If only a new ruler in Minas Thalion replacing Cathal, then maybe MT had chance of survival. My character kept hearing the same old same old reasons, Portion just want compensation for militia killed by MT while MT army on its way to fight Wetham. While Lukon joining in support of Portion. And when Portion say why MT just want deal with them alone, should have put all involved parties/realms and talk together. Just admit some wrongdoing, move on and rebuild, perhaps MT could have survived just doing that. Maybe even make full use of old Ash Ketchum himself, as he seems to have friends all around, much more influence than you give him credit for 
I'm not going to comment on the diplomacy as I've no interest in the popular forum sport of reliving old wars to prove or disprove the rightness of the outcome. OT played a blinder and I admire their having learned lessons from previous conflicts and applied them well even if I'd have (obviously) preferred them to have stayed out of it.
The MT-Wetham war was an experiment to test several of the Senate's founding principles whilst staying faithful to them.
The war was a hangover from a declaration by King Sadi who wanted to find out whether he or Cathal was the better general (a rivalry dating back to the Lukon-Oritolon war), and there's no obvious way for Wetham or Alebad to make territorial claims against each other making it the ideal testbed.
Rian offered a white peace which Cathal rejected, then rather than fight battles he had his infil brother Robert attack a number of MT's councillors whilst still being a knight of Wetham. The Senate Law made it clear that all rulers would encourage infils to join the Assassins. That suggested a reasonable pretext to continue the war and its aims: an apology from King Rian.
Marching through Portion was always going to be risky. Not because of their strength (they had very few active players at the time) but because there's always someone who sees crossing neutral territory as an excuse to either use murderous settings or loot. And as we had a Mayhem on team at the time it was unsurprising that both happened. I decided to roll with that and fight a second limited war against Portion-Lukon so Cathal immediately took full responsibility and offered full reparations for the damage as determined by Queen Raven. It was essentially a blank cheque but who in BM ever cashes those?
In the south Oritolon had broken the triple alliance to make war on Aren and at the request of both rulers Cathal agreed that MT would stay out of the conflict. He could hardly expect anyone else to stick to the 1v1 war dynamic if MT didn't.
Before any of this kicked off I'd put a lot of thought and hard work into creating a strong defensive position which no conventional force would breach: a garrison of several hundred range 4 SF, a six month food stockpile, a full war chest with field supply via secret society meeting places, and a good balance of fully developed RCs in Alebad. The city itself produced enough gold to support MT's army and also pay the 50 gold per 100 bushels Cathal was offering for additional food shipments making the neighbouring regions disposable.
Whilst the war was MT v Lukon-Portion-Wetham it was an interesting stalemate with the occasional bombing by the Assassins (a size 4 RC
should be bloody difficult to take down so no surprise there, but death of recruits could have been a problem if the campaign had been sustained) and a reasonable number of fun battles. MT took and held Windaria until certain events caused the Lord to defect. I won't say anything about that as it might still have potential for IC consequences so it's not appropriate for discussion here.
I was surprised it took OT so long to join the war but they'd taken some bruising beatings from us in our previous war because of our ranged SF and I'm guessing they held off until they had a similar weapon to deploy rather than the shock cavalry they'd used back then. The range 5 SF they now have really are an awesome weapon and were the only thing I'd chosen to ignore when planning Alebad's defences because of their rarity. The siege battle reports made for interesting reading because the defending militia garrison was impotent but fire at range 5 causes very few casualties per volley.
Cathal is now taking a break whilst I concentrate on Aoifa for a while. The Dubhaines will keep a presence in the Colonies for as long as I play BM.
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