2001-06-24 - 11:27 p.m.

Planetarion: Unity Under the Gun

Well, since I resigned as Minister of Communication in my galaxy, things have steadily been deteriorating. My Galactic Commander has refused to accept my resignation, in fact she refused to acknowledge anything I said at all. However, since then I have been refusing to do my ministerial duties, and have been donating the extra resources I get as Minister to other players.

I have mentioned before that the Galactic Commander is an elected position. Out of 25 players you need a simple majority - 13 votes - to reign as Galactic Commander. Until recently Sharon has enjoyed a unanimous vote, but that is slowly eroding away. Both Lily and I voted for Adamantium. Then other votes began to flake off. As of this morning, Sharon had 19 and six other votes were scattered among various people, including three for me.

I fully recognized that this was a dangerous game I was playing. Sharon has several ways to take out her ire on me. But the most dangerous option is if Sharon's tally falls below 13. What happens then is that all of the minister positions wink out. With no GC, there can't be a Minister of Communication, or any of the other offices. This is more than just an annoyance.

Anyone who took a look at our galaxy could tell that we didn't have a GC. A galaxy without a GC is obviously in the middle of some sort of civil war, and therefore easy pickings for an out of galaxy attack. This would be very, very bad. And it's not like we could change to another GC because the other votes would be spread out over several players.

There were a number of players in my alliance who kept their votes in Sharon's column. I talked to one of them, who I essentially viewed as the spokesman. He basically told me he didn't want to ruin his game this round over this dispute, however he gave me the impression that he'd change his vote if I insisted on it.

Getting all my alliance mates on board, if I could do that, would get Sharon down to 15 votes. That wouldn't be enough to impeach her, but would it be enough for her to take me seriously? How far did I want to push this?

This morning, that question was answered for me.

We had massive hostile incoming, the biggest attack on us this round. Lily and I were scrambling around, trying to cobble together defense. We got a lot of it from Fury, but there didn't seem to be any officers around so we have to individually ask people if they could help us. As the morning wore on, the situation turned from desperate, to dicey, and finally to stable. It looked like we had everyone covered.

I have to admit that Lily seemed to be the star defender here - I was mainly crunching numbers, trying to figure out what we needed.

When things were well involved, Sharon finally showed up. She tried to get in touch with her "contacts" in the various alliances, to get them to stop the attack.

One by one the attackers started to pull. It was unclear whether it was because their alliances persuaded them to, or they realized there was too much defense.

Once the situation started to stabilize Sharon and I got to talking on IRC. It was an interesting conversation, I wished I had saved it.

Basically Sharon apologized to me, in a limited way, but pretty much hinted that I could forget about any public statement.

Lily, for her part, didn't want the job of Minister of War back. She felt that Cocky hadn't done anything to deserve having the job taken away, and besides since she was going to be starting a new job in a couple of days, she wasn't going to have time to run attacks or anything like that.

So I messaged the people who had changed their votes, saying that the "disagreement" was over and that Sharon and I had made peace.

I wouldn't really call it peace. I pretty much caved in because I was tired of fighting. On one level it was kind of interesting, but on another level it was a big drag. I mainly wanted it to be over.

So things are returning to the status quo, with the notable exception that Lily refuses to go in the galaxy IRC channel any more. She really has nothing to say to anyone, and many of our galaxy mates still annoy the hell out of her.

And the attack on our galaxy was a bust. All the attackers eventually retreated, except for one unfortunate who landed and had his fleet vaporized instantly.