Demosquid

"You can leave the server. Your items can't." — Demosquid before reducing a Soldier's loadout to scrap metal

Demosquid
Origin
Creator	An unidentified F2P
Creation	Unknown
Debut	Unknown
Characteristics
Type	MetahumanGame anomaly
Alignment	Chaotic Neutral
Attitude	Vengeful, unstable, mocking
Fighting style	Close-rangeReality warping
Abilities	Client crashingItem-server manipulationInventory corruptionCosmetic assimilationStalemate enforcementLoser-state immunitySuperhuman strength
Weaknesses	Emotional instabilityDefault loadoutsItem-server outagesCosmetic overloadBlue Heavy
Status
Status	Alive
Occupation	Former friendlyServer-dwelling boss
Superiors	None
Subordinates	None
Allies	F2PsFriendliesGibus wearers
Enemies	Blue HeavyCompetitive playersItem collectors

Demosquid is a RED Demoman TF2 Freak accidentally created by an unidentified free-to-play player on a Demoman achievement server.

He was brought to life when the player, overwhelmed by a large number of unfamiliar items received through a server's !giveallitems command, hurriedly combined three mismatched cosmetics into a Demoman loadout. The only item the player considered valuable was the Voodoo-Cursed Demoman Soul. The other two cosmetics were selected almost at random, producing a misshapen, squid-like appearance. Much like Frosty the Snowman being brought to life by an ordinary hat, the combination of the cursed soul, the badly assembled loadout and the player's intense excitement somehow awakened the Demoman wearing them. At first, Demosquid was harmless. He behaved like an ordinary friendly player, spent most of his time around other F2Ps and rarely attacked anyone who did not attack him first. This changed after he witnessed a six-player competitive party destroy an entire team of friendlies on 2Fort. Demosquid survived by hiding in the water beneath the bridge while his teammates, including his closest friend, were killed repeatedly. The helplessness and humiliation of the event transformed him into a powerful server anomaly capable of crashing clients, corrupting inventories and interfering directly with the item servers. For a time, Demosquid was considered the most powerful boss haunting the servers in his region. His reign ended only after the arrival of Blue Heavy, one of the few beings apparently capable of resisting his control over the game.

Appearance[]

Demosquid is a RED Demoman wearing a badly coordinated three-cosmetic loadout built around the Voodoo-Cursed Demoman Soul. The cursed soul gives much of his exposed body a decayed appearance, while the other cosmetics overlap with it in ways that make his head resemble the body of a squid or some other malformed sea creature. The exact identities of the other two cosmetics have never been consistently documented. Some witnesses have described them as worthless achievement-server clutter, while others claim that at least one of them was not normally compatible with the Demoman. Attempts to recreate the loadout through ordinary means have generally failed, suggesting that Demosquid's appearance is not produced entirely through legitimate cosmetic equipment. His cosmetics frequently clip through one another. Portions of his head may disappear into the surrounding models, only to emerge again when he turns. The clipping does not remain consistent between observers. One player may see a cosmetic passing through his eye socket while another sees it hanging several inches away from his body. Screenshots taken at the same moment have occasionally shown completely different arrangements. The Voodoo-Cursed Demoman Soul remains the most stable part of his body. The cosmetic appears to have fused with the Demoman underneath it, making it difficult to determine where the item ends and Demosquid himself begins. Removing it through loadout commands has no lasting effect. The soul either returns immediately or leaves behind a dark, empty Demoman model which continues moving without it. When calm, Demosquid usually stands with the relaxed posture of a friendly player. He frequently crouches, looks upward at nearby players and swings his melee weapon without making contact. His movements become increasingly unnatural when he is angered. His limbs may skip between animation frames, his head may rotate independently from his body and his model sometimes remains completely still while sliding across the ground. Immediately before crashing a player's game, Demosquid's face freezes into a wide grin. His body then begins rapidly cycling through incompatible animations. Witnesses have reported seeing him taunt, reload, drown, explode and perform the loser animation simultaneously. The cosmetics multiply across his model until the victim's screen is almost entirely obstructed by them. Demosquid rarely carries a consistent weapon. He most often appears with stock Demoman equipment, although he can seemingly replace his weapons with any item currently registered on the server. Weapons taken from other classes frequently appear in his hands with incorrect animations. He has been seen wielding rocket launchers, flamethrowers, sniper rifles, construction PDAs and several melee weapons at the same time.

Biography[]

Creation[]

Demosquid's creation occurred on an otherwise unremarkable Demoman achievement server. The server advertised instant achievements, free items and access to a !giveallitems command. It was populated largely by new players who were attempting to obtain weapons and cosmetics without understanding how the server's item system worked. Among them was an unnamed F2P who had only recently begun playing Demoman. After entering the command, the player's inventory was flooded with weapons, promotional items, achievement rewards and temporary server-granted cosmetics. The player had never seen most of them before and believed that the items might disappear if they were not equipped immediately. The Voodoo-Cursed Demoman Soul was the only cosmetic that appeared valuable to him. Fascinated by its appearance, the player equipped it and then began rapidly selecting other cosmetics in an attempt to complete the set. Rather than considering whether the items matched, he chose whichever icons appeared first in the loadout menu. Three cosmetics were forced onto the Demoman at almost the same moment. The resulting loadout looked terrible. Models intersected with one another, textures overlapped and the Demoman's head was almost completely hidden beneath the combined shapes. The player nevertheless found the result amusing. The malformed silhouette reminded him of a squid, so he renamed the loadout—or possibly the Demoman himself—Demosquid. The player then returned to the game. For several seconds, the Demoman remained motionless in the spawn room. His player had not yet regained control and assumed that the game had frozen. The Demoman then looked directly toward the player's viewpoint and laughed without receiving any input. The player disconnected immediately. Demosquid remained on the server. It is believed that several factors contributed to his awakening. The Voodoo-Cursed Demoman Soul provided the body with something resembling a trapped spirit. The achievement server's modified item system allowed incompatible cosmetic data to remain attached to that body. Finally, the player's panic, fascination and excitement supplied the raw emotional force needed to animate it. None of these elements would have been sufficient alone. Together, they created a Freak.

Early life[]

Demosquid's first days were peaceful. Although he had become independent from his player, he retained much of the player's inexperienced and friendly disposition. He did not understand the objective of most maps and showed little interest in winning rounds. He followed other players through the server, copied their movements and crouched whenever someone crouched in front of him. He was especially attracted to players wearing the Ghostly Gibus, Pyrovision Goggles and other easily obtained items. Expensive loadouts seemed to confuse him, while familiar achievement items made him visibly more comfortable. Demosquid spent much of his time on 2Fort. He preferred the bridge, the sewers and the area immediately outside RED spawn. He would sit in the water for long periods, occasionally surfacing to watch players cross above him. During this period, he became part of a loose group of friendlies. Most of them were new players wearing Gibuses, free promotional cosmetics or items acquired from achievement servers. Several carried Giftapult-related items or repeatedly attempted to give weapons to one another. Their loadouts were poorly coordinated, their movement was clumsy and few of them understood the map well enough to reach the enemy intelligence. Demosquid fit among them without difficulty. His closest companion was a RED Pyro who had also used !giveallitems. The Pyro carried a Powerjack and wore a helmet that he believed to be extremely rare, despite it being another temporary or freely granted item. He repeatedly showed the weapon to Demosquid by switching to it and swinging at the walls. Demosquid copied the behavior with whatever melee weapon he happened to be carrying. The two spent entire rounds hitting walls, crouching beside dispensers and attempting to climb onto objects that could not be reached. The Pyro was one of the few players who never reacted negatively to Demosquid's appearance. While other players called the loadout ugly or demanded that he remove it, the Pyro treated it as though it were the finest cosmetic set in the game. Demosquid came to regard him as a friend.

The 2Fort massacre[]

The event that transformed Demosquid began when a six-player competitive party joined the 2Fort server. The group consisted of experienced players coordinating through voice communication. Their exact classes changed throughout the match, although their leader primarily played Soldier. The party did not join to complete the objective. They entered with the intention of dominating the server and driving out its weaker players. At first, the friendlies attempted to ignore them. Several remained in the RED courtyard while others gathered near the bridge. A few approached the BLU players while crouching and holding melee weapons, apparently expecting that the usual friendly behavior would be respected. The competitive party opened fire. A Kritzkrieg-boosted Soldier fired into the group from the bridge. The first critical rocket struck near Demosquid's Pyro companion. The explosion killed the Pyro instantly and scattered his gibs across the entrance to the RED base. His Powerjack landed in the water. The remaining friendlies were destroyed moments later. Australium Sniper Rifles covered the battlements while Soldiers fired into the courtyard and sewer exits. Players wearing Gibuses were killed before they could leave spawn. Those who attempted to fight back were juggled by rockets, headshot in midair and mocked through voice and text chat. The RED team became trapped inside its own base. Demosquid had been standing in the water beneath the bridge when the attack began. The first explosion threw him below the surface. Rather than climbing back out, he retreated into the 2Fort sewer system and hid near one of the submerged corners. From there, he watched the names of his teammates repeatedly appear in the kill feed. He heard the Pyro respawn, leave the base and die again. He heard the sound of critical rockets passing over the water. Every attempt by the friendlies to return to the bridge ended in another series of explosions. The massacre continued through several rounds. Demosquid did nothing. His original friendly disposition prevented him from attacking without provocation, but his fear prevented him from confronting the players who had clearly provoked him. He remained underwater while the rest of his team was humiliated. Eventually, the Pyro stopped respawning. Whether the player disconnected willingly or was forced out by repeated deaths is unknown. To Demosquid, however, the disappearance looked final. His friend had been killed, stripped from the scoreboard and removed from the world. The Powerjack remained at the bottom of the water for several seconds before fading away. Something inside Demosquid broke.

The eternal stalemate[]

The competitive party captured the RED intelligence twice and prepared to complete the third capture. As the BLU Scout carrying the intelligence entered the final corridor, the match timer stopped. At first, the players assumed the server had lagged. Movement continued normally, but the round no longer progressed. The capture zone refused to recognize the BLU Scout, even when he stood directly on it. The intelligence could not be dropped. The Scout attempted to killbind. His character died, but the intelligence remained attached to the corpse. When he respawned, it was still fixed to his back. Switching classes caused the briefcase to appear on the new class as well. The administrator attempted to restart the round. The server announced that the round would restart in five seconds, but the countdown remained at five indefinitely. Demosquid emerged from the water. Every player on RED was dead at that moment. Under normal conditions, the team should have entered the humiliation state. RED players would have lost access to their weapons and been forced into the loser animation while BLU finished them. Demosquid did not. The game attempted to place him in the loser state, but his body rejected the command. His weapons remained active. His movement speed did not change. The humiliation animation briefly appeared across his model before bending backward and disappearing into the overlapping cosmetics. The announcer declared a stalemate. No new round began. Demosquid walked across the bridge toward the BLU base. The competitive players fired at him from the battlements. Rockets and bullets passed through his body without producing damage indicators. Several attacks struck him directly, but the server refused to acknowledge that he had been hit. He did not charge, sprint or use a shield. He simply walked. The BLU players began retreating before he reached the entrance.

The inventory slaughter[]

Demosquid encountered the party leader in the BLU courtyard. The Soldier was wearing an expensive unusual and carrying a Strange Professional Killstreak Original. The Soldier fired at close range. Demosquid caught the rocket in one hand. Rather than exploding, the projectile opened into a loadout menu. Demosquid reached inside it, pulled out the Soldier's unusual effect and crushed it between his fingers. The particles vanished from the Soldier's hat. The Soldier attempted to switch weapons. His shotgun disappeared. His melee weapon disappeared immediately afterward. When he opened his loadout menu, every slot displayed the default placeholder image. Demosquid grabbed the unusual itself and tore it away from the Soldier's head. Unlike an ordinary cosmetic, the hat appeared to resist. Portions of the Soldier's model stretched upward with it, as though the item had become physically attached to his skull. When Demosquid finally pulled it free, the cosmetic broke into several low-value crafting items. The pieces fell to the floor and dissolved before the Soldier could collect them. The other members of the party watched from the surrounding exits. Some fired at Demosquid. Others opened the console and attempted to disconnect. Their commands did not work. Typing disconnect caused the console to print Demosquid's laughter. Using the menu returned them to the same match. Closing the game caused it to reopen on the same server. One player shut down his computer. The monitor turned black for several seconds before displaying the match again, despite the computer no longer appearing to have power. Demosquid moved through the party one player at a time. He tore unusual effects from hats and stretched them until the particles separated into individual squares. He snapped Australium weapons across his knee, causing the gold finish to drain from them like liquid. Strange counters were ripped from weapons and forced back to zero. Professional Killstreak sheens became dull grey stains before disappearing completely. Items did not merely vanish from the players' current loadouts. They disappeared from their backpacks, Steam inventories and item histories. Trade records led to blank spaces. Screenshots containing the items became corrupted. In several cases, players who had previously owned the deleted items could no longer remember their names. The party leader was saved for last. Demosquid forced the Soldier to remain conscious while every cosmetic was removed from his model. He then took the Strange Professional Killstreak Original and compressed it between both hands. The quality changed first. Professional Killstreak became Specialized Killstreak. Specialized became basic Killstreak. Strange became Unique. The weapon then lost its name, description, kill count and item history. The Original collapsed into a single piece of Scrap Metal. Demosquid placed the scrap in the Soldier's inventory. The Soldier attempted to unplug his computer. The power cable was removed, the computer's lights switched off and its fans stopped spinning. The monitor remained illuminated. Demosquid leaned toward the screen and laughed. Only after the Soldier acknowledged the piece of Scrap Metal did the computer finally shut down.

Aftermath[]

The 2Fort server never recovered properly. It remained trapped in a stalemate for several days. Restarting the machine changed nothing. Reinstalling the server produced the same map, same score and same unmoving timer. Demosquid remained in the water beneath the bridge. Players who connected during this period entered as spectators. They could not select a team, but they could watch Demosquid wandering through the abandoned map. The server list showed thirty-three players even when only one person was connected. Eventually, the server disappeared from the browser. Its address continued responding to connection attempts, but every client that reached it crashed before loading the map. Some players reported hearing Demosquid's laugh through their desktop after the game closed. Demosquid began appearing on other servers shortly afterward. He usually entered without producing a connection message. His name appeared on the scoreboard only after someone noticed him. Player counts frequently exceeded the server limit while he was present. His behavior toward ordinary players remained inconsistent. Demosquid often protected F2Ps and friendlies from coordinated teams, cheaters and spawn campers. He would stand between new players and incoming fire, absorb attacks and then remove the aggressor from the server. This protection was not entirely benevolent. Demosquid had begun associating expensive items with the players who killed his friends. Unusual effects, Australium weapons and large collections of Strange items could attract his attention even when their owners had done nothing wrong. A player wearing a costly loadout might find Demosquid standing behind him without warning. If the player remained calm, crouched or switched to a default weapon, Demosquid sometimes lost interest. If the player attacked, taunted or attempted to inspect Demosquid's cosmetics, the encounter usually ended with an inventory corruption or client crash.

Reign as a server boss[]

Over time, Demosquid became more powerful. Every corrupted item appeared to add something to his body. Unusual particles flickered beneath his skin. Killstreak sheens moved across his bones. Weapon sounds played from inside his cosmetics even when he was unarmed. He began taking control of entire matches. Rounds ended when he wanted them to end. Teams were scrambled according to rules only he understood. Players who targeted friendlies found themselves permanently assigned to the losing team, while new players were granted impossible critical hits or temporary immunity. Server administrators proved largely ineffective against him. Kick commands removed unrelated players. Ban commands added the administrator's own account to the ban list. Slaying Demosquid created additional copies of him at every spawn point. Some communities began treating him as a roaming boss. Players would remove expensive cosmetics before joining servers where he had been sighted. Others deliberately equipped Gibuses and stock weapons in the hope that he would protect them. For a time, Demosquid was known as the ultimate boss around those servers. Even other Freaks avoided fighting him within a functioning game, as destroying his physical body did not prevent him from attacking through the interface or item system. His dominance ended with the arrival of Blue Heavy.

The arrival of Blue Heavy[]

Blue Heavy entered one of Demosquid's controlled servers without appearing in the connection log. Unlike ordinary players, Blue Heavy did not receive a Steam identifier, ping or score. His name occupied a space beneath the bottom of the scoreboard. Demosquid immediately attempted to inspect his inventory. There was nothing there. Blue Heavy's weapons existed physically in the game but were not registered with the item server. His model contained no removable cosmetics, no quality values and no conventional loadout data. Demosquid could not grab or corrupt anything attached to him. Their first confrontation ended without a clear victor. Demosquid forced the server into a stalemate, but Blue Heavy continued capturing objectives. Demosquid disabled the loser state, only for Blue Heavy to place him into a unique humiliation animation not recognized by the game. When Demosquid attempted to crash his client, Blue Heavy looked directly at him and laughed back. The server then crashed around both of them. Demosquid reappeared several weeks later, but his behavior had changed. He no longer remained in one place long enough to establish complete control. He avoided servers where Blue Heavy had been seen and became violent whenever anyone mentioned the Heavy's name. Although Demosquid retained most of his abilities, he was no longer regarded as the uncontested ruler of the region. Blue Heavy had demonstrated that entities could exist outside the systems Demosquid controlled. The rivalry continues. Neither has permanently destroyed the other.

Personality and Behaviour[]

Demosquid's personality is divided between the friendly Demoman he originally was and the vengeful anomaly created during the 2Fort massacre. When he is calm, Demosquid retains many habits from his early life. He crouches repeatedly, follows players without attacking and responds positively to simple gestures. Players wearing Gibuses or using stock weapons are usually treated with curiosity rather than hostility. He is particularly protective of inexperienced players. He may guide them toward objectives, block enemy fire or provide them with weapons they have not unlocked. These weapons usually disappear when the player disconnects and occasionally possess impossible attributes while Demosquid is nearby. Demosquid appears to understand very little spoken language, but he recognizes certain words and concepts. References to friendlies, gifts, Pyros and Powerjacks generally calm him. References to competitive play, unusual trading or domination tend to anger him. His hatred of competitive players is not based on skill alone. Demosquid does not automatically attack someone for aiming well or coordinating with teammates. He becomes hostile when skilled players use their advantage to humiliate weaker teams, prolong spawn camps or deliberately target friendlies. Unfortunately, his judgement is unreliable. A harmless player wearing an unusual may be mistaken for one of the attackers from 2Fort. A Soldier firing an ordinary rocket may trigger the memory of the Kritzkrieg attack. Once this association is made, Demosquid rarely stops to reconsider. Demosquid does not value items in the same way ordinary players do. To him, cosmetics are pieces of identity that can be removed, damaged or rearranged. He understands that players care about them and deliberately destroys expensive items because of the emotional harm it causes. He is especially fascinated by unusual effects. Rather than immediately deleting them, he often pulls the particles apart and studies them. Some effects are stored inside his body and later appear around his cosmetics in distorted forms. His laughter is one of his most recognizable traits. Demosquid laughs when confused, entertained or angry. The same laugh often plays immediately before a client crash. It may continue after the game has closed, becoming quieter each time it repeats. Demosquid rarely speaks in complete sentences. When he does, his words usually appear through several systems simultaneously. A sentence may begin in voice chat, continue in the text chat and finish in the console. Some messages appear as item descriptions or error windows. He remains deeply ashamed of hiding during the 2Fort massacre. Any accusation of cowardice produces an immediate violent response. At the same time, he continues returning to the water on 2Fort whenever he is frightened or overwhelmed. Despite his power, Demosquid is still emotionally immature. He reacts to complicated situations as the inexperienced player who created him might have reacted: with panic, fascination, anger and sudden attachment.

Powers and Abilities[]

Demosquid possesses a mixture of physical, supernatural and game-related abilities. Many of these powers depend on the existence of a functioning server, client or item system.

Client crashing[]

Demosquid's best-known ability is causing individual players or entire servers to crash. The exact method varies. He may produce too many cosmetic models for the client to render, force incompatible animations to play simultaneously or fill the screen with malformed unusual particles. In other cases, the crash occurs without any visible warning. A targeted crash is usually preceded by Demosquid looking directly at the victim. Distance and line of sight are not always necessary. Players hiding in spawn or observing through spectator cameras have still been targeted. Closing the game does not necessarily end the attack. Demosquid has caused error messages, console text and laughter to continue appearing on a victim's desktop. During more severe incidents, restarting or unplugging the computer has failed to interrupt the connection immediately. Demosquid can also crash the server itself. This usually occurs when he is losing control of a match or confronting an opponent resistant to his powers. A server destroyed in this manner may remain inaccessible long after it has restarted.

Inventory corruption[]

Demosquid can interact directly with player inventories. He is able to remove equipped items, change item qualities, erase Strange counters and strip Killstreak properties. He can also destroy names, descriptions, paints, spells, unusual effects and other attached attributes. The corruption is sometimes temporary. Minor alterations may disappear after the player reconnects. Items destroyed during a serious attack, however, have been known to vanish from every visible record. Demosquid prefers degrading items rather than deleting them immediately. An expensive weapon may be reduced through several qualities before becoming a basic Unique item. It may then be transformed into crafting material or an ordinary stock weapon. His most infamous use of this ability was turning a Strange Professional Killstreak Original into one piece of Scrap Metal.

Item-server manipulation[]

Demosquid can interfere with the systems responsible for validating and distributing items. He may prevent players from accessing their backpacks, force everyone on a server to use stock loadouts or temporarily grant weapons to F2Ps. During these disruptions, item servers may report that they are unavailable even while functioning normally for players elsewhere. Demosquid can make items exist without valid identification numbers. These objects function in the match but cannot be traded, deleted or viewed outside the server. He can also separate an item's appearance from its underlying data. A Rocket Launcher may behave like a Minigun, a Gibus may emit an unusual effect or a piece of Scrap Metal may occupy a weapon slot. His control becomes weaker when the legitimate item servers are completely unavailable. Without an active connection, he can still manipulate visible models, but permanent inventory damage becomes much more difficult.

Cosmetic assimilation[]

Items destroyed by Demosquid are not always erased. Many are absorbed into his own model. Assimilated cosmetics appear briefly beneath his existing loadout before disappearing into it. Their attributes remain inside him and may be used later. An absorbed unusual can provide particle effects. A Killstreak item can give his body a sheen. Strange counters appear to increase his resistance to attacks, although the number being counted is unknown. The more items Demosquid absorbs, the larger and less stable his cosmetic mass becomes. At extreme levels, dozens of models may flicker around him. This increases his power but also risks crashing Demosquid along with everyone else.

Stalemate enforcement[]

Demosquid can force a match into a stalemate regardless of the objective or current score. Timers stop progressing, capture zones stop responding and intelligence briefcases become impossible to return. Restart commands remain permanently suspended during their countdown. The stalemate usually lasts until Demosquid leaves or is defeated. Killing every player does not resolve it. Changing the map may load another version of the same stalemated match. Demosquid uses this power when he believes a team has won unfairly or when he needs time to punish particular players.

Loser-state immunity[]

Demosquid is immune to the humiliation or loser state applied at the end of a round. He retains his weapons, movement speed and ability to attack. The game may briefly attempt to apply the appropriate animation, but Demosquid's model rejects or distorts it. He can sometimes extend this immunity to nearby players. Friendlies protected by Demosquid have continued fighting after their team lost, while the winning team became trapped in humiliation animations instead.

Session anchoring[]

Once Demosquid selects a player, he can prevent that player from leaving the match. Disconnect commands fail, menu buttons return the player to the same server and closing the game may cause it to reopen. In severe cases, shutting down the computer only removes power from the physical machine while the match remains visible on the monitor. Demosquid cannot maintain this connection forever. He normally releases the player after destroying an item, forcing an apology or completing whatever punishment he has chosen.

Weapon manifestation[]

Demosquid can produce weapons from server or item data. These weapons do not need to belong to the Demoman. He has wielded equipment belonging to every class and can combine their properties in impossible ways. He may pull a weapon directly from another player's loadout, leaving the victim's slot empty. Destroying the manifested weapon sometimes destroys the original item as well. His preferred weapons remain grenade launchers, sticky launchers and melee weapons. He is particularly fond of any Powerjack resembling the one carried by his Pyro friend.

Physical strength[]

Even without manipulating the game, Demosquid possesses strength far beyond that of an ordinary Demoman. He can tear cosmetics and weapons from player models, break Australium weapons apart and crush complex items into crafting metal. He has caught rockets without detonating them and forced open spawn-room doors. His strength appears greatest when handling items. Against living opponents, he is powerful but not invincible.

Damage rejection[]

Demosquid can cause the server to ignore attacks directed at him. Projectiles pass through his body or strike without producing damage. Hitscan weapons fail to register despite visible blood effects. Backstabs may play the correct animation without reducing his health. This protection depends on his control over the server. Opponents existing outside normal server logic, particularly Blue Heavy, can bypass it.

Water concealment[]

Demosquid is unusually difficult to detect while submerged. His name disappears from the scoreboard, spectator cameras lose track of him and tracking commands report that he does not exist. He can remain underwater indefinitely without drowning. This ability developed from the hours he spent hiding beneath 2Fort during the massacre. Water remains both his safest hiding place and a reminder of his greatest shame.

Psychological intimidation[]

Demosquid's reputation alone is often sufficient to empty a server. His laugh can be heard without directional audio and may play at different volumes for every player. Expensive cosmetics sometimes disappear from the loadout preview while he is nearby, even when he has not actually damaged them. Players targeted by him frequently panic and attempt to disconnect, which gives Demosquid greater control over their session. Remaining calm and switching to a simple loadout can occasionally prevent an attack.

Faults and Weaknesses[]

Despite his extensive control over games and inventories, Demosquid is not unbeatable.

• Default equipment: Demosquid has difficulty manipulating players who possess no registered cosmetic or weapon data. Completely stock loadouts give him fewer objects to grab, corrupt or use against their owner.
• Item-server outages: His permanent inventory-altering abilities depend on some connection to the item system. When the item servers are entirely unavailable, Demosquid is limited mainly to visual corruption and physical attacks.
• Cosmetic overload: Absorbing too many items destabilizes his body. Models begin multiplying uncontrollably and may crash the server before he can finish an attack. On rare occasions, Demosquid himself has disappeared during such a crash.
• Emotional instability: Memories of the 2Fort massacre can overwhelm him. The sound of a critical rocket, the sight of a dropped Powerjack or the disappearance of a friendly Pyro may cause him to freeze or retreat into water.
• Poor judgement: Demosquid often confuses expensive equipment with hostile intent. This makes him easy to distract using unusual effects, dropped weapons or deliberately constructed decoy inventories.
• Limited strategic thinking: Although he can control server systems, Demosquid rarely plans beyond immediate revenge. Calm opponents can exploit his fixation on a single player or item.
• Physical vulnerability: When separated from a functioning server, Demosquid's body is tougher than an ordinary Demoman but can still be injured. His game-related defenses cannot reject damage that the game itself does not process.
• Authority conflicts: Other reality-warping Freaks can interfere with his commands. Two entities attempting to control the same server may cause Demosquid's powers to behave unpredictably.
• Blue Heavy: Blue Heavy possesses no conventional inventory data for Demosquid to corrupt. He has resisted client crashing, ignored forced stalemates and harmed Demosquid through his damage rejection.
• The original player: It is theorized that the F2P who created Demosquid could still modify or delete the original loadout. Whether this would weaken him, restore his former personality or destroy him is unknown.

Relationships[]

The F2P[]

The unidentified F2P who assembled Demosquid's cosmetic set is technically his creator. Demosquid appears to retain fragments of the player's personality, including his fascination with unfamiliar items, poor understanding of loadout value and instinctive trust toward other new players. The player disconnected immediately after Demosquid first moved independently. No verified account of what happened afterward exists. Some believe he abandoned Team Fortress 2. Others claim he still possesses the original three-cosmetic loadout but is too frightened to equip it. Demosquid has never openly expressed hatred toward his creator. When shown an empty free-to-play backpack, he sometimes becomes quiet and stops attacking.

The Powerjack Pyro[]

The RED Pyro from the achievement server was Demosquid's closest friend. The Pyro's exact name is unknown. Demosquid appears to remember him primarily through the Powerjack, his server-granted helmet and the friendly crouching behavior they shared. The Pyro's death during the 2Fort massacre triggered Demosquid's transformation. Although the player likely respawned several times and eventually disconnected, Demosquid interpreted his disappearance as a permanent death. He occasionally mistakes other Powerjack-carrying Pyros for his old companion. These players are usually protected from harm, provided they do not attack him.

F2Ps and friendlies[]

Demosquid generally considers F2Ps and friendlies to be under his protection. He is especially tolerant of poorly coordinated cosmetic sets. Ugly loadouts remind him of his own creation and are less likely to provoke his hostility than expensive, carefully assembled outfits. His protection can become controlling. Demosquid may prevent friendlies from leaving, force hostile players onto the opposite team or extend stalemates indefinitely to preserve a peaceful gathering. Friendlies who suddenly begin killing other harmless players are treated as traitors. Demosquid punishes them more severely than openly hostile players.

Competitive players[]

Demosquid despises players who use organized teams to dominate inexperienced public servers. He associates competitive coordination, Kritzkrieg pushes, Australium weapons and aggressive spawn camping with the six-player party responsible for the 2Fort massacre. Not every competitive player is attacked. Those who play normally and avoid humiliating weaker players may be ignored. However, Demosquid's standards are inconsistent and often influenced by his current emotional state.

Item collectors[]

Collectors and traders are frequent targets because their inventories provide Demosquid with large amounts of material. He is fascinated by rare items but does not respect their monetary value. A one-of-a-kind weapon and an ordinary achievement item are equally physical to him. Attempts to bargain with Demosquid using items usually fail. Offering an expensive cosmetic may distract him, but it also risks giving him another object to assimilate.

Blue Heavy[]

Blue Heavy is Demosquid's principal rival and the first known being to break his control over a server. Demosquid fears him, although he attempts to hide this fear through anger. Mentioning Blue Heavy's name may cause nearby interface elements to turn blue or disappear. Blue Heavy's lack of conventional inventory data protects him from Demosquid's most dangerous abilities. Their conflict is therefore fought through direct physical force and competing control over the game world. Demosquid has not accepted his loss of status. He continues gathering corrupted items, possibly in preparation for another confrontation.

Notable Incidents[]

The Scrap Metal Incident[]

The best-known Demosquid encounter remains the destruction of the competitive Soldier's Strange Professional Killstreak Original. According to surviving accounts, the weapon was downgraded one attribute at a time while its owner watched. Every stage appeared in both the player's backpack and the physical model held by Demosquid. After becoming Scrap Metal, the item could not be used for crafting. Its description read only:

You should have stayed friendly.

The scrap disappeared from the inventory several days later.

The Thirty-Third Player[]

A twenty-four-slot server once displayed thirty-three connected players while Demosquid was present. Only twenty-three ordinary players could be located. The remaining ten scoreboard entries all used Demosquid's name but displayed different classes, pings and profile pictures. When an administrator attempted to kick the duplicate entries, ten copies of Demosquid appeared in RED spawn. The server crashed immediately afterward.

The Empty Backpack[]

One player survived an encounter by deleting every tradable item from his loadout and equipping only stock weapons. Demosquid inspected him for nearly five minutes. Unable to find anything valuable to corrupt, he placed a Ghostly Gibus on the player's head and allowed him to leave. The Gibus remained in the player's inventory despite lacking an item identification number.

The Silent 2Fort[]

A 2Fort server was found running with no players, ambient sounds or active timer. Demosquid stood underwater beneath the bridge, facing the location where his Pyro friend's Powerjack had disappeared. He remained there for nine hours. Any player who attacked him was disconnected. Players who sat quietly near the water were allowed to stay.

Trivia[]

Demosquid's name comes from the squid-like silhouette created by his overlapping cosmetics. He does not appear to be biologically related to a squid. The Voodoo-Cursed Demoman Soul was the only item in the original loadout that his creator considered good. Demosquid's other two original cosmetics have never been conclusively identified. He prefers 2Fort over every other map and can apparently enter versions of it that are no longer connected to active servers. Demosquid often hides in the water when frightened, despite being powerful enough to control the entire match. His laugh can sometimes be heard after a player's game has closed. A crash caused by Demosquid does not always generate an ordinary crash log. Some logs contain only repeated Demoman voice lines. He rarely attacks players wearing a Ghostly Gibus unless they attack friendlies first. Demosquid considers badly assembled cosmetic sets more trustworthy than expensive coordinated loadouts. He has been seen attempting to place cosmetics on buildings, projectiles and intelligence briefcases. Items absorbed into his body occasionally produce sounds from their original weapons. His own inventory cannot be opened through ordinary inspection commands. Demosquid does not appear in server connection logs until after another player notices him. He can exceed a server's player limit without occupying an ordinary slot. He becomes visibly angry when someone calls his cosmetics ugly, despite the loadout having been created through random selection. Demosquid has never been observed willingly entering the humiliation pose. During stalemates, his score continues increasing even when no combat is taking place. Some players intentionally wear stock equipment and Gibuses as protection when investigating reported Demosquid sightings. A Powerjack can temporarily distract him. Destroying or removing the weapon in front of him has the opposite effect. It is unknown whether Demosquid understands that his Pyro companion was controlled by a player and may still exist. Demosquid was once considered the ultimate server boss in his region before Blue Heavy appeared. Unlike Demosquid, Blue Heavy apparently possesses no item data that can be corrupted or deleted. Demosquid may still possess the unusual effect taken from the competitive Soldier who led the 2Fort attack. No one has successfully recreated Demosquid by equipping the Voodoo-Cursed Demoman Soul with two random cosmetics. His creation may have required the exact emotional state of the original F2P as well as the achievement server's modified item system. Removing the Voodoo-Cursed Demoman Soul from his model leaves behind an empty Demoman-shaped figure which continues moving. The single piece of Scrap Metal produced during his first major attack is sometimes considered his signature weapon, although he has never been seen carrying it himself.

Notable Videos[]

By the creator of the Freak[]

• No original video has been documented.

By the community[]

• No community appearances have yet been documented.