Rolling in the Deep
Entry posted by Schattenmann
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I agree. It is convenient to blame NPO for all of the EQ coalition’s troubles because it was the one that adopted responsibility for leading the (otherwise largely leaderless) eclectic group, and was the most recognised example of the conflicts of interest which plagued the coalition. The more-subtle truth is that the coalition suffered from divergent interests and/or different levels of commitment among many alliances and on multiple fronts which resulted in EQ being less effective than it might have been (which probably would have worsened if the war continued), but that does not fit well with the narrative for this war.That said, there is plenty of blame to go around regarding what went wrong in the EQ War (on both sides really) and Brehon was by no means solely responsible.
This post is best experienced while listening to:
Your summary gives a half-treatment to the issues.
NPO didn't just "adopt" responsibility for the coalition, they were responsible for the war; they organized it for like 4 months prior. Then they did the exact opposite of take responsibility: They announced that they weren't anyone's boss. Then Brehon disappeared.
NPO is not simply some passive object "example of the conflicts of interest." NPO actively schemed with its Umbrella-aligned allies before the war, made promises of a "handshake peace" made deals about who would be hit and who would not, and made promises about what coalition AAs would be allowed to do or not do. They didn't just have conflicts of interest, they created them and imposed them upon us.
There is no subtle truth about the internal conflict of EQ, there is simply the truth: The divergent alliances were invited to a war and given the impression that it was the Big One we'd all been waiting for for 2 years, and that with NPO abdicating leadership we would be running the war by consensus and to its natural conclusion. But that was never true because, we found out, NPO had already submitted a script to NG and C&G for approval and we weren't to be told until it was time to pull the plug. Then Punxsutawney Brehon came out of his hole he didn't see his shadow, so it was time to end the war whether anyone else liked it or not, and as anyone with a brain might have imagined, we all became quite agitated.
VE was on the verge of surrender after a long and retarded negotiation in which QueenHailee asked for input then went manic and disappeared when she received it, then--while preaching to all of us about our selfish idiocy over DH terms--NPO derailed the VE surrender in a weeklong battle over getting their name in the surrender-to list. Then NPO convened DH peace negotiations against the will of the vast majority of the coalition, thus precluding VE's surrender at all since they knew they could just hang out for whole-Umbrella peace. Thus we lost the crucial serious first surrender.
NPO continued to fake us all out over our supposed voice in the coalition when Brehon opened a thread asking for our beginning point terms for each AA we were at war with in preparation for his peace summit which we told him not to have in the first place. I know, height of irony, but a nice gesture. Then he proceeded to ignore everything we said and present his own terms loosely based on what we had said, to which Umbrella, MK, and GOONS went batcrap while OsRavan (or somebody) reminded Brehon of his "handshake peace" promise. The negotiations were too early for DH's damages to have warranted any serious consideration of peace terms, and Brehon's version of what we told him was too extreme; therefore, they blew us off, and left with the impression that we were ready for peace when we were not.
At this point, NPO should have let the war continue, but they were Hell-bent on the white peace and they were Hell-bent on it now. Brehon, Farrin, and Letum went on an internal campaign of berating the coalition for daring to ask for peace terms; this created massive arguments between NPO and AAs which wanted to continue the war or wanted peace terms, and between AAs who wanted terms and AAs who wanted to cut-and-run. NPO began trying to assert the responsibility/control they had refused at the outset; this set the dickheads on the C&G front on a path of obstinance for obstinance's sake.
Regardless of his clear inability to control anything or speak with a mandate on behalf of the coalition, Brehon again opened peace talks, and again mutated what the coalition wanted--a longer war with DH--into what he thought would work for us and within the promises he made pre-war--a negotiated extended war against Umb only. Sure, that worked very well for NPO with its inactive upper tier and $%&@ed up FA.
In the midst of our objections Brehon lost his blob, announced he was done negotiating, then went to NobodyExpects' Parlor of Love for a massage, and on NE's consult alone took the damn Frankenstein's Peace Monster to DH anyway.
At this point he turned around and told us that NPO, AI, and IRON pre-determined everything about the war and how it would end, and that we could sign the treaty or get bent.
The damage was done. The strife opened up by all this scheming and bullying had turned EQ into a roiling basketcase which signed the peace to get away from NPO and from each other. As ChairmanHal says, "there is plenty to go around" but with this exception: only that some of us could have handled ourselves better in dealing with NPO's crap.
And you know the shame of it all? What was it for? NPO got nothing. All those gymnastics to keep DuckRoll and win over C&G. I wish I got a dollar for every time NPO told us we had to go easy on DH because C&G was cancelling on them after fulfilling their debts this one last time. But you lost it all. Your scheming split arguably your best ally Anarchy Inc. in two and destroyed it, the scheming alienated IRON losing DR for you. And C&G, if the promises were made at all, reneged on them. Everyone in EQ was royally pissed or simply disillusioned. You got nothing out of all that.
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