New Era Part 2: Imperium Ships falls everyone dies
There was a twist to this entire RP that I didn’t realize until Dante told me himself. Zarn knew as soon as he saw the map. New Era was actually set in Neverwhen. Everything happening here was a sequel to War and Peace, not a separate entity and the Imperium knew what was going on. Dante always wanted this RP to have an ending. He had a vision in his mind and as we approached the end he told me it. The Imperium was going to invade as the final boss and everyone would have to work together to stop it. Jaden and I, as the two most active players, were given charge of this defense. Dante was nice enough to give both of us resources to aid in this task. I was given a copy of the map that had the location of every resource in Neverwhen. This would allow us to plan our defence to protect the most vital areas in our world. Jaden got a copy of the entire system Dante was using to simulate battles. He could, on his own, simulate battles to better work out his strategies.
I remember having a conversation with Dante when he pitched this idea. I remember that he was wrestling with being fair or treating this realistically. Time had passed in the other RP and The Imperium was a multiple planet society that wanted to expand into a new dimension. They also weren’t alone in this expedition as my own Ninja Monkeys (who were also starting to vie for Galactic Dominance across multiple solar systems) would end up joining them at some point. In reality this should be a very difficult fight that we would likely lose even if we played it right and Dante had some hesitation in representing it this way. But, by the end of our conversation, he decided that was the route to go. It would, at least, be memorable and hey. We could simulate these battles ahead of time so that’s a massive advantage. Oh if it had only worked out that way.
Jaden never simulated any battles. To be fair, the system for New Era was incredibly tedious. It was a collection of formulas across multiple spreadsheets that required you to place data in different places to get the result of a single battle. Dante had had a health scare earlier in the RP and there was a time where it looked like I would be replacing him for a few weeks. I had seen these spreadsheets and learned how to operate them. It was not a fun process. I also can’t be too mad at Jaden either, I didn’t really use the map for planning our defense. Instead I agreed to an idea that just didn’t really make sense but I couldn’t think of anything better at the time. I can now. The way to win as Neverwhen was to use the data we had to target landing sites that the Imperium would go to and stomp them out. Even though they were wildly beyond our technology, they would be split up and isolated and we could have easily dedicated enough forces to take care of them and any other landing. This is what Dante had envisioned since it's the most logical response to a planetary invasion.
What we did instead was to try and repeat the Dark Alliances attack on the Imperium. And I don’t mean the IC parts. Jaden wanted me to surrender and ask for control of a portion of The Imperium’s invading forces. If I had control of 50% of them, I could just not do anything with them and it would cut their forces in half allowing us to easily win. I never felt good about this plan since I A) didn’t want to repeat the past and B) was pretty sure it would just lead to an immediate defeat. Still, I didn’t have a better idea and Jaden was emphatic that it would work. So, the day came and I surrendered. This immediately gave up a chunk of our forces and also, technically, gave The Imperium a staging area for their invasion. It was a massively bad idea and pretty much led to an immediate defeat, even with 50% of their forces doing nothing.
It was around here that the decision was made to restart War and Peace. Everyone who participated in New Era was welcome to bring their characters over and keep the fun times rolling. The only person who did was Jaden which isn’t surprising when I look back at it. Dante, to extra emphasize that we got the bad ending, had the thread locked and thus New Era was done. It was finished and would never be altered again until it was eventually deleted from CAA to free up server space. I still can’t believe that we had an ending to this thing and that we got to it.