[[Treaty] The Legion of Dawn Heads North]

As Captain-General Jeric and the Guardians of the Dawn flew through yet another solar system on the legion’s long journey, they noticed an odd planet that reminded them of a place called Earth they’d visited before. This planet had no known name in the ship’s navigation system, but was noticeably colder than what seemed normal for the planet’s location. Nevertheless, life was still abundant, and the Legion of Dawn broadly agreed it seemed like a suitable place to rest before continuing on their journey.

 

The legion landed near a castle called Winterfell, and shortly after found themselves investigated by a local scouting party. Captain-General Jeric and the Guardian of the Bastion, Kan, agreed to visit with the rulers of the local kingdom. They found the castle of Winterfell impressive, despite being antiquated compared to the technology they were used to. 

 

The representatives of the Legion of Dawn, after asserting they were not there to cause any trouble, found themselves feasting merrily with the King of Winter, Ataxia Stark, and his advisors. Tales were sung of battles past, with undernotes of warning about “the coming Winter.” Jeric and Kan believed they could quite easily fix this problem, as their ship was capable of producing a tremendous amount of energy which could easily be released to warm the planet and prevent the encroaching cold, and offered their aid.

 

“Are you certain you wish to join us in the fight against the Winter?” King Ataxia asked, with a furrow in his brow. “Of course,” said Captain-General Jeric. The two shook hands, formalizing the alliance. “After all,” Jeric said, “how hard could dealing with some snow really be?”

 

“Snow?” Ataxia questioned. “Snow is the least of your worries now…” And in the far distance, the White Walkers felt the birth of the new alliance, and were worried.

 

TL:DR The Legion of Dawn and House Stark sign an MnDoAP.

[Why I think the current restrictions/stigmas on raiding are bad, how they could be improved and why they won't be.]

I appreciate the cameo, thank you

[What Was It All For?]

I wish you well, Alan. It’s been an honor fighting alongside you, and in general my time in the game has been better for knowing you. It’s been a rough road, at times, but ultimately - I think the game’s better for having had folks like you make the efforts you did. The memory of Black Skies, and of your accomplishments, will far outlast the negatives. For certain, I can say that working with you has provided an awareness of the true intentions of a lot of the game. It’s a shame this wasn’t a better environment for what you were looking to do; it should have been.
Good luck, my friend, and Godspeed.

[[DoE]Nations of Unity & Peace]

I expect to see you all achieve a game-wide NAP to end all war. Oh wait...

[2023 Player Award Nominations]

Player of the Year: Thalmor

Most Influential Player: Velyni Vas

Most Likely to Succeed in 2024: Themonia

Best Alliance Leader: Darth Ataxia

Worst Alliance Leader: Llojsa (Pelasgian King)

Best In-Character Poster: Doctor (DocScripts)

Best Villain: Sketchy

Nicest Player: Hurhy

Most Controversial Player: Graybird

Most Missed Player: Redarmy

Best Nation Page: 

Best Fighter: Dryad

Best High Government Member: Samani

Most Online/Likely to respond in 1 minute: Themonia

Best War Criminal: Betta

[2023 Community Award Nominations]

Funniest Event - Any of Thalmor’s Drunk Shows

Biggest Controversy - Graybird

Best Declaration of War (please link) - 

Best Wall of Text (please link) - Thalmor’s Boutique Alliances Rant https://forum.politicsandwar.com/index.php?/topic/36545-boutique-alliances-and-the-problem-therein/

Best Leak (please link) - Aurora’s removal from Midgard  https://discord.com/channels/446601982564892672/600041080406409284/1100193409899176056

 

Best Meme (please link) - 

Best Discord Server - Royal Orbis News

Best Ad (please link) - 

Best Community Contributor - Roberts

Best New Player 2023 - Themonia

Sexiest Voice - Thalmor

[2023 Alliance Award Nominations]

Alliance of the Year: Carthago

Most Improved Alliance: The Fighting Pacifists

Best New Merged Alliance: Legion of Dawn

Best Rookie Alliance: The High Table

Best Alliance for New Players: The Fighting Pacifists

Most Likely to Succeed in 2024: Carthago

Most Likely to be Rolled in 2024: Singularity

Most Honorable Alliance: The Knights Radiant

Best Fighting Alliance: Knights Templar

Worst Fighting Alliance: United Purple Nations

Best Alliance Growth: Eclipse

Best Foreign Affairs Team: Knights Templar

Best Foreign Affairs Move: KT’s M with Aurora prior to Holiday Slumber

Worst Foreign Affairs Move: WELP’s 6 month NAP with ODOO

Alliance with Best Propaganda: Knights Templar

Most Missed Alliance: The Wei

Best Alliance Flag (please link): 

Best Holiday Flag (please link): 

Biggest Alliance Decline in 2023: United Purple Nations

[[DOW] Free Lysander]

What a based DoW

 

I'm looking forward to being rescued by you @evilpiggyfoofoo @Velyni Vas

[[PEACE] The Sword Is Mightier Than The Pen]

As has always been the case, best way to leak is still through alternative accounts. Doubt anyone is surprised, lol.

[[Drama] BF's Dirty Laundry]

Vindicated once again.

[Treaty Nullification between BroFam and Black Skies]

Imagine expecting loan repayments during a war when even player-run businesses know better. Y’all are something else.

[[RoH] Wrong Target]

7 minutes ago, The Titan said:

What about your attempt to pry information about peace talks from pretty much every relevant ODOO leader?

Or pressure about BS-GATO relations.

Or whatever you did to tick off Sing?

 

Clearly you need to decide what comes first - your alliance ? Or your news network?

Peace talks were already leaked to me, and I already publicized the NAP term, before I reached out for comments and to discuss with some friends in ODOO.

Bourbon-GATO I reached out specifically to try to get an answer on what had happened to clear up the vague situation that had a lot of speculation going on.
Singularity appears to be mad they got leaked on and I posted it.

Anything else?

[[RoH] Wrong Target]

News stations in Orbis are purveyors of information. Are they completely unbiased? Never - there’s always an argument to be made that bias exists. Even if there was a magical news server where no bias did exist, someone would take that and make an argument about there being bias anyways.

 

When you have members handing out OPSEC like it’s candy, without any solicitation by myself or anyone else in Royal Orbis News, it seems to me like that’s not a RON problem, that’s a Singularity problem. Sure, after Singularity decided sending threats in DMs after RON leaked the merge was the proper way to go about things, my opinion of the alliance wasn’t exactly through the roof, but everything that’s been posted in the leaks and rumors channel has been relevant information, not “menial logs”. 

 

As for leaking being a “hostile act” - when someone knocks a hole in your boat, you don’t shoot the sea for sinking the ship. You shoot the guy who put the hole in the ship. When the someone in an alliance is freely providing OPSEC information, or, sorry, “menial logs”, it seems to me that the goal should be kicking that player. RON could stop taking those leaks today and another server or group would have them tomorrow.

 

It’s not an easy road, as has been demonstrated, trying to play the game with a different strategy than simply hugging a larger alliance, but House Stark remains confident in her capabilities to play the way we feel we should.

[[Anniversary] Seven Years of House Stark]

House Stark has officially been a part of Politics & War for seven years.

 

That’s seven years of ever-shifting politics, seven years of learning, seven years of growth, and ultimately, seven years of fun (even if it was always buggy fun!).

Having hit lucky number seven, we look forward to what the future holds, and have great expectations and hopes for the next year of House Stark’s existence. It has been fun working (and fighting) with all of you, and we hope it will continue to be so.

 

To seven years of House Stark, with many more on the horizon!

[[Treaty] Direwolves & Battleships]

The first leaves had already fallen. Darth Ataxia sat before the weirwood tree, admiring the beauty and enjoying the crisp air. Winter was coming. Ataxia’s trance was broken by the snapping of twigs and crunching of leaves from behind.

 

"My Lord,” said Lysander, the newest addition to House Stark’s ever growing house, “ships have landed in White Harbor and are sending men up the Knife.”

 

"Whose sigil do they fly?” asked Ataxia, already mentally preparing for a fight.

 

“Their number of ships far surpass the Lannisters, but they aren’t Ironborn either.”

"Assemble the men. We’ll meet them at Cerwyn.”

House Stark stood strong at the edge of the White Knife, with bannermen and generals all ready for the worst.

“It’s a fine day should we come to blows. But as your hand, Ataxia, I’d advise against hostilities” remarked Samani.

 

As if hearing his words, the rowboats appeared. Their masses began to hide the water as if land itself was reclaiming the river. Almost as if by reading the minds of the men on shore, the fleet of boats halted and a single vessel touched the shore, leaving the others out in open water. Three men and a woman disembarked and walked up to the gathered army on the shore.

"Greetings!” hailed one of the men. His long coat and gold shoulder pads marked him as the leader, “To whom do I owe the pleasure of speaking to?”

 

Ataxia rode forth with Samani and Lysander at his side.

 

"I am Darth Ataxia of House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and protector of the land you now walk on. To what house do you belong?”

 

"House?” the man looked puzzled. “I am Commodore Alan of the Black Skies fleet. I’m sorry to say that we’ve never seen these lands on our charts before.” The man to his left handed him papers from what appeared to be a toga underneath his sailors uniform. “We’ve been hit with several late fall squalls and have come off course. We saw land and moored off of the port down the river. I was told to come here to seek permission to stay for a while as we repair our fleet.”

 

Ataxia, relieved that battle would not occur, softened his pose. Seeing this, the unknown woman also relaxed, her hand moving away from the hilt of her sword. 

"Well, you may find sanctuary at White Harbor. You can repair your ships and harbor over the winter. Welcome to Westeros.”

 

Ataxia dismounted and shook Commodore Alan’s hand. 

"Palsada!” shouted Alan “have the men return to the port and begin repairs and see that our men are available to support. I’m sure our new friends here don’t want us loafing about.”

 

House Black Skies, Ataxia thought to himself. How peculiar.
 

TLDR: House Stark protects the rebuilding of the Black Skies Fleet and Black Skies protects House Stark from the Greyjoys. Both Houses sign an MnDoAP.

 

[I] Mutual Defense
Both parties are obligated to come to the defense of the other should they be attacked.

[II] Optional Aggression
Either signatory may opt to cooperate in the other’s offensive wars, should they so choose. 

[III] Non-Aggression and Conduct
Both signatories are obligated to work in each other's best interest and not conduct nor endorse action against the other.

[IV] Sovereignty
Both signatories acknowledge and agree to protect the other's sovereignty and exclude themselves from the other's internal affairs. 

[V] Intelligence
Both signatories recognize the role of intelligence in each's security and agree to share information without hesitance or alteration in the spirit of mutual defense.

[VI] Non-Chaining
In the event a signatory is obligated to defend a third party, Article I becomes Optional.

[VII] Cancellation
Both signatories are free to cancel this treaty at any time, but must provide a 72-hour notice to the other.

These Articles are effective immediately and authorized by the below signatories.

For Black Skies

Commodore: Alan
Quartermaster: Palsada
Captain of Foreign Affairs: Radial

 

For House Stark and the North

The King in the North: Darth Ataxia
The Hand of the King: Samani
Three Eyed Raven: Lysander
Archmaester: Captain Penguin
Lord Commander: Earl Glenn
Master of Coin: Darth Revan

[Policy system]

Interesting suggestion, throw me a DM on Discord and we’ll talk getting it proposed. Please do keep this just for alliance affairs though.

[[PEACE] That'll Buff Right Out]

Congrats on the peace. Should’ve been named “Now I Sleep” since y’all want to hug it out for six months 😝

[My Design Team Concerns]

I’ve been on the design team for a couple of months now, and it’s been fairly quiet. I think everyone would agree the game as a whole has gone quiet - politics are quieter, even with the war on, and since NAPs are apparently back in style, they’ll stay quiet for a while. With Village gone with university and Alex MIA, the roadmap for updates is dead in the water.

 

I’ve begun airing my concerns with the lack of anything being done, specifically within the design team, in RON recently, and there were a good number of folks who felt similarly. Special shout-out to @His Holy Decagon, who’s been naming issues with a specific member of the design team that he and others have (we’ll get to that later).

 

There appear to be two primary sentiments on the design team right now, for the people that are actually active and have said something in the last two months. 1) “Nothing’s going to be coded, so why bother doing anything.” 2) “There’s no design team lead, so debate can’t go anywhere, so why bother doing anything.” I really don’t like either of these sentiments, for a couple reasons. 

 

No coding does mean not much will be implemented, sure. But if coding were to resume tomorrow, would you rather have a list of ideas the design team has already debated to say “here, work on these”, or nothing? I think waiting until development can start again, only to deadlock ourselves in debate for a couple of weeks and waste the coding time made available, is a terrible idea.

 

The design team lead frontier makes more sense. As I mentioned earlier, Decagon (who shall henceforth be referred to as Deca) is on I believe Day 5 of bringing up his concerns with @Lucianus in RON. The main points Deca has made are that Luci has stagnated debate on a lot of issues, which prevents a number of changes from going through, and that he overall was extremely biased and many people had a problem with how he approached design team work. I’ve attached an image with the meat of the argument below, although Deca is bringing up new points daily in RON, so you’re welcome to go check them out or review what he’s said.

 

 

I don’t want to single out Luci myself, because I haven’t personally had these problems with him. I do know, however, that there are at least five to seven people on the design team who have either a) never said anything for the time I’ve been present, or b) have come up basically against any proposed change. 

 

Nothing is going to get done without a design team lead, and credit belongs to @Keegoz for starting that push the other day. Appointing a design team lead now will allow that lead to organize the team, make changes and add structure ahead of time, and get a priority list together so that when development resumes, we’re not all sitting around twiddling our thumbs. A lead can also work to deal with concerns of past dev team members that left over specific individuals, potentially returning valued players and their insight to the team.

 

TL;DR @Alex, @Dr Rush, or somebody needs to make a call and put a lead in ASAP. Having someone just step up won’t work, as there are plenty of individuals who will only accept the authority when it’s formalized. I’d encourage all of you to join in sharing your concerns with the process publicly so there’s at least a chance things get better.

[[DoE] -Unity-]

Looking forward to seeing what comes next!

[The DNN Lottery]

It’s almost like DNN is just a rip-off version of RON… who knew? 

[May the Blood God have mercy of WELP's soul!]

Officer, I didn’t know looking at ODOO’s balls was punishable by war, I promise!

[(RoH) Oh Dear. Here they go selective reporting again.....]

Hey! I’m in one of those screenshots!

 

All jokes aside, beautiful micro drama. I’m so glad Brotherhood Family is back to be as !@#$ed as normal. I’ve missed having someone to truly exemplify what it means to be a nano.

[Recognition Of Hostilities]

2 hours ago, Popat said:

On 22 September 2023 , Lady Gaga of Black Skies declared war on our applicant who had went recently inactive.  Brotherhood Family sent 2 counters. Lady Gaga sent me a message saying that they are sorry for hitting our applicant. 

Usually , such matters end after a counter but here is a different story. After this message , Black Skies sent an **invalid counter**  and we countered that invalid counters. They once again sent counters. Alan has no reputation and keeps involving his alliance in war due to simple minor incidents. His poor thinking of that we can make anyone surrender below our alliance score is wrong. An anonymous  source with no credibility has even sent the target sheet of the blitz on BroFam. At first , We thought the sheet was false. But given the tension between us , We think that BS does indeed plan to blitz us. Here is the target sheet. 
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vGUIMt6C60cp52ed7mydqPTrnX6JmdJJ36MroYnY5NU/edit
They were now escalating the conflict so our leader decided to reach them for peace and the response is below.

Alan says the game wants them to wipe the floor with us but the same 'game' has wiped the floor with him in past and he also mentions the 'threats' we made on his alliance. Countering for our applicants is not called threatening. Alan says we threatened to do 'Political opposition' against him. Let's suppose we did political opposition of BS. Did we tarnished their image? Did we used swear words against them? Did we plan to blitz them? Did we leak thier high gov chats?  Since , we are now talking about leaking. Their 2ic , Palsada leaked the whole chat of Delta bloc and joined the enemy sides. In fact , political opposition was done against us in form of slanders and trolling.  Just look at the hypocrisy here. Whatever I said above is not related to the reason due to which the original skirmish started , the reason was an applicant raid. Alan has been continuously avoiding the topic and blocking all modes of communication with us.

We told him we were here for peace and then the embassy was closed.
He has slandered us , made false accusations , planned to blitz us , countered legal counters and God knows what else they may be planning.

We ignored the slanders. We ignored the illegal counters but we are not going to ignore a whole blitz sheet against us.
Due to all this , Brotherhood Family recognizes hostilities with Black Skies and are ready to defend against their aggression.

Your RoH would be much better if you had cut the “did we…? did we…?” and “look what their member did years ago in a now dead sphere”

[Game Development Discussion: Tariffs]

8 hours ago, Alan said:

Seems like another way for alliances to manipulate the market, stronger alliances make more on stronger tariffs.

This however does pull the Market Sharing feature into question. Instead of adding something like Tariffs why don't we buff Market sharing/alliance embargoes.

You can set market sharing to say 0% and all other trades are at the 10% tariff rate. Just add to what's existing and make the current features better with more involvement/planning.

 

8 hours ago, Zei-Sakura Alsainn said:

Yeah, this definitely isn't gonna work that way.

Basically every major alliance and sphere has their own active big name trade market players, who'd get screwed by this. 

It also screws over the other normal less intense players, who overwhelmingly sell to buy offers. 

The only thing I see this maybe achieving is getting spheres to use the alliance marketplace mechanic. Or even just individual alliances, really. Most are big enough to do that. 

 

Hell, I used to run the Econ for a 100/100 AA. Fully Autarkic. The only interaction with the market was me selling excess. As much as 40 active members, as few as like 18. It doesn't take alot to become independent of the market in this game. 

 

For that reason, especially the above paragraph, I'm not certain it'd even be used. There's not many types of resources in PW, so it's incredibly easy for a small group to be self sufficient. There's not much scarcity either, and this would mostly just inconvenience your average player and completely wreck your typical big trader. 

I just... Don't see any point or real benefit? Other than, again, creating closed off sphere markers and enforcing it with this? Unless that's your objective, then... I don't really see what alliance leadership across the game gets from this. Other than their market oriented members who bring wealth to the AA being livid and possibly leaving, and everyone else being annoyed that something they barely interact with anyway got more tedious and negatively affects their income and growth.

But then, everybody would do that, and it wouldn't really be much of a CB would it?

 

It's a nice idea, I see what you're going for. I just don't think it's really going to work, at least not how you imagine, if it does anything at all. 

 

Definitely understand the reasoning being put forth here. To Alan’s comment - in a way, encouraging use of the market-sharing feature of the game is part of what this is meant to do. If the public market ends up not being able to sell goods for an alliance, then selling internally (within the sphere) becomes a lot more useful. Also helps during wartime, when you probably don’t want your members buying from your direct opponents.

To Zei - Given that many alliances are already independent, and only interact with the market on an alliance level to offload resources, them not using the market isn’t really all that relevant, since they already don’t use it? Plus, alliances often do resource trades/sales through bank-to-bank transfers, which wouldn’t end up being affected here, meaning they can still do the bulk sales if they can find a buyer.

Offloading on to the market might be more difficult for them, sure, and yeah, it could definitely hurt certain traders. At the end of the day, though, a lot of traders actually make up the bulk of market volume, so the only thing an alliance does by tariff-ing a trader is make their members buy internally, which as you yourself pointed out, most alliances are already at the point of being market-independent.

[Game Development Assistance: Achievements]