I think this situation has escalated much further than was necessary. Violence and insults were resorted to much more quickly than they probably should have been, by both sides. I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but I think several misconceptions and/or miscommunications stoke this terrible hate-furnace we are just now resolving.
First, I'll have it be known that I don't condone Princess's insulting. He has a quick mouth, but is a good villager and generally harmless, so I'm sorry he caused such a stir.
Now, for the sake of clearing our names, your names, and the situation in general, I'll just quickly go over my understanding of things, and how they came to bear such a ruckus.
A day or two ago, Princess' characters were partied with me. One of them was overseeing the smelting of iron ore (expounded upon below) and the other was fishing and foraging in an area we now realize was around one minimap northeast of Melsonia. Neither he nor I knew this at the time, as he had arrived there by taking the long route, (circumnavigating our own island, and thus approaching the fishing spot (
http://algeralith.info/HavenMap/?x=-12. ... .04&zoom=9) from the east rather than the southwest. I can verify this to be the case as he mentioned to me over Skype the the curiosity that was the circular hemp fields which he passed en route (
http://algeralith.info/HavenMap/?x=-5.46&y=83.64&zoom=9).
Anyway, he switched over to the character at the smelter to replace the ore. He may or may not have also been reading an article online. Foolish, perhaps, but that is besides the point. When he returned to the fisherman, he had been killed.
He inherited his character, and I took him out in a boat so he could show me where he died, and I could check for scents. Arriving at the scene, I found no scents and no traces of the (as has since been revealed to me) drowned fisherman. Moments later, we spotted someone lingering nearby. We assumed he was the killer, so when he landed and ran into the woods, we picked up his boat to replace the one we had lost. It had nothing in it.
Perhaps taking the boat was a poor move on our part, but it was not on any sort of property, and we assumed it to in fact be our own, re-appropriated from some unidentified murderer.
Fast forward to today. I arrive at my mine, around which a herd of mouflon had gathered. The door is blocked by a runestone, which read(s) something along the lines of "Don't you ever come to my walls with a bow and steal my boat again, or this wall comes down". I don't recall the exact text, but it was along those lines.
I found this bewildering. Nobody in my compound uses a bow, nor had we, to my knowledge, approached anyone's walls. We had taken a boat recently, but again, we assumed it was ours to begin with.
We figured that it may have been someone from Melsonia who left the message, as they are our only real significant neighbors and we had just recently developed some unwanted tension. Princess, taking matters into his own hands, headed up to the Gulag to ask if it was them, and attest to our innocence if so.
Here is where my information gets a bit fuzzy. I didn't witness the exchange between Princess and whoever at the Gulag it was he was talking to, but he recounted his side over Skype as it, ostensibly, transpired. Moments before Princess made contact, I initiated a conversation with Trogdor, who had just logged in. Our own conversation quickly shifted to Trogdor advising me to advise Princess to either log out or leave, but apparently Princess was already in combat, or something.
Since I don't know exactly what happened, I'll detail the two stories I am aware of, as I understood them:
Princess states:
-He approached the Gulag and asked "Hey, are you the one who left that runestone?"
-Asks Princess's character if he is friends with Urgot (I don't know who this is)
-Character relogs, apparently having lagged out
-Princess says he is from a settlement to the south, and the person seems to recognize me (Feuryn)
-Melsonian* asks if Princess's character was the person who was harassing their members 'just out of range' with a bow and bear cape. (The fisherman was wearing a leather cloak and boar tusk helmet, and wielding a fishing rod and bone saw)
-They disagree, Melsonian continues accusations and Princess continues denials. Supposedly, Melsonian calls him an idiot, he responds in turn.
-Conversation cools down, and requests for 'amends' are made. Princess requests '500k LP': the amount he had lost. Melsonian agrees and says 'we can do that, hang tight' and 'chill', as Princess moves to return to his boat.
-A short time later (recounted to me as "15 seconds later") someone arrives in a boat, yells "AH CHAOS DIE HONKY", engages contact, and chases Princess back to my mine
-During the chase, Princess flung various insults back at his pursuers, and more later from behind the gate
*I have referred to the interlocutor in the Gulag as 'Melsonian'. I understand he may or may not have been a proper villager, but I know not who exactly it was, and have called him 'Melsonian' for ease of explanation.
Important differences from "Melsonia states:" (and I apologize for the unequal detail, but naturally I have heard more from Princess than from yourselves. Feel free to chime in with anything I may be forgetting)
-Some time yesterday, they killed, by drowning, someone with a bear cape and bow who had been harassing members as he afked in a boat.
-Princess' character arrives at the Gulag and denies his involvement, and begins slinging insults.
-A boat was stolen off Melsonian property, and a scent was followed to the boat, which sat outside the mine walls.
-The stolen boat contained boxes of boar and bear meat, and other such things when it was stolen and subsequently recovered.
So, there we have it. Some things, such as the stolen boat, I cannot understand. We had taken a boat, but as I said, it was off property, and empty (and was, in our eyes at least, justified), and we never leave our boats sitting outside palisade walls. Furthermore, the mine contains no hearths, and its only real resident is a mine alt who rarely, if ever, leaves.
Other things, however, are reasonable misunderstandings. I suppose, from afar, the fisherman's fishing rod, bonesaw, helmet and cloak could be construed as a bow and bear cape. Perhaps your not-quite citizen was simply a bit overzealous in his desire to prove himself and demonstrate his faith and prowess. Princess was, likewise, was understandably upset at not only the loss of his character, but for continued accusations of thief, liar, and raider, and lack of ability to explain his situation. He did, however, run his mouth a bit more colourfully and for longer than was perhaps tasteful (despite his perceived threat to his life, and further loss of three characters, but on the other hand, in light of his recent forum rant, which I agree was unnecessary).
Now, I feel that having gone on for so long, I should be drawing some sort of profound conclusion. Really though, I'm rather tired, and I have other, non HnH-related duties I must soon attend to. So I'll just say a few last things:
I fully understand your concerns for the safety and security of your village, and I respect those concerns. However, given our previous interactions, I would also hope you might reciprocate some of that understanding. We all fully realize that, as it stands, you could easily squash us, as you demonstrated today, and we are grateful you have, for the most part, allowed us to settle where we have (we were not aware of your relative proximity when we did so, by the way). I just hope that, in the future, you might try and settle these issues without immediate violence, as such responses tend to simply escalate the issue. I'm not terribly difficult to contact, and I'm always happy to talk issues over before things need to come to blows.
by sexy_princess » Thu Feb 16, 2012 10:14 am 
