The East Pacific News Service
March 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
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:
Great Morstaybishlia - TEPwiki
tep.wiki
Alksearia - TEPwiki
The Kingdom of Alksearia, or more commonly known as Alksearia, is located on the Western shores of Arcutria. It is a Constitutional Monarchy, with the Crown retaining...
tep.wiki
Sokala - TEPwiki
tep.wiki
Ikrisia Levinile - TEPwiki
Ikrisia Levinilie is a twenty-seven year old vulpine sentient female from the nation of Vekaiyu. A test subject of the classified Project Uveshk, she is relatively...
tep.wiki
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!
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