While I am still in OOC mode, I would also like to take the chance to apologise to my opponents during the real war, I resigned from Council shortly before the war started due to great time constraints with RL, and sadly this was reflected during battle. I probably only managed to check my nation eight times or so for the entirety of it. As a bit of a war whore, I am greatly saddened that I did not get to gain and inflict many casualties, and my casualty rank has gone down significantly. Also war banter is always fun and so I regret the chance to have fun with my opponents. Hopefully should we meet again, we do so under better circumstances and we can have a jolly old time.[/OOC]
To fully understand the current situation between Gramlins, a knowledge of the history our relationship is required. Whilst it is a long history, I shall attempt to condense it down to a couple of paragraphs for you.
We first truly met during the formation of the Mobius accords. I believe we both had a large mutual respect for each other at this time and relations were generally good. It was however the lead up to the War of the Coalition and the events following it shortly that we began to have problems. They were one of the greatest proponents for war against Polaris, who at the time despite a lot of fallout we still considered friends and were trying to protect. When they (and the others) eventually got their way, we reluctantly had to assist in the war, as per our treaties. We pre-emptively struck elements of the BLEU block, Neuva Vida and PUKE on the behalf of those attacking polar. Whilst we initially did demand reparations, this was mostly done to assist RoK, afterwards we privately cleared NV and PUKE of any terms to us and let them go as we never wanted any in the first place. It was however their departure from Continuum shortly after this war that started to send things sour. We largely felt that we had been used by Gramlins to satisfy their hard on for Polaris. Once they had used the bloc for their dirty work, they left, flaunting morals and reasons which were very contradictory to some of their past behaviour which further enhanced the perception of being used.
As the karma war loomed, diplomatic relations started again, and it seemed as though they were wanting to patch things up. The timing was noticed but the thought of keeping that devastating Gramlins top tier off our side was certainly appealing. It seemed like it would be for naught however. As the war quickly accelerated, and it became clear we would be entering regardless, they requested we would not attack any of their allies, so they could remain on the periphery. Unfortunately we trusted them a little more than we should have, believing, in those desperate times that perhaps this was an old friend trying to help us. While they may have been trying to help us, it wasn't long before they attacked us, because we were disrupting the balance too greatly. They had to ensure that Pacifica was destroyed. A position we were not pleased with, but at least they then promised to keep anyone else off of us and they would stay off our allies. This is why we waived the cancellation time clause in our TOA when they cancelled it. We foolishly believed we could keep them off our allies and that it would keep others off us. We were after all best suited to taking on Gramlins (and had we not been dog-piled even more shortly after it would have been an interesting war). I think it was but the next day that their promises were again broken when several more attacked us.Turns out it wasn't enough, they claimed that several of those attacking us were whining about taking too much damage and had called on others to attack us. I think they fingered CSN and Fark specifically at the time but I may be wrong and would have to look it up. Those who had made the promises left the alliance following this and largely proceeded to laugh in our faces and blame us. Perhaps it was indeed our fault - it's clear now they are not an alliance who can be trusted. I will give them credit where credit is due however, and they did apparently help somewhat in achieving an acceptable peace for us. So if nothing else we were grateful for that. This gratitude was hardly as much as they were expecting however, after all, they may have helped us but they did attack us, and in our opinion they had broken their word to us on multiple counts, yet somehow it was in the positive and we were still interested in patching things up. After all this was to be a brave new world, and having a friend in Gramlins would be helpful.
It was our first encounters with Ramirus Maximus however that rapidly burned what little relationship points they had gained from us away. At this time he was but a low level government member, in charge of tech or something. He would incessantly ask us to do tech farms for Gramlins, something we turned down each time. If anything we wanted to be importing tech en-mass to recover our lost stock from the war, not sell it off. However he would not understand this and continued to bug council members day and night. Eventually we proceeded to ignore him. When he made his way to the top position that was about the end of any hopes for a positive relationship.
And so finally we come to current crisis. After accepting what we believed to be official terms offered by the government, were thoroughly annoyed to learn that that was in fact, apparently not the case. We are led to believe (at least according to MathewPK) that Gramlins had not actually sent an authorised representative to any of the negotiations and that these these terms were offered in error. I might believe that to be the case had it not been offered twice. Instead I believe that on a drunken night of WWII pacific theatre war movies, someone got some brilliant idea and vetoed our surrender. Even if this is not the case. Had Gramlins actually taken the negotiations seriously, sent an authorised person with whatever terms they are keeping secret - they may very well have gotten them along with admitting guilt. After all they constantly insist that they can't be that bad. To be honest I wouldn't even be surprised if they were incredibly lenient. At this point they wont be accepted.
I am amazed by many things they have said, claimed and done, however what amazes me the most is their apparent ability to doublethink. They freely grab a dictionary and take words for it, and sometimes, like unconditional surrender, even give technically correct, albeit odd definitions. Yet they consistently misuse these terms as if they have some vastly different meaning. It astounds me. A dictionary is not a list of cool sounding words to pick and choose from, and then make arbitrary meanings for, each word is pre-defined, and each definition has a certain meaning.
This is not their only case of doublethink, of course not! The irony of them attempting a police action from the side against police actions is outright hilarious. Let's not forget the fact that passing judgement in this manner is one of the purported greatest crimes the Hegemony ever committed. I gladly assisted in disbanding alliances in the aftermath of the UJW, I believe that I was doing a service to the community. Yet today it is different, I still believe many of these reformed alliances are detrimental to the world at large (Heck the advertisement for GOONS on something awful is largely about making people cry and ruining the game as can be seen here, [warning, foul language etc] http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/bannerads/53fcea9c14f2977964bbedb351121425.png and http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3282006 ), but I would no longer disband them for it and nor would I demand an unconditional surrender. The days of such actions being acceptable are meant to be long since gone.
The greatest problem however is that they want to pass holy judgement upon us without knowing us, our beliefs or our reasons. They prefer to make up their own or take at face value the words of others. We are not an immoral alliance. One of our core beliefs is trying to be a generally good alliance. War in and of itself is an act of evil be it on the on the offensive or in defence of friends. By definition it is an aggressive action (even if it has defensive or passive intent). However it is often a necessary evil, and if one is to participate in such and one feels justified in committing evil, they have already committed the immoral act by declaring war, the means of war [at least how it pertains to Cyber Nations in game/character] is largely an amoral decision. Be it for a greater good or simply in betterment or defence of your friends and alliance, you should do all in your power to be as effective as possible in the conflict. It is here that we justify pre-emptive strikes, just as we did so for Gramlins, TOP, MCXA and many others who wanted polar blood, just as we believed we did in defence of our allies, the New Sith Order. To say we did so without any reason at all is simply false. To say we did so out of paranoia is also false, we did so because we saw it as the most effective place for us to fight in the war as a whole. Not as a separate front, nor as a separate war. Dividing conflicts like this is merely a tool of propaganda, one we used in the WoTC and one that was used against us when polar et al peaced out leaving us behind. We desperately sought peace and were denied. I do not blame them for this, I would likely take the same opportunity to beat down one of my greatest potential opponents. To say our reasons were anything other than doing what we thought would help win this conflict for our allies however is out-rightly false. I would just like to note here that our most recent dow was generally terrible attempt at a joke, if you look back through most of our DoWs very few of them are actually serious and many are jokes or sarcastic hyperbole. Some good examples of this are our WoTC DOW and our GATO war DOW.
Even more false is it to believe that we desire to prey upon and hold some kind of grudge against our opponents of the last couple of wars. Ignoring the fact that in both cases we blatantly lost, and the fact that we actually declared war on vastly different sections of the treaty map. We had actually attempted to build better relations with some of these alliance during the inter-war period. For example, despite our great culture clash, I believe our Question and Answer session with Mushroom Kingdom left both parties with a greater respect for each other. Some attempts were successful, and others were largely ignored or rebuffed.
Not only is this extended war apparently removing this blight against our freedom, it's simply fun. When was the last time two great alliances effectively had a 1v1 without outside interference. Despite the restrictions placed upon us, we are enjoying this, the extra restrictions merely add to the challenge and enjoyment of defeating these deluded fools. For this I would like to gratefully thank the signatories of the ESA, for allowing us to face off against gramlins 1v1. It has been a blast.
At the end of the day however, we just want to move on. We accept that we were wrong about certain things and I doubt we'll be pre-emptively striking any time soon. The only one this extended war actually benefits is us, it's removing a maniacal alliance that not only can't use a dictionary, seems to honestly think our acts are comparable to the 9/11 attacks, that we are criminals of the highest order, and that we are the embodiment of World War II Japan. An alliance lead by a deluded and spiteful man and his brainwashed cronies, inflicting some of the greatest evil upon ourselves and the Cyberverse at large, in the name of other parties who do not want it in the first place. All because of their twisted definition of justice. Despite all this, we just want to move on. Make our amends to the parties who were actually aggrieved and move on towards the future. This is why we still offer white peace, but your stubbornness is wearing thin. More and more councillors are slowly deciding that you do not deserve white peace, and once that reaches a majority, who knows what you will get? One thing I will promise however is that it will be much better than unconditional surrender. We are better than that - we are better than Gramlins. Unconditional surrender is a term we vehemently oppose and will not propagate. Regardless of how deserving of it the Gramlins may be.
Gramlins take your peace whilst you can; we will not hold out the olive branch for much longer.
- Read more...
- 34 comments
- 781 views