“Please allow me to introduce myself….”
Greetings!
Once upon a time in NationStates, the Alliance Defense Network (ADN) was the ‘premier’ defender organization of NS. On average, the organization, founded in 2003, included around 35 member regions on average, which included regions such as The West Pacific, The North Pacific, The Rejected Realms, Nasicournia, Equilism, JuxtapositionX, ASE, et al.
There were essentially four contiguous active incarnations of ADN. The original ADN founded by Pheonix and Vasquez was formed to fight the Atlantic Alliance, and was succeeded by Constitutional ADN lead by Pope Hope and Vasquez with the ratification of the constitution on February 29, 2004. The same day, the Atlantic Alliance announced it’s dissolution, and the same day I joined ADN. Pheonix had left ADN, as he didn’t like the direction it was taking. Pheonix then had Equility and I in Equilism train his intel recruits independently of ADN.
ADN Director Pope Hope wanted me in ADN intelligence when I arrived (my reputation in investigating and removing the AA spy in Equilism preceded me), however she was frustrated by Intel Minsiter ROTJAGMAN having locked down intel to prevent raider spies from infiltrating (not knowing that ADN Vice President Democratic Donkeys was already a spy with access). And so I was appointed Director of the Office of Public Relations. And any intel I had went directly to Pope Hope. I was infiltrated into several regions/organizations at the time, and was Prime Minister/Delegate of Equilism.
Eventually, there were changes in the ADN Judiciary and I was appointed Prosecutor General, replacing Penngrove or Ivan Moldavi (I honestly don’t remember the exact order of succession there). Sugar Bear, who had written ADN’s constitution (he was a RL law professor), stepped down as Chief Justice, Sugar Bear had once asked me to write an Amicus brief in a case before the ADN court, and was kind enough to compliment me on the effort.
The first legal complaint I recall receiving was from Ivan Moldvi demanding I investigate Blackbird. After speaking with Blackbird, I found It was a false charge Moldavi was making. Ivan was yet to announce he was Peirconium of the NPO.
The first ADN elections came around, and Equility ran for President against Vaquez, while I ran for Vice President against the incumbent Democratic Donkeys and ASE’s Eurosoviets. Eurosoviets was able to rally allies to vote in his favor and nearly won. To prevent that, I withdrew from the race and threw my support to the incumbent Democratic Donkeys, who was re-elected.
Around this same time was the ADN/Ireland war. While Eurosoviets and I did not get along, we were both assigned by Pope Hope to negotiate peace with Ireland and their allies The German Empire. And, we were successful.
We had reached agreement with The German Empire first, however, the Founder of TGE woke up, banjected everyone and locked the region. It turned out their founder was RedCommunist, founder of USSR. Ireland had been pressuring USSR to support them via their treatied relations, and RC had withheld support. TGE then informed Eurosoviets and I that the peace treaty was pointless, their region was dead, and they withdrew from the war forming a new region.
Eurosoviets and I then succeeded in negotiating a Peace Treaty with Ireland and we presented it to ADN. Many were outraged, they wanted the war. Pope Hope herself tried to say it wasn’t’ legitimate, so we pointed out that we negotiated on her instructions, and pointed out the Constitutional law on the matter. The Peace Treaty was ratified, then all hell broke loose in ADN.
ADN President Vasquez planned, organized, and lead a post peace treaty raid on Ireland. That raid was planned on the ADN forums. I was the one that apologized to Ireland on behalf of ADN, which they graciously accepted. Pope Hope then gave me access to the secret Section 5 planning forums so I could conduct my investigation as Prosecutor General.
Long story short, I presented Articles of Impeachment against President Vazquez to the ADN Congress, and Vazquez resigned instead of facing charges. I exonerated the soldier participants, as they were simply following his orders.
Then Vice President Democratic Donkeys announced he was an Invader/Raider, and resigned. Leaving Pope Hope alone in command of the organization.
And at the same time, the ADN Congress was hopelessly deadlocked as factions vied for control of the agenda. Eurosoviet supporters wanted the ADN Congress to approve each and every military deployment. Defending can’t work that way.
As a result, Pope Hope reached out for support, declared Martial Law, and Constitutional ADN came to an end.
ADN:Reloaded was then formed. Pope Hope and Unistrut founded the new forum, and appointed Equility, Blackbird, and myself as moderators. Equility and I got busy reconstructing ADN’s forum. We were also appointed as the Intelligence Board of Directors. Later, after Equility left the game in summer ’05, I later served the Intel Board of Directors first with Blackbird, and later with Biyah. Each one of those partners had a completely different approach to intel.
Director Pope Hope then appointed me as an Adminstrator along with herself and Unistrut. She confided in me that she wanted a third party, as she didn’t feel she could control Unistrut alone. He was a renegade at times. She later gave ownership of the domain name alliancedefense.net to me.
There were some conflicts over the direction of the new version of ADN, but they were smoothed over and withdrawls were avoided. ADN:Reloaded’s Charter was ratified, and elections were held. I was elected Deputy Director, and when Pope Hope went to Cybernations and didn’t come back, I was left as Acting Director of ADN.
NS gameplay activity was suffering from disgruntled new players that couldn’t advance into organizational leadership, the establishment of Influence, and the novelty of Cybernations. ADN got quiet and inactive.
In Equilism, we engaged in an operation known as ‘The Schism’, and left our defender roots behind to save our community from extinction. ADN condemned me for it, but our actions brought activity not only to Equilism, but to ADN as well. The organization woke up.
It then left behind ADN:Reloaded and formed ADN : DSA. There were two charter proposals for the next incarnation of ADN, the one that passed (ADN : DSA) and Equilism’s proposal for a charter much like that of A.L.L. that would ensure ADN would not be an extra-regional government over it’s members again. Having failed in our attempt to reform ADN to respect it’s member regions, Equilism and I withdrew from ADN.
Somehow it seems I’ve forgotten to mention that I also served as Secretary of Defense of ADN during the Puppetmaster II operations to liberate The North Pacific from Pixiedance/InsanePower/Peirconium. We eventually succeeded with the Stars of Sky operation, which was largely run by a handful of people outside of ADN. We gathered privately each major update as Stars of Sky surfed the update to keep endorsements until the operation completed.
I hope that gives a (somewhat) short introduction to my experiences with ADN. And now I’ll be happy to attempt to answer any questions you may have. That was all a long time ago….
