If I may inject, because this is already taking way too long.
We are bickering over details.
A "friendly realm merger" does not require a precise definition of every word. What I intend by those words is that I don't want realm A and realm B to sit together and say "hey, as one realm we would have better game mechanics on our side" or whatever, and then simply join up.
What happened here was NOT the scenario I see as a "friendly realm merger", because it was not an agreed act of cooperation between two parties. You can discuss the "friendly" part if you want, but there wasn't a merger. Whatever you call it, and it sure is a strange event, but it's not the event I ruled disallowed.
Moreover, that real question is, which part of the Social Contract was broken. If we can not spot one without lots of arguing, then we can not assume that the players should have.
That is what I meant a while ago when I said cases should be handled a lot faster because unless they are fairly obvious, we can't expect the players to have seen their acts as violations. If it takes a week of deliberation between half a dozen Magistrates to determine whether or not... - how can we expect the players to come to a sane conclusion?
I'm almost ready to make a ruling that says if the Magistrates can't clearly say "guilty" within a few days, then he's innocent. Mostly so the whole game doesn't get bogged down in rules-lawyering. If that means we let a few people go without punishment, that's fine with me. I'd rather improve the rules than try hard to get every last one of them.
