The characters (in alphabetical order):

CoMik: friend of the cabal, godfather of the anti-cabal. Hasn't really competitively played for a long time, but still commonly listed among the best.
integral: a sad excuse even for a Canadian. One of the original members of the cabal. Many list him among the best ever. Some would see him as rnd's right hand man.
fiero600: a newer player on the site, very nice girl.
JeremyS: a newer player on the site, a quick study. Very vocal, and very insightful.
jpc4p: a fellow UVA Cavaliers fan. Original member of the anti-cabal.
leekstep: original member of the anti-cabal. Loves attention, loves creating conflict. Not many would name him among the best ever, but he knows that really he is the best that ever has been and ever will be, and anyone who disagrees is a PGA cheater.
Mikeypoo: original member of the anti-cabal. A gossip-queen and a prankster among the top players.
montecarlo: original member of the cabal. Hates leekstep with a passion. Loves resolving conflict.
rnd: original godfather of the cabal. kdice's very own Frankenstein's monster (perhaps with CoMik playing the role of Frankenstein?). Very aggressive, very focused and determined, very domineering, the largest type A personality in kdice (he owns the golden ego medal). Also acknowledged by the players as one of the best ever. 3v5 wins come naturally to him. He hates Ryan, because he thinks Ryan doesn't do a good job with the site or the game.
Ryan: the developer and maintainer of the site. kdice is a side project of his, as he is always writing books about toolkit applications and also giving time to other projects of his, such as gpokr. He is known by some as a benevolent developer, as he has been actively listening to the players and how they would like to see the game and the site improved. He is known by others as a shoot-first-ask-questions-later personality, quick to judgment, and oddly silent when asked for reasons as to how/why he made a judgment. (My personal feelings: as someone to whom coding doesnt come very easily, I really respect Ryan for taking the initiative and developing a thriving community based on multiplayer dicewars). Ryan hates rnd, as rnd is quick to disrespect Ryan's work and enjoys pranking around in the community.
Vermont: a debatable member of the cabal, since he hated rnd. Very respected member of the entire community, not just the top players community.
Vohaul: one of the most respected kplayas on the site. If anyone can obtain an honest response to A/S/L, it's this man.
wishbone: original member of the cabal. A firecraker of a personality, can get angered quickly and respond quickly and offensively when he feels offended.

Act I: The First Two Weeks

I had finished December waiting for a 5k game that never happened, so I never had a shot at 1st. January got off to the usual slugging-through-low-tables start (I've never donated money to the site or my wife would be a terror). I jumped up to 3rd at one point, but I never had enough time to play more than a handful of games each day. JeremyS made the startling insight that the game was no longer zero-sum, and therefore whoever played the most would win. That combined with the lower-risk-than-usual tables meant that I realistically didn't have a shot this month. Ho hum. I realized that my two most trustworthy co-players were jpc4p and Vermont. Leek started his standard attacks on me cheating. And he started to attack Vermont too, which I didn't appreciate. He angered us so much that we went to a 10k table to discuss the situation, and it was at that point that I decided never to forgive leek again for all of the mud he had slung my way over the months, and all of the times he has defamed me publicly because of his unfound assumptions. I would PGE him for the rest of the month. Vermont decided he would PGE leek as well, but sadly he didn't have the stamina to continue the PGE for more than a couple days, and finished his month playing 2.5k games. But now it was my time to stop letting leek just walk over me, and to finally make him pay the consequences for all of the actions he had taken against me over the months.

Act II: The Menagerie of Bannings (plethora or cornucopia didn't seem the right word)

On January 18th, I sat down at a 2.5k table, and lost almost 1k points, which I thought was ludicrous. I quickly discovered that Ryan had decided to change the risks at the tables to what they had used to be in previous months. Personally, I was delighted with this change, because a) I like higher-risk, higher-reward situations, since my truce-often-and-early strategy works better then, and 2) I now had a chance to jump up the standings as a result. Vohaul was one of three people who, at the time, were heads above everyone else in points. Vohaul was incensed at the change, since his lead was basically instantaneously shrunk by 50%. A very animated debate broke out between Voh and Ryan about the fairness of the change, and the fight quickly escalated. Mikeypoo, Vermont, and I were all in the audience, and tried to interject whenever possible to keep Voh and Ryan cool-headed. Voh started insisting that he would rather have Ryan reset his points to 0 than play the rest of the month with the higher-risk changes. Mikey, Verms, and I told him a couple times to not say that, since, based on experience, Ryan mutes/bans/resets people when they ask for it, and he is upset. Voh insisted one more time and Bam! Voh had 0 points. Voh left in an outrage. (Ryan gave the points back to Voh about 10 minutes later, and has said that he reset Voh just to show Voh that he was being too dramatic. but Voh didnt come back to the site for a few days due to frustration, and never made a run for 1st after he came back). Later that night, while everyone was discussing the possible effects of the midmonth change, leek offhandedly mentioned that he thought rnd (who had 20,439 points) would now win the month, since the change would only increase the amount of AIM PGAing. rnd realized shortly thereafter that for some reason he could not sit in a game any more. He tried proxying in from a different IP, still couldn't sit. rnd was officially banned from playing. shortly thereafter integral realized that he couldnt sit either, and was officially banned from playing.
rnd never loses. He will never allow anyone to trump him. So he set about looking for a way to get back at Ryan. integral just got bored, and wanted to play. They schemed up a plan with leek to get leek #1 for the month. rnd wanted this to happen so that on February 1st, he could post all over the forums bragging to everyone how he just won another month, and he is still the king of kdice, and basically slapping Ryan in the face. integral leaned more towards seeking revenge on leek (recall that everyone in the cabal was pretty pissed at how leek gained so much fame and popularity for outting the cabal, but then went on to cheating worse than they ever did, and never got blamed for any of it). int wanted to get leek to 1st, and then on January 31st, tank his account all the way down, and laugh as leek watched hopelessly. Regardless of how it would end, they realized that the beginning was to gain leeks trust, and to gain him as many points as possible. leek and I were doing our typical PGEing whenever we sat with each other. But then something changed, and leek started being nicer to me on the tables for a few games. And then I sat at a table with Voh, fiero600, and leek. And then rnd AIMd me. He went on to tell me that he was leekstep. I was like wtf. He said leek had been lending his account out to others he deemed worthy, and that leek was looking for someone to play as him when he went to China. Apparently this was the first game that rnd would play as leekstep and leek was judging his style. rnd told me to PGA him against Voh and fiero, because he thought that they would PGA. I told him ok (this was one of the two games that I AIM PGAd in January). I told rnd that if he helped leek to get a 1st for the month, I would out the fact that rnd was sitting as leek to the community and to Ryan. rnd said not to worry about it, that leek wasnt getting 1st. It was at this point that rnd and int borrowed some friendly people's accounts and PGAd leek from 120k to 220k over a weekend. I grew suspicious that something was going on (none of them included me in this scheming because I was 'acting crazy' this month). But I didn't conclude there was any cheating going on, because, hey, I had my own 75k gain in 3 days. I was upset enough to decide to initiate communication with Ryan. So I decided to email him, basically informing him that I now hate leek, and I am trying to exact revenge on him, and that he needs to understand that leek and rnd are working together, and leek was letting rnd play as leekstep. Ryan responded with, thanks for telling me, I can believe that, but I'm not going to punish leekstep based on what you tell me, because I know you're biased against him. But if you want to take him down, you have my blessing. So, that response felt good, I mean, I had Ryan's ear at least. But there was no way I would have enough time/effort to take leek down, and I didn't expect him to slip up in any obvious way. So I just kept playing my PGE game with him.
But then this one odd game happened with leek. This one night, the monte vs leek PGE teams were wishbone/monte vs. leekstep/cadpilot. wish was getting fired up saying that they were PGAing, but I was like, dude, calm down, they're just playing friendly because cad likes leek, and theres nothing different from that than you liking me and playing friendly towards me. cad would protect leeks small stacks and let them build up, he would even roll attack wish like crazy to keep wish crippled... nothing out of the ordinary really, given the context of the PGE. But hen in the first round of one of the games, cad attacked leek to connect, but the attack was a 1v2. Everybody was laughing at it, except for me, and I was like... wait a sec... where have I seen that 1-die attack happen before? And then I realized I had seen it a couple days before when I saw rnd/int/poo tooling around on a 0 table with the rndaxs account. They had discovered that they could all log in as rndaxs, then sit down at a table, and all three of them could control the account. It was pretty funny looking, because half the time they were cussing each other out, heckling each others' poor rolling skills or strategies, and someone was always mashing the 'End turn' button to force them to skip their turn. But during their playtime, they realized that if two of them happened to command an attack from the same stack on two different territories at the same time, the first attack would roll successfully (an 8v8, say), and then the second attack would register, but there would only be one die left in that territory, so the attack would roll off with only 1-die attacking (a 1v8, say). So then I started to go crazy. There were two people playing as the cadpilot account. It turned out (according to what int told me later) that leekstep was playing as cadpilot, rnd playing as leekstep, and someone else (probably cad) was logged into the cadpilot account at the same time. The two people logged in and playing as cad clicked an attack from one territory into two different ones, and the 1-die attack happened. I emailed Ryan back excitedly, because I thought I had found my damnable proof that leek was cheating. I also explained to Ryan that my primary mission for the month wasn't to get 1st, but to take down leekstep. However, Ryan did not respond for a few days.
And then, on the morning of the 29th (I forget the exact date), I woke up to find that the leekstep account, which I had last seen at 220k+ points, was nowhere in the top 25. I looked him up, and found he had 20,439, which happened to be the exact number of points that rnd had been banned at. I checked the forums, and there was some chatter going around about it. Regardless of why it happened, I was jubilant on my way into work that day. Leekstep had been taken down (perhaps due to me?), and now a noncheater was going to win the month. When I got to work, I tracked down Linch, fin, kam, das, and offered them all good luck in the last couple of days. We were all quite happy with the situation. Then I started trying to track down the story of why leek got banned. Turns out that rnd had a change in heart somewhere along the way, and decided he wanted to take out his revenge on leek instead of take it out on Ryan. So rnd had logged in as leek late the night before, found Ryan in a chatbox, and then derided Ryan nonstop, proving to Ryan that, indeed, it was rnd behind the leekstep account, and he bugged Ryan enough until Ryan decided, BOOM, leekstep account gets knocked down to 20,439 (but not banned apparently). At this point leekstep started going crazy in the forums accusing everyone of every kind of cheating, and admitting to nothing of all of the cheating he had pulled off under his account so far in January.

Act III: January 31st

As of 11pm, January 30th, when I was going to bed, I had 180k points. Linch had made a good run that day, and was sitting at 208k, which I didn't think was completely out of reach. I wasn't able to play on the 30th due to meetings all day long at work. So I had about 24 hours to catch Linch. I found that I couldn't go to sleep that night (you know it's bad when kdice keeps you from sleeping), and my wife and I have a policy that if I can't sleep, I'm allowed to go downstairs and play. So I logged on at 11pm, and decided I would try to get to 190k. Things started going my way. I had a string of luckier-than-average starts, and lots of people were playing nice with me. I hit 190k around 3:30 or 4am. Then I thought, hell, I'll play a little longer. I had 200k by 5:30am. And then Linch logged on. We got to play a series of 3 or 4 games together before I absolutely had to stop and sleep for a bit. Honestly, it's not that I outplayed Linch. I just got luckier starting positions. nexon was there playing with us as well, and he started throwing his support behind Linch (I don't mind that type of play at all, I understand that nex and Linch have been friends for a long time in kdice, and nex wanted his good buddy to get 1st). Still, my lucky starts were too... lucky, and I ended up at 208k after those matches, and Linch was around 202k. Then I slept for a few hours. I got into work around 11am, and started playing again around the same time that Linch started playing again. The forums were going completely insane with leek rhetoric, and at that point, integral IM'd me, and proceeded to explain to me exactly how he and rnd had collaborated with leekstep throughtout the month. I felt amazingly vindicated. It turned out that the 1-die attack had indeed been caused by two people playing as the cadpilot account (there had been another 1-die attack later on from the leekstep account, as well). I told int, dude, you gotta shut leek up in the forums, since he spouting all this 'I'm innocent and everyone else is guilty' shit all over the place, so int posted some of his chatlogs with leek in the forums to shut leek up (thanks, int). I continued to play nonstop until 3:30pm-ish. I gained points like crazy, due to two reasons that I can think of: 1) I had people coming out of the woodwork, old friends and new 10k-ers, who decided that they did not want to attack me (and this meshed really well with my truce-early-and-often style of play). I guess at the end of the month, everyone has made their decision as to whom they would like to see win the month... and it appeared a lot of people wanted me to win January. 2) I had one of my luckiest days of starts all month. I always had a strong base to operate out of. At this point, people started congratulating me, but I was like, hold the phone, honestly I don't know if it will hold up... not because I thought Linch could catch me, but because I hadn't heard anything from Ryan yet. And there was a distinct possibility he wouldn't he happy with me winning the same month that rnd/int/leek got banned. Even I could see how easily that could be interpreted as collusion. And then, at 3:30pm on the 31st, I got an email from Ryan. "What are you doing? Please do not win this month... it will look very very bad." Uh oh. I started frenziedly typing a long email back to him explaining 1) everything that I had learned from int about leek and the leekstep account, and 2) explaining how insanely my day was going so far, and pleading to him that I had not cheated all day, and only twice this month (which I had already told him previously). Before I could finish typing him that email, he sent me another one, giving me two options, neither of which involved a 1st for the month. Option 1 involved tanking out of the top 3 to prove that the cabal is dead, and option 2 was to make Ryan recalculate everyone's points using his PGA-sniffing calculations and subtracting all points gained when sitting with your apparent PGAs. I decided I didn't like the second idea (I think everyone will always have their respective groups of more trustworthy friends), and opted for the 1st. I asked him how far I should tank down, and told him that I had a rec league basketball game, and that I wouldn't be able to tank until I got back from that later that night. I found Linch at a table, and told him congrats that 1st was his. And asked him if he could get to 231k+ (he was currently at 225k). He said yes. Then I went and our team kicked ass in basketball, and that was very therapeutic.
Ryan had emailed me back and told me he would be fine with just letting Linch pass me, and I could keep 2nd. I told him that when I thought about it all, I remembered that my primary mission this month was to expose leek as the cheater he is, and my secondary goal was to get 1st. So really, I wasn't that upset about having to take 2nd, because leek had been exposed and my primary mission was accomplished. As a final inside joke for some old friends of the cabal, I decided I wanted to end the month with 231,337 points (das had finished November with 21,337 = 2 LEET, and I wanted to be fun and do the same, except 231,337 = 2 ELEET). Sadly (for me), this process took 1.5 hours, during which my wife got absolutely pissed that I was not going to sleep with her (yes, this is the same wife that is 10-weeks pregnant with our first kid). So, at 11:45pm, I finally got 231,337. In the meantime, leek had gone bipolar again and had threatened Ryan about stuff. Leek had also IM'd me and told me not to tank, that I deserved 1st more than Linch. But really, leek is just crazy. Anyways, everybody ended up happy (excluding leek, ofc). I had brought some measure of peace between Ryan and the old caballers.

Epilogue: From Russia with Love

To use a perhaps abstract and perhaps offensive movie reference, I feel like Sean Connery as Captain Ramius in Tom Clancy's Red October. In that story, Ramius has decided which side he wants to be on (the Americans), and defects from the Soviets. In the final battle, he successfully evacuates his crew and tricks them into thinking that he has nobly gone down with the Soviet sub. Only the Soviet and American military leaders truly know what has happened. I feel that, in my story of January, the Soviets are played by rnd/leek/maybe int. The American is Ryan. And all of the other unknowing people are the crew that naively thinks their side has won, but really doesn't know the whole story. And I am Ramius, who is just trying to do what I think is the right thing (leaving the old cabal ways and supporting Ryan). And I apologize as I have heard that these Tom Clancy movies are naively extremely offensive to Russians since they paint such a pro-USA picture (sorry to Kamikaze Mike, Linch, and any other Russians I've had the pleasure of playing with).
So who 'deserved' 1st in January? I agree with Ryan's logic. If anything, I deserve to get banned for all of my past offenses from May-July (the heyday of the cabal). So, if anything, having to tank from 1st to 2nd for a single month is a very minor punishment, and I accept it willingly. From everyone remaining (Linch, kam, fin, das), I think all of them deserved to win, it's just that Linch had the better streak of luck at the end. Linch is a good guy, and so are the rest on that list. I'm just happy that a blatant cheater (leek) didn't get the 1st, and instead got exposed for the cheater that he was in January. Any month where a non-cheater wins is a successful month in my book.

(roll credits)