Chapter VI: The "Grand" Alliance
(January 2002 - October 2002)

"On February 4th, 2002 the Golden Shields and other guilds formed a great alliance together called The United Front. Talks had been going on for some time before that. This alliance contained many of our old allies, as well as new ones. Today we've officially announced the alliance, that was kept pretty quiet for all these months. We are now allied, through the United Front, with The Army of Duress, The House/Knights of Balaklava, The Knights of Solamnia, The Order of the Black Lion, The White Tower, and The Winterblades. Outside the United Front we are still allied with The Leaders of Virtue and the Forgotten Tribe. This alliance is the biggest of any Shadowbane alliance, with 450 members between us. Certainly this is a great achievement, and assures our safety and well-being for a long time to come."
-Zion, Order of the Golden Shields

Although, by this time, we had invited several other people to join us on the secret spy forum, The Shadows of Gold, it was still mostly used for Zion and I to debate the pros and cons of various ideas we were kicking around for evil schemes, plans and other deeds of villainy. And this is where the idea for The "Grand" Alliance was born.

Zion first proposed this idea as a way of trying to gain total control over our "allies" of the moment. His plan was that we would set up the website and forum for a new Multi-Guild Alliance and then invite all of our current allies to join (in a way that made it pretty clear they were going to join or not be allies with us anymore). Zion figured that if we controlled the website and forums, we would control all the communication between the members of the alliance. With that working for us and Zion putting on a huge show of how well his lips fit on the seat of everyone's pants, we could pretty much call all the shots. I made it clear this was Zion's dumbest idea yet for three reasons:

1. First of all, I didn't think anyone could be stupid enough to actually fall for this. Obviously I overestimated our allies but none the less I didn't think it was possible for this to go on for too long before SOMEONE guessed it was a conflict of interest for one guild to control all the assets in the alliance.

2. Secondly, based on the fact that Shadowbane was a game all about backstabbing to get ahead, I assumed it would only be a matter of time before our "allies" (some of whom I never really trusted in the first place) saw a way it would benefit them to betray us, and then did so.

3. Lastly, even though I put allot of work into the security of our own forums, there was still a reason all the real inner workings of the guild went on inside hidden forums. With so many different people (who we didn't trust in the first place mind you) having access to one forum, I was sure there would be all kinds of security issues in the long run, although I couldn't have named anything specific at the time.

As always, Zion ignored me and I turned out to be totally right about everything.

Almost instantly, disaster struck and proved me correct. Our allies, The "Leaders of Virtue" instantly stabbed us in the back the moment we told them about our new "grand" alliance. Even though we knew for a fact that their members overwhelmingly supported an alliance with us and had even voted on it, their guild diplomat tried to tell us that they had NEVER been allied with us. Of all the times we were betrayed in the Shadowbane community, this stunt had to be the most obnoxious. At least everyone else who betrayed us had the balls to admit to it after the fact and did it for some kind of personal gain. The so-called Leaders of "virtue" apparently couldn't be bothered to take that kind of hit to their reputation, so they just lied. And we never did figure out what drove them to it. Then just to add insult to injury, their guild leader Khraiven sent us a 20 page essay on why alliances never work.

But Zion did manage to get most of the rest of our allies to sign on with the idea. I don't remember everyone, but here is the most complete list I could come up with:

Winter Blades
Our only allies that didn't betray us horribly and still seem to exist in some form. Winter Blades was always one of the biggest supporters of the alliance, although I have no idea why.

The White Tower
A european guild based on some fantasy novel. I never really understood how they could call themselves roleplayers when they were playing the role of some group from a book that had nothing to do with Shadowbane. They supported the alliance and were good friends with our guild, but eventually their guild split apart and the european players went one way and most of the american players joined us.

The Order of the Black Lion
A tiny guild that never had more than 12 members as far as I can remember. Seemed honest enough, although their leader was a real asshat.

The Knights of Solamnia
One of the Guilds I never really trusted, I don't remember much about them.

The House and Knights of Balaklava
Same deal as the Knights of Solamnia.

The Army of Duress
The guild that finally betrayed the alliance and caused the whole thing to come crashing down.

Everything went well at first. All the guilds involved seemed very supportive of the alliance and soon a name was chosen. The United Front. But soon all my points about why this idea would fail were proven correct.

The first problems started when a person calling himself Roac posted a message on the United Front public forums. Roac was the dictator of a supposedly "democratic" alliance of merc guilds called Arazain. Roac's post was an "offer we couldn't refuse" to "merge" with his alliance. He would remain the dictator of course, and the alliance would still be called Arazain and use their rules. But the benefit to us would be that we wouldn't die horribly when Roac declared war on us. He didn't come right out and say that of course, but it was obvious what he meant.

Now, you have to know that there were fewer guilds in Arazain at the time. And of those guilds, they were smaller on average than the guilds in our alliance. And we had spy accounts in two of the guilds in Roac's alliance, The Free Corps and Grey Ghost Recon (although these accounts were just regular members and didn't have access to anything really special). The only advantage Arazain had was a more attractive website. Considering all of that, you would think the response to Roac's demands would be obvious. So as soon as we (The Order of The Golden shields) saw his message we told him, in so many words, to fuck off. We didn't come right out and say that of course, but it was obvious what we meant.

There is no doubt in my mind we gave the only proper response to Roac's demands. But later on, inside the United Front, there was some debate about the issue. The Golden Shields, Winterblades, White Tower and Black Lion guilds all agreed it was right to tell Roac to take a hike. But The Knights of Solamnia and House Balaklava both thought we should have "discussed" the issue before we said anything. I don't think they were opposed to the response we gave, they just thought it was inappropriate for one guild to take action before even getting input from anyone else. This proved my first point correct, that at least some people would be concerned about any one guild in the United Front trying to control the whole show. Although in Zion's defense, I don't think at this point he was as interested in controlling anyone as he was in just making the United Front work.

My second and third points were proven correct by The Army of Duress not too long after the debate about how we should have responded to Roac. Duress joined Roac's alliance. I don't know if this was an intentional move to switch sides or if Roac simply corrupted Duress somehow, but they tried to claim they could remain a member of BOTH alliances and they didn't see how this was a conflict of interest.

Before the debate about Army of Duress being a member of both alliances could be settled, the breach of security I predicted happened. Brigands C'Antaris was a hardcore RP guild that was a member of Roac's alliance. Like most of the other RP Guilds in the game, BC was mostly a group of forum trolls that abused the lore of the game to treat all the non-RP guilds like crap. They were smaller and less vocal than some of the other offenders like Lok-ri, but what they lacked in volume they made up for in arrogance. So you can imagine I didn't consider it a "good thing" when a member of BC named Cassiel Vale got access to our forums. With five different accounts no less. We banned him, changed the forums passwords and made all the private areas invite only but the damage was already done. Obviously, Army of Duress had given them the password but they denied it until the very end. To make matters worse, Balakava and Solamnia were still disgruntled over the Roac incident and made a point of joining Duress' side in the argument, just to spite the Golden shields.

(On an interesting side note: It later became obvious that The Army of Duress and Brigands C'Antaris were friends. After Roac's alliance fell apart Brigands C'Antaris had to change their name because the original founder of their guild copyrighted their name and then asked them to stop using it after he quit. BC and Duress merged into one guild called the "Blackwatch Clann" and became one of those non-RP guilds all about being friends. And yes, their name was spelled with two n's. After getting their asses kicked in Shadowbane, they changed their name yet again to "The Shipwrecked Pirates" and became another RP guild based on talking like rappers while they steal things. They now play World of Warcraft and something called Gunbound. I tried to figure out what Gunbound is but the website for it looks like it was translated by a five year old asian kid who had five minutes to learn english by reading the ingredients on a package of Juicy Fruit gum.)

After that the alliance went downhill over a few months. In the end everyone went their separate ways. The White Tower, Winter Blades and Golden Shields remained allies as these three guilds were allies before the "Grand Alliance" scheme. Duress joined Roac's alliance which fell apart at some point later on before the release of Shadowbane. I have no idea what ever happened to Black Lion, Solamnia or Balakava and I honestly don't care to know beyond that they no longer exist. The White Tower also eventually split when Ubisoft announced that European players would not be able to play on the American servers (Ubi even said they would block European credit cards to keep Europeans out of the American servers). The American group eventually became a sub-guild of the Golden Shields while the European group later changed their name to Aethan Dor under the leadership of their original leader Azhrei.

Go on to the Next Chapter: Alatar Departs