Autonomy of Wessex

Greetings,
With the overwhelming numbers the Imperium has received, Wessex may be able to split off and become autonomous by itself, as we also have large numbers. It would also add less drama, the ability to do our own thing, be able to role play once again. The one major gripe I have with Imperium is that for such large numbers, they barely donate. Almost all donations that I see are done by Wessex members. It may be time for Wessex members to reap the benefit of all their donations by themselves. What do others think?

Sincerely,
Reverend Mister Varrick ChaosWielder

Even though my the desire to split off is strong, I do not believe we can split off at this time.

We agreed to be part of Imperium, and until His Majesty commands it to be done we must demonstrate to the rest of the alliance that Wessex is valuable as a separate entity. Right now that is not the case with the rest of the alliance. Excluding Imperium, because they DO see us as a valuable ally, and have demonstrated great friendship to us.

I must admit that I am worried with the numbers growing so quickly, the lack of donation, and the lack of team work of the Imperium. It is turning into a giant zerg. Of course Wessex stands tall and proud, and we donate, we are organised, and we work as a team. But is it fair to us to support the rest of the zerg? Not to mention some of the things going on in clan drama. But, I will obey the Will of His Majesty the King. If he wishes us to continue with our new allies, then thus it shall be. I just think if His Majesty is coming to the kingdom in the next while, wouldn't it be better for us to deliver him new holdings in His name?

I agree with your concerns Father Varrick, the rabble is strong within the Imperium. However, the Imperium is not preventing us from splitting off, it is the rest of the alliance we are part of.

When the beta launched, the plan was to form a clan called the Hyperion Kingdom, with His Majesty at the head of the government. Wessex, SSR, and the Imperium would have formed the core duchies. The plan was to take Calfardar as the first seat of power for the Kingdom, with the other two duchies taking the other two cities on Cairn. We also began looking for other large clans to form an alliance of mutual protection.

However, as we came closer to launch His Majesty started a new term of school, and Duke Brando also became involved in outside tasks. In deed, many of the Duchy members who first started playing Beta dropped out as the game had not changed all that much from DF1 (using prowess to raise skills was not in yet). Thus, at launch, the rest of the alliance expressed concerns that they would become a target just for having a Duchy of Wessex clan under it's banner. Indeed, if you peruse the forums it will become apparent that this was a real possibility.

Which brings us to the only downside of the new prowess system. If you cannot take a hold a spawn to earn prowess, your character growth will be much, much slower. Now if we had had the activity we are currently seeing, we could have made a more forceful argument, but as it was, it looked to be a very real possibility of the Duchy consisting of 3-4 players.

So the bottom line is that Sir Audin had to make a difficult choice, but he did so, and chose correctly.

As it stands we are, in my opinion, the most organized militia in the Imperium. The Imperium offered us a home, and we are going to respect that by being fully active and loyal members to it's leadership. That does not mean we are not going to continue to work on growing ourselves into a more powerful force, as that helps the Imperium as well as ourselves. We are still the Duchy of Wessex.

When the time is right and we are able to split off and be our own clan, it will be done in such a way as to support the Alliance, and hopefully the Old Timers Guild and the rest of the alliance in a helpful manner. Hopefully we will be able to claim one of the cities on Cairn. In fact, I am thinking of working on the building blocks for a bank for Izland, which is where several of us is bound at the moment.

I agree with Azzerhoden. As much as we wish to go free from a philosophical standpoint, from a practical and political standpoint we do not have the power to go it alone yet.

We need to recruit more players, and - this is a very important one - promote and reward skilled players into leadership positions. We are getting a reputation as a sort of 'old boys' club, with most of the officers being remnants of our first jaunt into DF1. Azzerhoden is an exception, but many of our officers, myself included are from that time.

We may need to rethink or at least modify our policies for advancement. While we are operating under Imperium's system, we should focus on filling up the Serviens spots in our Militia with good players and leaders, and then sending the best of them, as we get enough people, to form their own Militias.

All of them can operate as pseudo-fiefs, with the leader of each Militia being a Knight-level or equivalently ranked player.

This will allow us to rebuild the kingdom from the ground up, while still remaining supportive of Imperium's structure and rules. When we get four or five of these militias, we would have the numbers and hopefully the power to go it alone. If we prove ourselves to Imperium, we should also be able to get a city on Cairne out of it. Ideally Serruk. Serruk has the harbor, and while that is not vital now, it may be in the future. We should be looking at the long game.

As well, there are certainly members of Imperium who are spending time and effort to donate to the total effort - EFX for example is organizing several huge events which are aimed at getting together a prodigious amount of resources to be donated directly to the clan. We are doing a lot of individual donations ourselves, but we might think about tracking said donations for the purposes of convincing others to match them.

Friendly Competition, when wielded carefully, can be an effective weapon at combating selfishness or sloth. We can organize some inter-militia competitions, with perhaps a reward for the group who gathers the most over time. Include Hyperion or Wessex in the name of the competition as a subtle reminder that we still exist.

Right now our main focus is on rebuilding our numbers. Without a significant amount of good and loyal players, we simply cannot project power in the manner required to progress and dominate in Darkfall.

Who is currently responsible for recruitment? We should get a forum post up.

You both bring very valid points. I will meditate upon this. In the meantime, I will ensure the moral of our troops, both spiritual and physical, is taken care of. Thank you both for this very enlightening debate.

Sincerely,
The Reverend Father Varrick ChaosWielder
Cleric & Priest of Soldeus

No one has taken the initiative on getting an updated recruitment post together. Though, I would advertise we are currently in Imperium but rather have them PM us in game or go to the website to apply. Once we have contact then we can let them know of our status in game.

Perhaps, one of you could put together a draft for recruitement? We can go over it and tweak it if necessary.

Actually - I haven't figured out how we could structure such an advertisement.

Hrmm, I guess I will work on this task this weekend, and have a draft ready Sunday for you to review. Ill try brainstorming as well with a few people.

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Originally Posted by Azzerhoden Razeri

Actually - I haven't figured out how we could structure such an advertisement.

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Why not take His Grace's usual template and just whack it on with some added details?

I'm leery over advertising the name Duchy of Wessex when we are tagged Imperium.

What do you propose instead?

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Originally Posted by Otto Osterwind

Why not take His Grace's usual template and just whack it on with some added details?

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Truthfully, we didn't get a lot traffic from it.... So I think perhaps an advertisement by someone who will be available to actively answer questions.

Prime recruiting time this weekend with the release of Steam. Also would of been able to recruit many Wessex members. But I too am weary with the Imperium tag. I sadly do not have a different proposal than what was already said. We often have 20+ Wessex members on, and with the new recruiting going on can easily bolster that quite high. I am estimating probably about 20% of Imperium is Wessex already. A lot of old blood seems to be joining back and floating our banners.

Imperium has 340 members. We have roughly 20 in LSV

There is a lot of Wessex not in a Militia yet either. As a Priest, part of my Vow of Faith was I couldn't join the Militia's. But I will gladly run with you guys.

Why don't we advertise LSV for now in place of the wessex name? Its still bringing recruits to us while staying loyal to Imperium.

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Originally Posted by Varrick ChaosWielder

There is a lot of Wessex not in a Militia yet either. As a Priest, part of my Vow of Faith was I couldn't join the Militia's. But I will gladly run with you guys.

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The militia is not a military entity from my understanding. It appears to be more of a simple social grouping for the sake of recognizing one's roots. I would recommend that all who consider themselves Wessex would join LSV simply on principle. However, there's absolutely no perceivable harm in not being the militia so I leave it as a suggestion (it is also not my decision).

Having more numbers in LSV would allow us more leverage, but I am not all too familiar with the inter-alliance functionings and am merely speculating.

I would like to add that having that huge number on mumble only bolsters our own will to play. There are always people talking and waiting around to enjoy the game with.

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Originally Posted by Audin Cardew

Truthfully, we didn't get a lot traffic from it.... So I think perhaps an advertisement by someone who will be available to actively answer questions.

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Agreed; actually. That was an issue early on in MO as well.
Nothing stopping one of us from stealing the template with his permission, though, is there?

A lot of what is in the post is still valid. I'm suggesting it just needs a face-lift.

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Originally Posted by Audin Cardew

A lot of what is in the post is still valid. I'm suggesting it just needs a face-lift.

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I'd be willing; just need to find it again.

I am new but I think the main issue is you can donate all day long but if you don't get anything in return, minus you donations for building modules, why bother. I still have to craft everything myself because no one is ever available and the bank is on lockdown. I also move around a lot but why give your all if you are running around in R10 gear.

It is indeed very hard Spirit Hawk. But, your bretheren's will attempt to help you when they can. I myself am a crafter and can make some gear for you depending on what your class is. Try to see LSV (our militia) within DarkFall as our own clan, within a larger clan. We work together, and watch out for each other. We just have a large "alliance" to call upon when needed. So this way we always have people to hunt with, pvp with, and sometimes get gear if we cant get it directly from our group.

I feel like we should be extremely careful whilst building members and calling it Wessex. Theres is much bitterness and distaste for that name in Darkfall Unholy Wars. We have those in our very own alliance that upon knowing that is what we STILL are would seek to give us the boot and frankly we would die if we separated. Currently yes I feel we are growing and doing well but we've not many and those that we do have are not high enough prowess to deal with threats. My core group of running mates has defended against some but we still get rolled on a regular basis by the vast number of people with 20,40,50,60k prowess. I know for a fact we Imperium are already under attack from Sinister and Lords of Death along with their allies. Not to mention the blood-lust Happy Kangaroos and Yakuza have for us. I dare say it would be a deadly decision to break from the group. Let alone the alliance rarely functions as an alliance aside from crafting. We've called for help in Alliance numerous times and have finally stopped because no one heeds the call. No one helps. Therefor, Some of us shant be assisting them in their endevers. Hells, Sin and LoD attack us because as Sendog claimed Draxyn and The Grapist "Are huge shit talkers." That of which we have to suffer for. If we broke off we would be simply annihilated.

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Originally Posted by Zaleos Ravenblood

I feel like we should be extremely careful whilst building members and calling it Wessex. Theres is much bitterness and distaste for that name in Darkfall Unholy Wars. We have those in our very own alliance that upon knowing that is what we STILL are would seek to give us the boot and frankly we would die if we separated. Currently yes I feel we are growing and doing well but we've not many and those that we do have are not high enough prowess to deal with threats. My core group of running mates has defended against some but we still get rolled on a regular basis by the vast number of people with 20,40,50,60k prowess. I know for a fact we Imperium are already under attack from Sinister and Lords of Death along with their allies. Not to mention the blood-lust Happy Kangaroos and Yakuza have for us. I dare say it would be a deadly decision to break from the group. Let alone the alliance rarely functions as an alliance aside from crafting. We've called for help in Alliance numerous times and have finally stopped because no one heeds the call. No one helps. Therefor, Some of us shant be assisting them in their endevers. Hells, Sin and LoD attack us because as Sendog claimed Draxyn and The Grapist "Are huge shit talkers." That of which we have to suffer for. If we broke off we would be simply annihilated.

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You have some very good points. It was never my attentions to break from Imperium at this time. These are decisions for 2-3 months down the line. And when I say 2-3 months, I mean that is when we will assess what we have in personnel and quality of players. Only then would we venture on our own.

Unfortunately, crafters aren't stationed in cities to provide gear for clan mates all day. Honestly that would be boring as hell to just sit in town and wait for someone to come by and request some gear. If you are looking for higher level gear I would simply make a bag and required mats and name it. Put the bag in the Crafting requests. When the crafters log on they check the bag and craft the request. Once they are done they are put in the finished bag. Any Servien (IMP-III) or officer can grab these bags out for you. I usually have Mara near Sandbrook which I can run back to town and grab stuff for you.

Keep in mind, you can level up your own crafting but of course this would take some time. With the designated crafters they have committed 10k prowess points to master their craft. So it would be worth it to help them to get to that point. (A lot of the masteries have already been achieved).

I myself check a few times per day to see what I can craft. I love to help out when I can :)

I just got Darkfall 2 and am wondering what I need to do to Join up with you guys ingame. If someone could please let me know it would be great.
Thanks

Apply to Imperium ingame, register on the forums www.imperium-uw.com and check for the TS info and pop on ts :)

I would also like to point out that if you look at who has what responsibilities within Imperium, you will see a higher population of Wessex members then of others. That is because to be a member of Wessex, you typically have a higher sense of responsibility and calling.

So if we were to just leave, we would leave gaping holes in the Imperium, which is not something we could (or should) do to someone who has been such a loyal ally.