DNW War

The **DNW War** was a conflict between Ninzardia and Dungeon World that lasted from March 12, 2012 to June 20, 2012. This was Ninzardia's first "war" and marked the first usage of organized cyberattacks against external communities. The war sparked the creation of the Ninzard Senate as well as other major implementations.

## Background

*See also: Anti-expansion policy of Antares*
The beginning of 2012 began with attempts by Neptunity to recruit new members to the community, only to be constantly rejected by Governor Antares, regardless of vouching members to help them join. This policy was directly in clash with Neptunity, who wanted to allow for more members to join. Although Hybridex and Zapstorm also supported expansion policies, it was not considered a major problem. The revelations of the Galaxia scandal with Neptunity members leaving the community, led to Castler's resignation as leader of Neptunity and leaving Ninzardia on March 10, 2012. Many members of Neptunity followed in his direction while some stayed to secretly help Castler spy and sabotage the community.

Originally, Alaric and Orion1 were instructed not to reveal Antares's scheme by Machitis. Machitis had stated that immediately revealing this would simply kill the Ninzardia community. Initially, both Alaric and Orion1 questioned this reasoning. Alaric mentioned that revealing Antares's immediately would unseat him as the leader and if not, they could all just leave to form another community. Machitis, however, argued that this would be "problematic" as Antares would likely not accept the aftermath. It was likely he would still hold on the power due to his loyal support in Galaxia and Core Wizardry and would only kill Hybridex, Neptunity and Zapstorm. If Hybridex, Neptunity, and Zapstorm were to form their own community, Machitis argued, Antares would instruct Core Wizardry and Galaxia to go after the newly made community and cause havoc. It was better, in the view of Machitis, to stay united for now and to reveal it when the right time came. Alaric agreed with Machitis's reasoning. Orion1, on the other hand, was not fully persuaded by Machitis's line of thinking, but complied with Machitis's instructions anyways.

After leaving, Antares began to insult Castler. After becoming informed of this by his spies, Castler decided to sabotage Core Wizardry to spite Antares. On March 12, 2012, Castler, who had access to Xbox 360 accounts of members of Core Wizardry, deleted various game files from their accounts. Followers of Castler also unsuccessfully attempted to "hack" Antares's personal accounts. Antares's house was also doxed by Castler, who came by his place to taunt him.

While districts such as Zapstorm and Hybridex supported expansion policies, thereby opposing the anti-expansion policy of Antares, the leadership of both districts did not seek outright war. Both districts were fine with sticking with Ninzardia. Both districts were also already very critical of Castler's leadership capabilities. Having seen the post-election bans of 2012 which were also undertaken by Castler, most members of both districts were either unsupportive of Castler, skeptical, or just indifferent. Therefore, there was no justification for following Castler's footsteps and openly wage a war against Antares's leadership.

## Course of the war

### Start of the war

On the afternoon of March 12, 2012, Castler and Jayce had an encounter with Sounddy, Xorbit, and CloudMaster in real life. CloudMaster had begun insulting Castler over his actions and called him "a pussy" which enraged Castler, who responded by cursing. This resulted in a heated exchange between both parties until Castler had thrown a pile of gravel at the opposing party. This escalated into a full blown physical exchange of hurling gravel and stones at one another. Note that both parties were all children in 2012.

### March Squabbles

The March Squabbles were a series of flame wars that took place between the DNW community and Ninzardia. Basically, the exchanges were filled with curse words and the spreading of slander on both sides. While this had been in the midst of "the war," there was no real threat at place at the time. The personal accounts sabotaged by the DNW were the most damaging actions that had taken place up until this point of the war.

#### March senate summit

On March 31, 2012, Easter Sunday, Antares met with three members of the Ninzard Senate in real life: Netterix, Austiny, and Xorbit. There, they discussed plans in steps to take against the DNW community.

### April Altercations

The April Alterations were a series of more serious flame wars that started taking place in real life and not just online. For example, Cosmo and CloudMaster ended up getting extremely heated at each other after a coincidental encounter they had in real life. Castler had allegedly been "stalking" Antares—although, there is no solid proof of this claim.

#### April senate summit

On April 14, 2012, two weeks after the previous senate summit Antares met with four members of the Ninzard Senate in real life: Netterix, Austiny, Aeromage, and Xorbit. There, they discussed the first plans to get prepared for an actual cyber attack against the DNW community. Specifically, they planned to DDoS the platform that DNW had been running on.

### DNW War Measures Act

*Main article: DNW War Measures Act*
On April 14, 2012, with the passage of the DNW War Measures Act, the Ninzard Senate had requested that all the generals cooperate to learn how DDoSing attacks worked as well as other "hacking" techniques. Senator Atria of Hybridex was the only one to oppose the act.

Two Generals opposed and did not cooperate with the senates request: General Bananable who said it was "stupid" and Zap General Zap who merely asked a one word question: "Why?"

The two other generals: General of Capitalia CloudMaster and General of Galacticore Holiday, complied with the senate. Neptunity did not have a general at the time as Castler had originally occupied this position. A huge number of Neptunity's population had also disappeared due to Castler's boycott against Ninzardia.

### Preparations in April–May

From late April to early May, general things were taught to the members of Capitalia and Galacticore. They were instructed on plans and asked for any information regarding Connor (Castler) and his crew members. They "trained" for an "invasion" of DNW.

### First DNW Invasion

On May 10, 2012, the first invasion of DNW took place. The DDoS attack had not worked as planned. However, Antares had been able to get a hold of Connor's accounts and used it to invade the platform of DNW. There, they sabotaged the group chat through spamming, removing members, and using Connor's account to taunt him. This enraged Connor.

### Siege of Antares's House

On May 11, 2012, the day after the first invasion, the DNW crew of 8 boys stood and waited outside of Antares's house and taunted him from the outside. Antares had an older sister in the house who did not care about what was happening but at least alerted Antares, who had not noticed until then. Antares simply ignored the shouting people outside. After a couple of hours, Castler and 2 others left the area while 5 stayed. Castler made fun of Antares and called him "somebody who does not go outside." This became a commonly used taunt even used by opponents of Antares inside of the Ninzardia community.

This encounter had disgusted several other DNW members. Particularly, members of the Katsland community inside of DNW were very unhappy with the actions of Castler. They had also not been informed that this had been taking place until after the incident. As a result, several Katsland members left the DNW community.

While the leader of Katsland, Cat, pretended to remain on good terms with Castler, she acted as a spy for Ninzardia. To give information to Ninzardia, she communicated frequently with Hybridex General Bananable and Zapstorm General Zap, both individuals against the war. Although, she sometimes contacted Senator Aeromage and Atria but never with the others.

#### Increased support in Ninzardia

In Ninzardia, the siege incident had caused much of the Ninzardia community to side with Antares and the war cause. General Bananable announced he would help Antares for "defense reasons" in any way he could but would never force Hybridex's members to go on board with learning cyber warfare techniques. Bananable was put in charge of spying on DNW.

General Zap announced he himself, but only himself would participate, and not any of Zapstorm's members. He helped Hybridex spy on DNW. Zap himself also became a strong supporter of the war itself.

Deputy Governor Sounddy, who had become increasingly familiar with Antares's strategies and antics, became directly involved in the plan of a second invasion of the DNW community. He met frequently with Antares, Netterix, and Castor at Antares's house, who also communicated with the Generals of the Ninzard Senate.

### Battle of the Storm

As *cringe* as the name of the battle may sound, this was how the battle was named shortly after it happened. On May 30, 2012, during a particularly stormy day outside, Connor, Jayce, Cosmo, and a sizable group of 9 members decide to confront Antares in real life by approaching him through his backyard. They waited outside and shouted his name.

At Antares's house were Castor and Netterix and no other people. Castor, enraged, stepped outside and became physical with the DNW kids, known as the Knights of Neptune. Antares stayed inside and Netterix watched. The initial confrontation broke off and the DNW gang decided to go to 7-Eleven to purchase Slurpees (during a storm). This incident was informed to the Ninzard Senate. As a result, some members assisted to hunt down the DNW and "beat them up." Antares did not oppose.

CloudMaster, Sounddy, Xorbit, and Zap arrived at Antares's house, who then all decided to move out. However, the saw the DNW crew approaching with a several extra large size cups of Slurpees intended to hurl at Antares's house. However, they decided to hurl the Slurpees at the crew of 7 Ninzardia members. They all became drenched in Slurpees which subsequently enraged them.

The DNW crew were chased down by 3 Ninzardia members: CloudMaster, Sounddy, and Castor. However, they stopped chasing them noticing their low numbers. Here, Xorbit decided to return home, who was called "a pussy" by CloudMaster, Sounddy and Castor. However, Netterix, Antares, and Zap did not disapprove Xorbit's decision and understood. Zap had also wanted to return home to change his sticky Slurpee clothes, but was convinced to soak his clothes in water and stay with them. Only Antares was able to change his sticky clothes.

Antares and Netterix called for back-up. Only Machitis decided to come, who brought four bikes and three scooters (owned by family members).

Antares, Netterix, Castor, and Machitis rode the bikes while the other three rode scooters. They went to look for the DNW members who they did not expected to encounter. However, they caught up to them at the park, who were seen playing on the playground. They were also there with two girls: Cat and one other unidentified girl. Cat had come to Canada to meet her cousin who was a part of the Knights of Neptune. Eight DNW boys approached them with the intent to beat them up. There were no other bystanders at the time.

While CloudMaster, Sounddy, and Castor got off their bikes and scooters to confront them directly, Zap, Netterix, Machitis, and Antares used the scooters (and one bike) to use against the DNW members. The three Ninzardia members became beat up while one other tried to stop the fighting but became caught up in the fists and was injured. The fighting stopped as THE KNIGHTS OF NEPTUNE started running away at the site of scooters and bikes being about to be lunged at them. However, during this confrontation, some DNW threw stones at the members and Antares had been hit in the face, which resulted in a bruise.

The DNW boys ran home, but were chased down by Netterix and Sounddy on bikes, who ran a few of them over with their bikes who were then beat by Netterix, Sounddy, and CloudMaster.

Zap, Machitis, and Antares stayed behind as the DNW were chased off. They were too tired. Cat stayed behind and helped any injured people return home. This was the only time Cat had ever encountered the Ninzardia boys in the real world. Cat asked all of the Ninzardia members to keep their meeting a secret—something that was kept until 2022.

Back in Ninzardia, *the seven who fought*—Antares, Sounddy, Machitis, Netterix, CloudMaster, Zap, and Castor, returned as "heroes." This fight became known as the "Battle of the Storm." Please note that these were all like elementary school children at the time.

### June invasion plans

Over the course of the next few weeks, the Knights of Neptune and Ninzardia did not have confrontations in real life—likely due to the injuries they sustained during the "Battle of the Storm." However, Ninzardia continued planning on a second invasion. Antares also refused to go outside for the following month apart from school.

Meanwhile, the DNW leaders and those who participated in the fight also returned "as heroes." However, unlike Ninzardia, they shaped the battle as something that they had *won* against. They shaped the story as having severely beaten up the members of Ninzardia that resulted in them screaming and crying. This had been seen as a DNW victory. They also did not expected an invasion as they were delusional and tricked themselves into believing they had truly "won" the war.

In June, Cat and several other spies from Katsland helped Ninzardia gain information. Cat had also been able to leak sensitive details on the new platform they were using (following the first invasion) and information regarding Castler's private personal accounts online.

### Second DNW Invasion

On June 19, 2012, the DNW community platform was invaded a second time following a successful DDoS attack and the infiltration of all of Castler's accounts online. This invasions had come as a complete and utter surprise. Following the invasion, after Connor was gotten a hold of the next day, June 20, he declared: "I don't want to continue this anymore. Let's please just end this now." This marked the official end of the DNW War.

## Aftermath

The war increased the loyalty and inside support for Ninzardia. In other words, there was an increased sense of "patriotic attitude" for the community and interesting notion to perceive the Ninzardia community as "home."