[Complete] Report (Kardika)

[Cally 1080]

How all these freshly unbanned players feel after writing the most enriching sentences they've ever fathomed on a ban report for their slop friend:

I have interacted with Kardika numerous times, and all have shown an extreme lack of regard for what is good faith, and bad faith roleplay. Often one emote halting, not moving in front of the person to block their path, horse jumping to get into my keep, then breaking fleeing rules after attacks were attempted against him.

Often insisting after low-grade bandit rp where him, or one of his buddies, will one-emote kill people they halt on the roads. Him and his goons would result now, in what I can only assume is more low-grade kidnapping RP, bringing them to their fortress that is thirty blocks high, likely breaks door rule mechanics about checkpoints between triple iron doors, mind you. And commit to low effort PVP where they bait arrows from the top of the mega wall, and ragebait a bunch of Imperials. One time he even begged that they PVP directly after they took our PVP gear, since we had been kiting them in defender CRP for an hour. . . Kardika is found always contributing nothing to story, narrative, or any regards of fun. 

Nonetheless, this is not a factions server, and Kardika needs to find a new hobby.

[sam33497 7356]

I think Kardika's guys are fine, the only cancerous thing about what they're doing is the fort, which is honestly a server rules problem and not a Kardika problem. That said, I do think this is a good opportunity to take a look at how 'raiding' in the PVP plugin actually functions, because it has been really difficult for a long time whilst raiding to get into bases that have a lot of protection - worse so when it is intentionally designed to be cancer, there simply isn't any possible way to 'beat' the fort under existing rules. We pvped them last night and it boiled down to baiting them out of the fort for 2 hours, we couldn't interact with the fort at all since it is full of LWC cancer, gates, etc. I used 4 lockpicks and only gained access to the first out of 15 airlocked chambers, not sustainable... Now, for an actual pvp noob approaching this and not someone who feasibly understands what can and cannot be done versus such defenses, I imagine it involves waiting around, getting trapped, and dying, without any real clicking or fighting. It's definitely cancer, please look at LWC and pvp... raid only OP lockpick? battering ram? just let us bypass the 50 iron doors...

[Ferd0207 204]

I will refrain from commenting this particular case as I have personally not borne witness to it, or Kardika's banditing rp in general. In fact, I've only had one rp interaction with the man in passing, which was rather forgettable to begin with. The only I think I would note is that there indeed have been reports of truly garbage low-tier bandit pvp (of the *stabs you* kind) in the Haelunor discord by people who have, in fact, been bandited by him. 

 

I want to moreso talk about the general issues with banditry and how generally either vague rules, or lenient staff, serves to allow lotc to be a breeding ground for this low tier rp, facilitated by people who are not usually bad rpers, but do in fact rp in bad faith.

To begin with, about 95% of bandits and bandit groups brake what is one of the cornerstones of good rp and good storytelling in general. Namely - lack of motivations or inability to properly present/rp such. That is to say, they are unable to answer the simple question of "Why is my character a bandit and what led them down this path ?". This is a specifically more important question when concerning Salvo as the group has presented itself (on the forums) as a sort of revolutionary/anti-government movement. As such one would beg the question why partisans, which is what they are supposed to amount to, would in the first place kidnap and rob innocent people. Of course, we have seen such cases in history and in other fictitious works (such as GRRM's "A Song of Ice and Fire"). The truth is, Salvo has not established such a proper reason neither on the forums, nor, from what I see, in-game rp. Stating that such is impossible due to the nature of their RP (which is 99% banditing and 1% ragebaiting) is silly, because A. They choose to RP the way they do B. Such can still properly be established as they rp with their victims or attempt to recruit irp-ly (the latter of which they dont, instead recruiting exclusively off the forum or discord) and C. They don't seem too interested in establishing proper motivations anyways (As per Kardika's own words "This is just a glorified bandit group"). I am using Salvo as an example here because it is this group which Kardika leads. The same can  be applied to pretty much any other bandit group ever. Generally the drive behind bandit RP can be dumbed down to "I want the pixels", therefore one's character motivations, too, are "I want the pixels" which isn't really good in the way character motivations go.

Having said this, that's where the rest of the RP devolves into low level, degenerated slop. Bandits' emotes are short. Why ? Because they want the pixels. They also want to bail asap after that so they can go rob someone else in much the same degenerated, slop-producing manner. 

Further, one would make note that in the vast majority of bandit rp, the banditers in question log right off after a raid/kidnapping/robbing. Why ? Because, due to the lack of motivations established for their character, that same character is not just one-dimensional - they lack any dimensions to begin with. Being about as deep as a sheet of paper, such characters are extremely boring to play outside of banditing. So they just go play their other personas after that, therefore further contributing to the generally slop-level bandit RP on the server. Because their "characters" never develop, really.

What further exasperates the problem is the fact that not a small amount of bandits are generally just pvp goons. Therefore they raid capital cities hoping to either get pvp out of it (and if they dont they leave) or kidnap people to bait a larger group to pvp. I have seen them defend themselves with "but I have no time." Then why are you raiding Alba ? Or Grense ? Where you know you're bound to run into a lot of guards and other active RPers who will engage you ? If you don't have time, why do you engage in villanous rp with large groups ? Why engage in rp at all if you can't follow through with your first engagement one-liners ? It makes no sense and is just a very, very obvious excuse to veil your desire to just engage other players, often ill-prepared, in PvP. I only fail to fathom why such people wish to satisfy their urges on LoTC when there are more than enough servers on Minecraft where pvp is more or less central focus.

As concerns staff rulings, often I've seen the "Unenforceable guidelines" excuse be levied. However, guidelines are enforceable - it is a simply observation to see if the roleplay guideline of Give & Take has been at all met - if one player only takes and provides half-assed excuses galore, then they are breaking said guideline and need to be brought back to adequacy. Players need to report such behaviour without falling for ooc bullying meant to discourage them from speaking out. And staff needs to crack down on the people who are ready to bend rules or jump through loopholes on a moment's notice to satisfy their little pixel and pvp urges and not just wait for one of them to be stupid enough to outwardly break a rule in order to get banned.

Yap session over.

 

Edited August 23, 2025 by Ferd0207

[Chimeraof1999 1187]

As I am a semi-toxic person, I believe I would recognize who or when someone is being toxic or excessing the rule breaking boundary, as I've been dealt the punishments before. But for Kardika, it's different. Kardika is one of the most level headed people I've met on this server who has been banditing for a while. He assisted in the raids of Hyspia with salvo and has on times been super helpful in situations where crp was necessary. Kardika, like most bandits, do tend to slip up but that's just normal behavior. Not everyone is going to be perfect, but Kardika at least is humbled about it. Kardika and the group I ran with [The same group I got blacklisted with] has assisted me in understanding why I got blacklisted, told me to apologize to the people I was toxic to and has even told me to help practice. Kardika is not a bad or toxic guy, but on the other hand he can make mistakes! His crp is phenomenal and he super friendly in crp and willing to teach people.

 

To counter-act against CasualNuker's claims, I wish to inform the chat here that Salvo [Kardika and RedResult's group] took over the nation / vassal CasualNuker had owned and misplaced it, it is a sign of whats to come in the future. At times, Casual has expressed his deep dislike for the Salvomen, and when they had died down in activity, I believe that's when CasualNuker decided to come back. On the 26th of July, around the afternoon, Kardika's group kidnapped my character to hold me ransom, which I was fine with since they did all the necessary rp and all that BUT when they rode through Alba, the Alban's and Casual attempted to halt them as I was yelling for help, but they kept unfortunately doing emotes in shout or bad halt emotes so they continously ran. They had followed the group for a while until they decided to call moderation and mods had tp'd the group and I back for the halt, Pepto_bismol_ being the main mod overseeing it. After the pvp was finalized, as no one could agree and had continuous back and forth, it went back to running until they went inside Ivoria. The Albans were defeated and killed due to the tactics of Kardika's group as well as his friends, and Casual expressed his deep hate. I have a screenshot to coaberate the deep hate he had on the 26th of July.

 

 

My original comment underneath this post was deleted, as I believe they saw it as irrelevant but I hope this stays. NOTE; I am not saying Casual is a bad dude but the deep hatred he has for this group could help understand why he has made this into a BAN report. Please reconsider this ban report.

[I know I am not the best person either but this is just wild.]

[sapphic_spidy 1089]

On 8/23/2025 at 12:17 PM, Cally said:

Him and his goons would result now, in what I can only assume is more low-grade kidnapping RP, bringing them to their fortress that is thirty blocks high, likely breaks door rule mechanics about checkpoints between triple iron doors, mind you.

this is, with all due respect, just a bunch of assumptions, which i don't feel are relevant to the report. 

you assume it was low-grade kidnapping rp. it wasn't.

it likely breaks rules, but it probably didn't, people just didn't have the resources to break in. i repeat: no ladders, no boltcutters, 5 lockpicks

[Xarkly 17299]

Sorry for the delay on responding this one.

 

I had actually written out this full response like two weeks ago, but I ended up closing my browser and lost it all. That's my bad; there shouldn't be any prejudice caused by this, but my bad nonetheless. Two other (minor) reasons for the delay were a) I was trying to contact Kardika to discuss some of this aspects of this report, but he didn't respond to Discord messages, and b) I was curious to see if there would be any repeat instances of bad villainy by the Salvo guys following the report.

 

With that said, I'll respond to each allegation below and then sum up and set out the verdict. 

 

1: Powergaming

Going to dismiss this one off the bat because of the format of the report.

 

While Mods do have tools to search player logs, it makes our jobs pretty difficult if you don't give us some parameters to work off; "side-stepping a surrounded door in Stirland" without giving any kind of timeframe or even a date to work off isn't really sufficient. You're essentially asking Mod Team to engage in an unfiltered and indefinite trawl of Kardika's logs for instances of powergaming, which in turn means reviewing the surrounding RP of everyone involved for context so we can judge it ("others can be found in the moderation logs"). 

 

If you can tell us ,"this guy powergamed in Alba on Saturday afternoon", that's one thing. You don't need to provide your chat-logs all the time, but there needs to be some basic boundaries for us to work with. The reason I'm being a hardass about this is because I don't want to sponsor players making reports (irrespective of whether they're right or not) with vague complaints and expect Moderation to read through hundreds and hundreds of pages of logs to try find the kernel of the complaint.

 

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2: Meme RP

Having read Kardika's reply, I feel like it's pretty contradictory - you can't say "well, I only have time to deliver a one-liner before they catch me". This is just saying you're only engaging in the roleplay to taunt with a shitty quip and then leave before the other side can even respond or try to apprehend you. I don't accept you didn't have a choice but to do meme RP -- riding into the gates of a settlement in which you're wanted is a conscious decision on your part. You're entering the RP sphere of a guarded settlement and you should RP accordingly. If you're going to emote at your enemies, whether as a taunt or otherwise, you should afform them an opportunity to respond. 

 

It's a little bit different if you're literally just passing someone on a road, but we're an RP server -- you don't get to pick and choose what RP scenarios you participate in and how. If you emote at someone on the road, you should let them emote back, and vice versa.

 

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3: Persona

I accept that all of Kardika's aliases are the same persona, but names like 'John Oren' immediately make your interactions reek of bad faith and make anyone you RP with suspicious then you're just self-inserting for chief villainy. I won't read too much into it because, okay, sure, there can be reasons behind whatever naming scheme you use, but the bottom-lime is that it comes off really insincere. As a Mod, if I come over and see a persona with a name like this, I'm entering the scenario thinking it's definitely low-effort/meme RP.

 

As for the age thing - this isn't normally strictly enforced, you're able to change your age at will, but this is obviously within reason and it's not a cart blanche to make your character immortal. It goes against the point of a human (I'm not sure what race 'John Oren'/Vindacus is actually meant to be), but it's not outwardly harming anyone else's experience. That said, it's also not a precedent I want to create because it can lead to unfairness in some situations (immortal NLs, nobles, etc.) and it is lorebreaking. 

 

Given ongoing storylines with Salvo etc., I'm going to give you one month from today to PK your persona if they're a) a human and b) over 150 years old @Kardika.

 

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4: Horse Jumping

Just because the gates are closed doesn't mean the only way inside the city is via cheating.

 

This isn't really a proper complaint to make in a report, you can ask a Mod to verify the legality of the entrance but this is an allegation by process of elimination ("he got inside the city while the gates are closed = he cheated"). Again, I'm saying this moreso from a point of precedent; I don't want to see people making a reports based on this logic of process of elimination.

 

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5: The Rock

This one isn't a valid complaint.

 

The fort is not inaccessible. Like all builds on LotC, it's fairly fortified with various iron doors that make it hard to break in, but no harder than any other fort, bastion, castle, or palace. Granted, there's a few too many iron doors in parts, but that's not uncommon and Mods will open the excess doors in a conflict scenario. Arrow defences do not impede your ability to access the fort, and don't violate build rules, either. 

 

I've removed 50% of the stalactites for spam.

 

It's not against the rules to make walls that exceed raid ladder heights, either, so long as the walls conform to build standards -- which, other than the stalactites, I'm satisfied the Rock does. 

 

The fort's not 'unattackable', just difficult to attack - so are the majority of LotC forts/keeps. Even if you don't want to warclaim (the fort's elevation makes it extremely weak in an actual warclaim with artillery), there are other means of trying to deal with a super-fort, such as diplomatic pressure, aiding Krug's efforts in the civil war, entrapping the bandits outside, etc. 

 

There is no rule that a fort has to be easily raidable and no build rules have been broken here. 

 

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6: The Raid on 20 August

There were a few modreqs about this before the report went up, so I'd looked into this seperately beforehand. To summarise, the Salvo guys rocked into Grense, called PvP, and when the locals guards insisted on CRP, Salvo ended up soulstoning away.

 

Now, there is a little bit of mitigation here because a both people in the RP - on the Imperial side - said they wouldn't have time to stay for CRP. At that point, some of the guards - CasualNuker among them - said that whoever didn't have time to CRP was free to leave.

 

So all the Salvo guys left.

 

While Kardika's response is relying on CasualNuker saying people can go to excuse this, it is patently not the case that the Imperials were saying the raiders could all leave and void the fact they were ever there at all because they were not successful in calling PvP. I can understand CRP is tedious at the best of times, but that's a problem beyond this report -- the reality here is that if you, as a bandit, set out to raid a guarded settlement, you are the guards' mercy as to whether you end up doing CRP or PvP (unless there's a large amount of people present).

 

The attackers here pressured for CRP, and were given a get-out-of-jail-free-card by CasualNuker unwittingly saying people who didn't have time for CRP could go. This is zero good-faith villainy.

 

 

Verdict

To summarise:

• Allegations of powergaming, build rule violations, and horse jumping are dismissed.
• Allegations of meme RP and bad faith raiding on 20 August are upheld (alongside violating persona age rules).

 

I considered what the appropriate verdict would be on this one for a while. I expected to be banning Kardika after this, but as I thought about it, I found it pretty hard to justify in the circumstances. I could justify maybe doing a 1-2 week ban for the bad faith raiding, but I don't see a lot of point in giving short-term bans because I don't think it really accomplishes anything.

 

So, I'm not going to ban Kardika here. But, I will say this:

 

@Kardika Between your blacklist and now this, there's no more 'unknowns' and no more excuses when it comes to villainy. I understand the value of banditry and villainy on the server and I also accept that bandit victims are often quick to be called wolf. However, you also don't need me to tell you that some of the shit here is just you being dumb - from the meme RP to leaving the raid.

 

The only reason I'm not giving a token ban is to give you this as a warning to make sure you keep things in line and promote decent villainy. I've taken into account some of the feedback from this report of people who you did capture RP with and I perused your logs and I can see you've been doing some genuine RP between it all. I also don't think there's been any instances of bad villainy since this report (I think your Salvo guys had an issue with trying to force a bullshit halt emote dealt with by one of the other Mods, but I don't think it was you specifically).

 

So ...

• PK your overaged persona by 10 October 2025. 
• If you're caught doing low-effort meme RP or bad faith villainy, it's going to be a long one.