(Kinda a) Beginning of Term Speech

Icarus

Resident
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Pronouns
She/they
Hai TNP!
I’m Icarus, your new Minister of Defense, it is very nice to meet you all. I know it’s a little unconventional to put someone in a leadership position like this and obviously I understand that it’s not easy to just accept someone you don’t know into your community. If I was in your shoes, I would be skeptical too. I do hope that I can shine some light on who I am and what I am aiming to do here.
I will start off with a little bit of my own NS history so you can get a general idea of who I am, even though I know that’s not the same as getting to know each other over time. Feel free to skip this part if you’d just rather read about the awesome things we have planned for this term.

I started playing NS casually in May 2020 because I was stuck at home waiting to finish high school, a friend told me about this funky little political simulator called NationStates, and now 2 years and 261 days later I’m here. The UCR I started in has long since died and for my first 1.5 years I was mostly involved in the UCR politics of Caer Sidi, where I also got to sign the CS-Europeia treaty. I ultimately ended up as a citizen of Euro and joined the ERN in August of 2021. During that time I was largely still a member of CS until my focus fully shifted towards Euro in 2022 when I got my first ministerial position as Minister of Radio, which I held for 1.5 terms (we transitioned to Spotify during that time, which was pretty awesome). During my time in the Europeian Cabinet, I became increasingly involved in the wider gameplay sphere and FA matters. I was still an active sailor in the ERN during that time and became Grand Admiral at the end of June 2022. I held the position for two terms, during which I managed to fully integrate the ERN into Libcord and pull a record number of ERN updaters for two consecutive major sieges, I organised Wargames with our allies, increased the ERN op count by roughly 100% and introduced the ERN Militia, an initiative to mobilise civilian updaters and pilers in an organised structure, something that in this form does not exist anywhere else in the modern gameplay sphere. In November of 2022, I ran for President and was elected in a three-way race. In my time as president, some of our most notable achievements were our participation in the liberation of New Westphalia as well as winning UCR, Independent Military, News Operation and Podcast or Radio Show of the Year in the gameplay awards. When Hulldom approached me and asked whether I would be willing to take the job I was incredibly excited. I liked being president but I also realised that leading a military had been by far the most rewarding experience I have ever had in NationStates so I knew as soon as he asked that I had to say yes. However, that is enough about me! Back to the actual policies.

There are a lot of things that I want to get done this term and we have already started planning and mapping out how to best approach them all. The most important thing is going to create a base level of active and well-trained soldiers (if you’ve ever considered joining the NPA, now is your time), this entails setting up an active recruitment center, where we can create graphics, talk strategy and actively approach people to join the NPA. Simultaneously I will start launching training programs to teach people how to detag, trigger and chase. For the latter, we will probably get more outside help from the defender sphere to make sure that we get the best possible training available. The newly honed skills will be put to good use in shared operations and wargames with our allies and also in Libcord, where NPA sailors from now on will be able and are encouraged to participate in update activities whenever they are able to. The ability to have updaters in Libcord is going to be essential to establish the NPA as a large global player again, in gameplay, numbers are strength and building those numbers is going to play a significant part in TNPs power projection abroad. TNP has the largest population of individual players in the game, mobilising that kind of power is an immense effort but it will be well worth it, once we succeed.
The delegate and I will be working closely working together on reworking directive 5 to ensure the NPA is in a position that grants us the operational flexibility needed to lead an Independent military. I have not yet decided on who I want to add as my deputies, if you are interested please feel free to dm me on discord (Icarus#5903), I am generally also always open to constructive criticism, concerns and ideas you have, so hit me up.

In the end, I just wanted to say a massive thank you to Hulldom for putting his trust in me, I am so honoured that I get to be here and also to Rom and all of the people in command as well as Siwale who are helping me figure out all the logistics and bureaucracy that goes into running a military like this. I can’t wait to see where this term will lead us and I am looking forward to getting to know you all better, thank you for showing me nothing but openness and kindness as a community, it has made my start here so much easier than I feared it would be.
 
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