History Part 6: Post Karma

Part 6: Post Karma:

Following our exit from the Karma War, IRON surrendered to the Karma Coalition which was headed by Liquid Mercury and Archon. IRON faced a great challenge after this devastating war, with the first time we had ever had to pay reparations. For 90 days IRON lost its sovereignty and was under defense by many alliances headed by Fark. The defense was sometimes very shaky and late, at some points non-existent.These early times were of great difficulty as IRON saw her numbers drop from over 800 members to just under 500. Many members at this point were frustrated and not terribly interested in paying reps. As soon as we got a basic cycle or two of rebuilding done we were prepared to start. To the displeasure of everyone, most alliances were not willing or ready to take the tech as they were finishing up their war with NPO. After a few more cycles of recovering, IRON members began sending out tech at a lightening pace. Even without the full cooperation of many alliances, notably RoK, Matt Miller devised teams for sending tech that allowed us to race through the reparations.

Following this IRON members waited patiently to be released from terms and regain our freedom and begin anew. Everyone was very excited for what we knew would be an epic release due to our small militaries. Our growth would be bolstered as we found out by what would be IRON's first merger. Our great friends in CON, who were suffering from inactivity were going to merge into IRON. Being a very good military alliance this worked well for both parties. Following the exit of terms, IRON experienced exponential growth. For over a week we consistently posted NS gains of over 500,000 and on one day even over 2 million. IRON quickly did some treaty web cleaning by dropping our treaty with Sparta to the great approval of the membership. Over the next few months IRON grew extremely fast and reached as high as 3rd in the Sanction Race. During this time, the military and Vault pushed a number of programs that mutually benefited each other. The most notable being the Manhattan Project that along with other private funding brought out total up near 200. As the new year turned IRON went through a period of great chaos. During the holidays when most people are greatly inactive, IRON's staunch ally, TPF, was attacked by RoK and Athens ... with no valid cassus belli. Our military leader, former Councilman, Bill N Ted lead the Coincidence Coalition. Quietly over a weeks period IRON gathered stats and contacted everyone we could. Finally one night IRON and other very notable alliances bombarded the OWF with Declarations of War. The boards went down from too many users online and were not up for a painstaking 20 minutes. RoK and Athens and their allies quickly backtracked, leaving IRON the clear victor in this no war after a white peace was reached.

With tensions near breaking point, it was a mad rush to prepare for the obviously fast approaching war.

To be continued...