The churn year after the Federation's fall: SOL, Luna, Terra, the Council of Canyon Kingdoms and Horologium all rose and collapsed within thirteen months, ending with the disbanding of DiamondDeities in January 2020.
No alliance formed in 2019 survived the year intact. Between the Federation's death in November 2018 and the disbanding of DiamondDeities in January 2020, five successive alliances rose to power and collapsed.
SOL and the founding of Luna
SOL was created in the chaos after the Federation's fall in late 2018[1][2]. Its roster was never published; its members appear to have been DiamondDeities, Achte Shadow, Wrath Of Poseidon, Beyond the Scene, Spectral Cabbage and, later, Ecliptic Awakening[3]. It became the power that Luna was explicitly formed to counter on 14 February 2019, by Imperial, Emorians, Blacklisted, BuildCraftia and others[4]. Kingdom Foxes was not a Luna founder — Luna was at war with Fox from its second day, a war fought across 300+ territories in which Imperial alone attacked Fox 660 times[5]. By 3 March 2019 the front-runners were Imperial with 85 territories and Emorians with 61[6]. The war ended when Fox joined Luna on 8 July 2019, the day after the Treaty of Ternaves (signed by Fox, The Simple Ones and ThisIsMurica, splitting the territory of the dissolved Celestial Tigers); the earlier Treaty of Rodoroc (effective 2 March 2019) had already made peace between Fox and DiamondDeities[4]. SOL itself appears to have dissolved by mid-2019 as Luna consolidated.
Luna's map — and Luna's fall
After fending off an attack on Kingdom Foxes, Luna wiped every guild but Avicia; Avicia joined on 17 July 2019 and Luna held the entire map[4]. Six weeks later it tore itself apart: on 29 August 2019, after a leadership dispute, Emorians and Avicia left and declared war on Imperial, ThisIsMurica was kicked the next day for sending fighters, and Terra formed in the chaos on 30 August. The war for the map ran 7–19 September — over 2,000 exchanges across 322 territories in ten days[7]. The Simple Ones defected to Terra on 8 September and Terra took map control the same day; Kingdom Foxes left on the 18th and Luna collapsed[4].
A participant's account
The fullest narrative of the year's politics is a memoir chapter, "Recent Wynncraft Guild History", written by Arkada — Leonhart_Arkada, an Aedile of Titans Valor[8] — and published on 14 September 2019, while the fighting was still going on[9]. Written from the Terra side, it compresses the chronology in places; it is the only near-contemporaneous account of the war's politics, the sole witness for some events, and several of its details are corroborated by the map data.
Arkada frames Luna not as a new alliance but as a renamed old one: "The Valkyrie alliance, consisting of Kingdom Foxes, Imperial, Paladins United, and Emorians" crushed a summer raid on Kingdom Foxes, invaded every opposing alliance's land in under two days, and thereafter appears as "the Valkyrie alliance, now calling themselves the Luna alliance"[9]. He attributes the raid's failure to Valkyrie's "controversial use of sub guilds", which let main-guild members defend land faster. Blacklisted and BuildCraftia defected to the winning side, then Avicia and The Simple Ones[9].
The revolt that broke Luna had a political mechanism: the Emorians left "frustrated with the actions of other prominent guilds", and Luna then "seized all of its lands" — "a large mistake", in Arkada's judgement, because it made the Emorians sympathetic to the resistance. Terra was a merger of several small anti-Luna alliances — his own guild had been fighting in one called The Ascendancy — that assembled "nearly 15 guilds" for the weekend raid on Imperial and wiped every Luna guild but Kingdom Foxes in about six hours. On 14 September 2019 Luna mounted a counter-raid, forewarned by a spy, which Terra repelled: "Luna could not progress, and we considered their raid a failure."[9]
Victors without peace
Terra's core founded the Council of Canyon Kingdoms on 15 September 2019 — Kingdom Foxes, DiamondDeities, Titans Valor, The Simple Ones, Fantasy, Phantom Hearts and Empire of Sindria[4]. On 30 October, Imperial, Paladins United and Caeruleum Order founded Artemis. Terra fell on 2 November, seven weeks after its victory, its fragments launching one last raid on the newborn Artemis on 10 November[1]. The Council collapsed on 23 November when The Ascendancy bloc departed. On 1 December, DiamondDeities, Titans Valor and The Simple Ones formed Horologium[4] — the year's last alliance.
The end of the churn
On 8 January 2020, Nitrogen2Oxygen disbanded DiamondDeities, taking Horologium down with it; most remaining members regrouped as Lux Nova the next day[4]. Of the year's combatants only Artemis remained standing — the map-holder of the coming Artemis–Goose era.
References
- ^ A Very Never Ending Guild Timeline! original
- ^ The Federation (?) original
- ^ territory_exchanges — the territory capture log original
- ^ Chronicle alliance and event records (TAq database)derived original
- ^ territory_exchanges — the territory capture log original
- ^ Pre-2018 territory snapshots (recovered leaderboard captures) original
- ^ territory_exchanges — the territory capture log original
- ^ An Argument Against The Current Monopoly On Territory original
- ^ Inside Myself - Recent Wynncraft Guild History - Wattpadretrospective original