Shadow

Shadow
Icon of Shadow
General
Demonym	Shade
Activity level	Disbanded
Capital city	ThievesHaven
Settlements	ThievesHaven, Cicatrix, The Rose Garden
Stations	Jay
Government
• Sovereigness	Ae0n
• Ambassador	star_litty
Formation
Foundation date	26 April, 2023
Dissolution Date	3 July 2024 (politically) 8 October 2024 (purged)
Culture
Language	English
Links

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History

Early Days

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 article: 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 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 ship and factory technology, as well as combat training that reduced the nation's 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 article: 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.

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.