A Short Treatise on the Early History of Illyriad

Mr Damage, my perspective may seem to be changing but it's not really.  I'm simply opening up a little more because these last conversations will conclude my legacy here and I'd like to leave something besides the slander and vitriol that until now derailed any dialog.  Of course I don't always think everything Harmless and its members do is perfect, but I am mostly satisfied that we conducted ourselves honorably.  And in cases where that wasn't so, I did speak out - you just wouldn't know about it.  Internally, we've always enjoyed strong mutual respect and intense loyalty, and that comes partly from respecting our peers and members - even when we disagree with them - too much to air out disagreements and dirty laundry in public.

As to surrender, the way I see it is this:  while I can acknowledge occasional (read: uncommon) missteps in past conflicts, in this conflict Harmless is in the blameless right, vCrow et al are in the wrong - and in a big, clear-cut way.  Pride it may be, but to us surrender is equivalent to admission of wrongdoing in this war, of the variety that legitimizes their actions and furthermore rewards them for taking them.  So no, as far as we're concerned it is not an option for us.

We will not reward an enemy for winning an unjust war they started, but instead make that victory as costly as we possibly can.  And then once truly defeated, we can walk away from the game with our hands clean of the matter, while the entire community is left to deal with the victor and the new landscape that creates.  If we play our cards right, we won't even be around to say I told you so when entirely new social norms take hold and abuse of power is expected rather than speculated.  Frankly, we've spent long enough absorbing verbal abuse and all the while just trying to show a better way to play and uphold integrity.

Now if you ask for an alternative, I can offer a perfect one.  Let those bloodthirsty hordes which started this war and brought about this chaos and destruction surrender.  It is not our place to pay reparations for not having possibly been able to handle the situation any better or more honorably.  Or at the very least, individual players could start taking a little responsibility for themselves and consider that there could possibly be reasons to leave a war besides direct personal loss.  Heck, I'd be impressed if someone could just put a stop to the active combatants running and hiding in training alliances without actually surrendering or accepting terms.

Of course the winning side backing down won't happen, so the intractable impasse remains.  And I gave warnings at the beginning of this war, which so far show every sign of coming true.  I'd rather not be here when that happens anyway.

Thanks for answering HM. Your perception of surrender is perhaps where the impasse lies and shall remain. Conceding defeat to an opponent is also a respectable way of ending battle. By your understanding of surrender, all those who have surrendered in previous wars were the ones in the wrong? Or is this definition of surrender limited to this war only? That is perhaps a conflict right there and can lead you to where this situation began to materialise.

Rupe wrote:   You may not wish to be here HM but many of your warriors who will fight to the end with you may. Isn't it time you thought of your colleagues too?

Well Mr Damage, I can't think of any other case where war began (for additional parties) after a conflict was adequately resolved.  The Consone war had similarities in that the catalyst was not the real war - only representative of the underlying causes - but it ends there.  In every single case where Harmless has been involved in a war, something was happening that needed to stop, and surrender was equivalent to making that change under duress.  The party that had to surrender was the party that needed to repent from some past or continuing action: stop harassing allied newbies in training alliances, don't try to claim exclusive ownership of an entire province through force, take diplomacy more seriously, take responsibility for the actions of your members, stop defending an ally that needs to change and won't, etc.

But here there's nothing to change, only a changing of the guard through violence.  It would be an entirely different story if these aggressors had been willing to make peace with NC, but because they would not there is no honorable recourse but to stand by them.  We aren't the ones who removed the option of diplomacy, so to what would we surrender except a pillaging of our resources and shaming of our integrity?  We also cannot pay restitution when we are not at fault, therefore any surrender terms are purely profiteering (especially if there's no ongoing battle to later rejoin).  If you really want to see the community degrade fast, watch what happens when war becomes widely perceived as a highly profitable venture.

In order for us to admit defeat and concede the loss to our enemy, they'd first have to admit having goals already achieved.  Thus far, the incongruity between their stated grievances and subsequent overturning of an initially-accepted resolution to those grievances leaves us with a war that continues in absence of (publicly admitted) objectives.  If there's nothing we can change, and they don't stop on their own, then their objectives cannot not be corrective in nature and must also not be yet reached.  The natural conclusion is that our complete destruction is their objective.  Surrender would just be a brief pause for humiliation before continuing.  Oh, but we (internally, at least) don't have to rely on that kind of speculation anyway.  Between leaked intel and candid statements that would never be repeated publicly, we know bloody well what certain key players want, and it is quite incompatible with our survival in any meaningful capacity.

If the enemy can admit their objectives, we can acknowledge whether they've reached them, and if our complete destruction is not their objective, then this should satisfy them.  That's still entirely different from surrendering though, because the principle is simple: if you stand for what's right, then you do so regardless of the outcome.  To surrender is to repent from doing the right thing.  We simply cannot do that.

Nice post Halc, you guys are probably in a unique situation having been on both sides at different times. I feel there will be closer truths coming from Dark than anywhere else.