What I hope to achieve in posting this is to provide both sides of a story and how the decision that was made came to be.
What I also hope to accomplish here is for people to understand that my job (and any of the sackholder jobs) are to enforce rules and to separate the actions from the person. This means if someone screws up badly enough, they get punished/kicked, but the sacks still treat said person as a human being.
Obsidian has had a long standing rule since it's inception in 2005. The rule states:
The rules of Obsidian state that you are not permitted to be in another Dynamis LS while you are a member of Obsidian. There is only one exception to this. That exception is helping a non-Obsidian member obtain an attestation or a fragment.
Be sure to ask a sackholder for permission before taking another Dynamis pearl to make sure there is no miscommunication. Anyone caught in another Dynamis linkshell without a pearlsack's consent will face severe restrictions, if not outright banishment from Obsidian.
If you happen to obtain a piece of AF2 in the run that you attend, an amount equal to the average Obsidian cost (at that time) for that item will be subtracted from your points. If you have less points than required, your points will be reset to 0. Anyone found to be abusing this rule will be kicked from Obsidian.
Yes, a little archaic and yes, it doesn't say Einherjar specifically. The spirit of the rule is what matters here. Damn near every linkshell is going to have a rule similar to this in regards to their events. No one likes it when someone double dips. The spirit of this rule is we don't want you trying to circumvent the systems we put into place to get ahead of others. We don't literally mean "you can't be in another shell that does dynamis". We simply mean "if you do dynamis (or einherjar) with us, you can't do it with anyone else (with very few exceptions)."
This is easily the most serious offense someone can pull in Obsidian. When we see someone break this rule (or even attempt to), we just ban. We feel this is something your average player should be familiar with and because it's such a widespread rule, it's comparable to understanding something as simple as stealing. Most people understand what that is and that it is wrong. (That's not saying stealing occurred here. It is saying that the vast majority of society understands it's wrong.)
Which brings me to the primary subject of this post.
Normally, I look at the signups for Einherjar on a daily basis. Primarily to see the length of the waiting list. A few days before the Nov. 3rd run, I had noticed Iceblazek's name on the roster. I didn't think much of it as I had recently reactivated his account in Obsidian for Dynamis. When Nov. 3rd got here and I made parties, I sent a tell to Omoi to make sure she reminded Ced and Ice about the start time for the run. I do this the first few times I see new people on the roster because it's inevitable that someone will sign up and forget they signed up to a new event.
The reply I got from Omoi set off some warning bells related to the aforementioned rule.
Apparently Ice had announced his intentions over Vent in regards to Einherjar a couple days prior. His stated intentions were to get his tier clears with Obsidian and to do Odins with BBQ.
Mistake #1: Ice trying to double dip.
For those of you that don't know, Omoi is a sackholder on the Einherjar side of Obsidian. Ice's intentions irritated me. Omoi not saying something sooner irritated me as well, although I could understand why she didn't since she had just come back from a 2 week+ vacation. What I'm getting at is that this could have been stopped earlier before I had him in the party lists and forced us to essentially cockblock someone at the door. It wasn't just Omoi that heard it. There were others on vent as well that probably could have pointed out "Hey...you should probably talk to one of the sacks about it before you try that". Was it their responsibility to do so? Not really, no, but I'm just saying they probably could have.
At this point, there's one of two scenarios that play out:
1. I deal with Ice myself and ultimately make Omoi look like a rat right from the getgo.
2. Omoi deals with Ice (since she was the one that actually heard the stated intentions themselves) and then just reports to me what happened.
Wait, both scenarios make Omoi look like a rat.
No, actually both scenarios make Omoi look like she's fulfilling the responsibilities she accepted when she became a sackholder in Obsidian.
Doing what's right sometimes involves taking a hit to your cyber-street cred.
Ok, so now we're at a point where Ice has been told he either commits to Obsidian entirely or he's not doing Einherjar. Ice opts for the latter explaining he thought it was all right since it's apparently common practice for linkshells to consistently share members for their Einherjar runs.
(It is? News to me.)
Mistake #2: Assuming the rules of other linkshells apply to the rules of Obsidian.
How the decision to ban him was made:
When something of this nature occurs, the sacks are to report it to the other sacks. I did this. The response from the other sackholders was swift and to the point.
Ban.
Just to illustrate how fast this took place. I can put up a poll asking a simple yes or no question and it might take 2 weeks or more for all 11 sacks to actually vote in it. There was no poll posted in regards to Ice, I simply wanted to know if I was over-reacting by getting as irritated as I did.
Responses from all 11 sacks happened within 24 hours. Unanimous decision.
Some of the points made by sacks in regards to banning him:
- Between May 2006 and March 2009, Ice attended 130+ dynamis runs with Obsidian. For you non-math people out there, that's nearly 3 years of activity at 50%+ attendance. How did he not know of that rule?
- What would have happened the first time we saw him in Odin with BBQ after having leeched wins from us?
- He's come to me in the past with questions regarding the rules. What was different this time?
- Did he actually know Omoi was a sack? Not many people do as she's the only sack we have that's "Einherjar Only". Omoi says he didn't. Ice says he did. Ice had only been back in Obsidian less than a month. While it's certainly possible he did know, if Omoi didn't respond to his stated intentions initially, he probably should have followed up.
- Would he have made the comment about Einherjar if he had known Omoi had the authority to block him from attending? The general feeling is likely not.
- Would BBQ leaders like it if their members started leeching wins off them and doing Odins with us? Hard to imagine so. Even if they swap members with other shells consistently to get clears so Odins can take place, odds are the leaders of the respective shells have discussed it. In some cases, the members will act as the go-between, but those are usually reserved for one-time cases or once every now and then cases.
(Example being Lguapo missing an Obsidian Odin and asking if he could help BBQ with one of their tier rooms. I approved him doing that with the understanding that it wouldn't happen very frequently and -really important aspect here- because he asked.)
- Would we view this any differently had it been cut off days before parties were made? Possibly, but the intent was made clear from the actual act of signing up.
This led us to this conclusion:
He signed up for the run in question 4 days before the run was scheduled. He had previously shown a capacity to ask sackholders a question if he didn't understand a rule. He didn't do so this time depending on who you believe between Ice and Omoi about his knowledge of her sackholder status in Obsidian.
His stated intentions made it clear this wasn't going to be one of those "once in a blue moon" occasions where he might've missed a room BBQ did and was looking for a way to make it up so he could get to their next Odin.
Ultimately, we felt like there was too much shadiness going on here to allow membership to continue. While some may look at this decision as a doctrine on Iceblazek personally, I suggest you don't. I simply view as someone fucked up and got banned.
Aftermath
No one likes getting banned. I fully expected something to be said when I either told him or when he found out. The problem with a banning like this is that it unfortunately effects things outside of Obsidian since Ice and a number of other Obsidian members do Salvage together. I need to clear up a few misunderstandings:
"Half the sacks don't like him anyway, that's why Ice got banned."
If half the sacks disliked Ice, he wouldn't have been reactivated after being gone for 6 months or he would have been banned before his hiatus. Ice wouldn't have been reactivated after having been seen in BBQ's dynamis runs (allegedly someone else playing his character) if we didn't give him the benefit of the doubt on why he had been seen there.
"Omoikitte dislikes Ice and used that to get Ice banned."
No, Omoikitte did what she was supposed to do, prevented a rule from being broken and prevented Obsidian's membership from being taken advantage of. She would have done the same thing in Versus with anyone breaking her rules and she would have done the same thing with any other member of Obsidian. The problem here is that the name of the person happens to be "Iceblazek" and there's a history there. If she dislikes you enough to report your intentions to the Obsidian sackholders, why would she waste her time trying to find ways to rid you from her life when she's willingly letting you get on Vent?
What did she really hope to gain by getting Ice banned from Obsidian? She comes to maybe 1 or 2 dynamis runs a month. She manages to make about half the Einherjar runs a month. There is more time on vent spent with Ice and Omoi together than there is in Obsidian. There is more time in Salvage spent with Ice and Omoi together than there is in Obsidian.
Yeah, they're not going to send each other Christmas cards, but the point is if Omoi really, truly wanted to rid Ice from her life, she'd either stop doing Obsidian/Salvage/Vent events or she'd ban Ice altogether from Vent and Salvage.
Place blame where blame is due. The blame goes on Ice's actions and the reaction of the people with the authority to ban him. Omoikitte is not one of those 11 people.
"Obsidian sacks are over-reacting. Ice really didn't know the rules and actually didn't break any since he didn't make it to the Einherjar run itself."
To us, the fact he didn't make it into the Einherjar run itself isn't important. It's the fact that there's relatively clear intention not to tell anyone what was up aside from one comment over Vent that can be broken down.
Conclusion
The decision won't be overturned. I put Ice's side of the story up for the leaders and it was greeted with skepticism by two sackholders and a rather deafening silence from the other 8 (excluding me). Omoi has nothing to do with the decision making process unless her side of the story suddenly changes in a rather drastic fashion. Even if her side of the story did change in a rather drastic fashion, it would mean Ice's side of the story would have to change too as both of their stories had the same general points.
Anyone fighting this decision needs to understand that there are three sides to every story and I've done my best to treat this situation as such. Fighting for one side or the other is useless and pointless.
Sorry Ice got banned, but rules are rules. It doesn't mean he's earned a permanent place on my black list (as some I've banned in the past have) nor does it mean I'm going to go out of my way to avoid him. It does, however, mean that he screwed up and, despite his protestations, there are at least 10 other people who don't believe or like his version of the story and banned him for it. Those 11 people happen to be running the shell he was banned from.
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