We did that, very recently in fact: We assembled an alliance of every non-League of the Eagle realm on the entire island to fight them. And guess what? We still lost. If that doesn't illustrate the futility of trying to change things on Atamara, I don't know what can.
Meta concerns over the strength of the Cagilan Empire have been around as long as I can remember. But what you might want to see achieved as a player is not equivalent to what realms work towards in character. Whilst a bloc was gathered to fight a war against the Cagilan Empire and her allies, that isn't what everyone was fighting for. For example, Carelia just wanted a couple of cities. Caergoth and Suville only involved themselves to try and push Carelia out of the southern peninsula. What did they care about far off Cagil? After a while Suville quite understandably decided that an easier path to her ambition would be just to fight Carelia directly rather.
There has never been a homogenous anti-CE block in Atamara and there has never needed to be. There have always been localised wars going on and the strength of the Cagilan bloc has always ebbed and flowed. When I started playing in late 2004, Cagil had just created Carelia after destroying the realm of Lasanar based around Strombran. Tara had forged herself into a massive empire. The Cagilan bloc looked intimidating. Yet over the next couple of years Tara collapsed, Carelia started flip-flopping, Abington became a serious rival. This idea that Cagil has always had it her own way is false. They haven't. Fair enough, they are now the strongest they have been in some years, but there's nothing to say it will stay that way.
I really think everyone is being far, far too harsh on Atamara. Atamara has always been capable of drastic changes and it is not as calcified as everyone is making it out to be. After probably a good five or six years of Darka being a nailed on part of Cagil's every coalition, Darka changed sides. We talk about all the puppet states that Cagil sets up, but Coria turned against her master and was recently replaced by another realm that seems unlikely to toe the Cagilan line. Carelia is a former puppet state of Cagil who also did not toe the line. Suville has the potential to become as strong as her forebear of Abington once was.
I really think that actually, Atamara has the potential to be exciting in the near future. You have a whole host of small realms battling it out in the north. The realms around the southern peninsula will start flexing their muscles again eventually. Everything Silnaria was doing is still up in the air. Meanwhile, Tara and Cagil are probably at the limits of their natural expansion and it seems unlikely that they will fritter away nobles on founding more new realms. There simply isn't the need. We might be in a bit of an ebb after the last great conflict but a conflagration will break out again soon enough. I don't doubt it.
