Upon recently returning to the game, I began to recollect some of the history of the http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/Alliance/Alliance/453" rel="nofollow - Rhyagelle Alliance (RHY) , for which I was a member of for the majority of the my first stint in the game. There are some strong feelings about RHY on both sides, and I don't wish to prosecute them here. Instead, I wanted to present a bit of history -- sort of in the form of a case study -- of an audacious operation that we conducted months before Server War I, wherein we completely removed a largely inactive alliance from Lan Larosh and thus increased our presence in the region in the matter of a week.

I was appointed Rhyagelle's governor in Lan Larosh in the early winter of 2012. At that time, there were less than 5 RHY players in Lan Larosh -- the alliance's heartland was in Meilla. I positioned myself in the dead center of Lan Larosh, and directly to my east what a densely-populated, well established alliance called http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/Alliance/Alliance/417" rel="nofollow - Triality (TRI) . 

The TRI alliance came to Illyriad en masse from EverQuest, during the "big Sony hack," as explained in an old forum post. While they were not officially allied with H?, they had very close ties.

As the new governor, I made it a project to familiarize myself with all of the alliances present in Lan Larosh, and TRI was geographically the most significant. I tried to reach out to their leadership multiple times, but they always ignored me. In fact, they never even opened my IGMs. However, over time, I also began to notice that their leadership's populations were not growing. At all.

The lack of activity from the leadership led me to do an audit of other towns in their alliance. Following a couple dozen towns, I soon noticed that none of cities were growing either. The only TRI player who was progressing in population was Joscelin/Acanof (who would later join RHY, and then H?).

Given the fact that I knew TRI had come to the game as a group, I began to suspect that maybe they had left as a group as well, but no one really knew about it. They had dozens and dozens of huge cities, which would be ripe for capture, and their lands were well-placed and strategic. By this time, RHY had moved more players into the center of Lan Larosh, and our capabilities there were growing. Here is an old map that shows RHY in green and TRI in blue, just to give you an idea:

Armed with this data, as well as proof positive that no on except for Jos/Acanof was active in the alliance, Finrod was convinced that it was an operation we could move forward on. Finrod reached out to Joscelin and asked him if TRI was active. Jos confirmed that they were not -- he had tried to get a hold of people in the alliance, but to no avail. Finrod confided in Jos our plans and invited him to join RHY. Jos accepted, and his acceptance proved to be critical in the success of the operation.

 

However, I do object to the idea that taking a few cities is in any way similar to taking over an alliance.

For those who are wondering how this was possible, this occurred during a time before there was account deletion for inactivity, so these accounts were inactive for at least six months or so before the sieges started.

Dhenna was an awesome player, and her contributions to the game can perhaps best be seen in the quest guide on the forum that players still use.

http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/quest-guide_topic2064.html

Many thanks for your contribution to the thread, Rill.

1) The profile of the RHY alliance stated that they were returning players with the specific intention of being militaristic.  

2) H? members, myself included, had worked very closely with Triality helping them set up in some prime locations in LL a number of the locations extremely close to a few of our members.  

3) Dhenna, the leader of Triality did not give any indication to any of her close Illyriad friends not just H? friends that anything was amiss or that they were leaving Illyriad. 

2) Leadership of both alliances were contacted.   This did take a few days during which we kept on top of the issue and kept everyone appraised of the situation.

3) In contacting the leadership, the identity of the returning players - specifically the leader Finrod of Rhygelle - was disclosed.  I happened to have a very good prior history with the player that lead to a rapid de-escalation of the event and all the IGM's we shared with each other were still in my inbox.  (I made a habit of none deletion of IGM's up till the last war)

4) Direct contact with Dhenna was made and confirmed their inactive state.  

resulting in this message to Rhygelle and our members:

Many thanks for your contribution, Anjire, as it is interesting to get H?'s . I present this event just as an interesting operation, and one that doesn't occur very in the game. However, can you clarify what you mean by "militaristic?" Do you mean that to be simply an alliance that was not a training alliance, or an alliance that was designed to be overtly aggressive as a part of the game we played the game?

If the latter, then I would note that, from the time I joined RHY in the late summer of 2012 until leaving the alliance in the spring of 2013 during the war, the alliance profile never stated that we had a specific intention of being overtly militaristic. I don't have a copy of the old alliance profile to back that up, but I remember when Finrod updated the alliance profile in the fall of 2012, that it presented RHY as a dynamic alliance that certainly left military options on the table in the event of a conflict, but not one that was explicitly militaristic and sought negotiations to conflicts first. In addition, I think that Finrod himself, whom you mention having a "very good prior history with" was indeed a moderate who could work both the diplomatic and militaristic side of the game equally well. At that time, the alliance leadership was composed of both hawks and doves advising Finrod.

GM Rikoo

Some would refer to it as infamous - but since Jejune brought up the topic regarding Triality, I figured I would fill in some of H? perspective and rationale as to why there came to be a confed between our alliances.  The major reasons being the manner in which Rhygelle conducted themselves and my prior Relationship with Finrod.    

There wasn't a need to go public with the confed because Rhygelle was still growing and given the past treatment of Triality by a select group of players within the Illyriad community - it was deemed better to just keep the relationship quiet until Rhygelle became better established.  

If you want to delve further into history(in another thread) - I will answer as I have time.  

Tiresome? - yeah

Adegquately? - No

I have no desire to review the entire history of that event, but if Anjire wishes to do so, more power to him.  I mean that entirely sincerely.  Perhaps people who were not around for the original posts will find it interesting and/or informative.

I agree also that within the Traveller's Tale someday perhaps we can tell the story of the Coalition and begin to forge a history of that Coalition/Consone war, because I've found that, without a record of things that go on here, they are quickly lost to memory, which is a shame. (I was recently thinking of the conflict between AESIR and EF in the Spring of 2013, for example, that would make for a great story.)

Illyriad is an emotional game for many, but it my hope that we can look back onto past events without too much emotion or bitterness. In the case of the Coalition/Consone war, I think there has been enough time and history between that war and now that we can hopefully look back at it with some dispassion and critical distance. And I would agree that it would probably be better served in its own topic thread.

Another potential project is to try to recall previous players of note who are no longer part of the game for one reason or another. I'm thinking of Amroth, for example, who purportedly passed away a while back. During his stint here, he had a major impact on the game. A chronicle of who he was as a player and what he did would make for a great read, I think.