Keep the home fires burning...

It had grown excessively quiet in the back room. The flames had died down to a flickering glow in the hearth. Part of this could be explained by the fact that so many of the clan were busy doing things in their town, county, profession, trade, nation, army, university, church and so on and so forth. But still, it was too quiet in here.

Drac throws another log on the fire, watches the flame slowly spread again.

Another MacTavish Steward!

Hebrin MacTavish has been elected the next Steward of Scotland.

Hebrin is the second MacTavish Steward, following my recent occupation of the position (I stepped down at the natural conclusion of my term). He came in the same way I did, a result of a last minute switcheroo to get him into the Assembly (thanks Barseback for stepping aside for this purpose). The final vote of the Assembly was a very clear majority for Hebrin over the competition (Jefferson Davis Forbes, again).

Asbgas MacTavish has taken the Assembly seat vacated by Hebrin upon his election.

Congratulations Hebrin!

Why I am in Retreat and Other Mysteries

Hello, family!

LadyRobin here, stealing a little space to let you know that even though I'm currently bouncing between 5 minute player and retreat, I'm not going anywhere! I've been swamped with Real Life (school, cancer treatment, illness of parents, etc.) and needed to step back for a bit.

Hopefully, if all goes well, I'll be back in the saddle full time by April. They've changed my chemo and so we are waiting to see how this one works. I have the second round of the latest, mean chemo this Friday, and the first round kicked my butt!

IG, I am on a trip with young Raibeart, hiding from his evil relatives as they come looking to take him away from me. Rage is holding down the fort while we're gone, but I promise we'll be back!

I hope this finds you all well and looking forward to spring/April (not sure if that's spring in Australia, truthfully!)

Your erstwhile relative,
LadyRobin

Steward MacTavish of Scotland

I woke up one morning and found myself Steward of Scotland, a most peculiar experience indeed! It came about as follows.

I was asked by a number of members of the National Assembly to consider taking up one of our Clan's two representative positions within the Assembly so that they could nominate me to become Steward at the end of Korna Fraser's second term. Although I wasn't keen to politik my way to the job, i realised that other people were already doing it. As I tended to trust the people who approached me and we had a vacancy anyway, I put myself forward. In the subsequent poll for Steward, Pebm McKenzie was elected with a majority of one vote over myself. I breathed a sigh of relief.

A short while passed, and then Pebm McKenzie migrated to Ireland upon the formation of the new colony there. Scotland was again without a Steward. This was disappointing and a disconcerting. The Assembly immediately set about chosing a new Steward. I was nominated by one of those who had earlier approached me. There wasn't much opposition. I was elected Steward.

Really really weird, to achieve such an honoured position without saying a word or doing anything but say 'yes'. There must be something right with our system of government that allows one to achieve this without having to argue and stab one's way to the top.

Of course, staying there is another issue ...

Map of the World

For interest's sake, I hijacked this from an unattributed source on the official forums. Click on the image to see it fullsize.

Happy Hogmonay - 1457

May your road rise with you!

Brief note re Clan Armies

There are a number of Clan armies floating around Galloway these days, Forbes and Campbell. Both were last seen in Dumfries area. I believe that the Gunn's formed an ingame army a while back also, somewhere up near Stirling (it disbanded). Other clans are feeling slightly nervous, as the Campbells at least are spouting many threatening words against peace and good order in pursuit of their own agenda.

Under direction of the Steward, the Royal Scottish Army engaged the Campbells in what turned out to be a skirmish at Dumfries. Sadly, the Forbes got in the way and took most of the damage, allowing the Campbells to scurry behind Dumfries town walls before the RSA could hit them again (oh, so brave, those Campbells). Faced with the probability that many innocents would die if the town was stormed, the RSA leadership pulled back and granted a yuletide truce. Of course, the noisier of the Campbells saw this as a sign of weakness, which makes one wonder about what they would have done in the same position...

For awhile, the Campbells were shouting out about MacTavish, Wallace and Fraser - somehow believeing that we were the main force behind the RSA. Ha. I disabused them of that notion as well I could, but took note that they are looking for scapegoats for their own foolish behaviours.

For now, we aren't up to forming a clan army on our own. We are getting closer. Wallace, at least, is in a similar boat to us.

Not all Campbells are part of these troubles, by the way. I feel for those that don't agree with what their egomaniac leadership is doing.

At time of writing a yuletide truce is in place. Come the new year, interesting times indeed....

Response to Sajanzv's Accusations

Since Sajanzv has
chosen to make this issue a very public one, I will try to address as
much of it as I can for everyone's benefit. I also want to quote a
couple of applicable forum rules here for the public's information
and ask that we all abide by them:

Quote:

3. A. Thou shalt not flame,harass, demean, insult or slander your fellow players in public or private view. Flaming is defined as: posting ANY material that is deliberately hostile,insulting, inflammatory, vulgar and or socially charged which is being done for the sole purpose to incite anger and/or debase another's character- the only exception to the flaming rule is in character role play as long as it is not excessive and reaches the level of harassment. Accusations of inflammatory content will be weighed on the basis of both content and any established history between the posters to determine intent. This applies to abusive, obscene and or hateful Private messages as well as the forums Any post or Signature that contains current politics, phrases, and/or terminology such as Internet, AIM, computer, America,Canada etc will be classified as OOC and ANY such OOC flaming will be removed for content. 13. The usage of outside messaging services such as MSN or AIM are optional for Players of the RK and may not be REQUIRED as means of communication to hold any position of the Kingdom either ingame or forum related. Thou shalt not post ANY IM conversations quoted or paraphrased that include ANY REAL LIFE information. Any game related conversations that are posted into the RK forum are subject to the forum laws and will be edited or removed for any violations of forum laws contained therein.

Sajanzv wrote:

I just want to inform the people of Glasgow that I have had enough of all the namecalling, the destruction of intellectual property, and incompetence leading to leakage of information by some people in RK, and therefore I am resigning as Duke of Glasgow. For the last two days, I have been staring at a MSN status message whenever I log into MSN : http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i287/sajanzv/gdad.jpg

What Sajan
neglected to mention is why this message has been staring at him. I
believe this one can be best responded to by the Goblin family, but I
can assure you that this response on Goblindad's part was not
unprovoked. Any decent husband would have risen to his wife's defense
as a result of the RL personal nature of Sajan's attacks upon
Goblinmami.

Sajanzv wrote:

Next, I am tired of all the hypocrisy. Some of you may know there is a site that Erin_of_the_lake once started for the RSA Glasgow when the new version of the RK forums came into place. http://rsaglasgowregiment.makeforumfree.com On November 17th and 18th, Bevin thrashed my name and accused me of quite a few things, and yet on November 16th, Bevin was busy deleting threads in that forum, apparently on Goblinmami's orders. http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i287/sajanzv/Deletions1.jpg

When Sajanzv
resigned from the RSA, he forfeited all rights to that organization's
private forums, onsite and offsite. Because we trusted him, it never
occurred to the offsite administrators to completely remove his
access right away. We were unaware that Sajan was still accessing the
information in that forum until he accessed personal, confidential
information pertaining to our soldiers and began an email campaign to
their private email addresses. Out of concern regarding the illegal
use of this information, a joint decision was made between the
general and the two band leaders who still had mod rights to that
forum. All personal data was cleared and deleted. All other
information was copied and removed from the site. No documents were
destroyed. Yesterday, I received an email sent by Sajan to my
personal email account, not IG. This email was sent to a usergroup
that did not define the addresses in the mail I received. This is a
copy of the mail sent to my soldiers:

Quote:

Vandalism on the site‏ From: sajanzv (sajanzv@gmail.com) You may not know this sender.Mark as safe|Mark as unsafe Sent: Sun 11/23/08 12:16 AM To: ardencapleshields@hotmail.fr The following message is an email sent to you by an administrator of "RSA's Glasgow Regiment". If this message is spam, contains abusive or other comments you find offensive please contact the webmaster of the board at the following address: ardencapleshields@hotmail.fr Include this full email (especially the headers). Message sent to you follows: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So everyone may please note, This site was started by the RL person behind Erin_of_the_lake because of the massive RK forum problems. During my time in the RSA, I was made an admin on the site. I never deleted or edited anyone's posts or deleted anyone's access without informing them. I left the RSA over 2 months ago, and this site was not used much by the RSA since then. Along with Erin, I had compiled and posted a lot of guides for soldiers and armies, along with intel reports regarding criminal organizations and other issues. On November 16th, my account was deleted from this site by Argorian. When I asked him about it today, he said he was only following orders to remove my account because I no longer was in the RSA. This despite there are plenty of people who have access to this site who are no longer in the RSA. I contacted the RL person behind Erin, and she checked and confirmed that only my account was deleted. Not only that, but a lot of threads were deleted by Goblinmami and Bevin on November 16th. The RL person behind Erin reinstated me and removed Argorian's rights as admin. After that, Goblinmami ordered the deletion of the entire forum and this was carried out by Argorian. All that hard work that Erin and I had put into making guides and what not were entirely deleted. Such sheer vandalism all because they do not like a person is unbecoming of people. Therefore, this site is no longer available to the RSA. Considering the fact that the RSA leaders destroyed a lot of important work, they are getting off lightly. Sajan If you need any further information, please contact me ingame or via MSN.

Since there was
no way to know for certain which soldiers received this email, we
sent the following response to all Glasgow RSA members:

Quote:

To Glasgow Regiment, You all may have received a mail recently telling you about the offsite regiment. This post is to make all the soldiers aware this situation and to be able to have the facts of what occured. The mail that was sent to you all states that the General and the Captain of the Regiment destroyed files and information from the off site forum. Let me make it clear that the information that was deleted by myself was the Stats of the Soldiers. The security of this information, the infomation you all trusted to us was of importance. We felt that we could not leave it on a forum that we as your General and Captain had no administration rights to. No vandalism occurred. No files have been destroyed. All pertinent information contained within the offsite forum has been saved. While the offsite forum was a great site, and very useful when the forums were inaccessible to so many in the RSA, it is no longer needed. People were being required to check both the offsite forum and the RK forum, and were being asked to post in both. This was both time consuming to the Soldiers of our regiment. I as General made every effort to insure that all RSA soldiers have access to the RK forums. The message sent to you made assumptions and the person that sent it made no attempt, that I am aware of, to get any confirmation prior to sending out this email. I know that I was never asked. Any questions about this or anything else pertaining to the RSA may be directed to myself or your band leader. Again, let me reiterate that NO FILES were completely DESTROYED as ascerted in this email. Copies were made and stored. The offsite forum was stripped of the information because people who no longer had a right nor a legitimate reason to access personal information about you, the soldiers of the RSA, were continuing to access and using this information. The decision was made as a security measure, not because someone was disliked.

Sajanzv wrote:

Goblinmami then got Argorian to delete my account from that site. http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i287/sajanzv/Accountdeleted.jpg When I asked him why, he said it is because I am no longer in the RSA. Yet I had left the RSA over 2 months ago, the site has not been used in quite a while by the RSA, and I am not the only non-RSA person who has access there. My account was the only one deleted. So I mailed the RL person behind Erin_of_the_lake asking about it. She confirmed mine was the only account deleted. She also confirmed the post deletions. I got her to accept me back as a member and took the screenshots. And Goblinmami, Bevin and Argorian responded by wiping out the entire site, all the threads and posts. Some sample screenshots are : http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i287/sajanzv/Deletions2.jpg http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i287/sajanzv/Deletions3.jpg http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i287/sajanzv/Deletions4.jpg A lot of the guides both Erin and I had made, a lot of the intel reports that Charles, Erin and I had made were all deleted. None of it was RSA material or property, and they had no right to delete any of it. If this had happened on a RK forum, they would have been banned by the admins.

Most of this has
been addressed already. Erin, although the creator of the site, was
no longer a member of the RSA by virtue of her IG death. Therefore,
she had no legal right as a member of the RSA to do any of the things
that Sajan requested of her. The guides are not lost. The intel
reports are not lost. Any material submitted to the RSA becomes the
property of the RSA, just as in RL.

Sajanzv wrote:

I do not spend so much time on RK helping people, making guides, and what not only to have people call me names, destroy my work, and tamper with accounts and forums.

Sajanzv has in the
past been a tremendous help and mentor to new players. His wealth of
information and knowledge about the game has been invaluable to many
of us and we will be forever grateful to him for that. Nothing has
been destroyed. The forum still exists. There simply is no
information in it. Had he not abused his access privileges, we would
have never been forced to take action.

As to the rest of his
accusations, he is certainly entitled to his opinions. I personally
do not wish to fight with him or those who support him. I've had
enough of being wrongly accused and having my own name smeared and my
own reputation drug through the mud by the Duke. The only reason I am
responding at all to this post is to clarify the many questions being
addressed to me by my soldiers and my friends about the issues he has
raised. One question in particular has been asked and that is why is
he doing this, and why are the soldiers being drug into the middle of
what seems to be a personal issue. I'm not sure I can answer that, as
the general and other officers have tried to shield our soldiers from
the worst of his attacks. I apologize to any and all of you who feel
that you have been used or abused by this process. It should have
ended long ago.

Come One, Come All - to the Glen at the Weald

View from the Chief's table

Actually, at time of writing it's a 'view from a node somwhere in glasgow' as I am stuck on a node with about 8 other people as we work out what we're doing. Am learning more and more about travel on this trip, not being a leader and all it has been quite interesting.

RK Scotland seems to have recovered from the forum earthquakes though you still hear the occasional whinge about it. There are still problems in the RSA organising access to appropriate subforums (mainly due to constant changes in the officer ranks rather than the forums per se) so the Regiments have their own offsite forums ticking over.

Speaking of the RSA, MacTavishes are the band leaders of the two largest bands in the three counties - Lanark and Whithorn (Bevin and Hebrin MacTavish, respectively). Rage was a General in Galloway during one of the recent emergencies, also a Captain I believe. I am still on High Command as a Councillor. Rage and Luci are level 3 army way, I believe Aelin is also but we don't hear much from him these days. We do need to keep gaining experience in the military as much as possible so that when we need to form a clan army (not if, but when) we know what we are doing. So keep eating that meat!

In the National Assembly there are lots of words being exchanged between rep's in the public chambers about reforming the institution. All the options I've seen would reduce the power of the clans so I'm not keen on any of them. We'll see how that evolves. In the Council of Clan Chiefs (of which I'm a member) the general feel is that the clans will agree to disagree with any of these regressive changes. If we all hold true to that, should be safe.

Our clan remains fairly stable on 58 living members. Without an influx of new blood, our age profile is aging. Many of us are now level 2, more and more of us are close to level 3. Our clan subforum keeps ticking over fairly regularly, most of us who are active on the forums visit their regularly.

All in all, things are going good for MacTavish. I think we will need to do something big as a clan in the next few months to pull us all together again though, unless the various possibilities for national chaos comes to fruition (eg clan war between macgregor and forbes in galloway, NA strips clan rights away, England border closure turns into active hostilities, rebel army forms).