[Iron Wolf]

Under Siege: Great War III to Great War IV-The Unjust War

After Great War III was over, The Legion bent itself to the task of rebuilding its member nations. Those who were bill-locked got priority over the other nations for the available aid. A great effort went into organizing the aid trains to ensure that no one got left out who was in need.

Those left to rebuild The Legion took a look around and found their member nations significantly reduced in number. For a long time afterwards, in many Legionnaires’ signatures was the phrase “WWVLD?” which stood for What Would VL Do? The Legion was in a depression that wouldn’t shake loose until after the terms of peace was over about two months later. There were some nations that tried to buoy everyone’s spirits and refused to give in to the depression. Those few beacons of light were sorely needed.

While under terms, The Legion did craft an important document to provide future Legionaries direction and a path to keep to. This was the blanket Non-Aggression Pact with Planet Bob: The Pax Legio, passed on May 17, 2007. The main architect behind this treaty was then Foreign Minister, Thom Solo. Too soon, this would prove to be ironic.

During this time of depression was also a time of change in the attitudes of Legionnaires. Previous to Great War III, the most often used phrase to describe the attitudes and conduct of Legionnaires was “ruthlessly professional.” The Legion was lost and trying to find where we fit in the new scheme of things. Many members resigned because “The Legion is not what it used to be…” All things change, and The Legion was face to face with this inescapable truth.

Losing 7 million Nation Strength from Great War III, plummeting to about 3 million after the war, The Legion finally pushed back above 5 million. This took the efforts of the membership over the time of two cabinets to achieve, and the reparations from Great War III were paid off.

Our gaining strength was multiplied at the time by a war the Grand Global Alliance (GGA) was fighting. With that conflict happening, The Legion gained in standing and came back to being the sixth strongest alliance in CN. While not as strong as before, we were still a force to be admired and reckoned with.

A side-effect of having lost so many members and strength was that there was a general withdrawal from members posting on the CN forum. This gave an overall impression to many alliances that The Legion was aloof and uncaring. Nothing could be further from the truth, but perception is reality and this attitude was greatly amplified by those outside The Legion.

Many Legion members and in the government hoped that with Great War III being done, the bad blood between The Legion and the NPO could be set aside and have at a chance to begin again. Unfortunately this was not to be so. NPO found a new ally on the purple sphere in Valhalla and their leader, noWedge.

The Legion tried to create a purple bloc to promote strength and unity in PUPPY, later named GRAPE. Other purple alliances more or less agreed with the tenets of the document and with discussions joined the bloc. The only alliance to stir sand into the ointment was Valhalla for various reasons that continue to be debated over.

noWedge and Valhalla looked to try and derail any diplomatic move made by The Legion. They were a small alliance with no more than 90 members at any given moment, but they had a very persuasive protector in the NPO. At the height of tensions between Valhalla and The Legion, a popular joke within The Legion was that when it came to the CN Forum announcements, “It’s not an official Legion thread until noWedge flames The Legion at least three times.”

No alliance would allow this kind of behavior to go on without ramifications, but with the NPO having Valhalla’s back made diplomatic overtures or military responses difficult if not impossible. In effect, we were being pushed around by the scrawny kid with the gang of thugs at his side.

There were various incidents between Valhalla and The Legion during this time. One incident in particular got very serious. A member of The Legion was accused of spying on Valhalla’s forum. This happened just after elections, leaving some cabinet members on previously announced vacations and others at reduced internet access times due to other Real World problems.

Immediately, Legion members were ordered to go into peace mode, AKA “Hippy Shield.” Events happened incredibly fast. Those who were active in checking the Legion forum and those who spent time on The Legion’s IRC got the message and quickly switched to peace mode. This was done to give the cabinet members a chance to get a diplomatic resolution. A number of nations didn’t get the warning in time, and very soon found themselves at war with Valhalla, NPO and all the Initiative allies. Thus began August 6, 2007. The Legion is in a war it cannot win.

For a week, things looked very bleak for The Legion. The cabinet begged ODN not to come to our defense because they would face certain annihilation with us. To add to the confusion, the outgoing cabinet caught a very large amount of criticism from the general membership for not being accessible and giving assurances and updates. Resolution came with Lord Swampy promising $40 million in compensation and a public apology for the whole affair. The money was paid by Lord Swampy alone per his wishes. Potential and real hostilities concluded on August 13, 2007.

This was dubbed the Dove War, since the majority of combatants were in peace mode the whole time. However, Legionnaires, do not forget ever that some members during this time were in a very active and destructive war for their nation’s survival, many times giving as good as they got. While it is called the Dove War, some wear that ribbon due to combat.

During this time, Jazzi was the Foreign Minister. She was ill in the real world, but worked with Lord Swampy to sort out and end the Dove War. The outgoing cabinet caught a lot of Legion membership anger for not being present during the conflict even though they were on vacation and out of touch before things went sour. Jazzi in particular caught a lot of the anger and frustration of the general membership. Soon after the Dove War concluded, she resigned from The Legion and joined GOONs. Not long from this event she and one other former Legionnaire-to-be would show their true colors.

Another internal event came to light the existence of a group within The Legion called the Anti-Cabinesta/Phoenix movement. This group felt that moment in time was the last chance that The Legion would have to clean their own house and change The Legion for the better. This meant changing the culture of The Legion. Over time, cabinets were being elected more out of popularity of the person rather than a demonstrated ability to lead competently and ethically. The incoming cabinet listened to the group’s counsel long enough for the group to disband. It was thought that the ideas had taken hold but time would prove they did not.

One idea that came about after the Dove War was the institution of The Legion Protection Squad, AKA The Propaganda Squad. This squad’s duty was to help change The Legion’s reputation to more or less pro-Orders on the CN Forum. Another goal was to make The Legion seem less “standoff-ish and arrogant” and to correct mistaken beliefs about The Legion. The Propaganda Squad did an amazing job at beginning to turn public opinion about our alliance.

With the Initiative and World Unity Treaty nations on top tier politically and militarily, it wasn’t too many months before they started to jockey for positions within the WUT structure. FAN made a move to create their own bloc, and was treated to every WUT signatory attacking them for a few months. This was called Viet-FAN. The next group to start their own bloc within WUT was GOONs and their allies. They called their bloc the Unjust Path (UJP).

The UJP alliances had seemingly gone out of their way to annoy and provoke any alliance deemed less powerful or less well-connected with allies. They were given their way for a short time just due to their sheer power. Finally, the NpO had had enough of them and their pushy ways. Polaris was ready to fight their former allies and so war broke out again in September 9, 2007.

The Unjust War or Great War IV went into full swing. However, The Legion once again proved its defensive nature by announcing that it would only go to war if either we or ODN was attacked. And then the UJP performed two actions that were unaccountably inept. The alliance “\m/” attacked ODN, and then the same day tried to extort 1,000 tech from The Legion. Now we had two reasons to go to war.

The Legion had carefully rebuilt its military command structure and had stressed the need for every nation to build large war chests, money that had no other purpose than to fund a nation’s war machine. We believed the changes put in place would work, but lacked the practical experience to test it out. Great War IV was the proving grounds. The Legion declared war on September 11, 2007 against “\m/”and unleashed a fury not seen since the NPO Barfight.

The Admiralty was able to direct reinforcements where needed, and a new banking system was able to get funding where it was needed most. Towards the end of The Legion’s assault, Valhalla declared war on The Legion. This was ostensibly to honor their MDP treaty with GOONs, but they also had an MDP with the NPO. For the NPO’s part, they did not contribute troops to the fight, but were certainly funding their partner, Polaris and their allies.

A week into the attacks, two former Legion Cabinet members, Jazzi who used to be our Foreign Minister and sleepy who had been Defense Minister for a short period created a web page with anti-Legion Cabinet propaganda. Using logs saved during Jazzi’s tenure as Foreign Minister, she had posted what she and sleepy thought to be damning evidence as to Lord Swampy’s courting favorable relations with the New Polar Order’s Imperator Emeritus Electron Sponge, ostensibly without the general membership’s blessing. The logs were also interspersed with Jazzi and sleepy urging Legionnaires to resign from The Legion with honor and remove themselves from the war.

The reality of the revealed logs is that it showed that behind closed doors, the cabinet and some of their advisers swore like American sailors. The courting of the NpO was a well-known happening within the alliance as we wanted to have better relations with the Orders, and the NpO was the logical choice. There just was bad blood between the NPO and The Legion, so Polar was the path of least resistance to a pro-order stance. All that posting those secret logs proved was that Jazzi and sleepy, while no longer members of The Legion, were traitors by posting meeting logs that were not for public view and The Legion’s property, not Jazzi and sleepy’s, nor the GOONs. They are either traitors or spies; it depends upon how you chose to view the incident.

The casualties of Great War IV-The Unjust War fell hard on the Unjust Path alliances. At least two of the alliances that practiced relentless raiding on the weak were disbanded: Gen[M]ay and “\m/.” GOONs is still at war to this day with the NPO coming from this conflict (The GOONland Resistance Movement). When the end became apparent to “\m/”, they ordered first strike nuclear launches from their nuclear members. Use of nukes became widespread, but still was not as prevalent as in past wars. Those who did strike with their nukes first were almost universally put on alliance “ZI” lists and refused peace no matter what alliance they try to flee to. The Legion called off its assault after three weeks of furious, hard hitting attacks.

After two days of fighting, Valhalla was ready to sign peace terms with The Legion. They were to publicly admit they surrendered to The Legion. We were to both immediately cease flaming and trolling each other’s threads on the CN Forum. There were other conditions as well, but it was not documented at the time because there was a secrecy clause. If the true terms got out, that would be reason for Valhalla to declare war again for a breach in treaty. Upon getting terms, most Legionnaires had already offered peace to the Valhallans as per their orders.

noWedge and the Emperor of the NPO, Dilbert, caught The Legion’s Prime Minister, Lord Swampy alone in a chatroom. noWedge stated that the prior peace terms had never been agreed upon; his second in command, chefjoe who represented Valhalla at talks was mistaken.

The NPO “suggested” that what was much fairer was that The Legion offer Valhalla “white peace.” Lord Swampy put off the decision as long as he could, then broke the bad news to The Legion’s members: noWedge had managed to out-maneuver the cabinet politically once again.

We would have no choice but to do what the NPO suggested we do and offer white peace to Valhalla. While our military was much improved, there was no way we could oppose the NPO and all their allies on the field of battle. It would have been a massacre. We just did not have that kind of political or military strength.

But what we did take away from Great War IV was a renewed confidence in ourselves, and improved relations with the Orders, particularly with the New Polar Order and their Imperator Emeritus, Electron Sponge. Public opinion was becoming more favorable. There was also a new respect for The Legion’s military might. While we were not the superpower we used to be, we were once again a very deadly foe when angered to action. The Legion’s part in the war was concluded on September 23, 2007.