The clan-on-clan trial promised in yesterday's dispatch has borne fruit at last: Great Britain's VALOR has made good on its threat against Shroud Cay, storming the port and striking NWO's pirate colours from its walls for good. It is a small conquest by the standards of this war-weary ledger, but a conquest nonetheless, and the first this Gazette has been able to credit to honest steel in some weeks rather than to the NPC Raiders' usual scavenging. Those same Raiders, meanwhile, have not idled — France's SZYS must stand watch over Cano Araguao this afternoon at 13:47 UTC, and Spain's KARMA, still smarting from Champoton's loss, faces a second trial at Saint-Marc this evening at 20:54 UTC. Whether either garrison fares better than the marauders' recent, dismal record would suggest remains to be seen. The treasury table stirs again, though the summit is undisturbed: CFS holds its twenty-six ports and its throne for a sixteenth consecutive day, a reign now well beyond mere habit and into legend. HYDR4, so recently celebrated for its climb to seventh, tumbles back four places to eleventh despite its seven ports standing untouched — proof that in this ledger, standing still is itself a kind of falling. USN edges up two ranks to eighteenth on its three ports, a quiet but welcome gain, while VALOR's seizure of Shroud Cay earns it fresh entry onto the board at twenty-seventh, its first port and its first mention in these pages.