The quiet of December continued through a generally festive Solstice celebration season, with FAN's threats of an interesting 'Give a Gun' event coming to nothing, and politics slowing to a crawl with almost every nation across the globe celebrating some variant of Solstice feast. Possibly the most meaningful announcement is the completion of Mushroom Kingdom's reparation payments, and their immediate re-signing of the MDP with Greenland Republic. With Polaris most of the way through their own payments, and regaining a sanction, the re-emergence of a quasi-BLEU is the likely outcome in the near future.

The Grämlins' great friends at Umbrella and MHA got together with a very welcome mutual defence pact, which sees the MHA signed and sealed with the three largest Citadel alliances.

The peace was shattered in some corners of the world by the Christmas War (Christmas being the name associated with the Solstice festival, specifically the 25th, in the widely held Christian culture), but the alliances involved were all far from Seria and these effects hardly registered here. Hostilities were brief and anded the next day.

2008 ended with a bang for the USA, with a single misplaced tech raid escalating to a full scale declaration of war from Ordo Verde and their big brothers in the Viridian Entente. Political commentators are almost uniformly negative, and the Foreign Minister issued a statement urging for a rapid end to the war and a return to diplomacy.

Review of the Year

With Seria preparing for the upcoming Grämlin Day celebrations [OOC: the anniversary of Seria's admission to the alliance, 18th January], let us reflect on what has been accomplished in the last year.

Thanks to internal growth, recruiting and war damaging other alliances, the Grämlins has moved up to be a creditable 11th strongest in the world. With our closest allies in MHA and TOP coming in at 4th and 7th, and Fark and MCXA both holding a sanction, it has been a great year economically and diplomatically for the alliance. Seria has also done well, with consistent government funding for infrastructure projects and imported technology continuing to increase our presence on the world stage, pushing us to the edge of the top 50 nations worldwide! However, the prohibitively high costs of advanced infrastructure have caused a rethink in the value of growth, and government sources indicate that it is unlikely that Seria will continue that growth into 2009. So 2008 may be remembered as the golden age of Seria.

It has been an excellent year for the armed forces, with three BLEU nations dealt with efficiently and with thankfully small damage at home. War is never a good thing to be brought to a nation, but it is occasionally necessary to remove a threat in the present instead of letting it become more dangerous in the future – and most of the fighting was on BLEU soil. Serian commanders performed admirably and several Gold Crosses were awarded. The Prime Minister handled much of the subsequent reparation deals between Polarian nations and Grämlin nations, and as a result Seria's relations with Polaris are much improved since the war.

The event of the year of course was the relocation from the Green economic group to the Aqua one. There is still a strong attachment to Green within Seria – perhaps something to do with our flag (OOC: it's mostly green) – but the alliance decision was binding upon Seria and so we bade our former comrades a tearful farewell. Our friends in GUN have since joined us, and most Serians have found that Aqua provides just as plentiful supply of imports and trade agreements as Green ever did. We now take pride in both our Green heritage (including the UJA, in many people's minds) and our ever-extending Aqua history.

Elsewhere, we have seen the first anniversary of the second FAN war, making that the longest alliance war in history. We have seen the breaking of the first unbreakable inter-alliance bond, the Ordinance of Order, and the two Orders on opposite sides. And we have seen neutral alliances, first NADC and then the pillar of neutrality, the GPA, embroiled in war. 2008 may have had a peaceful first two quarters in Seria, but as always wars have been taking place elsewhere.