Sacking of Hallow

The Sacking of Hallow was a series of events in the NATO-Mir war leading up to and including the disabling of Hallow City's bunker network, destruction of the Elder Guardians and removal of wealth from the city. Each event, with perhaps the exception of the final was too small or insiginificant to have its own page but was nonetheless important to the overall direction of the war. Therefore they have all been grouped here and described in chronological order. As in the other battles of the war it was fought between Mir and various groups from the NATO alliance, mostly Hallow, Columbian and Valyrian citizens. These events took place over the month immediately after The Second Siege of Sempiternal.

Skirmishes Around Hallow
After the successful attack on Sempiternal Mirian forces resolved to attack Hallow proper. This decided as the Hallow vault and city were being used by entire NATO alliance as a base of operations. All movements extended from these two locations. There were no other fortified areas in the vicinity. Therefore, they were a key target. As usual the Mirian strategy was to provoke fights and let the NATO force's inexperience lead to them making mistakes and losing pearls.

Initial forays in the forest around Hallow City were intelligence gathering. Snitches were placed, Hallow traps were disabled and the occassional skirmish broke out. Notably Hallow had recently city bastioned most of their land claim making the snitching process more arduous for Mirian forces. It also made placing their own traps more difficult. The Mirian forces did make a large fall spleef trap but it proved ineffective in the heat of combat. However,DontMindMe (Silentcreeper), a Hallow pvp'er was pearled when he attacked the Mirians on his own and promptly failed his escape pearl several times, dying in the river outside Hallow City.

The next day Mirian forces identified trails of broken blocks on radar as tunnels dug by Hallow forces in an attempt to find them. Digging to bedrock revealed a network of buttoned 1x2 tunnels designed to find the Mirian Bunker. However, the Mirians had foreseen such a circumstance and built their bunker twenty blocks above bedrock avoiding any attempts at discovery. The scouting tunnels were investigated and discovered to lead directly to the Hallow Ice Road network - a system of ice roads connecting Hallow's key locations. The ice road and its main intersection were snitched. Very shortly after Ill_Boi (HiImPosey), who had joined Hallow the day before, was seen hitting a snitch at the intersection. EZ2Clutch, Citann and RosieMcCann rushed down the ice road and pearled Ill_Boi. The pearl was quickly moved to Mir.

Ez2Clutch Logbox Incident
Later Ez2Clutch fell into a Hallow fall trap near their vault and logged out. It took several attempts from Mirian forces to rescue him. The trap was located at bedrock about 30 blocks south of the Hallow trench making it very easy for Hallow forces to defend. After an hour or two of bastion breaking the Mirians felt comfortable enough to fully investigate the trap at bedrock. It was found to be deficient - whilst a DRO logbox had been made most of it missed Ez2Clutch and a single stone slab needed to be broken to free him. However, this combined with the IRO bunker around the trap and the constant harrassing by Hallow defenders made the process long and arduous.

Eventually Lysika proposed a rout which was successful. The Mirians potted up and rushed the Hallow forces who were taken by surprise. Whilst no one was pearled it revealed two facts. The first was that the Hallow trench was not vault bastioned, meaning it was essentially the superior pvp'ing forces playground. The second was that the vast majority of the Hallow forces were not pvp'ers and would run at the first sign of combat (it was always known they were not good, but it was expected that they would tank and fight a little). After several more rush attacks the Mirians were able to free Ez2Clutch and using their new found knowledge of the trench commenced snitching and casual fighting.

The Mirians reached the edge of the Hallow vault and a bow fight ensued. Surprisingly, despite not being pvp'ers, many of the defenders were exceptionally good with a bow completely halting the Mirian advance and largely putting an end to their brief fantasy of breaking the vault. However, Lysika maintained that the Mirians should stay a little longer as they were not losing anything and the players on Hallow's side were likely to make mistakes given their lack of experience. Indeed this turned out to be true when Aimuari, a defender, fell into one of the vault ring traps and was unable to escape. This was spotted by Krallen, a Mirian, who ordered he be focus fired. To everyone's surprise Aimuari popped, giving Mir their third pearl in two days. At this point the Mirians left and took the pearl back to Mir.

Attack on Hallow's Vault
In the week following Mirian forces made a move on the vault. This was mostly an opportunistic attack, motivated by the discovery that the Hallow trenches were not bastioned and the continued tactic of providing Hallow with too many choices, knowing that they would eventually make an incorrect choice and lose another pearl as had happened so many times previously. In this particular instance this tactic was not successful.

The Mirian forces broke the first ring against fairly heavy resistance. Some of Hallow's stronger pvp'ers were around for this and they were comfortable leading 'pot ladding' attempts against the Mirian forces which were fairly succesful, slowly wasting the attackers potions and durability. However, the ring was broken and the area griefed by Mir.

The next day Mirian forces were able to rebreak the replaced vault bastion and add to the grief, however, they were unable to progress further into the vault and later that day they were fully repulsed from the vault by a great many defenders. Notably Complexity, a Valyrian, consistently harrassed the attackers wasting their pots and generally fighting without fear. The Mirians left and resolved to change tactics, having seen that the defenders were now wise to ground attack defence.

One strange thing to note is much later that night Complexity was seeng on snitches travelling from Hallow all the way to Mir. When he reached Mir's western shore a Mirian task force was dispatched to pearl him. Strangely this all went to plan - there were no traps or unforeseen circumstances. It is not clear what he hoped to accomplish by doing this.

Valyria's Withdrawal from Nato
Valyria was a member of NATO that had committed a number of its citizens to Columbia and later Hallow's aid. During The First Siege of Sempiternal their leader Doommad was knocked off their skybunker and pearled by Krallen. Due to his high activity levels and some bad intelligence (Mir thought he was a main Hallow grinder) he was prison pearled. After losing such a key member of their nation Valyrian's reconsidered their role in the war and opened a dialogue with Mir. During these negotiations the events above, concerning Complexity, occurred making the situation worse for Valyria. However, an agreement was reached. Valyria would leave NATO and not fight Mir or aid NATO. In return Doommad would be downgraded to an exile pearl and Valyrian citizens would be released at the end of the war.

Sacking of Hallow City
Mirian forces moved to attack Hallow City on 15th March. Without the proximity of the vault it was considered to be an easy target that Hallow troops would be unable to defend without considerable risk. Tunnels were dug to avoid snitches and bastions protecting the city were broken without incident. Then the Mirian forces descended to bedrock and began disabling the defensive infrastructure.



The first targets were the four Elder Guardians positioned around a factory/pot bunker. The server admins had recently enabled the nerf to their fatigue effect - promised since the server opened, allowing the obsidian Guardian enclosures to be broken easily. The Guardians were killed and Mirian forces went about disabling the potion and factory bunkers. During this they stumbled across a strange shrine like construction beneath the city inside of which was a bedrock reinforced beacon and diamond block base. It later turned out to have been reinforced by DSclouse, an admin. The beacon and base were removed by Maxopoly. Once the initial bunkers were disabled the area was scouted more thoroughly revealing a larger bunker complex to the south. This also contained a pot bunker, amongst other things, and was disabled. Notably this second bunker was bastioned at y3 and above but not bedrock and had signs in Hebrew. When the Mirians left for the night only Hantzu came online to inspect the damage - and only very briefly.

The next day Mirian forces resumed activities, continuing to break into chests within the bunker systems. After several hours two Hallow defenders came online, Brunotheminer and Daddo69. They are notable for being two of Hallow's best and only pvp'ers. They milled around on the surface for perhaps an hour whilst Mirians ran around at bedrock, continuing their tasks. Finally Bruno and Daddo began digging a staircase down to bedrock. It is not clear what purpose this to serve as the Mirians outnumbered them 3 to 1 making any fight exceedingly risky for them. Upon seeing them descend on radar Lysika immediately had a minecart teleporter placed underneath where the Mirian's estimated the top of the stairs to be. All but two Mirians then retreated off radar. When Bruno hit a snitch at bedrock the signal was given and the Mirians potted up and rushed to engage. Bruno and Daddo immediately began retreating up the stairs - only to find the top blocked by Gregy165 and webs placed by RosieMcCann. A 2v1 fight broke out between Gregy and the Hallow fighters but reinforcements arrived very quickly and soon a 6v2 mess took place in the confined quarters of the stairwell. Bruno attempted to mine out but died quickly, Daddo lasted much longer but was, inevitably, pearled. Upon pearling the two defenders the Mirians retreated, taking the pearls back to Mir.

The next day the surface of Hallow City was explored by the Mirian troops. Very little of note happened, other than Prioma, a Hallow citizen, logging in and getting pearled.