Relina Zhan
Ducha of Gallinore, "Apollyon the Slayer"
We each have differing perspective and different desires for our own characters. We craft these stories as we collaborate with each other. So, what I need to know in light of recent things is what do we all want out of this?
I can only speak for myself in this regard, so i'll start with a little bit of my roleplay history:
I used to be a leader (often just me... alone) of a Hapes Consortium faction in second Life's Star Wars roleplay. It was never immensely popular and frankly, this one is bigger and more vibrant than mine was. The general player pool we had just wasn't into niche factions and roles like us and they weren't really into political intrigue RP, let alone basing their conflicts off of said intrigue. Interestingly, alot of them liked Game of Thrones, tho.... go figure. *shrugs*. Anyway, to make a long story short, the only RP I got for it was occupation and domination, likely because Hapes isn't a major faction and they seemed to only want major factions deemed important or fringers who subscribed only to themselves. the result was pretty much a bad experience all around for me and after about five years of enduring this repetitive game, I finally had had enough and left Second Life for good... basically, the straw that broke the camel's back was having everything to do with Hapes stripped from me and my character's roleplay dictated to me in retaliation for disagreeing with a Sim (virtual land) administrator's whims.
This broke me, emotionally, because I had become attached to Hapes. I wanted to milk it for all of it's rich potential to produce quality intrigue and war stories that could have a ripple effect to he rest of the community. Star Wars roleplay is my ideal escape from my busy and stressful professional life, so naturally, i poured alot of heart and passion into it and years of time and dedication. To have all of that dashed to pieces before me was in its own way heartbreaking and infuriating. Meanwhile, i had been dabbling in this community under a different name before as well, having previously left that Second Life community over a similar problem.
There was a point where the entire Hapes Consortium had been occupied, stripped of every naval vessel except for a "token" set of two fleets (which is 160 ships, technically, by canon Hapan order of battle) in the gateworlds region, to which they were restricted. If they moved from there, all hell would break loose. The occupation didn't involve any ground troops, since the consortium wasn't allowed a navy of it's own anymore. The biggest threat to this rogue Sith military had been taken out by wooing and manipulating the queen at the time (not me, actually. I never played the Queen) to capitulate. because of an idiotic decision like that, out of the belief it would keep the most people safe, the Navy was decommissioned and replaced by the Sith armada. They were totally content to control space and that alone. We weren't allowed any means at all to oppose them in this area, which meant our ground forces were useless and we had NO means to reestablish independence without having half of the nation wiped off the face of the galaxy, the faction shattered irrevocably, and dealing with the biggest Wound in the Force the galaxy had ever seen.
And so it was that I had to endure this and having EVERY SINGLE BLESSED attempt to reason out scenarios to make some frickin' RP happen without the aforementioned result shot down out of hand. I tried and tired and tired to make stuff happen and get the damn thing going, only to be told no, threatened ICly and OOCly (the latter pissed me off to no end), and basically told to let go of my RP if i couldn't buck up and deal. I told their leader to go screw himself and left... discovered this place and.... well, i dont' remember what made me bail the last time from here.. i think it may have been something strikingly similar that got me to go back after a few months only to scoop up the shattered pieces of my RP in SL and try again....
Anyway, here I am again with a new toon and a few new things to try pretty much the same thing expecting a better result. And before we have a chance to get somewhere significant with Hapes and establish ourselves as a faction more than just being here and occasionally RPing in other people's stuff independently, we are facing the possibility of an occupation by Sith who seem to claim territory just because Hapan territory falls within their recently gained sphere of influence... and it doesn't work that way. If I'm wrong about my assumption based on what I've read so far, I'd like to know, so that many concerns can be laid to rest. I'm beginning to feel like we are going to go back the way i just came out of, which is what I'm afraid of... because I want badly to have a decent story to tell of a Hapan noble in her natural environment without it being just me writing the damn thing. I'm no good at fanfiction, so no, i won't go write a book.
What I want out this faction is simple: Political intrigue! YES! INTRIGUE! GoT style, if you must! Hapes well known for it and to not have Hapes big on the intrigue aspect ruins the theme of the faction and its image. No intrigue Hapes is heresy!
I certainly also want respect for the environment of the Hapes Consortium and it's military size and scale. I dont' want to hear "minor faction" metrics and crap like that. The Consortium is only small compared to the galaxy itself and is minor because they don't bother others much and dont' need to. they are self-sufficient and don't need the rest of the galaxy, really. They can be made into a Major faction if they got invovled in galactic affairs more, though, considering their size. It NEEDS to be remembered and acknowledged that the Star Cluster itself has at least 63 inhabited worlds, each in their own star system and their own local government. The Navy is divided up between these worlds and under the control of the nobles who rule those worlds. The nobles are ruled by the Queen and if the Queen declares war, the whole Navy goes to war. Isolder has stated that the Consortium has "billions of warriors, thousands of warships". The Transitory Mists are a pirate-ridden no-man's-land. It is a highly ionised H-II emission nebula similar in size and scale to the Great Orion Nebula in real life. This region of space is highly ionised (which is VERY dangerous to machines, such as starships, shielding notwithstanding), chokes hyperspace travel, and was difficult to safely navigate. In the Courtship of Princess Leia, the Hapans brought Imperial Star Destoryers to Coruscant as gifts to Leia. This says that Not only did Palpatine fail to take them over, but the Hapans flashed their collective bottom at him by stealing his warships for their own use.... and that alone was with their inferior turbolasers and dated ship designs circa 8 ABY. In this day and age, we have evolved our ships, have a respectable Navy size, and our territoriality should not have waned. An enemy of the republic is an enemy to us, just as pirates are and should be dealt with swiftly and mercilessly. Under no circumstances should the Sith have brought an armada into our space, for the record, because they would be bottlenecked in a few at a time... and then they have to deal with pirates and Navy patrols, who by now will have alerted the Queen, who should at this point be making a decision on how to respond to what should be perceived as invasion.
Now, another thing that worries me that I have dealt with before is the act of ignoring the difficulty of invading the Hapes Consortium successfully, then once you've claimed victory, claim that NOW ALL OF A SUDDEN the factors that should have given us a massive military advantage conveniently works FOR you now (just not against you, is all)... pretty much forcing an invasion, plot-locking victory, then throwing us either out or under and dictating to us that we can't have it back under any circumstance. I'm scared of having to deal with that again. I REALLY REALLY REALLY don't want to deal with that again, having to face a complete waste of time and energy again for something i'v become rather passionate about. Naturally, i do not trust anything that can even remotely become an occupation RP without first going through extensive scrutiny with OUR decision being final for or against participation in the conflict roleplay... and a decision against participation should mean they need to find some kind of excuse to ignore the Hapes opportunity in an IC perspective. I'm totally cynical and skeptical about "accommodation" from them, having not met any nor discussed anything.... I'm still in GM/leader mode, pretty much, and while I'm not in this position presently, I get this way because my five-year history with Hapes Rp has revolved around this kind of stress.
What I want for conflicts is (preferably after we've had a chance to build something of this faction that can be worked with by others, rather than assumptions and suppositions) for the Hapes Consortium to always always always have the ability to either repel a major faction's invasion or, if we lose and are occupied, have the ability to gain Independence with the very real possibility of negligible negative consequences. I do not want plot-locking, dictation by another faction OOCly (Note: any dictation made ICly must be defiable and the resulting conflict winnable by us), or phyyric and catastrophic defeat that effectively results in the realistic impossibility of rising back up in a reasonable amount of time stronger than before. We're here to have fun, people, and we need to be accommodating and transparent in general and we need to build trust as players before we start telling each other what they own, drawing lines the sand. Sure, i'll grant them that Hapes lies within their occupied territory outside of the Cluster, but that doesn't mean they own the Consortium by default. Being that we are a sovereign faction, it simply does not work that way. It just doesn't.
So, I needed to make this rant here to get all of my worries off my chest about this. I'm not inherently against conflict with the Sith at all. Hell, it can be VERY fun, in point of fact... I just dont' want some kind of plot-locked, overarching scenario dictated to us without our input in the circumstances and possibilities. As I said, i've been through some bad situations where those courtesies were denied to me and the few i worked with from time to time. I really dont' want to deal with it again. i have high expectations for both this group and this community at large. I will conclude my venting with a request for transparency and open discussion on what we should do to accommodate our Sith-playing friends as both a trust building and maintenance practice and as a means to iron out details of what we all want to do with Hapes and make RP happen based on compromise.
I can only speak for myself in this regard, so i'll start with a little bit of my roleplay history:
I used to be a leader (often just me... alone) of a Hapes Consortium faction in second Life's Star Wars roleplay. It was never immensely popular and frankly, this one is bigger and more vibrant than mine was. The general player pool we had just wasn't into niche factions and roles like us and they weren't really into political intrigue RP, let alone basing their conflicts off of said intrigue. Interestingly, alot of them liked Game of Thrones, tho.... go figure. *shrugs*. Anyway, to make a long story short, the only RP I got for it was occupation and domination, likely because Hapes isn't a major faction and they seemed to only want major factions deemed important or fringers who subscribed only to themselves. the result was pretty much a bad experience all around for me and after about five years of enduring this repetitive game, I finally had had enough and left Second Life for good... basically, the straw that broke the camel's back was having everything to do with Hapes stripped from me and my character's roleplay dictated to me in retaliation for disagreeing with a Sim (virtual land) administrator's whims.
This broke me, emotionally, because I had become attached to Hapes. I wanted to milk it for all of it's rich potential to produce quality intrigue and war stories that could have a ripple effect to he rest of the community. Star Wars roleplay is my ideal escape from my busy and stressful professional life, so naturally, i poured alot of heart and passion into it and years of time and dedication. To have all of that dashed to pieces before me was in its own way heartbreaking and infuriating. Meanwhile, i had been dabbling in this community under a different name before as well, having previously left that Second Life community over a similar problem.
There was a point where the entire Hapes Consortium had been occupied, stripped of every naval vessel except for a "token" set of two fleets (which is 160 ships, technically, by canon Hapan order of battle) in the gateworlds region, to which they were restricted. If they moved from there, all hell would break loose. The occupation didn't involve any ground troops, since the consortium wasn't allowed a navy of it's own anymore. The biggest threat to this rogue Sith military had been taken out by wooing and manipulating the queen at the time (not me, actually. I never played the Queen) to capitulate. because of an idiotic decision like that, out of the belief it would keep the most people safe, the Navy was decommissioned and replaced by the Sith armada. They were totally content to control space and that alone. We weren't allowed any means at all to oppose them in this area, which meant our ground forces were useless and we had NO means to reestablish independence without having half of the nation wiped off the face of the galaxy, the faction shattered irrevocably, and dealing with the biggest Wound in the Force the galaxy had ever seen.
And so it was that I had to endure this and having EVERY SINGLE BLESSED attempt to reason out scenarios to make some frickin' RP happen without the aforementioned result shot down out of hand. I tried and tired and tired to make stuff happen and get the damn thing going, only to be told no, threatened ICly and OOCly (the latter pissed me off to no end), and basically told to let go of my RP if i couldn't buck up and deal. I told their leader to go screw himself and left... discovered this place and.... well, i dont' remember what made me bail the last time from here.. i think it may have been something strikingly similar that got me to go back after a few months only to scoop up the shattered pieces of my RP in SL and try again....
Anyway, here I am again with a new toon and a few new things to try pretty much the same thing expecting a better result. And before we have a chance to get somewhere significant with Hapes and establish ourselves as a faction more than just being here and occasionally RPing in other people's stuff independently, we are facing the possibility of an occupation by Sith who seem to claim territory just because Hapan territory falls within their recently gained sphere of influence... and it doesn't work that way. If I'm wrong about my assumption based on what I've read so far, I'd like to know, so that many concerns can be laid to rest. I'm beginning to feel like we are going to go back the way i just came out of, which is what I'm afraid of... because I want badly to have a decent story to tell of a Hapan noble in her natural environment without it being just me writing the damn thing. I'm no good at fanfiction, so no, i won't go write a book.
What I want out this faction is simple: Political intrigue! YES! INTRIGUE! GoT style, if you must! Hapes well known for it and to not have Hapes big on the intrigue aspect ruins the theme of the faction and its image. No intrigue Hapes is heresy!
I certainly also want respect for the environment of the Hapes Consortium and it's military size and scale. I dont' want to hear "minor faction" metrics and crap like that. The Consortium is only small compared to the galaxy itself and is minor because they don't bother others much and dont' need to. they are self-sufficient and don't need the rest of the galaxy, really. They can be made into a Major faction if they got invovled in galactic affairs more, though, considering their size. It NEEDS to be remembered and acknowledged that the Star Cluster itself has at least 63 inhabited worlds, each in their own star system and their own local government. The Navy is divided up between these worlds and under the control of the nobles who rule those worlds. The nobles are ruled by the Queen and if the Queen declares war, the whole Navy goes to war. Isolder has stated that the Consortium has "billions of warriors, thousands of warships". The Transitory Mists are a pirate-ridden no-man's-land. It is a highly ionised H-II emission nebula similar in size and scale to the Great Orion Nebula in real life. This region of space is highly ionised (which is VERY dangerous to machines, such as starships, shielding notwithstanding), chokes hyperspace travel, and was difficult to safely navigate. In the Courtship of Princess Leia, the Hapans brought Imperial Star Destoryers to Coruscant as gifts to Leia. This says that Not only did Palpatine fail to take them over, but the Hapans flashed their collective bottom at him by stealing his warships for their own use.... and that alone was with their inferior turbolasers and dated ship designs circa 8 ABY. In this day and age, we have evolved our ships, have a respectable Navy size, and our territoriality should not have waned. An enemy of the republic is an enemy to us, just as pirates are and should be dealt with swiftly and mercilessly. Under no circumstances should the Sith have brought an armada into our space, for the record, because they would be bottlenecked in a few at a time... and then they have to deal with pirates and Navy patrols, who by now will have alerted the Queen, who should at this point be making a decision on how to respond to what should be perceived as invasion.
Now, another thing that worries me that I have dealt with before is the act of ignoring the difficulty of invading the Hapes Consortium successfully, then once you've claimed victory, claim that NOW ALL OF A SUDDEN the factors that should have given us a massive military advantage conveniently works FOR you now (just not against you, is all)... pretty much forcing an invasion, plot-locking victory, then throwing us either out or under and dictating to us that we can't have it back under any circumstance. I'm scared of having to deal with that again. I REALLY REALLY REALLY don't want to deal with that again, having to face a complete waste of time and energy again for something i'v become rather passionate about. Naturally, i do not trust anything that can even remotely become an occupation RP without first going through extensive scrutiny with OUR decision being final for or against participation in the conflict roleplay... and a decision against participation should mean they need to find some kind of excuse to ignore the Hapes opportunity in an IC perspective. I'm totally cynical and skeptical about "accommodation" from them, having not met any nor discussed anything.... I'm still in GM/leader mode, pretty much, and while I'm not in this position presently, I get this way because my five-year history with Hapes Rp has revolved around this kind of stress.
What I want for conflicts is (preferably after we've had a chance to build something of this faction that can be worked with by others, rather than assumptions and suppositions) for the Hapes Consortium to always always always have the ability to either repel a major faction's invasion or, if we lose and are occupied, have the ability to gain Independence with the very real possibility of negligible negative consequences. I do not want plot-locking, dictation by another faction OOCly (Note: any dictation made ICly must be defiable and the resulting conflict winnable by us), or phyyric and catastrophic defeat that effectively results in the realistic impossibility of rising back up in a reasonable amount of time stronger than before. We're here to have fun, people, and we need to be accommodating and transparent in general and we need to build trust as players before we start telling each other what they own, drawing lines the sand. Sure, i'll grant them that Hapes lies within their occupied territory outside of the Cluster, but that doesn't mean they own the Consortium by default. Being that we are a sovereign faction, it simply does not work that way. It just doesn't.
So, I needed to make this rant here to get all of my worries off my chest about this. I'm not inherently against conflict with the Sith at all. Hell, it can be VERY fun, in point of fact... I just dont' want some kind of plot-locked, overarching scenario dictated to us without our input in the circumstances and possibilities. As I said, i've been through some bad situations where those courtesies were denied to me and the few i worked with from time to time. I really dont' want to deal with it again. i have high expectations for both this group and this community at large. I will conclude my venting with a request for transparency and open discussion on what we should do to accommodate our Sith-playing friends as both a trust building and maintenance practice and as a means to iron out details of what we all want to do with Hapes and make RP happen based on compromise.
