The Empire Newpaper

**The Empire** is the Company's online bulletin founded in the UnknownTradeCo subreddit on February 26, 2013 under the title *The Empire - The Company's Official News Source* by Irishkaiser. It is the main Company newspaper since even before the June Reforms and is the official journal of the Company and at times a propaganda publication, especially during the Southern War era(January 2013 - April 2014). The Empire's circulation is only limited to the UnknownTradeCo subreddit, but has attracted wider readers and sometimes controversy from across the Shotbow Community.

## History

The Company began to grow from the eight members of 2012, to fifteen members by 2013. The Company's growth resulted in the expansion of it interests, adventures and projects(such as the Castle Cole Expedition) and the dispersion of its members across the map. This made it very difficult for clan members to interact with each other. It did not help that the Company's membership was global, with members in North America, Europe, the Middle East, South East Asia and Oceania - making it impossible for the clan to meet up at full strength. At this time, members began to forget who other members were, some even never meeting all of the Company Members throughout their entire stay in the UTC. In order to clear up any confusion and provide a means for members to catch up with each other as well as a post for orders, Irishkaiser wrote up an online bulletin explaining the happenings and going-ons in the clan. For entertainment, it was peppered with satire and exaggeration for humor, such as taking a friendly fire incident and coining it as the "*LopNort Incident*", a word play on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim's "*Markath Incident*". Similarly, the whole story itself was twisted to mirror Elder Scrolls lore.

The name "Empire" was taken from Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, not particularly alluding to the Empire of Tamriel, but when Vignar Grey-Mane says: "*When the Empire surrendered to the Aldmeri Dominion, they shamed us all..!*".

During and after the June Reforms, the Empire became a controversial newspaper in the MineZ premium community for its frequent criticisms of premiums and admins. They also became a target for Night's Watch downvoters who started brigading the subreddit, in an attempt to censor and influence the UTC subreddit. The downvote attacks were seen as an affront to the UTC's freedom of speech and boosted the Empire's readers from not just more UTC members, but from people who started to take a notice, even the administration.

The downvote attempts placed the Empire as a cultural symbol of freedom of speech in the UTC as they still kept being posted, regardless of the attacks. The Night's Watch, eventually started their own newspaper, inspired by the Empire called "The Crow", written by boogaert, who was given the title of "scribe" for his work. Eventually, the difficulties in publishing and relations between boogaert and the Night's Watch broke down and the

## Articles & Sections

The Empire is divided into many different sections for ease of reading and each one varies in frequency of satire and exaggeration, but each still manage to tell the truth

## Legacy and Effect

Since it's creation, The Empire has be "copied" and the idea has been used by other people. The first was by the then Night's Watch member boogaert, who created The Crow, a similar "newspaper" for the Watch. The Crow was different however, it was bi-weekly (once every two weeks) and had news on Shotbow as well as the Night's Watch. Although it was praised by members of the Watch, it ran into problems due to boogaert not always being active or motivated to write it. He also did not have access to all of the information on the Watch, as he was not an actual leader. The end of the Crow came for a few reasons. Boogaert became less active in MineZ, the Watch became virtually nonexistent in activity, and The Weekly Arrow came about making boogaert's writing about Shotbow insignificant. The Weekly Arrow was originally a video series on the Shotbow Network's Youtube channel run by admin 1a52 that gave weekly news about the Network in general, although it died out quickly, likely due to the hardships of putting out a video weekly. Admin Navarr decided to start it back up and now puts out a changelog type post with all weekly changes every Sunday. There is no doubt that it was in part inspired by boogaert's Crow, due to Navarr's involvement in the Watch. Navarr's access to staff information and website power of course allowed him to make The Arrow much more easily, and give it to the people more easily. The Empire has still survived however, and stayed mostly unchanged.

## reference

1. ↑ https://www.reddit.com/r/UnknownTradeCo/comments/1997rb/the\_empire\_the\_companys\_official\_news\_source\_1/
2. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hDMSbaLslQ