2001-07-29 - 11:11 p.m.

Planetarion: The Beginning of the End

Over the next several days there are going to be several entries here dealing with the online game Planetarion, and talking specifically about my galaxy.

In Planetarion, the universe is divided up into galaxies, and each galaxy has 25 players in it. The galaxy you wind up in is very important, because even a strong, dedicated PA player will founder if he or she is in a weak or inactive galaxy. Since ship travel times are shorter in-galaxy, your galaxy mates are your first line of defense. It should also be pointed out that if your galaxy-mates decide to stab you, it's almost impossible to defend.

The current round of Planetarion is round 4, and I started playing in round 2. I was very lucky to wind up in a good galaxy first crack out of the barrel, and many of the players in that first galaxy were in my round 3 galaxy and now in my round 4 galaxy. In round 2, we finished in 13th place, in round 3 we finished 9th, and this time out we look like we are going to finish in the bottom half of the top 30. Obviously a very good galaxy.

However, this round things have been very stressful and there have been a lot of arguments, mainly over really petty stuff. If you don't know what I'm talking about, look back at my older entries under June 2001, the ones marked "Planetarion."

Over the last few weeks things seemed to have calmed down a bit. People were still squabbling, but things seemed more stable. It looked like we were going to be able to finish out the round at least on speaking terms.

And then everything went bad. A galaxy full of people who considered each other allies, if not friends, turned into some horrible soap opera, but perhaps a Greek tragedy is more like it. Dealing with all the problems in my galaxy is one of the reasons why I've gotten so far behind on my Uberhamster entries.

This sounds like a really lame excuse - I haven't updated here because of some stupid online game? However it seems to have turned into something else, some sort of psychodrama. I feel in some way that by dealing with the personalities and problems in our galaxy that I am learning a lot about myself and how I deal with the world. The fact that it is at a remove - all communications are via email or IRC - makes it somehow easier for me to get a grip on, but I think this is being translated into some useful real world life lessons.

I'll probably do some more thinking on this subject a bit later.

Anyway, since the upsets of June the galaxy had settled into an uneasy internal peace, but I don't think any of us had an idea how frail and fragile that peace was.

There was quite a bit of tension between two camps in the galaxy.

The first camp consisted of Sharon and her supporters: her husband Johnny, and their real-life friend Terror. Also on Sharon's side of things were three young male players that I pretty much considered to be her "harem" although perhaps "cheerleading squad" might be a more accurate term. They were called Twister, Kru and Authority. All of them were teenagers.

The other camp consisted of the Fury players, most notably Lily, myself and a Fury player named Britannia.

The rest of the galaxy tried to avoid getting involved in the squabbling, but most of them were neutral or leaning toward Sharon - at least at first.

I think that the problem, at the base of it, was that there were just some fundamental personality conflicts. For example, Lily is a very tough-minded person and Sharon's "helpless female" routine just grated on her. Lily also does not suffer fools gladly: the antics of Twister or Kru did not amuse her and she was not shy about telling them when they were being idiots.

I also freely admit to the sin of anger myself. On a couple of occasions I let my temper get the better of me and said some stupid, immoderate things. I generally tried to make up for it later, but usually the damage was done.

Even more polarizing was the relationship between Britannia and Johnny, Sharon's husband. Britannia is nineteen and very smart: logical, cool-headed and an excellent debater. Johnny, on the other hand, is 30 and has some monumental anger control issues - he constantly seems to be in a foul mood and his temper has a hair trigger. When Johnny gets angry he starts to swear and his vocabulary and typing skills deteriorate badly - like he was expressing himself by pounding the keyboard with his fists.

Britannia had a way to get under Johnny's skin, and this just drove him wild. Johnny would start making all sorts of wild accusations, and when one was proved wrong, he'd never admit he was wrong, he'd just find a new gripe. Most often the discussion between the two of them would end with Johnny saying "go fyck yuorself!" and exiting the channel in a huff.

There is another character I have to introduce because he is pivotal to much of what happened next. I'm going to call him Arthur. He is nineteen and lives in New Zealand. Superficially I'd include him among Sharon's youthful admirers, but he is a much, much better player than any of the others, and his feelings of loyalty to Sharon seem more weird and intense.

Arthur had been in our galaxy last round, and had been our highest scorer - a top 40 player in the game overall. However some conflicts near the end of the round with other players (notably me) caused him to look elsewhere for a galaxy this round. An up-and-coming alliance named NoS offered him a plum position as Galactic Commander in one of its strongest galaxies, and a place on its high council.

It was an incredible offer, he would have been crazy not to take it.

Arthur did quite well for himself this round - his galaxy quickly rose to the top five, and then into the number one position. To the surprise of everyone it stayed there and began to increase its lead over the galaxies below it. So it seemed like he'd made the right decision.

The previous round Sharon had been a Fury, and she had even hung out with the guys who led Fury when she visited London. However as the round ended, her ardor for the alliance cooled. Sharon never gave any rational explanations for why she left Fury, but I think that she expected to be treated as an important Fury member, but she wasn't nearly active enough to merit that. Also, there were other female Fury players who were officers, and who therefore out-ranked her. I think she found this intolerable. Sharon has to be queen - or nothing.

So Sharon left Fury, and since she was still friends with Arthur, he offered her a place in NoS. This was galling because NoS was opposed to Fury this round, and Fury was definitely on the defensive.

Sharon put the NoS alliance tag on the galaxy, in spite of the fact that she was the only NoS player. She claimed that the NoS tag and her friendship with Arthur protected the galaxy from the enemies of Fury. While it did do that to a certain extent it also put the Fury players in a straitjacket: we were not supposed to attack or defend against NoS and its allies, but they were at war with Fury.

At last the inevitable happened. Last night Fury launched an attack on the biggest NoS, galaxy - Arthur's galaxy. Along on the attack were three Fury players from our galaxy, Britannia among them. Frankly I think none of them remembered the co-ordinates of Arthur's galaxy.

The assault was not what I would call a success, but the attackers did break through at one planet - Arthur's.

Oh my, he was angry. He took the attack as a very personal betrayal, even though he did not know any of the players involved well at all. I think he viewed us as his pet galaxy, and now that the pet had bitten him, he wanted to put it to sleep.

Sharon was very angry as well. She, too, took it as a deliberate, personal slight. This was to have grave consequences in very short order.

(Continued, tomorrow)