Shadow (alternately "The Shadow Realm") was an active nation on Horizon's End from April 2023 to July 2024, led by Ae0n (de facto by star_litty starting in September 2023). The nation was, at alternate points in its history, dominated by pirates and by colonists, and had varying priorities over the course of its existence. The nation's capital was ThievesHaven on Chimgara.

Shadow was succeeded by Radiance on 3 July 2024.

History

	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
• Director of Operations	Astrobolt
Formation
Foundation date	27 April 2023
Dissolution Date	3 July 2024 (politically); 8 October 2024 (purged)
Culture
Language	English
Links

Early Days

Several members of Shadow first joined Horizon's End in April 2023 and Ae0n created Shadow as a formal nation on April 27. The nation was previously established on the Movecraft server "PirateCraft" before its members moved to Horizon's End. Over the course of the following months, Shadow would quietly develop its bases throughout the Ilios System, largely staying out of server political affairs at the time.

Shadow-Orovika War

On 22 August 2022, the nation of Shadow, under the leadership of Ae0n (with significant influence from Noix444), declared war on the colonist nation of Orovika, sparking the 40-day Shadow-Orovika War. The war quickly became unpopular among many of Shadow's members as they were the targets of Orovikan attacks. This was also influenced by the builder playstyle of many Shadow members at the time, which conflicted with the SvS-oriented playstyle of many recent recruits including Noix444, AdelieXY, and FellOffBridge.

Over the course of the war, 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 highlighted overall dissatisfaction with the war and brought Shadow 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 became accepted by Orovika as the primary diplomatic contact for Shadow. This recognition was initially unknown to Ae0n, leading to internal conflict between her and star_litty after star_litty coordinated surrender terms with Orovika. These conflicts abruptly led to star_litty's departure from the nation. Following this, Astrobolt picked up star_litty's negotiations, working closely with both Ae0n and Orovika to end the war. After continued negotations, Astrobolt was able to secure Shadow's surrender to Orovika on 29 September 2023, using the terms that star_litty had previously arranged, which involved the turn-over of one 12k destroyer to Orovika.

Rebuilding Shadow

After the end of the Shadow-Orovika War, Ae0n became increasingly inactive, eventually leading star_litty to assume a de facto leadership position during the winter of late-2023/early-2024. By this point, Shadow had been materially exhausted due to the Shadow-Orovika War - an issue that was only compounded by the start of the server-wide Horizon Federation-RentDueYesterday War just a week later on 6 October - essentially requiring the nation's infrastructure to be rebuilt from scratch

During this period of de facto leadership, internal politics changed drastically. Astrobolt coordinated with Ae0n, who eventually named Astrobolt and star_litty as co-leaders (as opposed to their previous position as Council members). Following various role permissions changes, star_litty became the primary leader in spring 2024 in all aspects except formal in-game leadership (as recognized by server plugins) and except ownership of the discord server. During star_litty's de facto leadership, Shadow drastically, yet gradually, changed course to become more builder-centered and community-centered. The nation admitted several new players including KBUSJ, EloMilo, and Kay_2905, who began contributing significantly to Shadow. Diplomatic priorities also pivoted; Shadow began distancing itself 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, continuing the ongoing, informal process of moving Shadow's primary activity and operations away from ThievesHaven on Chimgara.

On 23 April 2024, after over a week of careful negotiations, Shadow formed the Ilios Alliance alongside Cortesia Del Mar and Orovika. The Ilios Alliance would prove to be crucial for Shadow throughout the following months.

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.

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.

Legacy