Wagner War

Wagner War (image) (caption) Date December 13th, 2023 to March 31st, 2024 Location North America, mostly Cascadia Result Cascadian Victory; Inconclusive De Facto Status Territorial changes Reorganization of Several Cascadian Towns, Loss of Seaside, Overclaiming of San Francisco, 1 Chunk of Chaeronea Overclaimed Belligerents Wagner: - Chad - Texas - Rocky Mountain Federation - Tasmania - Restored Republic of Cascadia - Prairies - New Mexico - Russian Federation Cascadia Commanders and leaders Strength Casualties and losses

Writer's Note: this is still a WIP, I'll get the necessary format down soon.

The Wagner War was a conflict from December 13th, 2023 to March 2024 between Cascadia and multiple groups and nations under the coalition of Wagner Group. The war came about through the Osoyoos secession just a couple months before, rising tensions between Cascadia and Texas, and most of all, the upcoming update of Overclaim to be released on the advent of the new year. Most of the fighting happened through fighting over territory mainly through the new Overclaim update, and through PR, with Wagner Group in particular attempting to sway international opinion against Cascadia. It was a purely defensive war for Cascadia, with most of their actions being protecting their claims and towns from upcoming Overclaim operations by Wagner Group. By the time Overclaim had been added on New Year's Day, Cascadian leaders had already prepared the vast majority of their vulnerable towns for the upcoming update. As a result, the only territorial losses Cascadia received were the territorial atrophy of some towns, a section of what is now Astoria, and a single chunk of Chaeronea that had been overclaimed by Wagner Group. The conflict is widely considered to be the predecessor to the Great American War, of which had similar belligerents on the Texan side.

Background and Prelude to War

Cascadia-Texas Tensions

Throughout the year of 2023, relations between Cascadia and Texas were always very cold, as Texas had previously worked against Cascadia. North_Paso, Texas's King at the time, was a major participant in the Battle of Oceanside, having been the one who owned and claimed the land for the Anti-Cascadia side. Texas also attempted a covert operation in April 2023 to get an entire group within Cascadia, the Frontier, to secede from Cascadia, though this was a failure. North_Paso was already well known for spreading rumors now proven to be false about pedophilia within Cascadia's ranks, and used it for the rise of Chad and other Anti-Cascadian nations to supply them with ammo for the smear campaign to come.

On the contrary, in November 2023, a nation-hopper named Hersheylr arrived in Texas, having previously spending time in Cascadia and contributing to the end of the RMF Wars. While in Texas, Hershey obtained perms to the Texan capital of Houston, and severely damaged the Texan capitol in a terrorist attack. Houston lost considerable materials in the looting of this attack. Sparked by this event alongside the aforementioned, Texas joined the war on Cascadia and Wagner Group on December 18th, 2023. Through this, they also had propped up a puppet state the day before they declared war, the Restored Republic of Cascadia, out of the nation of Oregon led by Bon_Kranch, in order to fight Cascadia at their home turf and attempt to poach Cascadian towns to their cause.

The Osoyoos Secession to Chad

In August 2023, a political faction known commonly as Osoyoos, named after the town it originally resided from, was formed. It was mainly taken up by people of a friend group who had come to Cascadia on July 3rd, 2023, when the town of Osoyoos was founded. The group was hyper-nationalistic, imperialist, jingoist, and their ideology is often considered to be the Minecraft equivalent to Fascism. This was in major contrast to the rest of Cascadia, who generally did not have these traits ideologically. As a result, conflict would eventually spring, becoming extremely tense after the September 2023 elections. Eventually, they seceded in response to a tie during the revealing of the results of the October elections, between incumbent president EmpressCorgo and the Osoyoos-backed candidate Flatvent_One, who was also one of the leaders of the movement. They then migrated to central Africa and made the nation of Chad. Their secession was bitter, so they were immediately very cold with Cascadia. Chad grew very quickly and even overtook Cascadia in population for a brief period at the beginning of the war. Chad eventually formed the Wagner Group with originally the nations of New Mexico and Prairies, and subsequently declared war on Cascadia on December 13th, 2023, starting the Wagner War.

Overclaim

Overclaim had been proposed throughout the year of 2023 by the EarthMC staff team, and despite major disapproval among the playerbase, they eventually announced that it would be implemented as soon as New Year's Day started in Central European Time. This brought panic to many of those across EarthMC who had built up their towns and metropolitan areas before Overclaim had even been thought of, Cascadia being a major one due to their large amount of enemies at the time and amount of towns that would be vulnerable to the update. At the same time, this gave a unique opportunity to the numerous enemies of Cascadia, who realized that this could be a way to gut Cascadia's major towns entirely. This would be the reason Wagner Group originally started the war, wanting to seize this opportunity to get revenge on Cascadia for multiple grievances, though officially the reasoning was Cascadia's supposed eastward expansion. The Cascadian government had long recognized the threat of Overclaim, however their operation to protect their towns from it, REDACTED, was very sluggish in the buildup to the war itself, prioritizing other goals first, such as recouping from the activity loss caused by the Osoyoos Secession.

The Course of War

The war started via declaration by Wagner Group, of which was formed specifically to fight Cascadia between the nations of Chad, New Mexico, and Prairies. It was formed on December 13th, 2023, immediately declaring war on Cascadia at 5:13 PM ET, starting the Wagner War. Other nations would join the war, including the Texas-backed Restored Republic of Cascadia on the 17th, and the nation of Somalia led by 8set, reformed into the spiritual successor of the Rocky Mountain Federation, which 8set led during it's original incarnation also declared war on Cascadia on the 17th. They were followed by Texas on the 18th, in which North_Paso drafted a lengthy statement likening several prominent Cascadians to the Seven Deadly Sins and referring to Cascadia as "The most morally bankrupt nation on the server", in the now infamous "The Deadly Sins Speech". On the 20th, Tasmania joined the War under RealLimpopo, who had previously stolen Cascadia's bank through a botched buyout of the Rocky Mountain Federation. On the same day, the nation of Siberia condemned Cascadia, however they did not officially join the war. On the 22nd, Wagner group was formed again as an even tighter alliance, officially listing it's members as Chad, Tasmania, Rocky Mountain Federation, and the Restored Republic of Cascadia, formerly Oregon. It is not known why the original members of Prairies and New Mexico were not included in the announcement, and it is also not known why Wagner Group was formed twice. Finally on the 27th, the nation of Russian Federation joined the war indirectly by joining Wagner Group, being the last to join the war on the side against Cascadia. Throughout all of these, the goal of all nations who joined the war was to kill Cascadia entirely.

Buildup to Judgement Day

The climax to the war was on New Year's Day, or Judgement Day, with tensity and escalation occurring throughout the weeks before. Most of the fighting during this period was composed of a smear campaign, and the occasional scuffle in public chats, as Overclaim had not been added yet. BonZZil_ was unbanned during this time, who would go on to become a major enemy of Cascadia until his eventual reban during the Great American War.

On the Cascadian side, most of their actions composed of preparing their territory for Overclaim, now going significantly quicker through the process due to the war declaration. [Writer's Note: The rest of this paragraph is technically classified information despite it all happening a year and a half ago, I will go through the larp bullshit necessary to get it declassified]

On the Wagner side, they were primarily focused on preparing for a campaign to overclaim Cascadia, planting Overclaim towns near vulnerable Cascadian towns and preparing existing invader towns such as Bakhmut to overclaim neighboring Cascadian towns. This is where one of the only two territorial successes on the side of Wagner happened, in which 8set sniped the town of Seaside, a section of what is now Astoria, which conveniently bordered the Cascadian capital of Olympia. Alongside this, they also lashed out with a massive smear campaign, accusing Cascadia, usually falsely[Writer's Note: This article does portray the smear campaign as organized through it's naming, but it was actually quite informal and unorganized.]. This was through a few fronts, one being accusing Cascadia of being a dictatorship, citing the October 2023 elections, in which they claimed SayerQT rigged it against Flatvent_One, though this was unfounded. Another was through accusing Cascadia of being a "scam nation" or "nation of scammers", citing primarily the Hanse Library Robbery, which had been committed by Cascadians. However though, the government had not been involved in the operation, and actively went through the efforts of getting as much of the stolen items back as they could. A last one was accusing Cascadia of being a pedophile ring, using the aforementioned rumors from North_Paso, later proven to be false. All three of these were used with mild to moderate success of temporarily damaging Cascadia's reputation on the world stage.

There was an incident at the Cascadian Capitol on December 21st, where several Wagner members entered the building and claimed that they took it over, even attempting to get the event on TBI. However, then Cascadian President and architect of said building at the time, Setrus, simply closed the entrance behind them while they were inside and effectively trapped them.

One other event that happened before Judgement day was the Anti-Cascadia League incident. The former was an incident occurring between EmpressCorgo, the Treasurer at the time, and CDDragon4784, the leader of the USSR and of the United Front, an alliance Cascadia was apart of. In it, EmpressCorgo joked in a public Cascadian discord channel about starting an Anti-Cascadia group to get donations from those who opposed the nation, scamming them. CDDragon4784 created a discord server known as the "Anti-Cascadia League", also in a joking matter. In response, North_Paso of Texas acted as if it were serious, and released a statement condemning Cascadia for supposedly conspiring to scam, and even confusingly declared war on the Anti-Cascadia League.

Judgement Day

By this point, Cascadia's leaders were tense, although they had thankfully prepared most of their most vulnerable towns just in time for the update. The one major exception to this however was the town of Chaeronea, which was the main town where the Frontier originated, a friend group within Cascadia whom Chad's leaders particularly hated. As a result, they were the only town to be targeted in the Overclaim operation on Judgement Day, though there may have been plans to target the Capital town of Olympia and it's surroundings[Writer's Note: Unconfirmed, I just assumed they would have logically speaking.].

New Year's came to Fix's timezone at approximately 6:00 PM ET, however Overclaim would not be implemented for several hours. Eventually, at 1:11:55 AM, on New Year's Day, the staff team shuts down the server to implement the update, with CorruptedGreed testing it out on a neighboring town all the way in Europe while the server was down, becoming the first usage of the new tool.

30 minutes later, the server comes back online with Overclaim enabled at 1:41:38 AM. Immediately, Wagner members 8set, Karn4 and others come online with the town "The_BUFF", positioned against Chaeronea under the nation of Prairies. Unfortunately though, the then mayor of Charonea 3llies came online and enabled Overclaim Shield in the town in the nick of time, leading to Wagner only being able to overclaim a single chunk of the town. The chunk they had overclaimed was actually part of a house with tens of thousands of gold in valuables, however the vast majority of this was evacuated by WrestlingWithGod prior to these events, and Wagner was only able to acquire a very small fraction of the value stored in the house. After another temporary shutdown of the server between 1:47:56 AM and 1:52:29 AM, the rest of the night would be relatively uneventful, as Wagner was unable to attack any more Cascadian towns with Overclaim. Overall, contrary to Wagner's estimations and the worst fears of Cascadian leadership, very little actually happened and the attacks on Cascadia that night were minimal at best. Had 3llies not come online and enabled Overclaim shield in the nick of time though, it is likely that Wagner would have ravaged the town, alongside Montana's capital, a nation that the Frontier collectively owned to be a nation shop.

Events After Judgement Day

Chaeronea was the last vulnerable town in Cascadia, and the town only had enough gold in it's bank for two days of Overclaim Shield. WrestlingWithGod, who was a former mayor of the town, put extra gold in the town bank in order to expand the shield's lifespan while they thought of a plan. Due to the fact that chunk refunds had been removed with the official update of Overclaim, town splitting was prohibitively expense, leading to Cascadia deciding to simply downsize the town from it's original 360 chunks to just a third of that.

One incident that occured during and after Judgement Day consisted of North_Paso founding an organization of the name "International Court of Justice" on December 30th, likely to be a competitor to the United Front's organization of the same name, an alliance that Cascadia was a part of and close with. North_Paso's ICJ likely died out immediately, as no record can be found on it outside of the announcement of it's establishment. Wagner members decided to instead infiltrate the existing United Front ICJ, leading to 8set becoming a judge. Then, on Judgement Day itself, Wagner opened a trial against Cascadia for supposed sexual grooming, likely citing the aforementioned false rumors provided by Paso. Cascadia, not being a signatory of the United Front ICJ specifically, refused to take up the trial for reasons that should be obvious. Not long after this incident, the United Front pulled out of the ICJ on January 4th, which made the entire organization effectively defunct.[Writer's note: Yes, Wagner members really did attempt to try someone for sexual crimes on a fucking block game court, I'm not making this up, and personally, I still can't wrap my head around it to this day.]

Afterwards, not much action occurred between Cascadia and Wagner, with most events simply just being a continuation of Wagner's smear campaign. Although this too would fade for the most part by the end of January, as Wagner's members gradually became less active and onlookers from neutral nations found the smearing to be increasingly more annoying and obsessive. The last action of the war occured in March through the San Francisco Offensive of 2024, where towns surrounding the town of San Francisco, part of the Restored Republic of Cascadia, overclaimed the town partially. This caused it's mayor, Unbated, to go inactive on the server and leave the town to NFISH2021, who would join the North Sea Republic through San Francisco's ingame nation of Norcal. The NSR would collapse several months later, and to this day San Francisco and Norcal remains in the hands of NFISH, independent.

End of War & Aftermath

The end of the Wagner War was never official, and it only "ended" because Wagner Group eventually fizzled out and stopped their offensive after Judgement Day. As a result, the San Francisco Offensive of 2024 is generally considered the end of the war, as it was the last significant action committed by any belligerent during the war. The end of the war could be compared to the end of Korean War in the real world, as it never had an official end, and neither South or North Korea made an official peace treaty.

It is generally considered to be a victory to the Cascadian side of the conflict, as while their reputation was damaged temporarily and the town of Seaside was lost, these losses proved to be temporary, particularly as Seaside was regained in the interwar period between the Wagner War and the Great American War. Alongside this, the territorial losses for Cascadia could have been severely worse, or even fatal if [REDACTED] was not successful at protecting vulnerable towns, most of which being in the central Metropolitan area. The preparations they made for their towns were permanent too. As a result, the war theoretically made Cascadia more proactive about it's territorial security, preventing another similar crisis in the future.

For the other side, the war was an overall defeat, as their gains against Cascadia were both minimal and temporary, especially compared to their goals at the start of the war. All of the Wagner member nations with the exclusion of Texas and the Russian Federation became inactive by the end of the war, however some of the leaders of said defunct nations would consolidate in Texas and go on to fight in the Great American War, including Karn4 of Chad and Bon_Kranch of Restored Cascadia. Texas would increase in activity significantly after the war, eventually becoming one of the strongest powers in North America, and they would begin fighting Cascadia again just a couple of months later in the Great American War, which would become a much bigger war than it's predecessor.