So what I'd like to do here is post an explanation of the FA changes we've seen recently, specifically the decision to treaty NPO, dissolve OO and form a new bloc in the form the of Inquisition. I'd like to preface this with the observation that this explanation isn't meant to blame our decision on any AA (TKR in particular) - nor is it meant to offer excuses for why our gov (and myself) opted to take BK on the route we did. Basically, what I'd like to is explain our reasoning and enlighten people who might not otherwise have access to our FA thinking and, hopefully, help people understand why things changed so radically in the past couple of weeks. So basically the path to Inquisition started with the Silent War, which was the last gasp of what has traditionally been know as the 'other side.' NPO, TC and Paragon made a final attempt to defeat the 'Hegemony' (Syndisphere and OO) and their failure meant that our side no longer faced a competitor capable of challenging us in a meaningful way. That our side had 'won' the game was demonstrated in the following months - we destroyed SK's nascent 'Game of Thrones' sphere by forcing Valyria to disband, we destroyed the 'Paperless' bloc by forcing TEst to splinter into three parts and rolling Arrgh to the point that they gave up and in doing so generally established that we were dominant and could not be messed with. The Mensa-Lordaeron war (where Mensa beat the crap out of Kastor and his allies were too intimidated to get involved) is simply the latest incarnation of this.

However, having established our dominance, some of the members of the Hegemony began to question what we should do next. tS responded to its rise to dominance by founding Treasure Island with its closest allies, an AA dedicated to exploiting the flawed treasure mechanics. Mensa responded by ramping up its criticism of Alex and holding a vote on whether to continue in PW at all (which apparently passed, since they're still here). And TKR responded by taking steps to ensure that it would remain in first place, an understandable move when you consider how hard they worked to get there, but perhaps not the best course for the game as a whole. I'll expand more on that below. So how did BK's gov respond to our newfound dominance? We got concerned. BK is a military alliance and we pride ourselves on our activity, our community and our skill in combat. We've never been afraid of a tough fight and even when things looked bad (such as during the Silent War) we managed to keep things together long enough for our coalition partners to help us turn it around. So, when we ran out of meaningful people to fight, we started asking ourselves what we were going to do next. Unfortunately, there wasn't really an easy answer to that question.

Our initial thought was that we could do more with OO - expand it, deepen its ties, take it on a more proactive course that was less Syndi-OO and more OO (leading, but not necessarily splitting). We made several proposals to this effect between December and March, ranging from admitting faithful allies like CS into the fold, to mapping out FA goals for the coming months, to deciding what exactly we wanted to do with this behemoth we'd created. None of these ideas came to fruition, mostly because TKR blocked them. This is important to understand, since it is explains a lot of what happened later, but basically TKR really liked the status quo and took steps to help maintain it. And, to provide some context, here's a breakdown of some of their responses to our proposals (I'm paraphrasing, but there are logs to back each of these conversations up);

BK; "Hey TKR, let's admit CS into OO."
TKR: "CS is unreliable because they protected TLF six months ago and, in any case, we don't need to expand OO because we've effectively won the game."

BK; "Hey TKR, let's sign some other AAs then."
TKR; "We've already won the game, so we don't see any point in signing a lot of new treaties."

BK; "Hey TKR, let's prioritize OO in our FA."
TKR; "Sorry guys, but we regard all of our allies equally, so while we're a member of OO we don't consider BK or BoC any more or less important than any of our other allies."

BK; "Hey TKR, let's plan out the next few months - what's your preferred solution to dealing with the fact that things are kind of stale right now?"
TKR; "Well, we don't want to see a Syndi-OO split, that's for sure. In fact, our preferred solution would actually to see our 'side' break off into 3 or 4 pieces: mini-spheres either led by BK/TKR/tS or BK/TKR/tS/Mensa. That way we avoid the bilateral conflicts of the past."
BK: "So your preferred solution is the break off from us? Hmm..."

Now these types of conversations (and there were several) weren't enough to cement our decision-making, but they were enough to get us worried, since we felt it indicated that TKR wasn't that into us. Add to that a general dissatisfaction with how the Paperless war went (since BK and TKR were responsible for fighting more than 70 percent of the wars in that conflict, even though we had no goals beyond having a good fight) and a feeling that we were taken for granted by many of our allies led to a fair amount dissatisfaction on our part. We were also concerned about the fact that further consolidation meant that we were running out of possible targets - Guardian signed TFP, VE signed LoC, TKR exerted an informal protectorate over Valkyrie and Rose insisted on maintaining its ODP with WTF (for reasons I can't understand), so there wasn't really anyone to even raid anymore. But BK is a good ally, so we mostly bitched in private and continued to try to convince other AAs to see things from our perspective.
However, other AAs were also concerned about the state of the game and started doing stuff, most of which led to conflict between the members of OO;
BoC wanted to mass raid Valkyrie to test the new war mechanics; this got vetoed by TKR (despite not having any formal tie to Valkyrie).
BoC decided to sign Western Union, one of the TEst splinters and TKR opposed this. This was kind of awkward for BK, since while I have no use for Hidude's former AA (and turned down a treaty offer when they made it), we are also firm believers that AAs (even allies) should be free to make their own FA decisions. TKR, however, disagreed and did not want to see a bloc mate allied to a supposedly 'enemy' AA (it was never entirely clear how they reached the determination that WU was an enemy, but sure). Anyways, BoC went ahead and did it anyways, TKR threatened to dropped them, brought up every gripe they've had about BoC for the past year and then went silent for several days, during which BK went around trying to mend fences and see what people planned to do. It was unpleasant.
CS and Chola decided that they wanted to form a bloc with Kastor's AA, as part of a bigger effort to mix up the game's politics a little. BK and BoC were disappointed (mostly because we still wanted CS for OO), but TKR opposed it, since Kastor was, once again, an "enemy" AA. CS eventually opted to reject the bloc for fear that TKR would drop them. Add to this a general lack of communication within OO (except to bitch at each other), a feeling that one of its members was opposed to any sort innovative course of action and the concern that one or more members could walk out at any given time and you might get the sense that the atmosphere was rather tense and unpleasant. This is where NPO came in.

Now, I know (because I read the survey results) that people don't trust NPO and are wary of our decision to work with them. I understand that - I was one of the biggest advocates of ZIing them during the Silent War and Who Me (for example) has never made any secret of his dislike of them based on their actions in CN. So why did we approach them (and it was us that made the first move, not them)? Well, in a nutshell, because they were a top 10 AA that was pretty decent (at least as far as the 'other side' goes) and that we knew was tired of the existing dynamic and wanted change. Since we were also concerned and frustrated with how FA was shaping up, and shaken by our bloc ally's seeming refusal to do anything new or interesting with OO, that meant that both us and them were amenable to discussing how we could improve our relationship, which progressed fairly quickly into a treaty and then bloc discussions with other unhappy AAs, such as Chola, CS and BoC. Those discussions eventually matured into the Inquisition, which was specifically tailored to supersede the 'us versus them' mentality that characterized the past year or so of PW and do something genuinely different in FA.

This, of course, was not taken well by TKR. We had discussed a possible tie with NPO with their leaders in a general way (as we did with tS and Mensa), but they still felt we were 'moving too fast' for their liking. Given that TKR had opposed BoC-WU and CS-Ron, it probably would have been impossible to move slowly enough for their liking, so I don't feel that's a particularly valid critique, but here we are. TKR's initial response to us informing them that we were seriously moving toward a treaty with NPO was to demand a FA summit, which is actually something that BoC had proposed in the wake of the WU thing and TKR had ignored until we started making FA noises. We weren't told that the summit was related to NPO, but we later discovered that its intent was to try to pressure us into not signing them after we went ahead and signed NPO anyways. This lead to an argument where TKR effectively accused us of being bad allies and where we countered that we were willing to work with them to diffuse tensions, but we weren't going to let someone else dictate our FA. TKR responded by having it and its friends build up militarily and by trying to convince our mutual allies that we were plotting a war (which we're not) and we responded by explaining our perspective and refraining from building up to show our good faith. This continued until IC (the leader of TKR) formally resigned and Lordship and I talked out our issues, which led to TKR's decision to scale back their buildup. We went ahead with our new bloc (since the old one wasn't going to survive in the wake of so much truthful back and forth) and TKR gave its notice on OO, which ceased to exist on March 17th at 8:46pm EST.

So, with all this in mind, do I regret the decision to go forward with the NPO treaty and the new bloc? Not particularly. PW had gotten stale - there was no meaningful opposition, everyone was engaging in a infra building circlejerk and the people at the top (which included BK by association) were unwilling to take the risks associated with shaking up the existing dynamic. Think about it - if you look at the top 15 AAs from the Syndi-OO era, numbers 1 (TKR), 2 (Pantheon), 3 (BK), 4 (tS), 6 (Mensa), 7 (Rose), 10 (CS), 12 (TCW), 14 (Chola) and 15 (BoC) were directly allied, numbers 5 and 14 (VE and Hogwarts) was neutral, number 8 and 9 (SK and NPO) were unaffiliated with each other, number 11 was part of an isolated bloc (Acadia). Having an overwhelming de facto superbloc at the top does not make for a healthy game environment - those of you that play CN can probably back me up there. Effectively what we've done with Inquisition is take the numbers 3, 4, 8 and 10 and built something different with them and it's already leading to more dynamic politics. TKR (which as I said, has largely avoided potential cross sphere treaties since reaching the top) has become more FA active, largely due to concerns about BK (which are unfounded at this time, since we are still committed to maintaining positive relations). People are maneuvering in ways that haven't occurred since before the Silent War, which is something that this game desperately needed. And things are finally uncertain again, since people are wondering where this new BK-sphere (and make no mistake, we are the most prominent member) is going to jump. While I'm not looking for a conflict at this time, I sincerely believe that BK needs this sort of uncertainty to do well - it gives us purpose and helps focus us, which is also something that we've lacked since the Silent War.

I should also point out that we have retained our ties to tS and Mensa - the only tie that is gone for sure is OO and therefore TKR, since we didn't have a separate treaty. Despite any appearances to the contrary, we're not being reckless with this, just assertive. Which leaves NPO. Based on what I've seen and read, people tend to be skeptical of our decision to work with them for a few reasons - they're traditional enemies, they have a negative reputation from CN and because our decision to sign them compromised our relationship with TKR and in OO. As far as it goes, the 'traditional enemies' argument doesn't hold a lot of water in my opinion, although I do respect the right of people to believe what they want. Of our current allies, we have fought CS, Zodiac (as BoC), Mensa, CKD (as TEst) and tTO (as UPN) in the past two years and all of them have proven (or have the potential to prove) that they're willing to be as faithful friends as they were committed enemies.

Politics is (or should be) driven by interests, not personal likes or dislikes, so permanently writing off someone because you disagreed with them a while back is a shortsighted way to run FA, at least in my opinion. And yeah, they have a reputation from CN as being Machiavellian, but so what? We didn't sign an agreement with them, pull down our pants, bend over the kitchen table and ask only that they use us gently. We went into this with our eyes open and knowing that they have something that we wanted (they're a competent, non-traditional ally that was interested in change) and that we have something they wanted (we're a prominent member of the Hegemony that was willing to take a risk on them). No one here is naïve and we all understand that all relationships involve some mutual using of the other person and as long as our interests align there isn't likely to be much friction between us. As for the charge that we 'sacrificed' TKR to gain NPO, I hope that the background information I've provided helps dispel that notion. While we worked well with TKR for a long time, things had been problematic for a while. This decision was a symptom, not a cause, of the general deterioration in OO. In any case, we're not asking you to be besties with NPO - we are, however, asking that you approach them with an open mind, since they have as much stake as we do in making this new relationship work and it benefits both sides if it does. Holding on to old grudges does not help BK (or NPO for that matter).

And that's pretty much it. My apologies for the length of this, but I felt that you guys deserved a full explanation of what is happening and (more importantly) why it did. Me and the rest of gov will also do our best to answer any questions you guys might have, so feel free to ask those as well. Also, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank everyone for the constructive feedback (and support) from the recent survey, since it's your hard work that makes BK what it is. So, yeah, questions? TLDR (for Strum): a 3000 word essay on BK FA since the Silent War, with a focus on the factors that led to our decision to leave OO and join the new bloc.