis can be made about the clan’s councils.

Wow, I lost it there, back to the Hoodian Faith. So what is it?

I asked for help to the current Head of the Hoodian Council (HoHooC for short) to help me answer that. He said: “It’s a fun meme group that evolved from a typo into a running inside joke.” Probably right, he’s the leader, he’s supposed to know. At that point, however, curiosity bit me. So I started asking around. This is the Hoodian Faith to the mere mortals:

“The worshipping of the misspelling of ‘Good Morning’?”

“A group to stand against the tyranny of the Pawfia” (We’ll talk about what the Pawfia is some other day)

“I…guess it’s about the willpower to say “hoods” instead of “hello” every day.”

“A weird cult.”

“The Hoodian Faith is the Ying to a Yang, the Day to a Night, the Hood… to a Cloak. Always challenging the ways of the Pawfia and ensuring that everyone has a proper choice when it comes to religion.

Also a CQ meme.”

“It is the belief that if you have a piece of cloth covering your head, you are protected from the elements and all the dangers around you. Akin to the bunker, blankey and large stuffed animal faiths, but for a slightly more mature audience.”

“A religion loosely based on a piece of clothing everyone has but nobody wears, only created to compete against the ruling faith in Pawfia.”

“The Hoodian Faith is a unifying force: all Hoodians are one within it. Whenever the sacred word of Hoods (or any variant thereupon) is spoken, one cannot help but feel a blossoming sense of pride. It is the feeling of being part of something bigger than oneself, of being immersed in a greater whole, of being one with Hoods. The Hoodian Faith does not ask much of you, just that you keep its sacred word alive. Once you do so, the Hoodian glory shall repay your effort a thousandfold.”

“To be honest I just pay the faith lip service and chant hoods wherever possible. But Google sites some prominent Hoodians other than you (obviously) [she means me, the writer]. It mentions Thomas Hood who wrote poems that measured Victorian society against Christian Values. There is The Site of Hoodians which clearly must have some religious significance to virtual Hoodians everywhere. And then of course there is the Hoodian Council, clan quest and the unanswerable question of why the colour of hoods don’t match the capes.”

All those answers above were all right. But the one that nailed it was the following:

“The Hoodian Faith is a secret-not-so-secret society. As I understand it came about because of a mistake made long ago, but ¿What great discoveries throughout history were not the result of something not going as planned?

Many a society has risen and fallen, but this one has withstood the test of time, because what greater power is there that binds us together than the power of an inside joke?”

You’re still looking at me. After all my ramblings, you still don’t get it?

The meme, the inside joke, the Hoodian Council, the fraudulent elections that were held, the typo and everything that makes up the Faith…also makes us now. If you come into our clan chat and say “Hoods”, you’ll understand. Clan Quest is our internet home, and the Hoodian Faith is our family joke, our secret, our treasure in this messed up world.

Unhoods.