Can we get real...

[Grumblesaur]

Aland is what happens when you combine ooRP hatred with the storyline. There was personal friction between Justin (and some others) and Wesker (plus his clique) at the time. But retcons are bad and I'd rather keep it as a monument to future devteams of how not to write the story, than retcon it.

Aland is what happens when Bretonian players are upset that they've lost assets and see fit to pull staff strings and make unusual alliances to take other factions' toys.

Lose Southampton? Fine, take Aland from IMG with the help of CR and the Core. Also, ask Liberty to loan you some ships, so that you even get some fleet variety too.
Lose Leeds? No worries, take Exeter from the Zoners.
Lose Harris? Easy fix, ask your CR buddies to grab it for you and hand it back to you after the war.
Lose Gaia? Screw it, colonize Sprague. Nobody's living on that stupid rock anyway.

"But we lost billions of people in the Leeds bombing!" might be true, but also, the things that affect interactions in the game (you know, the part of all this that actually matters, and not who gets to have the most interesting infocards or forum threads) are the positions and ownership of assets, particularly dockable ones, and the ranges of zones of influence.

Any growth that the Kingdom of Bretonia, its citizens, and its players could have derived from having to cope with this loss is lessened or erased by its immediate replacement. Trading a broken Southampton for a working Aland throws away the possibility of Bretonia being a vulnerable house after a long and difficult war, and thus, many possibilities for interesting roleplay and minor conflicts. Bretonia would have to be more worried about internal conflicts and attacks from smaller groups like the Mollys and the Gaians if they were weak. They'd have to worry about the Enclave if they were weak. But no, they get to be strong. No need for convalescence when you are invincible.

The fact that Bretonia as a house is being robbed of its chance to struggle makes it a Mary Sue, saved by one deus ex developer after another -- never failing in any meaningful way and never having the chance to learn from that failure.

Where we can dock and where we can execute the lines on our IDs fundamentally define how we play the game, but it seems to me that Bretonia's players can't stomach the idea of losing things, and so other factions have had to bear the emotional weight of loss for them. Now in the lore Bretonia has everything it needs to start spooling itself back up not even a year after the conclusion of the war, with no somber walk through the graveyard fields to pick up the pieces of the broken parts of their civilization.

No, Bretonia gets to eat its cake and have it too. Of course it does. Bretonia's players are more concerned with looking good in the infocards and having lots of control than actually playing the game.

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A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay,
brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.