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[Theophilos]

Part 4: The Continuum

The signing of the Mobius Accords brought about a new era of prosperity for IRON. At first the IRON Council was a bit unsure about the treaty, after all, they weren't very familiar with some of its members, such as The Gramlins. After some long heart- to-heart talks with the participants, they felt more comfortable and eventually signed off on it.

It was a sad fact, however, that the Continuum seemed to collide with IRON’s other bloc, One Vision. At the time they were considered IRON’s primary bloc. Relations steadily deteriorated with one of IRON’s greatest and closest allies, the New Polar Order. Arguments occurred making it necessary for IRON to take a harder stance and slowly to cancel official ties. The New Polar Order eventually was removed from One Vision. It seemed that there was little concern for IRON’s preferences and the thought was that this would shock some sense into them. Fighting continued and one by one treaty levels were downgraded until no ties existed. IRON still considered them friends and protected them for many months after obligations to do so no longer existed.

The Continuum Era more than any other was marked by friendship. IRON had formed strong bonds with all of the alliances, and with some strong friendships were formed. However, this was also a time of conquest. For the most part IRON believed they were fair and reasonable and not a overbearing oppressive hegemonic force. There were a few wars here and there for a variety of reasons. Many would currently say that IRON was on a mad tech stealing binge, and while that may have been true in a sense, that was never really the intention. The war against GPA, one of our mostly criticized wars was, arose more out of sheer frustration and annoyance with their inept government than anything. While many of the incidents were laughably small, there were several that were quite serious (aiding an enemy and threatening to destroy allies). This was recognized and although there were votes for war several times, it was a long time before war actually occurred. Finally, everyone had had enough. IRON was just damn annoyed. GPA’s inept government had cheated us, threatened our friends, aided our enemies, lied to us on multiple occasions and generally they had given us the run around.

Still for the most part, The Continuum was just a group of friends and it wasn't until the WoTC occurred that the end was obvious. Leading up to this point, IRON and NPO had continually prevented the continuum as a whole from hitting Polar. The rally against them was most verbal from Crymson and Sam, but of all the alliances the Gramlins were the most eager to destroy them out of pure hatred. For IRON the WoTC was a terrible tragedy. IRON refused to hit Polar and in order to fulfill obligations they were saddled with pre-empting elements of BLEU. We did demand reps but shortly after peace was announced rescinded our claims to any. The only reason we demanded them in the first place was our friends ally, Ragnarok wanted reps and was unable to procure them without our assistance.

By the end of the war The Continuum had begun to fracture and IRON began the long task of building especially the upper tier of nations for the eventual war. It was around this time that Vox Populii and other terrorist organizations formed. Despite continued efforts, The Continuum would never be the same. Suspicion of certain members and groups took hold, leaks became a common thing and from this point on The Continuum held together more out of convenience than friendship (It should be noted that most of those suspicions proved to be accurate).

With the world gradually turning away from IRON, policies were softened, but this occurred too slowly. Concessions were seen as too little- too late and as merely PR moves. IRON was testing the water, and even when the backlash continued, it seemed clear that vengeance and not change was wanted by the others. IRON would still continue to change from within but it was internal change and thus not announced to the world. A couple of months before the Karma war ever reared its ugly head and before The Continuum imploded, IRON had cleared the PZI lists and these lists have remained clear ever since. IRON continues to reserve the right to it should we deem it necessary, but haven't had need of it in since. Amusingly, not being aware of this fact, our enemies in Karma demanded we clear our empty list as one of our terms. This request was the easiest one of all to complete.


to be continued....




History Part 3: The Fan-Wut War and The Unjust War

History Part 2: Friends, Tensions, Enemies

History Part 1: The Forging

Edited by sojourner, 25 April 2010 - 12:52 PM.