The Hyperuranic Academy of Artistic, Aesthetic, and Awesome Cards (AHCAEF; in Eleutean, Amiranthie Ybrearmelleant en Chersyr gyeanturs, avissaedneàs ea dramarevrurs (AYCGAD); in Catalan, Acadèmia Hiperurànica de Cartes Artístiques, Estètiques, i Formidables (AHCAEF)), commonly known as the Cardemy (Eleutean: ar Chersanthie; Catalan: la Cartèmia), is a professional honorary organization in the Hiperuranion devoted to acknowledge the artistic merits of NS cards that excel due to their artistic and aesthetic qualities, to promote its creation throughout the Spheres of Ènnes, and to foster the maintenance of collections that reunite, celebrate, and display them.

The artistic and aesthetic values of the cards are eminently subjective and, therefore, when considering these values things like the bank worth of the cards or the collections that keep them are of no importance, nor the themes of such collections, the amount of cards kept by them, nor the number of cards of the same nation possessed by that or any other nation.

Membership of the Cardemy
1. Can become members of the Cardemy:
1.1 Both Riam Tanyersac, Sovereign of the Hyperuranic Realm and founder of the Cardemy, and Anthologica, Chancellor of the Arts of the Hyperuranic Realm are permanent and lifetime members of the Cardemy.
1.2 The nations that are full members of the region Hiperuranion, as long as they're also members of the World Assembly, have a population greater than 3,000 inhabitants, have permanently resided in the Hiperurànion at least the six months prior to the announcement of the awards of the year in force, are represented by a flag that adhere to the criteria shown in 'Eligibility of the cards' (see further below), and have a sizeable amount of cards with a high artistic and aesthetic value that follow the criteria detailed in 'Eligibility of the cards'. In addition, the Hiperurànion's member nations must demonstrate and keep a series of quality standards as detailed in the first part of this dispatch.
1.3 Changes that go against these requirements, or the loss of some or all of these requirements, means losing the membership of the Cardemy. (See below, in 'Especial norms and considerations', for more information about this rule)
2.1 Affiliation petitions to the Cardemy must be sent to its Secretariat (Anthologica), which will supervise every petition. The petition must be made via telegram, and must include a presentation of the high artistic and aesthetic value cards owned by the applicant nation. Such cards should be preferently reunited into one or a few collections to facillitate their avaluation by the Secretariat. The presentation must include a short explanation on why the cards are considered of high artistic and aesthetic value by the applicant, and a link to the collection or collections.
2.2 Neither Hiperuranion's RMB nor The Hiperurànion's Agora are valid places to apply for membership to the Cardemy.

Organization and operation of the Cardemy
3.1 The government and operation of the Cardemy is divided into the Presidency, the Secretariat, and the Assembly.
3.2 The Presidency is inelegible and eternal, being held by Riam, who was the right of veto in the election of the Cardemy Awards, and can modify any rule or working norm of the academy if there are actions or agents that undermine the integrity and well-functioning of the Cardemy and its annual awards, wether they're intentional or due to misinterpretations or loegal holes of these rules.
3.3 The Secretariat is hold by Anthologica, Chancellor of the Arts of the Hiperurànion.
3.4 The combination of Presidency and Secretariat constitute the Government of the Cardemy. Only its members can announce the calendar of the awards, as well as to open public polls and official discussion threads on the awards and the Cardemy.
3.5 The Assembly is constituted by all the members of the Cardemy. The members can express freely their opinions on the Cardemy's functioning and the organization of its awards, and have the right to propose the candidates and vote them to elect the winners for each annual awards.
4.1 These rules that govern the Cardemy and its awards can't be modified or eliminated during the awards period, which starts with its official announcement and ends with the publication of the winners of the year in force.

The Cardemy celebrates annual awards to praise the best NS cards from artistic and aesthetic criteria. The awards are divided into various categories.

Organization of the awards
5.1 The awards are annual, and are celebrated in either spring or autumn of the year in force.
5.2 The awards must be given to cards belonging to the most recent season existing in the year in force.
5.3 If shortly before spring or autumn of a given year a new card season is published, the Government of the Cardemy will decide if the next awards are given to the new season or the previous one. (See below, in 'Especial norms and considerations', for more information about this rule)
6.1 The Government of the Cardemy must announce in advance the calendar of the awards. The announcement opens the awards period of the year in force. The announcement of the awards must include these steps, and in this order: a period to nominate candidates and elect the jury, a day of publication of the finalists, a period to vote the winners, and a day to announce the winners.
6.2 The periods can't last more than seven days and, ideally, must coincide with weeks of the calendar.
6.3 In order to do all the steps and announcements correctly, the awards must be announced no later than twenty days before the day the awards are published.
6.4 The winners must be announced a Saturday or Sunday. With this step the awards period of the year in force is closed.

Awards categories
7.1 The awards are divided into several categories reunited in three groups: Regular, Variable, and Especial.
7.2 Regular categories are permanent i non-modifiable, not being possible to elimimate them from the awards, nor modify them. They're the following: Best Legendary, Best Epic, Best Ultra-rare, Best Rare, Best Uncommon, Best Common.
7.3 Variabe categories are permanent, but they can change from one year to the other. There can't be more than six. The names of the categories must be as short and concise as possible. (See below, in 'Norms and especial considerations', for more information about this rule)
7.4 The intrinsic criteria to the variable categories must be tied to the artistic and aesthetic values of the cards, and must be of generic nature; they can't be, therefore, too specific. (See below, in 'Norms and especial considerations', for more information about this rule)
7.5 Especial categories award graphic elements that are representative of the nations and regions of NS that aren't part of the NationStates Cards. The awards are as follow: Best Nacional Banner, Best Regional Flag, Best Regional Banner. They are of meritory nature, which means that for each annual awards the Cardemy may award all three, only two, or just one of the awards, or declare all of them null.
7.6 The same artistic and aesthetic criteria that make the card eligible must be applied to the objects of the especial categories' awards.
8. The membres of the Cardemy can suggest the addition, supression, or modification of variable and especial categories, a thing that the Assembly will decide in open voting in the Hiperurànion's RMB with debates and polls. These changes can be made only between the public announcement of the winners of the year in force and the publication of the official calendar of the next year's awards (both days excluded).

* The ones decided by the Cardemy for each annual awards.

Eligibility of the cards
9. All existing cards in the season in force in the moment of the announcemment of the awards are eligible, except:
9.1 The ones showing one of the flags that NationStates gives by default, in any form or style. (See below, in 'Norms and especial considerations', for more information about this rule)
9.2 Cards showing any existing flag of the real world, being its design either the same as the original or a modification of the original, either occupying all the available space in the flag or a substantial part of such space. (See below, in 'Norms and especial considerations', for more information about this rule)
9.3 Cards with offensive graphic elements or text. (See below, in 'Norms and especial considerations', for more information about this rule)
9.4 Cards that show symbols, text, or direct references to the national-socialist, socialist, communist, or fascist ideologies, as well as any other ideology of the real world that is considered offensive or denigratory. (See below, in 'Norms and especial considerations', for more information about this rule)
9.5 Cards with graphic material of very bad quality, including those excessively degraded, pixelated, or blurry, except when the apparent defect is, in fact, unequivocally part of the artistic design. (See below, in 'Norms and especial considerations', for more information about this rule)

Election of the nominees and the jury
10. For cards to be considered for votation it's necessary that members of the Cardemy publicly nominate the cards that desire as finalists, always considering the following:
10.1 Nominated cards must comply with all the criteria that make the cards eligible.
10.2 Nominations must be done the way indicated by the Government of the Cardemy, and within the period this government decrees.
10.3 Cards that won in any of the categories of the awards immediately preceding the ones celebratred the year in force, can't be nominated.
11.1 The jury of the awards will be constituted by the Sovereign of the Hyperuranic Realm (Riam), the Chancellor of the Arts of the Hiperurànion (Anthologica), and three members of the Cardemy elected by sortition for the awards of the year in force. These three members will be sorted from the members of the Cardemy as long as they're not self-excluded previously. The election must be done by sortition, and the announcement of the reuslts must be done no later than the last day of the nominations period.
11.2 The number of members of the jury must be always odd.

Election of the finalists and the winners
12.1 Finalist cards of all categories will be published in a list once the jury of the awards has seen and checked all the valid nominations. The list will be published in both the RMB and the Hiperurànion's Agora.
12.2 For every category there must be a minimum of three finalists, and a maximum of six.
13.1 The winners will be elected from among the finalist cards, by the jury of the awards.
13.2 There can only be one winner per category. If there's a tie in the deliberations, it's necessary to revise the case to break the tie.
13.3 The same nation can win in a regular category and in one or various especial categories, or not win in a regular category but win in one or various especial categories.

Information, debate, and doubts
14.1 The Assembly's debates that are related to the awards must be done in the Hiperurànion's Agora, although it's possible to open a discussion thread, open to everyone, members and not members, to talk and discuss the awards. Such thread would be, as well, the place to solve any doubt and petition related to the Cardemy and its awards.
14.2 Especial debates (like polls), as well as assemblies of the members of the Cardemy and of the juries of the awards will be done in the Hiperurànion's RMB.
14.3 Official announcements of the Cardemy will be done in both the RMB and the Hiperurànion's Agora.
14.4 We discourage using telegrams to make petitions or solve general doubts that can be easily solved in the RMB as well as in the Hiperurànion's Agora.

Special norms and considerations
These norms are clarifications on the rules shown above and, therefore, they are, as well, their extensions and have the same legal force.

On 1.3 («Changes that go against these requirements, or the loss of some or all of these requirements, means losing the membership of the Cardemy»). Especially, not being part of the World Assembly in the moment the year's awards (from their official announcement in the calendar to the official announcement of the winners) take place, a necessary measure to assure elections as democratic as possible. Also, to stop having a sizeable amount of cards with a high artistic and aesthetic value, wether it's due to a decrease of such cards or an increase of cards with poor artistic and aesthetic value.

On 5.3 («If shortly before spring or autumn of a given year a new card season is published, the Government of the Cardemy will decide if the next awards are given to the new season or the previous one»). In principle, the following awards will still commemorate the cards of the previous season, since the cards from the new one would be little known and explored by the public. The first awards of the new season won't be celebrated until the next year.

On 7.3 («Variabe categories are permanent, but they can change from one year to the other. There can't be more than six. The names of the categories must be as short and concise as possible»). In the announcement of a year's awards variable categories can be accompanied by a short text specifying their nature and reason to be. For example: Best photography: Award to the card with the best photography, wether it's original or digitally treated, a screenshot, or an image taken from a video.

On 7.4 («The intrinsic criteria to the variable categories must be tied to the artistic and aesthetic values of the cards, and must be of generic nature; they can't be, therefore, too specific»). Things like, for example, «Best card with an animated gif» or «Best digital drawing or painting» are more than acceptable, but things like «Best card showing a cat» or «Best card with the colours green, white, and black» are not.

On 9.1 («The ones showing one of the flags that NationStates gives by default, in any form or style»). Wether they are the flags that NationStates gives by default when a nation is founded, or a modification of those. This includes, as well, the cards with the «Ex-Nation» sign or any other sign given by NationStates.

On 9.2 («Cards showing any existing flag of the real world, being its design either the same as the original or a modification of the original, either occupying all the available space in the flag or a substantial part of such space»). This includes any flag, vexilological item and emblem, or seal of states and government entities (offices, bureaus, departments, agencies, etc.), businesses (private or public), associations, non-governmental organizations, social or cultural movements, and other entities or individuals the flags or heraldic signals of which are official and recognized as legal.

The coat of arms (of individuals, lineages, countries or states) and vexillological items (flags, banners, pennants...) that are ancient (already existant before year 1500) are permitted as long as are shown as being part of a larger artistic set.

Fictitious flags derived from or based on real flags, wether they're historical or still in use, are acceptable as long as they differ enough from the originals and clearly show an artistic effort in their design.

On 9.3 («Cards with offensive graphic elements or text»). Images, symbols or text that offend in a clear way groups of people, wether they're real, wether they're nations, regions, or fictitious individuals from NS, are not allowed. In this consideration, the names of nations are not included, but text that is part of the card and depend on the information introduced in 'Settings' ('Classification', 'Motto', and other that may appear), are part of this consideration.

On 9.4 («Cards that show symbols, text, or direct references to the national-socialist, socialist, communist, or fascist ideologies, as well as any other ideology of the real world that is considered offensive or denigratory»). In the Hiperurànion we known that good ideas re the best to build cultures and civilizations, and that ideologies are ill-fated because they're dogmatic by nature. Cards are not elligible for the awards if they have symbols or any reference to ideologies of social, economic or polítical kind, especially the ones already mentioned in this rule.

Religions are not considered ideologies (despite thet fact that can be tied to them, as well as contain dogmas) and, therefore, cards with religious references or symbols, references to sacred texts, and references to sacred or religious legends and myths, are elligible as long as their design follow the rules of the Cardemy.

Capitalism is considered a socioeconomic system, not an ideology. Therefore, symbols and references to capitalism are allowed.

On 9.5 («Cards with graphic material of very bad quality, including those excessively degraded, pixelated, or blurry, except when the apparent defect is, in fact, unequivocally part of the artistic design»). This includes defects caused by the automatic amplification that NS does to flags that are too small when put in a card (basically, blurring and pixelation).

Blurring and pixelation in animated gifs are excluded due to the low quality required in flags, as long as such defects are not flagrant and allow to appreciate whatever the flag represents.

Clarifications

The «year in force» mentioned in these rules refer to the year a certain Cardemy Awards are celebrated. So, for example, the year in force for the 2025 Cardemy Awards is the year 2025.

Since the beginning of the Cardemy Awards took place in the year 2023, the same that saw the publication of NationStates Cards' third season, the awards for the first and second seasons are singular and bestowed ex cathedra by Riam.

The Cardemy Awards are an initiative of the Hyperuranic Academy of Artistic, Aesthetic, and Awesome Cards, a private nonprofit organization devoted to the promotion of the arts. The Cardemy is not affiliated in any way with NationStates nor with its creators, and is not part of the NationStates Cards game.