To Whom it May Concern,

There was a great deal of forum drama after RBL's recent war with PewPew. They chose to fight a war on their terms for what they valued, which unfortunately was not in line with how top kds generally fight one another. As a result of the way that war unfolded, kingdoms who previously held a large lead in acres over us suddenly faced the prospect of a large deficit, and began to demand that we withdraw. To their credit, those demands were withdrawn, but the end result was a situation that nobody was happy with.

Over the last few days, a great deal of conversation has taken place, both in public and in private. Rage (the kingdom which became RBL and still has some long time Rage players) lost three separate age crowns due to similar situations where a kd chose to farm to a 3rd party. None of us who played through those ages and invested the incredible amount of time and energy into being #1 as the age neared a close will soon forget how angry and helpless it made us feel to watch those situations unfold.

As most reading this thread will know, the loose alliance of kds who felt that it was unfair to them to be passed in such a manner initially insisted that RBL intra-raze acres in exchange for some sort of CF, in the name of fair play. For a couple reasons, I felt that this didn't really demonstrate fair play, which have been discussed to exhaustion in the other thread.

Much to the credit of all parties involved, the ultimate desire was for the intentional farm out in this case to not be the deciding factor in who won the crown this age. I did not want to punish my players for doing nothing wrong, but I also did not want to subject other kingdoms to the same thing that cost my kingdom several age crowns.

I offered, very early on in the process, to simply remove my kingdom from the race for #1. While this was initially rejected, understandably in light of last age's actions by a different kd, much of yesterday and last night diplomacy went on to find a way to make this work. In the end, the result of the diplomacy was the following agreement:

We stop pursuing #1 land and EOA CeaseFired AMA, BB and EJ. We have been asked to keep our growth limited to 210k as an upper limit. It is possible that one kingdom who we do not have an EOA CF with may come to war us late in the age, and if that happens we were asked to raze ourselves back down to #2 land should we win that war and find ourselves again in #1.

It is my hope that by taking my kingdom out of the running voluntarily and putting the full weight of my actions and my deeds behind the idea of playing clean and fair in the top that all of the top kds will set aside the rampant dirty play and dealbreaking which has marred the last few ages, and return to playing honestly and fighting their fights fair and hard. Sometimes you have the advantage, and sometimes you don't. There's always the next war and the next age, and I believe that if you have to play dirty or profit from someone else playing in a way that is not generally accepted, then it's not worth winning that way.

I have spoken to many leaders in the game since I became the monarch of the kingdom, and I have always said that our core ethos was to fight hard and to fight clean. I could not say that if I took advantage of this situation and tried to leverage it to take the #1 land spot this age. That is why I made the offer, and ultimately why this situation has now been resolved without any deal-breaking or gang-banging or other dirty play.

I would like to thank Elit, Flogger, Pendel, Protector and MrCurious for trusting in my personal honesty enough to make this agreement in good faith. I also would like to compliment them for choosing a solution that leaves the race essentially the way it was before, with the exception of RBL being out of the race voluntarily. They could very easily have simply done what they liked and profited from the situation and nobody could really have stopped them. They have shown a sense of fair play and ethics together with us.

It is my hope and desire that all of us who play at the top and compete for the top finishes can find common ground and a set of ethics that we can all agree upon and which we will all agree to uphold, no matter whether the offender is a friend or an adversary. I believe that until we do, each age will continue to be marred by incidents such as those from the last few ages.

I hope everyone has a great rest of this age and look forward to seeing you all on the battlefield in a couple weeks when the next age comes up. I have requested that the players in my kingdom not post for the time being, especially in this thread, but some of them were deeply angered by the threats and accusations leveled towards them and would have preferred that we fight. I hope in time that they will understand and accept that we would not be who we say we are without our actions matching our words.

So please excuse anyone who is still upset and posts out of that anger and frustration. Every one of us has been angry and spoken in anger things which we otherwise would not say. To those still fighting for the age, I wish you all the best of luck and hope you enjoy the journey as much as the destination.

Sincerely,
Drixx
Monarch - Rumours, Bargains, and Lies (Formerly - Rage of Absalom)