Previous events......

On turn 892 Eden is paired with Asylum. Eden is expecting Asylum to open communications. Over 60 hours later still no hail has been received so Eden sends the following message;

Asylum.

I have not received a hail from you this turn. I notice you are a UPF officer. I do not trust the motives of the UPF nor do I fully trust a captain I have had no previous dealings with who associates themselves with Borg Prime. As you have given me no indication of your intentions I shall be submitting orders to attack you this turn. If you reply to this hail at least 2 hours before the turn deadline demonstrating peaceful intent I shall order my crew to stand down and not 'attack regardless'.

Eden.

With less than two hours before turn 893 runs Eden sends a further message which is cc'd to the Fierce List;

Asylum. There is now less than two hours until turn 893 runs (8pm GMT) and I still haven't received any hail from you. I shall not have time to check my e-mails before the next turn so I am not re-submitting my orders. If you have peaceful intentions but just haven't had the time to reply to my previous hail (repeated below) then you will be able to avoid combat by 'micro jumping' or 'hiding in space' as I have no desire to force what would be such a one sided fight.

Eden.

PS. I am sending this second hail to both your Yahoo and Anon Mail accounts.

Constitutions charges......

You have attacked a ship (Asylum) under 100 turns old without proper cause. From my reading of the Prophet of the Fierce One's rules relating to attacks on such ships, yours meets none of the conditions. You are also not a registered "hostile" ship, nor was Asylum listed on your alliance's enemies page.

In addition, you apparently did not give Asylum adequate notice that he was at risk of attack (12 hours), based on the e-mails you forwarded (below).

How do you respond to these charges?

Edens opening defence statement......

MS Bounty/All.

As it looks as though I'm to face charges over the Asylum incident I shall make this official statement.

I had no reason to believe that Asylum was under 100 turns old. I was not aware of Galaxions list of young ships and I propose that a link to this list be placed on the Fierce Prophets player page for future reference.

The UPF openly declare that their officers will 'attack on sight' ships that don't comply with their policies. This is a provocative statement. Any ship prepared to enforce this policy is taking a provocative stance. In my opinion there is nothing in the Fierce Code to suggest that indirect provocation isn't relevant. Despite my over estimation of Asylums age I still don't believe I have broken the '100 turn rule';

From the Fierce Code of Conduct;

"There are cases were a ship under 100 turns may be attacked regardless of size. 7 - young ship has provoked attacker Provocation includes, but is not limited to threats, demands and insults posted in the SST, anon mail, email or any TBG related forum or bulletin board. The prophet will judge other acts of provocation as they arise."

My error is that I failed to hail Asylum at least 12 hours before the turn ran. To this charge I plead guilty. It was an unintentional oversight and I apologise to The Great Old One, The Fierce Prophet and all Fierce Chosen for this breach of conduct. However I would like to state that 8 hours 19 minutes should still have been ample time to respond to a hail and I did give him "a reasonable way to avoid attack" in the event his communications were down. Having read recent messages from Constitution and Wolverine it seems that Asylum had signed off days before. If I had hailed earlier the outcome would have been the same. I still find it incredible that a UPF officer had time to notify his organisation, submit his turn and post in the SST but fail to hail the ship he was paired with!

Eden.