Tartarus Robotics Group Salt

Tartarus Robotics Group is, much like Team British Robotics, highly suspected of being a parachute account for another ARC member, to have extra robots with which to seek glory without the baggage attached to his original team. It is curious that neither Alex Mantella, nor his imaginary little brother Laz, are ever seen in the same chat at the same time...

Laz, which is definitely a real name for a real human being, and team captain of Tartarus, is notorious for two robots. The first is Hellhound, an impenetrable brick wall that leaves even the U.S Government baffled by how resistant it is to damage. Laz is undoubtedly the master of "zen and the art of brick", due to the insane brickiness of Hellhound. Various people are indeed impressed by the over-brickiness and cheapness of Hellhound, and are at a scramble to either copy it or QQ about it (sometimes both). Nothing if not reliable, it has established the pattern of entering every (and I mean every) tournament as a top four seed and making it to exactly the semifinals. This apparently impresses people enought for any 360 lifter to now be generically known as a 'Hellhound Clone'.

Everything was Hellhound...until Black Dog. It was born of a new initiative by the team's captain to diversify his portfolio a little bit. In recent tournaments, Laz has made efforts to branch out from making fast 360 lifters and quick 2WD wedges, and has begun making fast 360 clamps and quick 2WD drum spinners. According to the entry post of the team's now-notorious drum spinner, Black Dog, "the next best thing after a brick in ARC is a spinner that can pretend to be one!" Truly words of wisdom from the wise. As predicted by many, Laz worked himself into a frothing rage when Black Dog lost its undefeated streak in ROBOTS to an SJW (The Monsterworks' absolutely fucking stupid 'Safe Space'), but it managed to get revenge in the finals, courtesy of pretty much the entire ARC community deciding of Safe Space, "We can't actually let this thing win a title, can we?!"

Since then, the dog has been successfully studded and has gone on to sire a number of pups of various teams, all hoping to benefit from its champion bloodlines. Some have called for the frisky canine to be neutered, though this is summarily unlikely to happen unless Laz does it himself. At this point, most of the ARC community has fallen into a state of 'dull acceptance', in which virtually any new drum spinner is simply labeled a 'Black Dog Clone' and sent on its way. It is estimated that, at the current rate of Black Dog encroachment, 87% of all competing robots will be Black Dog Clones by late 2018, with the remaining 13% being Hellhound Clones.

While Laz is unabashedly proud of this dubious achievement, he also seems to draw enjoyment from the notion that he is a mysterious and unpredictable figure. Indeed, his various avatars seem to have been chosen specifically to leave people confused as to which fandom he belongs to, since that's apparently important on ARC. More likely, it is that the actual person puppeting this fake account keeps forgetting what his backstory was, and has to make up new ones constantly, under the veil of "just doing dank memes" to excuse how unbelievable his lies are. But we can see through those lies, Alex. The fact that this is the longest salt mine entry and it was obviously 100% typed by himself originally before I got here is proof of the strong narcissism that runs in this family's bloodline.

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