The Great War

First, I would like to thank Tamaeon for representing my views on what caused the war. Thank you Tama!

Dark's involvement in the war began with the war between NC and Bane. Being a personal friend of Malek of Bane and him being a good friend to Dark we were sympathetic to Bane's peril after NC declared war on them. At the time Dark was a member of The Coalition and Kompanion and myself conveyed our growing unease at the way that war was developing. I'm pretty sure that we have also made our stance public in the forums. This brought one alliance leader who would later be a major part of the Grand Alliance to quarry in GC what exactly is Dark's stance on the NC-Bane war. To my recollection, I have never before exchanged words with the said leader and Dark and his alliance did not have diplomatic agreements. But since he represented a power in Elgea I decided to make my view even more public in the hope that other alliances may get politically involved and the NC-Bane war will come to a peaceful end. I opened the following thread on the game forums (Tama posted a link to it in a previous message in this thread):

http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/ncbane-war_topic5236_page1.html

While the polemics on this thread raged I became more and more concerned with the fact that players from Coalition alliances – especially TVM – were joining NC while Bane was denied the same because of what I perceived has Bane sympathizers being intimidated by the more than real possibility that joining will inevitably bring the entire Coalition against them. As the thread shows I finally found that if any help is to be given to Bane, it will only come from Dark. Since I knew that if all of Dark will join the battle at least 1 major Coalition alliance will also join, Dark's leadership decided to join with only 3 major Dark accounts. On September 3 I gave Malek the names of 3 Dark accounts (including my own) to be invited to Bane and join the war. On September 4 I was informed that Bane will agree to surrender.

It should be known that while the NC-Bane war was raging the Grand Alliance began to form. To my knowledge there was no intent at that time to initiate a world war, but the example of what happened to Bane made the alliances that in the future will form the Grand Alliance begin to feel the water and seek a balance to what was seen as unchecked Coalition aggression. At this time I began to be contacted by alliance leaders that never spoke with me before. At least one of them was trying to make sure that Dark is no longer a member of The Coalition and that my speaking for Bane was not in fact a trap. I believe that if I did not manage to reassure him that Dark will no longer side with the Coalition in the case of more aggression - he would not have signed up for what would later become The Grand Alliance. Again, to my knowledge there was no plan at the time to challenge the Coalition, but new ties were beginning to form.

Pretty soon after that NC got involved in the war between Celtic Knights and RE. Talks began in earnest again with the intention of halting this war before it expands. It had the same explosive potential as the NC-Bane war, the difference was that the Grand Alliance was almost fully formed albeit hidden in the shadows. When uCrows entered the war things became almost inevitable. I believe that the only thing that would have stopped the Great War from happening at that time was NC surrender, but NC did not have "surrender" in them. I was still trying to avoid a great war, but other alliance leaders felt that we are as strong as we are likely to be and giving way will only allow the Coalition to gather more strength and come against us in the future. When Harmless declared war on The Eagles there was no coming back. We were in it, all together, to the bitter end. On October 30^th 2013 the Grand Alliance came out of the shadows as vCrows, Shade, Soon and Dark declared war on Harmless?