Canteen

In 2012, a surprising thing happened. Not only did the world not end as predicted, but Valve spontaneously added a player-versus-enemy mode to Team Fortress 2.

It was called Mann VS Machine, and it was rather interesting in that nobody really saw it coming. For five years prior to that, Team Fortress 2 had predominantly been a 12-vs-12 multiplayer game. With almost no warning, we were suddenly introduced to an almost entirely new game where six players had to work together to fend off hundreds and hundreds of robots. At release, there was no enemy list, no class suggestions, and no strategy guide. The only way to discover the new gamemode was to assemble a team and delve right in.

That was the other thing that was notable about Mann VS Machine. You needed a team of six people. You couldn’t do it with just five. And not only that, but your six people generally needed to fill different roles and work together like a well-oiled machine.

When the gamemode first came out, I tried playing it with a lot of different friends - usually whoever was online, or whoever wanted to come. In time, though, I began to gravitate toward one group in particular. The six of us made a decent team, and this sort of silent agreement formed between us: every time new maps came out, we’d play them together. They became my “core” Mann VS Machine group.

The Engineer and Sniper were two friends I had known since middleschool. It was pretty common for the three of us to play games together, so they were pretty much a shoe-in for any core group.

The Soldier and Heavy were two Prequel fans who had been following me into public TF2 games for the last few months. I hadn’t known them for long, but I knew they liked Team Fortress 2 and were able to play pretty much any class that was needed.

And then, there was the Pyro.

I didn’t actually know the Pyro that well. He must have added me on Steam at some point, since he was on my friends list, but he had never communicated with me beyond that. One day, when we needed a sixth player for a Mann VS Machine match, I picked a random name off the top bits of my alphabetical friends list: “Frosath”. I asked him if he wanted to join, he responded “sure why not”. And that was how I met the Pyro.

Something was different about the Pyro. You see, in a Mann VS Machine mission players get credits that they can spend on either passive character upgrades or expendable, one-time-use “canteens” that give a temporary effect like invincibility, critical hits, or an ammo refill. Personally, I’ve never been big on canteens - the notion of an expendable item that can only be used once doesn’t sit well with me, and like spell scrolls in an Elder Scrolls game I tend to horde them forever “just in case”. Frosath, though, had a different tactic: he constantly used invincibility canteens.

When facing a large enemy, he’d slam on an invincibility canteen and fight them solo. When faced with a large group, he’d slam on an invincibility canteen and charge straight in. When the attackers’ bomb was near a pit, he’d slam on an invincibility canteen to ensure he could safely push it in. He’d go through dozens of these expensive canteens, throwing them away at any moment that he might need a little invincibility. And yet, it worked amazingly well.

The rest of us started calling it “Frosathing”. Like, this practice of just saying “fuck it” to long-term passive defense upgrades and pouring everything into canteens. I never managed to pull it off successfully - I’d always hold onto my canteens for too long, fearing the waste of using them at the wrong moment. That’s probably why I liked Demoman - with the defensive bonuses from his shield, I could slowly stack defensive upgrades until I achieved a nice, passive almost-invincibility that would never wear off. I didn’t like dealing with the expendability of canteens, and I couldn’t pull it off like Frosath did.

As time went on, I grew closer to the other members of our group. The two fans who had followed me into games and struck up conversations with me ended up becoming moderators on my fanart page. The two childhood friends continued to work with me here and there on my weird projects. My relationship with Frosath, though, remained pretty distant. Every once in a while, when Valve released new Mann VS Machine missions, I’d get the team together and send him a message. He’d join, and we’d fight our way through the robot hordes before parting for another six months.

It was a very professional relationship and I didn’t think much of it. The most personal it ever got was probably around Christmas, when I gave him an in-game Axetinguisher with a red ribbon around it, accompanied by the touching message “here”. He wielded it for the remainder of the games we played together.

I also didn’t think much of it when I was later reading a Prequel thread on 4chan and someone made a joke about how, with my webcomic’s update rate, they were probably going to die before it was finished, and another anon responded with “I know I will. But it will be fun for as long as I can read it.”

So, skip forward to last Saturday. It’s been a long while since any new Mann VS Machine maps have been released, but it’s also October, where it is tradition for us to get together and play Mann VS Machine Wave 666. By “tradition” I mean we did it when the map first came out, and again in 2013. That’s not really much of a tradition, but the group’s Soldier was adamant. He asked me to check with the others.

The Sniper was in. The Engineer was in. The Heavy, sadly, had a test today he needed to study for. We could still get a 5/6, though: all we needed was the Pyro, Frosath. Sadly, it seemed like he wasn’t online. And hadn’t been online in two months.

That was pretty unusual for someone with 2000+ hours in TF2, so I began to check around. His last Steam activity was July 9th. His Tumblr was pretty easy to find with Google, and its last post was on July 21st.

On July 5th, there was a post about being in a hospital’s intensive care unit.

I began digging for information. Sorting Google results for his name by date, the last mention of him I could find anywhere was a Tumblr post by a someone reading “That’s a heavy feeling”, and tagged “Frosath”. I added her on Skype, hoping I could get more answers.

While I waited, I checked with another mutual friend.

And 40 minutes later:

We ended up going on with the planned Mann VS Machine game anyway, sort of dedicated to Frosath. We took turns running his loadout and trying to do the thing with the invincibility canteens, and learning that most of us couldn’t pull it off as well as he could.

As sad as it was to realize he was dead, I don’t think any of us took it horribly hard. We just weren’t that close to him. It’s a weird feeling, which sort of puts me where I am now.

Looking back at it, I realize how much I didn’t know Frosath.

Did he respect me? He added me on Steam for some reason, and he never said no to a game. In all the times we played, he was using that axe I gave him. He never spoke to me much; was it because he was shy, or just as succinct as I was? Were our games something he looked forward to, and did he want me to invite him to more of them, and I never did? Or was he apathetic; a stranger on my friends list who joined games because a stranger asked him?

He rarely used voicechat when we played. Was he just a quiet person, or was he in some kind of pain? His Tumblr mentions coughing blood. I don’t know what kind of cancer that is symptomatic of. I know I had seen offhand mentions of it before, but I never broached the topic with him. Was he glad I didn’t, or hoping I would?

Was he the 4chan anon who said they would die before Prequel was finished? I knew he visited the site; /v/ was one of the groups listed on his Steam profile. Was he really that aware that it would happen, that he would just enjoy every moment in a serial webcomic for what it was?

I don’t know the answer to these things. However, looking back at it I feel there is one thing I understand: why he meshed so well with canteens.

I think Frosath knew he was going to die. Every game we played, he knew he was drawing from a very limited pool of days that could be used once before they were gone forever. Every moment was an expendable item for him - and yet, he knew how to hit that Use Canteen button without fearing that it would be a waste. Sometimes it would be, sure, but other times it would make it all worth it.

I play the long-term game. I’ll invest everything in passives, trying to slowly build my way toward being unstoppable in the endgame. Frosath, by contrast, played the game like there was no future. He expended his resources to the fullest in that moment. I’ve never found another player who could do it as well.

And… I guess that’s all I’ve got.

Here’s a sad birb he drew. It got 8 notes:

I guess that’s really what gets me the most about this. Posting this story to my Tumblr might be the most people exposure Frosath ever gets, and it’s coming from someone who barely knew him as anything more than the Pyro player who could use expendable items well.

At the same time, I guess I’m glad I actually have a platform where I can say it. If there is an afterlife then I hope he got one with videogames, and I hope his friends can find some comfort in the fact that a group of five near-strangers remember him, and will probably use the term “Frosathing” for a long time to come.

Also, let’s take a moment to appreciate that the first Google result for “Frosath” shows a Deviantart post from 2013 that opens with “Okay so no im not dead”.