Orinnari

Orinnari

Orinnari joined Civclassic in July of 2017 having played no prior iteration and currently resides within two nations: Yoahtl and Ashelor.

History

Joining

Orinnari joined after a /r/WorldPowers community server collapsed. He'd find himself playing the Minecraft server more than the meta game, so a friend from the subreddit, DarkyDu, suggested Civclassic. He joined the server and after some local chat exchanges, settled here just above, and fifteen blocks below, modern day Anburon. He planned on creating a small house with a large basement, but quickly lost interest in the server and covered the basement hole.

The Plantation

District map of the Commonwealth showing The Plantation, Strassburg, and Southend.

Not long after, DarkyDu suggested joining him in the Commonwealth where owned the area known then as The Plantation, now modern day Arran. Orinnari accepted and began levelling out an 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.

Hidden Base

He 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.

Commonwealth Capitol

He 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 such property beyond that boundary. This lead to a feeling of alienation since the first week or so of playing had been so unfruitful.

Strassburg

MiloY's manor and its bridge to Stassburg.

Fadedsoul invited Orinnari to join him is Strassburg, a German themed settlement 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, now 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. Orinnari then laid out most of what is now known as the Downtown Area: 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 - which mirrored the experiences of Orinnari and StrPlatinum - 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, minor griefing, and minor 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.

Southshire pre-reconstruction

Southshire post-reconstruction

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 both decided to extend an invite to SamuelV to join the council. This would lead to the start of the Building Era.

mrmamizoupie

Around the 15th August 2017, a Southshire and Commonwealth citizen known as mrmamizoupie was pearled. The people of Southshire (also known as Southshians) were naturally outraged that a friend and citizen had been pearled within and removed from Southshire territory, particularly when there was at the time seemingly no rhyme or reason. Information was slowly released over the next day or two. On 17th June 2017, Orinnari stated Southshire's position:

"Mami commited crimes abroad, but then he became a citizen of Southshire and therefore the citizen of the Commonwealth. Now, I have been told that the Commonwealth does not intervene in cases of extradition in cases where someone has been pearled for crimes abroad, however, Southshire does intervene, and because he was a Southshire citizen and pearled in Southshire, we feel we have a right to a say and to block extradition. However, we can be overruled by the Commonwealth.... so we need a ruling over whether Mami can and will be extradited."

MiloY, who then seemed to chair the Commonwealth's response to this matter, agreed with Orinnari's interpretation of the law and brought up precedent made in previous iterations of civ, that the Commonwealth traditionally does not prevent extradition. The conversation was then taken into relevant channels and voice chats where the Commonwealth gathered its most trusted citizens to rule on the issue and taking Southshire's voice into consideration, but ultimately voted to allow the extradition.

However a new issue arose: the Commonwealth had been operating under the assumption that the pearl was held by Southshire, and Southshire believed the opposite, and so when a vocal minority within Southshire began to conspire to break mrmamizoupie free and that the pearl wasn't being handed over, the Commonwealth assumed that Southshire had gone rogue. It turned out however that the pearl's owner, ThePayman, wanted his own set of demands met before relinquishing the pearl. The Commonwealth managed to talk ThePayman down from these demands since an agreement had already been made and would otherwise create an international incident.

On 19th August 2017 when the situation was resolved and mrmamizoupie was going to be tried (listen here), Orinnari felt extremely exhausted since he had dedicated several days to this issue and the conversation surrounding it was toxic and boiling over. Orinnari himself received accusations and verbal abuse which he was woefully prepared for.

Oakhurst's creation

Oakhurst's borders

Oakhurst's government building and Orinnari's manor

Oakhurst was an area within Southend. Orinnari had been building in that area for about a week or so since his house at the time was dead centre of Southshire and didn't like the sheer amount of snitch pings. After the mrmamizoupie pearl situation was resolved, Orinnari annexed the land, thereby creating Oakhurst, and then stepped down from the council in an attempt to get out of the spotlight. 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.

View of Southshire from Oakhurst

Returning to Southshire

Orinnari's proclaimed desire to dissociate from Southshire did not last long. When JC, Orinnari's successor, decided the 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 moved on from the turmoils of the mrmamizoupie situation, and that he was willing to rejoin the council if they wanted him back. His problem however was that by the time Orinnari contacted StrPlatinum, he had already announced to the Southshire discord that the replacement would be decided by election.

During the discussions of Orinnari running for council, Charlameme brought up a potential conflict on interest because Orinnari was the leader of an autonomous territory of Southshire and running to become a council member of Southshire, 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 on 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 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.

Oakhurst construction plans in The Plantation

An example of hostilities between Oakhurst and Southshire was when Orinnari lobbied for a rail connection between the two boroughs and was met with scorn because to them it seemed ridiculous to have a rail that short, though it turned out to be roughly the same length as the rail from Mount Augusta to the Jewish Quarter, Mount Augusta.

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 in order to move 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 to an island just north of The Plantation, now known as Shen. The island however was small and Teal-cliff'd, thus required lowering it 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 the Commonwealth also refused to recognise it as a borough. This became a very inactive time for Orinnari.

Returning to Southshire, really this time!

Orinnari returned to Southshire in December 2017 after server activity was at an all time low due to The Somber War, where Orinnari and cinzar would often be the only players online. Cinzar became the new leader of Southshire and the Constitution of Southshire was abolished in favour of returning to the council system it had previously. Orinnari rebuilt the house he once had at the centre of the city but within the Dark Oak District in the northern part of city.

Yoahtl Ascension

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"

Soon after 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

Orinnari's NYC shop

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 the new capitol, NYC. However he was almost immediately accosted by TheOrangeWizard for building a property on NYC island but 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) also 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 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. 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!

View from the South Island property

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 free 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 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.

Ashford's location, size, and purpose

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

The Kingdom of Ashelor's borders

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 jaded 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 close replica of Orinnari's shop, insisted on his right to do so, and said that Orinnari should feel flattered, Orinnari and dBeatzx left for greener pastures on 6th January 2019 and found themselves in the +,+. Since dBeatzx left with Orinnari, ThirdOfFive began spreading the lie that Orinnari had poached dBeatzx and was therefore a traitor despite both retaining their Bloomean citizenships. Orinnari successfully negotiated the land from the Free Territory of Kropotnia on 8th January 2019 with a treaty called the Treaty of Mutual Recognition.

Meme of Ashelor by Aleh

CivEx

On 28th January 2019, Orinnari received an invitation from bgbba to join Yoahtl on CivEx which after some exploration he accepted. dBeatzx had already become somewhat inactive and so when Orinnari and Selanid moved over to CivEx, Ashelor was effectively put on hold. On 17th February 2019 in a spurt of activity, dBeatzx attempted to revive the Ashelor by negotiating to become a state of Bloom, however this was quickly prevented by Orinnari due to fears of interference by ThirdOfFive and other Members of Parliament, though this sadly made dBeatzx go inactive again.

CivEx would however effectively die by the end of March 2019 due to bad admin public relations incorrectly stating that the lifespan of the server would only be about three months.

Timeline

Returning to Yoahtl and Bloom

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 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, so the construction of a trenched city owned by the dissenters made them uneasy. If they thought that legislation would be forced through to move the capitol to this new trenched city to which might not have access to, 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 and therefore progress.

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 time 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 accumilate 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 since it came from nowhere and completely unprovoked, and so decided to step down firguring 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

The plan to expand the island of 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 alzdadog to design a bridge to connect the island to the mainland for rail purposes.

Shen's rail bridge design

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 another 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.

Moving to Nyasaland

Around 24th December 2019, Orinnari went on a spree of joining Discords linked on the ccmap, one of them being Nyasaland's. The community seemed very active and welcoming, which was a surprise since he thought they were inactive or kept to themselves as his only interaction with Nyasaland had been their shop in Bloom. He was also drawn to them by the mutual liking of the game League of Legends, and would often watch streams of the game in voice channels. His intention was to move Ashelor to Nyasaland in hopes of it being more active and populated. By 30th December 2019, he had terraformed and constructed the canals, though the area was not independent or even autonomous, since the area was on Nyasaland's main island and they were newcomers, but Nyasaland nonetheless accepted the idea of it being its own thing and not necessarily complying with the aesthetic of the town. It however became quickly apparent that a mutual liking for a game was not a substitute for the kind of affinity that smooths group dynamics when he often found himself treading on eggshells around certain longstanding members. He didn't want to cause upset or make waves, but this often meant double checking everything he said, writing disclaimers before writing anything political, and being extremely specific in conversations, which quickly became tiring and outweighed the benefits of staying, especially since playing League of Legends with the others meant playing on North American servers, thus having very high ping.

Ashelor's Statehood of Adina

On 10th January 2020 Ashelor was griefed for the second time by seanfpa and xVANCEx. Seeming that Orinnari was spending a lot of his time in Nyasaland and Aleh was largely inactive, Orinnari decided to offer Ashelor as a state to Adina so that they could use the land for farms and such should Ashelor be abandoned. But over the coming days and weeks, this would never happen since Orinnari was already growing distant from Nyasaland and instead becoming more involved with Adina. Ashelor's ascension to statehood also brought with it the federalisation of a version of Ashelor's Habeas Corpus laws. Adina passed the "Ashelor Integration Act" on 17th January 2020, and Ashelor responded by passing the "Recognising the Ashelor Integration Act" on the same day. On 24th January 2020, Ashelor passed "Integrating into the Republic of Adina" which officially transitioned Ashelor into a state of Adina.

Around the beginning of March 2020, both Orinnari and Aleh found themselves more active and so made an effort to be more involved with Adinan affairs, however, the cultural divide between Ashelor and Adina became more and more apparent, particular when Orinnari ran as a judge candidate on the principle of separation of powers: that the judge should - in their official capacity - be limited to judicial affairs. This as well as Orinnari's proposal to make the National Assembly more transparent clashed with the unwritten conventions of Adina thus framing Orinnari as an outsider. It was surprising then when Orinnari and pamaxwell tied and were brought into a private room and asked to choose between deciding the winner through random chance, or allowing the National Assembly to vote. After a short discussion, they both decided with the National Assembly vote since Orinnari didn't want to set the precedent of chosing winners randomly. Orinnari was not surprised however when the National Assembly chose the incumbant who campaigned on extrajudicial promises.

Ashelor's secession from Adina

On 24th February 2020, ImperatorMendes approached the government of Ashelor with a proposition to build a vault within Ashelor's red desert. Orinnari and Aleh immediately had concerns, mostly to do with its proximity and the implications that would have on the town of Ashelor, but also what it would mean in terms of borders, since it would mean a dramatic reduction in Ashelor's already small land claims. After some research into Adina's laws to figure out the specifics of how a land transfer would occur, he found that there wasn't anything specific pertaining to land jurisdiction with the exception of the "Ashelor Integration Act" which stated that Ashelor would retain its borders, thus implying that those borders meant something. This was backed up by the fact that Adina was requesting Ashelor for the land rather than acquisitioning it, thus implying that Ashelor could in fact refuse.

On 25th February 2020, Ashelor passed "Land Negotiations with Adina" which empowered the Governor - an newly formed governmental role created under the requirements of statehood of Adina - the power to negotiate the desired area of the red desert with Adina, thus negotiations began. At first there were discussions of a land exchange, but Ashelor quickly stated that a land exchange should be mutually beneficial, that it shouldn't be land area for land area but rather useful land for useful land, but that caused that line of negotation to end pretty quickly. Adina then bragged about having sold Phylon, an area they had recently been gifted, to Odresh (uuuh) for 192 diamonds. This inspired Ashelor to suggest a land purchase and while Adina understood, they felt it wasn't within their budget.

"yeah i totally get why you guys do want to be compensated, we just may have to move location if it is too pricey" - matanic, President of Adina

Ashelor came up with the price of 64 emerald blocks, but after some discussions of a zero-interest payment plan, Incentives offered to pay bill in full himself, so it seemed like construction would start in a matter of days.

On 14th March 2020, which was two days after the elections in Adina (thonking), the mood suddenly changed when matanic sent Ashelor a rather scathing message which stated in no uncertain terms that the government of Adina was disappointed with the request for compensation; that they understood that Ashelor (supposedly) didn't feel Adinan; that other states do feel Adinan thus would give up their land if it were them; that Ashelor should start acting like a state; that Ashelor doesn't deserve to be a state; that if Ashelor citizens wished to exercise their Adinan rights then they should act like Adinans; that Adina will be "clarifying" its laws to give powers to the federal government to be able to take land from states without asking.

As you can imagine this wasn't taken well, but civil discussions began nonetheless about how to transition Ashelor to a different type of territory within Adina that granted more autonomy. However they were soon made privy to the fact that Adina was updating its constitution so that autonomous territories would no longer get voting rights on the federal laws they'd still have to follow. This was seen by Ashelor as a blatant attempt to coerce them into handing over the land as a good little state would, or to accept a form of self-imposed and federally enforced isolation from Adina, giving credence to the idea that Ashelor wasn't really Adinan. It was also not lost on Ashelor that the federal government could, in theory, pass legislation requiring Ashelor to relinquish the land anyway, so in an abdunance of caution, Ashelor pursued independence.

Salisbury Gazette

On 20th March 2020, the Salisbury Gazette published a heavily one sided and propagandised article about the recent dispute between Ashelor and Adina using more dramatic and selective quotes which deliberately left out discussions from voice chats and other channels, as well as curiously making sure to mention how Orinnari and Aleh [closely] lost the election, 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.

Ashelor's first execution

On 20th March 2020, a player by the name of Mr__Wiggles entered Ashelor and began breaking chests. Still skittish over the raid in January, Orinnari called in reinforcements. Onederful from Adina offered to help. Wiggles was pearled and Onederful was compensated for his troubles. It turned out that Wiggles thought that Ashelor was abandoned because while wandering around for a few minutes, he didn't see any activity. Orinnari only noticed the raid because he was up late and AFKing in his home. Wiggles was then sentenced to five days exile pearled, as well items known to be taken from neighbours in similar raids confiscated and returned. However, in Ashelor's laws, someone who is sentenced to pearl time must be ceremonially executed. Wiggles was executed by guillotine on 25th March 2020. (Watch here)