Like staying away from the war? Like agreeing to attack Tara? (Ok, this was not never agreed to do, cause you backed off when you had to actually do what you say).
Anyway, what i meant was that Coria is sneaky and twists words and papers. I guess i already mentioned somewhere that written agreements are the !@#$. If you cant trust without name on the paper, you really dont trust.
I find myself also having to respond to this. I know Coria was attacked by Hammarsett first. You can't expect us to not defend ourselves because we're "supposed to stay out of the war". We've stayed out of the war with Eston, though. The whole deal with Tara retreating could be argued as participating, but IC, my character doesn't agree. There's nothing untrustworthy there, he's just strictly following the treaty. (Which, as an aside, did Kerwin drop that? I have been ready to negotiate it...)
As for attacking Tara, if you've seen the whole process, you'd know that we never reached an agreement. We got close, in fact, Coria was ready to sign something
long before Darka, Eston or BoM. Back then, I could've convinced Coria to agree, but by the time you guys were ready, the plan had been leaked (through Minas Ithil, no less...
1), you had almost nothing to offer Coria and, as a result, I could no longer convince Coria. We never even got to a point where we could do "what [we] say". Hammarsett held out until the very end... If we'd tried to turn on Tara then, we'd be marching with hardly any strength into almost certain failure... for what, a city and a ravaged duchy? This doesn't even account for the likely revolt by my nobles (due to the timing), the damage to our own lands, and the forewarning that Tara got. On top of all that, at that point, the treaty hadn't been signed by anyone yet. As I recall, there were still some issues over specific terms. Ravendon may be sneaky, but he's not entirely stupid. Even so, I am
still dealing with the repercussions in the Central Alliance for when it was discovered. Of course, this is all OOC. Only a few people IC have all the pieces to connect as far as I know.
On the last point, though, I won't deny that Ravendon, at least is sneaky and twists words when he needs to... But he will
always stick to treaties or official agreements. You have to remember that Coria was the one defecting, not the North. You better bet we want some kind of assurance that our butts are covered. A paper treaty is a perfect representation of that. No sane man would trust an agreement made with his (current) enemy blindly. It doesn't matter if you believe you should be able to trust someone without their name on a treaty, you weren't the ones going out on a limb. If I can't trust you to catch me when I fall, why would I jump at all? You're the one on the ground, you don't have nearly as much uncertainty. To put that in IC terms, if we had turned on Tara, we'd be the ones at risk, not the North. If the new alliance failed, the North remains much the same and Coria is either destroyed or forever scorned. Ergo, it's not your side that should have been worried as much about trust. If we insist on a treaty being made to finalize anything and to trust you to carry out those terms, you can't claim we don't stick to our word because we don't trust you without a treaty. It's like being told to write a book report, doing half of it and then complaining you didn't get full credit because you
did read the book and you
might get around to finishing the book report... We'll just have to trust you on both of those details.
It's also important for Coria and elected rulers to have paper treaties due to the election cycle. (I'll admit ignorance here when talking about other government styles and their election cycles.) Every month, there's a chance that someone doesn't have faith in Ravendon's leadership and runs against him. He might even win. When he does, do you expect Ravendon will remember every single thing he needs to say to this new leader?
Luckily, much of this is over for us, though, or I'd be concerned about even speaking of it OOC. I've been working for months now to redefine Coria from being sneaky and careful to bold and straightforward now that we're in a position to do so. We'll see how everything works out when we can go back to war. There's less than 2 months before our treaties with MI (gone in less than that is my bet) and BoM pass their forced existence. After that, we get to reassess who we want to fight, if anyone. (I kind of fubar'd the only other front we'd have considered fighting on... Even if he isn't responsible, the South seems to have been all about peace since I sent Ambassador Asleon down. I originally sent him down to figure out if we'd have to go to war soon and which side we should actually support.)
Sorry for the huge post.
EDIT: Forgot something. That superscript:
1: Minas Ithil was actually directly responsible for the leak... So the assertion that Coria backed off because we didn't hold to our word is nonsense. Luckily for me, it worked out likely better, but much less interesting this way.
