The time has come for me to announce my resignation from the CPA Administration. As I prepare to close this chapter, I wish to look back on the journey that brought me here, express my gratitude to those who shared it with me, and offer one final note to the community I have been proud to serve.

I am writing this letter in the midst of changes. Yes, truly radical changes. In my room, there are only boxes of books, stored belongings, dusty pieces of furniture, walls worn by time, and a peculiar mixture of classical paintings, family portraits, and superhero posters that marked my childhood. The echo of my voice and of the sounds coming from my computer and peripherals reverberates throughout the room, as I express my gratitude for the moments that made me who I am today. Internally, my own voice reverberates as well. I reflect. I think. I question. I pray. At last, I accept.

As you may have noticed, I am moving into a new home. Yet this change is merely one of address; a geographical expression of something psychological and spiritual that has already been taking place throughout all these years. It is called maturation. Ah, and how complex this process is. It shakes our foundations, our personality, our character. It influences our tastes, our pleasures, our preferences. It shapes and reshapes our routines, our dreams, our relationship with reality. Growing up is difficult, but it is necessary. We constantly struggle with our own inner selves, for we do not wish to abandon them. What happens is a kind of clash between our future aspirations and our nostalgia for the past. Now, why does this happen? Well, this is a fundamental part of human nature. We are born to grow. We live to form ourselves and to reach the fullness of all the potential of our souls.

The irony is that, despite being inherent to human life, we do not know how to deal with maturation very well. In general, we are slow to overcome that which was once so meaningful to us. Yet this is part of it. And it ought to be part of it. It would be strange if it were otherwise! The difficulty with maturation only truly becomes a problem when our aspirations, dreams, and goals in life are unable to cross the abyss created by the intensity of our attachment to the past or by our conformity to the present. Perhaps growing up is precisely learning to love what we once were without needing to remain there (And, deep down, is there really an essential difference between who we are and who we were?)

Nevertheless, there is a fundamental difference between preserving and remaining. We can keep our memories without living in them; we can love a period of our lives without demanding that it continue; we can recognize the importance of who we once were without turning that former version of ourselves into a prison. The past, after all, does not need to be denied in order to be overcome. On the contrary, perhaps we can only truly overcome it once we recognize its value and accept that it is an integral part of our being. There are things we need to leave behind not because they were bad, but precisely because they have fulfilled their purpose. And yet, the boy I once was is not a stranger to me. He is me, and I am him, although I am not only him. The teenager who dreamed, erred, became recklessly enthusiastic, and believed that certain things would last forever is also me. The young man who discovered new ambitions, lost friends, found others, faced defeats, and insisted on carrying on is also me. And the adult who now looks back, burdened with new responsibilities and standing before new dreams, did not come to replace all those others. He was born from them. Our being is not built through the successive elimination of who we once were, but through the incorporation of all that we have lived.

My child-self remains within me. Not as an old photograph kept somewhere in the recesses of memory, but as a real presence in the constitution of who I am. His tastes, his fears, his dreams, his experiences, and his first discoveries helped form what I now call “I.” If I could completely remove that boy from myself, perhaps the same man would no longer remain. After all, the man who now assumes responsibilities is the same boy who once dreamed of having them. The adult who now projects himself into the future is the one who, one day, imagined that future without even knowing what it would look like. There is an enormous distance between the two, that is true. But there is also a profound identity. I am all of my “selves.”

At the same time that I am called Eduardo in real life, in this very virtual universe, I am Edu14463. In the end, I am still me. Under different names and through different personal expressions. Yes, I am me. The boy who entered an online community without imagining that it would occupy eleven years of his life. I am the eight-year-old child who, thanks to a newly discovered penguin game, learned to write better, to imagine stories, to dream, to build friendships, and to speak English fluently. I am the teenager who discovered his first loves in this community, who received the Truth of Jesus Christ through this online environment, who matured his ambitions and dreams, who learned to write journalistic articles and reports, to manage groups and communities, to edit and record videos, to create graphic designs, and also to understand that not everyone can be trusted. I am the legend who led wars, tournaments, and countless events throughout a decade; who inspired people, met his best friends, and developed his oratory. I won, I lost, I made mistakes, and I started over. I am the one who returned out of nostalgia. I am the one who persisted in the dream of administering a great media organization when I was told that I would never make it. I am the one who learned to love and not offend anyone; to wish good upon everyone, including those who wish us harm. I am the one who had fun with friends in voice calls, game nights, and late-night conversations. I am the one who reached where he wanted to go and, at last, is satisfied. Today, I am Eduardo: a teacher, a physicist, an almost-philosopher, on the path toward discovering his vocation.

We are all, therefore, a unity unfolding through time.

One day, when I am even older, I will look upon the man I am today with the same mixture of distance and recognition with which I now look upon the child I once was. I may say, perhaps, “I was different.” But I hope I will never say, “That was not me.” Because it was. I am. And, in some profound and mysterious way, I will continue to be.

Now, in this letter, I am the one who looks back, departs, and says farewell. I reflect upon the symphony that served as the plot for the melody of my virtual life in Club Penguin. May this sweet harmony serve as the musical background for your own reflections, and may it make you realize that what, in isolation, appears to be nothing more than noise, when contemplated in the light of the entire score, reveals itself to be part of the beautiful arrangement God conducts.

---

Overture — Andante Innocente

I do not remember the exact moment, but it was around May 2011 that I discovered Club Penguin. I was exactly seven years old. It was during a computing class (yes, kids used to have computing classes in Brazil, because technology was just emerging and still was not a part of our daily life like it is today). My friends and I most likely sidetracked from the class task and found out about the existence of the game. At the time, I had absolutely no idea that I was standing at the beginning of a journey that would follow me for the next fifteen years. I remember trying to create my account with a name that I am almost certain was something along the lines of “Edu Bonitão” (which means ‘Handsome Edu’ in English). Of course, it was already taken. Lol.

Thus, the system suggested another name.

Edu14463.

And so, almost by accident, a name was born. The “Edu” was mine. The 14463 was simply what the game gave me. I could never have imagined that those five numbers would become one of the most enduring marks of my life. Over the years, 14463 followed me everywhere. It became passwords for cards, phones, computers, emails, accounts, and countless other things. A random combination generated by a children’s game somehow became a small signature that accompanied me through different stages of my life. My personal brand, haha! Even my mother created a penguin and played for a few times with me. She was Flor14463 (Flower14463 in English). My heart becomes warm as I write this. Love your parents, dear reader; they are not perfect and never will be in this Earth. But thanks to them, we are alive.

Throughout the next months, I fell in love with the game. I remember playing with my school friends and calling their houses to arrange when we would meet online. There was no WhatsApp. There were no smartphones. Somehow, we still managed to find each other. We would arrange times to play Card-Jitsu together, exchange Club Penguin stickers from the albums we collected, compare our collections, and even play with the physical Card-Jitsu cards outside the computer. I still have some of those cards. My friends and I would even organize dance contests at school, dancing to Club Penguin soundtracks, LOL. I remember one of them started breakdancing and accidentally kicked another colleague in the face. Perhaps I was the one who perpetrated it. Well, I don’t remember, lol.

Looking back, there was something wonderfully simple about it. We were children discovering a world together. Every party brought a childlike happiness. Every new room was something to explore. Every update brought something new to talk about at school the following day. I was discovering the island, the rooms, pins, minigames, puffles (I loved the white puffles), its mascots, its parties and, perhaps more importantly, I was discovering what it meant to belong to a community. I was learning to socialize, to make friends. I was beginning to create memories that, at the time, seemed completely ordinary.

That was my first love with Club Penguin. Not yet the army community. Not yet leadership. Not yet diplomacy, wars, journalism, administration, controversies, victories, defeats, or any of the things that would eventually make this world so much more complicated.

Just a seven-year-old boy, a computer, a group of school friends, and a little penguin named Edu14463. There was no ambition in it. No grand plan. No desire to become anything. I simply wanted to play.

The concert had begun.

Allegretto — The First Crescendo

The first real crescendo: the game stopped being merely something I played and became a world I inhabited.

By 2012, I would wake up excited to see what was new. I would sometimes rush through breakfast just so I could play for a few minutes before school. Whenever a new party arrived, I wanted to be there as early as possible, discovering the new rooms, the decorations, the secrets, and everything else the island had prepared. And then there were the mascots. Back then, meeting one of Club Penguin’s famous mascots was a genuine event. Their visits were not announced beforehand by the game’s staff. They appeared unexpectedly, somewhere on the island, in one of its 380 servers spread in 6 languages, and disappeared just as quickly. Finding them was therefore incredibly difficult. Fortunately, the community had developed its own solution: mascot trackers.

Fan-made blogs and websites would track the locations of mascots and publish information about their appearances. I followed them obsessively. These websites were incredibly popular in the Brazilian Club Penguin Community.

I still remember being at my aunt’s house, where I would sometimes borrow my cousin’s computer just to play Club Penguin, when I unexpectedly found Aunt Arctic herself at the Plaza during the Marvel Superhero Takeover. She was not just another character to me. Aunt Arctic was the editor of the Club Penguin News. And seeing her there planted a very small seed in my mind. I wanted to write. I had already begun discovering the enormous ecosystem that existed around Club Penguin outside the game itself: news websites, cheat sites, guides, trackers, blogs, forums, and eventually xat.com chats. Each website would have one of its own.

And then I discovered the Turma do Lago (in English, the Hidden Lake Crew). The name still makes me smile. They were a group of penguins who usually gathered around the Forest and the Hidden Lake. They pretended to have supernatural powers and spent their time fighting one another. To an eight-year-old boy, this was absolutely fascinating. I had not known that Club Penguin could be this much fun. There was an entire lore behind it as well. There were heroes and villains, clans and rivalries, alliances and betrayals. The villains belonged to the “Dark Side,” eventually associated with the Empire, led by a weird guy called Baidu, while the forces of good included a clan called Revenge, led by a penguin named Petery. Other clans appeared later, including Akata, which I would eventually join. There was even family lore. My character in this universe was called Anjel. My mother was a woman called “Angel.” (who I’m quite sure was a predator now that I think about it, haha…). My brother was Baubau9. And, naturally, there were romantic subplots. I had several “girlfriends” in Club Penguin (yes, CP helped me develop my romantic skills) and later, in the RPG world as well. We simulated battles inside the game, fought one another on xat.com, trained techniques, developed our powers, and expanded the lore of this strange little universe.

It sounds ridiculous now. It was ridiculous. And it was wonderful.

Because this was the moment when I stopped merely playing Club Penguin and began to create within it. I was participating in communities created by other children and teenagers who, like me, had discovered that a game could become a canvas for imagination.

And then something happened outside the screen. At the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013, my family moved to the neighborhood where I live today. With that move came something I did not understand very well at the time: I lost contact with almost all of my friends from my old school. It was a difficult moment. I had been taken, in a sense, from a world I knew and placed into another one I did not. A new neighborhood. A new school. New classmates. New surroundings. And, at least initially, no real friendships. The transition was painful. But while one world was disappearing, another was expanding. My virtual life became more significant than my real life connections.

At the end of 2012, exactly on December 28, I decided to create my first Club Penguin blog: SosEdu14463CP. I wanted to imitate the great blogs I had been reading. I wanted to publish news. I wanted to write articles. I wanted to report what was happening on the island. Of course, I was eight years old. So the writing was not exactly Pulitzer material. But it was a beginning.

I began learning how to organize ideas, how to write, how to formulate sentences, how to use grammar, how to report events, and how to communicate something I had experienced to someone else. And thus my passion for media was born! I did not know it then, but that little blog was the first draft of something that would follow me for years.

Needless to say, 2012 was the year of Operation: Blackout. The real ones know what I’m talking about.

Andante — The Quiet Between Movements

2013 began with the satisfaction of having created something of my own. I had my own blog, my own little audience, and, for an eight-year-old boy, that was something genuinely exciting. I was no longer merely consuming the world of Club Penguin; I had begun to document it, to write about it, and to imagine that perhaps other people cared about what I had to say.

I spent another year immersed in the game I loved. I played with my virtual friends, followed the parties, collected stamps with an almost unreasonable determination, and continued hunting for mascots whenever they appeared. Some of my favorite parties that year were the Marvel Super Hero Takeover, Music Jam, and the Medieval Party. I met Gary, Brady, McKenzie, Sensei, and even Herbert during Operation: Puffle, encounters that, at the time, felt almost like meeting celebrities in the real world.

Eventually, the little blog I had came to an end. I simply did not have the required maturity to keep publishing, and, to be completely honest, I was never particularly satisfied with how it looked either. I looked at other blogs with their beautiful templates and polished designs and felt discouraged by my own little creation. So I closed it. Looking back, however, I do not see that as a failure. It was my first attempt. And, perhaps more importantly, it taught me how to write. Moreover, my motivation to learn how to do graphic design stemmed from my desire to make a beautiful website template for my Club Penguin blogs. And it worked, somehow! Furthermore, I learned how to put together posts, how to report things, how to organize information, how to communicate with an audience. I was inexperienced, certainly, but I was already beginning to discover something that would accompany me for years: I liked creating things and sharing them with people.

Meanwhile, I set up my first YouTube channel! Inspired by the rise of social media in Brazil and the surge of Club Penguin YouTubers, I promptly downloaded HyperCam3 and started recording fun sketches, guides, and satires. Obviously, I had zero knowledge of video editing. So, you can already imagine the quality of the videos.

Still, the music was changing.

By 2014, I had largely abandoned the world of blogging. I spent more time with the Turma do Lago, enjoying the RPG, the xats, and the constant little dramas and adventures that existed within that universe. I continued playing Club Penguin and enjoying its parties, meeting the Muppets, Elsa, the Penguin Band, Rookie, and many other characters along the way,  but something had shifted.

The RPGs had become my real center of gravity. I spent more time there than I did inside Club Penguin itself. The RPG had developed its own lore, friendships, rivalries, jokes, battles, and characters. There was always something happening. In a strange way, the rest of the world began to disappear. 2013 and 2014 were, in retrospect, almost a silence between movements. I went to school. I came home. I played Club Penguin. I entered the xat. I returned to the RPG. I collected stamps. I followed mascots. I lived inside that little universe.

And there was another reason why it became so important to me: almost nobody around me in real life knew about it.

No one in my new school played Club Penguin. I was one of the youngest students in my class, and I was embarrassed to talk about something that, in my mind, made me look even younger. So I hid it. I did not tell people about Edu14463, Turma do Lago, xat.com, the battles, the friends, or the strange little world I had built for myself online. And, perhaps ironically, I still hide parts of that world from people today. But at the time, I did not understand that I was living through something important. There was only a boy, a computer, a penguin, a chatroom, and a fictional world that had somehow become real enough to matter.

Somewhere beneath the surface, the next movement was already beginning to form.

Allegro — The World Gets Larger

Ah, 2015. Looking back, I think of it as the year in which the orchestra suddenly became much larger. At the beginning of that year, I was still deeply immersed in the Turma do Lago. The xat remained my little universe, and the roleplays were still the center of my virtual life. I had no idea that, somewhere between January and February, I was about to stumble into a community that would change the course of my life for the next eleven years.

One day, I decided to visit a xat where a friend of mine was spending time. It was called CP Universe. It was, at first, simply another xat. But it was also a blog xat. I asked whether I could join the website. They said yes. And that small decision opened a door that I would spend years walking through. I met MarcosPengu, Gamball, Derik, Espiaao1, and, most importantly, Cookky2.

I did not know it yet, but Cookky would become my brother.

As time passed, my passion for CP Universe grew stronger and stronger. Some of the people who had originally been there eventually left, but I stayed. I worked, I wrote, I participated, and little by little the blog became my home. Eventually, it became mine. And I wanted to make it something.  pushed it forward, grew its audience, learned how to design and code templates for Blogger, and helped turn it into a recognizable name within the Brazilian Club Penguin community. It was the first time I experienced, in a more serious way, what it meant to build something with other people and watch it become larger than yourself. But it was not all work. Far from it. We had an absurd amount of fun. We recorded videos for our YouTube channels, ranking CP parties, mascots, and saying some very politically incorrect stuff. We made ridiculous little YouTube Poop-style sketches inside Club Penguin. We wrote guides. We played games. We joked around. We spent countless hours doing things that, from the outside, probably looked completely meaningless. To us, they were not. They were our lives. We developed a genuine friendship, even though time and circumstances would eventually separate many of us. But Cookky2 remained. He became my brother. And, more than a decade later, he is still one of the people with whom I share one of the closest friendships I have ever made through this community.

Then, sometime in 2015, another door opened. And this one led somewhere I had never even known existed. One day, a random guy appeared in the CP Universe xat. His name was Jayden1092. He was the founder and leader of an army called Water Ninjas. He was recruiting. And somehow, he found us. Cookky and I were fascinated. Until that moment, the Army Community was almost completely unknown to us within the Portuguese and Brazilian Club Penguin scene. Suddenly, there was this entire parallel universe of armies, events, battles, leaders, ranks, tactics, and communities that we had never really encountered before. Naturally, we joined. I remained in Water Ninjas throughout the rest of 2015 and into parts of 2016. Cookky eventually left WN and joined the Nachos, where he would remain until 2017.

My memories of those early army years are unfortunately fragmented. Some of the history of Water Ninjas was, to put it mildly, rather cursed, with unstable leadership, controversies, and even multilogging scandals involving previous acting leaders. It was not exactly the most glorious chapter of army history. But none of that changed how I felt about it. The army was in my heart, and I loved it. I remember interacting with people like Atticus, LordNinja, and others who had worked alongside me in the old mod line. Cookky and I would occasionally appear at each other’s army events, exchange a few words, and then return to our respective worlds.

Still, my heart was divided. I had discovered the armies, but I had not yet fallen completely in love with the Army Community itself. My attention remained split between armies and, above all, my media career. Because something else was happening. My name was beginning to spread. My writing was becoming recognized within the CPBR community. I was no longer simply the eight-year-old boy who had once opened a tiny blog because he wanted to imitate the websites he admired.

In 2016, there were days when I would practically rush home from school just to publish a post before my competitors. I wanted to be faster. I wanted to be better. I wanted people to recognize my work. And, slowly, they did. And in this process, I made very good friends, co-workers who joined my blog, partners who worked closely with me, and, of course, even writing rivals, haha. Ah, how fun were those times…

I began working for websites that I could never have imagined being part of when I was younger. The little boy who had once dreamed of writing Club Penguin news was suddenly becoming a recognizable name within the very community he had admired from afar. My virtual résumé began to grow almost absurdly quickly. By the end of 2017, I had worked, in one capacity or another, with an almost ridiculous number of Club Penguin websites:

1. Club Penguin Universe — 2015–2017
2. Mundo Ártico do Club Penguin — 2016–2017
3. Club Penguin Premium — 2016–2017
4. Turma do Selo — 2017
5. Puffle Network — 2015–2016
6. SOS Club Penguin — 2017
7. Club Penguin Avalanche — 2016–2017
8. Portal Club Penguin — 2016
9. Club Penguin Todo Dia — 2016
10. Club Penguin News — 2015
11. Sled of Club Penguin — 2015
12. Conect Club Penguin — 2015
13. Yeah Penguin — 2015
14. Club Penguin Aurora Boreal — 2016
15. SosEdu14463CP — 2012–2013
16. Club Penguin Aqua — 2012–2013
17. Club Penguin Ice — 2012–2013
18. Turma do Celsaso CP — 2012–2013
19. Club Penguin na Água — 2012–2013
20. Club do Nitrinho CP — 2012–2013
21. Desenhos do Club Penguin — 2014–2015
22. Loucuras do Club Penguin — 2014–2015

Looking at that list now is almost surreal.

The boy who had once been discouraged because his first blog did not have a beautiful template was now writing for some of the most recognizable websites he knew. The child who had once admired Club Penguin bloggers from a distance was becoming one of them. And somewhere in the middle of all of this, I realized something important: I had found my place in the CPBR community. Not necessarily in one website. Not necessarily in one army. But in the world surrounding Club Penguin itself. I had found a language, a craft, a community, and a name. Edu14463 was no longer merely a username generated by a computer. It was becoming a person. And the orchestra, which had spent years quietly playing in the background, had finally found its rhythm.

By 2016, I had almost completely surrendered myself to media. Writing, reporting, designing, publishing, competing for views, discovering new websites, meeting new people. This was my world. That year, Cookky2 came to me with an idea. He wanted to create a Portuguese colony of the Nachos. We called it Elite Guardians. For us, it was exciting. We began putting everything together: the xat, the uniform, the website, the structure, the identity. We were building something of our own, and we were genuinely happy about it.

For the first time, perhaps, the idea of an army was becoming something more than a curiosity.

Then came the news. Club Penguin was shutting down in March 2017. I still remember the feeling of shock, sadness, and, honestly, anger. I was furious with Disney. In my childish understanding of the situation, they had already been ruining the experience we loved: changing things, altering the parties with gross marketing, taking the game in directions that no longer felt like the Club Penguin of my childhood. And now they were taking the whole thing away. The place where I had spent years of my life was going to disappear. The irony was cruel. I had spent years reporting on Club Penguin, and now I had to report on its death.

I remember writing about the shutdown for the very blogs where I worked. I had to turn something that was breaking my heart into an article. I had to inform other people that the game we all loved was going away. Those were some of the strangest articles I have ever written. Still, I remained loyal to the job until the very end.

When the final day came, I stayed online. I stayed until the last possible moment. I watched the world disappear around me, knowing that there would be no next party, no next update, no next mascot visit, no next morning when I would rush through breakfast to see what had changed. And when it was finally over, I cried. I cried on my mother’s lap, genuinely devastated.

It may sound silly now. After all, it was a game. But it was not just a game to me. It was the place where I had spent my childhood.

The orchestra had stopped. Or, at least, I thought it had.

Club Penguin Island came afterward, and I remained loyal to the Club Penguin media world throughout 2017, reporting on it and trying to keep that little flame alive.

But something had fundamentally changed. The original melody was gone. I did not yet know that another movement was waiting for me. I did not know that the army idea Cookky and I had started building would eventually return in a completely different form. I did not know that Elite Guardians was not really dead.

And I certainly did not know that, by October, my entire virtual life was going to change again. The silence after the final note was only temporary. The orchestra was preparing to play again.

Vivace — The Elite Guardians

Club Penguin itself had died months earlier. The world that had introduced me to all of this was gone, and for a while I thought perhaps the story was over with it. Yet the world of armies survived in the strange and unexpected ecosystem of private servers. And so did an idea: Elite Guardians.

What had once been conceived by Cookky and me as a Portuguese-speaking colony of the Nachos in 2016 had been interrupted by Club Penguin’s closure. Now, with Club Penguin Brasil (a PT-based CPPS) giving Portuguese-speaking players a new home, we decided to bring the dream back. On October 19, 2017, the Elite Guardians of Club Penguin officially came into existence.

Our first event had only ten people. Looking at what EGCP would eventually become, that number feels almost comical. We began with almost nothing: a new army, a handful of people, a Discord server, uniforms, tactics, and an enormous amount of enthusiasm. Most of our soldiers had never even heard of Club Penguin armies before. We had to teach people what an army was, how events worked, how to recruit, how to lead, how to fight. And somehow, it worked.

Within a few months, we were reaching the 20s and then the 30s. Sizes unseen in CPRA so far – besides RPF. We recruited people who would eventually become some of the most important characters in the history of the army: Slowfood64/BOBS, Victoria484, Belga, Lass, Dollynhoxdd, Gutavuh, Erizy, Pedrox (who used to work with me in CP blogs), and many others. Of course, before fully establishing ourselves, we had to fight against some attempts to create rival armies in CP Brasil. Haha, the funniest moments. The covert operations to deface rival servers, infiltrate and gather info, raid their events… Good times.

The army grew, and with it came the moments that made those years unforgettable. There were voice chats that lasted far longer than they should have. Craaazy moments in CPPS that would get us arrested in real life. Gameplays. Memes. Random conversations at absurd hours. And then, training events. Tournaments. Wars we won. Wars we probably should not have won, but somehow we made it. Ridiculous schemes that somehow worked. Arguments that seemed like the end of the world and, a few days later, became jokes.

We were young. We were sometimes stupid. We were occasionally insufferable. But we were happy.

And EGCP gave us a place to grow together. The first Portuguese-speaking army, introducing armies to the Brazilian and Portuguese Club Penguin player base. This is my legacy.

The army itself became increasingly ambitious. We fought other armies, expanded across servers, participated in tournaments, formed alliances, and became a serious force in the community. By early 2018, our sizes had reached the 40s, something that was extraordinary for the small and medium army scene of the time. Then came the larger conflicts.

The countless war battles against the Templars. The political disputes with UMA. The struggle surrounding the CPO Army League, the exodus from Club Penguin Online. The conflict with Waterkid and Epic101, which would result in me getting doxxed for the first time. The diplomacy. The alliances. And eventually, World War VII. That war was one of those moments when the little game suddenly felt enormous. And, we won! We defeated RPF! The biggest army at the time, thought to be unbeatable. We dealt their first war loss in the CPPS Era.

Thus, EGCP became one of the major forces of that era. We reached sizes that would have seemed absurd when we had started with ten people. We fought alongside and against some of the largest armies in the community, and our leadership became increasingly involved in diplomacy and warfare. And yet, strangely enough, when I remember those years, the wars are not the first things that come to mind. I remember the people. I met friends through EGCP who became my friends outside of it. I experienced things with them that had nothing to do with penguins, armies, or private servers. We talked about our real lives. We joked about our problems. We watched things together. We played other games. We spent hours in voice calls. And, eventually, some of us began changing together. We left behind certain habits. We became more serious. We started thinking about faith. And, together, we found Jesus, Our Lord. That part of the story is particularly strange when I look back on it now. The same virtual world that had once been almost entirely about RPGs, armies, wars, jokes, and youthful chaos became, for some of us, one of the places where we began taking our lives and our relationship with God more seriously.

There were, of course, darker moments. No community survives for years without them. There was internal drama. People left. Friendships were tested. Some relationships broke. There were mistakes I made and mistakes others made. There were moments when EGCP itself seemed fragile.

But something remarkable happened. The closest ones stayed. BOBS. Cookky2. Belga. Lass. Dollynhoxdd. Gutavuh. Godheit.

And somewhere amid all of this, I experienced another kind of first. I fell in love. My first serious relationship began with someone I met through this whole journey, and for a while, it felt like the virtual and real worlds had finally touched each other completely. Regrettably, I would eventually leave that relationship. To this day, I regret it. It remains one of the decisions in my life that I wish I could undo. Perhaps that is another reason why these years carry such weight for me. They were not merely the years in which I became a leader. They were years in which I became a person.

Ultimately, in these years, I learned that leadership was not simply having authority over other people. It meant taking responsibility for them. It meant making decisions when nobody agreed. It meant dealing with conflict, negotiating with people you disliked, defending people you loved, accepting criticism, and sometimes admitting that you were wrong.

I learned that winning a war was exciting, but that keeping your friends together afterward was often much harder. And perhaps most importantly, I learned that the people behind the usernames mattered far more than the usernames themselves.

By 2019, the political landscape had become increasingly complicated. EGCP was involved in the great migrations between private servers, the conflicts surrounding the CPO Army League, and the broader political struggles of the army community. We eventually found ourselves facing the Rebel Penguin Federation in another major chapter of our history. Contemporary records describe EGCP as one of the major forces of the period. It was in that year that I was inducted as an army legend for my contributions in EGCP and the army community through it. Cobra and Cookky were also inducted with me.

But there was a peculiar irony in all of this. The stronger EGCP became externally, the more important its internal friendships became to me. Because an army can win a war and still lose its soul. By 2020, the enthusiasm that had carried us through those years was beginning to disappear. Leadership had become less interested. Real life was beginning to pull us in different directions. The community itself was changing, and the energy that had once seemed inexhaustible was no longer there. Eventually, we made the decision to close EGCP in January 2020. The army that had once been a little idea between two friends was gone. And this time, the silence felt different from the silence after Club Penguin’s closure. There was sadness, certainly. There were unresolved feelings and internal wounds. Some things had not ended beautifully. Some friendships had been damaged along the way. But the closest ones remained.

For the first time since 2017, there was no EGCP. And I thought that was the end of the story. Well, I was wrong again.

Tempest — The Big Return

I had left the army community behind in 2020, and although I occasionally heard whispers of what was happening, I was largely disconnected from it. I graduated from high school, was now in university, finally joined a church, life was truly improving. The world I remembered had continued without me, and, by the time I began paying attention again, it had changed almost beyond recognition. My main sources of information throughout 2021 and 2022 were, rather amusingly, Xing and SavageCobra. Xing would occasionally message me to boast about his latest achievements: TCP’s Legends Cup victory, another impressive Top Ten streak, another accomplishment that apparently deserved to be immortalized in the history books (if not by his multilogging). My responses were usually profound contributions to the conversation, such as “nice” and “ok.” I was not exactly following the community closely.

SavageCobra, meanwhile, was one of the close friends I had made during the EGCP years, and he remained active in the army scene. Through him, I had a small window into a world that was continuing to evolve without me. But I had no intention of returning. At least, not seriously. Then came April 2023. I was talking with Cookky2 and some friends, reminiscing about the old days. We remembered the wars, the events, the friendships, the ridiculous things we used to do, and the army we had built together. Naturally, the conversation eventually reached the inevitable question: What if we brought EGCP back? It began as a joke. We were just a few old friends talking about something we had loved years earlier. We were not sitting down to plan a major army revival. We were not expecting to reshape the community. We were certainly not imagining that, within a few months, we would be fighting some of the largest armies in the game.

But the joke refused to remain a joke. Within weeks, we were studying the modern army community, trying to understand how it worked. The old days of simply invading servers across different private servers and declaring wars on whoever happened to stand in our way were long gone. The community had changed its structures, its expectations, its judging system, and its general approach to warfare.

Club Penguin Armies itself had been established in 2022 as a unified organization following the consolidation of the previous organizations. The army league and its map were now built around a different. The game we remembered had acquired new institutions, new rules, and an entirely new generation of players. And we were old men returning from the wilderness. Well, relatively speaking. We studied the rules. We examined the armies. We looked at the judging procedures, the server map, and the political relationships between the major players. We discussed who might threaten us, whom we could work with, and what kind of leadership would be needed to make the revival succeed.

Then we began contacting the old heads. People who had once been part of our lives, people who had fought alongside us, people who had grown up with us in the first generation of EGCP. We wanted to bring back the old spirit without simply trying to recreate a world that no longer existed. Among those we entrusted with leadership were Lass, Fitsuki, JoshepPeter1, and Belga. And in May 2023, Elite Guardians returned.

The first events went well. The army began reaching respectable sizes for the standards of the small and medium scene, and the revival quickly acquired a momentum of its own. The old name was back, the old friendships were being renewed, and a new generation of Guardians was beginning to take shape. But we had a problem. We were still thinking like the old EGCP. And, naturally, I was one of the worst offenders. In the old days, we had been fiercely expansionist. We invaded servers, fought armies, and treated the map as a battlefield to be conquered. We wanted to expand, to challenge our rivals, and to make our presence felt. God forbid armies behave like actual armies! That mentality was still alive in me, Cookky, Gutavuh, and Cobra, who formed part of the army’s advisory circle. So we encouraged the new leadership to take the map seriously, challenge the established armies, and make the Guardians impossible to ignore.

The modern community was not entirely prepared for that. LOL. It was smaller than the one we remembered, and warfare was less constant. The prospect of an ambitious returning army seeking territorial expansion and challenging established powers was, to put it mildly, disruptive. And then I began thinking about the Army of Club Penguin. ACP was the army I wanted EGCP to challenge. I wanted to prove that we could return after three years of inactivity and compete with the very best. Not simply survive. So I began negotiating with the Water Vikings on behalf of EGCP. The idea was to form an alliance and wage a joint war against ACP, weakening its influence over the map. After EGCP managed to invade SWAT servers faster than ACP during a dispute over territory, we anticipated that ACP might eventually target us. Its leader, Calgocubs21, had hinted that the situation could lead to conflict. Then the negotiations became more complicated. The Water Vikings were unwilling to enter a conflict without a guarantee of victory. Their involvement brought the Rebel Penguin Federation into the equation, given the close relationship between the two armies.

And suddenly, World War IX. The Blue Sunset Alliance, formed around EGCP, Water Vikings, and RPF, faced ACP and the coalition that gathered around it. The conflict became a sprawling war involving multiple major armies and dozens of battles. For me, the experience was surreal. The old instincts had returned. And EGCP was growing. The war did not produce the clean, decisive victory that we had initially imagined. The conflict became more complicated than either side had anticipated, and the eventual treaty left both alliances with reasons to claim success. But EGCP had established itself as a major force, and our rivalry with ACP would continue throughout the rest of the year.

The first great test came at Legends Cup XIII. Only three months after returning, EGCP reached the semifinals and faced ACP in a battle that went into overtime. We lost narrowly, but the result itself was extraordinary. We had gone from a revived army to a serious contender for one of the most prestigious trophies in the community in a matter of weeks. The battle became the largest of the tournament’s semifinals, and the rivalry between the two armies was only beginning. And then came Christmas Chaos. We faced the Rebel Penguin Federation in the semifinals. This time, we won. Not just barely, either. EGCP defeated RPF 3–0, ending its three-year winning streak in the tournament and securing our place in the final against Water Vikings. The victory was one of the defining moments of EGCP’s second generation. The final was a different story. Water Vikings narrowly defeated us, winning one room and tying the other two. We went home without the trophy, but we had made our point. The Guardians were back, and nobody could reasonably dismiss us as a nostalgic revival anymore.

By the end of 2023, EGCP had become one of the defining armies of the year. We had returned from three years of inactivity, challenged the established powers, reached the finals of a major tournament, and helped shape the political landscape of the community. But there was another story unfolding alongside it. My own.

When I returned to CPA, I recognized some familiar faces. One of them was DMT, whom I had known since 2019 and who had previously been involved in the administration of CPA Org. I began asking questions about how administrators were selected and what the process looked like. I also expressed my interest to Wynn, the administrator at the time, to whom I remain grateful. I had seen the state of the community, and I wanted to help improve it. It was the same impulse that had driven me to build EGCP years earlier: the desire to take something I cared about and make it better. But this time, I wanted to contribute from another direction. Media and Administration. I had loved writing about Club Penguin since childhood. I had spent years building blogs, reporting on parties, writing guides, and trying to make my work better than it had been the day before. Joining CPA Media felt like returning to my roots while opening a new door. On August 30, 2023, I joined the department.

In October, I was promoted to Associate Editor. I worked tirelessly. I wrote, edited, helped publish articles, and tried to prove that I belonged there. I owe Mchappy a great deal for giving me the opportunity and continuing to trust my work, even during the periods when I was not entirely sure whether he liked me, haha. For the first time, I was pursuing two ambitions simultaneously: helping EGCP become a great army again and working my way toward a position in the organization that governed the community. Unfortunately, the two worlds were about to collide. As my interest in becoming an administrator became more public, opposition to me grew. Some people who disliked EGCP, along with others who had personal grievances against me, assembled an expose concerning the army’s actions on Club Penguin Avalanche, a Brazilian private server where EGCP had been able to grow substantially, as well as allegations concerning my own conduct. It was my first major public scandal. Until then, I had dealt with criticism, disagreements, and the ordinary drama of online communities. This was different. The expose threatened not only my reputation but also my ambitions within CPA and, to some extent, EGCP itself. I was caught in an uncomfortable position. I wanted to become an administrator, and I was trying to distance myself from the army to avoid conflicts of interest. But EGCP’s leadership was still young, and I felt that the army needed my help. I continued advising it, often behind the scenes, while attempting to establish myself independently within CPA.

The situation eventually cost me my positions within CPA Org. I was fired from all roles. The only position I managed to retain was Associate Editor, thanks to Mchappy’s decision to keep me in the department despite the opposition of people who wanted me gone. It was humiliating. And, for the first time, I felt that my ambitions might genuinely be over before they had even begun. But I did not disappear. Neither did EGCP.

While I was dealing with the fallout, the army was preparing for another major conflict. ACP, Templars, and PIC declared war on us, and Winged Hussars came to our aid. Friends such as Shinzo and Snork returned to the CPA, reviving connections that stretched back to the first generation. Our relationship with Winged Hussars had roots in the New Viking Alliance, the alliance block EGCP had led in 2019 to help keep the small/medium army community stable and safe, including during the period when Winged Hussars emerged as an independent army after leaving TCP. Old friendships were returning at exactly the moment we needed them. The war was hard-fought, but EGCP prevailed, winning fourteen battles. I cannot overstate how satisfying that victory felt. We had been publicly attacked, our reputation had been damaged, and our opponents had every reason to believe that we were vulnerable. Yet we held together, fought back, and won.

By the beginning of 2024, EGCP’s reputation was recovering. The controversy gradually faded from public attention, and I continued working in media. I was producing work, improving my writing, and doing what I could to strengthen my case for admin. But I was not promoted. And the situation within EGCP was becoming complicated again. In March, another controversy involving PIC’s leadership emerged, and we lost March Madness. My attempts to distance myself from the army had become increasingly impractical. I had wanted to step away from advising it, but the Guardians were still at risk of losing their place among the major armies, and I felt that abandoning them would be irresponsible. So I stayed. I returned to leadership for a period in 2024, helped the army expand on the map, and participated in further wars. We remained competitive, and we eventually secured our first trophy of the second generation by winning the inaugural Around the World Cup. It was a satisfying achievement, especially after everything that had happened.

But my own relationship with CPA was deteriorating. One incident, in particular, still makes me laugh when I think about it. I pinged @everyone in the #memes channel. Yes, really. The administration, under Disha, decided that I was abusing my permissions and fired me from the editorial team. There had also been tensions within the department, and I felt that some people were looking for additional reasons to remove me. Whatever the precise balance of responsibility, I had reached my limit, especially after the controversies in December 2023.

I left the CPA server. For a while, I focused exclusively on EGCP. And yet, even then, the story did not end where I expected. Around May or June, Coolguy reached out to me with an offer to return as Associate Editor. The organization needed people, and apparently my work had left a gap that was not so easily filled. I accepted. And that experience taught me one of the most valuable lessons I would carry into the rest of my life: Do such good work that people notice when you are gone. Be excellent at what you do. Work hard, improve your craft, and keep your ambitions alive. But remember why you are doing it. The point is not merely to acquire a title, a position, or recognition. The point is to contribute something valuable to the people around you. I loved media because I loved bringing information to the community. I loved writing articles that people would read, producing work that helped people understand what was happening, and being part of something larger than myself. That love was what kept me going, even when recognition seemed impossible. And, eventually, my work was appreciated. In July 2024, I was promoted to Managing Editor.

Fortissimo — The Storm Before the Triumph

The following months were particularly interesting. I remained loyal to CPA Media, working harder than ever, for I had finally moved up and been given another opportunity to prove myself worthy of becoming an administrator. After years of ambition, setbacks, and waiting, I could finally see the possibility of reaching the position I had once thought might remain forever beyond my grasp.

Meanwhile, as real life began demanding more of my time, I decided to step down from EGCP leadership and return to the role of advisor. Around this period, I was also operating under the alias Dalloway, attempting to conceal my presence from the army. At the same time, I joined the Water Vikings as a second-in-command. This was, in part, an attempt to detach my public image from EGCP and present myself as genuinely unaffiliated. Sorry, Aaron. I remained with the Vikings for two or three months, but eventually departed. Although I appreciated the experience, I realized that the work did not inspire me to pursue leadership there. My ambitions lay elsewhere, and I could not pretend otherwise.

Then, around August, Mare promoted me to Editor-in-Chief. At last, I had reached the position I had long desired: Department Head. Technically, I had previously been offered the position of YouTube Head, but that was not quite what I envisioned for myself. My ultimate goal had always been administration. I wanted to help guide the organization itself, rather than remain responsible for a single department. Becoming EiC, however, was an important step in that direction, and I intended to make the most of it. I overhauled the media department, worked to improve its output, led the team toward better numbers, recruited cartoonists, introduced stories and new columns, and established quality checks for our articles. I wanted CPA Media to be more than a place where news was published; I wanted it to be a department whose work people genuinely looked forward to reading. It was a demanding responsibility, but one that brought me tremendous satisfaction.  I was happy, and I had a feeling that the next movement was already approaching.

In October 2024, I was offered the position of Executive Producer. I accepted gladly. After years of working, waiting, trying again, and refusing to abandon my ambitions, I had finally reached my dream. Yet the same day that brought me this achievement also brought one of the most turbulent episodes of my virtual life. An internal crisis within EGCP erupted, demanding the attention of myself and my closest fellow guardians and advisors: Cobra, Cookky, and Guta. The situation concerned Fitsuki, then a leader of the army, whose actions we understood as an attempt to remove us from our positions as guardians and advisors and fundamentally alter the balance of authority. When we discovered the proposed changes to the army’s constitution, we confronted him and attempted to resolve the matter. Those efforts failed, and the guardians ultimately removed him from leadership, revoked his access, and banned him from the army. We believed we were acting to protect EGCP. What we had not anticipated was the extent to which Fitsuki had already gathered support among the army’s troops, staff, and High Command. More than half of the army, it seemed, was prepared to rebel against the very people who had spent years building and maintaining the organization. The consequences were devastating. We lost access to our own website, the very website Cookky and I had created as teenagers back in 2017. To this day, we have never recovered that access. Former friends joined the opposing side, and EGCP, after all those years of battles, victories, friendships, and reinventions, closed its doors for good.

It was a peculiar kind of grief. This was not merely the end of an army I had once led; it was the destruction of something that had accompanied me through adolescence and into adulthood, something whose history was inseparable from the history of some of my closest friendships. The website itself was only a collection of pages and countless posts, of course, but it represented years of shared labor, memories, and dreams. The crisis grew worse when members of High Command leaked conversations from our leadership chat and created a series of exposes. Some inappropriate messages were stripped of their context; others were difficult to defend even when considered in full. The fallout was painful, and I will not pretend that every criticism was baseless or that every decision we made was beyond reproach. We all had things to learn from what happened.

Perhaps one of the most important lessons was that our virtual lives are not wholly separate from our real ones. What we say and do online can affect other people, damage friendships, shape reputations, and reveal aspects of our character that we might prefer to keep hidden. Behind every username is a human being, and behind every screen is someone whose actions carry consequences. We cannot demand to be treated as real people while pretending that our conduct in virtual spaces is somehow unreal. The person behind the username is still the person. The internet does not suspend our responsibility to act with integrity. If anything, the distance provided by a screen can make integrity even more necessary, for it is easy to forget the humanity of those on the other side. We needed to learn that lesson, and I certainly did. I would be dishonest if I claimed that I emerged from this period without regrets. Yet EGCP’s collapse was not the only crisis unfolding around me. On the very day I accepted my promotion to Executive Producer, an expose concerning my own conduct was published by the EGCP rebels. It did not take long for the administration and CPA’s advisors to become aware of it. I was allowed to explain myself and write a formal apology to army leaders and the wider community concerning my private conduct. I took that opportunity, and for a time, it seemed that the situation might settle. Within a few weeks, much of the community had moved on. My promotion, however, remained on hold.

Thus, while the music of my ambitions had reached what should have been its triumphant climax, I found myself suspended in an unresolved chord. I continued working as Editor-in-Chief, fulfilling my responsibilities and waiting for the controversy to subside. I had spent years trying to prove that I deserved a place in administration; now I had to demonstrate that I could continue doing my work even when my own reputation was under scrutiny.

On December 23, after two or three further exposes were released and I once again had to deal with their aftermath, the administrators and advisors finally gave me their vote of confidence. I was promoted to Executive Producer. And I could hardly have been more grateful or happy! To my surprise, much of the community received the news positively, with people congratulating me on the achievement. After months of uncertainty, criticism, and waiting, I had finally reached the position I had dreamed of for so long. There is something strange about achieving a long-awaited ambition during a period of personal upheaval. One expects success to arrive with a clear sky, a standing ovation, and a triumphant finale. Instead, sometimes it arrives while the orchestra is still struggling through dissonance, and one must learn to accept the applause without pretending that the music has been perfect. I had lost friends I had believed would remain friends. I had watched EGCP collapse in circumstances none of us had expected. I had been forced to confront the consequences of my own conduct and to recognize that professional ambition, however sincere, could not excuse the need for personal growth. Some things could be repaired; others could not. Some relationships would survive, while others belonged irrevocably to the past. But a new chapter was beginning.

Maestoso — The Golden Age

2025 began with me serving as an Executive Producer, still learning the intricacies of managing an organization as complex as Club Penguin Armies. I had spent years working in media, and I was familiar with YouTube to some extent, thanks to my childhood experiences creating videos and working on Club Penguin blogs. But administration was a different instrument altogether. It required not only creativity and ambition, but also diplomacy, patience, judgment, and the ability to make decisions whose consequences would reach far beyond myself.

I had always been a man of grand plans. By this point, I had already identified several structural weaknesses in CPA’s rules, observed the shortcomings of previous administrations, and studied the things that had historically allowed the organization to thrive. I had ideas for improving nearly every aspect of the org. Yet I was still an Executive Producer, and I knew that my influence was limited. After the controversies surrounding EGCP and my own conduct the previous year, I also understood that I had much to prove before others would entrust me with greater responsibility. Nevertheless, I was in an excellent position to learn. I participated in Army Board meetings, observed the reasoning behind administrative decisions, assisted wherever I could, and gradually built relationships with army leaders whose support would become important to the administration I hoped to lead someday.

The early months were also a period of institutional transition. Under Mare and Coolguy’s administration, I continued working to improve CPA while watching the community’s political landscape evolve. One episode that proved particularly consequential was the war between the Army of Club Penguin and the Doritos of Club Penguin, which ended amid a serious controversy involving the apparent doxxing of an ACP member. Threats and blackmail directed toward the administration followed, testing the organization’s willingness to stand firm when confronted with pressure. We ultimately brought the conflict to an end, and the episode reinforced something I would carry into my own administration: an organization cannot claim to govern responsibly if its decisions can be dictated by intimidation. Leadership sometimes means accepting that a decision will be unpopular, that people will accuse you of bias, and that the easiest way out will not necessarily be the right one.

And of course I would be targetted as well. 32op released a post containing screenshots of myself apparently threatening an EGCP troop of IP grabbing. And, well, the IP grab thing became a meme and still is to this very day. I had survived yet another expose!

Then, in April, Mare retired from her administrative position. Snork, a longtime friend of mine, was promoted to Executive Producer, and I was finally promoted to Chief Executive Producer after four months in my previous role. Snork was also promoted to CEP shortly afterward, given his unaffiliated status. For a moment, the future seemed to be opening exactly as I had hoped. Yet there was another complication. A third generation of EGCP was being attempted in 2025, and I had helped establish the conditions for its return. Despite my decision to distance myself from the army, people could still reasonably associate me with it. As an administrator, I needed to avoid conflicts of interest, and after everything that had happened the previous year, I did not want my presence to undermine the new generation’s prospects. I therefore remained at a distance, allowing the new leadership to build its own identity without my constant involvement.

Unfortunately, Snork soon became inactive and expressed his desire to leave the administration. Coolguy and I were left to shoulder the responsibilities of running CPA, but with Coolguy’s own real-life obligations and Snork’s inactivity, much of the administrative burden fell upon me. Coolguy would eventually depart to lead the Dark Warriors, and I found myself carrying an increasingly heavy load. I had wanted this responsibility for years. Now I was beginning to understand what it actually meant.

The defining moment of this early administrative period came in June, following a series of serious incidents involving doxxing within the community. The matter could no longer be treated as an ordinary dispute between armies, nor could it be dismissed as something that each army should resolve privately. The safety of real people was at stake, and the question confronting us was fundamental: what exactly was Club Penguin Armies supposed to do when the independence of an army came into conflict with the safety of the community? On June 6, I published what remains, perhaps, my magnum opus. I drew upon political and ethical thought to examine the relationship between liberty, autonomy, law, and responsibility. Armies had to remain independent. They needed the freedom to develop their own cultures, organize their leadership, recruit members, and pursue their ambitions without unnecessary interference from a central authority. But independence could not become a shield behind which harmful conduct could continue unchecked. Freedom without accountability is not true freedom. It becomes the freedom of the powerful to impose their will upon others, while those harmed are left without recourse. A governing institution, therefore, must know both when to refrain from intervening and when intervention becomes a moral obligation.

That was the heart of the statement. When misconduct crosses into doxxing, harassment, or other forms of cybercrime, it ceases to be merely an internal matter. CPA could not simply host tournaments, publish news, maintain a server map, and observe the community from a distance. It had a responsibility toward the people who entrusted it with their participation. The statement condemned the conduct of individuals involved in the doxxing incidents, established the administration’s position, and made clear that armies tolerating such behavior could face disciplinary measures. I was proud of this work. Not because I believed I had produced a perfect document, but because I had finally been able to put into words something I had been thinking about for a long time. I wanted CPA to be more than an organization that happened to possess authority, but THE governing body of all armies in the community. The statement was also a turning point for me personally. I had spent much of my career trying to reach positions of influence. Now, at last, I had the opportunity to shape the institution itself.

By June, the administration was approaching another transition. Coolguy announced his retirement on June 15, leaving me as the sole active Chief Executive Producer while Snork was no longer carrying out his administrative responsibilities. Once again, I found myself standing at the threshold of a new chapter, only this time I was no longer waiting for someone to give me the opportunity to lead. The responsibility was already mine. I was also preparing someone to share it.

Jojo Teri, who had served as Head Moderator, had demonstrated the dedication and judgment necessary to take on greater responsibility. I began training him for administration, knowing that I needed a partner who could help translate our ambitions into actual work. If we wanted CPA to flourish, we needed a team capable of carrying its vision forward. On June 21, we officially announced the beginning of the Golden Age of Club Penguin Armies. Jojo was promoted to Executive Producer, marking the beginning of a new administrative era. The announcement promised stronger moderation, revitalized media, bold leadership, and innovation. On July 13, I promoted him to Chief Executive Producer, marking our unforgettable administration! We had a vision, and we intended to pursue it.

The first months of our administration were marked by an extraordinary amount of work. We strengthened communication with army leaders, sought to revitalize the departments, expanded the organization’s activities, and began reconsidering policies that had become unnecessarily restrictive. We wanted CPA to be an institution that could preserve order without suffocating creativity, and one that could exercise authority without losing the confidence of the people it served. The results began to appear quickly. In July, the media department published 105 posts, breaking its previous record and demonstrating the energy that had returned to the organization. Top Tens regularly featured more than twenty armies. We introduced quality checks so that the community could offer constructive feedback on our departments and administrative work, rather than leaving us to evaluate our own performance in isolation. We continued expanding community activities, tournaments, and opportunities for members to participate beyond their armies. We also held the best iteration of the Legends Cup of CPA Org under our administration, with an unforgettable Casino theme.

We also began reconsidering the structure of warfare itself. The server map had long been burdened by rules that, although often introduced with good intentions, could restrict expansion and make territorial competition more cumbersome than it needed to be. In August, we announced a public summit to discuss its future. Over five sessions, army leaders and community members were invited to debate the rules, suggest changes, and help shape a more dynamic system. The process produced dozens of votes and substantial revisions, with the new rules taking effect in October. We also began developing plans for a new map, an economy system, and mobility units such as ships and planes.

Of course, calling this period a Golden Age did not mean that everything was golden. In September, serious allegations concerning members of the Rebel Penguin Federation’s staff and the handling of misconduct within the army came to light. The controversy rapidly escalated into a major conflict, with The White Order (this name is still very funny) forming an alliance against RPF and declaring war. The situation placed CPA in an exceptionally difficult position: the organization had to investigate the allegations, assess the response of the army’s leadership, protect the community, and make decisions amid intense public pressure and a politically charged conflict. The emergence of CPAL as a competing league amidst the RPF-TWO controversy added another dimension to the political landscape. CPA could no longer assume that its position as the principal governing institution would remain unchallenged simply because it had held that position before. We had to demonstrate our value through the quality of our work, the fairness of our decisions, and our ability to provide an environment in which armies could actually thrive. Competition could be frustrating, especially when it threatened the unity and influence of the institution we were trying to strengthen, but it also forced us to examine what we were offering the community and why people should continue to place their trust in us. We chose to answer that challenge through work.

Our investigation resulted in disciplinary measures against RPF for its handling of the situation. We also imposed a penalty on The White Order for an inappropriate tactic during the war. Later, following further investigation, we required RPF to take additional action and extended its penalty. These decisions were not universally welcomed. Some believed we had acted too harshly; others believed we had not gone far enough. The controversy placed enormous strain on relationships throughout the community and demonstrated just how difficult it could be to distinguish principled governance from the competing demands of public opinion. For me, this was one of the defining tests of our administration. There were difficult moments. There were accusations, arguments, and days when the responsibilities of administration seemed to consume far more time and energy than I had anticipated. The Golden Age was not a period in which we escaped the problems of the community. In many ways, it was the period in which we confronted them most directly. By the end of the year, the administration had overseen an impressive range of projects, from tournaments and community events to investigations, policy changes, and new ways of involving members in the life of CPA. The organization was not perfect, and our work was far from finished, but we had established a direction and begun to make it real.

The curtain had barely risen on 2026 when the Golden Age found itself facing a new set of challenges. We had spent the previous year strengthening CPA’s foundations, revising its policies, revitalizing its departments, and establishing a clearer vision for its future.

On January 4, we hosted the 2025 Person of the Year Live Broadcast, an event I had the pleasure of presenting alongside Jojo Teri and Mare. Rather than simply publishing the award results in an ordinary article, we decided to announce them live through the CPA Discord stage. More than thirty people gathered to watch the broadcast, hear the announcements, and celebrate the individuals who had made an impact on the community throughout the previous year.

Moreover, for months, our developers had been working on a new server map. The old system had limitations that made warfare and territorial expansion more cumbersome than they needed to be, and the competition posed by CPAL’s own map gave us an additional reason to reconsider what CPA could offer. We wanted to build something that was not merely an alternative, but a substantial improvement: a system that would encourage armies to fight, make territorial control more meaningful, and provide leaders with more strategic possibilities. The project was developed through the collaboration of Dino and df44, with Lort533 also assisting with map-related work. Dino was responsible for the map’s visual design, while df44 undertook the coding, interface, and development of a new bot to manage its functions. It was an ambitious undertaking, combining the visual presentation of the map with an automated system capable of handling the logistical side of territorial warfare. But how could we introduce such a system without first allowing the community to experience it? Our answer was Operation: WinterStorm.

Announced on January 13, WinterStorm was conceived as a community-wide tournament that would double as an open beta test for the new map. Instead of having armies compete under their usual banners, we divided participants into four teams: Black, Blue, Green, and Red. Each team would operate as an independent army, conquering territory, scheduling invasions, purchasing equipment, and attempting to outmaneuver its rivals. The operation began on January 24 and continued through February 1. Around 220 people signed up, and the event produced more than forty invasions in a single week. The teams had to learn how to use the new mechanics while simultaneously competing against one another, and the administration had to respond to technical issues, clarify rules, and make adjustments as the tournament progressed. We were testing a new map, a new economy, and a new bot while trying to keep a live competition running smoothly. It was a great deal of work, to put it mildly. On February 4, we officially introduced the new server map, with the permanent launch following on February 6. The system featured an economy, mobility units, and a much more interactive interface. Armies could manage their finances, purchase equipment, schedule invasions, and use GaryBot to automate functions that previously required manual administration. The map also created opportunities for future additions, including new forms of strategic interaction and further expansion.

The new map also carried a symbolic significance. CPA had no intention of surrendering its position as the community’s principal league simply because another organization had introduced competing features. We intended to demonstrate our value through the quality of our work. Competition could motivate us to improve, but it could not become an excuse for stagnation or imitation.

And then the following months would come. March Madness, Multilogging Mayhem, Around the World Cup III… And many community activities and changes we were still introducing in CPA.

By the time April came to an end, the Golden Age had lasted for more than ten months. The administration was stable, the map was operational, and our projects were continuing to expand. Yet even the most successful periods eventually require renewal. On May 3, we announced the beginning of another chapter: the Aura Era. After 315 days without a change in the administration, df44 and Kira were promoted to Executive Producers, and further departmental reforms and summer activities were announced. The intention was to bring new people into the administration while building upon the foundations established during the Golden Age.

And so, as the first months of 2026 drew to a close, I found myself looking at CPA with a mixture of pride and anticipation. We had accomplished much, but there was still more to do. The community was changing, new challenges were emerging, and the next generation of administrators was beginning to take shape.

Finale — Where I Stand Now

The first months of 2026 had been filled with projects, innovations, and new beginnings. But as the year progressed, something began to change—not so much within CPA as within myself. I was entering the final year of my Master’s degree, and my thesis had become an increasingly demanding responsibility. There was no longer the luxury of postponing the work indefinitely. At the same time, my professional life was changing. I was promoted at school to teach High School, a responsibility that brought with it a considerable increase in workload. Preparing lessons, teaching classes, correcting assessments, and meeting the demands of the school day consumed far more of my time and energy than before. Between my academic obligations and my work, the hours available for everything else grew increasingly scarce. And CPA, of course, was not something that could be administered in the few minutes left over at the end of a long day.

I began to become severely inactive. I was still involved, still concerned with the organization’s direction, and still willing to help when I could, but I could no longer offer the consistent presence that my position demanded.  I had spent years asking for the opportunity to carry that responsibility. Now, for the first time, I was confronting the possibility that I could no longer carry it as I once had.

It was a difficult realization. I had not lost my interest in CPA, nor had I ceased to care about the institution we had built. If anything, the more I reflected on the previous years, the more deeply I appreciated what we had accomplished. But affection for an institution does not automatically grant us the time to serve it properly. Sometimes, the most honest thing we can do is recognize the limits of our availability before those limits begin to undermine the responsibilities we have accepted.

Meanwhile, CPA was entering a period of consolidation. I had survived countless controversies, exposes, political disputes, and challenges to our authority. The administration had endured moments when its legitimacy was questioned, when our decisions provoked fierce opposition, and when the future of the organization seemed far less certain than we would have liked. Yet we had continued working, defending our principles, revising our policies, and trying to demonstrate through our actions why CPA deserved the community’s trust.

By this point, I believed we had succeeded in establishing CPA as the principal governing body of the army community: its central organization, the institution with the strongest position and the greatest influence over the direction of army warfare. I was proud of that achievement. One of the final major struggles of this period concerned CPAL. Our rivalry with the competing league had continued to challenge CPA’s position, and tensions intensified when CPAL attempted to organize what we regarded as a fraudulent imitation of Legends Cup, one of the community’s most important tournament traditions. We responded with a coordinated operation intended to challenge the attempt and defend the integrity of the competition we had worked so hard to maintain. It was a fierce confrontation, but we prevailed. CPAL eventually shut down, and CPA emerged from the struggle with its position reinforced. That was something I could be proud of, even as I recognized that I would not be there to oversee everything that came next. We also partnered with CPA Wiki, another step toward preserving the community’s history and consolidating its institutional resources. I remained involved on and off, helping the newer administrators settle into their positions and offering guidance where I could. But my presence was becoming increasingly intermittent, and I knew that the time was approaching when I would have to acknowledge what had gradually become apparent: my administration was entering its final movement.

Nevertheless, there was still one more thing I wanted to accomplish before leaving. Thus, as I prepared to depart, I supported the establishment of a new judging organization to replace CPA Judges, whose institutional life had effectively come to an end. I hoped that this new body would provide the community with more reliable judging, clearer procedures, and a stronger foundation for the battles that would continue long after my retirement. In a way, it felt like an appropriate final contribution. I had spent much of my time in administration trying to improve the institutions that made the community function. It seemed fitting that my last major concern should be the quality and integrity of the very activity that had brought so many of us together in the first place: warfare.

Of course, I still wanted to achieve more. There were reforms I would have liked to complete, projects I would have liked to see realized, and ideas that never made it beyond discussions and plans. I could imagine other tournaments, further improvements to the map, new initiatives for the departments, and still more ways of bringing the community together. Even now, part of me wants to return to the drawing board and ask what else we could build. But life does not always allow us to complete every project we begin. My Master’s thesis will not write itself. My students deserve a teacher who has the energy to teach them well. I need to find time to nurture my own spiritual growth. I have spent years learning how to lead an online community. Now I must learn, with the same seriousness, how to order my own life.

And so, with gratitude, I find myself preparing to leave.

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The Next Composition

When I first entered Club Penguin in 2011, I could never have imagined that the game would eventually lead me here. I was a seven-year-old boy who wanted to play with his friends, discover parties, collect stamps, meet mascots, and explore a world that seemed endlessly magical. I had no idea that this little penguin would introduce me to writing, journalism, graphic design, video editing, administration, diplomacy, and the complicated art of leading people in armies.

I could not have imagined the friendships I would make, the conflicts I would endure, the victories I would celebrate, or the disappointments that would follow. I could not have known that a childhood hobby would influence my English, my ambitions, my confidence, and even the way I understood responsibility. Least of all, could I have imagined that I would eventually become one of the administrators responsible for governing the very community that had grown out of that childhood game. Yet here I am.

I am grateful to everyone who played a part in this journey.

Thank you, dear readers, who followed my articles when I was just a child writing Club Penguin guides and cheats. Thank you to the friends with whom I worked on blogs, sharing the excitement of creating something of our own and the simple joy of bringing news, entertainment, and stories to other penguins. You were there at the beginning, when all I wanted was to write about a game I loved.

Thank you, Jayden, for introducing me to the world of Club Penguin armies. You always seemed convinced that the Water Ninjas were somehow doomed to fail. Your pessimism was practically a defining characteristic. HAHA. And yet, thanks to WN, I am here today. Funny how life works, isn’t it?

Thank you, Marcos, Gamball, and Derek, for the time we spent together in Club Penguin Universe. Those days helped shape my childhood and introduced me to friendships and experiences that would eventually lead me much further than I could have imagined.

Thank you to the troops of EGCP’s first generation, to my mod line and owner line, and to everyone who served under my leadership. You were part of the foundation upon which we built our army, and I will always cherish the memories we made together. Thank you, too, to our rival armies, against whom we fought countless battles. Competition gave our victories meaning, our defeats lessons, and our history much of its excitement. To the leaders and legends of CPA who inspired me, challenged me, and taught me valuable lessons along the way: thank you for helping shape the person and administrator I became.

Thank you, Cookky, my brother, for creating EGCP with me and for building a family alongside me. What began as an idea became one of the most meaningful chapters of our lives. We grew up together through that journey, and no matter how its story ended, what we built and experienced will always belong to us.

Thank you, Bobs, Lass, and Guta, for being among my closest friends throughout these years. Thank you for the loyalty, the conversations, the laughter, and the countless moments that made this community feel like home. Thank you, Cobra, my American brother, for everything we went through together in CPA. Through all the good and bad moments, the ridiculous situations, and the challenges that tested us, I am grateful that our paths crossed.

Thank you, Ana, my Latina sister, for being there when I needed your advice the most, and for all those wonderful nights spent playing, talking, and chatting until far too late. Thank you, Eden, the craziest person I have ever met in CPA. Even though we are no longer as close as we once were, you remain a friend I cherish deeply. Some friendships change with time, but that does not mean their memories lose their worth.

Thank you, Aaron and Dino, for the partnership and friendship we developed after my return in 2023. I am grateful for everything we accomplished together and for the trust we built along the way.

Thank you, Coolguy, Mare, Mchappy, Wynn, DMT, Super, and Orange, for entrusting me with the responsibility of becoming an administrator and giving me the opportunity to prove myself in CPA. I will always be grateful that you allowed me to turn years of ambition, work, and experience into something that could serve the community.

To my beloved department heads, every single one of you who worked under my administration, and to our hardworking staff members: thank you for being the life and soul of this organization. Your dedication, creativity, and willingness to work toward a shared mission made everything we accomplished possible. Without you, CPA would be little more than a name and a collection of rules. You gave it life. You gave it purpose. You made the work worthwhile. Keep working hard, keep building, and keep making me proud!

Thank you, Jojo, for being the best co-administrator I could ever have asked for. We went through so much. LOL. I genuinely do not think I could have administered CPA properly without your presence, ideas, dedication, and support. You stood beside me through some of the most demanding moments of this journey, and you proved yourself to be a fantastic administrator. I am proud of what we built together, and even more grateful that I did not have to carry the burden alone.

Thank you, Kira and df, for accepting the challenge of carrying this institution forward. You are already proving yourselves to be excellent administrators, and I hope you continue to grow into the responsibility entrusted to you. Preserve what deserves to be preserved, improve what needs to be improved, and never be afraid to build something new. Carry on the legacy of the Golden Age. Make it your own, and take CPA further than we ever could.

Thank you, Victoria484, for having loved me and for teaching me what true love is. I deeply regret leaving you, though grateful to have met you.

Thank you, Mom and Dad, for buying me Club Penguin merchandise, taking an interest in my childhood, and never discouraging me from playing the game I loved so much. You could not have known how far that little penguin would take me, or how many years later I would still be writing about the experiences that began with it. Thank you for allowing that part of my childhood to flourish.

And, above all, thank You, Jesus Christ, for guiding me throughout this journey. Looking back, I cannot regard this path as a mere accident. Through the friendships, the opportunities, the disappointments, the mistakes, the victories, and even the painful endings, I can recognize Your hand at work in my life. You allowed me to experience things I could never have anticipated, to meet people who would leave lasting marks on my heart, and to learn lessons that extended far beyond the boundaries of a virtual world. You accompanied me when I was a child who knew very little about life, when I was a teenager discovering my ambitions, and when I became a young man learning sometimes painfully what it means to be responsible for others. You allowed me to fail, to begin again, to recognize my weaknesses, and to grow. And through it all, You were shaping me into the man I am today. I do not know everything You have in store for me, nor can I yet understand the full meaning of every experience. But I trust that this chapter, too, belongs to the story You are writing in my life. I offer You the memories, the friendships, the work, the joys, the regrets, and everything I have learned. May whatever good came from this journey bear fruit beyond it.

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For years, CPA was one of the principal stages of my life. I devoted countless hours to it, cried and sacrificed sleep for it, celebrated its victories, worried about its future, and allowed its problems to occupy my thoughts long after I had closed my browser. Sometimes I loved the work. Sometimes I hated it. Often, I experienced both feelings on the same day. But I cared, and that care gave meaning to the time I invested.

Now I must allow that chapter to end.

The virtual world was never merely virtual in its consequences. The friendships were real, the lessons were real, the mistakes were real, and the growth was real. The screen was the setting, but the person learning, failing, laughing, and changing was always me.

I hope CPA continues to grow. I hope its administrators build upon what we accomplished, improve what we left unfinished, and discover opportunities we never imagined. I hope the new judging organization helps establish better standards for warfare. I hope the people who remain find as much joy, friendship, and meaning in the community as I once did. And I hope that those who remember my administration remember not only the controversies or the titles, not only the battles won or the projects launched, but also the effort behind them. We tried to build something better. We made mistakes, learned from them, endured opposition, and continued working. We did not always succeed, but we did not give up easily. For that, I am proud.

I began this journey as a child who wanted to play a game. I leave it as an adult who has learned a little more about work, friendship, responsibility, ambition, and himself. Between those two moments lies an entire symphony. I would not exchange that journey for a perfect one. It was mine, with all its imperfections. And now, at last, I can let the orchestra rest.

For every person who shared this stage with me, every friend who stood beside me, every rival who challenged me, every reader who followed my work, and every person whose life briefly intersected with mine: thank you for the music.

Now, I finish this letter already in my new home, unpacking, and building the next chapter of my life. I am leaving with gratitude, with lessons I will carry for the rest of my life, and with the quiet satisfaction of knowing that I gave this chapter a great deal of myself. Thank you for the battles, the friendships, the arguments, the laughter, the trust, the opportunities, and the memories. Thank you for allowing a little boy who once called himself Edu14463 to become part of something much larger than he could have imagined. After all, I will forever be Edu14463.

The music will continue, even if I am no longer conducting. And somewhere, in a little corner of the internet, a penguin will always remember the way home. As I loved to say when I finished my posts: Um abraço gelado e… Pinguinando! (A cool hug and… Waddle on!)

Fin

Edu14463
Former Chief Executive Producer

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