Welcome to the eleventh iteration of Leaving a Legacy, a column dedicated to memorializing illustrious figures who have been immortalized in the Hall of Fame across various armies. In today’s edition, we turn our attention to the odyssey of Xing – a polarizing yet esteemed figure whose cabinet is lined with immense accomplishments.

HISTORY

Xing, formerly known as Pikachu624, first made his appearance in Club Penguin Armies in 2013 by joining the Army of Club Penguin. 2013 was a tedious period for the Clovers, as figures such as Kinfunks4 resigned from leadership, with Boomer20 later taking his place. Xing quickly rose through the ranks and became a prominent element of the staff team and was notable for attending plenty of AUSIA events. Xing would later move on to the Rebel Penguin Federation. From this point, he would meet an antagonist figure in the Rebels, none other than Elmikey, a very prominent figure at that time in armies.

Xing kept bouncing between different armies, joining the Light Troops and creating distinct armies in the post-Old Club Penguin era such as Under Water Fighters of Club Penguin, Valkyries, Comintern, Red Comrades, and Red Cavaliers. Xing would soon enough join the Romans, ascending through the ranks and eventually becoming the leader. He was also given a position in the Dark Knights Empire, which was under the leadership of SavageCobra, another rising figure. The DKE merged into the Romans, and unexpectedly, Xing officially retired from the Romans on March 2, 2018.

The Creation and Legacy of Templars

On the 4th of April 2018, Xing established a new army known as the Templars. To accelerate the growth of his army, he invited many of his close friends and veterans from various armies to join his newly registered force. Shortly after its foundation, a significant number of raids took place on their land due to accusations of offenses. As a result, the Elite Guardians of Club Penguin declared war on the Templars on the 9th of April 2018. This conflict would later become famously known as the First Great Holy War. During this period, many invasions occurred between both parties, notably on Old Club Penguin servers such as Deep Freeze and North Pole.

At the same time, the Elite Guardians managed to conquer Abominable and Sleet, while also successfully defending Oasis and Glacier. They scheduled an invasion of the Templarian Capital as the final nail in the coffin – and succeeded. Even though the Elite Guardians had claimed all of the Templars’ land, the Templars also claimed victory, despite the Guardians clearly demonstrating dominance and pulling a magnificent number of troops compared to the Templars. Elmikey later joined the Templars leadership to accommodate the army’s issues and merged the Rebel Penguin Marines into the Templars. The army would  face a mountain of internal issues as Security would deface the army on 5th of May 2018.

World War VII

After the Templars revived their structured leadership, tensions began brewing once again when Elmikey and Cobra joined the Templars, both of whom opposed the RPF at the time. A low-ranking RPF member accidentally raided an event, sparking a full-scale battle that led Silverburg and Popsisclebreak to accuse of multi-logging. Later, the Rebels declared the Second Great Holy War (also known as World War VII) against the Templars.

Xing played a central role in directing the diplomacy between the two adversaries. He also aimed to build friendlier connections with other armies to gain colossal support and overpower the Rebels. However, on the battlefield, the Templars played a defensive role in the war and were unable to keep up with the invasions from RPF, also due to the fact that RPF had an enormous player base. A covert operation was launched by the Rebels in order to gain access to the confidentiality of the Templars, so they would be able to expose and censure them.

Things took a swift turn as many armies started to extend their hands to the Templars, such as the Pizza Federation, Elite Guardians, a potential Water Ninjas revival, and many more. Slowly, this form of friendship would lay the groundwork for the Red Dawn Alliance. This alliance was founded by influential figures – i.e., Edu14463, Cookky, Cobra, Elmikey, and Xing. They would go on to win the war after building up massive endorsement from various parts of the community against the powerful Rebel Penguin Federation. Unfortunately, the Templars would shut down before the war could conclude.

GENERATION 2

Xing once again revived the Templars on Club Penguin Rewritten with an entirely new leadership-Cobra, Clade, and Jay. The army focused primarily on its AUSIA division, reaching sizes of 20+ troops. Unfortunately, the leadership was short-lived. The Templars joined an alliance created by the Pizza Federation’s former leader, Neptune. Xing, alongside Clade, Liam, and King William, continued leading the Templars on Club Penguin Online. The army hit staggering sizes and firmly established its presence as a major force in the community. The Templars also participated in the Christmas Chaos 2018 tournament, advancing all the way to the finals.

However, their great success was accompanied by a shadow-a controversy that cast doubt over their triumph. The Templars had originally defeated the Elite Guardians in the semi-finals, but the Guardians viewed the result as biased and soon declared war that would be known as the Third Great Holy War on the Templars, eventually emerging victorious. After a brief sequence of events, EGCP and TCP joined forces to take on the Pirates. Ultimately, the Pirates defeated the TCP-EGCP duo.

Templars Exodus

The Templar Exodus was a clash between the Templars and the New Viking Alliance-a major army coalition composed of armies like EGCP, PZF, and notably, the Winged Hussars. It was formed after a group of Templars High Command parted ways with the Templars. The Winged Hussars contacted EGCP for their support, which led to the revival of the NVA and ultimately resulted in a war. The conflict came to a ceasefire after seven days due to many armies, including both the NVA and Templars, shifting from Club Penguin Online to Club Penguin Rewritten. This shift fundamentally led to Blizzard server being split equally between the NVA and the Templars. Additionally, the Winged Hussars were recognized as an autonomous army.

2020’S

In May 2020, the Templars faced an unexpected defacement by the infamous Epic101, who had gained administrative permissions from Freezie in an attempt to halt their move away from the CPO league. Xing was consistently making pro-Club Penguin Army Media and Club Penguin Rewritten comments in the CPAM Discord server, insulting CPO league officials and praising the efforts of armies within the CPR community. Consequently, Xing and the leadership created a new Discord server while continuing on his path to shift to CPR.

After their move to CPR, the army swiftly started to scheduling organized events and alerting troops to increase their activity. Xing and the leadership maintained a loyal framework of troops. The Penguin Saloon Army League later blacklisted the Templars for directly messaging people off their server to recruit them. They were also responsible for mass botting accounts in their recent events at the time, where the supposed mastermind of the operation was Jay, who ran a bot script and created multiple bot accounts in order to increase their sizes.

Campaigns and Collapse

The Templars declared war on the Crimson Guardians, a decently strong army that had managed to reach the semi-finals of the Challengers Cup. In an unanticipated turn of events, the Crimson Guardians transferred their servers to their allies, the Army of Club Penguin. The Templars would then declare war on Os Mascarados due to the OMA having strong ties with the Elite Guardians. Soon after, the Templars declared war on the People’s Imperial Confederation in an effort to expand their territories on the map. However, high-ranking members of the army disrupted this campaign by carrying out another defacement. Eventually, the Templars managed to stabilize, but Xing departed a week later, with Brownpen4 stepping in to replace him.

Near the fall of June, the Coup Crusaders declared war on the Templars, believing that the Templars were not following the code of conduct within the army community and that they viewed smaller armies as inferior. On July 11, Xing once again returned to the Templars as Emperor. In July 2020, he declared war on the Lime Green Army due to ongoing poor relations and their pivotal role in the New Dawn Alliance.

The Recon Federation took the opportunity to declare war on the Templars, eventually winning the conflict and forcing the Templars to surrender their capital. The Templars then entered a turbulent period from September to December 2020. By September, the Templars and Recon Federation had formed an alliance through a peace treaty, primarily due to both armies being major contenders at the time. Unfortunately, this alliance proved to be short-lived. On September 22, Xing retired once again, resulting in the army reverting back to a Grand Priory structure

YEARS OF PRIME

In 2021, Xing began implementing strategic maneuvers within the Templars. He successfully led the army to achieve the number one spot in the Top Tens for the first time in their history. Following this turning point, the Templars consistently maintained the top position, eventually breaking the Rebel Penguin Federation’s record of 21 consecutive weeks at number one. Remarkably, they held that spot for 50 straight weeks and went on to win Legends Cup XII, defeating the Water Vikings. Impressively, Xing earned the Person of the Year award twice, becoming the only individual in army history to win the title more than once. Years before these achievements, the community elected him as an Army Legend in 2018.

Under his leadership, Templar dominance extended across multiple tournaments, including victories such as winning the New Year’s Bonanza 2022, reaching the semi-finals of both Aces of AUSIA and March Madness 2022, and most notably, making it to the finals of Christmas Chaos XII before falling to RPF. Xing also won Best Major Army Leader 2022 and Most Achieved Winner 2022.

Club Penguin Armies requested an exclusive interview with Xing about his time as an influential person in the Templars.

I. Let’s go back to the early days. What inspired you to create the Templars, and what were your initial goals for the army? Did you ever imagine it would become one of the most consistent forces in the army community?

What inspired me to create my army was my religion. As a Christian, I decided to create the Templars as a way to express my religiosity at the time. My initial goals were to grow big and go to war. Which, we eventually did against EGCP in April 2018. At the time, I didn’t think it’d become a consistent contender and even grow to have a full year of dominance under it’s belt.

II. You have built more than just an army, you established a brand, culture, left behind a vision and legacy. What advice would you give to someone starting their own army today in this era of Club Penguin Armies?

Building a culture, legacy and brand as extensive and appealing as the Templars’ is not an easy task. What one must do is believe in yourself and be the most stubborn person imaginable. Being stubborn with regard to your goals, in any setting, allows one to persist in such a way that your goals eventually do become realized in ways you would’ve never expected. That’s apart of the beauty of it all, isn’t it? You never know how you’ll get to your goals, but, you know that you’ll get there eventually no matter the case.

III. You led the Templars through countless wars, tournaments, and eras. Which period of Templar history do you consider to be the golden age, and what made it so special?

Leading the Templars, especially as it’s figurehead, is not at all an easy task. I consider both 2018 and 2021-22 very special. 2018 showed me the ceiling to my potential that would be later realized in 2021-22 and as you know, 2021-22 was very much the last time any army single-handedly dominated the community and captured the headlines like we did. I am proud to say we are the last army to have dominated in such a way.

IV. Who were the people, whether allies or rivals, who shaped your journey in armies the most? Are there any names you’d credit for helping you grow as a leader or person?

Templars has never had consistent allies. From allies dying, to stabbing us in the back, you name it. We had a very shaky situation with regard to alliances. Nevertheless, the Templars have always excelled with or without allies. Our rivals, may they be RPF, WV or ACP, have helped us adapt to army warfare as it evolved and kept us in fighting shape. Iron sharpens iron, as they say.

I’d like to credit my troops for helping me grow as a leader and as a person. Whether that be Grand Priors or the newest Roblox recruit, I believe they all had taught me a valuable lesson in how to deal with people in a variety of complex ways. This could range from helping someone through very personal and tough times or simply just mediating conflict between people within the army. Overall, being amongst people in such a large and diverse environment has equipped me to deal with real-life situations and workspaces.

V. Finally, if you could leave one message to your troops, friends, veterans and the rest of the community, what would it be?

Everyone will shout your failures from the rooftops as soon as they hear of them. Even if your successes are magnanimous and widespread, people will discount your successes for they do not enjoy admitting as to when they’ve been outdone. Furthermore, always hit back 10x harder when you’ve been knocked down and defeated. If you’ve created an army, lost a war and then give up at the end of it, you’ve came all this way for nothing. Your job is to finish the journey and rise to the top. You must be a strong person, relentless and brave. You must be a father-figure in the eyes of your troops as that is the only way they’ll obey your every command and follow you into the deepest reaches of hell itself.

Finally, you must have an ego in this community or anywhere for that matter. You are the only person who will defend yourself in the best way possible. Only you can talk your talk and walk your walk. Furthermore, it is imperative that you are humble towards your friends and confidants, as they are the ones holding you up. You must defend yourself. You must be your own person. You must bite, kick, scream and punch everyone to get your way. If you do not do such, you are a loser. There is only winning and losing in this world and you must fight hard to win. Even if you do not win, you must get up when you have been knocked down and ignore the pain and sorrow resulting from your defeat. The true champion ignores the feeling of defeat in an effort to reach his true prize.

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Xing is truly one of the most brilliant and greatest leaders the community has ever witnessed throughout the course of Club Penguin Armies. He is the epitome of what a leader should be – one of the most commendable leaders who may never be repeated ever again in the history of armies. As Popcorny once remarked about him, “To call Templars an army isn’t quite right. Xing, through both lunacy and genius, has morphed Templars from an army into his own cult.” His style of leadership and diplomacy was impeccable yet notorious and was the true definition of a charismatic leader. What do you think of his achievements? Did you enjoy reading the post? 

MtJordan II
Associate Editor

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