Tech: The real Otago Incident & Saint Kilta, wannabe colonial power

Beware of the Flaming T!

Beware of the Flaming T!

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Our omniscient and very appreciated APM (hey, Mike!) suggested that this post explaining the real story behind the Otago Incident and the rise and fall of the original St. Kilta and its brief colonial empire be enshrined in the wiki for our general amusement. So, here it is, a snippet of the Vex almost at the beginning of it all.

Hans wrote: Esto was, sadly, a convenient villain for some very unsavoury characters out of STK's past.

Winfried replies: Tell me more!

It's a story I was thinking about since... well, it was one of the reasons I asked for St. Kilta in that round of Vex imperialism so many years ago.

I was one of the "victims" of the real Otago incident, where Phillip Abbey actually tried to swindle Edward and the rest of the players by making up an alternate map of Melania with redrawn borders and coastline to make Otéagu humongous; somehow I downloaded that map, put a whole string of cities up and down the coastline, only to be told by then Assistant Planetmaster Max that the actual map of Melania included a much less interesting coastline, and that the French/Portuguese Big Neutral Hippie Alliance (aka Mauretanie, Africablue [Afrazure], WWWW, Thistland) would take it personally – which they did; I had to reassure them as a player that I was not an ugly imperialist like Phillip, because they made a lot of complaints to Edward about letting in such barbarians into the game. This all happened in 1998/1999.

Phillip's original swindle: the diagonally striped aread shows "Greater Welfenia", the yellow line (extending up to Hwitian!) was the "border, I suppose, and the hanging... thingy was his idea of making land out of the sea

Another projection, this time from Ferrata, showing greater Welfenia

Another of Phillip's trick maps, showing another border for his Otago colony

The first tricked map, which I downloaded

The Nova Vex part of the tricked map, with another version of STK without the hanging wang (not Chung)

The final tricked map, apparently "signed" by Edward and Kjell-Roll (ARM's original owner). Observe that the whole of Greater Welfenia is now included and the much-diminished Hanging Wang

The real official map, with the uninteresting coastline and the straight border with WWWW

So was the state of the Vex at that time, and the ideological investment these guys had led to them buying a license from Edward, creating a whole new ImagiNations world called Alliance, a ringworld out of Larry Niven scifi, and doing something totally different... except for the EXACT RECREATION OF NORTHERN MELANIA AS IT WAS IN 297. But that's a story for another post.

Tantrumland: the faithful recreation of northern Melania, Maritimia, eastern Nuarmia/Nwangwe and southern Longerath made by the hippies after they cried and took their ball home with them

It gets better! We have the old LC, Dignania, Davenport, even Phenixia, all with the original Vexillium font instead of the thinner new Alliance one!

Ol' Phillip left me a tangle of diplomatic problems to solve (much writing, much kowtowing, much asking pretty please may I trade with you again?), an absolute refusal to share any info on his former colony, and a sense of unfairness. So I worked a large portion of post-colonial resentment into the Otéagu/TDCorp origin story, thinking that STK would be taken over or played further. Of course that didn't happen, and when the chance came, I jumped at the opportunity to do a "You cut us adrift, now the monster you created will come back and eat you up" kind of thing.

Sorry for giving you another mound of text; I can be quite nerdy when I go into details.