Editing Shadow (section)

= History =
== Early Days ==
[[File:HGM_issue1_pg3.png|thumb|300px|An issue of the newspaper "[[Horizons Galactic Media Weekly]]", published by [[Oliveburger22]] on 19 May 2023.]]
Shadow first joined Horizon's End on an indeterminate date in April 2023; Shadow (at first briefly named "The Shadow Realm" ingame) was an established nation from the [[Movecraft]] server "Pirate Minecraft". Over the course of the following months, Shadow would quietly develop its base in the [[Ilios System]], largely staying out of server political affairs at the time. 

== Shadow-Orovika War ==
{{main|Shadow-Orovika War}}
On 22 August 2022, the nation of Shadow, under the leadership of [[Ae0n]] (and informal co-leadership of the recently-admitted [[Noix444]]) declared war on the colonist nation of [[Orovika]], sparking a 40-day conflict termed the [[Shadow-Orovika War]]. This war was deeply unpopular with the bulk of Shadow's player-base, who did not wish to be in conflict with players with whom they had positive personal relationships, and resented the [[SvS]]-oriented players that Ae0n brought into the nation to wage the war, such as [[Noix444]], [[AdelieXY]], and [[FellOffBridge]].

In this time, several members of Shadow (such as [[star_litty]] and [[VoidsentRose]]) elected to leave the nation in-game in order to excuse themselves from conflict with Orovika, a movement which crippled Shadow's war-making capacity and forced them to the negotiating table on two separate occasions. Following a [[Shadow-Orovika War#First Attempt at Peace Negotiations|catastrophic first round of diplomatic negotiations]] between Orovika and Shadow, which were broadly perceived by both Orovikan and Shadow witnesses as a diplomatic failure on Ae0n's part, star_litty (despite being in exile) became accepted by Orovika as the primary diplomatic contact for Shadow. star_litty was able to successfully negotiate a conditional surrender for Shadow on 29 September 2023, involving the turn-over of one 12k [[destroyer]] to Orovika.

== Rebuilding Shadow ==
After the end of the Shadow-Orovika War, [[Ae0n]] became highly inactive, leaving [[star_litty]] to assume a ''de facto'' position of leadership over the nation. The Shadow that she inherited had been materially exhausted during the Shadow-Orovika War - an issue that would only compound with the start of the server-wide [[Horizon Federation-RentDueYesterday War]] just a week later on 6 October - essentially requiring the nation to be re-built largely from scratch. 

Under star_litty's informal leadership, Shadow's strategy on the server pivoted drastically. The nation admitted several new players (such as [[KBUSJ]], [[EloMilo]], [[Kay_2905]]) who rapidly became integral components of Shadow. Shadow's diplomacy also pivoted, distancing from players like [[FellOffBridge]] (who had since gone on to form [[RentDueYesterday]]), and aligning with the colonist nations on the server via the [[Horizon Federation]]. Positive diplomatic engagement with nations such as [[Cortesia Del Mar]] gave Shadow access to more advanced [[starship|ship]] and [[wiring|factory]] technology, as well as [[SvS|combat training]] that reduced the nation's [[Shadow-Orovika War#Noix444 Joins Shadow|previous reliance]] on imported muscle. On 26 March 2024, star_litty founded the settlement of [[Cicatrix]] (then "cherrytown") on [[Aerach]], moving the locus of Shadow's activity away from [[ThievesHaven]] on [[Chimgara]].

On 23 April 2024, after over a week of careful negotiations, Shadow formed the [[Ilios Alliance]], a tripartite colonist and privateer alliance between Shadow, [[Cortesia Del Mar]], and [[Orovika]]. The Ilios Alliance would prove a major boon Shadow in the course of the following months.

== Radiant Revolution ==
{{main|Radiant Revolution}}
In the nine months following the end of the [[Shadow-Orovika War]], [[star_litty]] led Shadow from a ''de facto'' position; her formal title within the nation, per [[Ae0n]], remained "ambassador". As Shadow became increasingly detached from Ae0n's legacy, this situation became more of an issue, especially as Ae0n would still need to be consulted on major national decisions, and would often be obstructionist towards changes that she believed deviated from her version of Shadow (despite not playing the server). This situation caused increasing dissatisfaction not only to Shadow's leadership council, but to the whole player-base of Shadow, as it led to the impression that Shadow's players were not in control of their own nation, and indeed most of Shadow's players had never known a version of Shadow led by anyone other than star_litty.

[[File:Radiant revolution.png|thumb|400px|star_litty announces the [[Radiant Revolution]] to the server.]]
Following months of peaceful attempts by several players in Shadow to convince Ae0n to hand over in-game leadership to star_litty (by setting the capital of the nation to [[Cicatrix]] over [[ThievesHaven]]), on 2 June 2024 Ae0n elected to log into the server specifically to strip star_litty and [[Astrobolt]] of in-game permissions as retribution. Circumstances had now become intolerable, and so the vast majority of Shadow's player-base enacted a mass secession of all active settlements from the nation on 3 July, taking most accessible assets with them, and forming a new nation called [[Radiance]].

Radiance immediately received widespread diplomatic support from nearly the entire server, most especially the [[Ilios Alliance]] (with [[yodabird19]] of [[Cortesia Del Mar]] declaring that "The Republic of Cortesia Del Mar recognizes the nation of Radiance as the legitimate, direct, and sole successor to the nation of Shadow (2020-2024), and the inheritor of all of its assets, obligations, and entitlements" a mere minute after the formal announcement of the change-over). On 8 July 2024, Horizon's End [[staff]] manually transferred several Shadow claims to Radiance on 8 July, concurrently with [[Ae0n]]'s "unfit for community" permanent ban.

The nation of Shadow finally purged in-game on 8 October 2024, after being upheld through [[activity logging]] for several months.