2001-07-30 - 11:16 p.m.

Planetarion: Night of Blood, Day of Water

This evening, after a period of long inactivity, Sharon decided to join in on a NoS defense. She was defending against Fury, and she wanted us all to know about it.

But, damn her wretched luck, she was doing more than that - she was defending against the head of Fury, Synthetic Sid himself.

Most alliances are ruled by a High Council, but in Fury it is Sid who calls most of the shots. When he saw that someone from a Fury galaxy was defending against him, and he saw it was someone he knew, he launched an immediate retaliation.

About this time, I came online only to see the head of my alliance attacking my GC. Before the retaliation Britannia had practically begged Sharon to pull and she angrily rebuffed him. When she saw that she was getting Fury incoming, she was livid. She made a promise in the IRC channel that if she lost any resources to Fury - she would get them back from Fury. The implication was that she would get them back from us, her Fury galaxy mates.

This put me in something of a moral quandary: do I defend my GC against my alliance? Luckily the decision was taken out of my hands - Sharon got massive defense from NoS so my ships weren't really needed.

There had always been a saying in our galaxy - the galaxy goes before any alliance. Sad to say if I really had to choose, I would have chosen my alliance because of the simple fact that next round I will still be a Fury, but I will not be with the same galaxy mates.

However, even though any defense from the Fury players in our galaxy was unnecessary, our absence was noted by Sharon and this would have a direct consequence on all of us.

To be frank, I was only listening to all that was going on in the galaxy with one ear - I was more interested in what was going on in the beta.

I did something very foolish, which turned out to be a good thing in the long run. I practically stayed up all night playing the beta. I was very tired, but I was involved in some complicated attacks, and wanted to keep monitoring them. Kidding myself that I was only going to stay awake for "a couple more turns" I eventually looked up and saw it was almost 4:30AM. Well, I figured, I could sleep late the next morning.

In fact, I was just getting ready to go to bed, when suddenly my "real" Planetarion screen lit up in red: I had hostile incoming. Serious, big-ass hostile incoming. The trouble was that PA was working very slowly and I couldn't see what was happening to the rest of the galaxy. Four-thirty AM our time is ten-thirty in the morning, Central European time, so most of PA is awake and active. I concentrated on getting defense for myself from Fury.

Finally I was able to get a look at the galaxy screen and my worst fears were confirmed - three other Fury players had incoming too: Adamantium, Britannia and Xtasy. All those planets had taken part in the attack on Arthur's galaxy, and all the incoming was from Arthur's galaxy.

I then tried to get some defense from Fury and from our local allies. It was really hard for me to function, because my brain was screaming for sleep. Nobody seemed to be around but me.

It was then that one of my galaxy mates, Cocky, showed up in the channel. Of course that's not his real IRC nick, but I gave it to him because he's such a cocky bastard. Recently he and I have been getting to know each other better, and I've discovered that beneath that smart-alecky exterior is someone with some serious woman troubles.

Okay, here is where it gets somewhat complicated.

Cocky is one of our galaxy's better players, and he's a member of an alliance called Wolfpack. Until recently Fury and Wolfpack had been allied, but since Fury had recently been acting so feeble and confused Wolfpack was trying to keep them at arm's length.

Here is when the never-ending soap opera of the Planetarion alliances comes in. The trouble was that Arthur's galaxy was ALSO tagged Wolfpack and by attacking there my three galaxymates had also run afoul of Wolfpack. Cocky was told, in no uncertain terms, that if he defended the people who attacked Arthur's galaxy he would be thrown out of Wolfpack and attacked as well.

This started an argument in the Wolfpack IRC channel that I was not privy to. Eventually it was decided that it was okay if Cocky and other Wolfpack people defended me, because I hadn't attacked one of their galaxies. Then Arthur's galaxy attacked Cocky, too. On top of that, just when I thought I was covered I got more incoming: Arthur himself was attacking me now.

This caused even more shouting in the Wolfpack channel and Cocky's attackers quickly withdrew.

Around this time, a little after 5AM our time, Lily woke up. I filled her in on the situation and she immediately set about getting us more defense from Fury.

My memory of events is rather muddy - after all I'd had no sleep for over 30 hours.

Sharon was still under attack from Fury but her defenders outnumbered her attackers by ten to one - the Fury attackers would be crazy if they actually landed. Sharon was in the channel, being rather smug about the fact that the Fury players in the galaxy - HER galaxy - were being attacked.

Lily and Sharon then got into a fight in the galaxy channel. At one point Sharon said to Lily: "Do you want to be attacked, too?" Less than five minutes after those words were spoken, Lily was being attacked too - also from Arthur's galaxy.

I was aghast: Sharon was working with our attackers! Being neutral is one thing, but helping the attackers is something else. It was nothing short of betrayal, and I told Sharon that. She went utterly through the roof. I made the accusation that Sharon had brought this attack about, along with her "lapdog" Arthur.

Sharon threatening Lily almost unhinged me: I asked Sharon if she wanted to be de-elected, attacked and exiled from the galaxy. This stupid threat - which I had no way of backing up - would come back to haunt me later.

I was still trying to get defense from Fury and our local allies. I concentrated on trying to get defense for Britannia and Xtasy - Adamantium had nearly a million enemy ships coming in, and he seemed like a hopeless case. The way that battles in Planetarion are stacked, if you cannot get enough defense to cover your planet, you are better off getting no defense at all.

Cocky then asked me if I wanted to talk with someone from the galaxy that was attacking us. I figured: what the heck - what harm could it do?

I was introduced to Holly, the Wolfpack member of Arthur's galaxy. She did not really seem very pleased to meet my acquaintance. She wanted to know: where did I get off calling her GC, Arthur, a lapdog?

It was another surprise on a morning of surprises. I had made that remark in our PRIVATE galaxy channel. Apparently our enemies were getting fed information from our private channel, which meant that it was no longer secure. I informed Lily of this and she set up another IRC channel for us to talk in where none of the people we didn't trust could hear.

Holly then got me access to a chat room where other members of her galaxy were: specifically Century, her galaxy's biggest player, and Arthur himself, both of them NoS players. Whereas Holly had been somewhat chilly toward me, Century and Arthur were plainly angry and utterly contemptuous of me.

There followed a harrowing couple of hours as I attempted to parley with them. Looking back on it, and reading the transcript of the chat I really don't think they were really interested in negotiating with me - they just wanted to fuck with me.

I did most of my talking with Century, but Arthur kept chiming in with abuse. He seemed to be having a very hard time controlling his temper. He made it plain that this attack was purely personal on his part.

Lily and Britannia were still trying to get defense, but it looked like they had tapped out their sources. It looked like I was covered, and it seemed like Britannia and Xtasy seemed mostly covered, but Lily's planet still needed more defense, and like I said before being half-covered is worse than not being covered at all. Adamantium had no defense at all, but we were attacking him ourselves, just to keep some of his resources in the galaxy.

Throughout the negotiations with Century and Arthur, I was struck again and again with how much intimate information they had about my galaxy - it seemed like someone (Sharon, most likely) was feeding them information while they were talking with me.

I asked Arthur point blank: was this attack Sharon's idea? He surprised me by evading the question, but he led me to believe that if Sharon didn't call in the attack, it was done with her blessing.

On reflection, it is probably a good thing that I was so foggy from lack of sleep otherwise I probably would have lost my temper more than I did. Century and Arthur were deliberately insulting when they talked to me, and they kept trying to dictate the internal politics of our galaxy to me as part of the negotiations.

They also astounded me by informing me of the fact that the vote for Galactic Commander in our galaxy now stood at Sharon 20, Uberhamster 5. Again, this was something that only a member of our galaxy would have known, in fact I didn't even know it myself!

A few hours before the vote had stood at Sharon 24, Uberhamster 1. After the previous disagreement I'd asked everyone to change their votes back to Sharon and everybody had obliged except for one woman who absolutely refused to vote for Sharon. Early on in the attack, when it was plain that Sharon was somehow involved, I hastily changed my vote to myself, thinking that I could figure out who I really wanted to vote for later. Lily also changed her vote for me.

Much to my surprise, when I looked at the election screen, I saw that Cocky also was voting for me. During the previous unpleasantness he'd been firmly on Sharon's side, but the fact that she was siding with the attackers over her own galaxy shocked him deeply. In fact, he seemed to take it personally.

From what some of my other galaxy mates were saying, it was like Sharon had stepped over an invisible boundary. In fact, she had - it was clear that she had sold out her galaxy-mates to a hostile galaxy. Even people who had been previously neutral seemed shocked and angry at this apparent betrayal. Everyone understood that the retaliation against the three players who had attacked Arthur's galaxy was justified, but the attacks against Lily and myself seemed to be strictly personally motivated and that bothered a lot of people.

The negotiations dragged on. Lily had offered to just give them a free attack on her planet, if they would leave Britannia alone. At first Arthur thought I was lying when I told him this - he couldn't conceive of someone sacrificing themselves like that. He private messaged Lily and confirmed that it was her idea. Well, he confirmed it after trading insults with Lily for twenty minutes.

The negotiations finally reached an impasse - they wanted more one more concession than I was willing to give. I went into the now-secure galaxy war room with their final offer, which I really did not want to accept. My head was spinning - I was incapable of making a decision. I couldn't calculate which planets were covered and which weren't. The NoS guys said that they were getting through at my planet, but that didn't seem possible. Therefore, I put it before my galaxy-mates in the war room: what should my answer be?

The reply from one of my galaxy-mates seemed to sum up the general feeling: "Tell them to go fuck themselves."

I had a com-loss so I was no longer in the chat room with the NoS players, so I PMed the answer to Arthur. He and I had actually been talking in private for a while. He was much more reasonable in private than in the other chat room, but he was plainly very angry. However, he was also curious - he wanted to hear our side of the story as well. But his curiosity would alternate with fits fo dark rage where he would promise endless attacks on our galaxy.

When I told Arthur that the galaxy had categorically turned down any concessions to the attackers, he again thought that I was lying, or that I had misrepresented their offer to them. At this point I didn't care what he thought. However, I tried to stay polite - I didn't tell him what they REALLY said about him.

It was now 11AM - I'd been dealing with this stuff for six hours and I still hadn't slept. I was exhausted and the attackers were one hour form landing. Then the phone rang. It was the Manager calling from the store downstairs. We'd had a pipe burst in the store - we needed to call a plumber immediately.

Real life intruded on the play-world of Planetarion. There really was nothing further I could do about the attack, so I had Lily make my excuses to everyone and I went downstairs to survey the damage.

(Continued, tomorrow)