Early days (EL15LS)
El15LS was founded by Psychokilla. Since a few days after being founded, EL15LS were the leading tribe in K15 and continued to be for a while yet. They struck up formidable alliances with the then-mighty Fuse and the small northern tribe, Pols.
Pols War
In November, due to an internal conflict within Pols, some of their members, lead by one of the barons Skipperhy, left and joined EL15LS. Pols and EL15LS continued to have diplomacy for the forseeable future. There were, however, some problems in the south, as their biggest allies, Fuse, were being destroyed by V-V-V, Kinky and Garuda. In this period, EL15LS changed its name to ASBO.
Back in the north, friction was mounting between ASBO and Pols. ASBO had formed alliances to the north (Pols), to the east (=III=), to the west (Fbs) and to the south (Fuse). ASBO were becoming notorious for nobling all the 3k barbs in K15. This angered Pols when they started doing this further north into k15 and then into k5. Also, Skipperhy and Fiercegoldfish, having been at loggerheads in Pols, continued to anger each other from either side of the alliance.
Fiercegoldfish then contated Lady Annastasia, one of the ASBO dukes, about a tribe who were allied to ASBO. Fierce seemingly threatened ASBO to keep away from supporting their ally whilst Pols attacked them, but all this did was to cause ASBO to drop the alliance and declare on Pols Pols2 also decided to join despite assurances from ASBO that they had the option to stay out. Within a few hours of the declaration, stanford bri (Pols duke), cgopie1 (rank 3 player of Pols and council member) and Mrjs76 (rank 1 player in Pols and top 100 players in W24) all defected from Pols into ASBO.
From the start of the war, ASBO hammered Pols. Afterb a few days into the war, however, around half of the noblings for the ASBO side were made by the three players who had recently defected from Pols. Pols complained of Fbs' involvement in the war, despite very little evidence supporting this case. Pols were quickly pushed out of K15 through ennoblements and defections over the next few weeks, culminating in Fiercegoldfish declaring defeat to ASBO. The terms made by ASBO were that |Pols disband, and all villages in K15 would be free to noble. K5 players would still be attacked at will, though Pols2 (who then changed its name to Obv) would be NAP'd.
Post-war and Awkard Decisions
There was an uproar in the ASBO internal forums about the NAP with Obv as they were now boxed in to the north, west and east by allies. Their only choice for expansion was to the south, where the very impressive V-V-V, Kinky and Garuda were rapidly moving in, after they had dismantled Fuse a month earlier.
Shortly after the NAP with Obv, SWARM and V-V-V both declared on Fbs, ASBO's allies. The ASBO forums were now rife with debate. Many of the ASBO members wanted to help Fbs and declare on V-V-V or, at the very least, send support to Fbs. The ASBO dukes refused to be drawn in despite mails from Fbs requesting support to the dukes. Lady Annastasia even came out and said to everyone that Fbs didn't even want the support, and Psychokilla persisted with the reasoning that Fbs brought this upon themselves. All of this turned out to be false. Psychokilla continued to ignore the Fbs pleas and the outcry from the ASBO members themselves.
ESL declared on V-V-V shortly after. V-V-V were now warring both Fbs and ESL. The chance for expansion towards the core was very apparent to the ASBO players. The biggest outcry for war yet finally caught the attention of the ASBO dukes. However, after talking about it, Psychokilla issued a statement to the ASBO members saying that the leadership did not believe that ASBO were ready for a war of that magnitude and there were still room for expansion into K5 and K6. The ASBO members recognised the dukes' wishes. Whereas the former part of the statement were true for the most part, the latter part of Psychokilla's statement would eventually lead to ASBO's demise.
V-V-V agreed a NAP with Fbs so they could concentrate on ESL and shortly after SWARM followed suit due to great relationships and respect being built between the two tribes.
Border Control
The decision not to expand south continued to create unrest in the ASBO camp. Almost all of the 3k barbs in K15 were being taken and border agreements with Fbs prevented growth into K4 or K14. Obv were still in command over k5, despite ASBO continuing to noble there. K16 were mostly taken up with =III=, but due to no official border agreements, ASBO sporadically continued to noble there. The only alternative was to move into K6, though =III= had already started nobling there themselves.
Several of the ex-Pols members in ASBO still had villages in K4 and were frustrated with the fact that they were unable to continue nobling there. Gilly2020 refused to cease nobling there and was promptly kicked by ASBO. However, strong debate continued through the likes of mtsensk and cgopie1 along with others.
Eventually, ASBO backed down to the pressure to come up with a proper method of expansion and announced to Fbs that the border agreements with them would be terminated. This, of course angered Fbs and ASBO's decision to create an academy tribe, ASBO2, did not help mattters as most of the players were recruited from K4. Psychokilla even suggested to Fbs that they merge into ASBO. This was immediately rebuffed.
Fbs started to make plans to war ASBO. ASBO had, too many times, not lived up to agreements and had refused to help Fbs in their time of need. Another motive may have been V-V-V's lead on ESL. DaHolla had indicated that they V-V-V would continue their war with Fbs once ESL were done. However, V-V-V value the 1 v 1 wars and if Fbs were to be in a war when V-V-V finish ESL, V-V-V would be unlikely to interfere and let the two tribes battle it out. Slowdowntubby contacted =III= to see if the same was happening to them.
Fbs and Obv then merged to create Boob. Boob now bordered ASBO to the north and to the west. The alliance with ASBO was then dropped to a NAP shortly after. =III= followed suit. It was obvious to almost everyone that either Boob or =III=, or both, would declare on ASBO. However the ASBO dukes refused to make war preparations as they were convinced that they still held good relations with both tribes.
A week later, Boob declared.
War with Boob and =III=
=III= never officially declared but they started attacking ASBO players. Boob were unhappy with this as it may have prompted V-V-V to interfere, as it was now a 2 v 1. The ASBO dukes continually tried to use this to get V-V-V to help them. V-V-V did not answer ASBO's calls for help and ASBO faced a war on three fronts.
The war started badly from the start with ASBO well behind in the rankings in the war stats in both wars.There was much complaint from the ASBO camp at =III='s lack of declaration or any sort of announcement to ASBO about a possible war. ASBO tried bringing in some of their allies, such as Alpha and BANE, though none of these tribes really made a difference to proceedings.
Many ASBO players went inactive during this period, passing their accounts to one of the three dukes. cgopie1 was one of these players but he did come back for a day. During this day he openly criticized the way that the tribe was run, the poor decisions made by the dukes, and the lack of action taken when it seemed clear to everyone that there would indeed be a war. He then passed back the account to Psychokilla. This outburst from cgopie1 prompted many exits from ASBO, with many going to =III=. Mtsensk and arty oh arty joined Boob as they both still had contacts there from their Pols days. As soon as cgopie1 returned he contacted slowdowntubby and was also let into the Boob. Several more players then continued to leave ASBO for =III= and ringo joined Boob as well after cgopie1 had recommended him. Eventually ASBO were down to very few active players, with only the three dukes, plus five or six active players left in the tribe. During this time, Boob were forced to change their name to BOOTY.
Before April, the war with ASBO was nothing more than a clean-up operation of k5 and half of K15 (BOOTY and =III= came to an agreement to only noble players on their own half of the K, split by the X=550 line).
In early April, ASBO disbanded.