The War Story
As I read the many different accounts of the Citadel/Nobelis war, there seems to be great deal of information which time has flawed, twisted, and miscounted; in the interest of an important historical recollection for Libera, and as my last contribution to Tibia, I will attempt to recount the Citadel/Nobelis war in as much length and detail as I possibly can. I will attempt to remove the undeniable biases I have toward the events, and I will do my best to relay what I remember as objectively and accurately as possible. Note that this is an amazingly long and detailed post, or series of posts, and I understand that most readers will not have the time or interest to read through all of it. I don't care. This is my account of the story for those few who are interested in the perspective of someone who was there for every moment. Remember, however, that my account of these actions is simply my account.
The feelings of tension that arose between the parties involved in Citadel and Nobelis arose with the prospect of a war long before the one that is remembered. Aphradeity and Lane had personal issues (the details of which I am not entirely familiar with and will not attempt to explain; ask any of the parties involved if you want the real story) with Ardwena, a member of Citadel, which seemed to point to an inevitability of war. Being the acting diplomat of Citadel, I came into contact with Aphradeity, with whom I had before then been on friendly terms, and attempted to discuss the possibility of a peaceful resolution. Aphradeity was polite, but firm, saying that there was no recourse to war in this case and that the other members of Citadel were not the targets of their anger, only Ardwena. I flatly stated that all Citadel members would support Ardwena without question, and we left it at that. It was around this time that Sukafu had the wild idea of attempting the (old) demon quest, and Citadel -- assuming our time on the server was limited anyway -- decided to attempt it. Thaddaeus already had some knowledge of the quest, as Lane had told him what to do when he intended on doing the quest with him, and Thad asked players who had completed the quest on other servers to fill in the information we did not yet know. The quest itself is an entirely different side-story that I will, in the interest of keeping this short, skip over. Citadel completed the quest, and every piece of loot was officially owned by every member of Citadel.
In the meantime, Gamemasters had stepped in to deter any further harassment of Ardwena by Lane, Aphradeity, and their followers. Whether or not the means by which this happened were initiated by Ardwena I honestly do not know; she has never given me any reason to suspect that there was anything suspicious behind the Gamemasters defending her, but it did seem rather odd that they would so vehemently defend a counselor. In any event, that too is a story in itself, and suffice to say that Citadel was quite pleased with the completion of the quest and the dissipation of a threat of war. Life continued peacefully that way for a number of weeks, and they were some of my best memories of Tibia.
We were dedicated powergamers back then; it was the summer, we were jobless, and enjoyed spending a great deal of time on Tibia, as most players do at some point in their experience of this game. On one particular night, Rethan and I had stayed up until about
along the lines of this: Aphradeity had come to "check up on us" (probably assuming we were AFK training -- which, I suppose technically, I was, even if only training fist), and Rethan, reading the handwriting on the wall, stopped training and started to push me to PZ (we were not well prepared for any sort of conflict back then; neither of us carried UH or SD regularly unless we planned to use it on a hunt, and he had none with which to heal me while training -- things I couldn't imagine doing today, but, we are all noobs once, and we certainly were before the wars). Sometime during the push, Spiral Fire came up and killed me with exori vis (I have had Lane both privately admit to and deny being on the character at the time; I cannot say with certainly who it was). Needless to say, when I woke up, I was confused and a bit pissed off, but realizing the delicacy of the situation, I decided to let bygones be bygones and make nothing of the incident. This, in hindsight, had proven to be a mistake.
It was one or two days later that the incident which Kalderon has described in a previous post occurred. Five Nobelis members (Lane, Kalderon, Xori, and two others whom I cannot accurately recall) killed Sukafu at our guildhall in Venore, which was, at the time, Valorous Venore Guildhall (a trap waiting to happen). The means by which this was achieved, if I recall correctly, was to pz lock Sukafu by attacking him on a second account, having him kill it, then trapping the street with parcels and fire and pinning him against the guildhall until he could be killed. As the street was only two panels wide, this was a relatively simple and effective plan, and it worked.
This left me in a precarious situation. I did not feel as though my guild was in any position to partake in a war. Our seeming lack of experience, skills, and funding after recently spending a large sum of money to complete the demon quest, a debt from which we never fully recovered, appeared to tip the scales too far in the favor of our enemies for a war to be practical. At that time, I shied away from fighting until it was our last resort, and turned to the forums for support. I issued a long post titled "An Appeal for Peace" explaining the events that had happened and appealing to Nobelis for a peaceful settlement to whatever dispute they had with us, insisting that we would be willing to let both the deaths of myself and Sukafu go unpunished so long as we were allowed to live undisturbed. Nobelis responded by killing Thaddaeus in a similar trap outside our guildhall the day after that post was issued.
Moments after this incident, I gathered the members of Citadel for a meeting on the course of action to take. There seemed to me (and most agreed) that there was no other option but to fight back, despite our naivety at combat. Rethan had recently become friends with Evicor, the Grey, and when we told him that we planned on warring with Nobelis, he supported us, as he had his own problems with Lane. We all began to plan quickly for a strike that would kill Lane -- a quick intelligence gathering showed us that he was far south of Thais, so we assumed him to be at Deeper Fibula. As we drew closer, this seemed evident, so we decided to plan our strike then and there.
The idea was simple: those members with the most reliable connections -- and the most HP/highest damage infliction would go down and harass Nobelis until they decided to flee into the teleporter out of Deeper Fibula. Above the teleporter, we had the rest of Citadel, as well as some other friends, sealing off the entrance, waiting to kill them once they went up. Sukafu, Evicor and I carried out the attack in Deeper Fibula; it went on for about two minutes, through firewaves,
great fireballs, dragons and dragon lords until Lane, noting he had no SD and therefore had no means with which to fight us, led himself, Aphradeity, and Tideus to the teleporter. The three were killed shortly after teleporting and we returned to Evicor, the Grey's house on Greenshore for a celebration of sorts.
It wasn't long before an entourage of angry black-clad beligerents were poised outside our door. The force was made up of both Nobelis and Solar Alliance, who had allied with Nobelis upon hearing of the attack. As with any war, insults and taunts were exchanged, challenges made, etc., the usual menial chatter that happens when one side far outnumbers the other. We took this time to plan our next series of actions; we would wait until the presence of Nobelis was minimal, as they made up the largest percentage of the "fighting force," and we would specifically target Solar Alliance. We found an opportunity to put this plan into action only a few hours later, storming into Thais with minimal resistence and killing several members of Solar Alliance and Nobelis -- none that were noteworthy or of any significance, but kills nevertheless. After negotiation with Helmchen (with not one, but four guns to his head) Solar Alliance agreed to discontinue their support of Nobelis.
The battles that happened after that night in the "first war" were menial and of little consequence. No members of Citadel died, and if any died from Nobelis, they were not important enough to change anything. The war stayed at a stalemate without much real combat for a few days, until Jewls approached me for a preliminary peace talk. Although Jewls seemed to sympathize with our plight, he could not make me any guarantees, as he told me the decision was Lane's to make. A few days later, I spoke with Lane, and we decided upon a treaty whose terms I authored and everyone from both parties signed. I do not remember every stipulation of the treaty, but it was a tentative agreement that was intended to make sure that Lane would not overstep his boundaries so long as Citadel stayed out of everyone's business -- something we felt happy to do. Although the tension and animosity had by no means been removed, the fighting, at least for the time being, had ceased.
Several more weeks passed without any major conflicts between Citadel and Nobelis -- all had seemingly gone well. However, the more time passed, the further Nobelis had seemed to overstep the boundaries outlined by our treaty, and determined not to be caught off guard again, we were wary of their actions. There were, if I recall correctly, four aspects of the treaty which we felt Nobelis had violated; however, I can only recall two: Abdush had been making threats of violence to Evicor, and Lane had allegedly been using his second account to kill members of Promethians, a guild that -- through Evicor -- was deemed as under the protection of the treaty (a violation of the "guilds associatied with or protected by either party" clause). It seemed from our perspective inevitable that the events would escalate until another war took place, and as we had enough evidence to -- in our estimation -- consider Nobelis a threat to our safety, we decided that this time we would begin the war on our terms, striking quickly and effectively so as to lower morale and send a shock that would deter anyone from supporting Nobelis.
I expected that the public would be behind us during this plan of action; after all, it seemed clear to me at the time that we were "the good guys" and they "the bad," and that is how we had decided to play the game. However, I had made a misjudgment in that regard, as the public
seemed split as to whether or not we were not ourselves at fault for the conflict for taking such an aggressive route this time around. I will reflect more on the public sentiment shortly, but let me explain the aggressive tactics with which we renewed the war.
It was more of a spur of the moment decision than a premeditated plan. One night we were particularly fed up with what we perceived to be Nobelis's disregard for our peace agreement. At the time, we had enough soldiers, resources, and confidence to initiate warfare, and more importantly, we had the element of surprise. Our plan was simple: we were to disable as many members of Nobelis as possible -- one by one -- and offer them an ultimatum: death or withdrawal from the guild. We asked for no payments, hoping that there would be more of an incentive to leave if there were no reprucussions -- in hindsight, this too could be viewed as an error on our part, but we did not feel right taking payments, so we did not request them.
The first target we approached that night was Extodus, who, at the time, was a level 88 knight in Nobelis. Five of us found him hunting at orc fortress and fired upon him, demanding that he stop and listen to our proposition or he would be killed. Extodus ran until we cornered him against a river (on all sides except one, diagonal to him, before moving diagonal was so easy) and asked again for him to stop and negotiate with us. He again refused and attempted to run away, so we felt we had no recourse but to follow and kill him, which we did without hesitation.
Our next target was Tideus, who we had determined was located at the black knight spawn. We quickly gathered our group and headed there, this time with a slightly different mission. Tideus was to be killed on sight, something we all had agreed upon, though I was the most vocal in deeming that his position and actions during the previous phase of the war (and to a large extent, admittedly, my personal dislike of him) made him unworthy of a chance to leave Nobelis. To be perfectly honest, we doubted he would leave Nobelis at the time and thought asking may delay our chance to kill him, so we all agreed the goal was nothing short of an assassination. We set up a haphazard trap, stormed in, killed him (he made no noticeable attempt to defend himself), and left. I was later informed that he had been alerted to our presence beforehand and knew we were coming, but was having connection problems. Entirely possible, and likely probable, though I do not know enough to confirm or deny the claim.
The public sentiment was more divided than ever over this particular sequence of actions. Some supported us, perceiving -- as we did -- that Nobelis were the "bad guys" and deserved to be treated as aggressively as they had treated others in the past. Others condemned us for several different reasons: some deemed us hypocrites for our aggressive policy of warfare that had so vehemently labeled unjust only weeks before, others for our no-mercy-assassination-style crusade against Tideus, and others for our killing of Extodus. Of the three arguments, I think the only two that had substance were those against the murder of Tideus and against our war tactics. I believed at the time that the only way to stop the imminent threat of Nobelis was to attack them unexpectedly with full force once they had proven themselves to be a danger to our security, and given the chance, I would make the same decision today. The fact that Tideus was killed without a chance to leave Nobelis was probably the strongest argument, and knowing that my personal bias played a role in the denial of his chance to be free, I willingly paid out of my own pocket for his amulet of life a few weeks after the incident.
To get back to the war, our strategy continued similarly for the next few days: we cornered Nobelis members, offered them the ultimatum, and they left. Most did so willingly, and some did so without our convincing. There was always the possibility that they would rejoin Nobelis, but we were naively confident that honor would be more important than vengeance, and that the fact that they left for no price at all would leave them with no incentive to rejoin.
The war then entered a phase without much conflict. Lane and Aphradeity were the only members still remaining who logged on, and they would from time to time run out at night, kill a few low levels from allied guilds, and proclaim a victory. It was an effective strategy for lowering the morale of our allies, and one that often frustrated those who were not around to see it happen.
Summer was ending, as were the times of Citadel. Sukafu, Rethan, Ardwena, and Avera York all left Tibia for real life reasons in a short time span. The only realiable soldiers that remained in Citadel were Thaddaeus, Kalderon, and myself. The rest of the members at the time were either noncombatants or did not possess the levels to make a real difference in battle, although they were all loyal. It did not take long for a plan that had already been going on underground to take effect; members were rejoining Nobelis, and as this happened, powerful people who were formerly neutral were switching to support Lane, and battle seemed imminent again. This began the true phase of the war from which the most intense and memorable battles occured.
I cannot recollect every battle of the fifteen to twenty or so that were fought during the time that Citadel was declining and Nobelis was growing. We fought the battles on our terms, and though we were often outnumbered, we suffered very few casualties while usually inflicting several. I am, of course, naturally inclined to think that we fought well, but I do honestly believe that, of the battles we fought, we could claim a "victory" for the majority of them. Kalderon has in this thread recounted one such battle, among which there are several others; very often the only people around to fight us were Aragornknight, Warlock Crusader, Lord Magus, Oxydrene, Darkendraken, Extodus, and Shinpei (later Tideus and Evicor). I will not list any deaths of Nobelis from this period in the interest of keeping myself objective; please refer to another source if you need this information.
I will, however, insist that most of the battles were intense and fought well on both sides. Citadel's numbers and funds were slowly, but surely diminishing. It was a great shock to me and the rest of Citadel when Evicor had asked to borrow my E-Plate, demon legs, and medusa shield for blocking demons and never returned it, instead having sold it to Lane and joined Nobelis to fight against us. Despite the setbacks, we fought on through more battles, showing up perhaps one night a week, sometimes a few nights in a row, and battling when we figured Nobelis would be unprepared. Toward the end I started to have horrendous lag that was unusual for me, even on Libera, and I found it difficult to keep fighting, though by some miracle I still remained alive, for which I credit Thaddaeus and Kalderon, and not myself.
The last battle we fought came when I decided to push the envelope and fight despite the connection problems. It was a serious mistake; fighting even with solid connection would have
been unwise, as Nobelis had prepared well for an attack. Pressed for time and funds, we decided to fight anyway, in what was Nobelis's greatest victory of the war, and our most crushing defeat. I watched Thaddaeus die in battle for the first time in my life, swarmed by knights and the target of far too many runes, and soon after I found myself trapped, unable to even attempt to avoid it with the lag I was facing. I didn't even see my death in the lag -- but then again, I wouldn't have wanted to.
It was after that defeat that we decided we no longer had the will nor the supplies to continue the war. Our numbers were dropping as those of Nobelis were increasing, our funds were nearly depleted, and we had no interest in a future in a world that would allow what we saw as evil to rule. I gave the little I had left, including the demon quest and other unique items of Citadel, to friends of mine and effectively washed my hands of Liberan politics, events, and people. The people to whom I gave much of my possessions I no longer consider among my friends and the items given away have since fallen out of the possession of those to whom they were given and are lost forever; so be it. The legacy of Citadel was not in its wealth, but in its bond, which lives on through the friendships we still hold. I still talk to Rethan, Thaddaeus, Kalderon, and Krymdal on a daily basis, and keep in touch with Avera York and Sukafu.
We lost the war, but in retrospect, it is for the birds.
The details that have been omitted from this recollection are mainly those of specific battles or intrigue that may make a nice fiction novel but would not enhance a historical account of the war. These are essentially the facts as I see them to be true and hope others who experienced the war will verify. Although I have a vivid memory of many of these events, I realize my accounts may be biased, incorrectly recalled, or simply false.
Be what it may, this is my account of the war. Take it for whatever it is worth to you, and enjoy the game while you still do;
because you won't forever.
- Rorc
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