By - The Reporter
On - 06 AUG 2016
[article]STAFF ARTICLE[/article]
"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places."
- Ernest Hemingway
Wars are called, controlled and commanded by leaders, but those leading the charge are not the be all and end all of a conflict. The best commander is helpless without a force to command, and a large army will remain ineffective without a good leader.We often hear of the leadership - the big names - but what about those who follow?
At the end of the day, unless the leadership of a group really shits the bed (here's looking at you, Ace and Moon), it's not the leaders who bear the burden of war's fallout. Leaders are well-established; they have friends and allies, and over the years, those bonds only get stronger. Usually.
We hear enough about the leaders, so today, we focus on those rarely bathed in the limelight; those new to war or just learning to stand on their own. Where to they land when the hurricane subsides? Most are unchanged by the course of war, but others either meet their breaking point or flourish.
In the end, the winner of a war is not the party who declares victory. It's the side whose people come through the gale mostly intact.
Note: All are listed alphabetically by category, which are also listed alphabetically. * indicates an uncertain affiliation.
Alliance
- darkwolf
- Openly displeased with the outcome of the war, darkwolf vanished after the fact, only to appear again very recently.
- DezzieCuThroat
- Buried at the end of the war.
- Elizabeth
- Seemingly vanished shortly after declaring an end to the war - rarely seen since. Her vast swaths of employees have scarcely been out, save for the past few weeks.
- Frances
- Dropped out mid-war, rarely seen since.
- Gypsy*
- Dropped out mid-war, zeroed afterwards by Agrippa. Subsequently sired by Vex.
- Koz
- Claims to have "left the city" after the war ended.
- Shi no Tenchi*
- Whether a spy from the beginning or initially loyal to The Ferrymen, she has re-sired under Anders.
- Tiergan
- Proposed a conference touching on war protocol - it flopped. Whether it failed due to his absence or he was absent because it failed, or something else entirely is unknown.
- xxsacrificexx
- While multiple sources claim Sacrifice's displeasure with the city was long-standing, her participation in the war ended with her burial.
- Yurina
- Always has been quiet, but stepped out of war. Rarely seen since.
House of D'dary
It's hard to give individual insights when things have been quite... dead. The House of D'dary has barely been seen, nor heard from since April 30th. The best I can offer is a list of individuals sighted in public, which is as follows:
- Anders
- Ezra
- Gypsy*
- Ildiko
- Kiia
- Liz Summers
- Max
- Orion
- Rhet
- Shi no Tenchi*
- Vex
- Andre sired Tarin before or shortly after the mass suicide
- Orion and Rhet bound
- Vex sired Gypsy
These are, to the best of my ability, statements of fact with as little speculation as possible, but they are far from complete. Of course everyone is privy to the goings on of their respective groups, and so my perspective is limited. What I do see here is a Pyrrhic victory.
I leave you with a quote from a man who articulated my thoughts far more eloquently than I ever could:
"The thing is, you cannot ask people to coexist by having one side bow their heads and rely on a solution that is only good for the other side. What you can do is stop blaming each other and engage in dialogue with one person at a time. Everyone knows that violence begets violence and breeds more hatred. We need to find our way together. I feel I cannot rely on the various spokespersons who claim they act on my behalf. Invariably they have some agenda that doesn't work for me. Instead, I talk to my patients, to my neighbors and colleagues [...] and I find out they feel as I do: we are more similar than we are different, and we are all fed up with the violence."
― Izzeldin Abuelaish