The McCandless Clan [MACLA]

u'"Sola nobilitas virtus" NRDS The majority of McCandlesses scattered across the globe can trace some ancestors back to Ulster, and generally the trail ends there. Indeed many McCandlesses have returned to their native shores to pick up the trail, but usually to no avail. When John McCandless began his thirteen-month crime spree, catapulting him to the top of the Amarr Empire\'s \u201cmost wanted\u201d list, the nation was enduring the Great Repression. Failed banks had deprived people of their life\u2019s savings, and the mood of Amarrians was decidedly against financial institutions. Unemployment was so high that capsuleers, forced to leave their homes to search for work elsewhere, lived in POSes. Entire families lived in make-do towers, ships, P.I. Domes or whatever else they could pull together. Many people traveled west, on bad jump-routes, seeking a new life. Amarrians, who had helped to supply the Caldari with food during The Big Caldari vs Gallente Title Fight, were hungry. Their problem wasn\u2019t just a lack of money. Gate camps, throughout the fertile Midwest, had decimated trade. Once-productive asteroid belts were eroding, mining POSes were in foreclosure and miners (migrant or domestic) joined the legions of other workers without jobs. In YC 04, when McCandless was released after serving nine years (of a ten-to-twenty-year sentence) for the botched robbery of a grocer - the Amarr economy was at its Depression-Era low. McCandless, embittered by his long sentence, had a plan. He wanted to free his friends - bank robbers, like Marlessa Blark - who were still behind bars. Gankings and WarDecs, committed by people dubbed \u201cyeggmen\u201d (or \u201cyeggs\u201d) by the press, were becoming a serious problem during \u201cThe Great Crime Wave\u201d of YC07 and 08. It wasn\u2019t just hard times which caused pilots like Salvos Rhoska and Joe Phoenix to consistently relieve banks of other people\u2019s money. Technology was on the side of the criminals. Light Neutron Blasters, imported from the Caldari, were plentiful, but they were only part of a gangster\u2019s arsenal. Getaway ships with new and reliable Type 8 engines - a vastly different travel experience from that of unemployed people forced to walk or use horses to pull their out-of-gas vehicles - were key components of crime scenes. John McCandless and Marlessa Blark also relied on fast ships to keep ahead of "the law." Sometimes McCandless made between 50 and 100 jumps a day as he eluded capture. Big guns, fast ships and relentless travel were the marks of their gang ... until the day when a waiting posse claimed the lives of John and Marlessa. Their ship ended-up with 167 laser holes, John dead and Marlessa injured but in custody. Guns and ships of law-enforcement officials were usually no match for those of Repression-Era gangsters. How could public funds support crime-fighters when the Empire\u2019s economic downturn was mired at near-bottom levels? Those facts favored The McCandless Clan - at least for awhile - when Marlessa "Ma\'Baker" McCandless escaped prison in YC14...'