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by August. . 1,570 reads.

Augustin Alliance: The Greatest Test

Last updated on Monday August 14th, 2017. If you find this dispatch helpful, please upvote.


| AUGUSTIN ALLIANCE | FOREIGN RELATIONS | MEMBER REGIONS | MILITARY | STATISTICS || CAPE OF GOOD HOPE | CONCH KINGDOM | LAND'S END | NARNIA | RIDGEFIELD |

AUTHOR: August
LAST UPDATED: Monday 081417, 2220 EDT
FORUM POST: viewtopic.php?p=32336238#p32336238

Last night, following a private discussion between Founder August and other Alliance staff, the decision was made to close down the Augustin Alliance as an organization for an indefinite period. The news broke first in the AA Discord server, to responses of surprise and disappointment. Included in the statement were the Joint Task Force, which was disbanded immediately, and the server itself, which was archived and hidden except for its #general channel. Each of the five constituent regions are expected to continue their operations as normal, and no significant changes in government are anticipated at this time. The AA leadership expresses its regret at the abruptness and negative impact of this event, but maintains that it is ultimately in the best interests of all those involved.


The above is the final official statement of the organization. The following are my personal remarks.

First of all, I wrote a few versions of this announcement. It has been difficult to express everything in a way that is concise, professional, and complete. I hope this clears up any remaining confusion people may have.

The general idea is that ever since the first region was founded in January of last year, I have been doing the vast majority of the work to keep everything running. Not all of it, mind you--over these nineteen months, we have had a couple fairly dedicated officials helping to move things along. However, those have been few and far between, and the effort required to maintain an organization of this size and complexity is immense. I keep my personal NS to-do list in Evernote, and it stretches off the page. It grows faster than I can check off the boxes. We have one of the largest update military organizations on the field, where I am the only active officer. We have one of the most active Discord servers in the game, with hundreds of users, and only a couple consistently active staff (including myself). We have contests, military operations, political transitions, and all manner of events that should go in news stories, and I am the only one who writes them. We have nearly fifty official dispatches to maintain, and I run almost all of them. We have huge projects to complete, some of which have not been announced yet, and I am the only one working on them. The list goes on and on, but I fear I am going overboard already.

Surprisingly, this is a sustainable state of affairs. I could continue like this if I had to, but should I?

I am a full-time engineer at a small firm. I also resume classes shortly--eight of them at a time. I have an additional part-time job during the school year. All the normal adult obligations of housing, food, bills, etc, are still present. Every day it becomes harder to justify the hours spent prodding and cajoling a group of melodramatic teenagers on the internet to contribute to the community they call home. As of last night, I no longer believe that task to be worth my limited time.

Now, the AA is in hibernation, not permanently dead, hence the use of "intermission" rather than "the end." That means no further updates will be made to this thread or my dispatches, the JTF will stop updating, the server has been archived, etc. Everything still exists and will be reused if/when the AA returns, but is completely off-limits until that time.

As for the regions, they still exist. Their governments still exist. Their residents are still present. This, right here, is the crux of the whole thing: the AA was never intended to be the most important of my creations. It was just a banner, an umbrella term for the five regions, which were supposed to be entirely self-sufficient and independent. A solid, strong community is not defined by its name, but by its people, and nothing I did should have affected that principle.

Today, the individual regions have a chance to prove themselves without me. They have everything they need and more: the structure, the knowledge, the community. This will be the greatest test ever faced by the regions of the Augustin Alliance... until they meet again.

If you have any questions about the decision or the AA itself, please ask. I will also consider declassifying AA documents, logs, or other internal matters on a case-by-case basis*.

*With justification. Military secrets are off the table. JTF opsec is still Fort Knox.

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Created by August. Do not reproduce, in whole or in part, without explicit permission.

August

Edited:

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