Spiritus Foreign Update: "It's been a while" Edition
It has been a while hasn’t it? Well, a lot has happened so let’s catch up. First of all, it’s important to note that we’ve put into place Government themes which will be rotating, so don’t be confused if the titles change, they still mean the same thing. Currently we’re going with titles from the Dune series. We certainly hope that you might like them!
The Government of Spiritus
Padishah Emperor (President): The Salaxalans
Prince Royal (Vice President): Ceardia
Proctor Superior of Culture (Minister): Wuufu
Proctor Superior of Defence: Tim
Proctor Superior of Disputes: Isidor C Somerset
Proctor of Disputes (Deputy Minister): The Freedom Factory
Proctor Superior of Foreign Affairs: Guy
Proctor of Foreign Affairs: Tangaroa
Proctor Superior of Information: Horse
Proctor Superior of Integration: Toms
Proctor of Integration: Scissoro
Proctor Superior of World Assembly Affairs: The Salaxalans
Vice Delegate: Ceardia
Proctor of World Assembly Affairs: Ceardia
Landsraad (Regional Assembly)
Baron (Representative): Guy
Count: Wuufu
Archduke: Toms
Duke: Tangaroa
Supreme Court
Chief Truthsayer (Justice): Isidor C Somerset
Truthsayer: Horse
Truthsayer: Vacant
Landsraad Update: The Past Many Months
The 8th Laandsraad sleeping on the job.
We last left off with a huge amount of activity in the Landsraad, and this continued for some time. Many important issues were addressed, from joining the FRA to adding terms to the Supreme Court. Even then–Prince Royal Toms got into an active mood and decided to reorganize the Library of Law to make it more clear.
The 8th Laandsraad sleeping on the job.
All of this soon came to an end near the finish of the term in early April. It began with the first non-binding resolution the Landsraad ever passed, the Censure of Libertarian Librarians. The four other Landsraad members, the Salaxalans, Guy, Horse, and Dolphin, believed that LibLib was not behaving as fit a member of the Landsraad, and decided to censure him. LibLib then resigned from the Landsraad, stating that he did not wish to serve in a body that had censured him.
Soon after, the April elections began and concluded, with six candidates running for five seats. The candidates were the Salaxalans, Guy, The Saturnian Republic, Sovreignry, Dolphin, and Menkov. Menkov came in last with six votes, and thus was the one candidate not to win a seat. However, this wouldn’t stay that way for long. This term of the Regional Assembly ended up being one of the least inactive ever seen, with nearly nothing being accomplished. In Late April/Early May, due to people stepping up for Executive Elections, there was once again a Special Election for the Landsraad. Dolphin and the Salaxalans both resigned their positions to run on separate tickets for the office of Padishah Emperor. The Special Election lasted weeks as nobody stepped up initially. In the end, Arbiter08 and Menkov took the two empty seats by being the only people who chose to run. In total, during the entire two-month eighth session, two laws were passed, and Horse and Isidor were confirmed as Associate and Chief Truthsayer, respectively.
Fortunately, at the beginning of June, elections for the ninth session began. There were five candidates running for 4 seats, and all of them (Guy, Dolphin, Toms, Wuufu and Tangaroa) talked about the need for greater activity. It was a close race, but Guy, Toms, Wuufu, and newcomer to government Tangaroa. Thankfully, this session has so far been much more active.
So what’s happening now?
Discussion is happening in the chambers of the Landsraad on everything from eliminating the Prince Royal position to citizenship requirements. A recent bit of excitement was the disappearance of the current Prince Royal, Ceardia. We do hope that everything is ok with him, but here the show must go on, so Speaker Pro Tempore Guy was given power to preside over the Landsraad, and he is doing an admirable job.
As of right now, The Second Citizenship Act, proposed by Guy (and presumably written by Guy), is being debated in the RA right now (by only Guy and Toms, but its still a debate). The biggest edition to the bill is that if citizens are rejected citizenship by the President, or isn't acted upon within 7 days, the RA can confirm or deny the person Citizenship. The bill is currently on course to go to a vote, so long as the rest of the RA can get its butt into gear.
4 bills during this session have been passed by the small RA, with the most notable being the Censure of Libertarian Librarians (Repeal) Act, which repealed the highly controversial Censure of Libertarian Librarians, which was passed during the 7th session of the RA. Other notable changes are the following: The Motion to Empower the Speaker Pro Tempore, which gives the speaker, if the Vice President is gone, the power to preside over the RA; The Vice President Vacancy Constitutional Amendment Act, which added a provision in case of an absence when a Vice President succeeds a President in case of a absence, and allows for the new President to appoint a new Vice President, and the Office Holder Election Eligibility and Miscellaneous Changes Constitutional Amendment Act, which, as the title states, edited the prerequisites for a citizen to run for office, and edited the Constitution in a few ways.
Spiritus Executive Elections and Aftermath
The Four Padishah Emperor Candidates prepare to debate
Once again, Spiritus saw another active and highly contested Executive Election. Fists were thrown, words were spoken, and a winning ticket came out on top.
The Four Padishah Emperor Candidates prepare to debate
At the end of April and into May, the Executive Elections began! There were four official tickets this time:
- Tangaroa with running mate Jonielle
- The Salaxalans with running mate Ceardia (Saleardia)
- Dolphin with running mate The Freedom Factory
- Reon with running mate Drexyl Nox
Many things were disagreed on throughout the election, but the voters had a clear opinion on who they supported. Although the election initially looked very close, the final results showed a decisive winner with the Saleardia ticket receiving 17 votes. In comparison, the remaining 10 votes split nearly evenly to all three of the other tickets *combined*. Saleardia had a ticket focusing on Internal Revitalization, and increasing Forum Activity.
Upon their election, there was a slight shakeup to the positions of Proctor Superior. Guy was chosen as the new Proctor Superior of Foreign Affairs, while Tim replaced Karputsk as the new Proctor Superior of Defence. The other Chapterhouses remained the same. Toms, Wuufu and Horse remained as Proctor Superiors of Integration, Culture and Information respectively, while Isidor continued to serve as Proctor Superior of the recently created Chapterhouse of Disputes. As expected, Salaxalans kept both his position of World Assembly Delegate and Proctor Superior of World Assembly Affairs.
Other, more recent things, that have happened include:
- In terms of Culture, Proctor Superior of Culture Wuufu’s live nights of music and gaming are still running strong, and his recently begun PMT Nation RP, Spirri, while still getting off its feet looks to be going very well. Set in a Post-World War Spiritus, it already has many involved nations and appears to center around the recent discovery of Wormhole Technology by Wuufu's Nation.
- Padishah Emperor Salaxalans decided to put together an UNO tournament in the chatroom using our friendly IRCbot, Tammy, hopefully to promote activity throughout the region. From an initial glimpse, there appears to be great promise for this tournament of the well-beloved card game.
- The Spiritus Defence Force has recently seen an increase in activity, participating in many defenses and liberations across Nationstates. Another symbol of pride for Spiritus, captured by members of the SDF and some Diplomacy, is the attainment of embassies with every single Warzone. A long-existing goal, it has finally been re-accomplished again to the cheers of many across Spiritus.
The Steam Summer Sale assails the wallets of Spiritans!
Wallets of many Spiritans recoiling in fear for their money
And finally, the most important thing that has happened in all this time: THE STEAM SALE!
Wallets of many Spiritans recoiling in fear for their money
Minister of Integration, Toms, had this to say about the sale:
See any games you were thinking about getting there? If so, hopefully the fantastic reviews by Toms have made you decide to get them! Now we'll be taking our comission from Stea *cough* I mean, congratulating you on the successful attainment of yet another great game!Toms justifies his spending:
Standing in for Horse - Tim's Things of the Month: Incredibox and Unturned
Hi there folks, it's Tim! Normally this would be Horse's bit, but I'm standing in for him this time. Now, as you haven't seen us for a while, I'll be reviewing two things this update! These two things are Incredibox and Unturned, which are nothing alike but both absolutely fantastic! Without further adieu, let's go!Incredibox
Found at http://www.incredibox.com/v3/, though you can change the address to /v2/ and /v1/ to try the older versions, this game is extremely simple yet extremely addicting. Multiple people appear on the screen, and you have a choice of assigning a clothing to each of them. There are four different categories of clothes: Beats, Effects, Melodies, and Voices. Within each of those, there are five different varieties of the category you can add to each person! With seven different people to add different effects, beats, melodies, and voices to, this is an extremely versatile music experiment with some really fun results.
Just in case that's not enough, there are three different music videos you can unlock and watch by putting on the right combination of garments on your seven singers!
Unturned
Before I start, if you're in a game for its life-like graphics then this game is not for you. However, if you're in a game for the utter amount of customization and versatility possible in a game then this is absolutely for you! Plus, just in case you needed more, the creator of the game adds new features almost daily! Oh, and it's free!
Recently Greenlit and Released on Steam, you can find it here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/304930/
The game itself has been around for quite a bit, with the creator adding stuff constantly. A few of us Spiritans would play it semi-regularly together, and it became just one of the fun little things we did as a region! Back then, we'd have to constantly update it manually from his website because of how often updates came out. However, now that it's on Steam, updates come there automatically. Furthermore, the game has had an enormous amount of support - far more than the creator ever expected.
The best way to describe it would be to call it a DayZ environment with all the building and customization of Rust. Yes, the graphics are far more simple, but this also means that you really don't need too amazing of specs to run it! This is truly a game that grows with the community, and the creator of the game frequently polls players on what other features they want. At the moment, the game is PC only but its creator is quickly working to get a Mac-compatible version up for download on Steam! If you're interested, check out the game on Steam and watch the Trailer below.
[flash=400,300]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QthD-_rrjPw[/flash]
If you're interested, please do check out Unturned as the developer deserves to have this game to be a huge hit!
Thanks for reading the Spiritus Foreign Update!
Articles by: Toms, Tim
Edited by: Toms, Tim, Salaxalans
Once you get past that the graphics aren't too terribly amazing, it's a lot of fun.