Colony Wars update: the revolution is upon us!

Before my report on the momentous events happening in today's Colony Wars session, I give you: the new world map of Granado Espada [Cervantes server].



First note of interest: Illuminati faction seem to have taken the week off. The first hint of this came in this blog post by Arcleaumont. You can see in that cropped screenshot of the faction chat where miyake makes a statement to that effect.

Later on, during tonight's war, a source confirmed for me that Illuminati were absenting themselves from this week's Colony Wars.

As they had been allied with Illuminati, Fenrir faction also took a hard hit in this week's Colony Wars. Many factions declared war on them, hoping to take a colony or two for themselves.

Taking advantage of such a leave of absence and the ensuing imbalance in that alliance, several factions both old and new stormed in to stamp their names all over the world map: Vradical, Halcyon, Apathy, WrathOfGod, Fukkatsu, GuardsOfHonour, and MaFiaCLuB™ factions.

And that's the reason why the map above looks like it's been through a hell of a revolution. ^^

Here's a list of the factions that declared war on each other. Those lines marked "truced" mean that the truce was declared during the Colony Wars session; other truces were declared after, and are not noted here.

[If you feel this list is incomplete, please leave a comment and I'll update the list accordingly, with credit.]

Vradical v Illuminati
Vradical v Fenrir [added by Kumbee]
WrathOfGod v Illuminati
Fukkatsu v Illuminati
Fenrir v Fukkatsu
FallenAngels v Illuminati
MaFiaCLuB™ v Illuminati
GrandLodge v Illuminati
Eurynomous v Illuminati
FallenAngels V Fenrir - truced
Halcyon v Fenrir
ReBirth v Illuminati
GrandLodge v Fenrir - truced
WrathOfGod v Fenrir
GuardsOfHonour v Fenrir
BLackHoPE v Fenrir - truced
MaFiaCLuB™ v Fenrir - truced
ReBirth v FallenAngels - truced
MonoChrome v Illuminati
Eurynomous v Fenrir
MonoChrome v Fenrir - truced
TEriYaki v FallenAngels - truced
TEriYaki v Fenrir - truced
Apathy v Fenrir
DolceVita v Fenrir
TEriYaki v Vradical - truced
ReBirth v Fenrir
TEriYaki v WrathOfGod - truced
FallenAngels v Vradical - truced

Included in this list is one declaration of war that had been made during the previous week, and was resolved in honorable truce during the Colony Wars session:

BaRoN™ v FallenAngels - truced

Of particular note are the new / younger factions that have captured colonies and / or were active during the struggle for those colonies. Apathy faction is the present owner of the colony at Rio Albi; Eurynomous, TEriYaki, and MaFiaCLuB™ were active during the battles for the colonies.

***

Notes from WrathOfGod:

Last week WrathOfGod faction, of which I'm currently a member, managed to grab the Pradera de Ceniza colony and keep it to the end. With that in mind, and wanting to help the faction, I signed up to help defend the colony.

Many of the faction's members converged on our lone outpost to help defend it. In the screenshot below, I think I still missed a few people who were on the other edges of my monitor:



[I'm...somewhere in there XD]

As our squad hunkered down to defend the colony, the news was broadcast all over the server at frequent intervals. Within the first 30 minutes of the Colony Wars session, all of Illuminati's colonies were gone.

One enemy down, then. Fenrir, on the other hand, seemed to be fairly busy with many of its colonies being attacked, so we had nothing to do, really, for a very long time. Some of us actually passed the time by leveling off the assorted dogs in the map ^^

There was a brief debate in the faction over whether or not to go look for another colony to take; but the back-and-forth was rendered moot when this came up on the screen:



And then there were two: Pradera de Ceniza, and the Ferruccio Junction.

With the war down to its final hour, the messages began to come in - Illuminati faction, which we were at war with, was in Pradera - but it turned out that some of its members had simply decided to hunt Diablo, and were busy trying to summon him. That done, some of them actually attempted to attack us, but with the numbers that we had been able to amass for defense, we managed to repel them with some effort.

Next week promises to be even more action-packed. Diversity has been restored to the map, Illuminati may yet attempt a comeback, and WrathOfGod now has two colonies to defend!

***

Faction notes:

Halcyon faction includes several former Yakisoba members, while TEriYaki is rumored to be populated by former ASA members.

It seems that someone has formed a new CARNAGE faction; I'll try to get details on that during the week.

After this night's Colony Wars session, Fenrir faction leader forian, as well as leading member Mew, announced that they were leaving the game. Fenrir is now led by Utopian.