Back in March, the second regional government (and the first under the overhauled version of the Articles) was elected.

One of the new offices under the new version of the Articles was Steward of Internal Affairs. The race for Internal Affairs was between I am a Planet Bitches (aka Icarus) who received nine votes, and Jedinsto who received two votes. Icarus' plans involved new game nights, a monthly meme contest, and welcome messages for new arrivals in the region. Jedinsto's plans involved game nights and RMB awards. Icarus served the full term and followed through with the plans laid out in the campaign.

The other office created by the new Articles was Steward of Culture. Republic of Free States (aka Crafty) won this election in a walkover. Crafty had served as Minister of Roleplay prior to this election, a position almost identical to Steward of Culture. Despite having no opponents, Crafty still posted a campaign. Crafty's ideas including expanding roleplay to new planets, and to change the roleplay rules for an overall more enjoyable experience.

Volkerben became World Assembly Delegate in a walkover, and did not post a campaign.

The race for existing office of Speaker of the People's Council was the tightest race. The candidates were incumbent Aurelion, and eternal challenger Cylonmont. Aurelion's plan was to keep the People's Council as strong as it had been for the first term, and to help legislators in the Council as was necessary. In their typical fashion, Cylonmont posted a complete joke campaign, which was a poem telling the citizenry not to vote for them. Aurelion won this race with seven votes to four.

The Cyrannus Star System has finally started foreign outreach and relations this year, with the most notable events being its participation in The Week of Hiraeth, the NationStates Great Exhibition, and the opening of two embassies onsite.

Week of Hiraeth-
The Week of Hiraeth, organized by Caer Sidi, took place between the 17th and 21st of February. It consisted of an art contest, a puzzle hunt, and game, movie, music and karaoke nights. The games included Secret Hitler, Among Us, skribbl.io, and Jackbox. The movie night saw a streaming of the Pixar movie, Soul. Pallay and Cylonmont (representing Spiritus as Feirmont during the event) participated in the puzzle hunt. CSS’s very own Icarus (I am a planet bitches) helped run the event, and was a regional representative for Caer Sidi.

NationStates Great Exhibition-
The NationStates Great Exhibition 2021 took place between the 5th and 10th of March. Cyrannus Star System had an exhibit, with Pallay running most of the CSS thread in the forum (nsge.jcink.net). Participants in the CSS exhibit included Aurelion alpha and Republic of free states. The regional exhibit can be found here.

Embassy Openings-
CSS opened embassies with two regions, Spiritus and Thalassia this year.

At the beginning of May, Cyrannus founder Pallay made an announcement that he was going to be overhauling the roleplay world of Cyrannus. Pallay cited the hastily thrown together nature of the current setting as the major reason for the overhaul, as many pieces that he wanted to bring in and add did not blend well with the haphazard nature already established. While only minor hints have been dropped at the time of writing this, some questions Pallay has already answered lean towards expanding the canonical lore for the setting.

Mid-May Pallay also hosted a poll asking residents what they would most want to see come out of this redesign. The poll was multiple choice, not limiting the residents to picking solely one option as to what they wanted to see most. Common history per planet came out on top with 27.3% of the vote. This was followed by universe lore at 22.7%. Precursor empires and more maps followed with 18.2% and 13.6% respectfully. The bottom two options, species and expanded technologies brought up rear with 9.1% each.

Cyrannus was originally built with the 2004 television series Battlestar Galactica as it’s core. However, it seems to be Pallay’s intent to expand this into a completely custom world with that inspiration simply as the foundation.

In January, I opened the first legislative discussion of the New Year. Proposal 2021-1 was put forward before the People’s Council to overhaul the bloated and murky initial constitution that Cyrannus held. The original constitution contained twelve choppy and vague articles that either repetitively or skimpily described their purposes and left many things vague or underdefined, the new one only consists of six that are clearer and more concise. Cyrannus has operated for nearly four months on this document and I have witnessed some of the confusions that it has caused our members. The government only truly consisted of the offices of President, World Assembly Delegate, and Speaker of the People’s Council, but as explained below, there were places this needed to be adjusted.

The first major overhaul was the Executive government. Under the previous Articles, the President operated as it’s head and was able to create and replace ministries as it saw fit. This left a lot of people in the dark on what ministries the President intended to operate, which led to stagnation in getting applicants for certain jobs as they didn’t know if a better suited one would come along and they’d regret their choice. To fix this, the new constitution shuffled the executive around and established three full-time ministries, Internal Affairs, Culture, and World Assembly Affairs, with the Founder taking the lead of the executive as the Director. This change allows the citizenry to know what’s available and what they’re getting before they decide to try for it.

The only other major change was to the last three articles of the original document that pertained various odds and ends that centered around moderation and basis’ of the region. This described the process of Persona non-Grata, Ban-on-Sight players from the region, regional message board rights, and sovereign neutrality. These were combined and adjusted within the new Article VI of the constitution to describe the Rights and Rules of CSS Members and Entities. This new article describes everything that members of Cyrannus are allowed to do as well as Cyrannus’ stance on hate, trolling, and tolerance, the latter parts I plan to establish in fuller detail soon.

Both these major changes were accompanied by minor ones as well. These included condensing the Residency and Citizenship articles into one, laying out and defining the People’s Council and Council Speaker articles better, cleaning up the Elections article to read smoother, and eliminating the judiciary from the Articles as it is unnecessary and unused in a region with very few quarels. It is in my firm belief that these changes will benefit Cyrannus for the best going forward as we continue into 2021 and beyond.

The Colonial News Services has seen a brief period of inactivity. Our first edition was published in February this year and we have been silent since that point due to real life concerns with the only two writers at the time. With the addition of Jedinsto, Nationific, and Equatorie to the writing team, we're hoping to have these updates out on a more consistent schedule of every other month. This schedule will (hopefully) begin next month and each edition will cover any major events that happen in Cyrannus. Thank you for your patience in the delay of this edition and we look forward to covering more of Cyrannus with you.