Hi everyone

It's been a while since I posted a chapter. I have been distracted by other things and haven't had the mental faculty to focus on writing at the same time.

I am planning to get the next chapter out next Sunday, and will continue posting regularly after that, at least on a weekly basis. We are about to enter the final arc of Book 1, so I'm keen to get started on that.

The rest of this message is about the other things that have distracted me lately, namely MMOs and the Game of Thrones-style politics. And politics in general.

I talked previously about the drama my guild was involved in when we got targeted by another alliance (henceforth referred to as Zerg Two. There is a Zerg One, who use Zerg Two as a proxy in their quest for server domination, but it's primarily Zerg Two that we are concerned with). Since that event, there has been a lot of shifting of allegiances, propaganda, political manoevering, and backstabbing. Oh and actual fighting in the game itself. Sometimes everyone is so busy posturing and scheming on Discord they forget that the actual game exists.

There are various different alignments which are driven by the game mechanics. One is RPK (random player killing, where guilds attack anyone they see who isn't in their alliance) and opposite that is ARPK (anti-random player killing, where you only attack enemies). But there are lots of shades of grey in between. Other polarities include territory control guilds vs nomadic guilds, and of course there is inevitably "the zerg" vs "the anti-zerg."

Zerging is a term that has become very watered down – originally, in Starcraft, it referred to the faction that mass-produced cheap, fast combat units, and so was borrowed by other games to refer to any group of players who used numbers over quality to gain an advantage. Nowadays, any side that outnumbers the other is referred to as "the zerg" irrespective of whether it was an intentional strategy or not, or the quality of the gear/skill/level of the players involved.

My guild is primarily a territory control guild and ARPK, in that we welcome new players and small guilds to our area so long as they obey our rules i.e. not killing each other, following the etiquette for sharing or taking turns with mob spawns, no griefing, no trash talking etc. Our corner of the map is not particularly rich in mob spawns (we keep hoping the game devs will fix it, but no joy so far), so our alliance and our area hasn't been targeted, and until recently we maintained good relations and a "no siege" understanding with Zerg Two (this is a massive over-simplification but let it stand for now).

However, we have always been very independent in our outlook, and various actions over the last few months have indicated to the Zerg One and Zerg Two that we won't always follow their lead. We also stupidly invited a guild to the alliance (I will call them Renfield) who had very strong ties with Zerg Two. A few months ago that wasn't a problem, because we thought niether of the Zergs had any interest in us and would leave us alone. But after there was some drama in which Zerg Two threatened to siege us, my guild no longer wish to be associated with them ... but it became increasingly obvious that Zerg Two had a very strong voice in our alliance, in the person of the leader of Renfield.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

This created two factions within the alliance – one which was willing to do anything to stay close Zerg Two and their vassals, and tried to persuade my guild to accept all sorts of unreasonable concessions to this end, and the other faction (led by my guild) which repeatedly chose options that would demonstrate or increase our independence.

It's been interesting (and mentally draining) participating in the power struggles that have slowly been driving our alliance apart. We've realised that people we trusted are not, in actual fact, our friends. The leader of Renfield is a consummate politician – someone said of him that "he has two opinions about everything" – and he was the ringleader of the "Appease the Zerg" faction. However, luckily my guild had a secret weapon, in the form of our diplomat, whom I will call Machiavelli. Watching the Renfield leader and Machiavelli manouevring to place the other at a disadvantage, and continually scoring "reasonable-ness" points against each other, made me realise something.

The reason politicians are the way they are is because if they were genuinely well-meaning, open and honest they would never survive to be politicians in the first place. Anyone who is genuine and honest is vulnerable to people who know how to play power games, and who are also experts at appearing fair and reasonable.

So, in conclusion, I would make a terrible politician. There is a big difference between Machiavelli and I in the way we see things. I'm fairly empathetic, and I understand and pick up on people's emotions very easily. What Machiavelli reads, however, is people's motivations. This means he can see the threads of power and influence connecting individuals, and can predict their behaviour, in a way that a more emotional-based model can't.

Anyway, the alliance has split in half, although we agreed to remain "friendly" because neither side really wants to go to war.

But here is an example of the kind of political manoeuvering that goes on. The first thing the "Appease the Zerg" faction did, after we split, was reach out to a guild that we have been fighting (let's call them Poisonous), and get them to promise not to kill us in Appease the Zerg's territory, which is adjacent to our own. On the surface that seems helpful, right? But Poisonous are an enemy, and we kill them regularly. So in actual fact, this agreement benefits them more than us. It's as if Appease The Zerg tried to force us into a non-aggression pact without consulting us first, but when we indicated we didn't want it, they tried to make it look like we were being aggressive and unreasonable.

This is the kind of thing that has been going on for several weeks now, and will probably continue for several weeks more. It's made it hard to concentrate on Josh's story.

And yeah, we refused the non-aggression pact.