As most of you know, a war started in Southern Nara yesterday, between forces of Chiraq and Naran/DGP forces. Over the preceding weeks, we have grown increasingly concerned by what we’ve seen as a pattern of aggression and conflict seeking behaviors from Chiraq. While most of these are not major on their own, we see them as part of a larger pattern of behaviors that speak to certain intentions.
Now, if all these smaller incidents were all they did, I doubt that things would've gotten the way they were now. However, there was one inciting event that ultimately led here.
Benelux is a relatively small nation of Alenarith, being based in the southern Ice Sheet region with their principal territory being on the east end of the Ice Sheet, and an exclave, Lythetica, on the west end. While they are somewhat linked to the Meridiem Entente through an anti-raider pact, this is a lower tier of that alliance that does not confer mutual defence, putting them in the position of only really being an ME *leaning* state. Benelux has been around the block for awhile and is especially friendly with our ally Whiskia.
Chiraq is a newly independent nation on the west side of the Ice Sheet that split off from Skandic after being a state there for a time. While they are an ally of Skandic, a member of ME, it is best to see them as an independent nation outside the power blocs. This nation is formed by many players who have either played this iteration before, or have played another civ-like server, like Eden.
The conflict started on October 6th when the Beneluxians had discovered that part of Lythetica had been bastioned by some foreign power. These bastions belonged to Chiraq. While this could've been seen as a mistake, upon discussion with Chiraq it was revealed this was not a mistake, and that Chiraq was taking the land. While Benelux was offered a sum of diamonds for this land, what was offered to them was seen as a pittance and they refused that price. Chiraq did not remove their bastions. With a lack of a strong partnership with a larger nation and virtually no recourse being such a small nation. They looked around for help, asking the Whiskians to approach us to step in. After some discussion with Whiskia and later with Nara, we approached Benelux and encouraged them to directly open a ticket with ME leadership, as previous discussions with Chiraq had mostly been in DM’s and through intermediaries. At this time, Chiraq was still part of Skandic.
Over the course of the next several days, construction continued and the bastions and snitches remained in Benelux territory. During this time, mediation was attempted via Leadattic, the leader of Skandic. I don’t need to go into detail highlighting the potential conflicts of interest here. Benelux continued to refuse to sell the land and continued to request removal of the bastions, snitches and encroaching buildings into their territory. Throughout this we have had discussions with members of ME leadership. In attempts to avoid further conflict or escalation, we were assured by the ME that they would not consider us attempting to help Benelux with this situation (as requested by Benelux) to be offensive to the ME. 8 days after the initial conflict arose, a few Narans went over to Lythetica to lend support to Benelux. There was an attempt to establish specifically where the border was, as well as a snitch inside Benelux territory being broken (these were on Chiraq groups). There were no attempts to destroy the farm or encroach into Chiraq during this and we did not threaten violence towards Chiraq. After a short time a group of roughly 8 members of Chiraq arrived in Lythetica and demanded that we leave “their land”, accused us of breaking into their infrastructure and threatening retaliation. A group chat was formed with several Chiraq and Naran/Whiskian/Benelux members afterwards, after their initial responses, we started conferring within our own gov and ally channels to get people up to speed and form a response. Roughly 3 hours later, Chiraq1,2 left the discussion and accused us of wasting their time.
We feel strongly that throughout this entire sequence of events that representatives of Chiraq have been incredibly aggressive and misleading about what should be an incredibly simple situation.
This brings us to the events of the 17th. At some point during the 17th we were alerted that SPQR was under attack by Chiraq. Considering the previous issues in Benelux among other concerns we were spurred into action to prepare for potential future conflicts should they arise. Admittedly, this led to a poor decision to start construction on a small bunker along out existing IR network that lies on the cardinal of Chiraqs’ vault. This is understandably something Chiraq would take offense to. I don’t fault them for that.
All of the infrastructure in question lies well within Naran territory, any tunnels that lead into Chiraq either weren’t made by us or were there before Chiraq existed as a nation.
While concerns were generally high at this point, they were sent into overdrive yesterday at roughly 2pm est. We received information from multiple independent sources via DM/otherwise that Dalgon portal was a potential next target by Chiraq. We immediately pinged internally to start getting people into queue and to scout the portal area. Nara reached out to representatives of the ME at this point, as well as the DGP. Salerno, being doubtful of any possible attack by Chiraq on Nara, sent individuals to monitor the situation, which nonetheless seems to not have deterred hostilities. DGP began to send people down to Dalgon portal, and plans were made to begin increasing the defensive infrastructure at the portal. Between 2pm-3pm est I reached out to multiple others, including Therewalker, who was in the general area, to see if they had any additional information and to mention we had heard about a potential attack. We received additional word that several members of Chiraq had been seen traveling south from Eryos/SPQR area during this time. For the next few hours, people slowly logged in and began moving towards Nara. At 6:39pm est, Gingerbreead (who had been landbanned from Nara/Whiskia following some minor griefing/raiding)3 began hitting our border snitches along the border with Chiraq. Ginger strafed back and forth over the border snitches from Lythetica down to New Swisston for about the next hour. At some point, Ginger stumbled upon the partially built bunker. Not long after Ginger was joined by Sonnydumdum, another Chiraqi with a history of instigating issues and who is also landbanned from Benelux and Whiskia. Eventually, there was a small scuffle with them and some of our members on surface, close to 8pm. Ginger was warned in local they were landbanned and did not respond. Ginger combat-tagged some defenders and was chased off directly afterwards. Not long after roughly 8-10 members of Chiraq crossed the border, we believed the warning about us being attacked was proven true and the pings began again. During the night and in the days prior multiple new accounts flocked to Chiraq, almost all connected to other pvp centric servers and not to civ or civ related servers. We believe this lends credence to the warnings we received and the concerns we had about aggressive actions taken by Chiraq being preplanned and coordinated.
After the events last night we currently stand at a ceasefire with Chiraq. We are continually discussing what comes next and what we’d like to see happen in this situation. Nara is not a nation that craves war, we do not commit to any of these actions lightly. We hope to figure out the next steps soon and will continue to discuss this with Chiraq, our friends and allies both near and abroad.
This has been a collaborative Sword/Arkenpost.