Late this day, reports began streaming in of an entire Duchy flying new banners of a newly formed realm where the city of Colasan stands. Shortly after, it was made known that another region and it's lord pledged new allegiance to Kindara. Thus leaving the Kingdom of Cathay, more aptly a Queendom in the last many months, in a precarious position.
With it's former King Galiard Scarlett and his short-lived successor, Queen Kasia Kain so suddenly making their departure from the realm many months ago, it appears the identity and spirit of Cathay's nobility at large have suffered enough blows to morale from the consequent disappearances and other mysterious, but gradual, reports of other longstanding key figures also vanishing from the public eye.
Rumours abound that without a more convincing leadership to have held the realm together in trust and spirit, it was a justified course of action to secede and let Cathay fade away into shame of what it has now become. Others assert that the realm has arisen before because of the strong values and principles in which the realm was founded upon, and that as long as they breathe and live these virtues, they will persist onwards.
Whichever way it appears the go, one thing is at utmost clear; Another realm of the Free Peoples is now officially out of the running to present any comparable resistance to the Empire as the once proud, united, Free Kingdom of Cathay it could have once claimed of itself before, but now no longer.
~
I think these quotes summarize quite well what seems to have happened in Cathay:
Only appearing to be outmatched. In reality, they had a remarkable ability to swell their ranks once the war actually started. Not only that, their ruler did an excellent job of gaining sympathy and swaying others to their side. Their political maneuvering was almost perfect.
And yes, [...] did not perform very well in that war. We had several key figures either go inactive and autopause, or outright leave/quit soon after the war began. [...]
The defectors have pretty much destroyed that. Most of them won't be allowed back into
[...] when the war is over. Many of them won't even be allowed to remain in the Far East.
It really seems to have unfolded just as the above quotes laid out; The onset of the war, attributed to the character named Galiard Scarlet by quite a few others now, began with influential political swaying that brought several realms together, but all too soon after the war's starting, began to unravel in different ways. Perhaps one of the key highlights was when Cathay's rulers, both the characters Galiard and Kasia of the Scarlett and Kain families respectively, both left or had their characters die off while the war was still going on strong. The latter was supposed to have been the expected successor/leader in following through with the war and keeping Cathay whole, but with her own disappearance/death, the following months drew many more mysterious disappearances (pausing/deleting, mostly permanent deleting and quitting of Battlemaster entirely) of other really quality, key, and influential characters of the realm; from Dukes to Lords, to Knights having been part of Cathay's history from after the era of Toupellon, to some even older than that; to when Cathay was still in it's first era after having just evolved from a Lasanar Colony on the heels of the Antoza Commonwealth war.
All these characters, in a very short time I think, since say just the last 3-4 months, sort of got up and left week after week in a very silent manner (though a good handful at least posted small OOC messages or leaving messages). Then arrived nobility from Ohnar West, along with a spattering of other new families and nobles NOT related to Ohnar West, and during this time Queen Stephanie Greyson also rises to power, and so began the chapter that seems to be what we are seeing today.
I'll admit that as a player, from the time the player's of Galiard Scarlett and Kasia Kain deleted their characters, up until about the character Queen Stephanie Greyson really seemed to get into the groove of starting something going, there was a really dead silence in the realm; so many characters and players had paused/left the game after Galiard and Kasia's characters went poof so suddenly, that there was literally no activity in the realm chatter; it really seemed an identity crisis, or at least that the realm was about to disband right then and there.
But over the last month or so, things picked up again as things began to seep through that Cathay's Queen was secretly negotiating with Arcaea's Emperor, keeping the details mostly hidden from the realm, and then at last the banning of the Ohnarian 'defectors' seemed to finally trigger a string of activity, heated debate, discussion, and chatter in the realm again; leading up to the somewhat explosive events of Colasan seceding to form a new realm in the north, and Haul joining Kindara in the south.
I have to say, it was nice to see lively discussion again in the last weeks or so even though it was more internal strife and roleplaying/conflict between characters than ever seen before; where as most of Cathay's roleplaying history and atmosphere was based more on a realm vs realm, team vs team spirit, under characters like Galiard Scarlett, Ranulf Miles, James Blazeral Harker, Hamish O'Ways, etc. The amount of internal strife that was allowed to reign so freely this time around was a very interesting dynamic for my character in Cathay.
