Grandpa... tell us about the war

Miklabjarnir wrote: I totally agree with Brandmeister that my Archduke Ferdinand-analogue was a bit stretched, but my intention was to indicate that we are talking about wars both sides wanted.

i have no war stories to add to the thread, but i know enough about the events leading up to the war to say that there is no single cause, that alliances even on the same side have different reasons for participating, and that not all alliances involved (and certainly not all players) wanted war.

this thread will be much more fun if we can keep the speculations about causes and motives out of it. thanks to Miklabjarnir, Nokigon, Elmindra and The Duke for their respective tales. if anyone has a disagreement with something said by another player, let him tell his own tale to set things right.

http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/aa-bsh-conflict_topic4646_page1.html?KW=affirmative+action

Edited by geofrey - 18 Feb 2014 at 15:18

Great stuff from Nokigon and Elmindra. No boring crapy talk. Just warriors shareing ther storys in the field. Realy great. plz give us more.

Angrim wrote: ... i have no war stories to add to the thread, but i know enough about the events leading up to the war to say that there is no single cause, that alliances even on the same side have different reasons for participating, and that not all alliances involved (and certainly not all players) wanted war. ...

Confederations do carry an inherent risk of getting alliances dragged into wars for the wrong reasons, but much of it can be mitigated with careful drafting of terms.  Harmless went to great lengths to ensure that neither we nor our allies would be pulled into the wrong side of an unjust war in the name of honor.

http://arcanum-illyria.com/wiki/Elgea:Harmless/Treaties

I actually wrote up these terms myself, and am quite proud of them - they have held up admirably.  They couldn't be used to get us out of the current war, but nor should they even if it proves our downfall.  You have to stand for something, else you're worth nothing.

My story is a bit political, but those are the stories a politician has.  To make this less personal, I'll avoid the use of enemy names and other specifics.  Before Harmless entered the war, NC was already entrenched in a conflict.  They were our allies, but they were fighting with alliances of comparable size over conflicts that did not directly involve us.  As per our treaty, they did not request our aid in a fight they could handle and in which they were not clearly the victims.  But then larger alliances started dogpiling onto NC (some honoring treaties, others just because they wanted to or had old unrelated grudges) and their prospects for mere survival became dim, let alone victory.  Now they did request our help, which we gave...first as mediators.

The number of forces threatening to get involved against NC was rapidly escalating to a scale that would bring in absolutely everyone on our side and ensure there would be no winners no matter the outcome.  Furthermore, we (supposedly) had allies on both sides of the conflict.  At this point, we believed the only tie our false ally had to the other side was through loose confederation between supposedly peaceful alliances - we would later learn they their supposed ire had more to do with positioning themselves to break an alliance they no longer wanted, and very little to do with that treaty.  But for now, we did our best to act in good faith toward both our allies despite increasingly belligerent complaints from the least-involved party in the whole affair (so far).

Both sides had grievances, and some of them were legitimate, again for both sides - we could not have taken either side militarily with complete confidence that we were acting honorably.  Luckily, both sides of the original conflict were also willing to negotiate.  Apologies were made, promises offered, and we stood on the doorstep of peace.  But the larger alliances siding against NC - notably those with no legitimate grievances against NC but a bigger plan that had more to do with Harmless - did not want peace.  In particular, our large false ally on the other side specifically wanted the war to continue and for Harmless to be drawn into it, and had solicited the aid of alliances which had surrendered in the previous war.  As far as I'm able to determine without speculating on deeper motives, the (new) leader of this alliance had become convinced that Harmless had adopted a policy of destroying whatever alliance was number 2 and that we'd be coming for him next, despite our ties and ironclad reputation for fair dealing with all past and present allies.  Any appearance of such should also be weighed against how alliances tended to act specifically toward us when they gained the number 2 position, but I digress.  An influential leader stepped in to curtail the negotiations and snatched diplomatic defeat from the jaws of victory.

All this had taken quite some time and still more large alliances were tearing into NC - their situation was dire.  At this point any question of honor or obligation on Harmless's part was quite far removed from the equation.  NC had negotiated in good faith and tried to reach peace, but that option had been removed by the other side.  We still wanted to avoid a world war, and so we sought out some way to take the pressure off NC without the ultimate escalation.  One of the alliances declaring against NC had no personal stake in the current conflict and furthermore had been involved in the Consone war against us.  The terms of their surrender in that war had included a clause stating they could not engage in any hostile activity against Harmless or any of our allies for 6 months, or the agreement would be void.  As luck would have it, they were still just inside that window.  We used this technicality to declare on just them, hoping that this would satisfy our supposedly conflicted false ally and perhaps even convince them of our unwillingness to turn them into enemies.

But of course it wouldn't, since this ally was actually orchestrating the whole conflict which at this point would normally have been resolved peacefully even had half the major supporting alliances on their side not existed.  Our tightrope act ended in vain, and shortly after this everyone even remotely involved declared on us and all our allies - alongside quite a few forces that were not involved at all.  From that point, we've faced an overwhelming enemy filled with (as far as I can measure) equal parts false allies who betrayed us and/or were deceived into turning against us, past enemies seeking revenge, and completely neutral forces just joining in for the carnage and profit, with one possible exception in the form of a small alliance which voiced grievance over Harmless previously declining to forge an alliance with them.

And looking back at the whole sordid affair, I rather think that last tiny detail - the alliance so deeply offended that we politely declined their overtures (though to hear them tell it we'd insulted their dead mother) - is the strangest of all.  But that is the sort of capriciousness by which a leading alliance is judged.  Beware positions of power, for when in one, there is no mark too small to be counted against you.


Edited by HonoredMule - 21 Feb 2014 at 00:54