I was a common noble when CE, Tara, and Talerium "won" the last of the major wars. I had a lot of fun going out and marching and killing bad guys.
Fast forward some time and when the Tyrant disappeared, I became the new Tyrant of Tara. I took one look at the diplomatic situation on the island from the eyes of a ruler who is supposed to give his players a fun time and realized that it wasn't setup that way. And so I spent the entire year of my Tyrancy first stabilizing Tara and making it an effective realm again, and then began working to break up the CE/Taran alliance.
As a player, I wanted it dead. Gone. Buried. But at the same time I (and especially my character Regstav) were loyal to CE. Regstav fought when Tara had three regions and it was CE that saved our butts time and again. So there was no way that Regstav would just drop them. He owed them way too much for that.
But others agreed that the CE/Taran alliance needed to be broken for the good of the game, including the previously-mentioned "Old Guard" in the League of the Eagle. We came up with some very interesting ideas that would have broken the League up rather well. Never agreed on any of them, but we were talking in the right direction. Heck, I was pushing HARD for an idea that would have broken Tara into three different realms with two cities each. Point is, we all agreed that things had to change.
Then the Strombanians lit another fuse by doing what they did best. Insulting people and then saying "come at me bro if you dare face CE."
At which time I responded with a "don't mind if I do" and dropped Tara out of the Federation. And considering all the work I'd done over the last year to improve relations between Tara and the non-CE realms, I'm pretty confident Tara would have survived. Oh, there was always a chance one of my new allies and friends would have stabbed Tara in the back. It had happened before. It could happen again.
I judged it worth the gamble though. Even if Tara died, I considered it worth getting the game going and exciting again. Now what I WANTED was to break CE and Strombran, see a return of Carelia in the Strombanian regions, and break up Cagil into some bite sized chunks. Then break up Tara. I was about "this" close to just handing Shanandoah over to Minas Leon. I had plans to get one or two of the Taran dukes to secede and start their own realms. Or maybe I would have stepped down as Tyrant and done my own secession.
Either way, I had lots of plans to break the power of Strombran, CE, and Tara and they were going along very nicely and turning the whole island on its head. And I never could have done any of it without the help of the other rulers and high muckitimucks in the League of the Eagle. I don't think I've ever seen a group of players agree to destroy everything they've worked to build all because they knew it was best for EVERYBODY who played the game. Not that well at least. They pulled the trigger and it was game on. Made me proud to be one of their number.
It was a good game and it was a good time.
I'm sorry that outside people decided to end it before we found out how it was going to play out.
