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thanks Tretrid, always appreciate the detail that goes into these updates. Glad to see Todd firing on all cylinders in the Magisterium
 I was particularly pleased to see the process of appointing new Viziers being given the scrutiny it deserves by the Magisterium ![[Image: raJUAd0.png]](https://i.imgur.com/raJUAd0.png) The East Pacific News Service
April 2, 2020 An Interview with East Malaysia and His Thoughts on the Empire Coup of the East Pacific
By Zukchiva (Editor's note: East Malaysia is a Vizier, Magister, and Deputy Minister of Information and Communications. East Malaysia has been part of TEP since 2004, and served as an "Elder" in the aftermath of the Empire's invasion of The East Pacific, as will be explained.) Interviewer’s Note: Having played NationStates since 2004, East Malaysia is a current and active citizen of the East Pacific. He was instrumental as a regional leader when the Empire couped the East Pacific’s inactive government in 2008 for a four month period. The following interview was held on March 24th to March 27th, 2020. The interview’s original topic was about East Malaysia’s service to the region as an Elder during the Empire coup, but it soon turned into seeing what was this esteemed player’s thoughts on the coup overall. The interview took place in Direct Messages on Discord. Minor edits have been made to fix grammatical errors, but otherwise the content has remained unchanged. Zukchiva: Hello East Malaysia! I'll be interviewing you today about the time you spent as an Elder of the East Pacific, back during and a few months after the Empire Coup of 2008. Not many people know the work you and your fellow Elders did, and even fewer know how it really felt like to be a government leader of TEP during that crisis. The first question I would like to ask is for you to explain, in your own thoughts, what the Elders were and what was their importance in East Pacifican history? East Malaysia: The Elders were the guiding hand and rock that the region needed after months under siege by The Empire. It was a temporary role just to oversee the rebuilding of The East Pacific’s government. Thinking back to that time, I think the role was minor, in the scheme of everything that was happening at that time. Now where I believe the role was very important was that the Elders, myself included, didn’t just stay in power but we relinquished our power to the people. We kicked off The East Pacific’s democracy that is still going strong more than a decade later. It’s unfortunate we don’t have logs from the writing of the Concordat that would highlight the key contributions of everyone and not the few that approved the document. Zukchiva: I agree, I find myself often wishing I could see the logs from the drafting of the Concordat myself. But at least we got the Concordat! My second question I'd like to ask is, how did you first think of the idea of the Elders when Citizen Flemingovia proposed it? As I understand, it was a supremely different form of government from the East Pacific's past two democratic governments of the time. East Malaysia: Without looking... I believe so. A lot was going on at that time. I was brought in I believe after the role was set up. At this time I was a simple citizen and was probably picked because I had been in the region for what was at the time considered a long time... ha. I was honored to be considered. The previous government of The East Pacific was not democratic at all. So we went from dictatorship to democracy. And to perhaps clarify that we did have democratic elements like a legislator and judicial branch but overall the Delegate had the last say. Zukchiva: Oh! I guess I didn't research far enough. Guess I'm gonna have to dive back into my research. >_> I understand that it has been a while since you were an Elder, like many-years while. However, looking back to what you remember and what happened afterwards, do you think you would've wanted to do anything different in that role, in hindsight? In other-words, what would you change, if anything, regarding your actions as an Elder? East Malaysia: Honestly I think keeping logs of the building on the Concordat. That’s the biggest error of the whole process. Or at minimum kept footnotes to help future generations To understand what something means, why we included it, and who thought of the idea. Zukchiva: That would've been pretty cool! But either way, thank you for your work in forming the Concordat. Next, based on whatever you remember, how did you feel during the Empire coup itself? Were you stressed, scared, or some other emotions when they were ruling TEP? East Malaysia: Before we went full resistance, the general feel of the region was, to see if we could work together. Let the Empire take over but still use the forum since it had all the roleplay and historical importance but that didn’t work out in the end. I don’t remember being stressed or scared. We realized early on that we were in for the long fight. Influence really wasn’t a thing at this time so you had to have the endorsements. It was going to be a war of attrition due to the number of residents and citizens that had been banjected. I vaguely remember it was not easy getting help from the numerous armies of the day and that’s largely due to The East Pacific’s natural isolationism that left us with less friends to work with. Zukchiva: From the records of the time it was shown that TEP saw itself as an inactive community. Do you think TEP would be as vibrant as it is today without the Empire coup? East Malaysia: Probably. Because if they didn’t coup the region then someone else would have. Zukchiva: If you were able to name the most important person responsible for helping TEP survive the coup, who would it be and why? East Malaysia: It’s honestly impossible to name one person. We, the community, collectively did our part to fight against them in our own ways. Loop was willing to work with them but that obviously failed. Pack was Delegate-in-Exile. I remember approaching two regions seeking their help. Zukchiva: What was the strongest moment/event you experienced during the coup? East Malaysia: ASBS becoming Delegate. We could finally take a take a sigh of relief. Holding out for four months is years in the way NS moves. Zukchiva: I've noticed that the Empire adopted nobility names in a form of role-play, and spoke disparaging comments against the community of TEP at the time (like one couper calling TEP her "property". How did you, specifically, feel about those remarks, if you remember anything? East Malaysia: It made us work harder to remove them from power. That’s part of the reason titles of nobility not being allowed was included in the Concordat. It was the belief that even if someone is Delegate they are still equal to the citizen. They simply have more responsibility to the region. That’s still the belief today I think. Zukchiva: Besides ASBS and Daanistan's legendary unendorsemsnt campaign, how did you guys and gals fight against the Empire? What methods did you use? East Malaysia: I remember early on trying to get support from various defender groups of the day, I might have been in exile, that seems familiar. But honestly, I don’t remember all the methods. Zukchiva: Well, thanks for sticking with me so far, Em.  One last cliche question. Is there anything you'd like to add? About being an Elder, or the Empire or what happened after they left. Any sort of message or thing you believe the younger readers of EPNS should know of that time? East Malaysia: This is what makes being a citizen and being an active member of the community by participating in government or roleplay so important. An active community can easily combat outside threats. NationStates is a very complex game when you break it down. The East Pacific is The East Pacific’s because of the community and government. It’s our own virtual country and it should be the duty of everyone to keep The East Pacific strong the beautiful. Zukchiva: Thank you for your time, East Malaysia! It was extremely appreciated. East Malaysia:  The Conclave Rolls Out Reforms By Zukchiva (Editor's Note: This article is written as a firsthand account by the Viceroy, Zukchiva, hence the use of first-person words like "I".) If you read the East Pacific News Service’s Edition published for January 2020, you’ll know that the Conclave has already begun reforming itself as part of the massive post-coup East Pacific reforms. The aim for the reforms are to make the Conclave a more accessible place for everyone, and in this way ensuring more transparency and fairness in East Pacific justice. As Viceroy, I instituted the following “steps to reform”, or in other words a small to-do list to assist us Arbiters in changing the branch for the better. These steps will be explained in detail in the order listed below in order to help increase understanding of the changes going on, despite many of them being unseen. The Steps to Reform:
Completed Steps These are steps that have already been completed. (Yay us!) Step: Come up with Election law For many years, the Viceroy of the East Pacific has been the sole administrator of Delegate Elections, one of the most important events in East Pacific government. However, no law was ever enacted for elections, with only unwritten norms and traditions, along with the Concordat, guiding election procedure. This obviously often caused confusion and tension during election processes, along with many mishaps in election occurrences. In order to rectify this, I proposed to the Magisterium on February 14th, 2020 the “Delegate Elections Act”. Due to complicated issues involving a llama and a lawn that took up my time, A Mean Old Man was brought in as a co-sponsor for the bill. Following debate with insightful comments by A Mean Old Man, the proposal was motioned to vote on March 15th and came into law on March 24th, 2020! Step: Set guidelines for precedent usage Precedent is a bit confusing of a confusing matter, and the Conclave went into disarray for a tiny fraction of time as we were trying to find out how precedent worked and how it would function in the court. (Note: Aelitia was the only Arbiter with more than a year’s worth of experience when he left, so we’re all pretty new at our jobs!) However, after a quick Discord discussion on the matter, Arbiter Pakitsk drafted the Procedural Rules on Precedent, which were quickly reorganized and then passed through vote. You can read them at this link. These guidelines clarify into procedural law what precedent is and how it will be used in the drafting of verdicts! These guidelines will also help citizens to understand precedent, so that judicial functions and the way Arbiters reach verdicts makes more sense. Step: Reform the Standing Orders of the Conclave (SOC) The Standing Orders of the Conclave had become slightly outdated and open to interpretation since they were redrafted in 2014. So we, the Arbiters, met in Closed Chambers to edit the SOC, then made a public convention (in which only one citizen showed up :<) to allow citizens to provide their input. After a month or two, we voted the final draft into action. In the end, not much was changed besides clarification on trial procedures and the formalizing of the ability of the Conclave to raise an advisory question to a Judicial Review. While not the most life-changing of reforms, these small changes will help the Conclave run trials for years to come. Steps In-Progress These are steps to reform that are currently being done or haven’t started yet.  Step: Creating new Conclave guides Viceroy Barb was one of the Conclave’s most notable Viceroys, leading the court into its first few landmark trials and drafting up the first rendition of the Standing Orders of the Conclave along with Todd McCloud, in 2010. As part of her work, Viceroy Barb created two guides: A Viceroy Tutorial plus a guide on Trial Decorum. The Viceroy Tutorial explained what Barb learned about doing the job of Viceroy and wanted to share with her successors, while the Trial Decorum explained the trial processes and expectations of that time. Overtime, these tutorials became outdated as trial procedures, Arbiter duties, and Viceroy duties changed over time. Thus, as part of the Conclave reform, new guides are being created by me! (And can be checked over by the Arbiters if they feel something should be changed.) The current goal is to create four new guides stemming from Barb’s idea of tutorials: A Guide to Being a Presiding Arbiter (it’s a confusing job), A Tutorial to Being the Viceroy, A Tutorial to Being An Arbiter, and A Guide to Trial Procedures (the only one out of the four guides that will be made public). These guides should prove as helpful resources in the future, or at least that’s our hope! Step: Reorganize the Conclave Forums The forums for the Conclave have been a little bit complex for some time. While this had not been an issue for the past few years, some forums of the Conclave hadn’t been used since Yuno’s Delegacy, and the Closed Chambers subforum is overflowed with unarchived posts. As part of reforms, a request has been submitted to forum administrators for simplifying The Library of the Court subforum (currently closed to the public but will be released in the future) into a single subforum containing all of East Pacifican judicial law, along with other more minor changes. This important resource will aid all those seeking to delve into judicial matters when the request is completed. On a side note, I was almost offended when I realized it wasn’t public (being such Step: Create table consisting of precedent for easy access to legal rules At the Conclave, we understand that precedent is a confusing matter (as elaborated on earlier). And given that it can be used to charge a criminal crime and dictate court procedures, we decided that precedent needed to be listed out clearly in a simple forum thread, with a table. The plan is to go over all Judicial Reviews and trial verdicts, and to record any precedent they set and place it into said nice table. This will help further simplify how our court works and further turn the Conclave into a more accessible legal branch. Step: Implement an Attorney System During the case of TEP v. Fedele, an Arbiter was forced to become an attorney for one of the accused based upon a series of mishaps (and my suggestion to the accused to get an Arbiter as an attorney). Afterwards, I realized my mistake but it was a bit too late in that regard. In order to ensure that defendants are properly represented in future trials, Arbiter Pakitsk drafted up a resolution for the establishment of a Public Attorney Office to the Magisterium. The Resolution came into effect on March 28th, 2020. New Administrative rules, mostly following the opinion of the Magisterium as set in the resolution, are now being debated by the Conclave in Closed Chambers. They are expected to go to vote soon. With the establishment of this Office, trials are expected to run more smoothly in the future, and without delay. In the end, the reforms simply aim to make the Conclave a better place. With a new dedication to justice and simplicity, the changes being made should ensure that everyone can understand judicial processes, their place within it, and judicial functions they can perform in their positions. If anyone has ideas on reforms or wants to learn more, please feel free to contact me as derp#9479 on discord, or my NS nation, Zukchiva for telegrams. ^-^ Stay safe, and have a nice day! FA is Not Dead (Yet) By Libertanny For the past few weeks, since Minister Libertanny came back from LOA, Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been experiencing a total revamp, reorganization, creation of new plans, ambitions, ideas and targets. Many things changed and happened. In order to increase security of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but also to make role assignments easier, Discord server of Foreign Affairs went through a total revamp.reaction-roles, new masks and verification process have been added (using Pancake and Reaction Roles bots). For more intuitive and easier use, Foreign Affairs subforums (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Embassy Row) of The East Pacific Forum were reorganized by East Malaysia. New Google Documents and Sheets were created, to keep track of diplomatic missions, tasks assignments and staffers. Foreign Affairs Policies, after vivid debate within Platinum Hall - Cabinet of Foreign Affairs (consisting of Zukchiva, Libertanny, Marrabuk, A Mean Old Man, Tretrid, East Malaysia, Sedequia and The Atlae Isles), have been liberalised. That action caused The East Pacific to reach out to new possible friends, resulting in establishment of relations between The East Pacific and The Free Nations Region, Social Liberal Union and League of Conservative Nations. In the meantime, Embassies with Thaecia and The Union of Democratic States have been estabilished, whilst Embassies with Equilism, Greater Dienstad, Europe and Gay were closed. Survey in a form of Google Forms was created, in order to analyze opinion of TEP’s friends in several areas. As of now, a total of 7 regions rated cooperation between The East Pacific and their respective regions 9/10 or higher, namely: (1) New Pacific Order [10/10], (2) 10000 Islands [10/10], (3) The Free Nations Region [10/10], (4) Eientei Gensokyo [10/10], (5) Thaecia [9,67/10], (6) The West Pacific [9,67/10], (7) Balder [9/10]. “The East Pacific seemed quite friendly and open-armed just from my first interactions with a few of its members. The Foreign Affairs Department has been especially cordial to foreigners, and I look forward to meeting more people from TEP” - comments Terranihil, Director of Foreign Affairs of League of Conservative Nations. “We were very interested to say the least when we found out that TEP was considering relations with our region. It’s not everyday a GCR even talks to a UCR. The FA Ministry has been very friendly and reminds me of the ministry I’ve been building for years here in there SLU. I look forward to continue building relations with TEP and have our members get to know each other.” - says Goncar, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Social Liberal Union. "Our Experience with The East Pacific has been great so far. They are very friendly and are actually pretty dedicated towards the regions having consulates with them compared to other GCRs. Their Foreign Minister Serge is doing a fantastic job with the consulates and Consul Aivintis (TEP's Consul to FNR) is very active, dedicated and friendly." - comments South Asians, Vice President of The Free Nations Region. But that’s not the end. Ministry of Foreign Affairs has started recruitment, in order to begin a new era of this body - the new form of organization and hierarchy. In the same time, talks within Cabinet of Executive Government and Platinum Hall of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, regarding a new project, have been very vivid. Hopefully, we will be able to share more details in upcoming releases of EPNS. The Conspiracy behind Pacific-Con By Inquisitive Examinations Note: The following is a work of satire and does not represent the views of The East Pacific. On March 17th, the Delegate Marrabuk posted an image of a spiral thingy with the caption “April 2020,” introducing Pacific-Con, a gathering of the five Pacific regions, with speakers and events for gameplayers and roleplayers alike. It seems innocuous, but there’s more that’s hidden under the surface. The five feeders are very large and very diverse, but that diversity presents a huge challenge for unity. Something about “ardee,” I guess. I don’t think it’s particularly important. I think they’re just finding excuses to yell at each other at this point in NSGeePee. But do you really expect these regions to come together when their varying perspectives on ardee? It would take an inordinate amount of friendship and interregional cooperation for that to happen, and events that would appeal to both sides of the ardee spectrum. Would Pacific-Con have that? I don’t know, I’m not much of an ardee man myself. In all honesty, The East Pacific should pull a Lazarus and just declare themselves neutral and opposed to all ardee in general. They all seem to be the subversive type. Secondly, there’s “arpee.” What even is arpee? In The East Pacific, the people on the forum and the people on the ol’ arembee have two different arpee sectors, whatever that means. All I know is that means my messages on the arembee won’t be seen by anyone. If The East Pacific can’t even agree what arpee is, how will five different regions get together and do arpee? Are they going to merge their worlds together and make a huge amalgamation or something? Personally, I think they should just create a Minecraft server for the whole thing. And then people can play it after Pacific-Con ends and realize that they don’t need NationStates after all. Just kidding, of course, NationStates will suck us all back in. Then there’s games. Games! The same 50 forum games return! If the Paradoxical event that The East Pacific is hosting along with The North Pacific and Europeia has taught us anything, it’s that NationStates players cannot count in order to save their lives. There’s just something about the game that affects people’s ability to count. But how, and why? And here’s where I’m getting to the point. Let me ask again, given all these challenges, why would representatives from all five of the Pacific regions plot together and bring us all together? The cabal that runs Pacific-Con clearly doesn’t care about ardee, arpee, or games. It’s just a ploy for what they really want. They’ve been bribed by Max Barry to advertise his new book. You’ve seen the ads all over NationStates (unless you have a Postmaster-General account, in which case you’ve been scammed into giving Max money). Max Barry shamelessly advertising his new book, like when he created NationStates to sell Jennifer Government? You see, due to the troubling times that the crooked editors have forced me not to name, Max is having trouble selling his book in physical stores due to them being closed. On his website, he says that “the best kind of promotion now, obviously, is online promotion.” His newest book is about humans coming together to face an alien threat. Does that mean that NationStates is about to be attacked by aliens? Who knows, that might be the April Fool’s event this year. But where else is a better place to advertise it than an event where five unlikely regions come together? Perhaps that’s what all the arpee and ardee is about. Pacific-Con will be the epitome of the consumer culture that Jennifer Government was criticizing all along. But that’s not even the worst part. The new book, which is named Providence, is clearly named after the Eye of Providence, which you will know as the Illuminati symbol. The same eye that was on Jennifer Government! This proves, without a doubt, that the cabal that runs the feeders and all the major, large regions is not the Rahls, but the Illuminati. And they have sponsored the book for this very reason. I bet Max Barry is one of them, using his influence to lure us all into this allure of a game and trap us in this political simulator. Through my investigative skills, I have determined that Pacific-Con is a scam run by the Illuminati, which controls a large chunk of NationStates to sell Max Barry’s newest book to make money. Whatever you do, do not join Pacific-Con and do not join the Discord server when it comes out. Stay inside and answer your issues and farm cards in peace. I mean, hell, even Todd McCloud is there. Never trust the fox. He’ll try to sell you his books.
Ambassador from The East Pacific to The South Pacific.
Editor of the Eastern Pacific News Service The East Pacific News Service
May 2020 Edition Honoring Our Heroes
By Zukchiva The East Pacific has always sought ways to revere and remember the nations that have served within its borders. Stemming from resolutions to honorary citizenship, the East Pacific has attempted a variety of ways to honor its heroes. Here’s a look at three of the previous ways in which the East Pacific has tried to honor its citizens, and a short blurb on its newest, fourth attempt! Honorary Citizenship Honorary Citizenship was basically a legal concept in which any person who received this type of citizenship would be able to remain a citizen of the East Pacific, even when they no longer meet the traditional requirements citizens need to maintain (remaining in the East Pacific, not ceasing to exist). As one of the East Pacific’s highest honors, the Magisterium awarded honorary citizenship to many monumental nations such as 1 Infinite Loop, A Mean Old Man, Drakkengard (One of the first Viceroys of the East Pacific), and Mexregiona (one of the East Pacific’s former roleplayers and Delegates) for their service to the region. During the Delegacy of Fedele, Fedele himself brought up the idea of removing citizenship, based upon the “elitism” it gave to its awardees as setting them “above” the citizenship of the East Pacific. While a Concordat amendment striking out honorary citizenship would pass the Magisterium, it would fail the citizen’s referendum and would not go into effect. However, honorary citizenship was one again brought up for removal during the November 2019 Concordat reforms. This time, it was passed through both Magisterium and citizen referendum, and was formally repealed within that year, with all honorary citizens now losing their honorary status. Magisterium Resolutions to Commend an Individual Albeit the least used method to honor, the Magisterium has used its ability to release extremely strong opinions of the body (resolutions) to commend individuals for their service to the East Pacific. The two individuals who have been commended in such a fashion insofar are Packivilania (also known in TEP as ‘Pax’) and Xoriet. Pax was honored for his work as Delegate-in-exile during the 2008 Empire coup along with his work as a forum administrator and government leader. Xoriet was rewarded for her legendary records she made as General of the Eastern Pacific Sovereign Army, in which she reached record numbers of operations that have not been met since her tenure. The Hall of Heroes Perhaps the most recognizable honorary institution to the East Pacifican, the Hall of Heroes was an institution meant to give individuals a detailed description of their exploits, in their own forum thread. The Magisterium was responsible for voting in nominees into the Hall, who, upon passing vote, would receive a thread and a description describing why they deserved to be in the Hall. Ever since its institution in 2014, the Hall has suffered from neglect and disuse. In 2019, a new position called the Keeper of the Hall was created to run the Hall, with Bachtendekuppen serving as first in office. While he would end up completing his duty by writing out descriptions of everyone ever instituted into the Hall, he would end up resigning later on due to tensions with Delegate Fedele. In 2020, the Hall of Heroes Act was repealed after once again falling into inactivity and disuse, and was replaced with the Order of the Golden Ocelot Act, which instituted in legislation a medal long held in esteem by the East Pacific. The Order of the Golden Ocelot The Order of the Golden Ocelot is now the primary way in which the East Pacific honors its citizens. While it is still relatively new in its latest form, it has been in effect starting from 2015. In 2015, Delegate Ramaeus instituted via Executive Order the institution of the first rendition of the Order. The medal was created by British Grand Pacific (a prominent government official of the time), with its design meant to honor Xoriet for her actions and duties she performed in her service for the East Pacific (while this is not explicitly stated, this can be reasonably inferred to the device of an “ocelot”, which remains one of Xoriet’s primary appearances). Ramaeus would award the Order to Todd McCloud, 1 Infinite Loop, and Xoriet amongst a few other select nations. Ramaeus, when awarding the medal, stated that “The members of this Order have profoundly changed and impacted The East Pacific in their given fields, whether it be military or civilian.”, in explaining the purpose and meaning of the medal. These values in which Ramaeus decided who would be deserving of the medal now exist in the medal’s current form. In 2017, Delegate Aelitia would re-institute, via Executive Order, the awarding of the medal to three more nations: Hobbesistan, Free Pacific States, and the British Grand Pacific. For the award, Delegate Aelitia would also design the medal’s ribbon, which is in use today. In 2020, the Magisterium debated and officially passed the Order of the Golden Ocelot Act in April. Ten days later, the Act would become law, instating the Order as the highest civilian award within the East Pacific. This Act would legitimize the versions of the Order initiated by Delegates Aelitia and Ramaeus, while ensuring that from now on the Magisterium may also award the Order by majority vote, alongside the Delegate’s ability to award the medal at their discretion. Within the same month, the Magisterium debated and moved to vote fourteen nominees to receive the Order, consisting of those who used to hold honorary citizenship or were in the Hall of Heroes (but hadn’t received the Order), as well as three other nations awarded separately for their hard work and dedication. The Magisterium has, within the same month of April, passed all nominations for the Order with a high majority. The Order of the Golden Ocelot is another attempt by the East Pacific to honor those who had served it for so faithfully and for so long. While time can only tell whether the medal will accomplish what the Hall of Heroes and honorary citizenship could not, hope is bright for this revitalized award. It’s the hope that this medal will finally bring to its awardees the honor and distinction they have, in the East Pacific’s eyes, rightfully earned. The Drewpocalypse By Turtle (Quebec-and-Maritimes/Nordenpunto) On April 20th, the YouTuber Drew Durnil released a video showcasing NationStates, causing the event dubbed the "Drewpocalypse". Tons of people created nations, which caused the servers to lag a lot. Who is Drew Durnil? Many were unaware of Drew before this situation unfolded. A poll was held by Sedequia inquiring about if the respondents had created a nation following the release of the infamous video. Out of 492 participants, 306 (62%) said that they were. The others had no clue what was going on or voted no. These results don’t tell us much though, other than that there has been a lot of new foundings inspired by the video (no surprise on that end). Nonetheless, Drew has been releasing videos showcasing, playing or spectating games related to geography, history, military strategy and the likes for nearly seven years now, so there’s bound to be some overlap in the fanbases. What exactly happened? Around noon, "Creating 1 country to battle 184,028 other Countries in the World" came out, causing a large spike in the number of nations created (about 550 foundings per hour in TEP after release, with a slight slowdown later that day). NS servers didn't take this well and delays were observed worldwide. This was because the RAM usage was at capacity, so disk memory had to be used instead. Ultimately, most of the new people won’t stay, and the fans of Drew that do will be considered just another fellow player in due time. A second wave? This afternoon, another video of Drew playing NationStates was published, bringing up the possibility of even more players joining in large quantities. Though many new nations were created, the servers didn't seem to struggle too much. The data shows that 360 new nations were founded in TEP today between 16:00 and 17:00 UTC. According to VW53aland, the Minister of Immigration of the East Pacific, "[...] foundings are equally distributed over the 5 feeder regions; TP, TNP, TWP, TSP, and TEP. So the total influx will be five times larger than what we're seeing." Some quick math tells us at least 54,000 new nations have been founded (worldwide) since the start of these events. Closing Remarks Though it will be remembered, The Drewpocalypse is not a watershed moment in NS history. Most of the people that enjoy and stick with the game would probably have stumbled upon it at some point. Though the amount of people that have joined during these events is unparalleled (for now), it seems unlikely that this will change much in the grand scheme of things. (Except for anyone who has to process applications. VW has shown how many more citizenship applications they’ve been getting and they deserve more appreciation.) The Catgirl Candidate: Interviewing Sakana By Atlae (Editor's Note: Sakana was the previous Overseeing Officer of the Eastern Pacific Sovereign Army, and ran for WA-Secretary General under the name "Trans Anarcho-Communist Lesbian Catgirls," reaching second place.) Atlae: Hello Sakana! I know most of NS will know you as Trans Anarcho-Communist Lesbian Catgirls, the second-place runner-up for the 2020 April Fool’s World Assembly Secretary-General Election, but could you introduce yourself and give a brief overview of your NS and TEP career? Sakana: Hey there, Atlae! I'm Sakana, also known as Feu de Glace. I'm currently spending most of my time in The Black Hawks, but I've also been in a few other regions. I started my NS life by spending about three years in the region that I decided I liked the welcome telegram of (New Warsaw Pact). After deciding that I needed to get out of that rather isolated region, I got unexpectedly invited to Lily. From there I somehow ended up in The Pacific's military, Legio--but that's a weird and confusing tangent. At some point I joined The East Pacific as a citizen and when there was no one with any experience in R/D to take over the position of Overseeing Officer, I was offered the position. This was right in the middle of Fedele's attempted coup of TEP so I was immediately thrown into the thick of things. Since then I've been moderating TEP's Discord, keeping things clean and the bots working. Atlae: Why did you ultimately decide to run for WA Secretary-General? Sakana: Well, the event started on the Trans Day of Visibility and it was an April Fools' event so what nation would be better than Trans Anarcho-Communist Lesbian Catgirls?! It was fun, silly, and timely. I also hope that there were some smiles from it. I also really enjoy the April Fools' events and like competing in them so no matter what it was going to be fun. Stressful, but fun. Atlae: What did you think about the previous 4 years of Caelepes’ term as WA Secretary General? Sakana: Wh-oh right. The Sec-Gen position is one that wields immense power and should be treated with utmost respect. With their power to veto anything and kick anyone out of the WA, it's scary. Imagine being kicked out of the WA while you're trying to tag a region? That'd be awful! Okay, so I'm being told that they don't actually have that power. Huh, I wonder what they do... Atlae: In your campaign bulletin, you start with “We’re here, we’re queer: the Trans Catgirls are here!” You mentioned earlier that you began your campaign on International Transgender Day of Visibility, so do you think your campaign resonated with many young catgirls at home? Sakana: Oh, I know that it did! I got a lot of telegrams from people that were really happy to see the nation running for office. Those telegrams really made me happy since, between the gorespam and awful telegrams that I kept getting, there was a lot of negativity. Those good telegrams made it all feel worth it. I also had some people come out to me which was always an amazing experience. Atlae: Speaking of telegrams, one of the main complaints of those voting in the election was the amount of campaign TGs sent to them. What's your opinion on this? Sakana: Haha, there were a lot of telegrams. I myself tried to not send that many out (ie. one WA wide telegram) but I know that other people sent out more than that. All I know is that Alti made that lovely dispatch which was hilarious and made it clear that people weren't liking the amount of telegrams. I also don't think that I have a good perspective on it since I got ~500 telegrams from people. Oh, and I, uh, may have had WA Campaigns blocked on accident sooooooooo who knows! Atlae: On your campaign thread in the Election Headquarters subforum, you and your campaign picked out catgirl pictures for the top SecGen candidates and anyone who requested one. Where did you get the catgirls from and can you confirm right here and now that they are doing okay one month later? Sakana: The worldwide team of catgirls volunteered in support of the election! They were all given the highest accommodations and got homemade cookies as thanks. All are safe now and, from what I last heard, are still enjoying the after party. Maybe they'll be partying until the next election, who knows! Atlae: Who were the people who helped you with your campaign and what work did they do? Sakana: I'd like to wait to answer that one since I need perms to see an old Discord chat to make sure I get everyone. Atlae: TEP was one of the first regions to support your candidacy, along with TBH [The Black Hawks]. What impact would you say that those early boosts/endorsements gave you in the election? How were you able to appeal to so many different regions? Sakana: I think that those early boosts were very helpful in getting momentum. The support from both of them made a solid base for a coalition. I think that we were able to appeal to so many different regions because we had a fun and silly campaign. We weren't worried about being serious for April Fools', that'd be heresy! That non-serious tone definitely helped us appeal to a lot of regions. Atlae: Late into the election, [violet] introduced the running mate mechanic into the election. One of the major surprises in the final round of voting was when McMasterdonia became your running mate. Could you share some insight into how this came to be? Sakana: Oh, that twist! We had that planned for a bit which is why the catgirls didn't have a running mate before. It was something fun and unexpected that we thought would shake things up a bit. It was also brought up briefly between the five candidates (I think I talked to everyone?) that got into the final round that we would all drop out at once leaving the election with no winner. The would've been the most ridiculous thing to happen and I'm sort of sad that it didn't. Atlae: There have been many accusations that you and other members of the “WA Elite” - namely, the other four candidates that made it into the final round of voting: Kuriko, Caelepes, Valentine Z, and McMasterdonia - conspired to keep Jocospor out of the final round of voting. At risk of a substantial reaction from the Confederation of Corrupt Dictators, do you have any comment on this whole affair? Sakana: Okay, I have to say the idea of me being a WA elite is hilarious to me since most of the time I don't even know where my WA is, lol. And, as for saying anything on the matter, I think that those that got into the final round of voting deserved to be there. Everyone worked very hard to get into the final voting round. Atlae: Could you give your thoughts on each of the other 4 final round candidates? I know you’ve already given them a catigirl pic. :p Sakana: Sure! I think that all four of them are fantastic people and it was extremely fun to run against them. The election allowed me to get to know a few of them better and I'm really glad for that. If you want specific thoughts on each on, the campaign telegram that I sent out gave an adjective for them: Quote:Kuriko is QUALIFIED Atlae: What would you say to Kuriko right now about her very grueling job as WA Secretary-General? Sakana: Hope you enjoy reading the thousands of pages of requirements that you have to follow~! Atlae: How has post-election life in NS been for you? Sakana: Post-election life on NS has been about the same as pre-election life. I'm still having fun doing silly things. The only difference is that the catgirls have had c/c proposal(s?) written about them. Oh, that and I keep getting replies from my WA all telegram from people that are just now opening their telegrams up. Other than that things have been pretty much the same. I have enjoyed sneaking puppets into XKI [10000 Islands] for Kuriko to find, though. So far she's only found one but who knows, there might be more~ Atlae: Last question. Will you be running again in 2024? NS is dying to know. Sakana: If I'm still here, maybe. The world always needs more Trans Anarcho-Communist Lesbian Catgirls~ Atlae: Alright, thank you for your time. It was a blast interviewing you. Sakana: Let me know if there is anything else that I can help with! The Judgment By Inquisitive Examinations Note: The following is a work of satire and does not represent the views of The East Pacific. Where were you on 4/20/2020? A date that will live in infamy, and not just for its auspicious date. It is the day when the deity known as Drew Durnil came down from the heavens and destroyed NationStates’ servers with his divine wrath. Only the likes of [violet] could stop his rampage, but the damage was already done. His army of followers, ranging from 30,000-50,000 nations strong, would have been enough to topple all of the GCRs and major UCRs (CCD’s pipe dream, I suppose) if they were commanded to. But nay, they have dispersed around the world, settling in the regions whose recruitment telegrams were the most interesting. Despite everyone’s initial rage about the lag and general inconvenience caused by Drew’s divine judgment, NationStates as a whole benefited from the publicity. The East Pacific, for that matter, increased by at least 50%, with the citizenship application office ballooning with requests after his divine message was available to the public. Clearly the East Pacific was favored, since that was the birthplace of Drew’s digital manifestation. The day that he returns would signal the Second Coming. It soon emerged that Marrabuk, the Delegate of The East Pacific, posted the following message: “Hippity hoppity Drew Durnil's channel is now TEP's property” 1 (Marrabuk). This message may seem innocuous to the average reader, but here at Inquisitive Examinations we examine things inquisitively. Clearly Marrabuk has the Mandate of Heaven (why else would he be Delegate) and must have some message from the beings above us. Perhaps he is even descended from them, given his luscious coating; he really is the most handsome. But that would mean that fate has ordained that the destinies of The East Pacific and Drew are irreparably entwined, and that Drew would return one day. Of course, one would be remiss if they were not to supply evidence. TEP’s Provost, A Mean Old Man, submitted a proposal to the Security Council queue and it quickly made it to quorum. However, he rustled quite a few feathers even in The East Pacific for not drafting it in the forums first, which a 10x-WA Resolution author like AMOM should undoubtedly know to do. Even though by April 30, the proposal had overwhelmingly failed, AMOM posted this message in his defeat: “I think he may have planned to post the video as this was ending.  ” (Mean Old Man) The video in question was a sequel to Drew’s first divine revelation, causing the influx of nations of the Drewpocalypse. The message that AMOM had left also contained an image, which inscribed on it were these words: “When your resolution fails...But your plan works” (Mean Old Man). Clearly, either Mean Old Man had either coordinated this with Drew, or the action of condemning Deruuu had captured his attention again. Drew’s divine revelation at one point mentioned the condemnation of his digital manifestation, expressing pleasure while voting for the doomed-to-fail resolution. Following the failure of the resolution and the deliverance of Drew’s divine revelation, Mean Old Man changed his classification to “MASTER PLAN.”![[Image: hlB3SvY.png]](https://i.imgur.com/hlB3SvY.png) ![[Image: a2fDjIg.png]](https://i.imgur.com/a2fDjIg.png) (Artist’s Rendition: Drew Leading the Masses, probably by some guy) ![[Image: JnEizgw.png?1]](https://i.imgur.com/JnEizgw.png?1) (Artist’s Rendition: The Conjurers’ Ritual, probably by another guy. Depicted from the top, clockwise: Marrabuk, A Mean Old Man, Libertanny, Bachtendekuppen, Todd McCloud. Center: a burning lotus flower.) Work Cited 1. Marrabuk, Most Handsome of. “The East Pacific Board.” NationStates, Max Barry, 20 Apr. 2020, 3:40:55 AM, http://www.nationstates.net/page=displa ...p38234351. 2. Mean Old Man, A. “[DEFEATED] Condemn Deruuu.” NationStates, Max Barry, 30 Apr. 2020, 9:31 AM, forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?p=37045834#p37045834. Editor’s Note: These last three articles are short submissions from nations in The East Pacific, about categories ranging from roleplay and satire. They are intended to stoke community involvement in chronicling the stories of TEP. Tensions rise in Sokala as 2020 Prime Minister election starts By Dominic Brual One week after the start of the Prime Minister candidacy declaration period, tensions between various political parties rose to alarming levels. Several political leaders have been brought in for questioning for being suspected of instigating incidents of vandalism and theft that were observed by the Sokalan National Police Association. Among them was Ronaldo "The Rock" Rose, Party Representative of the ROCK party. "He's [Prime Minister Aruto Sokala] targeted me and my party for the past decade!" Ronaldo Rose exclaimed in an interview "He knows that if we win, we'll expose the corruption he's been hiding behind his socialist revolution." Rose and his party have been openly trying their best to impede the current Sokalan administration's policies after a failed impeachment attempt that led to Rose and the ROCK party being turned to a national laughing stock. Rose has been charged with 5 counts of incitiation and is currently being investigated for his connections to 5 incidents of vandalism of VICTORY offices in Santa Rosa and Subic. Meth Addicts Add Additives to Meth By Methany Gladd Ever since methamphetamine production was standardized in the nation of Jakubonia, the official manufacturers have began to add additives to an addict's favourite drug. This is to lower the concentration of the drug, causing people to buy larger batches of it. Some illegal drug rings have already began distilling and purifying this product, to gain a taste high. Luckily, the practically nonexistent law enforcement has been gradually cracking down on these fiends! Legislations to make a minimum drug concentration quota are underway. Thany Devito Can Beatbox By George Joestar (local aristocrat and interpreter) Y’all gon make (pwt) me act a fool (pwt) up in here (pwt) up in here (pwt). y’all gon make (pwt) me lose my cool (pwt) up in here(pwt) up in here (pwt). y’all gon make(pwt) me bust a SMACK (pwt) up in here (pwt) up in here (pwt). y’all gon make my fingers snap (pwt) up in here up (pwt) in here (pwt). Why should I battle a crusty old man when you can’t even defeat a little weak Peter Pan. You’re lucky this is only a beatbox battle (pwt), cause in a real battle I would make you feel rattled. Look at him, he’s only got one (pwt) planet, I’ve got the whole galaxy (pwt) under my dependence. You’re gonna pay when you bleed and die, yes you will die destiny arrives. Y’all gon make me aha prt aha sss aha prt ahaha prwrt prwrt aha sss Y’all gon make me aha prt aha sss aha prt ahaha prwrt prwrt aha sss Y’all gon make me aha prt aha sss aha prt ahaha prwrt prwrt aha sss Y’all gon make me aha prt aha sss aha prt ahaha prwrt prwrt aha sss Bwm saia semi bwmbwm ama don stopa bwm saye bwm don bwm stopa pwt bwmbwm saia semi bwmbwm ama don stopa bwm Let me show you how to scratch it ahuHU bwm sama uta p utaata uta eta uta bwm etauts bu pww hu pww eta pww uh seta eta pu etta pu bwm either way destiny still arives.
Ambassador from The East Pacific to The South Pacific.
Editor of the Eastern Pacific News Service The East Pacific News Service
May 31, 2020 The Magisterium is Grooving
By Zukchiva During the past month, the Magisterium has seen an unexpected spike of activity. From anti-griefing policies to debates on governmental power, Magisters and citizens alike have been hard at work reforming the East Pacific’s body of law. The Magisterium has done a lot, so here’s an exhibition of some of its work! ANTI-GRIEFING POLICIES The East Pacific has always primarily identified itself as an unaligned region; it is a region that is neither raider nor defender. While the region maintains this political and military ideology, recent incidents have encouraged the Magisterium to pass anti-griefing policies. The reasoning behind these policies is to prevent the Eastern Pacific Sovereign Army (EPSA) from irreplaceably damaging native communities, following the belief that while the EPSA can raid, it shouldn’t do so in a way that destroys regions. Of course, there are some exceptions to this rule, namely fascist regions and regions who have acted to damage the East Pacific. These policies took the form of an amendment to an existing law. They prohibit the EPSA from various destructive behaviors such as banning natives, passwording regions, and refounding regions. However, the EPSA is still allowed to raid regions at its leisure, and also remove tags and embassies from regions, showing that the East Pacific doesn’t mind raiding to a large extent. ENDORSEMENT CAP RAISE With the Drewapocalypse hitting the region hard, discussions around raising the Endorsement Cap from 300 to 400 were abundant in all circles of government. After lots of discussion and debate, the Viziers proposed to the Magisterium the raising of the endorsement cap on May 7th, 2020. From there, the Magisterium supported the proposal and passed the cap unanimously, with Delegate Marrabuk signing on soon after. With this higher endorsement cap, nations within the East Pacific shall be able to now endotart to levels similar to when Yuno was Delegate. The enactment of this higher endorsement cap and subsequent increases in endorsement levels indicate that the Drewapocalypse has really helped the East Pacific recover the vast number of World Assembly nations that were ejected during the Fedele coup. LEGISLATING VOTING PROCEDURE For many years, the East Pacific has relied on the voting system known as “instant-runoff voting”, or “IRV”, to conduct Delegate elections. Proposed by a Magister sometime in 2014, the voting system has since been used by all Viceroys of the East Pacific to ensure fair and democratic Delegate elections. However, in order to prevent potential future abuse and to help clarify the processes around IRV, it was decided to legislate the voting system into law. This was done by amending the “Delegate Elections Act”, which is an already-in-effect law dealing with many Delegate election procedures. The bill passed Magisterium vote and was signed by Delegate Marrabuk, passing into law May 18th, 2020. NEW VIZIER APPOINTMENTS On May 6th, 2020, Marrabuk nominated two Citizens for the position of Vizier to the Magisterium. Said Citizens were Dylan and Tretrid, both long time roleplayers and Magisters of the East Pacific for a multitude of years. For the next few days, citizens showed up to give their support for the Viziership (though there were some concerns brought up with Tretrid’s role in EPSA). Nonetheless, the nominations were moved to vote after a few days, and the Magisterium quickly confirmed the nominees into Viziership. Dylan and Tretrid have already proven themselves capable in their new roles, despite having only been Viziers for around a week. It is a definite hope within the East Pacific that more nations may be set to become Viziers in time. For now with 13 Viziers however, the region is more than capable of handling any external threat against its government. THE REGIONAL MESSAGE BOARD ACT, 2020 The Regional Message Board Act was a bill proposed by Magister Lerasi to allow the government to try citizens for offenses such as spamming or harassment. From the get-go, the bill was controversial, with the hard question being whether or not the government has the power to legislate such “out-of-character” or “OOC” offenses. Nonetheless, the bill would eventually go to vote and receive a very high majority from the Magisterium. However, Delegate Marrabuk vetoed the bill, marking a historic move as the second veto a Delegate has ever performed under the Concordat. The stated reason which Marrabuk stated in vetoing the bill is as follows: “I’m vetoing this because I don’t believe OOC stuffs should be engraved in IC laws.” Marrabuk would later explain his reasoning in a separate thread. Soon after the veto, Provost A Mean Old Man would initiate a new discussion for the Magisterium regarding the vetoed bill. Debate has proven active, showing a diverse split of opinions over two pages of discussion. However, it is important to note that the discussion remains respectful and open to all Citizens; a testament to how the East Pacific as a community has grown since the Fedele coup. CONCLUSION These are the only most prominent legislative items in which the East Pacific has dealt with in the past month. There is no mistake that the Magisterium is filled to the brim with determined and loyal East Pacificans willing to reform The East Pacific’s law into something strong and new. The Magisterium is grooving, and working hard for the East Pacific’s future! An Interview with VW53a
By Tretrid VW53a, who is often just called “VW,” is the East Pacific’s Minister of Immigration, and so is in charge of managing the influx of newcomers to The East Pacific. VW is also a member of the Citizenship Commission (CitiCom), which is the body that processes citizenship applications. VW also made a series of graphs showing the spike in new nations in the wake of Drew Durnil’s two YouTube videos regarding NationStates. Tretrid: What do you do as Minister of Immigration? VW: Well, to be honest, most of my work just comes down to processing the Citizenship Applications. That is probably about 90-99% of what I do. When my job started, back in October, that pretty much was my job. But since the Ministry of Manpower was integrated with Immigration at the start of Marrabuk's second term in February I should do a little more. I have also done a little research in November keeping tabs on the number of foundings in our region, movements into and out of our region, number of nations with WA or with Citizenship, and the number of nations Ceasing To Exist. Also recently I maintained a graph on the number of foundings per hour from a few days before the video of Drew came out up to early May. But still, far more than 90% of my time, as Minister of Immigration comes down to processing Citizenship Applications. Tretrid: What was it like when Drew released his first NationStates video? VW: Well, I think I heard it first from Sammy (New Leganés) who is my main member of Staff and who is mostly involved with sending Telegrams to nations whose Citizenship Application was accepted. So, a video about NationStates. Well, that has been done before I suppose. I thought nothing of it and I continued watching the TV program I was watching. During commercial breaks, I tried NS, Discord and our Forum on my phone, but everything seemed to be slow. I blamed my phone or my router. Later that evening, at the PC, I first noticed the high number of new WA-members, the increased number of masking requests on our Discord and then started checking how the influx of new nations was. That is when the magnitude of the influx really hit me and I started creating the graph to get a grip of how big the increase really was. Well, they have kept me busy for a few days. XD Tretrid: What was it like to process all these new citizen applications from the Drewpocalypse? VW: It was headache delivering. No, really. I did have help from you and some Viziers. I would especially like to thank Libertanny, who processed about 16 of them iirc. At one moment I saw almost 40 unprocessed Citizenship Applications. However, I had to turn down about a third of them. Normally, I process them one by one. I decided to not take that route with this high number of CitApps. But that meant a lot scrolling back and forth to collect which application was accepted and which wasn't. It was quite a job. However, I believe the incresed activity is a good thing and I hope a lot of the "Drew people" found NationStates an interesting and fun game, and/or have found The East Pacific to be a fun and friendly region. For all we know, our future Delegate, Provost, Viceroy, or Grand Vizier, may be among them, and then my work hasn't been in vain. Tretrid: How do you think these events will impact the future of TEP? VW: Phew, that is hard to say. Like I said, part of the Drew people may have found their game and/or their home here. But some of them will also disappear to other regions and a lot of them will CTE in one or two months I suspect. So the impact on the future of TEP is actually down to the characters that stay here. They get to leave their mark on TEP, on the RP (be it on our forum or our Regional Message Board), on our government, et cetera. It is up to how they evolve, how TEP will be impacted. However, I believe it will be in a good way. Tretrid: What is it like to be a member of CitiCom? VW: Hmm, I don't really know how to answer this. If you think it would make me feel proud or something, then you're wrong. I am not interested in status, or something like that. I do a job because it needs to be done, and that's it. So, being a member of CitiCom to me is no different than being only a Citizen, but with just a little more work to do. I can say I found it difficult, certainly at first, to be the head of Ministry whose main task, or even sole task, according to a previous (Deputy) Minister was actually the task of the Citizenship Committee. When I started, the CitiCom was under the Conclave's control, and it contained about five members, not including me and the Immigration Staff. Recently, CitiCom has come under control of the Viziers (the Praesidium). I believe that CitiCom has grown too due to this. However, I guess I am still doing the first step in the process of 80% of the applications. Tretrid: What is the most common mistake made on citizenship applications, and what would you like to tell new people so they can avoid this error? VW: I haven't kept statistics on that. So, I'll take a quick look in a minute. I am pretty sure that when CitiCom was under the Conclave's control, the most common mistake was: omitting information. People mentioned for instance all their puppets, but didn't mention all the regions those puppets resided in. After CitiCom's control was transferred to the Viziers, earlier this year, the questionnaire in the application form was shortened. Looking over the new application thread that was made after the transfer, I notice that there were some errors in the beginning that seem to be less common now. At first many people didn't copy the entire form, so they skipped the ratification of the Concordat at the beginning, or they left out their pledge at the end. Then Grand Vizier McStooley changed the layout, so that the form could be copied easier, and after that we have not seen that error anymore. [returns after a few minutes of absence] Well, one mistake that has happened more than once, is that someone enters their TEP nation in their forum profile, applies for citizenship, and then move to another region before their Citizenship Application was processed. Of course, this is a huge mistake. Who in their right mind would leave TEP for another region? So this error can be easily avoided. Just stay in The East Pacific! But the most common mistake is made here: If I have one, the name of my World Assembly member nation is: .... Often people fill in their nation's name, even though they are not a WA-member (anymore), or sometimes haven't even applied for WA- membership. But almost just as often people write here "None", even though the TEP nation they're applying with is a WA-member. So people should check if they have a nation that is already admitted to the WA, and if so, mention that nation at this question. If they're not sure, they could just check all their nation's pages. (By NationStates, every user is allowed to have only one WA-member.) If they're a member, there will be a green bar on top of that page stating "WA-member". Also on the bottom of their page, they might see a list of nations that have endorsed them. (Non WA-member cannot give or receive World Assembly Endorsements.) Tretrid: Lastly, is there anything you'd like to say to the readers of the EPNS? VW: Yes, I would like to invite every resident of The East Pacific to apply for citizenship. It is your ticket to a very fun community. It is also your first step on a path where you get more acquainted with the laws that govern our region, and the people that create, maintain, uphold, and execute these laws. It is also your first step if you are interested in joining any such group. One other major advantage of becoming a Citizen, is that you get to vote for a new Delegate every 4 months. This June will be one of those months, so you should apply very quickly! And of course, being a Citizen, you get more protection. But blah, blah, you were not going to break the law, now were you? However, what if someone else did? Against you? Anyway, hope to see your application soon. Just go to https://tep.li/citizenship and follow the instructions in the opening post there. If you are having trouble, or questions, you can always contact any of the nations in the Ministry of Immigration. Those are: Virgolia, New Leganés, Tretrid, and VW53ALand. Paradoxical: Electric Boogaloo By Giovanniland ![[Image: Obszar_roboczy_2_kopia_28.png]](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/633779031342579733/716811123919159448/Obszar_roboczy_2_kopia_28.png) The first edition of Paradoxical - an event jointly hosted by The North Pacific, The East Pacific, and Europeia - was very successful. With over 200 participants, roleplay competition, two multiplayer games and several spam games, it became a memorable event.. So... What if we told there will be a second edition, and it will have futuristic themes? That's right! Paradoxical'2.0 is coming! And the organizers hope that you join for many interesting competitions and other activities! Paradoxical'2.0 is an event hosted officially by The East Pacific and Thaecia, with volunteers from several other regions: The North Pacific, The West Pacific, The Pacific, Europeia, and Caer Sidi. Furthermore, the event has two partners - one is The East Pacific Evolved Roleplay, a regional roleplay organization, and the other is NationStates Today, a newspaper about important NS events. With a large and competent team, you'll see that Paradoxical'2.0 is perfectly planned to be an awesome interregional event, where many people will meet and have fun! The event starts at the 1st of June, and will happen through an entire week until the 7th of June. You may have noticed that I mentioned competitions - but what are those? First off, I'll talk about roleplaying. There will be not one, but three types of RP, and you can choose as many as you want! We'll also have Art and Writing contests, along with a lottery, as the previous edition - all of them with prizes, this time however - they shall be a secret. That's not all, though! Many other activities will be happening, such as Trivia, Skribbl.io, Cards Against Humanity, and even a Minecraft server! Now, isn't that amazing? If you agree, don't hesitate to join! Competition entries will only be available at the first day - so don't wait, join the server now: https://discord.gg/8dWyTPB! Interview with Blueacia By Zukchiva Interviewer’s Note: This interview was conducted on Discord, so much of the interview is rather choppy in grammar and sentence structure. The interview goes over how Blueacia joined NationStates, as well as some parts of their experience as a TEP roleplayer. Zukchiva: Hey Blueacia, nice to meet you, and thanks for the interview! How are ya? Blueacia: Good Zukchiva: Awesome! So first question: could you tell me a bit about how you found NationStates? Blueacia: Me and 2 friends started it some time back. We all wanted to have a simulator for our own nations. As we played Airline Empires a lot I took the name Blueacia, one of my friends took the name Sicily and Naples, and the other friend choose Vaspor Zukchiva: Y'know, your name is pretty unique as far as NS names go. Anyways, what did you and your friends do after joining? Did you found a region for yourselves, or did y'all do something else? Blueacia: Thank you for the compliment about the name. Tbh I used a name generator like my friend who choose the name Vaspor Zukchiva: Well, it was a good name generator >_> A lot of name generators like NS have long and weird names :p Blueacia: I don't know about regions, but we did a lot of issues, and laughed us sick sometimes about the results. And we tried to convince each other our government was the best Zukchiva: That sounds pretty sweet and fun, actually. What happened to your friends? I haven't seen them around here. o.O Blueacia: One of them (Sicily and Naples) was a hit and run on the map. He liked the idea of this, but didn't want to RP all the time. The other isn't good in English. So I wouldn't do him a favour asking him to join Zukchiva: Oh, so they still play NS? Blueacia: I don't think so Zukchiva: That sucks :/. But it seems that y'all did have fun when you played together. Now, to the meat and gravy of the matter; what attracted you to coming over to TEP Evolved? What made you stray from issue answering, in other words? Blueacia: Simply said, I didn't like the stats they were using on NS. I was already in the East Pacific region, answered the mail. And joined TEP in 2017. Always have been that 1 pixel island until few weeks back. Zukchiva: Lololol, yes you have! So I notice that you have a masking as "Cartographic Researcher" on the TEP Roleplay Discord. Why do you have that role, what do you do under it, and do you enjoy being a Researcher? Blueacia: I just make sure every nation on the map is also on the cartographical list with the correct info Zukchiva: Do you like doing it? And how did you get that role in the first place? xD Blueacia: Dylan asked who would do it, and I volunteered Zukchiva: Heh, sounds pretty neat. So what made you decide to become the one-pixel tax haven you've been known for roleplaying as all these years? :p Blueacia: "Known for roleplaying" ROFL. Like I only do Urthvision constantly, I don't RP that much. But I always liked the smaller nations on Earth. Vatican City, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, Andorra, Singapore etc. I chose to become the Monaco on Urth. Because I am a big racefan. And watch the Formula 1 since 2004. And the GP of Monaco is the most famous. And they are a tax haven. Zukchiva: Interesting! lolol. But now I have to ask, what makes you want to stay and hang out with everyone? If you don't roleplay much, then what keeps you active in the forum rp community? Is it the community itself? Friendships? What's the thing keeping you addicted (everyone has one if they play NS) Blueacia: It's just fun to be around you guys, I always want top start and RP more. But it hasn't happend yet Zukchiva: That's so sweet! I know everyone in TEP Evolved appreciates having you here. :p Well, it seems like it's getting time to wrap this up. Would you like to say anything extra that hasn't been said yet? A message, perhaps? Blueacia: Everyone is welcome in the Blueacian casinos, see you there. *Thumbs up* Zukchiva: Thank you for the interview, Blue! Blueacia: You're welcome TEP Evolved: Roleplay Like No Other By Dylan TEP Evolved is one of the East Pacific's most premier roleplay. From Urthvision (our equivalent of Eurovision) to war, to a royal wedding to gunboat diplomacy, a lot of action happens on Urth, the roleplay's home planet. Here's a quick recap of some events! Very recently, we moved from a map where each pixel is about the size of half of Disney World, Florida, to a map where each pixel is the size of Gibraltar! (Woah, that’s 50km2 down to 6.3416km2). It’s our third iteration of the current map that was made in 2014, named Urth HR (hi-res), but actually our first maps were made all the way back in 2003! Our most active roleplays going on at the moment is the Arkian Civil War. Created by Arkia, the roleplay is about a three-way civil war in a regional power between a capitalist democracy, imperialist monarchy, and union communists; it’s packed with fleshed out character role-play and in-depth battles that are funded and fought with countries from all across the world. Our most exciting community roleplay that is upcoming is Urthvision XII, the twelfth edition of Urthvision, which is a song festival competition with representatives from any nation around Urth. Urthvision happens up to three or four times a year and it’s a great way to share our nation's favorite artists and music tastes. TEPWiki: A Catalog of Everything By Dylan TEPWiki truly is one of our greatest successes. We moved over to TEPWiki after we faced many problems with our old wiki provider, and it acts as a great Wikipedia style base for all national factbooks, characters, places, and other awesome pages. Here are three pages, one belongs to a roleplayer who joined in 2016, and the other two from the Drew-wave. Alongside these, we will showcase one of our characters that the RP community wanted to show off: https://tep.wiki/wiki/Great_Morstaybishlia https://tep.wiki/wiki/Alksearia https://tep.wiki/wiki/The_Democratic_Republic_of_Sokala https://tep.wiki/wiki/Ikrisia_Levinile Now the last one is very interesting, as Ikrisia has a storied history in the realm of the east, from soldier to world leader of a nation of fox-like people. The wiki page touches on this history, but it deviates rather sharply from the written books published by Todd. Which one’s the real Ikrisia? Tune in to find out! New Ventures: A Drew-wave Player’s Experiences By Art It has been exactly 30 days since I’ve joined the NationStates community. 30 days of roleplay, shitposting, and vibing in the Discord voice chat. The first time I joined NationStates was the most confusing and exciting thing that I experienced. I was assaulted by several telegrams with the great horse, Marrabuk, leading the charge. At first, I tried to reply to the telegrams in character as Prime Minister Aruto Sokala, a character I made in panic. By the end of the day, I managed to stumble into the Discord server and the forums, with me applying for citizenship in the end. In the following days would be basically me getting to know the great people of The East Pacific and developing my nation’s wiki page. Even as a newbie, I became involved in almost every aspect of TEP. I became a frequent visitor of TEP Roleplay Center’s voice chat, became a magister, and begun helping TEP develop its laws and I became a junior diplomat for TEP’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I’ve learned a lot of things in the 30 days that I’ve been in TEP. I’ve learned to love roleplay, a hobby that I used to be afraid of. I’ve also learned that I can apparently wake up at 5 am just to talk to some Americans and Europeans from across the world. In conclusion, TEP’s been a great region for me as TEP helped me grow as a new player. I was not rejected and was instead accepted with open arms. So, You Want to Run for Delegate By Inquisitive Examinations (Editor's Note: This article is a work of satire. None of these views represent the view of the Eastern Pacific News Service as a whole. On June 1st, The East Pacific will undergo a sacred tradition. It is a great one. It is something that is eagerly awaited every year. It is a time of celebration, to highlight certain members of TEP’s wondrous community. There will be great events to celebrate the occasion. The East Pacific is preparing for Pride Month. In other news, the Conclave is administering the election of a minor government official for a term of four months. But this seemingly innocuous thing is quite important! That’s because this is the election of the WA Delegate. There’s already some hubbub about the somewhat mundane job of being the puppet of the Rahls. A whole new channel in TEP’s Discord server was cordoned off for the sole purpose of discussing the Delegate Election. Now, how does the election of this Christie Island bureaucrat work? The Viceroy of the Conclave, or the Designee of said Viceroy, will open a thread declaring that nominations are open for the Delegate. Citizenship applications will be suspended, and The East Pacific will go on holiday for a week! For 72 hours, any old citizen can nominate whichever person they like to be Delegate. In the next four days, the voting begins. Here in TEP, we use Instant-Runoff Voting if there are more than two candidates, meaning that there are ranked votes. And those are good because numbers are good. Of course, there are rules about running. But talking about electioneering or vote stacking or election impropriety is boring, so let’s move on. Now, some astute readers of the Eastern Pacific News Service may be quick to point out that Marrabuk’s summer vacation is conveniently scheduled for this month. You’re right, Marrabuk has promised not to run for a third term. Of course, we can’t take it straight from the horse’s mouth. Therefore, we must do something to make sure that Marrabuk cannot participate. We’ll be adding stairs to this election. There have been questions raised about if this is the best way to select the most qualified candidate. Thus, a new selection process has been proposed in the dark depths of TEP’s Discord server. No longer will candidates simply “run” for the Delegacy. They will now be sprinting, jogging, and not galloping. They will be undergoing a triathlon, tightroping over a pit of lava, and surfing in shark-infested waters. Whoever wins (or is the last one still alive) becomes the next Delegate. This is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best way to elect a Delegate. Using knowledge obtained from the UTEP libraries from this Dahl’s Charwinuggles guy clearly shows that natural selection via trial by ordeal leads to the strongest, fittest Delegate to pass their genes onto the next generation. In addition, no one would dare coup TEP if it meant a large risk of falling into the lava. Only true, patriotic TEPers willing to die for their region would volunteer as tribute. Their love for TEP exceeds the risk of falling face first into shark-infested lava (the sharks are lava-proof, you see). Now, if you’re considering running for Delegate, I have some advice for you. This is the one big trick that is guaranteed to get you elected, 30 day money back guarantee! Be an animal. The East Pacific has had a rich history of animals being Delegate. Todd McCloud is a fox, Bachtendekuppen is a puffin, Xoriet is an ocelot, and obviously, Marrabuk is a horse. In addition, many top government figures are animals. Libertanny is a parrot, and Zukchiva is a goose; could they be contenders for the next election? 100% of the Inquisitive Examinations’ focus group (sample size, 1) has stated that they would vote for an animal candidate of a non-animal candidate, because they have none of the slimy characteristics of humans. Fedele wasn’t an animal. I’ll leave you with that fact. Of course, if you haven’t won the election, despite the 100%* guarantee, don’t let that get you! If you’re really good friends with the Delegate, just let them appoint you as RO with all the relevant powers. Remove the winner and those who supported him from the region, since clearly they aren’t deserving of the Delegacy. Once you realize that you and your cabal don’t have enough influence, appoint a random person with a lot of influence to banject more people. And you’re all set! Happy running!
Ambassador from The East Pacific to The South Pacific.
Editor of the Eastern Pacific News Service The East Pacific News Service
May 31, 2020 Libertanny Elected Delegate, Horse Retires
By Tretrid After the latest series of Delegate Elections, Libertanny has been elected Delegate of the East Pacific. Vice Delegate Libertanny has run in both the February 2020 and the October 2019 elections, so it seemed natural that he should run again. It seemed like the path to the Delegacy would be clear for him, or at least it was until Viceroy Zukchiva entered the running. Here is a list of all nominees, as well as those who accepted their candidacy:
Since Viceroy Zukchiva, who would otherwise have overseen the election, was himself running as a candidate, Viceroy Designee Pakitsk was instead administering the election. Also, it should be noted that Marrabuk had opted not to run for a third term as Delegate. And so commenced the campaigns for the Delegacy. Libertanny focused mainly on foreign policy. Part of this was through the Consortium, an ambitious plan initially created under Marrabuk’s delegacy. Meanwhile, Zukchiva took a more general approach to improving TEP. Not all of these campaigns were serious, however. In fact, two joke campaigns were run. Algerstonia based their campaign off of George Orwell’s celebrated novel, 1984. To be specific, they proposed basing TEP off of INGSOC and instituting the totalitarian government from the novel. And most importantly, they proposed ordering citizens to touch their toes without bending every morning. Aivintis (or “Lerasi/Aivintis/Warris/Manganite Mangote Mangite Magnet Mangent Mangetithe/The Wolf/Oh My God Idiot Stop Changing Your Name”), on the other hand, proposed theming TEP after the Empire, the group that invaded TEP in 2008. Among other things, Aivintis also proposed making the founder of the Confederation of Corrupt Dictators, Jocospor, “Chief Minister of Laughing Affairs.” Eventually, every candidate other than Zukchiva, Libertanny, and Algerstonia had dropped out of the race. It was a very competitive race, and for a lot of the time Libertanny and Zukchiva were either very close or tied. However, eventually, Libertanny won the election with 30 votes to Zukchiva’s 24. The delegate transition quickly started. The Delegate-elect quickly started to create his own cabinet, nominate ROs, and start to institute his agenda. Meanwhile, outgoing Delegate Marrabuk has made a farewell statement, and has recently been confirmed as a Vizier by the Magisterium after his nomination by the Delegate-elect. A Parrot's Platform of Promised Plans and Potential Policies By Aivintis Libertanny's campaign, called the #Libertanny4Delegate Program, promised to bring even more democracy, unity, and strength to The East Pacific. In case you weren't planning on reading through text wall that would put the Great Wall of China to shame, I reread it so you don't have to. Here's a little rundown of Serge's plans for The East Pacific and promised policies:
Although it hasn't even been an entire month since Libertanny was elected, this is what has been accomplished already:
An Honest Interview with a Parrot: A Talk with Libertanny By Zukchiva Interviewer’s Note: This interview was held with Delegate Libertanny on June 29th, 2020 via Discord Direct Messaging. As such, the grammar and spelling of this interview is riddled with typos and mistakes! Zukchiva: Hey Lib, thanks for giving me the chance to interview you! I'm sure a lot of people have questions on what you plan to do in the next few months as Delegate, especially now that you've spent two weeks in office. My first question (to ease into this interview), is simply how have the past two weeks as Delegate gone for you so far? Have you already come across strong obstacles and have you made substantial progress on your campaign goals in this short time? Libertanny: Hello Zukchiva, Well. When Marrabuk said, that being Delegate is basically having a second job, I didn't fully believe him. I was a Vice-Delegate for some period, and I was thinking on how is that supposed to be that different from being Delegate. But it is. It is very different. You can go to sleep and wake up with 20 pings and 10 DMs, alongside forum and in-game notifications. So in between of working full-time, being freelancer / setting up own websites related company and spending weekends away from home, I'm also doing my best to be the Delegate of the East. I hope I'm not doing that bad, but it's up to Citizens. But that's just a typical me, and you seem to know it the best :stuck_out_tongue: Speaking of what I have achieved (looks into his own campaign). We started creating Bureau of Public Affairs, we already have its leader (Zukchiva) and Forum RP Officer (SirShadow). RMB RP Officer elections are currently happening and I have contacted TEAPOT to have its representative in BoPA / Cabinet too. I have instituted McStooley as Vice Delegate of the East. We kind of changed idea for Organization, and we decided to use Trello, which is an awesome tool to organize Cabinet's tasks. I have nominated ROs. Ministry of WA Affairs has become and independent body (as in, not a part of Regional Affairs). We've had an awesome VC with most of Cabinet attending, during which we talked WA Development Program and prepared business plan for it. We have also began working on Consortium (having already 5 regions + TEP being interested in idea and server being created). We've also already scored a failure - the guarantee of independence of one of regions was denied by them. Zukchiva: Thats... actually extremely impressive @_@ So that's one thing that caught my eye in all that is the WA Development Program! Many people would say that TEP is a bit behind on the World Assembly game, with GCRs such as TNP, TSP, and Balder having WA programs. If possible, is there any special unique feature you plan to put into TEP's WA Program, which our fellow GCRs have not added within theirs? Libertanny: I wouldn't say so. The East Pacific doesn't have its own resources to have a Development Program, so we are really relying on r3n from The North Pacific here. We're basically making a copy of TNP's program. What we are adding, however, is membership in EPSA as part of WADP. In order to encourage people to participate in EPSA without them feeling like losing cool badges from WADP, we will be adding EPSA related categories. Thanks to Evri, we now also have an autoupdating dispatch, that pings WA Residents not endorsing me once a day (if I'm not wrong). Zukchiva: Well, for better or worse, having a World Assembly Development Program is gonna make our region stronger, that's for sure. One important campaign promise you made is that you are willing to form a treaty with the region of Thaecia. How is the progress on that? If you haven't started negotiations, when do you plan too? Libertanny: We haven't began talks yet, as we are pretty busy, as in, both regions are. Thaecia's just gone through elections and we started so many tasks at once. So I would say, as soon as situation gets calmer for both regions, we will start treaty talks with Thaecia. Hard to say when, excatly. But in less than a month, I hope. Zukchiva: Mhm. Interesting! One thing you've always been interested in is Magisterium activity as you've been a Magister for a long time before becoming Delegate, and in many other regions the crafting of legislation plays a big part in the executive leader's role.As Delegate, do you see yourself pushing for any specific piece of legislation, or general changes to our current law? Libertanny: I don't think we should determine this per me serving our region as Delegate now. I have always been into Magisterium and I have always been more or less active there, even as non-Magister. And I do intend to be active, when some things calm down and I have more time. I do not support anything specific law as of now, but I am in general support of (1) making laws less complicated, (2) making laws shorter and more universal (i.e. no refenreces to Concordat or other Acts, unless totally necessary) and generally (3) laws to boost security and (4) laws to boost democracy. Zukchiva: All of those are very strong goals regarding our legislation. o-o Now to take a small shift in direction: what do you think has been the greatest challenge (insofar) as Delegate that you have dealt with in these last two weeks, if any? Libertanny: Frankly. VC has been the biggest achievement imho. I havent seen such activity in Cabinet yet. And we managed to prepare a rather detailed idea for WADP during 90 mins. So it seems like something so simple, but yet so efficient and fruitful. Zukchiva: The Voice chat was pretty cool, ngl! I especially liked the fun we had in it. So, another question I have is, why did you decide to stick with the masonry theme and why did you make it a large part of your campaign? Many other Delegates in TEP have experimented with TEP's theme, why not you? Libertanny: It is a very simple question and a very simple answer. Keeping masonic theme is remembering about past heroes of our region, that server under the Compass. We also remember about Loop, who is more or less the Father of current East. This also seems to be simply "our" Eastern theme. When you think about freemasonry, you think about TEP. And that's also because I'm a regionalist, so keeping traditions is kind of a part of my ideology. And as a last note. Last time we changed theme we were couped Zukchiva: Lol, yeah that's a pretty strong point ->- Speaking of coups, it has only been eight months since the coup occurred. While TEP is pretty strong now, it may not be as security-protected in the future. What do you think is the most largest long-term threat to TEP's security, how do you propose we solve it, and is there anything you plan to do now as Delegate to lessen said threat in the future? Libertanny: Oh the solution is pretty simple. We need to stop making overly complicated laws and make them all more universal. What killed us the most were so many non-updated or overly complicated laws. Coupers didnt care and were doing their thing, whilst we were debating in Conclave and Magisterium things like "is stopping a coup legal?". I dont have a direct solution, as I dont see a direct threat. We can never know what is gonna happen tommorrow. But having simple, universaland understandable laws is probably the main self-defence mechanism. Zukchiva: Hm, that's quite a unique take. But, it does make sense. This next question is a bit different from the others. The Vice-Delegacy was a new position created by Delegate Marrabuk, in which you served for around a few months. Do you think that your tenure as Vice-Delegate has helped you acclimate into your role as Delegate? And do you think it has, in some way, prepared you for your current job, and if so, how? Libertanny: Well. It for sure did help me prepare for Delegacy. But I wouldn't say it played an important role. It's role would be just equal to being Minister of Info in past, or MoFA or Magister. Delegacy is being fluent in or at least similar with a lot of spheres of GP. So that was a nice addition, but I don't think it prepared me for being Delegate more than any role I had before. What was awesome about being Vice-Delegate is that, you had more freedom in doing things, than when you were a Minister. So that for sure boosted my GP activity even more. Zukchiva: And it seems I'm running out of questions, and we've both got places to be. So, it's time to conclude this interesting interview! But on a last note, as is custom, do you have a general message you want to share with EPNS's readers? Libertanny: Potatoes are a cheap replacement for Italian pasta. Gooses taste the best grilled. Besides that. I think not. Zukchiva: Well Lib, this has been a fine interview, besides the threat on my species and way of life O_O Thank you for having me, and allowing me to bombard you with my questions! Straight from the Horse’s Mouth: An Interview with Marrabuk By Atlae Interviewer’s Note: This interview was held with the outgoing Delegate Marrabuk on June 29th and June 30th, 2020 via Discord Direct Messaging. The following is an unedited transcript of said interview. Atlae: On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate your delegacy and why did you choose that number? Marrabuk: 7. I chose that number because even though I felt like I have done well, there are always room for improvement and always more things to accomplish. As a matter of fact, I didn't even manage to complete the consortium project. Atlae: Is The East Pacific better now than it was before Fedele? Marrabuk: Personally, I believe so, yes. The region is more stable and unified. There are bound to have disagreements like all families do. But at the end of the day, we will die for one another. Atlae: What was the best thing that happened during your administration? Marrabuk: To be honest, there's too many to list. For starters, loyal TEPers banding together to help fight against the coupers was and will continue to be one of my fondest memories of our great united region. Atlae: What was the worst thing that happened during your administration? Marrabuk: There were a few notable ones. For instance, the whole AMOM being appointed as Senior Commander of EPSA and releasing an official statement has caused such a huge uproar amongst our allies and potential allies. We could've definitely handled that better, but I still believe we managed it well enough given the cards that were handed to us. Atlae: What would you say is TEP’s position on the interregional stage? Marrabuk: We have a treaty with every single GCR except Lazarus. A treaty with strong UCRs such as XKI and Europeia, building stronger relations with many stable and upcoming UCRs like Thaecia, for instance. So I say, we're pretty strong in the interregional stage Atlae: What do you think is the general direction and outlook for the future of TEP? Marrabuk: Reforms internall post coup has been tremendous. Activity has went up tenfold and the unity of the region is now unparalleled. Keeping our region's activity high, unifying our region further and strengthening our influence in the interregional stage via the consortium is the direction I feel our region need to continue. Atlae: What obstacles will Libertanny have to overcome in order to be a successful Delegate? Marrabuk: Libertanny has a tendency to work and focus on too many things at once. Personally, I believe Lib's biggest obstacle to prioritizing and recognizing what needs to be worked on first and be able to complete it before moving on to the next project. Atlae: How will you stay involved in The East Pacific now that your term has ended? Marrabuk: I have recently just been confirmed as a Vizier and have also been nominated for forum Global moderator role. I am still an advisor to the cabinet and my DMs are always open if Lib or fellow TEPers need advice and guidance. Atlae: As of now, you have around 100 endorsements from the nearest Vizier, Zukchiva, as well as a boatload of influence. Will you repeat the decisions of your predecessor? Marrabuk: Not sure, I understand this. What decisions did my predecessors do? Atlae: What did your immediate predecessor do when he was leaving office :p Marrabuk: Coup? Yes, definitely and I am certainly planning to coup. Thanks for asking. Atlae: Thank you for letting us interview and thank you for the service to our region. We’re a little TEAPOT By Evrigenis Within TEP, interest in NS trading cards has been brewing for several months, and it has found its culmination in The Eastern Association of Pacifican Ornamentation Traders (TEAPOT). The new body has struck out from existing cards organizations by deciding to be independent of regional government while simultaneously being the region’s official cards association. In addition to being able to sign up on the East Pacific’s regional forums, residents can apply by pinging the official TEAPOT puppet on the regional message board with the pledge to abide by the Charter. The full text of the Charter is available here. How did the tea come to be? On the 6th of June, the Vizier and Arbiter Goose Zukchiva fielded the idea to make the Association official. They then promptly wrote the first draft of what was to become the Charter. This spurred on many questions about what the foundling organization was to look like: Would it be part of the government or independent? How should leadership be structured? While the legislative debate was developing, another important question was asked: What should it be named? Feu de Glace, also known as Sakana, CAME UP with the current name to hearty approval. Rateafication on the 13th was unanimous. Thus, The Eastern Association of Pacifican Ornamentation Traders was born. Who serves the communitea? In the wake of the Delegate election, the cards community held its own tea party leadership contest. Nominations were plenteaful; however, the election boiled down to former Overseeing Officer of EPSA, current Minister of Regional Affairs, Feu de Glace/Sakana and Deputy MoIC and cards enthusiast Evrigenis/y0. The campaigns focused on who the Steward should be and how the Association would strengthen TEP, respectively. Both campaigns were well received, and on the first day after voting was opened, “abstain” led. In the final analysis, the results were 3 abstensions to 3 votes for Sakana to 4 votes for y0. With y0 taking a sliver of a lead, they became Steward. How tea get started? Evrigenis’ first action as Steward was to appoint Feu de Glace Deputy Steward. y0 also set up the beginnings of the structure for the TEAPOT, going through with their campaign promises to hold a contest for a new puppet and open a heisting reports thread. What’s next? We’ll soon find out! RMB RP Spotlight: A Civil War By Osterreich und Ungarn During the month of June, an arresting development took place in the TEP’s Regional Message Board Roleplay. What occurred was a major geopolitical crisis in the world superpower Osterreich und Ungarn in the form of a military coup directly followed by a civil war. The Kaiser (the leader-in-exile) rallied his supporters and tried to fight the new military government, but a lack of professional soldiers along with a socialist uprising in the West quickly caused the Kaiser’s front to collapse and for him to flee into the wilderness. After the Kaiser’s disappearance, the socialist faction and the military government continued to fight, causing untold amounts of destruction to multiple cities, small towns, and landscapes. The newly fledged military junta was, however, soon hijacked by an ultranationalist and expansionist group called the Honor Party, which rallied its supporters and took charge of the junta. During the later stages of the war, the socialists began to run out of food, oil, and most importantly, morale. In a desperate attempt to salvage their goal, the socialists spread their troops out and consequently overextended their front. This decentralization of socialist forces allowed the Honor Party to crush the socialists once and for all, take control of the nation, and establish a new totalitarian state. Now, the nation rebuilds itself as the world prepares to deal with the war's unprecedented outcome. Whatever may happen next, the future of Osterreich und Ungarn, both as a world superpower but also as a bastion of democracy, has now been irreversibly changed. The East Pacific’s Urth Roleplay: A Newbie’s Perspective By Sokala Roleplay. According to Wikipedia, it is “an activity that is the changing of one's behavior to assume a role.” In NationStates, one assumes the role of multiple identities. You assume the role of not just the leader, the congress, or the senate of a nation but the nation as a whole. As someone whose only roleplay experience was playing at Garry’s Mod DarkRP servers where everything was basically just “make money and then shoot people”, Roleplay in NationStates, in general, was a culture shock to me. I was first introduced to NationStates by the Youtuber named Drew Durnil. As an RTS enthusiast, the idea of controlling a nation tickled my brain and led me to join NS. Upon fiddling with ideas for a nation name, I settled on the name Sokala and from then on I discovered The East Pacific(TEP)’s different roleplays. From Urth’s intricate history to Valsora’s futuristic world, TEP’s roleplays were filled to the brim with pages upon pages of worldbuilding and hours of effort by the creative minds of Roleplayers in the East Pacific. During my time roleplaying on Urth, TEP’s Forum Roleplay world, I found out three things that made Urth different from other roleplays in TEP. The first thing that differentiates Urth RP from other RPs was that it had a very long history spanning almost two decades. Urth RP, formerly known as The East Pacific RP, was created by One Infinite Loop in 2003. Until today, lore created by nations in 2003 is still used in today’s Urth RP. One such example is the Urthian race of Nekomimis, a race of cat people made by Loop himself, which still populate many nations in 2020 Urth. Another example is that some nations like Bai Lung, Kelssek and even Xiopothos that were from the original map still exist today on Urth. ![[Image: Jp1JQ8i.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/Jp1JQ8i.jpg) A picture of TEP RP’s ‘Asia’ map. Est. 2004-2008 Last but not the least, Urth RP has one of the most newcomer-friendly communities I’ve ever seen. Right from the start, you’ll be greeted by the mods and current roleplayers then during which they’ll be guiding you every step of the way, from applying for citizenship to making a map claim. From personal experience, the people of Urth RP do their best to make sure newcomers feel welcomed and at home right from the beginning. Although other RPs like Valsora and Windsor are also newcomer-friendly in their own way, I think Urth is the best in the fact that everyone helps everyone, regardless if you’ve been part of the community for a decade or a second. Urth RP is one of the best communities to be in NationStates especially if you’re new not only to NS but also in roleplay in general. If you’re a newly founded nation and are looking to participate in TEP, I strongly suggest joining us over at Discord. The Megathread uprising of 2020 By La xinga On the night of Sunday, Jun 21, 2020, Administrator and Senior Game Mod Reploid Productions locked the Right-wing Discussion Thread and the Left-wing Discussion thread, places which were meant for you to discuss about, well, left-wing politics and right wing politics! The mod's reasoning for the lock can be found here. United muscovite nations was the first nation to post. UMN was a person who posted on the 4 and a half year old threads frequently. He even put in his forum sig: "Grumpy Grandpa of the LWDT and RWDT". To quote UMN himself: "Congrats on [REDACTED] over a huge portion of the user base. Think I'm gonna head off the site for good, since LWDT and RWDT were the only halfway decent things to do on this site. Go ahead and deat me so I don't have a reason to come back." Once he realized the mods were not deleting him, he spammed and flamed his way into deletion. UMN was warned for spamming, didn't care, got a three-day ban for flaming, posted against it, and finally got the DEAT. The first FOUR posts were different posters attacking the mods for their actions. People demanded that the mods say how they got to this decision, and also claimed GHRs don't work. People questioned: "What happens if a mod breaks a rule? Can't they just delete the GHR? Oh, admins answer them? What happens if Admins break the rule?" Conspiracy theories ran rampant: Did the mods have some biased thing that no one knows about? The Archregimancy insisted that was not the case, yet, sadly, no one listened to Arch. People also claimed the mods didn't want people to chat, and one nation claiming that "the mods took smaller threads and merged them into bigger threads, and now they're getting rid of the big threads? Two nations decided that since there was no more RWDT or LWDT, they'll create a less broad new one. Nouveau Quebecois created the Authoritarian Right Discussion Thread I, while South Odreria 2 created the Authoritarian Left Discussion Thread I, both immediately locked by moderator Sedgistan, since they didn't meet the guidelines for megathreads. Whether or not that was a bad thing to do or a good thing, the users of RWDT and LWDT were not happy. People wanted other threads in NSG locked, some not even Megathreads. Nations did receive warnings, bans from forum for a certain amount of time, and even a DEAT. Reploid Productions repeatedly stated: “Once again, the topic is the megathread closures and requests for review of other megathreads. It is not for loaded questions about unrelated cases, hence the continued removal of posts as bad faith.” Yet again, when people are mad, they go over the line. People are free to criticize moderation, but mods are still players behind the screen, users that play NS too, like all of us. The Enemy of the People By Inquisitive Examinations (Editor's Note: This article is a work of satire. None of these views represent the view of the Eastern Pacific News Service as a whole.) On June 22, a scandal erupted that would change free press forever. Our step sister-twice-removed organization, NationStates Today, released information of a threat from Lazarene Prime Minister JoWhatUp not to publish a leak from a citizens-only channel about certain treaties. JoWhatUp’s worst crime - besides the capitalization of their name - is that he expected that this threat to NationStates Today would not be leaked, saying “I trust this will not be leaked.” This is an outrage for any believer in free press, who have for years advocated the god-given right to leak. One notable critic goes on to say that “[Lazarus] effectively criminalized routine investigative journalism,” which is verifiably true! According to NationStates Today, this leak came as a result of an article about the Better Together Accords and the Treaty of Skandia between the New Pacific Order and the regions of The West Pacific and Balder, respectively. These treaties were publicly posted in the Gameplay forum on June 10 and June 13, 2020. NationStates Today supposedly contacted JoWhatUp about leaked statements regarding these treaties at or around June 16, 2020, when JoWhatUp refused to comment on these statements and blackmailed NationStates Today. NSToday came forward with this behavior on June 22, and to this day there hasn’t been an article about these treaties yet. Or at least I can’t find it. I’m smelling censorship, though. When NationStates Today came forward with these allegations, Gameplayers blasted NSToday for accepting the leak. Some even went so far as to call them a security risk, suggesting that they were inside governments and watching! This accusation is absolutely absurd. The trench-coat wearing NSToday reporters hanging outside the region’s government buildings are not dangerous! If you go to them and ask about their day, they will probably sit down with you and explain for hours on end showing you pictures of their spouse and kids, as well as their loyal pet, probably. None of these Gameplayers have asked these spies how they feel. These people that they’re calling security risks have lives too. A young aspiring security risk walked into my office today. When they aren’t busy spying on other regions, they settle down in The East Pacific and write roleplay posts. I played Secret Hitler with another security risk, and although he was literally a fascist, I could tell that he enjoyed having fun and organizing the game. These security risks interviewed GCR Delegates like Marrabuk in an interview for a podcast. They literally recorded every word they said and no one raised any objections over their Delegates being bugged. If these people keep going on censoring the free press, who is next? The good people at Inquisitive Examinations will not bow down to this pressure and will continue to examine inquisitively! JoWhatUp, don’t comment on this article. We in Inquisitive Examinations do not like comments from people with random capitalization.
Ambassador from The East Pacific to The South Pacific.
Editor of the Eastern Pacific News Service The East Pacific News Service August 31, 2020 An Analysis of the Rejected Time's Survey Rankings of The East Pacific
By Zukchiva For anyone who stalks the NationStates Gameplay Forums, you are probably aware of the recent survey results released by The Rejected Times (TRT), the Rejected Realm’s most prominent newspaper. This survey has been posted every two years since 2014, and addresses how people view certain aspects of the larger Game-Created Regions. With the opinions of 53 people having been recorded and analyzed, TRT released a detailed analysis of their 2020 survey, with various categories being used to assess regions. Some of the categories included Overall Perceptions, Diplomacy, Activity, Culture, and Stability. I, in this article, will set out to explain why the East Pacific’s scores in the categories of Culture, Military Presence, and Stability, have fallen so far compared to most of the other categories. Only three categories will be covered for the sake of keeping this article simple! 1. CULTURE One of the greatest hit categories for the survey was Culture, with the East Pacific losing a large margin of -16% of its score compared to 2018. The East Pacific is one of the lowest ranking regions on the list, only barely scraping by the Sinkers. To the average East Pacifican, this may seem confusing as the East Pacific is traditionally a region steeped with inside jokes and history, some common examples being fridge owls, caek, and pax fruit. However, one should not view this category as assessing a region’s cultural history, but rather how publicly viewable and invested is a region in developing its culture. An examination of all the other Pacifics, and the Rejected Realms, show a large variety of public events both big and small constantly being hosted. Examples of such events include Democracy Day within the North Pacific, Thinksame in the Pacific, and Punday Mondays in the West Pacific. It is no coincidence that the North & South Pacifics are some of the top regions in this category, while the West Pacific surpasses the East Pacific by a hefty .39 points. The above facts reinforce the idea that the East Pacific, whilst having a strong cultural identity, does not do much to grow and encourage participation of the community in cultural festivals and games. This should not be blamed upon anyone specifically, but rather how focused the Ministry of Culture has been on hosting interregional events rather than East Pacifican-only events. It is obvious that the East Pacific therefore needs to take a step forward in terms of hosting cultural events and activities solely, or at least focused upon, the East Pacific. Only then will the East Pacific be able to increase its own cultural values and heighten community involvement to the level of the other Game-Created Regions. 2. MILITARY PRESENCE Another hard-hit category for the East Pacific, with a 13% drop from the results of the 2018 survey. Similarly to Culture, the East Pacific is barely scraping by the Sinkers and is below all the other regions within the survey. That being said, this is not much of a surprising category. The Eastern Pacific Sovereign Army (or EPSA) has not always been the most active military. Infact, EPSA had not really done many updates and mainly acted as a glorified piler force for the better part of 2015 until recently. Updates were so minimal during this period that having participated in even one update was all it took for a soldier to be considered “experienced”. While the Army is now facing a revival by Overseeing Officer Atlae, it still has a long way to go before it becomes the organization it once was. Especially considering both the small scale of operations the Army is undertaking as well as just how recently Atlae became Overseeing Officer, and it’s plausible to see why The East Pacific was ranked so low. One way in which the East Pacific can raise this perception is to post update reports on NationStates Gameplay forums. While this is not necessarily important nor necessary, considering the Army already posts its updates on the East Pacific forums, posting such reports will show just how active and present the Army is compared to the military organizations of the other Game-Created Regions. 3. STABILITY Stability was one of the categories in which the East Pacific hit hardest, with a gigantic drop of -25% since the last survey. The East Pacific only scores above Lazarus, and barely above at that. It is not too much of a surprise as to why the drop occurred. Once a region gets couped, the systems it had in place get questioned and the region is seen as vulnerable when it once seemed strong. This drop of perceptions occurred to the East Pacific mainly due to the Fedele coup of 2018. However, the reason for this drop can be further explained than just the coup. One reason why so many people may have perceptions of instability within the East Pacific is the government’s recent actions, such as the recent situation with the West Pacific, the inclusion of A Mean Old Man within Army Command (although that was later reversed), amongst other choices. NSGP in general seems to view the East Pacific as a region that, while active and friendly, is not the most stable with a lot of changes coming into the region’s lifestyle and traditions. ENDWORD It is ultimately clear that the East Pacific has heavily dropped in NSGP’s general perceptions since 2018. And while it is plausible for the East Pacific to work its way back up to the good graces of the interregional community, it remains up to the government on whether or not it will decide to do as such. But for now, while perceptions may say one thing, it is true that the East Pacific is a thriving and active region. Whilst many improvements can be made, at the end of the day the East Pacific is still chugging along. Ultimately, that is what matters most. The Ebil Rick-Rolling Goose of TEP By TechTag Zukchiva, also known as Zuk, Zukkini, Zukchiva Yura, ZUKHOMINGMISSLE, MOMMY I’M TERRIFIED, derp derp it’s a zuk, derp, Gooseastley, Resident Goose Overlord, let us coup the east pacific, EPSA Cheerleader, and many more one of TEP’s influential and important person/nation up until this day, starting his government work on Marrabuk’s delegation has helped TEP to recover from its knees today. And many people of TEP look up at him as a good person/nation that gives fun to everyone. TechTag: Ok now we’re on the river where Zukchiva currently lives on and I can also hear some “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley in the distance so it means he’s nearby here. <proceeds to make honking sounds> Zukchiva: Stoopid hooman, don’t speak in my language, I can’t literally understand you. And you suck at honking lol. Anyways, why did you decided to visit me in my rick-rolling river? TechTag: I came here to interview you for our EPNS Issue for this month! Would like you like to spare a bit of time for a few questions, please? Zukchiva: Eh sure, why not? I have some time for it. TechTag: Thank you very much! Okay, here is the first question. Why did you decide to be a goose? Is there any particular reason or anything that led you to be a goose? What was the reason that made you make it canon if it was accidentally mentioned by someone? Zukchiva: There was no particular reason. I was watching some videos of the game known as “Untitled Goose Game”, which for the uninitiated is a game where a goose causes trouble in a small village in Europe. And I felt that it was a cool character so I became a “goose”. And when people began calling me a goose, I began reacting to them in a way I find slightly annoying and sometimes slightly funny. And over time, this cycle of people calling me a goose and my reactions to them solidified my goosey persona. TechTag: What was your first experience when you joined The East Pacific? Zukchiva: My first experience was just one of uncomfortableness. I received the welcome telegram from Queen Yuno (our Delegate of the time), and I think I decided to stay in TEP based on that. But I found the game to be weird in general, and I didn’t really like all the telegrams being spammed onto me from recruiters. After that, I began roleplaying on the RMB and things went up from there. TechTag: What does it feel like being an important person in TEP and being a meme at the same time? Zukchiva: To be honest, I don’t think my memeness and importance conflict with each other. TEP is all about memes and if you look into TEP’s important people, you’ll find that each has a lot of personal mottos and jokes. One I particularly remember but don’t understand is Bach’s tendency to eat children. That being said, I don’t feel that important. I’m just chilling here and trying to have fun, so being a meme just means I’m enjoying myself in TEP! TechTag: Is Bach going to eat me? Zukchiva: Yes. TechTag: What is your opinion on TEP as a whole? Zukchiva: I feel like we are doing well as a region. The Magisterium is full of Magisters who vote and debate on stuff. Roleplay is chugging new stories at a rapid pace. The government is no longer a dead fish in the water, compared to a few months before the coup. So I think TEP is doing well, considering it hasn’t even been a year since the coup. TechTag: What’s your say on the government of TEP? Zukchiva: I think our government is active enough. But I feel like we have a LOT of legal problems that I believe we should seek to fix. Some of them include our citizenship process, resident rights, and how our legislature functions. As such, I have been pushing for Concordat “reform” in order to fix our most basic set of laws, in the hopes that we can fix all of the Concordat's major flaws! TechTag: What does it feel when you ran for the delegacy and lost? Are you somewhat expecting to lose or some sort? Zukchiva: Honestly, it didn’t really feel that good. I definitely felt some form of disappointment and some other mixed emotions. However, within the next few months, I would get over it and focus my efforts more on TEP! I honestly was expecting to lose the moment the first votes came in. Libertanny always had a slight lead ahead of me. So while I did try to remain hopeful, I also did some-what expect to lose elections. :p TechTag: Let’s say in an alternate universe, that you win the delegacy, what would you rather do in general? Zukchiva: Work for the East Pacific’s best interests. In other words, host more cultural events, set up a WA program, expand our news capabilities, and forge new relations with new regions. Those are the main things I would’ve done if I was Delegate! TechTag: What’s your opinion in Libertanny running the TEP Government? Zukchiva: Libertanny has done extremely well in running our government. He’s handled so many situations and issues in ways I would have never even thought of. It’s almost to the point where I wonder if I would have done nearly as well as Libertanny is doing now if I had become Delegate. One thing I do love about Libertanny is his balance with his goals and the views of his cabinet. Libertanny has set goals and definitions for his term, but he also listens to his advisors and Ministers and adjusts his plans according to their input. His ability to listen and not be too stubborn has led the way to a diverse, active, and really well-functioning Executive in my opinion. TechTag: What do you think about the people of TEP? Zukchiva: I think everyone in TEP is awesome. We have the capabilities of being serious and being funny/crazy/insane on a dime, which I really love. I do feel like we shitpost too much, but besides that, we’re pretty awesome as a community. TechTag: Did you enjoy life here in the Nation States as one of the oldest nations? Zukchiva: While I do enjoy life in NationStates, I do have to say that in terms of age I am a very young nation. In fact, I am what most would consider a toddler. TechTag: If new nations were to join and interested in working here in TEP, what would be the best advice you can give to them? Zukchiva: Have fun. Don’t feel obligated to do anything. Ask for help. Join the Magisterium and vote, so that you can learn about our laws. Don’t feel awkward about sharing your opinion, and don’t apologize for it. And in everything you do, try to do it both for yourself and for the betterment of TEP. TechTag: Lastly, if you haven’t encountered the Nation-States game, what would you think your roleplaying life would be? Does it stay the same? Zukchiva: Frankly, I probably wouldn’t be roleplaying at all. xD Not sure what I would be doing, but roleplay outside of NS doesn’t really interest me. TechTag: wHaT dO thInK AbOuT mE? (ofc we would not let go a memey question cause this is Zuk peeps.) Zukchiva: A very cool person who seems to be working hard at his goals, and a person I consider a friend! You kinda remind me of well… me. Yes, that sounds weird, but it’s a fact. Whether that’s cool or not is up to you. TechTag: Thank you very much for your time Mr.Goose! I hope you have a good day and life ahead of you! Here’s a loaf of bread by the way as a gift! Also, Zukchiva hates Grammarly and other grammar checkers. -TechTag Thaecia and the East Pacific; Friends & Comrades By Zukchiva Under the guidance of Delegate Marrabuk and Delegate Libertanny, the East Pacific has made great strides in recovering its strength and rebuilding itself. One important aspect both Delegates have focused on is foreign affairs. During both Delegate’s administrations, the East Pacific made a strong focus to form new meaningful relations with a multitude of regions, as well as to solidify and expand long-standing relations. One of the regions whom the East Pacific chose to form bonds with is a User-Created Region known as Thaecia. Marrabuk initially reached out to Thaecia to establish relations sometime in October, right after the coup occurred. Negotiations were favorable Thaecia and the East Pacific had established consulates with each other by Janurary. In March, relations were furthered when an in-game embassy was established between both regions. While the building of relationships was certainly fast, it was not without merit. Both communities share various similarities, such as having a love of memes, being democratic, and being generally inclusive communities. With their similarities to each other, the outpour of support each region has for each other is to be expected! Given the region’s strong relations, as well as how close the region’s communities are, it was no surprise when both regions eventually began thinking of entering into a treaty. Negotiations began in early June, and the treaty was brought before the Magisterium in late July. Eventually, the treaty would be ratified by the East Pacific in early August, with a 94% majority of Magisters in favor of ratification. In order to specify the special bond between the East Pacific and Thaecia, a poem named “Poem of the Greats” was included as the treaty’s preamble. In addition, the treaty avoided the use of treaty templates often utilized by regions ironing out treaties, with The East Pacific and Thaecia opting to write their own unique treaty instead. With these two facts in mind, it is obvious both regions sought to build a special treaty for their unique friendship. While time will tell if the bond between the East Pacific and Thaecia will hold, it is obvious that both regions are hoping to build a more fruitful and mutually beneficial relationship with each other, to last for years to come. EPSA Mission Reports By Catiania (Editor’s note: These reports detail EPSA’s activity in the past couple of weeks. They are written in a different style than the usual articles.) ![[Image: It_was_a_%27dark_and_stormy_night%27_......718913.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/It_was_a_%27dark_and_stormy_night%27_..._-_geograph.org.uk_-_718913.jpg) Actual picture of a dark and stormy night It was a dark and stormy night. The wind was biting, the temperature frigid, the rain sheeting down. It was not a night to be out raiding. But Lieutenant Catiania was insistent. He had something to show his commanding officer. Catiania led Atlae through the gales to a shed behind the EPSA barracks. He had a frantic, fevered look about him. Atlae didn’t like it one bit. Catiania paused by the doors to the shed. ‘Prepare yourself,’ he said, ‘For nothing will be the same again.’ He threw open the doors, revealing, in the weak light of the sun in a storm, a small, furry, undeniably cute form in the center of the dilapidated building. ![[Image: image.png]](https://i.ibb.co/PGpkpnn/image.png) Actual picture of CatBot ‘It’s… it’s a cat’ said Atlae, doubtfully. Had Catiania finally cracked? ‘No, no, not just a cat.’ Catiania ‘My invention... my creation... it can sniff out the defenceless, the weak, the cowardly. It can lead us right to them. It is a machine unparalleled, an unflinching, unrelenting weapon of war.’ Catiania thrust the small bundle of fur into Atlae’s arms. It nuzzled it’s nose into his armpit and curled itself up in his arms, purring contentedly. It didn’t seem so much a weapon of war as a very tired kitten. Atlae was skeptical. But yet, Catiania had never been wont to conjure up wild imaginings. So Atlae agreed to let the kitten loose with some of his trusted soldiers. The soldiers assembled, watching Catiania apprehensively. Standing in the rain, the wind flapping the grey, dramatically frayed cloak that had suddenly appeared on his shoulders, Catiania threw his arms wide, and declared: !t The kitten, still curled in Atlae’s arms, suddenly straightened, its limbs ramrod straight, its eyes glowing red. It shot off into the distance, leaving behind only the ghost of a low growl. Atlae and the soldiers exchanged glances, shrugged, and charged off after CatBot. What followed was an extremely successful night, as the increasingly exhausted members of EPSA struggled to keep up with CatBot’s boundless enthusiasm and sheer effectiveness. So effective, indeed, that they conquered their own barracks. Due to CatBot’s preoccupation with bugs - it missed out on the minor updates and slept while the defenders went rampant - the second test was a little less effective. After CatBot was given some catnip and some scratches behind the ears, it leaped off and liberated many regions of their vermin problem. Allowing CatBot some rest after it’s exhausting couple of outings, EPSA joined up with some of our friends to occupy Calefacta Aquas Piscinae for a little while. The official report can be found here By the next major CatBot was ready for action once more, and indeed hit so many targets that it started forgetting them. Previous mission reports may be found here. An Analysis of the Rejected Time's Survey Rankings of The East Pacific By Sammy and Blueacia Back in 2018, when I (Sammy) wasn’t really involved in any TEP stuff, I used to spend a lot of time on our old Skype server. Blue was one of the people around there, and as soon as he realised I knew some stuff about Eurovision, he suggested me to join a contest he had been making for Forum Roleplay for some months. It was called “Urthvision”, and was an attempt to emulate Eurovision on Urth. I made New Leganés join then in the third edition of it, and since then Urthvision has reached an incredible number of 12 editions. In the seventh edition, there was a tie between Blueacia and New Leganés on the first position, so we both won and hosted the next edition. It was a really nice time, but people might have some questions… So let the expert talk!! First of all what is the Urthvision Songfestival? Simply said it’s Urth’s version of the Eurovision Songcontest. How did it come to existence? Few years back I (Blueacia) asked on the old Skype server if people knew Eurovision and if they would join a RP when it would be on the forums. After some questions from people I knew I had to think some more about it. In november 2017 I dared to really start it and asked a few people who I talked a lot with to join. Since then we had 12 editions, the last edition just ended. How is it RP’ed? Well, if I may say so, it’s quite an easy roleplay. People pick whatever song they like, come up with RP names and write a bit about the song and/or about the performers. The host collects all the info and makes it into 1 post and can write a bit bit around it. when the post is up all the participating countries can vote on the songs with the Eurovision rules (so no voting for your own song). The winner will host the next edition just like Eurovision. How many editions and winners are there? The 12th edition just finished. And because of a tie in one of the editions there are 13 different winners, we’re still waiting for the first nation to win it a second time. Some of them are no longer on Urth, but the winners are: 1 - Caltharus 2 - Hama 3 - Free Syllvin 4 - Furnifold 5 - East Cerdani 6 - Absurdistan 7 - New Leganés & Blueacia 8 - Kuthernburg 9 - Tivot 10 - Shango 11 - Norgsveldet 12 - Acronis How many participants are in Urthvision? The total of different nations joining Urthvision is 55. The record of participants in 1 Urthvision is 18, this happened twice. 1 time was when people were allowed to join with multiple nations and the second time it was 18 different people joining. Anything else? (Sammy) Before ending, we must also mention the extraordinary roleplayers that now make the hall of fame: Dylan, Oan, Furni, Arramall, Rico, Tuva, Todd, Norgs and Ben, as well as we both. The contest has seen how people have come and gone, and the history of Forum Roleplay and Urth itself during these 3 years, making it one of the oldest events still going on and part of Urth’s essence. It brings hype and activity to the roleplaying, and also a diversity of music tastes, styles and culture of each nation and even each roleplayer. It is a real honor to have participated in it for such a long time, and we hope it continues along with both the old and new generations of roleplayers. N-Day 4 - A Flying Disaster By Aga (Editor’s note: This article is a work of satire. None of these views represent that of the Eastern Pacific News Service.) Right from the very beginning, UPPERCUT knew it wasn't going well. They already sounded like a shady butchery, and battling with fake factions with the same of similar names wasn't going to do any wonders for their bad naming situation. Seeing that the name "UPPERCUT" was taken, they rushed to create a newer faction: "UPPERCUTS". That didn't only make them sound like the butchery, but made them sound like a shady slaughterhouse, which uses terrible karate to dispose of cattle. However, it soon emerged that UPPERCUT(s) has much larger problems than cows. They had to face genocidal jockeys- The Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Death; Pestilence and Famine.. The Short Tempered Horsemen (administered by Hell) rose through the ranks, as they added puppets upon puppets into their factions, some of them unfairly exploiting the fact that they are kind hearted and cute defenders who won't even do a fashbash. Finally, you've got Canopy, a friendly and neutral faction that was powerful but largely irrelevant until it will one day be destroyed, much like the Amazon rainforest. Canopy always strove to maintain the friendly irrelevance, hoping that no bigger powers will betray them, and that their friendly yet strangely irritating apathy will eventually pay off. Pay off it did. Second place was significantly better than they could hope for. So, three powerful amigos (Jockeys, Canopy and the Slaughter-House) were off to war, armed with the illusion of peace, Slaughter-House moving bullishly; 'Fenda Jockeys with a short temper and Canopy being forgotten. However, we all knew that Harmony wouldn't last. It's N-Day, after all - the only day when defenders can be violent. The Horsemen attacked the butchers, not the forest. Jockeys, can unfortunately get away with anything. So they attacked, with their multiple satellite states, nuking UPPERCUT(S) to obliteration. Then, that was it. The nasty defenders won. What more is there to say? I could ramble on about how the UPPERCUT(S) leadership structure was non-existent, how Canopy will remain irrelevant unless they become controversial, and how the usage of puppets should be curbed, but I won't. Partially because there is no point- N-Day will probably be changed by a team of mods hell-bent on changing everything to make it easier for them to win, but also because is there really a point horsing (geddit?) on about this? No. It’s once a year- enjoy it for Christ’s sake! Let’s nuke each other to death without a care in the world! Pretend we’re not maniacs playing a strange and infamous game, and enjoy nuking people who don’t agree with us. Because that is the true spirit of N-DAY. The Puppetmaster By Inquisitive Examinations (Editor’s note: This article is a work of satire. None of these views represent that of the Eastern Pacific News Service.) The East Pacific’s foreign affairs are in turmoil. If left unchecked, it would result in possibly irreparable damage to The East Pacific’s image and reputation among foreign regions. The East Pacific has lost the #2 spot to Chicken Overlords. On August 16, the WFE (World Factbook Entry, pronounced ‘woofie’) of Chicken Overlords proudly proclaimed “We Beat The East Pacific to become the 2nd largest region!“ right around when both regions were around the 8100 nations mark. Although The East Pacific quickly regained the #2 spot, with Chicken Overlords’ WFE saying “We temporarily Beat The East Pacific to be the 2nd largest region!”, it was all for naught, as Chicken Overlords steadily surpassed The East Pacific, which did not catch up. As of August 31, Chicken Overlords has about 9,687nations, set on exceeding The North Pacific’s population of 9,727 (only 50 away). Now, what makes Chicken Overlords so special? It is currently the largest user-created region, so one would expect people in Gameplay to really care about it. However, its delegate, -The Chicken-, only has one endorsement. Including the delegate, there are 14 WA nations in Chicken Overlords. Assuming that they are goody-two-shoes, that means at least 14 natives, with some non-WA puppets here and there. However, that still accounts for... *checks notes* 9,713 nations unaccounted for. Aside from the fact that 0.1% of these nations are WA and only one of them is endorsing the delegate, that’s an absurd number of nations whose identities are otherwise unknown! It soon becomes apparent that Chicken Overlords is stuffed with nations called “Womble” with a number affixed to it. Their most recent additions have been going closer and closer to five digits, which would be extremely less alarming if this “Womble” character counted in binary instead of base 10. This proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that this “Womble” persona is not a machine or a program, at least not 100%. It’s been speculated that this “Womble” person maintains the puppets with Auralia’s login script, and it has also been observed that this “Womble” individual really loves Anarchies, since all of the “Womble” nations are Anarchies. This has created a large anomaly in statistics, much to the consternation of WA Census Bureau statisticians and stats-lovers alike, who have clearly nothing better to do. At first, this story may seem like a non-story. Who cares about this “Womble” being creating thousands of nations to hold the top spot in regional leaderboards anyway? Chicken Overlords is nothing but a bloated puppet storage and embassy collector region, with its activity generated by either talking to themselves or other puppets, right? But there’s more than meets the eye. Some have speculated that these “Womble” puppets serve a purpose. Some have speculated that they are to partake in ‘ardee’ (we at Inquisitive Examinations have been told that this is inaccurate due to Chicken Overlords being early to update and rather a nuisance to must ardeers) and others have suggested that they are card farmer puppets (which, while there have been many puppets of card farmers, Womble does not appear to be a very big one), but they seem to miss the true purpose here. There must be something more than creating the nations out of boredom and leaving them and counting up the numbers. There’s got to be an ulterior motive here to creating thousands of governments and billions of citizens out of thin air for. It only takes a bit of digging. An obvious solution would be N-Day or Z-Day, which, although unconfirmed, is rumored to take place in late September and Halloween, respectively. A nine or ten-thousand nation army would be formidable at N-Day, for example. But there may be more. “Wombles,” according to a Chicken Overlords official, referred to those of the Wimbledon Common, which according to Wikipedia Britannica are little animals that love recycling. Could this be a message to those across NationStates to recycle? Is this “Womble” figure attempting to spread their recycling propaganda, during these times, across NationStates by flooding puppets to the point where no one can go anywhere without seeing them? This is ghastly. This is nefarious. As a proud, freedom-loving investigative journalist team, we pride ourselves in exposing the inner doings of the elite and the corrupt and the mainstream media. We strongly advocate for national sovereignty and we will not stand for this explicit messaging poisoning the world with pro-recycling propaganda! When we at Inquisitive Examinations examine inquisitively, we proudly assert the right to throw evidence and things we don’t agree with in the trash. No snowflake like this “Womble” fellow can make us change our mind. You will take this refuse from our cold, dead hands! This explains everything. The collection of embassies. The race to the top of the leaderboard. They are trying to tell everyone. But we cannot let this stand. Look at The East Pacific. After Chicken Overlords overtook it, what color was TEP’s flag? Green! This is environmentalist advocacy at its finest. In addition, around the 30th and the 31st, the so-called “servers” were going down for upgrading. This is a metaphor for the recycling lobby getting its way, as the number of nations were to blame. If this “Womble” bloke didn’t overtake The North Pacific by the time “downtime” occurred, they can at least be satisfied that they could slow down the world, temporarily, with their recycling protest. Only our lord and savior Drew Durnil can slow down time and space by supplying an influx of nations. If only the “Womble” puppets were for the best and most dedicated ardeer or card farmer or nuke factory in existence. Don’t let this “Womble” personage indoctrinate you with their anti-trash agenda. It is time to eject/banject every nation possible into The Rejected Realms, the trash collector of regions, so that our mound of trash will surpass even that of the Wombles. It’s politically incorrect to call The Rejected Realms a trash heap, you say? Hmph. We at Inquisitive Examinations are being told that telling everyone to empty their regions into TRR amounts to “Sedition” in the Conclave. We will not be censured by the corrupt East Pacifican government and its arcane and stupid legal system. Imagine democracy, anyway. We will continue to examine inquisitively the nefarious Chicken Overlords! These chickens will never be our overlords!
Ambassador from The East Pacific to The South Pacific.
Editor of the Eastern Pacific News Service
Cheers for the update
The East Pacific News Service October 3, 2020 Thermonuclear War Occurs, AA Victorious
By Tretrid That time of year was coming up again. Specifically, the time when thousands of nations would obliterate each other in thermonuclear warfare. A lot of regions were preparing for it beforehand. However, things were a bit different this time around. The old feeder alliance, UPPERCUT, was no more, and the feeders went their own separate ways. The North Pacific and the South Pacific joined up with the Potato Alliance, which also included most of the regions of Canopy from the previous N-Day. In full, the Potato Alliance had the North Pacific, the South Pacific, the Rejected Realms, 10000 Islands, Forest, Spiritus, Europe, The Leftest Assembly, The Union of Democratic States, International Democratic Union, Yggdrasil, Autropolis, Sonindia, The Hold to Hide In, New West Indies, Warzone Asia, Warzone Sandbox, India, European Union, Union of Democrats, Democratic Socialist Assembly, 00000 A World Power, The Communist Bloc, Big Farma, and South Pacific. So, summed up, Potato had a lot of regions, and was looking to be one of the largest factions in the game. And they didn’t bother hiding it, as Potato was being promoted about a month before the actual event. Meanwhile, the Pacific, the West Pacific, Balder, and United Kingdom joined together to form CRAB, or Crustaceans Repelling Atomic Bombardment. And as for the sinkers? Osiris, Lazarus, The Black Hawks, Refugia, Lone Wolves United, Caer Sidi, Thalassia, Europeia, and Social Technocratic Union formed the faction Ba Sing Se. Where does that leave the East Pacific? They approached the other regions of the Consortium (a bloc of sorts with a few UCRs) to form a faction, and they agreed. Several other UCRs joined this faction, and then we have ATOMIC, or Alliance To Obliterate Many Inferior Contenders. They consisted of 21st Century Rome, Force, the Iwakusphere (The Glorious Nations of Iwaku and Eientei Gensokyo), The Labyrinth, Loranium, Lorania, Southfield, Phoenix Partners, Thaecia, The Democatic Republic, The East Pacific, The Free Nations Region, The Kingdom of Great Britain, Wintercrest, and Wintreath. Meanwhile, the Augustin Alliance, consisting of Cape of Good Hope, Conch Kingdom, Lands End, and Ridgefield, as well as Anteria, Karma, Hartfelden, The United Ascendancy, The Great Experiment, Krasnaya, Scotia, Hive, The Global Democratic Union, URA, and Southern Africa, was back. Having traditionally done well in N-Day (with the exception of N-Day 3), they were once again looking to do very well in the coming nuclear armageddon. The reigning champions, Horsemen of the Apocalypse, had returned. Like last time, they included Hell, Underworld, Glass Gallows, Middle Earth, Hippy Haven, Citadel of Ricks, The Order of the Grey Wardens, and Lily. The involvement of TGW and Lily is notable here, as it was the sheer amount of puppets wielded by the two R/D orgs that propelled the Horsemen to victory in the previous N-Day. And so N-Day started, on 6 AM UTC, September 26. Well, it started on 6 AM, instead of the more usual 9 PM, because of an error made by [violet]. This lead to concerns that N-Day would coincide with Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism. The large factions initially focused on taking out smaller factions to get some easy points. For example, ATOMIC completely obliterated the Layem Defense Coalition. After some rather easy victories for each of the large factions, they then proceeded to attack each other. By around 8 AM UTC, the Horsemen started attacking the Potato Alliance with several ten thousands of nukes. The attack, though in part dampened by the amount of shields Potato had stockpiled, was devastating, and sent the Potatoes into a rather deep negative score. Around the same time, all of the large non-horsemen factions sent all their nukes flying at the Horsemen. This wasn’t very effective, though it did consume some of the Horsemen’s shields. With Potato out of the way, ATOMIC was next. The Horsemen once again attacked with thousands of nukes. ATOMIC was able to weather the initial wave of nukes, but eventually ran out of shields, and was irradiated with around 50k Radiation. ATOMIC briefly attempted to do guerrilla warfare, much like what Potato was doing now. However, they gave up, and eventually decided to merge with a faction. After considering merging with Ba Sing Se and Augustin Alliance, they decided to merge with Augustin Alliance. Potato never really gave up, even if their region was very devastated. And their determination paid off for them in the end. Meanwhile, the Horsemen were set on all sides by several very large factions. They were outnumbered, and their main hope was taking out the other factions early. But eventually they ran out of shields, and the onslaught of the other factions caused them to plummet to the bottom of the leaderboard. Potato had also managed to get a positive score again, and was quickly rising up. Their comeback was massive, going from several tens of thousand points below to about 285K points by the end of the event. While all this chaos was happening, Noahs Second Country founded the faction Second Best Test, which mainly included Noah himself and his card farming puppets. Another card farmer, Evrigenis, who had fought in ATOMIC and became disillusioned with the Augustin Alliance, decided to join forces with him. They did pretty well, mainly because they had other puppets create factions so they could nuke them, while trying their best to prevent the other factions from finding out and messing with what they were doing. And so, in playing N-Day in such an unconventional way, they managed to end up 6th place on the leaderboard. The Augustin Alliance, like most of the other factions, were focusing on Horsemen. After the Horsemen were defeated, they eventually got into a fight with CRAB, despite both factions supposedly having Non-Aggression Pacts with each other. This irritated several people from ATOMIC, causing them to leave AA and rejoin the old faction. Some remnants of ATOMIC went through the effort of trying to make a comeback, and by the end, they once again had a positive score, with 1627 points and 18th place. And so the Augustin Alliance ended in 1st place, Potato ended in 2nd place (only barely behind the AA), and Ba Sing Se ended 3rd while managing to avoid getting any sort of radiation. Discussing Nuclear Strategy with a Parrot By Tretrid Libertanny is the current Delegate of The East Pacific, and was also heavily involved in the creation of ATOMIC and was part of its High Command through N-Day. He is also a parrot. Tretrid: If I told myself from one year ago that I would be discussing thermonuclear war with a parrot, he would probably think I was on mind-altering substances. What circumstances have lead me to discuss nuclear war with a parrot? Libertanny: You see. My reply won't bring any rationale to the conversation. You are talking to a Parrot about nuclear war. The Parrot, that competed against the Goose in democratic elections. The Parrot that is now successor to the Horse. The Parrot, that stands in the hall of Delegates - next to Puffin, Fox... or Ocelot that is currently a Senator of an autocratic region in a game, that lives its own life and was supposed to be an advertisement for a book written by a human in real life. The Parrot, that leads a region, where Arbiters (judges) represent different types of nature (f.e. desert) and the same region, that was almost couped by a memer. I don't know what circumstances led you to that - I'll just say "The East Pacific" swallows sunflower seeds. Tretrid: Anyway, what led to the creation of ATOMIC as a faction? Libertanny: Now that's a question I am capable of replying to! Well. Since Marrabuk was the Delegate, we were working on a project called The Consortium. We managed to gather quite a nice band there - The East Pacific, Free Nations Region, Force, Thaecia, Kingdom Great Britain and Iwakusphere. One day we were simply talking about cooperation and what we could do. We went through 4 of 6 member regions participating in Liberation of South Pacific and unanimous vote against Commend Altino. Our next idea was "something bigger" - and we did it. We decided to create our own faction for NDay to strengthen bond between government officials (who led ATOMIC), warm relations between our residents and simply have fun together. However, hearing about Potato, we decided to go further - we decided to reach out to our friends to create ATOMIC with us. It worked - we managed to get some regions to join and we strengthened relations with them. From top of my head - Wintercrest and The Labyrinth. But there was more. So again, ATOMIC was simply supposed to be first bigger cooperation of Consortium, and it worked much more better than we expected. We got new friends and the world heard about us. Tretrid: Oh, since you just mentioned the Consortium, can you briefly describe what it is? Libertanny: Indeed, I can. Consortium is a bloc for cooperation between The East Pacific and our friends. Whilst in history, some were bringing ideas to make it "momma TEP & its UCR children" that's totally not the idea I went for. Whilst it doesn't seem popular between us, GCRs, I treat UCRs equally with GCRs. And that is what we went for - a bloc made out of equal partners. Our main goal was bringing communities together, strengthening diplomatic relations and doing cultural cooperation - or simply, making friends. But with the time, it went further - like mentioned WA or R/D cooperation. Upon this, we had second meeting of High Council and Grand Founders, which was open to all Consortium Residents. We agreed to convert Consortium into something "bigger". We included technological cooperation (we have quite a nice IT team, that f.e. developed us a tool for NDay), we included voluntary R/D cooperation and we included WA cooperation, which does not require all Delegates to vote in certain way, but the decision of WA Council is shared as WA recommendation to all Consortium Residents. As of current, we are in the middle of formation of Military Council and WA Council. Our next step is legislating the founding treaty (Convention of Lausanne). Tretrid: So what were your general plans for ATOMIC this N-Day? Libertanny: Well. Our general plans were survival and destruction of Horsemen of Apocalypse. We were doing rather fine until second offensive of HoTA (we survived first offensive with no loses - around 15k nukes incoming). When second offensive started, we rapidly noticed, that HoTA's goal is not desruction of ATOMIC immediately, but destruction of our shields. HoTA were sending up to 1,5k nukes at one nation. So it was rather easy to notice their strategy. Upon this, we decided to do Guerilla Warfare (idea stolen from Potato), but at the end of the day, we decided to merge with Augustin Alliance. However, when AA made decision our command did not like, many ATOMIC members moved back to our faction. They managed to bring us from last place (-50k points) to 18th place. So we achieved both of our goals, at the end of the day - destruction of HoTA and rather nice "survival". Tretrid: How did ATOMIC make decisions and choose who to attack? Libertanny: We had our command split into two levels. Low Command - which was basically leaders of member regions and High Command - which was the most experienced individuals from different timezones. Most of our decisions were made based on fast votes - we were pinging command, voting with reactions, if either option was having much support rapidly, we were executing that - you know, there's not too much time to decide during nuclear apocalypse. If it was needed be - High Command had authority to make any decision they wish to at any time. Our attacks were focused on HoTA - so it was really just "attack HoTA". We were, however, coordinating our attacks with other factions. I was in constant contact with Sakana (Ba Sing Se), August (Augusting Alliance) and Xoriet (Crab) and I was forwarding all agreements to the command. I cannot tell you on how command made decisions whom to attack after they moved out of Augustin Alliance - I was asleep. But it was probably like before merge - common decision of the Command. Tretrid: What led ATOMIC to do its all-out attack on Horsemen? Libertanny: Rationalism, I would say. It was known from the very beginning, that if all factions don't cooperate against HoTA, we would be all eaten by them. Although it took Ba Sing Se and Augustin Alliance long to notice that, they joined the fight too. And frankly, imho at least, BSS and AA were best coordinated factions. But yeah, it was really about rationalism. Tretrid: What lead to ATOMIC deciding to merge with AA, instead of trying to make a comeback like Potato did? Libertanny: I think there was no decisive event, that made us choose merge over guerilla warfare. We talked both, we tried to go with guerilla warfare, but we then decided that it's either destruction of ATOMIC or merging with someone else. We considered both Ba Sing Se and Augustin Aliance, but we decided to go for AA by simple vote. Tretrid: What were the reasons that ATOMIC merged with AA specifically? Libertanny: Well. Obviously, our first thought would have been Potato - but they rejected merge proposal before the Nday. So we did not even consider it. Speaking of Crab, I think they were somewhat neutral party, that our command had no feelings about. Ba Sing Se and Augustin Alliance, however, impressed us with perfect coordination and attacks they launched on Horsemen. So when it came to proposal to merge, we either considered AA or BSS. It then happened through simple vote. Although at first it was head to head vote, the time was rushing, so commanders changed their votes to AA to reach majority rapidly (which actually ended up in unanimous vote). Tretrid: In hindsight, what would you have changed about what ATOMIC did? Libertanny: Frankly, I don't think I would have changed anything. To me NDay was perfect. We had a chance to do something bigger with our friends - Consortium. We achieved the goal of destroying Horsemen. We all had fun. Consortium made its first IT project. To me, it was really perfect and I would not have changed anything. Tretrid: What do you look forward to in the next N-Day? Libertanny: Firstly, I for sure look forward to do it alongside Consortium and other regions, that created ATOMIC with us. I'm also hoping, that Crab, AA and BSS (or any other substitutes of them) will join fight against Horsemen earlier, than they did this year. But most importantly - I look forward to having as much fun as we had this year TEP's Finest: The Order of the Golden Ocelot By Pledonia "The Order of the Golden Ocelot shall be dictated as the highest civilian award to be given within the East Pacific.
The Order must be given only to those who hold the following traits: The recipient must have had a long-lasting impact upon the East Pacific. The recipient’s impacts must be consistent with the values of the East Pacific. The recipient must have served the East Pacific with distinction and honor." On September 23, 2020, for the first time since January 2017, the highest civilian award within the East Pacific was awarded to eight of TEP's finest individuals. The Order of the Golden Ocelot. "These eight individuals are the very shining stars of our region, they are the very beating heart of The East Pacific, and they have brought change and impact to our Region, " says Libertany, our delegate. Listed below are the eight who were awarded the Order of the Golden Ocelot. Asendavia - for playing one of the most important roles in fighting the coup - spreading awareness about Rahls and Fedele before the coup, and bringing interest of Forum Roleplayers to Gameplay, and spreading patriotism within Forum Roleplay, and being, per se, anti-coup leader of Forum Roleplay; for active membership in Petit Comité (Small Magisterium Cafeterium) - the (partially legislative) resistance body before the coup; for service as Vizier, Magister, Arbiter and Cabinet Advisor; for promotion of Forum Roleplay and actively helping newcomers with getting started; for helping Roleplayers with improving their roleplay and advising them on matters The Atlae Isles - for revival of Eastern Pacific Sovereign Army post-coup; for developing EPSA to the stage it has not seen for years; for incredible job done within news service both before and after the coup; for service as Magister; for service as Senior Diplomat (and member of Inner Circle of FA) and help with revival of Foreign Affairs of The East Pacific post-coup; for general contribution to all of the Executive as Staffer Dragons Blood (McStooley) - for help in rebuilding The East Pacific post-coup as the Vice-Delegate during Libertanny’s Administration; for tirelessly working on improving The East Pacific, especially in the “hard” eras; for service as Magister, Vizier, Grand Vizier and Delegate Marrabuk - for doing an awesome job as the first post-coup Delegate; for uniting all of The East Pacific’s communities and bringing regional integrity to a new level; for playing one of the most important roles before and during the coup; for service as Vizier, Magister, Cabinet Advisor and Minister of Foreign Affairs; for creation of several meaningful diplomatic relations and alliances Nova-Columbia / Krionik - for tirelessly working on introducing first release of Valsora as member of RMB Mapmakers Team; for reviving the project of Valsora and developing it to the point, Valsora became mainstream RMB Roleplay; for tirelessly working as creator of second release of Valsora since 2018; for working on currently used RMB RP Rules, that brought Roleplay on RMB into a new level; for working on increasing standard of Roleplay on RMB; for creation of one of the best dispatches within The East Pacific, that inspired several other RPers Tretrid - for bringing EPNS from the grave post-coup; for long and active contribution to news service before coup; for working on conversion of EPNS into Ministry of Information, alongside Libertanny and The Atlae Isles; for help with revival of Eastern Pacific Sovereign Army; for active membership in Inner Circle of FA as an Advisor; for service as Minister, Vizier and Magister; for tirelessly working on improving the Executive; for contribution to Forum Roleplay, and help with recruitment of new Roleplayers, and help with getting started with TEP Wiki, and for bringing new and unique ideas to the realm of Urth Tuvaltastan (Tuva) - for active contribution to Forum Roleplay as “one of the most brilliant souls of the whole 16 years of history of EP Forum RP”; for activity and tireless work on managing and improving the realm of Urth as Cartographer and Cartography Moderator; for helping newcomers with getting started in Forum Roleplay; for service as Magister and Staffer of the Executive Zukchiva - for active membership in Petit Comité (Small Magisterium Cafeterium) - the (partially legislative) resistance body before the coup; for working on rewriting and improving both laws and the Concordat; for contribution to RMB Roleplay as member of first RMB Mapmakers Team (first release of Valsora); for contribution to RMB Roleplay as creator of Dibergia RMB Roleplay; for setting up the Bureau of Public Affairs and service as first Director of Public Affairs; for service as Magister, Deputy Provost, Arbiter, Viceroy, Minister, Acting Chief Minister, Director and Vizier Congratulations to all who received this illustrious award. Hail pacificum Orientale! Shattering Diplomacy; Roleplay's Spiciest By Dylan (Editor’s note: This was written to promote the roleplay “Shattering Diplomacy,” which takes place on the Forum Roleplay setting of Urth. It may be read here.) Shattering Diplomacy plunges the reader straight into the second volume of Clauzia Sarohart. Readers may remember her humble beginnings in the roleplay Ethalria Will Never Rise Again, from the wounded remains of a hospitalised soldier during the Auroran-Pacific War to her rise in politics over 2018 and 2019 to become Prime Minister of Vothetria, a nation forcibly broken apart as part of Ethalria’s terms of surrender to Morstaybishlia. Whilst at first Shattering Diplomacy focuses on the deep web of political identity in the outcast Morstaybishlian Province of Nocturne, the reader will soon come to realise there’s a shadow of deception surrounding the thousand year rivalry of Great Morstaybishlia and Ethalria, with two Ethalrian rivals secretly manipulating the outcome of an independent Nocturne; the now-President of the right-wing North Ethalrian Confederacy Clauzia Sarohart and the recently new Premier Lenski Sarinn of communist Thalria. With political attacks just around the corner and cunning twists and turns in the shadow of politics, it’s a Roleplay filled with such uncertainty and spiciness that in every post the reader will be wanting to read the next. But the civil unrest, mass demonstrations and revived independence identity that surrounds Nocturne isn’t the only problem that looms over Morstaybishlia, something big stirs in its colonies, and on the other half of the fatherland... The shadow of Morstaybishlian greed is something that has long loomed over the Auroran continent and by extension the world; what will happen as the roleplay progresses? There are subtle hints laid across the chapters, it’s up to the reader to figure it out before it becomes a reality. Which politician, Sarohart or Sarinn, will be the one to thrive in the crumbling of Morstaybishlia? Or will Prime Minister Franklin Barvata pull the reigns and prevent disaster from toppling over the thousand year wall of rivalry? After all, no Morstaybishlian Prime Minister wants to be known as the prime minister who saw decline... Stay tuned for the unraveling of Chapter 3, and hopefully I will see you through the rest of the roleplay through as much as 8 or 9 planned chapters. After Roleplaying in The East Pacific for four years now, this is by far my favourite, most spicy and planned out roleplay. After it has finished I plan on novelising it, and if you read it, let me know what you think of the characters, of the plot, of the narrative! Thank you, and happy reading. Constitutional Reforms: What's Going On??? By Zukchiva Regional constitutions are the foundation for the vast majority of regional governments. A constitution serves as the baseline of regional law and day-to-day governance. It is no joke to say that if you want to get to know a region, you should look at their constitution. For besides dictating lawful procedures, constitutions often establish the basic themes and beliefs of a region. It is a common practice to amend constitutions as time plunges forward and the game itself changes. New game features are added, regional social dynamics are changed, new beliefs and viewpoints are shared. A constitution is not just the baseline of a region, but a living document. No region can have a perfect constitution, so if a constitution is not kept up-to-date, then a region is sure to fail. So it was no surprise to anyone when the East Pacific undertook a rigorous rewrite of the Concordat (The East Pacific’s constitution) following the infamous 2019 October coup. The rewrite, headed by Aelitia and later taken over by Bachtendekuppen, fixed many prevalent issues within the Concordat. One of the most noteworthy changes of the rewrite was the formation of the Viziers as a new branch of security, helping to consolidate the East Pacific’s security to the responsibilities of one body. On February 3rd, the Magisterium passed the rewrite with a 100% majority, and was further confirmed by 100% of citizens voting in favor during the subsequent referendum. Thus, the Concordat was rewritten into a much clearer document. THE PEOPLE START TALKING However... In the following months after the rewrite, more issues began to be raised regarding the Concordat. Some issues included how the Concordat still did not prevent the infamous marsupial purges and how unregulated the Magisterium’s (The East Pacific’s legislature) internal procedures were. The Magisterium held too much power over how it legislated its own internal processes. In the span of a short few months following the rewrite, three Concordat amendments were passed. The three amendments provided clarification on the legislative process, allowed the Conclave (The East Pacific’s court) to process non-citizen resident appeals, and raised the majority vote requirement for Arbiter (Conclave Justice) nominations from ½ of the Magisterium to ⅔ voting in favor. While these amendments were important fixes to the Concordat, they did not do much to fix the most glaring issues prevalent from the Fedele coup. Therefore, it was in August and September that the Magisterium decided to finally start reforming the Concordat. Again. REFORMS TRULY BEGIN The first large-scale amendment proposed was a rewrite of Article F in late August. Article F guarantees the rights of citizens and residents within the East Pacific. The amendment simplifies the current Article as well as establishes new rights and procedures regarding Resident bans, in hopes of stopping future mass-scale purges of residents. The second amendment proposed was a rewrite of Article B, the Article dealing with the East Pacific’s legislative branch. The Article focuses on enshrining many of the Magisterium’s procedures within the Concordat to cut down the potential abuse of the Magisterium maliciously changing its internal procedures. Among these newly added procedures includes how Citizens can join the Magisterium, Provost (the Magisterium’s Speaker) elections and terms lengths, and Provost removal procedures. The third large-scale amendment proposed was a new Article A, which will go before the first Article currently present in the Concordat. This new Article seeks to legislate The East Pacific’s core identity: the compass is declared as the East Pacific’s official symbol, green and yellow as the East Pacific’s official colors, and any form of In-Character Fascism/Nazism is banned from the region. All the aforementioned amendments are still being debated in the Magisterium and have not yet gone to citizen vote. However, should they pass the Magisterium’s vote as well as the citizen vote, then the East Pacific can rest assured that many, if not all of the issues with the Concordat, will be finally fixed for a while. Interview with Altys: A Newcomer's Perspective By Zukchiva Altys is the East Pacific’s current Minister of Culture. Having joined the East Pacific earlier this year, he quickly made a name for himself and revitalized the Ministry of Culture. Additionally, he serves in various positions in Thaecia such as Senator. As such, this interview was held to see what his perspectives of TEP were, as an experienced player just getting involved in the region. This interview took place on Discord from September 12th, 2020 to September 29th, 2020. Minor edits were made to correct typos and ensure flow of the interview. Zukchiva: Hello, Altys! Thank you for doing this interview, how are you doing? Altys: I'm doing good & you? :p Zukchiva: Doing alright although I wanna eat some chips soon :x Altys: nuuu, dont Zukchiva: :9 Zukchiva: Alright, while I grab some chips because I'm still hungry (eep), would you mind giving a brief history on your time in NationStates? Regions that impacted you, major positions you've held, that kinda thing. Altys: Alright so I've arrived on NS on August 2018 and didn't do anything GP-side until March/April 2019 when I joined Thaecia. I quickly became a RP Admin(due to being good at mapping) and an OOC admin on the main server(I became admin during an incident where someone who had just joined tried to spam). In Late May/Early June I became Associate Justice, in early July I became Roleplay Minister, and was at the time staff in all Thaecian ministries. Then Rayekka's administration came and I got kicked out of most ministries, except FA where I became one of the first members of the FA Council (FA Inner Council equivalent in TEP). Nothing much happened during this term, I got re-confirmed as Roleplay Minister and stayed Associate Justice. Fast forward to February 2020, I ran for President and lost by 15 points (15%), I however became Deputy Prime Minister (mainly an advisory role and something comparable to the Chief Minister of RA in TEP, except DPM does not legally exist) and assisted Korsinia during his first term. I stayed Roleplay Secretary (changed name in the meantime) and Associate Justice. In May Paradoxical '2.0 happened and Serge & I were known as the AFK admins on the Minecraft server; always online, but always AFK. After the festival ended Serge spammed me to join TEP; so I did. I became a citizen, joined the executive (MoC & MoFA at the time). Back to Thaecia, right before the end of the term, the general election happened and I decided to run for the Senate and won a seat. Korsinia won a second term as PM and it was already known I wasn't going to be his top advisor anymore. I however stayed staffer in all of the ministries and was made head of recruitment. The Bigtopia (our MoFA) then proposed to the diplomats & the culture staff to organise an event led by Thaecia; and that's how LNF was born. :p I organised most of the stuff for the festival, but got really precious help from Lemonadia for the planning, and the people who volunteered to host activities. During the festival planning, Aivintis had offered me the position of DMoC in TEP, which I accepted as you all know it. On the last day of the festival, August 16th, Serge proposed to me to become TEP's new MoC as Aivintis was resigning, I wasn't sure at first, but I do not regret accepting the position at all! I really love my time in TEP. On the same day as I was offered the Ministry of Culture, I got fired from Thaecia's FA Council (arguably the job I loved the most in the region, not directly because of the position itself, but because I really like FA). This wasn't the best of times for me, and my activity in the region simply dropped to almost nothing like before. I recently resigned as Head of Recruitment, and keep thinking of resigning as a Senator since Late August. To you this might not be important, but I also moved my WA from Thaecia to TEP on September 18th. The next day I would be reinstated as a member of the FA Council. It's safe to say I've forgotten lots of things, and emphasized too much on the most recent ones, but these obviously are the first ones that come to mind, and 2020 really was the year where I started doing a lot of things (thanks to the lockdown as well ehe). Zukchiva: Well, that's interesting to hear. Annnd you answered two of my next questions. XP It seems you've done a lot in Thaecia, before becoming involved in TEP. I also did notice you moving your WA and thought it was important, but didn't think to ask. It's nice to hear about your NS story, you've done... alot! So I think the question we have now is: Why are you starting to do more in TEP rather than Thaecia? What brought along said change? Altys: For now I am, but thanks to this interview I decided to relaunch my projects for Thaecia. As for what brought along the said changes, one was already explained above (August 16th) and the second simply is school. Zukchiva: Glad to know this interview has had some impact! And glad to see that you're focusing more on real life. Now, to turn our questions to more the abstract: How would you describe TEP in one word? And why? Altys: Friendly Simply because peeps are always nice to each other and toxicity is almost (never say it completely is) nonexistent here. Oh and of course - when Thaecia got in controversy with the NS community and got yelled at from all parts, TEP came in and supported us - actually trying to help Thaecia understand NS Geopolitics more, instead of simply bashing it like the others did. Zukchiva: It's nice to hear you say that, I've always considered TEP to be a friendly region (although IG I have a bias. :p) Now, TEP and Thaecia are different regions with different qualities. As someone who's been a part of both regions, what would be the single greatest difference between each region, and how do they differ in that respect? Altys: Unity In TEP it's flagrant when you join: the region's different communities are really split up. Forum RP stays on their server, RMB Peeps keep themselves to the RMB, and only the GP community seems to be a bit everywhere. Of course if you ask them to do something on another place than their core one, they might come depending on what it is (ie game nights), but they won't do it naturally. In Thaecia absolutely everyone is in the main server and is part of the same big community. Sometimes the Roleplay may or may not become a bit more separate, but the majority of its roleplayers are part of the bigger Thaecian community anyway. This 'unity' thing really shocked me when I learned Thaecia had 2x 3x more voters in general elections that TEP had in Delegate elections. Zukchiva: Yeah, I can see the truth in what you're saying. I hope that TEP can be united as Thaecia is! I feel like Marrabuk and Lib have done some work in that regard, but we definitely have some work to do in TEP. XP So on a similar thread, what is one thing you like about TEP as a region? Altys: It's old. Being in Thaecia which is a fairly young region, long-term experience is limited to her lifespan. But with TEP being a GCR, there's a lot of old NS players who have been here for a very long time and have lots of experience in GP, which is always nice to have when you have questions. ^ Due to that, TEP is also pretty big, meaning you are less likely to be in a situation where you lack man/brainpower for a project or attendees during an event, and especially as minister of culture, it really is a comforting feeling. Zukchiva: LOL, that's one way to put it! Yeah, TEP is old and quite large, which makes sense for a GCR. So what is the #1 top thing do you believe TEP needs to improve on? Altys: Unity :p Zukchiva: Should've expected that. XP Alright, now we're pretty much done. However, I do want to ask: would it be possible for you to share some of your future plans as Minister of Culture, assuming Libertanny wins the upcoming elections? Altys: Oh well, first I will have to lose the Thaecian General Elections as I'm running for PM over here But if I indeed stay MoC, you can expect more game nights, more permanent activities (like radio culture), and hopefully a higher culture score on The Rejected Times' GCR rankings Zukchiva: LOL, got that reference XD Anyways, good luck to ya in Thaecia! And yayayay game nights and radio culture are both awesome things!!! You've done a great job as MoC and I'm very sure you'll be capable as Thaecia's PM. It was nice interviewing you, Altys! Have a great day. :p Altys: It's not certain I am to be PM yet. 5(or more) candidates are running, and some of them (me included) are pretty strong. And thanks! You too. Zukchiva: :p Septeamber’s Biggest Partea: Tea House of Cards By y0 Since its introduction to NationStates as an April Fools event in 2018, trading cards has grown to prominence as a subgame with its own community. Several regions including The East Pacific (TEP), 10000 Islands (XKI), and Lazarus (Laz) have each created programmes devoted to cards as regional organizations. Like similar pursuits in Ministries of Culture, however, the cards game is even more fun when it is played interregionally. TEAPOT, XKI’s Cards Co-op, and Laz’s Cards Guild came together to put on the Tea House of Cards festival with three main goals:
These objectives culminated in Tea House of Cards (THoC), a dozen day tea party that took place from the 9-12 September on Discord and on the NS region sharing the same name. It consisted of three major competitions, cards related games and events, and lectures which you can still read today. The final day’s pull event introduced eleven players to pull events and helped bring more copies of S1 Hesperonis, S1 Mexregionia, S2 Ramaeus, S1 Improving Wordiness, S1 Testlandia, and S2 Testlandia to the world. Congratulations to Virgolia, Fuentana, The Cosmic Mainframe, Noahs Second Country, The Atlae Isles, Pluvie, Constantinolia, Oofery, Catiania, Free Las Pinas for pulling cards during the event. A big thanks goes to Feu de Glace and the Atlae Isles for lending some of their cards and Noahs Second Country, Grea Kriopia, and Debussy for co-hosting! We loved seeing everyone’s excitement and creating this shared experiences with the community. If you missed out, THoC is only the first of many. so we hope to see you again in S3! Chasing our own tails By Cat and Atlae You know the feeling. You’re curled up by the fire, and suddenly, you see something small and furry twitch at the edge of your vision. Immediately, your predator instincts rise, and you are on full alert. You remain perfectly motionless, so as not to disturb the prey. Again, the flicker. You leap up and hare after it. It’s a devious quarry, constantly escaping to your side, always just out of reach, leading you in an endless circle. Not one to be discouraged, you pour yourself into the chase, forcing yourself to move ever faster. The thrill of the chase fills you, exhilarated, adrenaline rushing, instincts screaming. But your soon-to-be victim remains just beyond your grasp, never quite letting you seize it. Finally, exhausted, you collapse on your side, panting. Now, you admit to yourself - all along, you were chasing your own tail. But this does not diminish your enjoyment, oh no. Testing yourself is a worthy pursuit, and you are fully satisfied with the efforts of both you and yourself. Hearing this report from their second, Atlae, Overseeing Officer of EPSA, decided that perhaps it would be a good exercise to collectively chase our own tail. How does EPSA, an organisation, chase its tail you ask? Do organisations even have tails, you say? What stupid questions. I decline to answer. Separating into two groups, one called ‘Cat’ and the other ‘Mouse’, because one cat related R/D metaphor wasn’t enough, we prepared for battle on the night of the 7th.. Despite much of the Cat team having little to no chasing experience, they performed admirably, never giving up despite a lack of success. The Mouse team, thoroughly enjoying the uneven playing field, happily collected several hits. After cheerfully chasing ourselves for a while, our game was rudely interrupted by some Grey Wardens and co. Our pivot to a normal tag raid was not as successful as we might have hoped, the tricksy Grey Wardens putting an end to our romp through NationStates. The joys of this game did not go unnoticed by the rest of NationStates. The NPA came to us with a proposal: a multi-org version, switching who was chasing who halfway through major on the 12th. What followed was a highly enjoyable competition between friends. The finish was tight, with the night eventually going to EPSA by a close margin. Of course, these escapades were not the only things EPSA has been getting up to! Here are the rest of the missions completed over these this past month: September 7th, 2020 - already listed above September 12, 2020 - already listed above An Epiphany on Democracy By Inquisitive Examinations The easy thing to write about would be the massive craters that have dotted The East Pacific and many of its allies and the radiation spread throughout. But Tretrid did a fine job and wrote two articles about the catastrophe we call N-Day already, so we won’t be inquisitively examining any further on that subject. While we pull ourselves out of the rubble, we must consider whether we stay with our current leadership or look to lift up new leadership to blame for our troubles. That’s right - delegate elections. An unprecedented TWELVE individuals have accepted their nominations to run for Delegate. In order to be a fair, balanced, and very very objective news source, we will inquisitively examine each and every candidate.
Acronis
In their campaign, they promised to “take a break” and keep The East Pacific in a state of status quo or stasis. Following their election as Provost, however, Acronis withdrew his campaign. Eastern Alksearia In their campaign, they listed what direction they would take each Ministry. Evrigenis In their campaign, they progressed the merger of The East Pacific into the AI hivemind by creating election.exe. Top scientists have yet to decipher what secrets it may contain. Great Algerstonia In their campaign, they adopted much of EnnEssGeePee’s rhetoric of hating The East Pacific and promised to destroy it through various methods and ultimately, a “Great Purge.” Lerasi In Aivintis’s campaign, Mangegneithe creates a catchy hashtag and offered “potential solutions to issues” in TEP. Libertanny In their campaign], the parrot also creates a catchy hashtag while running for re-election. Marrabuk In their campaign, they come out of retirement to offer a different vision for TEP. New Leganes In their campaign, they offer an inspiring story of how their time in TEP and their ideas forward. Pakitsk In their campaign, they railed against heresy against Ademar, starting with the doubleposters on the RMB. Taduwe In their campaign, they promised to convert TEP to raiderism and Violetism, as well as banning many things. The Atlae Isles In their campaign, they note they had written a campaign but it had been stolen. Any rumors of military dictatorship have remained unconfirmed. Zukchiva In their campaign, the primary challenger to Libertanny last election honked into a tape recorder.and made a campaign. First thing to note is that a lot of these campaigns were long. Zukchiva noted that his campaign was 11 pages long, down from last election, when it was 19. But the length only serves to hide a casual mindset that serves to doom TEP in the long run. Every. Single. Candidate. (apart from Taduwe) is part of the government. Acronis is a Deputy Minister and the newly-elected Provost. Eastern Alksearia is also a Deputy Minister and Director of Public Affairs. Evrigenis is a Deputy Minister and the Minister of Virtual Enhancement, aka the person who does coding for the region. Algerstonia’s a Magister. Atlae’s a Deputy Minister and the Overseeing Officer of the EPSA. Lerasi is a Deputy Minister and the former Minister of Culture. Libertanny is the Delegate. (duh) Marrabuk is the former Delegate and is a Cabinet Advisor. New Leganes is a Deputy Minister. Pakitsk is an Arbiter and Cabinet Advisor. Zukchiva is an Arbiter and Deputy Minister. So we have seven Deputy Ministers jockeying for Delegate. Great. But wait. Out of those 10, FIVE are Viziers (or Delegate), and SIX are EPSA (Zuk is actually a Vizier and an EPSA soldier). Over half of the candidates are on the map of the elitist TEP Evolved group, whose high-quality roleplays are the envy of all NationStates. Quite a few others are or formerly active in RMB roleplay sects, which are also quite vibrant and elitist. Six are also current Magisters, which are also quite an elitist group, with its membership numbers record-shattering as people try to better their reputations. Taduwe is the only true outsider in this race, but alas, they’re a Hawk, and may even be of the same ilk as them. What we see here is the formation of an oligarchy. So many are appointed Deputy Minister to assure their place in government. One might even call this meritocracy. The East Pacific has 9000+ nations, yet only these forum elites and their cabal? The East Pacific may claim to be vibrant and bursting with activity. But we all know that something is rotten within. Stagnation is the natural state of TEP, and the activity is just a ploy to lure in unsuspecting nations and kill their creativity and capability for self-thought as they mindlessly bow towards their avian overlords and its allies. How dare TEP have candidates who deign to be active? How dare these fools take TEP into a completely new direction, invigorating it with new life instead of wallowing in its pit like the good little region it is? How dare TEP have new friends with all these...lesser regions? The East Pacific has debased itself, preferring to play in a lower level than the rest. And where’s Todd McCloud in all this? The quintessential TEP figure. He and the older generations have been pushed out in favor of the new. Such is the folly of democracy. They push out the old, wise figures who have lead the region for years who are always right. The better system is to dawdle in the Delegate seat for a bit and eventually choose a successor in your immediate circle to appear as if you’re changing. Because change is bad, and The East Pacific should always be Todd’s Pacific. Don’t be giving any lies about how Todd is busy or he’s writing books. These young whippersnappers have exploded the size of the government to absolutely bloated proportions. The Executive, which for much of TEP’s history has consisted of the Delegate and his or her closest personal advisors, has ballooned into a giant, closed-off Discord server with so many Ministries focused on things TEP has never focused on before. The Magisterium has set a new record in the number of participants in its legislature, a pathetic attempt at vote-stacking by A mean old man, of course. And the Conclave!? Still 4 Arbiters. We have some hope as of yet. Don’t take these numbers and go thinking that TEP is active, nooooo. It’s a parasite. You see all those laws that the Magisterium passed in the last term? Probably not, because it was cut from this edition from the last minute! Apparently it wasn’t comprehensive enough to list all the things that the Provost AMOM has pushed through at breakneck speed to subvert TEP! That’s the fickle thing with democracy, you see. You need activity from people, of course, but once there are too many people they start to think for themselves. Look at the EPSA for another example! The EPSA was dead for many years after the Golden Age under Xoriet. A true shining example of what an unaligned, defender-leaning GCR military could look like. And now look at what that Atlae kid is doing. Tagging, liberating, building an army from scratch, pathetic. He’s exploiting the people and conscripting them for the political whims of the elite. And look who’s in the EPSA! A lot of government and roleplay people. It all fits togehter. Remember that these were the same people who forced out Fedele nary a year ago. Funkadelia published a visionary tract called the “45 Theses” about why the oligarchy was bad, and they called it sedition. When Fedele tried to consolidate power and hand it over to Davelands peacefully, they revolted and banned him from the region, backstabbing him through a Regional Officer namedThe Cult of the Great Cthulhu. Fedele was one of the best Delegates The East Pacific ever had. He was not afraid to show TEP what it should be, a region slowly simmering over a dying fire, and point out the oligarchy that opposed him. Alas, forces of other NationStates regions rushed in to jockey their ideas. The anniversary of that day, October 14th, approaches. When we bow our heads in remembrance, we must remember not only those we have lost on that day, but also The East Pacific that could have been. For as much hate as we can pile on them from EnnEssGeePee, they will choose their own direction. That does not mean we should not fight. If we can subvert their democracy, one final time, we can bring The East Pacific to its true place. Maybe they’ll even shed their pesky governance system. Prevent the commons from the gateway of citizenship and we can shape The East into what we know best for them.
Ambassador from The East Pacific to The South Pacific.
Editor of the Eastern Pacific News Service |
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