[Iron Wolf]

The Eagle Falls & is Reborn: Great War IV- to Purplegate and Beyond

In the aftermath of Great War IV, things were looking up for The Legion. We had a respected, experienced cabinet headed by Lord Swampy. Planet Bob did not appear to hate us and flame our threads on first sight. Our military prowess was acknowledged to be fine tuned and of the sharpest of edges. We admittedly still had a long way to go politically, but few doubted that we were finally on the road to the top again.

Valhalla continued to be a sore point with most Legionnaires, and discussions of Valhalla and noWedge never ceased to come. There were many Legion members that did not have an ill wish of Valhalla until after events of the Dove War and Great War IV changed their opinion. Unless things changed, there was going to be another conflict of war between The Legion and Valhalla and therefore probably the NPO.

Lord Swampy chose not to run for a second term as Prime Minister leaving the field open. The Prime Minister position was hotly contested between two very well-known Legionnaires: Sinatra and Thom Solo. They had very different cabinet experience that would put them in the running for the leadership of The Legion.

Sinatra was Home Minister during Great War III, and Deputy Prime Minister two times during the reconstruction period after that war. Thom Solo was Foreign Minister in the cabinet immediately after Great War III. He had spent the majority of his career in The Legion as ambassador to various alliances, many of them very important and high-profile. As stated earlier, he was the guiding hand behind the blanket Non-Aggression Pact, The Pax Legio. On the surface, it would appear that both men offered The Legion sound, proven leadership skills.

The vote was the closest in recent memory, and ended up with a run-off election between the two choices. In the end, Thom Solo won by a nine vote margin. Thom Solo was a Hall of Fame member; as his avatar stated, just an “All-Around Nice Guy.” But as Sinatra states in his memoirs, “Thom was a fine Legionnaire however his presence in office would prove to be near fatal to The Legion.”

Another problem in the cabinet that didn’t seem to be readily apparent to most voters was when Pezstar won the office of Foreign Minister. In retrospect, “controversial” would be the kindest way to describe her leadership, if not entirely accurate.

October 2007 was peaceful for The Legion. There was nothing of major importance to worry about, other than the ever-present noWedge issues. That Halloween was a happy time in the alliance. Many members celebrated the time of year by changing their avatars to masquerade as other Legionnaires of note (or of infamy). There was a competition on GATO’s forum (called GATOween) challenging other alliances to a spam-off. The Legion acquitted themselves with honor, beating easily all other contenders for the championship. Of many things The Legion can be rightly accused of, talkative and masters of spam are definitely something we can claim without any doubts.

The Legion’s public relations group to the outside world, The Legion Protection Squad, was going full steam ahead. As misinformation came up on the CN Main Forum, those members were on the ball and quickly countering it with The Legion’s real stance and intent.

Then that fateful November happened. Without warning, Lord Swampy resigns from The Legion, as does Thom Solo. The remaining cabinet orders everyone into peace mode again. Then the announcement that was the worst blow anyone could imagine.

While still Prime Minister, Lord Swampy was either approached by lead elements within Valhalla or approached them to discuss the coup of noWedge and oust him from power. Prime Minister Thom Solo was advised of this by Lord Swampy when Thom took over the leadership of The Legion.

In a move that can best be described as a total loss of sanity, the architect of the NAP treaty with Planet Bob, The Pax Legio, had given his consent to continue with the plan to attempt the coup of noWedge. The leadership of The Legion had directly attempted to interfere with the inner workings of a foreign power; every alliance with an MDAP with Valhalla including the NPO now has just cause to go to war against our alliance should that secret come out. And came out it did, in spades.

Thom’s resignation moved Vidra99 to the Prime Minister position since he was the Deputy PM. He appointed Wain as DPM and the cabinet attempted damage control. The cabinet contacted Valhalla and NPO to inform them of the illegal coup attempt by the two former Legionnaires. However, the damage was beyond control. By electing their leaders, the general membership had made themselves accountable for their leaders’ actions. That is the double edge of democracy: those with the right to vote are responsible for the actions of the elected whether they actually voted or not.

Confusion still reigns, and Pezstar announces on the CN Forum that The Legion is disbanding to save the general membership from a second Dove War. The announcement however, was illegal as many Legionnaires found out after following the disbandment order. Pezstar had signed two cabinet members’ names to the disbandment notice in direct opposition to their wishes, making the order illegal.

Legal or not, many Legionnaires followed the order, cutting the membership strength of The Legion in half in less than a day. Most of The Legion’s most experienced members; sometimes called our best and brightest resigned and left. Many stay because they simply did not know what was going on while they were away from the internet. Others stayed out of duty and love of their home in The Legion.

The loss of so many members with experience in running an alliance government was devastating. Junior members with far less experience and sometimes none at all was left to step up and lead in this dark hour. The exodus forced those newer members to learn their trade and grow up quickly. In the long run this could be seen as a good event, as it ended a long-running debate over whether or not the upper tier of leadership was an exclusive club of elites or not. This massive “brain-drain” leveled the playing field giving many a chance to shine who otherwise might have been overlooked.

The remaining cabinet members, Vidra99, Lincongrad, and Ayrrie, appointed Sinatra, HymenBreach, and FreedomBringers to form the provisional government, The Triumverate. The triumvirate is to lead the remainder of The Legion and attempt to get what terms may be had for surrender. After appointing the Triumverate to their task, the three remaining cabinet members resigned to give those who stayed behind a better chance at getting surrender terms. A short while later, Lincongrad had a private talk with Z'ha'dum and arranged to re-enter The Legion.

The terms are harsh and non-negotiable. $300 million in reparations per month, to end at some future point in time to be determined. The Legion is to have an NPO Viceroy installed to oversee the rebuilding of the alliance to where it can be self-governing and the rest of Planet Bob can trust us to not go off and cause another major global incident. No one is allowed to resign from The Legion. We were to be moved off from the purple sphere to gray or no team. All our treaties were suspended until further notice. While under Viceroyalty, the NPO would see to our protection should we Legionnaires fall under attack.

The terms were put up on a poll. Not to vote whether to accept or not, but to gauge where the rest of the membership sat in regards to these terms. To accept the terms and make the best of it was the majority opinion of Legionnaires active that November 9, 2007. It was a majority of about 6 votes, but a majority nonetheless. This disaster came to be known as Purplegate.

Before the NPO could take possession of The Legion’s old forum home and gain root admin access, itches, who was the Director of Cruelty and Beatings, deleted all the old forum threads to deny the NPO access to secret information that would have cause irreparable harm to other former Legion and allied nations and alliances. He performed this act knowing full well that it would mean his nation being a permanent member of the NPO’s “ZI” list. While this was done to protect those who had been friendly to The Legion, the sad side-effect was the destruction of much of our written history. Fortunately, Korlus was able to restore many of our historically important threads.

That night of November 9th, the NPO installed Viceroy Z'ha'dum was the first NPO member to ever enter The Legion forum in an area other than the foreign embassies. Some members made him feel welcomed in The Legion, while others had hard feelings and were openly antagonistic towards him. Z'ha'dum surprised many members with his initial statement of intent. He was here to help rebuild The Legion with us. He would do whatever he could to help facilitate the process, but ultimately our success or failure would be up to us. He did not demand trust, but rather asked to be given the benefit of doubt and let him prove he was trustworthy.

Some former Legion members came back after finding that the disbandment of The Legion was falsely done and illegal, even knowing full well how difficult the task ahead would be. It takes a lot of courage to stand your ground knowing the task ahead is damn hard. It also takes an equal amount of courage to willingly walk back into a situation that may well end badly but try anyway.

The first month and a half was hard. Members set themselves to the task of another charter convention. The debate was heated and sometimes very personal over the direction we would take in forming the new government. Would we go back to our treasured direct democracy, mirror the NPO with a single appointed leader, or mix and match them? On December 20, 2007 the announcement of our leadership and more importantly, our new charter came with the answer.

We reached the best compromise possible: 4 appointed Consuls to lead the alliance, one elected from the ranks of the Representatives who are elected from the General membership to be the 5th member of the Consul. The third part of the government was to be the Senate made up of Legionnaires appointed to the old Director-level jobs and would form the pool of members who would replace Consuls as they resigned their posts.

Our first Consuls were: Minister of Internal Affairs TechDragon, Minister of Economics ShadowPhoenix, Minister of Defense Xineoph, Minister of Foreign Affairs SeasonsOfLove, and Speaker of the House Lincongrad (SotH added after Representative elections as of January 18, 2008—the Ministers were selected by Z’ha’dum as of December 20, 2007).

One term that was changed after only a couple days was the forced move off from our traditional sphere, purple. That was at the suggestion of Gibson, a Legionnaire, with the very tangible work and effort attributable to Z’ha’dum. In exchange for staying on purple, the members would have to vote for noWedge to hold the in-game office of Senator, giving him the power of sanctioning trades against nations that caused problems for the purple sphere. This was also open-ended, so potentially could have remained in force forever just like the reparations.

On January 19, 2008 the lockdown was removed. Legion members that wished to leave were now allowed to do so. Some nations did chose to leave soon thereafter, but few overall had left. After enduring so much together, there just weren’t many members willing to leave the alliance with so much work yet to go.

Then in early February 2008 someone or some group hacked into our old forum home on http://z10.invisionfree.com/The_Legion_ and deleted everything. All documents, member records, surviving histories. All gone. Some of what was lost was recovered because Legionnaires had saved some of the documents they either referenced frequently or treasured for other reasons were saved to local computers. Graphics were largely rescued due to their being out on individual accounts at websites such as Photobucket. A temporary forum was set back up while we Legionnaires had a quick discussion on what to do. Do we set up again on the same free server that had little in the way of security, or do we move to a paid service that would be more secure and offer more customizing? Melidan stepped forward and out of his own real-world money paid for the initial setup and continuing maintenance fees for space on the server that now hosts our home at www.avelegio.net. Our new home came online on February 14, 2008.

Unbelievable news happened a week later on February 21, 2008. noWedge, Regent of Valhalla had been removed from power by their Norns, a group charged with the protection of their own charter. Approximately a week afterwards, their chefjoe was named Regent of Valhalla. There was cheers and laughter from many Legionnaires at the news of noWedge’s fall from power. Most members of The Legion felt the “scrawny bully in that gang” finally got what was coming to him for such a long time.

After the change in power within Valhalla, relations between Valhalla and Legion improved seemingly overnight. The old Legion was gone, and now so was the much hated antagonist. And very soon, there would be even more cause to celebrate within The Legion.

March 7, 2008 was a day of epic announcements. Most stunning of all was the end of the NPO Viceroyalty over The Legion! Finally we were free to determine our own destiny! We were freed as well from the reparation payments. Because of the destruction of the old forum in February, it is impossible to tell just how much was actually paid to the NPO, Valhalla, and their other allies. What is certain is that it was in between $1.6 billion and $1.8 billion. No other alliance on Planet Bob has paid anywhere near that sum for reparations.

Then in the same announcement came more unbelievable news. The Legion and the New Pacific Order were once again allies. A new MDP had been signed, called Z'ha'dum's Legacy. Also announced in a different thread the same day was another MDP: The OMGWTFBBQURKIDDING Mutual Defense Pact between The Legion and our old antagonists, Valhalla. See Legionnaires? Miracles really do happen sometimes.

The Legion set about doing what all alliances do in peace: build relations with other alliances, build their member nations, and ensure we were ready for the next conflict to come around. Planet Bob is never at peace universally, and conflict can come quickly as we had sadly discovered the hard way. The Legion didn’t have to wait long for the next conflict.

In violation of GATO’s Great War III surrender terms, they had unknowingly had Chris Kaos in a position of leadership from June to September 2007 under a pseudonym. With this, the NPO and its allies in One Vision declared war on GATO on April 26, 2008. GATO’s only allies in this war turned out to be the Imperial Assault Alliance (IAA), Commonwealth of Sovereign Nations (CSN), and the United Sovereign Nations (USN). By the time all the MDP activations occurred for One Vision, GATO and allies (also called “No Vision”) were outmatched 8 to 1 in nation strength alone.

For The Legion’s part, we were asked to help attack CSN and so we did on April 27, 2008. At the time of The Legion’s Declaration of War, there were five members online that were socializing and came up with a plan to blitz CSN. The five members were Melidan, Jacosby, Onichan, Imperial and Assarax. Most of them were drunk at the time, so dubbed themselves the “Drunken 5.” Their attempted update blitz went off five or six minutes after the server update. Needless to say, it was a less than optimal execution of an otherwise good plan.

The war was destructive to CSN, though to their credit they did try to put up a good fight. About two weeks later on May 17th, peace terms between The Legion and CSN were announced. CSN was to pay The Legion 550 tech, reduce its military to 30% level of soldiers only, and to destroy all strictly military Improvements. Not particularly hard terms because CSN’s entry into the war was due to their honoring a treaty. Certainly, The Legion’s remaining experienced members could empathize with their plight; memories of Great War III coming to mind.

During the events and excitement of war, a huge announcement came from the purple trading sphere. On May 6, 2008 the Poseidon Mutual Defense and optional Aggression Pact (MDoAP) was announced to a surprised world. What was attempted under PUPPY and GRAPE finally has come to be a reality as originally envisioned. Peace officially reigns between members of the purple trading sphere.

Drama continues to happen in the big world of Planet Bob, and changes are the only constant. However, The Legion has shown and continues to show that there is another constant. The Legion will always act with honor and integrity; will not flinch in the face of adversity, and will continue to show by our actions that we conduct ourselves with nobility worthy of our purple colors and trappings.

o/ Ave Legio!