Article XIII – Saturday 13th October 2012
It’s certainly been a busy week across Gameplay, with particularly dramatic developments in the R/D game. I’ll update this article as and when I become aware of wider news, but as of now there’s only one story on Gameplayers’ lips: the fall of
Eastern Islands of Dharma.
A Disaster for Dharma
After Unibot II’s DEATion, Dharma was left Founderless, but with a password in place and a Delegate, in the form of Quelesh. It had been gradually abandoned for around two months beforehand, after Unibot II moved to Gholgoth, a process which has been somewhat speeded up by the arrival of a vast raiding party in the region.
Led by
The Black Hawks, with
Jakker as the point, the initial contingent has been boosted over the last few days, with support from regions as varied as
The Black Riders, Unknown, The New Inquisition, Antarctic Oasis and
The Legions, to such a degree that the raid leader has 46 endorsements at the time of writing – seemingly an unassailable total.
It remains to be seen whether Dharma can be rescued, but for now one of the UDL’s heartlands outside of Kyzikos has been transformed into one of the greatest concentrations of raiders seen in months, all eager to take part in the feeding frenzy.
Depending on your outlook, this raid is either a foul example of regional destruction and endorsement piling, or a spectacular achievement for raiders across NS. What cannot be denied is its scale and scope.
This interview was conducted by my comrade
Communist Quinntopia before his departure.
Q1: Did you found the UDL, or was it someone else? Also, when was the UDL founded?A: I founded The United Defenders League, yes. The initial creation of The United Defenders League closely followed my resignation as Arch-Chancellor of The Founderless Regions Alliance. It was founded sometime roughly around June 7, 2011 (which was when our forum was first built), although we didn’t “formally” accept our first member (besides me) till June 13 2011. Ironically, our first member was Spartzerium and our second member was Rawrgirnia; the former now serves for The Black Hawks and the latter served for DEN. But fortunately, I can say our third member, Eluvatar, has served with us faithfully for well over a year now. *makes a sigh of relief*
However we didn’t “publically release” The United Defenders League until September 1st – this way we could use the summer (which is lacking in activity and a bad time to try to generate enough momentum for a new organization) to build our forum infrastructure and get a core group of defenders trained and “detagging” as well as defending. By the time September 1st came around there was significant buzz generated by our activity that when we came on the scene and announced our organization publically, we attracted a lot of players to defending in general and were considered a major defender organization in a very short period of period.
Q2: From your distinguished career as a defender, do you have a most significant defence?A: I am going to assume you mean “significant mission”. In defending, we have two three broad categories of operations: liberations, defenses and restorations (detags). Liberations are measures to remove entrenched invader delegates from regions they have been invaded, Defenses are measures to stop invasions in progress and Restorations are actions taken to return a region to the state it was in prior to an invasion.
If you were asking me what my most significant defence is (specifically): I took part in a solid evening of defending with my colleagues-in-green-tights that actually “shut-out” all tag-raids one night on Mar 31 2012. Some regions that usually are regularly targeted like The Youngworld and Benevolent Capitalism were defended which is a relief.
My personal favorite mission (in general) would probably be Operation Little Stalingrad, the Liberation of ITALIA, this past April, which was the largest successful liberation done in a rather long time (31 updaters) and the first “big” liberation that I did successfully after ending my drug use about two months previously. I just remember the relief that came with the mission’s success, that operation in itself was three days of planning and recruiting in addition to no sleep; So, to have that come off without a hitch and save a great community, while proving to myself that it wasn’t the narcotics that was the “magic spark” necessary for victory, brought me an overwhelming sense of joy.
Q3: As some speak about "raider unity", would you say there is some sort of "defender unity" amongst the main defending organisations?A: Well, let’s first decide what “raider unity” is? I’d argue that raider unity is (1) cooperation on raids, viz. raiders will help other raiders (of different organizations and stripes) to raid targets, also “supplier” regions will provide sufficient ‘piling’ on the raider delegate to ensure a liberation would be improbable, (2) diplomatic cooperation, viz. raiders agree not to talk bad about each other in public.
If you want to argue the extent of raider unity is more than this, I’m willing to listen to alternative versions, but I’m going to compare this model for raider unity to defenderdom.
Do we have diplomatic cooperation? We try, but the thing about defenders is: most of us really care about native communities. We get mad sometimes and we speak out against our fellow defenders in public – this can be a consequence of cross-organizational communication being rescinded sometimes but often it’s just us being stressed-out human beings saying stuff we probably shouldn't say out of stress.
Do we have cooperation on operations? Not to the same extent as raiders, several major organizations will not take cooperative measures to better ensure victory in defenses (e.g., cross-organizational-endorsing), although we do share hints, nods and prods which can be immensely helpful.
We’ve seen full cooperation across the spectrum of major defender organizations for a couple of authorized liberation missions: Belgium and Capitalist Paradise, to be specific. But nearly as soon as the word gets out that the defender machine is ready to get in full gear, raider groups flee (in Belgium’s case, The New Inquisition fled to The Rejected Realms where it was greeted with an ambush by all the major defenders organizations). Obviously this is a concern for cross-organizational counter-intelligence, but it’s also rather evident, I think, that we do not usually see all-inclusive defender cooperation for liberation missions whereas all-inclusive military commitments is less rare in the raider world.
We see this deficit of cooperation for a number of reasons; one I would like to share is simply put: a difference of options for the realization of one’s main objective. Raiders have a simple objective: to cause damage to native communities thereby frustrating defenders. This is achievable in a number of varying approaches to one main scheme: “an invasion”. Defenders also have a simple objective: to protect native communities from unjust invasions. But how to go about that vague objective carries with it at least two general methodologies (“liberations” and “defenses”), ethical disagreements over the prioritization of those methodologies and structural differences in the capacity of defender organizations to perform either methodology well. So… cooperation is complex. In retrospect, I think, we (defenderdom) have done a good job of cooperating for the greater good of native communities considering all the obstacles that are in our way.
Q4: Judging by your forums, the UDL seems to have a Robin Hood-like theme to it. Is there any particular reason for why this is?A: I knew I wanted The United Defenders League to have a medieval chivalric and romantic tone to it; something idealistic that we had not seen before in a major non-regional defender organization. We've always seen a general militaristic or political theme (e.g., ADN, FRA, EAA) or a left-wing theme (e.g., RLA) but nothing grand and idealistic that just screams: we’re here to help you because it’s the right thing to do. NationStates was home to those sentiments before, but to really revive it and get people energized in an actual humanitarian effort, I thought it needed to be symbolized and restored as apart of the core virtue of our organization.
Originally, I was going to go with a King Arthur theme, but then I remembered TITO actually uses a vague “knight” theme, so I was stuck for a theme until I drove by a street-post that said “Sherwood St.” and the name clicked. Robin Hood’s Band of Merrymen were loyal tight-wearing civilians turned combatants, authorized not by any state’s law but a higher moral law (a sense of justice) to challenge illegitimate leaders and the injustices they commit against political communities. It seemed like a perfect fit.
Q5: What do you expect to happen to the UDL in the future?A: We will see the end of injustice or go down trying. Either way, I am sure we will have left NationStates better off than it was without us. Thanks for the interview.
Silly WA Proposal Of The Week
This week’s silly proposal, chosen by me on account of its poor quality and the particularly hilarious “ACKNOWLEDGES that Silver Dragon refuses to acknowledge” clause, is
“Condemn Silver Dragon”.RECOGNIZING that all regions in
Majestrate are under the control of
Silver dragon,
NOTING that Silver dragon has desecrated
Lazzarania,
FURTHER NOTING that Silver dragon overtaxes its residents for no apparent reason,
KNOWING that Silver dragon has further supressed all free trade,
ACKNOWLEDGES that Silver dragon refuses to acknowledge the venerated World Assembly,
CONCEDES that Silver dragon is a treacherous authoritarian,
DEEMS Silver dragon worthy of condemnation,
HEREBY CONDEMNS Silver dragon.
That’s all for this week – to be honest, I have absolutely no idea what’s coming next week, so I’ll wait for Quinntopia to spill the beans rather than speculating myself, as interesting as that would be.
Yours,
- FreeSoc (Of the Free Socialist Territories)