Orinnari

Orinnari joined CivClassic 2.0 in July of 2017 having played no prior iteration. He's currently a citizen of Southshire and Yoahtl.

Joining
Orinnari joined after the /r/WorldPowers community Minecraft server shut down. He found himself playing the server more than WorldPowers itself, so a friend from the subreddit - DarkyDu - suggested CivClassic. He joined the server and after some local chat exchanges, settled in Westeros just above, and fifteen blocks below, contemporary Anburon. He planned on building a small house with a large basement, but quickly lost interest in the server and covered the basement hole.



Not long after, DarkyDu suggested joining him in the Commonwealth where he owned the area known then as The Plantation. Orinnari accepted and began levelling out a small area of roofed forest along the south western coast. This was until SirCrowley raided the Commonwealth on 17th June 2017. At the time not much could be done but logout and hope he got bored before doing any significant damage, however everything Orinnari owned was stolen or despawned. Orinnari then attempted to make an underground base in the hopes of steering clear of any future raiders while still remaining close to population centres. This however fell flat within a day or two when he discovered how RealisticBiomes was preventing his farms from growing.

Orinnari decided to move to the Commonwealth's then unnamed capitol for more protection and integration with the community. But on 20th June 2017 he bore witness to and was the victim of an episode of MiloY, who had grown angry at his fellow countrymen for surpassing an unclear boundary and so began to destroy any and all such property surpassing that boundary. This lead to a feeling of alienation since the first week or so of playing had been so unfruitful.

Strassburg


Fadedsoul invited Orinnari to join him is Strassburg, a German themed borough within a snow biome. He accepted though did not like the snow biome, nor the build style restrictions of Strassburg, so he built a cliffside house and a staircase to it, both of which largely remain intact. Soon after, StrPlatinum joined him in Strassburg after his own experiences with MiloY. Additional drama occurred when fadedsoul decided to remove a bridge between MiloY's manor and Strassburg. That being said, after a frank and earnest discussion of politics, Orinnari and MiloY came to respect each other even if they didn't agree, and MiloY unexpectedly appeared in Strassburg territory, taking a huge risk in doing so, to return Orinnari's items that were taken during the boundary issue.

Founding Southshire
Orinnari and StrPlatinum decided to search for a place to settle a new borough on 25th June 2017, as while they both appreciated fadedsoul's hospitality, they didn't agree with Strassburg's direction. A few potential areas were explored but then Orinnari spotted the empty peninsular south west of the Capital District, which later became known as Southend. They explored and after finding it to be a roofed forest biome, Orinnari practically begged for them to settle there, and they did, and that's how Southshire was founded. StrPlatinum suggested calling it "Niro" ("Orin" backwards) however Orinnari suggested "Southshire", a play-on name of Northshire from World of Warcraft, since it was south of Westminster. Orinnari then laid out most of what is now known as the : the roads, the river, the train station and underground rail tunnel, the bank, the farms, the plots, and the factory building.

Harassment from a mercenary
On 2nd July 2017, Tabby, a Commonwealth citizen, hired a bounty hunter to pursue an alleged griefer named DurianSmash. Durian had been given a plot within Southshire after being driven out of the capitol - something Orinnari and StrPlatinum could sympathise with - but was interpreted by Tabby as Southshire protecting and perhaps even funding an unrepentant griefer. Zayshi, the bounty hunter, arrived at Southshire and started behaving ominously, checking chests, minorly griefing, and minorly harassing. Tabby warned that Orinnari might "try stuff" if Durian was captured, and Zayshi soon went rogue and attacked Orinnari and attempted to break into his home.

Southshire's reconstruction
On 10th July 2017, after Orinnari had visited the Commonwealth's capitol, he took a liking to the canal design and began a reconstruction of Southshire, replacing the dirt bank river with a network of canals though without the prohibition on bridges. The reconstruction resulted in the bank and factory being being sacrificed and moved respectively. It is also when Orinnari rebuilt his home.









The third councillor
Orinnari and StrPlatinum had been the only two members of the council, a body created by Orinnari to decide things together, or at the very least keep the other informed on any decisions made. Around mid July 2017 a new player called SamuelV joined Southshire and immediately showed a skill for building. After a few days, Orinnari and StrPlatinum decided to extend an invite to SamuelV to join the council. This would lead to the start of the Building Era.

Oakhurst's creation




Oakhurst was an area within Southend that Orinnari had been building in for about a week or so since his house was at the time dead centre of, Southshire and didn't like the sheer amount of snitch pings from passers-by. After the Trial of mrmamizoupie, Orinnari was exhausted since he had dedicated several days to the issue and the conversation surrounding it was boiling and toxic, receiving accusations and verbal abuse. He wanted to get out of the spotlight so stood down from the council, annexing Oakhurst in the process. Oakhurst was intended to behave like the City of London and even created the title of "Lord Mayor" to cement that connection. Oakhurst's creation didn't receive any resistance from the council at the time since Orinnari co-founded Southshire and they felt he had the right to claim some land for himself."As other things are happening right now, I will keep this short and to the point. The peninsular that I have claimed has now split, legally speaking, from Southshire. It will not become another borough, nor is it claiming independence from the Commonwealth. It is becoming something akin to The City of London, not to be confused with London. And as such, I hereby formally rescind my council member status, and any roles that included or implied. I will transfer ownership of the Citadel groups of Southshire, as well as the website's GitHub repository. I am formally dissociating myself with Southshire in order to live and build on my own, to be left alone."

Returning to Southshire
Orinnari's proclaimed desire to dissociate from Southshire did not last long. When JC, Orinnari's successor, decided to step down on 28th August 2017, Orinnari knew this could be an opportunity to rejoin Southshire. He knew that his stepping down was a moment of weakness, that after a week he had rested and recovered and was willing to rejoin the council should they want him back. His problem however was that by the time he contacted StrPlatinum, he had already announced to the Southshire discord that the replacement would be decided by election, so Orinnari begrudgingly decided to run as a candidate, but knew he would probably fail.

During some candidate questions, Charlameme brought up that since Orinnari was the leader of Oakhurst, an autonomous territory of Southshire, and was running to become a council member of Southshire, there could be a conflict of interest. Thus after some hours of negotiation and agreement, the following deal was struck:

"As I am unable to simultaneously hold the position of Councillor and Lord Mayor of Oakhurst, this is my statement on how that would be resolved. If elected, the autonomous district of Oakhurst, where I am the sole resident and owner of, will be encapsulated into Southshire proper. All Oakhurst laws, building codes, criminal codes, and other miscellaneous government enactments, will be placed on hold, to no longer be legally binding or enforceable. The land of Oakhurst will become my personal private property within Southend, with all the protections that includes under law. Oakhurst shall remain in this state until such time where I leave, or are otherwise removed from the council, whereby Oakhurst returns to its previous state and I am reinstated as its sole owner and leader.

It should be noted that this statement only becomes binding once the council votes to legitimise it, and then being elected into the council. If only one of the two occur, or happens in the wrong order, the statement becomes null and void. It is also not my intention for my statement to set a precedent, instead I would ask to keep any future agreements on how to resolve conflicts of interest on a case by case basis."

That kind of negotiating rejuvenated Orinnari's drive to be a legislator, but he also knew he wasn't a people person, which made the inevitable loss of the election even more impactful. He ran not as a John Doe, but as a co-founder, as a previous council member, as the builder of Southshire, as a writer of its laws; he knew he wasn't popular but hoped that people would elect him on his ability rather than popularity, but he ended up losing disproportionately to Callum.

Oakhurst's boroughification
The complete and total loss of the election lead Orinnari to believe he wasn't welcome and that if he ever wanted to legislate again, he'd need to do so elsewhere, and so when the Oakhurst Agreement became null and void, Orinnari decided to focus on but also 'boroughify' Oakhurst, to put it on the same level as Southshire. He figured that if he could build and rebuild Southshire, he could build Oakhurst just fine. However, opinions of Oakhurst and Orinnari immediately began to sour; the boroughification was considered another tantrum, a power grab, an attempt to screw Southshire over. It drew the ire of Dr_Oracle, the then owner of Southshire's branch of Empty Promises, though this was resolved when Orinnari sent him an essay detailing Oakhurst's history.



Hostilities between Orinnari and SamuelV reached a peak, so in early October 2017, Orinnari decided to dismantle Oakhurst and cede the land back to Southshire to relocate elsewhere. At first Orinnari returned to The Plantation, even going so far as to reconstruct the government building, but this was later abandoned as large swaths of the land was reinforced to DarkyDu's groups. Oakhurst was then relocated again to an island just north of The Plantation, now known as Shen. The island however was small and Teal-cliff'd, thus requiring it to be lowered down to sea level to make it usable. But the move itself from Southshire turned out to be a mistake as not only was Shen isolated geographically, socially, and infrastructurally, but also because the Commonwealth refused to recognise it as a borough. This became a very inactive time for him.

Returning to Southshire, really this time!
Orinnari remained a citizen of Southshire and would often submit proposals, but he only fully returned towards the end of November 2017. Though server activity was at an all time low due to The Somber War, where Orinnari and cinzar (the then Chancellor of Southshire) would often be the only players online. They both decided to stage what was effectively a minor coup of the Council to reinstate governance in Southshire. At first they decided to leave the Constitution of Southshire unchanged, but soon after began submitting petitions (example) to amend and interpret the Constitution to fit more in line with how the government actually worked. A few weeks later however the government was reformed in an attempt to return to a simple three person council without abolishing the Constitution entirely, but this ultimately failed. Southshire had always been lacking in law enforcement, particularly by its own government officials, but with the reformation this became more acute where for example citizenships were granted and stripped without regard to the law. And so it was decided by the Council on the 14th January 2018 to abolish the Constitution, using it only as a guideline, and reverting fully to the three person council. This however was controversial as it was seen by some as a nuclear option to prevent tvman from running in the next election. During this time, Orinnari rebuilt the house he once had downtown but within the Dark Oak District in the northern part of city.

Yoahtl accession
Becoming a town of Yoahtl had been a semi-serious meme within Southshire for quite some time. On 13th January 2018, serious talks began between Southshire and Yoahtl to become an autonomous town. These talks were leaked, which caused some drama within the obstinate, meta-bound citizenry, but negotiations were productive and a treaty was drafted. After votes and negotiations, Southshire has decided to secede from the Commonwealth in order to join Yoahtl as an autonomous town as described in this document.

If we were going to transition to Yoahtl we wanted to do it properly, and so we devised three steps to complete before pushing the button and making the change.


 * 1) Receive and invitation from Yoahtl via their own processes. We did not want to first secede from the Commonwealth and then find ourselves in the position of having to wait or possibly being denied, which would cut ourselves off from all federal protection and infrastructure.
 * 2) Negotiate with the Commonwealth to discuss permission and concerns. We wanted to make sure that our plans were acceptable to the Commonwealth as to not create an international incident, our primary concern being land.
 * 3) Conduct a vote within our local government. We wanted to make sure that we did actually want to go through with this, and so the entire government - the council and deputies - were required to vote, and only if the vote was unanimous would we make the transition.

All three conditions were met, and so we made the transition. On 14th January 2018, Southshire officially became an autonomous town of Yoahtl.

"Inventory Checking"
On the same day that Southshire joined Yoahtl as an autonomous town, Orinnari travelled to NYC for the first time. The server was lagging like crazy and large groups of people were being kicked from the server at the same time. Orinnari was kicked twice while on the rails and rode past SouthernBloc along the way who was standing to the side of a rail. After a kick SouthernBloc was ahead of Orinnari though travelling slowly, so Orinnari caught up fast. After another kick which effected them both, Orinnari went to his minecart but so did SouthernBloc, seemingly not noticing nor caring about their minecart up ahead. SouthernBloc prevented Orinnari from continuing his journey, forcing Orinnari do try and move past them, and then prevented him again. Orinnari used his axe to one hit his minecart, but SouthernBloc attempted to take the minecart at the same time, causing them to get hit, which was used as justification to kill Orinnari to "inventory check him", stealing all of Orinnari's items and minecart. Orinnari still has claims against SouthernBloc for what they did.

Settling in Yoahtl
Progress in Southshire was slow and Orinnari's attempt to reset his sleeping pattern alienated him from the goings on in Southshire, and it appeared like the population wouldn't truly recover. Orinnari decided in late February to early March 2018 to move to NYC. However he was almost immediately accosted by TheOrangeWizard for building a property outside the city trench. Orinnari quickly dismantled the property in fear of being thrown out and created a slim shop within the trenched city. This shop quickly grew in size however when 1) SgtSoda agreed to trade his plot for a larger one in the south eastern part of the city, and 2) when Feathercrown ceded a small area to Orinnari to square out the plot, and 3) when the ore exchange was moved from under his plot to allow for a basement.

Even with the plot's expansions, it was still dwarfed by 5point0's mansion, Fort Ruina, and SpiderString's brewery. And so he found it perplexing how TheOrangeWizard would continuously bring up and refer to Orinnari's plot size with more than just an edge. When TheOrangeWizard was speaking with someone else and their plot, he brought up Orinnari's plot and its size. That moment was when Orinnari realised that TheOrangeWizard was not going to let it go and would continually dangle this issue in front of him and anyone who'd listen. And so he decided around mid June 2018 that he couldn't live in Yoahtl anymore if he would continuously face this level of toxicity.

Returning to Southshire, really really this time!
Orinnari returned to Southshire for a short stint of a few days. The previous Oakhurst land was already occupied and even then the bridge was being used as a tree farm and so blocked the original sought after view. He instead attempted to build a house at the top of a mountain on South Island, but this fell flat as the path to reach the house was laborious, the biome was ugly, and the build space too awkward for him to work with.

Moving to Bloom
Orinnari found himself in a frank discussion with ComradeNick on Mumble where he expressed his feelings of aimlessness, that his return to Southshire, or a potential return to the Commonwealth or back to Yoahtl felt like a step back rather than moving on. ComradeNick pointed Orinnari towards Bloom as it was a new nation and most of its inhabitants were newfriends from towny, so Orinnari could delve into integrating and developing them as a civ-nation. He became a citizen of Bloom on 24th June 2018.

Orinnari's shop (later christened as "Forward Settle") would soon kickstart Bloom's economy as it brought XP and enchanted diamond tools to the market. He also quickly took interest in Bloom's parliament, which while elected did not have the same issues that plague(d) nations like Mount Augusta and Icenia. After a particularly devastating raid on his shop that was never repaid, Orinnari withdrew from his business and focused more on local politics: he would later introduce many new laws into Bloom including trademarks, date standardisation, a ban on the phrase "hub" in official contexts, as well as several improvements to Bloom's Constitution. In an attempt to restart his business, Orinnari claimed a portion of Bloom's eastern territory to become a farming district called Ashford. It would be segmented into different farming sections with the most important and first completed section being the tree farms, where the land was expanded into the river to allow for the growth of spruce trees. But he quickly discovered that he wasn't a power farmer, nor had motivation to create farming bots, so he kept to political matters from the safety of his bunker home within the borders of Ashford. Towards the end of 2018 Orinnari disbanded Ashford in favour of rebuilding Forward Settle within Bloom's capitol.

Founding the Kingdom of Ashelor
In November 2018, a player named ThirdOfFive became a citizen of Bloom. At first they gravitated towards each other as they both had a great enthusiasm for law making, however Orinnari quickly found himself frustrated by ThirdOfFive's inexperience and tendency to insist upon solutions that either wouldn't work or would cause more problems than they solved. After a spat in which ThirdOfFive created a knock-off of Orinnari's shop, insisting on his right to do so, and stating that Orinnari should feel flattered, Orinnari and dBeatzx left for greener pastures on 6th January 2019 and founded the Kingdom of Ashelor. Since dBeatzx left with Orinnari, ThirdOfFive began spreading the lie that Orinnari had poached dBeatzx and was therefore a traitor.

Returning to Yoahtl and Bloom
On 28th January 2019, Orinnari received an invitation from bgbba to join Yoahtl on CivEx, which after some exploration he accepted. Orinnari built a home reminiscent of his original residence from NYC and suggested the name "Adobe Forge" for the factory room since it looked like the Adobe logo from the minimap. CivEx would however effectively die by the end of March 2019 due to bad admin public relations incorrectly stating the lie that the lifespan of the server would only be about three months.

After CivEx died Orinnari followed Yoahtl back to CivClassic, moving back to NYC as well as placing an alt back in Bloom. Soon after NYC went through a reconstruction period, undoing the damage that TheOrangeWizard did while he was Alcuahtl (leader of Yoahtl) to the city.

In February 2019, the O.R.I.N. rail was completed in Bloom, standing for Overland Rail In the North.

In May 2019, Orinnari, iOminous, and Aleh began constructing a new city in Bloom called New Haven, a successor to iOminous' Haven city, a trenched city in a northern territory of Bloom. The idea was to create a larger and closer version that could fit more citizens and be directly connected via rail. ThirdOfFive soon joined in to help in its construction, but also began proclaiming that New Haven would be the new capitol of Bloom, despite the numerous protestations of the rest of the group. It was a particularly tenuous situation since Orinnari had spearheaded the blocking of legislation that would have privatised the government vault hole. If they thought that legislation would be forced through to move the capitol to this new trenched city to which they might not have access, it could have shut the entire project down. However, when ThirdOfFive was told categorically that New Haven would not become the new capital, he dropped out of the project, which caused a quick spiral downwards in motivation in the rest of the group.

Orinnari switched focuses between Yoahtl and Bloom pretty regularly, but on 23rd July 2019, Orinnari was a councillor for Yoahtl and suggested a structured mechanism for proposals which included the ability for the council reject blatantly populist or meme worthy proposals subject to any restrictions imposed by the Chief Justice of Yoahtl. But this wasn't taken well by Tigen, a long standing Yoahtlan citizen, who went on to characterise Orinnari's entire personality and contribution to Yoahtl as being a busybody councillor coming out of the woodwork to accumulate ever more power, thinks players are dumb and aren't worthy of power, and is a shy dictator who's no longer forcing the indignity upon others of having to pretend he's anything but. Orinnari was completely taken aback at the level of spitefulness and vitriol since it came from nowhere and was completely unprovoked, and so he decided to step down figuring that he would not tolerate such behaviour from a work colleague or a friend and so shouldn't be expected to tolerate it from a voter.

Reattempting Shen
Soon after Orinnari stepped down from the council in Yoahtl, he sought out an external project to focus on and remembered Shen, the island that was used for Oakhurst. He asked the Ashelor people to join him however they didn't seem interested since they sensed that it was Orinnari's project rather than a group project. He wanted to expand the size of the island, transforming it from a small sliver into something more respectable and workable. However the sheer scale of the project worked to demotivate Orinnari, especially since he was determined to fill in the expansion rather than leave it as a shell or hollow island. The expansion plan was soon abandoned, but managed to commission Aleh to design a bridge to connect the island to the mainland for rail purposes.

Returning to Yoahtl, really this time!
Returning perhaps isn't the right word since Orinnari hadn't left Yoahtl, but was just focusing something outside of Yoahtl. Nonetheless, Shen seemed more and more like a secondary project, a place to build farms or some sort of weird attraction rather than it be a new home or town, especially since specificlanguage had made Orinnari promise it wouldn't become like another Southshire or Oakhurst. His focus naturally fell back towards Yoahtl since Tigen had disappeared again so there was no longer a source of drama in that respect.

However, around the beginning of September, both Sventhar and SpaceVolcano's toxicity became quite acute, so much so that within the next month, Sventhar would be sued twice (first [settled outside of court ] and second) for toxicity and harassment. It got to the level of intolerability, and after Aleh had mentioned exploring old Ashelor for nostalgia's sake, they both sought to reclaim Ashelor.

Problems with the Salisbury Gazette
Following the secession, on 20th March 2020, the Salisbury Gazette published a heavily one sided and propagandised article about the recent dispute between Ashelor and Adina selectively using more dramatic quotes which deliberately left out discussions from voice chats and other channels, as well as curiously going out of its way to mention Orinnari's and Aleh's narrow defeat in the recent Adinan elections, which could imply certain untrue things to readers. Orinnari posted a rebuttal to the article's subreddit post, but it was then that he began to view the Salisbury Gazette as a tabloid rather than a prestigious and unbiased news source.

Founding the Admiralty of Wesbury
On the 10th January 2021, Orinnari sought a new project. Ashelor was firmly established but was quickly fading into inactivity. Ashelor had the disadvantage of being remote so that travel to and from other nations took an inordinate amount of time. Nor did Ashelor have any neighbours, allies, or foes. Once people had built their houses there wasn't much left to do. Slushhi became the last bastion of activity, so once he decided to take a break, the last few who logged in here and there went dormant too. This issue was compounded by the increasing popularity of Icenia with its promise of juicy drama and government positions, but also the launching of Devoted Hell. Either way, Orinnari felt it would be inappropriate to start making changes to Ashelor without the consent of the citizens and so began considering a small project nearby to other nations and so founded a new nation: Admiralty of Wesbury.

Returning to Southshire, really really really this time!
On 7th June 2021, Orinnari glanced at Southshire's Discord server, noticing a lot of recent activity, most notably RoboRik's proposed redesigns of the downtown factory building. He rushed down to Southshire to see if it had been built, or whether anything else had been built since the last time he had been visited and that's when he found himself in a conversation with cinzar who then invited Orinnari to build a house, but was later given permission by StrPlatinum to claim most of Oakhurst's old territory as private property. Cinzar insisted however that the Nymph Embassy ought to remain. However, Orinnari successfully negotiated the deed to the land in return for manually relocating the embassy and its items to the opposite side of the canal, effectively reclaiming all of Oakhurst's former territory as private property. StrPlatinum then spontaneously granted Oakhurst autonomy, returning it to its original form back in 2017.

Relinquishing Ashelor
Orinnari had been the Lord Protector of Ashelor since 30th December 2020 when the Royal Prerogative was re-instated with a few minor changes and named as the Lord's Prerogative, hinting at a Cromwell-esque republic which was totally not a Monarchy. But Ashelor was growing increasingly inactive. On 3rd February 2021, Orinnari suspended the election cycle due to lack of interest. Later, on 17th May 2021, Orinnari suspended the need for citizens to register to vote and the need for proposals to be seconded. Ashelor became so inactive that Icenia effectively occupied and annexed Old Bloom, however this was instigated by Truckman, a Bloomean and Ashelor citizen, so the only issue was the Icenia didn't consult with or inform Ashelor's government. Wanting to move onto other projects, Orinnari passed on the position of Lord Protector to 7misun on 5th July 2021.

"PSA Orimmari isn't me"
On 13th September 2021, a new account joined Civclassics named "Orimmari", clearly a gimmick account of Orinnari. Made somewhat unsettled by this, Orinnari posted a few notifications to various discords that the account was not an alt and shouldn't be given groups. On 11th October 2021, after someone in global chat wondered how Orinnari could've joined without having logged out, he felt it best to be more active in disassociating himself with the gimmick account: this however backfired, causing interest and memery, including from Wingzero54 (the admin of Civclassics) himself. As this continued, two days later Orinnari tried being more personal by making a subreddit-post explaining the gimmick account, how it made him feel uncomfortable, how the characteristic similarity of the gimmick account posed an inherent risk to security and privacy, etc, but this also backfired: the community thereby feasted gleefully on his vulnerability and attempt to leverage the imitator to stop. While this was spiralling, Orinnari got a good piece of advice from bgbba and had the idea to make it seem like he switched to another account. He used a script to re-nickname himself in all civ-related discords and used a headless client to afk on Remcompti. Shortly after, the account "Remcomptii" appeared, which Orinnari found very funny though was also somewhat disappointed that the imitator didn't go for a more meme-worthy corruption like "Remcumpti". With that said, Orinnari's opinion of the community was lowered by the whole affair.

"Dereliction: Ashelor"
On 1st October 2021, Okx declared the independence of Dumnonia, a new one-man nation comprised exclusively of Yoahtlan territory. Two days later, GDAN12 filed a lawsuit against Okx. Since Okx did not trust Yoahtl's courts to be fair or unbiased he vowed not to show up to court. At first, Orinnari offered himself as Amicus curiae to give a second opinion on the numerous charges laid against Okx. However, SpaceVolcano, the High Justice of Yoahtl who was presiding over the case, was insisting on a standard trial without an absentee defendant, so Orinnari became Okx's defence lawyer. On 9th October 2021, Orinnari used Ashelor in his opening statement to court as an example of technically unlawful secession being nonetheless perfectly acceptable. Half an hour later, GDAN12 posts a dereliction request of Ashelor to the UMP. In the next three weeks, GDAN12 would argue repeatedly for Ashelor's dereliction. When confronted, GDAN12 claimed to hold a general opinion against inactive nations holding claims, and yet to date Ashelor remains GDAN12's first and only dereliction request to the UMP. When Orinnari suggested that Ashelor should become a protectorate of the CCCP, GDAN12 reacted poorly, arguing that newfriends would be unduly prevented from settling there and keeping the area claimed is wrong no matter how small Ashelor's claims are.

Southshire's trans-flag drama
(CW: transphobia)

On 13th November 2021, cinzar asked in government channels who had made a diamond reinforced trans flag. StrPlatinum responded that the flag belonged to a former Southshire citizen and was being protected since it kept getting torn down, to which cinzar admits that that was him. Orinnari asked cinzar to stop molesting the flag to which he questioned why he'd "support enabling a mental illness." Orinnari kept an eye on the Skynet relay and noticed that after cinzar logged in there was noticeable damage to the flag, though admitted that it could have been prior damage that he didn't notice. Cinzar responded that it wasn't him.

On 16th November 2021, Orinnari reported that someone named RKFalcon88 had been caught on snitch logs griefing the flag. StrPlatinum confronted RKFalcon stating that continued griefing would result in pearling. RKFalcon responded by echoing cinzar's transphobic arguments. Orinnari and RoboRik said that the flag was a protected historical site and should be left alone. RKFalcon responded both that he'll clear the grief if the flag is replaced, and that the flag will continue be griefed until it's replaced. The next day, cinzar vetoed a build project of RoboRik, stating that it "has blocks that does [sic] not fit the theme". This perplexed Orinnari since Southshire had never had nor enforced a theme before. Orinnari and RoboRik suspected that the veto came in large part as a retaliation for the flag drama, though cinzar and RKFalcon rejected this notion. When StrPlatinum okay'd the project, cinzar and RKFalcon decided to unilaterally secede Bonita Springs from Southshire. StrPlatinum, who had been openly critical of Yoahtl's handling of Dumnonia, allowed the secession without objection.

On 24th November 2021, a Bonita Springs embassy(?) in New Yoahtl City was trans-flag bombed and covered in signs with progressive messaging. Two days later, on 26th November 2021, a number of IMC citizens invaded Bonita Springs with the intention to perma-pearl RKFalcon and level the settlement, using the internal Southshire flag drama as justification. After Orinnari received frantic cries for help from Bonita Springs, he and RoboRik began lobbying for the withdrawal from Bonita Springs and the cessation of violence. It was decided internally not to offer Bonita Springs reentry into Southshire - and thus under the protection of SATO and the UDF - since this would likely be seen internationally as active support for cinzar and RKFalcon's blatant and unapologetic transphobia.

The murder of Civclassics
On 17th November 2021, Civclassics went down for approximately two days for unknown reasons. A couple of days after restoration (21st November 2021) Wingzero published an announcement in the Civclassic Official Discord going into detail about the server downtime:"Things are winding down on CivClassic. I am closing the Bug Bounty program as I was singehandedly managing the program and will no longer be doing that. I will not be implementing any more changes and will generally not merge any code requests unless they are needed to fix issues. The server being down was because the automatic payment failed and only one person has access and did not notice. It simply took several days to get around to setting it back up. The issue was not a lack of funds. Regarding modmail, I have been handling 99% of it and going forward if your modmail is not of high importance I would not expect it to get answered. That all being said, Kira is down and I'm not fixing it right now and there's nobody else to do it"This announcement was ominous enough for people to assume the death of Civclassic but Orinnari was unconvinced. Given that Civclassic development had been lethargic for months, he didn't consider that aspect of the announcement news. He didn't consider however that the automatic payment failing but not due to insufficient funds was foreshadowing Teal's intentions. On 24th November 2021, Teal made a subreddit post titled "End of the Year Party 12/18/21 at 18:00 UTC" to send off the year with an in-game party. People began to suspect that this event was an End of the World (EOTW) event and rumours began to spread. On 8th December 2021, Teal made another subreddit post titled "Through the Roof 'n' Underground" which fawned over the success and longevity of Civclassics while also stating in no uncertain terms that Civclassics will come to an end and will not return for a third iteration. Orinnari responded with the following comment: THIS IS COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY

It beggars belief that you would do this, Teal, that you would post what is now evidently clear an EOTW event over two weeks ago and letting rumour run wild only to come back acting all bashful, praising Civclassics' longevity as if you aren't holding the pillow over Civclassics' proverbial face. For anyone not in the know, Teal effectively abandoned Civclassics in all ways but one about three years ago, same as Bagi. These two have categorically refused to cede full control over to their successors, insisting on keeping such things as the Patreon funds, the domain name, and the OVH instance (the actual server itself), etc, to themselves. This is why whenever something goes incredibly wrong, which happens a few times a year, we have to wait until Teal or Bagi fixes it, because we are literally unable to do so ourselves. This is also why they're still listed as owners in the sidebar... because they are.

It also begs the question on who was included in this admin team decision. Was Teal and Bagi included? Was Maxopoly? Wingzero? Civclassics, for all intents and purposes has no administration whatsoever, and this is in large part due to frustrations from the subsequent admins in not having full control.. but why should they decide? Teal promised that Civclassics will remain alive for however long it has funding, effectively ceding the decision over to the playerbase.

It's entirely possible for Wingzero to take a backup of Civclassics and restore it onto a new server with a new domain and a new Patron, it's been discussed many times, but he's decided not to do this in light of Teal's intentions. Indeed, I've just asked him whether he'd allow someone else who wishes to keep Civclassics alive to restore a backup onto a new server, he said no. It's worth noting that Wingzero since (and before) his post withdrawing all active administration from Civclassics has been playing around with creating an alternative civ server of his own.

Civclassics is not dying comfortably of its own accord because players are disinterested, Civclassics is being killed by its admin team. Orinnari felt more than a little betrayed given his contributions to Civclassics' code base, feeling like it had now gone to waste; that the admin team were sacrificing Civclassics in furtherance of their own prospective civ-server projects. Wingzero in particular had ruminated about and even began working on a civ-server project of his own. To Orinnari, the idea that Wingzero had agreed to shutdown Civclassics knowing that his server would be a likely replacement felt macabre to say the least. Most of the community however did not share Orinnari's outrage.

On 17th December 2021, on the eve of the EOTW event, CivMC was announced with the subreddit post titled "What is Civ? - A Prelude". CivMC is Wingzero's soon to be released civ-server.

On 18th December 2021, Orinnari repeatedly asked Teal during the EOTW event what will happen with the remaining funds from Civclassics' Patreon, all of which he refused to answer. While some players included mentions of the funds in their speeches, the general atmosphere mirrored the lack of outrage and spurned Orinnari for being a "killjoy".