By Unibot.
For previous lectures, see:
- The Anatomy of the Coup: How Francos Spain Won
- Anatomy of the Coup II: Attack of the Puppets
(The Invasion of the North Pacific)
The Founding of the East Pacific
The East Pacific is unique among the feeder regions in that it's the only feeder region in recorded history to have been a User-Created Region before it was a Game-Created Region. For at least a month prior to becoming a Game-Created Region, the East Pacific served as a forward base for the 'third legion' of the Atlantic Alliance, a leading expansionist / proto-imperialist organization of its day. What's truly remarkable about the East Pacific's origins, however, is the number of sheer coincidences present throughout - a fact that I hope to impress upon readers. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that if almost any single event in this lecture were changed, 1 Infinite Loop would not have become delegate of the East Pacific and the entire history of the region would have been fundamentally different.
The story of how the East Pacific came to be is a comedy of errors with the most impeccable timing...
An oft repeated claim is that the East Pacific was also first founded by the Atlantic Alliance. The primary source for this claim comes from MrNonChalant, former Supreme Commander of the Atlantic Alliance. On the original Official Forum, MrNonChalant wrote less than a year (Jan 01 2004) after the event that "the East Pacific was created by [Hitler the Great]1 on the orders of Nusseburg from the Atlantic Alliance due to my urgings." Years later, MrNonChalant elaborated further in saying that "the East Pacific was not founded by me, though I was one of the first people to recognize its potential value. There was a thread that is now gone along with so much of the AAC in which I noted that there was now The Pacific, The West Pacific, The North Pacific, and The South Pacific but no The East Pacific."
"There was some debate about this," writes Mr. MrNonChalant about the founding of the East Pacific, "I seem to recall Nusseburg wasn't sure if this would bring down the wrath of the moderators. Anyway, one of our people (I'm not 100% sure which) took the initiative and the region was controlled for a time by The Great Hitler1, one of our nations."
In a recent email exchange with MrNonChalant (Jan 06 2018), he recommitted to this retelling of events to me and added that "Nusseburg and his memory is similar to mine."
With that said, however, I do wonder given a burgeoning amount of counter-evidence whether the story of the East Pacific's founding is more complicated. Was Hitler the Great (and by extension, Atlantic Alliance), the original founder of the East Pacific? Or did he hawk/refound a pre-existing region?
AA Co-founder and Operations Commander, Nusseburg writes at the time (May 12 2003) that the East Pacific was "taken while [it] had the chance" by the Atlantic Alliance during a "huge flurry of activity" a "few weeks ago," which is plausibly a reference to the week of April 21st when Regional Controls were first introduced. NetworkRadio also wrote that Reubenlucy "was the defending delegate of the conquered East Pacific," who later "joined the ACC and was a respected member." A simple search finds Reubenlucy joined the Atlantic Alliance's forum on April 23 2003 and can be seen via Wayback Archives visiting East Pacific's RMB (not *the* East Pacific) to post pro-Atlantic Alliance propaganda on April 26. How "East Pacific" or Reubenlucy fits into the East Pacific's founding remains unclear.
Contributing further to the confusion is a post from New People / Mammothistan who conceded there were disagreements "over which nation was the founder of the East Pacific. Some say it was Reubenlucy, others Hitler the Great." Mammothistan (New People) has since written that Reubenlucy and the Federation of Commercial Affairs were the commanding officers in the Atlantic Alliance's mission in the West Pacific and had fought over the delegacy. That conflict, according to Mammothistan "bled over into The East Pacific, founded later."
"The West (Pacific) has been its own creation ever since the first day of Occupation," writes Godwin Austen of the Meritocracy in 2006. "There had been a feud between two officers then, the Federation of Commercial Affairs and Reubenlucy, and that war led to the creation of The East Pacific. The West has been identifying itself based on borrowings from the East ever since. The East Pacific was founded by Hitler the Great, a refuge of the Nazi Wars. That was an ancient fight from which almost no one is around anymore."
The Pacific's Freedom and Pride also wrote in 2005 about the brief power struggle between Reubenlucy and the Atlantic Alliance over the West Pacific2, which ended with Reubenlucy joining forces with Atlantic Alliance but it's unstated how exactly the East Pacific plays into the equation except to say that Reubenlucy challenged the Atlantic Alliance in the East Pacific as a result of Atlantic Alliance challenging him in the West Pacific. My best guess is that Reubenlucy and the Atlantic Alliance struggled for power in the West Pacific for one week, with Reubenlucy and Hitler the Great also vying to found the East Pacific first on April 26 (when Reubenlucy also appeared that day on the "East Pacific" 's RMB.) Without game-appointed founders, they would have had no clear indication as to who founded a region first if two (adversarial) officers responded to the same order near simultaneously.
Ultimately however, it seems implausible to me, or rather, unlikely, that the East Pacific remained unfounded for months after the North and South Pacific had been created as MrNonChalant and others suggest. Nonetheless, since the East Pacific never had a game-recognized founder, the creation of the East Pacific by Hitler the Great or someone else must have taken place prior to April 27 2003 when founders were first introduced. Given the coincidental timing of April 26/27 2003, the supposed founding date lays credence to the rather controversial theory that Atlantic Alliance didn't found the East Pacific but rather invaded and took control of the East Pacific when it became available to do so with ejection powers. Alternatively, Atlantic Alliance may have just been extremely unlucky: founding the East Pacific, a single day short of the introduction of founders, thus changing the course of the East Pacific's history dramatically.
What can said with certainty is that the Atlantic Alliance came into possession of the East Pacific - a small, insignificant user-created region at that time - during or near the week of April 21 2003. Numerous sources and eye-witness accounts (e.g., Myrth, Heinekenbier) also note Reubenlucy was routinely the delegate of the East Pacific in his capacity as a Lieutenant of the Atlantic Alliance. It remains in dispute how the East Pacific came into the hands of the Atlantic Alliance and what prior connection Reubenlucy had to the East Pacific. Given for years, NSWiki cited MrNonChalant's recollection that Hitler the Great founded the East Pacific, Reubenlucy and his involvement in the East Pacific has since disappeared from public record. This lecture is the first time to my knowledge that Reubenlucy will have been cited in any contemporary text as a former TEP delegate and potentially (albeit unlikely) even the founder of the East Pacific.
The East Pacific as an AA Forward Base
It should be said that as a backwater user-created region, the East Pacific wasn't necessarily an 'important' region to the Atlantic Alliance. On May 12, just days prior to the East Pacific becoming a Game-Created Region (GCR), Nusseburg dismisses it as a "ACC "stronghold" of, what, 7 nations?"
There are no Wayback Archive captures of the East Pacific during its brief time as a forward base for the Atlantic Alliance, but it's easy to paint a picture of what the region would have looked like. The East Pacific's World Factbook Entry would have included a standard tag noting it was a "Forward base of the Atlantic established on [date]." Lt. Reubenlucy was often delegate. It was a passworded founderless region (a "numeric password," which you had to request from the delegate), with seven or eight nations at any one time and its RMB, filled with camaraderie and stories from the battlefront. Fortunately there is a capture on Wayback Archives of a Residency List which provides us with a list of those Atlantic Alliance recruits and officers that were residing in the East Pacific on May 06: Communist nazis, Downtrodden workers, El Great Almighty Sean, Heinekenbier, Hitheir, Hitler the Great, Reubenlucy, and Rick El Duce Willems. Qantrix, an Atlantic Alliance recruit, was another self-described regular resident of the East Pacific.
The Rise and Fall of the Atlantic Alliance
Atlantic Alliance's meteoric rise as a NationStates world power was followed by a fall from grace as sudden as its emergence. Founded by Dosopan and Nusseburg on March 16 2003, the Atlantic Alliance was distinct from early invaders and defenders, or today's imperialists or defenders, in its hopes to form an influential bloc of colonies without, as Nusseburg says, "[attacking] any well-established regions." They saw themselves as taking regions with unrealized potential - embryonic Game-Created Regions and regions named after RL nations - and 'cultivating' them. Atlantic Alliance didn't want to risk their reputation by invading developed regions.
"In the interest of being tactful as well as being "safe," we feel that it's a good policy to attempt to only target regions with no clear direction, in such a way that we do not provoke anti-ACC sentimentalities," explains Nusseburg. "Our mission is not subjugation -- it is ultimately the building of a strong political bloc. In an age where the vast majority of the world is divided into thousands of independent regions, our battlecry is "Relevance."" When pressed to describe regions that the Atlantic Alliance would consider too established or organized to target for invasion, Nusseburg describes them as "extremely active regions, regions that have a democratic system of influencing delegate votes, and regions that have their own websites."
By the time that the Atlantic Alliance came into possession of the East Pacific, it was already occupying two Game-Created Regions as forward bases, the West Pacific (Captured: April 19 2003) and the Rejected Realms (Captured: May 04 2003). More controversially - because these regions were more established at the time of their invasions - members also had their sights set on the South Pacific and the Pacific.3
Ultimately, the downfall of the Atlantic Alliance was not its leadership per se or its ambition, but rather, its membership which proved at times uncontrollable and unreliable: leaking compromising intelligence and executing unsanctioned missions.
On May 05, the first significant blow to the Atlantic Alliance's reputation came as it sustained a brutal loss in Iraq, one of its occupied regions. In a major upset, the Freedom Alliance, the small upstart defender army, took back control of Iraq from Atlantic Alliance. Freedom Alliance's co-founder, Andistine, later admitted that they had multied extensively to defeat the Atlantic Alliance, but the loss was still extremely damaging to the Atlantic's reputation as a military powerhouse.
In the aftermath of the defeat4, with suspicions of treachery in their midst, Atlantic Alliance closed down applications temporarily and placed new applicants on a wait-list for training. Only a couple of weeks later, the NS Associated Press wrote with regards to Iraq, that the Atlantic Alliance had "suffered some defeats as of late that have harmed both their morale and reputation," putting officials on the defensive.
The next blow to the Atlantic Alliance's reputation, which is especially relevant to this lecture, came shortly thereafter with the invasion of the East Pacific by the Farkers: the most notorious, swashbucklin' invader group of its generation!
The Invasion of the East Pacific
At the dead of night on May 12, the Farkers trickled into the East Pacific under the noses of the Atlantic Alliance, taking the delegacy at approximately 9:00 GMT with a moderately-sized contingent (probably 13-15 endorsements.5) The lead invader delegate, Lothlanderamore unceremoniously ejected the Atlantic Alliance's troops from their own forward base upon taking the delegacy.
To celebrate their victory, the Farkers ended the night by brazenly trolling Atlantic Alliance on their own forum with gibberish messages.
A NS Associated Press article from later that week writes, "who knew [Farkers] were suicidal?" The journalist regales his readers with a colorful play-by-play of the Farker invasion.
"After losing their role playing battle at Blarney, that same night they somehow were able to get the password for the region of the East Pacific and take the region from the Atlantic Alliance," writes the A/P Wire. "In addition it appears that they then went and mocked the Atlantic Alliance in their forum using a type of text messaging about the NES game of Duck Hunt. It was amazing that they would take on another invading region but then to rub it in their face was on the verge of suicidal."6
Still to this day, Heinekenbier (now known as HC Eredivisie) remembers logging onto NationStates only to find to his surprise that he and the rest of his Atlantic Alliance colleagues had been ejected and banned from their forward base: the East Pacific had been invaded the night previous. Heinekenbier explained to me in a recent telegram exchange (Jan 13 2018) that he was the delegate of the East Pacific during the night of the invasion and subsequently the last Atlantic Alliance delegate of the East Pacific; his recollections are further corroborated by the Atlantic Alliance's Minister of Justice who referred to Heinekenbier as one of its base delegates, May 11/12.
Heinekenbier surmises that Reubenlucy must have had to depart the East Pacific for a mission with the Atlantic Alliance, leaving him to take the reins just prior to the invasion.
The Farkers were made up of an influx of players7 from Fark.com that joined NationStates in January; they had since established themselves by this point as a group of hard-nosed but mischievous risk-takers with a bunch of high-profile invasions in France, America, the Heartland, Great Britain, Ireland, 32 County Irish Republic, Lazy College Students, Axis, Poland, Old South, Blarney Castle, and Conservative Nationalists.
The Farkers took advantage of an underregulated and undermoderated game environment to invade and maliciously refound regions and troll natives with spam - even going as far as to use a scripted migratory nation to identify regions that were not yet passworded. They were masters at confusing their many opponents8 and outside observers, using false names and misleading jump points to such an extent that although the Farkers were just one group, they were known under an umbrella of names and personas (e.g., Pirates, French Pirates, Puddists, Farktopia, Farkistan), including the names of regions they had invaded (e.g., France, 100 Nations of Conquest.)
The question of how the Farkers obtained the password for the East Pacific, however, remains a mystery. It goes without saying that without the password there would have been no invasion and consequently, no Farker occupation. The history of the East Pacific was radically altered by whoever leaked its password...
Who Leaked the East Pacific's Password?
It's not impossible this question could lay claim to being the oldest cold case in the history of NationStates. After the invasion, the Atlantic Alliance opened up an internal investigation with two prime suspects under consideration: Reubenlucy and Myrth. A compelling case can be made against both. A "trial" of sorts was overseen by Qantrix and Louldamin.
Reubenlucy was suspected only because he left the Atlantic Alliance shortly after the invasion of the East Pacific to join Australia where he became a long-time member and delegate. It's possible that Reubenlucy's involvement in the Atlantic Alliance may have had more to with keeping access to the East Pacific he appeared attached to, than it did supporting the organization.
As a native of the Pacific and Europe, Myrth was at that time a vocal anti-invader that admonished and indeed, toyed with invaders of all likes, including the Atlantic Alliance. Hoping to infiltrate the Atlantic Alliance, Myrth had placed, Borisland, a puppet nation flying the Atlantic Alliance's flag in the East Pacific just prior to the lead delegate locking the region down with a password in early May. What drew suspicion to Borisland/Myrth was that he soon asked for the password after it was imposed, despite already being in the region!
In his defense, Myrth and others have long cited the fact that he was publicly denied the password by Reubenlucy: how could Myrth be to blame if he didn't get the password? New testimony from Heinekenbier, however, undermines the strength of this alibi. At multiple occasions during our interview, Heinekenbier admitted (unprompted) that it was he who had accidentally leaked the password. "The password was not leaked per se," wrote Heinekenbier, "as I gave it to Myrth I believe who requested it (yes, I f**ked that one up big time)." In a different telegram, Heinekenbier again adds he is certain he telegrammed Myrth the password: "I'm certain I TM'd the password to him."
The East Pacific under Farker Occupation
It started out as a normal invasion, until it wasn't. The Farkers were initially caught off guard when the East Pacific became a Game-Created Region under their own noses - they had stolen the East Pacific from the Atlantic Alliance but they had no idea it would become a Game-Created Region while in their possession. Juxapositions, a Farker, recalls to me via telegram that "I remember clearly is that we (The Farkers) had no idea that the feeder regions were put into place and we had a lot of confusion for those first hours wondering how in the hell people were getting into the region."
Comprehensively applying a nation-dating technique, I would estimate that the East Pacific gained GCR status and privileges on May 15. I scanned all regional happenings captured by Wayback Machine in a wide time frame for nations moving from the East Pacific and then I estimated their exact founding date using population. Prior to May 15, the cases of nations sighted moving from the East Pacific is sporadic and rare, after May 15, it was common place for brand new nations to be sighted moving from the East Pacific. Two of those "brand new" nations were German Surfers, which moved from the East Pacific on May 15, 2003 17:11:56 GMT, and Rightious Wrath, 20:59:36 GMT. If this theory holds then the East Pacific was given Game-Created status not more than three days after the Farker Occupation had begun. This estimated date, May 15, is consistent with the timing that those closest to the event recall; all agree it was not long after the initial invasion that the East Pacific became a Game-Created Region.
As the password lock was abolished and new nations flooded into the East Pacific, the initial knee-jerk response from the Farkers and their delegate, Lothlanderamore, was to eject all nations. At this time, endorsements received weren't yet tracked on nation pages, preventing delegates from knowing whether a UN nation was a threat or not to its delegacy before the region updated. However, this hard-nosed ejection policy quickly drew public condemnation, outrage and accusations of region griefing. Over the next week, the ejection policy was loosened to ejecting only UN nations. Then, ejecting only UN nations that neglected to endorse the delegate. As others have recounted, Lothlanderamore left NationStates indefinitely soon after this - passing the delegacy to a fellow Farker, 1 Infinite Loop. The exact date of this transition is up for dispute. 1 Infinite Loop often cites May 25 as the transition date, but Texas' NS History data has Lothlanderamore as delegate until at least May 28 (and 1 Infinite Loop delegate by April 02.) LA Times notes that 1 Infinite Loop moved his nation from Farktopia for an (at that time) unknown purpose on May 27. My own guess would be that 1 Infinite Loop founded the East Pacific forums and became delegate on the same day, May 31 2003.
When 1 Infinite Loop became delegate, the World Factbook Entry still included the Farkers' warning that UN Nations not endorsing the delegate would be ejected; this again directed public condemnation and scorn to 1 Infinite Loop who quickly was gaining a reputation as a tyrant and a griefer in the early days of the East Pacific that raised international interest in unseating him and freeing the occupied region once and for all. Having inherited "his position from the previous regime," Kandarin writes in 'Military Blunders: Nationstates' that 1 Infinite Loop was not "actively involved in endorsement-swapping," and with "less than 50 endorsements, made a prime target for any large-scale invader."
1 Infinite Loop faced his first test as delegate a week later.
June 08, 01:15:42 AM EST: PapalExhibitionism is admitted to the World Assembly, rising to the East Pacific delegacy quickly with the help of some multis (72 of them.)
PapalExhibitionism was an established spammer, who wrote on the East Pacific's World Factbook Entry upon taking the delegacy in an ill-advised rampage: "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA You lose, 1 Infinite Loop." While PapalExhibitionism and his or her puppet nations were soon deleted by 5:24:20 AM EDT, the absence of a delegate created a power vacuum - a twenty four hour window - for nations all around the world to try to upset 1 Infinite Loop's hold in the East Pacific. One region that siezed the challenge was the Rejected Realms and the newly created Rejected Realms Army (RRA); their failure to capture the East Pacific in the uncertain interregnum (a comedy of errors if nothing else) was expertly covered in depth in the first chapter of Kandarin's study, Military Blunders: Nationstates. But it was a failure, nevertheless, that led to 1 Infinite Loop returning to the East Pacific where he remained delegate almost continuously for over 1080 days; serving the East Pacific faithfully, Loop developed the region's early culture and institutions and founded the Confederacy of the East Pacific.
This study has, in my mind at the very least, raised more questions than answers about the Atlantic Alliance's involvement in the East Pacific's pre-history but without the sudden resurrection of Reubenlucy or Hitler the Great, I hope this "Anatomy of the Coup" lecture still satisfies those who wanted to learn more about how the East Pacific as a fledgling Game-Created Region - spawned in expansionist intrigue - came to be. Change only a few dates, a few events in the strange and perilous history of the East Pacific and the course of its political trajectory would be altered unimaginably. The Atlantic Alliance handed the Farkers a new Game-Created region through a series of mistakes and horrendously bad luck; in turn, the Farkers held onto their prized new occupation only tenuously throughout the invasion of the East Pacific.
Citations
1. It seems likely that in all these instances that MrNonchalant means "Hitler the Great" - a documented AA soldier.
2. Westwind was kind enough to recover this illuminating quotation for me from Freedom and Pride, November 2005:
"This was not a steady control, for at first, a nation known as Reubenlucy went on its own endorsement swapping campaign and took the delegacy for at least 7 days. However, with the support of the Atlantic Alliance and its central command behind him, FoCA took the delegacy for good, or so he thought.
"Reubenlucy eventually became friends with Federation and they agreed since opposition to the ACC's iron-fisted rule was getting more vocal, that someone needed to be in control of the region at all times. Since FoCA lived in the USA, and Reubenlucy in Australia, they shared password control over the delegate nation. This arrangement succeeded for a while, but the opposition launched a full revoloution. In order to combat this, and before the mods handing down strict banning rules, Reuben, in control of the delegate nation, ejected the 2nd and 3rd "troublemakers" and banned them until after update, thus preserving control of the AA/CC for a month.
"Reubenlucy became friends with the 3rd person that was ejected, who was named Norion. Norion was a WP native who did not wish to get tied up in the Atlantic political situation. Because of the hateful situation against the alliance, Commerical affairs slipped away and Reubenlucy, now in full control of the nation and region, allowed Norion to creep higher in endorsements. Eventually the situation against the alliance became so brutal that the central command colonels voted to disband the organization and officially hand TWP off to the popular native delegate, Norion. "
3. Atlantic Alliance's New Ali directed (possibly unsanctioned) missions to seize control of the South Pacific and the Pacific and to that end, briefly unseated the South Pacific's delegate, Killer Monkeys. Atlantic Alliance's invasion of the Pacific was even more interesting in that it sought to exploit a power vacuum left in the wake of tyrant delegate InfernoIce's UN ban and subsequent ejection from the region on May 08 15:49:51 GMT. When the native delegate, the Wold, took the Pacific's delegacy with just ten endorsements, he faced steep competition from the Atlantic Alliance's Jell-O to trade endorsements and build his support quickly (50 endorsements by May 09, then 150 by May 10.) Jell-O and the Atlantic Alliance controlled the Pacific, on what appears to be an unofficial basis, from May 11 to May 16 2003.
4. Mere moments after being booted from Iraq, you can see Atlantic Alliance recruits discussing the failed mission on the Rejected Realms' RMB via Wayback Machine. Those same recruits can even be seen agreeing to return to their forward base in the East Pacific!
5. This rough estimate is based off other Farker invasions at that time: America (approx. 15) and Great Britain (approx. 10.) 1 Infinite Loop also said he had thirteen endorsements (likely all Farker endorsements) when he first took the helm in the East Pacific as its delegate.
6. I dated the invasion of the East Pacific based off of this article, "Invaders take on mods" (NS Associated News.) According to the reporter, the invasion took place on Monday night (May 12), the same day as the Farkers' scheduled roleplay war: "Battle for Blarney Castle Starts Monday Morning." The region's update time is an educated projection based off a series of recorded updated times from Wayback Archive, averaging for variance.
The Blarney Castle refound was one of the most daring and outright beguiling of the Farkers' victories. They tricked their opponents and natives of Blarney Castle into voluntarily leaving the region for a day to hold a roleplay to decide 'fair and square' who would win Blarney Castle. The result? The Farkers lost the roleplay but had already refounded the region quietly in the night.
7. While not a complete list, the Farkers included: 1 Infinite Loop, ABCNNBCBS, Ackbar, Architeuthis, Backgroundnation, Casus Belli, Feynland, Hilarity Ensues, Jaffa, Jolinar, Laurencia/Laurencie, LeWonkatania, Lotlanthanderamore, Nothingg, Southeastern Canada, Stalingradski, Stimpland, Tommasi, WeirdVille, and WheatonCurtistan.
8. The Farkers were opposed most venomously by a coalition of regions that it had invaded or antagonized in the past. The most prominent and vocal opponents included the Entente Cordiale (an alliance between Imperial Germany, North Alerica, America, American Federation, The Mountain, and "an unnamed new member"), NationStates' Irish community (Ireland, 32 County Irish Republic), France, and Great Britain.