The War of Thalmarkin... Supremacy?

[Antonine]

Well, AA is in Trottie, OG is in Yipin, the mighty Eagles are in Jyl and the Wolves suck so much they've probably taken a wrong turn somewhere and gotten lost. :)

I have suspicions about where the Wolves are. If they are where I think they are then I'm in a race against time and, if we lose, then we might as well quit the entire war.

Damn Fronen. Obsessing about taking a few rurals when they could lose their only real ally in the war if they don't pull their finger out.

[Lorgan]

Damn Fronen. Obsessing about taking a few rurals when they could lose their only real ally in the war if they don't pull their finger out.

Guess they needed rurals... :)

[Antonine]

Whelp, we surrender.

GG, please don't execute me.

[Lorgan]

Thalmarkin Wall of Meat! Seriously, we really got slaughtered against your army while AA survived without a scratch... That's the last time we let Bob pick our tactics! :P

[Antonine]

Yup - I expected to be wounded what with charging head first into enemy ranks but I was quite surprised to see we wounded Enzo and Pyrix *and* made Enzo retreat from the battlefield.

[Chenier]

It's quite funny how using obvious lies has become a part of diplomatic strategy. Never really saw it on BT before (except perhaps Chenier), and it leads to some tricky business for the ones trying to avoid it :p

Everyone already knows that Fronen were attacking Thalmarkin, and we beat you to it (though not really, since we attacked Melhed, not Fronen). Question is only which side people will prefer.

Chéniers only very scarcely lied. Overglorified themselves, sure. Picked which facts to put emphasis on and which to ignore, always. But straight-out lies, very scarcely.

Their problem was that their enemies' lies were more believable than the truth, and how really everyone with a history on the continent has mud on his name, whether out of malice or by trying to go with the lesser evils during desperate times (which came about routinely on with recurring invasions). Pretty much every realm that endured over the years has plenty of stuff to be called out against them. It's easy to ignore that an evil was really one much lesser than all its alternatives when peacetime has returned and every leader is just too eager to solidify his rule by focusing his nobles on an outside threat. Oldest trick in the book, really.

I tend to consider that the main factors in Chéniers' bad rep on BT were 1) chauvinism 2) arrogance 3) ambition. It's easy to hate a guy that clearly considers you to be inferior, that isn't afraid to be controversial, and who actually manages to wield large influence over (what was) the #1 superpower. They never just picked on anyone for the fun of it, though, their attitude was a nemesis magnet. People would get annoyed with them and try to bring them down. They'd retaliate.

After all, what's to gain by stating obvious lies that nobody will believe anyways? If they cared to influence foreigners, which they scarcely did, they'd only have told believable lies, if lying would have been their intent. Once you make an accusation that sounds too wild to be true, you lose all credibility and influence towards your recipients. Instead, Chéniers (Nicolas and Guillaume, mostly) would simply say the truth, no matter little they expected the others to believe it, because, after all, what did they care if lowly foreigners believed them or not?

[Disturbedyang]

Chéniers only very scarcely lied. Overglorified themselves, sure. Picked which facts to put emphasis on and which to ignore, always. But straight-out lies, very scarcely.

Their problem was that their enemies' lies were more believable than the truth, and how really everyone with a history on the continent has mud on his name, whether out of malice or by trying to go with the lesser evils during desperate times (which came about routinely on with recurring invasions). Pretty much every realm that endured over the years has plenty of stuff to be called out against them. It's easy to ignore that an evil was really one much lesser than all its alternatives when peacetime has returned and every leader is just too eager to solidify his rule by focusing his nobles on an outside threat. Oldest trick in the book, really.

I tend to consider that the main factors in Chéniers' bad rep on BT were 1) chauvinism 2) arrogance 3) ambition. It's easy to hate a guy that clearly considers you to be inferior, that isn't afraid to be controversial, and who actually manages to wield large influence over (what was) the #1 superpower. They never just picked on anyone for the fun of it, though, their attitude was a nemesis magnet. People would get annoyed with them and try to bring them down. They'd retaliate.

After all, what's to gain by stating obvious lies that nobody will believe anyways? If they cared to influence foreigners, which they scarcely did, they'd only have told believable lies, if lying would have been their intent. Once you make an accusation that sounds too wild to be true, you lose all credibility and influence towards your recipients. Instead, Chéniers (Nicolas and Guillaume, mostly) would simply say the truth, no matter little they expected the others to believe it, because, after all, what did they care if lowly foreigners believed them or not?

The fact is, almost all rulers lied to protect their spot. Those who said no here are obviously lying. It is how you portray it and how you put it in perspective. Most tend to amplify the fault of others to cover their own. But i think the downfall of Cheniers was that he does not gather a lot of ally. I lied a lot IC but i also maintain a certain amount of allies regardless of the lies. Chenier due to his arrogance brushed out all allies and head out to achieve his target alone. Pavel despite infamous in the continent, has rather lots of supporters within his own realm, and those tend to spill over as he uses his realm mates to gather support from other realms. Please come back and join thalmarkin. Dislodge King Fingolfin, pretty please. Haha

[Solari]

I'm not too good to call out Andreas on the forums if he were making stuff up. ;) I think folks would be genuinely surprised to learn that Fingolfin very, very, very rarely lies. I certainly can't recall catching him in one. In order to maintain that claim, I think he's just very careful about the course of action he commits the realm to. Sometimes it's a !@#$ty course, and his core advisors raise a stink. He responds by altering the course or convincing us. Other times, the Kin of Thalmar just get to suck it up and trust that he isn't going to get us all killed. But as for the notion that a ruler somehow has to lie to protect their position, Fingolfin is the best anecdotal proof I've encountered that it simply isn't true. It's not the easy way to play a character, but it can be done. There's a reason the character is the longest-serving ruler on the continent, and it isn't because Thalmarkin is full of gullible sheeple. If anything, it's a collection of ambitious and inflated (Jaune) egos that has largely held together because a) winning is fun and b) the ruler doesn't demean the group by ruling as though people can't handle the truth.

EDIT: I am being told on IRC by Lorgan that Fingolfin has, in fact, lied. The instance was so dumb that I'm going to make fun of Lorgan for it right here. Fingolfin said that the occupation of Lastfell would be temporary. Hahahaha. Whoever bought that deserved to be lied to. A fortified town next to our capital, taken by an untrustworthy enemy during an invasion, and then held by a clanner/multi while he plotted a rebellion? Yeah, that's never going to be a tenable situation. Shame, Fingolfin! You're just like all the others! :'(

[Chenier]

The fact is, almost all rulers lied to protect their spot. Those who said no here are obviously lying. It is how you portray it and how you put it in perspective. Most tend to amplify the fault of others to cover their own. But i think the downfall of Cheniers was that he does not gather a lot of ally. I lied a lot IC but i also maintain a certain amount of allies regardless of the lies. Chenier due to his arrogance brushed out all allies and head out to achieve his target alone. Pavel despite infamous in the continent, has rather lots of supporters within his own realm, and those tend to spill over as he uses his realm mates to gather support from other realms. Please come back and join thalmarkin. Dislodge King Fingolfin, pretty please. Haha

Everybody falls eventually.

Chéniers found plenty of enemies, but always managed to find allies, even if it was more of a struggle at the end. Guillaume loathed Nothoi for almost all of their existence, they even executed Miroslav when he tried to join them, and yet, who came to help Enweil in its final days? Nothoi did. And if it weren't for Melhed, I'm convinced Fronen would have as well. The Chénier family, at the peak of The Blood Cult, had influence in pretty much every single realm, save for Sint and maybe Riombara. While openly professing human sacrifice. Chéniers were really only arrogant with those they despised or otherwise considered inferior, I'm convinced a great number of characters who interacted with Nicolas or Guillaume who have had great relations with them. Did it limit the number of potential allies? Maybe. But then again, they managed to befriend realms they had vilified again and again, when circumstances changed. I'd say they were familiar with Game Theory, and would try to assert others' motivations. If the foreigners could be brought on a path parallel to their own, they'd try to make it happen. If it was obvious that the interests were antagonistic, they wouldn't bother unless they had serious reasons to.

What screwed their ambitions was the invasions. It wasn't in their power to significantly alter the courses of the invasions, which hit Enweil hard again and again and again. Enweil used to have the advantage of a lot of nobles and a lot of land, including very wealthy cities. But with every invasion, land was lost, and players quit out of frustration. The opposite was true for Riombara, which basically got wealthier and larger every time. At the end, there was not other possible outcome. Rio was left isolated in a remote corner of the continent. There was nothing else for them to do than to bash at Enweil. Nothoi and Fronen are both a stretch to attack. And the years of rhetoric the leaders used to vilify Chéniers and Enweil did not permit for some kind of cold co-existence. While it may have been in their long-term interests, OOC, to leave Guillaume and Enweil struggle on so that they could eventually have more conflicts that don't take years to march for, the context simply did not allow for that to happen. Any ruler who tried to backtrack on the years of Chénier-bashing would have needed very serious concessions from Enweil to pull it off without losing his seat, and Enweil simply did not have anything left to concede, other than its pride, which the handful of Enweilians had nothing left to gain by conceding.

To be fair, if the situations were reversed, I'm not sure that Chéniers would have allowed for Riombara to survive, though I think Guillaume would have had a lot more leeway than Rio's rulers had. Unlike Riombara, Enweil could reach plenty of other nations, a potential hostile faction in the South-East was not required on the long-run, OOC. And Enweil had no lack of enemies to pick from. The only thing that would have kept Guillaume from ordering the complete destruction of Riombara instead of isolating them to a handful of poor regions, were situations reversed, would have been the fear of a massive migration to an enemy realm where these nobles would be more dangerous.

[Solari]

Guillaume didn't do anything other than be awesome, IMHO. And be a dick about it. That's was precipitated his downfall. But he wasn't some chronic liar. That's Machiavel.  :-X

[Lorgan]

Indeed, there was always a grain of truth in what the Cheniers said. They just always chose to go for and stubbornly hold to their own ludicrous interpretations. :P
Like back when Riombara was having a strong debate between allying with the monsters or not. MR seceded and allied with them, after the invasion they dissolved back into Riombara, which of course made it a plot against Enweil from the get-go since Enweil was allied with the daimons and thus under heavy attack from the monsters. And Riombara was evil for allying with the monsters... :)

But lying is a strong word anyway, good rulers need to be able to bend the truth to their purpose, which of course Fingolfin has done.
If you go out and blatantly lie to someone however, that's just bad diplomacy...

[Disturbedyang]

Yes, that's a better word at it. Bending the 'truth'. And the matter of fact is, Fingolfin repeatedly 'lied' by focusing the matter on something else. Such as those lands that were 'loaned' to the Thals by Melhed, where he conveniently chose to declare it his. So that say that he never lies is a bit of a loyal servant, especially OOCly.

[Lorgan]

Well, Lastfell was actually a bad example, technically he lied or didn't come through but Melhed's conspiring with the undead annulled the earlier agreement in our eyes and that's why we went back on the earlier agreement. Also to provoke Melhed into war, fruitlessly.

It's actually kinda funny when you think of it, it used to be everything North of Winifael was blighted and we were constantly trying to provoke Melhed into war, now we've got everything (sorta) North of it too + an ally in Agyr and now they're going out of their way to war us... :P

[Noldorin]

Lies!

Fingolfin doesnt lie straight out (not to my memory at least). Sometimes the truth is quite bent, but its not That often, and always with backdoors to return through if it gets called out. One of the fun things about playing this way is that you can always argue for your case, and most often in a much stronger way than your opponents. Obviously its all up to the listeners to make up their own mind about what to think about it, but so far Fingolfin has gotten out of alot of crap by still being the good guy in almost everyone eyes :) (well, except for those directly targetted). Times may be a'changing though.

But well, most of the times we just go straight forward and calling out others lies. Pavel and Elicia came with tons of accusations towards Fingolfin the last weeks, which were all met and countered, and neither of them could back up their accusations. Thats tricksy to do if you are lying to people left and right.

[Antonine]

Melhed has now signed a ceasefire with Thalmarkin.

Immanuel Octavius of Melhed has just corrupted the government of Trottie and bought the region, taking it from Ar Agyr to Melhed :p