The Rejected RealmsBoard

Index

• An Interview with the Outgoing Delegate, A Leaf on the Wind - Agalaesia

• The Embassy Raid - The Python

• The South Pacific Cabinet Elections - Purple Hyacinth

• Kyosson Coup of Warzone Airspace - Crowheim

• The Partnership for Sovereignty - Toerana
  

Editor’s Note
Hello Readers of The Rejected Times! This Issue we’re trialling a new way to reward our writers, and allow our readers to give feedback on our issues, as well as answer a few quick questions to give us an idea of the sort of people who read our issues, to help us write bigger and better issues in the future.

Linked below is a google form that allows you to give us feedback and vote on your favourite article from this issue. It requires you to sign into a google account, but we do not collect your google account and/or email address.

Give us feedback here!

If you have an issues, let me know.

Enjoy this issue,

~ Toerana | BowShot

An Interview With the Outgoing Delegate, Sarah

Interview | WRITTEN BY Agalaesia

A former Delegate Officer of Culture and Officer of Outreach, as well as a current Officer in the Rejected Realms army, one could say that Sarah is amongst the most successful players in NationStates.

Six months ago, she ran for the delegacy and won by a large margin, making it to the top very quickly. Now having resigned from the delegacy, she enjoys the pink “Former Delegate” masking in the Rejected Realms’ Discord chat.

Almost immediately her love for the Rejected Realms and her selflessness can be sensed. “I really love TRR, it's my home,” she says. “I ran for Delegate because I thought I could do good for TRR.” Sarah does indeed have a long history of contributions made to the Realms: as Culture officer she introduced theme days and ran regular contests - both events remain a part of the region today.

“I think Borm had a strong platform, honestly,” she continues. “I think he would have done well. We just have vastly different approaches to things. It could have been interesting working with him. I feel like our strengths are opposites so we could have been a well balanced team.”

During her delegacy, Sarah faced many challenges - not only was there a lot of heated debate over the Regional Message Board rules, but she was also challenged by Tinhampton over a late governmental report. When asked whether she expected this, she said: “I don't know how to articulate exactly what I expected. You try to prepare for odd FA things and you have an obvious plan for officers that you set out ahead of time. And you just kinda try to prepare as best you can for the wrench in the plans.”

One of her least favourite memories as a delegate?

“Being challenged.”

Sarah was indeed by two-time unsuccessful challenger Tinhampton, who also challenged Sarah’s predecessor Dead-Eye Jack.

“I knew it was unlikely to go anywhere, but really it was draining. The whole situation was frustrating because it felt like it was seconded by people that had no idea what it really meant or how our system works. I don't believe it was a challenge worthy situation, since it was resolved fairly shortly after it was pointed out that I was late.”

Interestingly, Sarah doesn’t have a moment that she felt proud of, despite spearheading the Partnership for Regional Sovereignty and being the Foreign Affairs face of the region for almost half a year.

“I have a hard time seeing my Delegacy in a positive light. Perhaps I am just too hard on myself. I don't feel that I achieved anything, let alone something to be proud of. I came in with a strong energy and I had a lot of goals, however I got burned out pretty quick. Officer appointments were a struggle for both elections. It was a difficult situation. A lot of the times it felt like things just piled on.

I am proud of achieving my term. Like just making it to the finish line of a normal term. I wanted to quit so many times way before it was time. But I didn't, and I am proud of how far I made it and that I didn't just ghost my team or my responsibilities. I don't think I have a favorite memory, tbqh. I enjoyed a lot of things, and I'm so thankful I had a continuous killer culture staff. That really helped a whole lot with their planning on festivals and activities. I appreciate their work and their efforts.”

The Embassy Raid

News | WRITTEN BY The Python | EDITED BY Editor-In-Chief

The Embassy was one of the oldest embassy collecting regions in history, originally founded on the 26th of April 2015, and in February 18'th 2021, the day that will go down in NS history, the embassies were closed by a coalition of raiders from Lily, the Black Hawks, Lone Wolves United, Europeia, Karma and the Augustin Alliance. What happened?

It all started with the embassy-collecting region Traveling Wilburys being founded, on the 3rd of August last year. Traveling Wilburys quickly started collecting embassies and as of writing, still has over 1000 embassies. They also got close with the Embassy, and eventually the Embassy shared its password with Traveling Wilburys (the Embassy is founderless but has been kept safe until now by password protection).

However, Traveling Wilburys, on the 14th of February 2021, revealed itself to be run by none other than Frenchy himself, a senior member of Lily. Armed with the password, Frenchy organised a successful raid on the region, seeing a wide range of aforementioned organisations. Some failed liberation attempts happened involving organisations such as the Free Nations Defense Alliance, Union of Democratic States Armed Forces and Wintercrest, however, these all failed partly because of raider competency and partly because defenders did not have the numbers, as the largest defender organisations refused to do liberate the region, because they found embassy collecting regions "annoying"; This had a domino effect making other organisations more pessimistic the chance of a successful liberation being pulled off.

The minor update of 18th of February 2021 will be the day forever remembered as the day when one of the largest and oldest embassy collecting regions, lost every single one of it's embassies. In fact, there were so many embassies that update took around 2 hours to complete, and after that some of the embassies hadn't even closed yet (there was a technical error around 24 hours after this, initially thought to be due to the raid but admin later declared it was an error where the "game server couldn't talk to the database server"). Eventually admins worked on closing the embassies and successfully did so, although producing the unfortunate side-effect of resulting in an embassy-less history page. After the embassies closed, on the major update of 20th, defenders from TITO reclaimed the delegacy, along with help from the original liberation group, and are currently in the long process of rebuilding the Embassy...

The South Pacific Cabinet Elections

Opinion | WRITTEN BY Purple Hyacinth | EDITED BY Crowheim

The South Pacific’s Cabinet elections ran from February 1 to February 14. Six positions were up for grabs: Prime Minister, Minister of Culture, Minister of Defence, Minister of Engagement, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Minister of Media. While there was some heated debate, things largely went smoothly and there were no surprise upsets.

The previous term saw the first elections for three new ministries: the Ministries of Culture, Engagement, and Media. The portfolios for those three ministries had originally fallen under the control of the Ministry of Regional Affairs, but the Assembly had voted to split it after deeming the Ministry too big, in addition to other various reasons. While hopes were high, the outgoing Cabinet had been criticized for a lack of accountability and transparency, including little activity from several ministries. Perhaps most notably, the Ministry of Culture had failed to produce many activities, with the Minister, Swifty, even facing a recall, though the recall ultimately failed. The elected Minister of Media, Farengeto, had also not stirred up much activity within the Ministry of Media. He ultimately resigned, and after Islas took over, there was some activity. That is not to say that all Ministries were struggling--the Ministry of Engagement and the Ministry of Defence (also known as the South Pacific Special Forces) both saw lots of activity and were looked upon favorably.

With the shortcomings of the previous Cabinet fresh on people’s minds, it was no surprise that many were concerned about how ministers would strive for transparency and accountability. For example, in the Cabinet election debates and interviews hosted by the South Pacific Independent News Network (SPINN), five out of the six interviews and debates had a question mentioning transparency.

Three positions had one person running against no opposition: the Ministers of Defence, Engagement, and Foreign Affairs. In the position of MoD, the only candidate was Witchcraft and Sorcery. W&S is a longtime defender who recently rejoined the SPSF and currently holds the rank of Officer. Since his return, he has been quite active, also serving as the Director of Foreign Affairs of Founderless. His campaign touched on his stance on regional sovereignty, expansion of the non-updater Tidal Force, better recordkeeping, and foreign affairs. The campaign had very little pushback and W&S won the race handily, only losing one vote to Re-Open Nominations (RON).

USoVietnam, the incumbent Minister of Engagement, chose to run for reelection. He has several projects going on within the Ministry that he plans to continue, such as a project to create official informational dispatches infrastructure and a project to create an independent cards organization. The Ministry of Engagement was highly successful in the past term, with not only a lot of work getting done, but also several updates to the public throughout the term to promote transparency. He was popular in the previous term with high approval ratings, helping him win every single vote.

The final uncontested race was the race for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, with only Roavin running. An extremely established figure in both TSP and in the wider gameplay world, Roavin’s ability to be a competent MoFA was not questioned. However, his campaign was not primarily about foreign policy--rather, it revolved around his vision of a new role for ambassadors, who he envisioned would have a more active role, including learning about gameplay to potentially be prepared to be future MoFAs. He did receive some questions about the viability of the program and the details of his foreign policy objectives, as he had only given a vague statement about largely maintaining the status quo in his campaign, including promoting the Partnership for Sovereignty. Ultimately, he was still very popular, losing only two first-place votes out of 40 to RON.

The Minister of Culture race was between North Prarie and Royaltica. Prarie ran on a platform of increasing engagement among staff, creating a TRR-style Culture Calendar, encouraging roleplay, and activities with other members of the Partnership for Sovereignty. Royaltica’s campaign mentioned a variety of things, including their goals for ministry organization, TSP Campus, advertising, and a points system. Royaltica did get some questions regarding their lack of activity in the past term. In contrast, Prarie was more active in TSP in recent months, and with his more fleshed out ideas, he won 33 first place votes to Royalitca’s 5.

Belschaft, Rabbitz, and incumbent Islas were running for Minister of Media. Belschaft ran a unique campaign to abolish the Ministry, saying that it was unnecessary and unhelpful to journalists. Rabbitz’s campaign talked about his plans for pushing defenderism and making more content. Islas’s campaign was mostly about continuing to produce the content that was already being produced, plus more work on some other projects. Curiously, the campaign threads had few questions or comments from voters. However, the debate between the candidates that was hosted by SPINN had some of the most back-and-forth debate between the candidates of all the debates. Belschaft’s idea of abolishing the ministry had some support, but was largely rejected by voters. While Rabbitz and Islas both advocated for a pro-defender bias in MoM publications, Rabbitz seemed to get more opposition for it, potentially due to the fact that he mentioned it in his campaign while Islas didn’t. Likely due to a combination of Rabbitz’s and Belschaft’s unpopular ideas, Islas already producing publications as Minister, and other factors, Islas ultimately won the race. They won 23 first-place votes, Belschaft got 10, Rabbitz got 8, and RON got 3.

For the office of Prime Minister, Glen-Rhodes/Sandaoguo and Jay Coop/Qvait ran. Glen’s campaign focused on setting realistic goals and highlighted his past experience to prove his competence. He stated that the failures of the previous term had to do with big, unachievable goals, so setting realistic goals was especially important. Jay’s campaign mentioned a number of specific things he wanted to do if elected across the ministries. He also emphasized defenderism, including promoting the Partnership for Sovereignty. Both candidates had support, but Glen ultimately won 32 first-place votes to Jay’s 11.

The newly elected Cabinet did not officially enter office until a week after the election concluded to provide time to transition. Right as the term started, the newly elected Prime Minister released an Inaugural Address. In the address, he briefly described the general agenda for each minister. Additionally, Glen also announced the creation of two councils within the Cabinet, the Domestic Affairs Council (composed of the PM, MoC, MoM, and MoE, plus any deputies and advisors), and the Foreign Affairs Council (composed of the PM, MoFA, and MoD, plus any deputies and advisors). The two councils would work on most cross-ministry tasks among themselves, making things more efficient as ministers with unrelated portfolios would have no need to get involved. He also appointed Anjo as the Director of the Office of WA Legislation, a newly-created position after OWL was formalized into law. This was expected, as Anjo was the incumbent Secretary of OWL, which was the name of the position before it was changed when OWL was formalized.

While the term has just begun, there are already some good signs. For one, the Inaugural Address was released, in contrast to the Inaugural Address not being released in the previous term. However, with much of the term yet to happen, we will have to wait and see whether each minister’s promise is fulfilled.

Kyosson Coup of Warzone Airspace

Satire | WRITTEN BY Crowheim | EDITED BY Editor-In-Chief

BREAKING: The Rejected Times is shocked to report that a Kyosson family reunion taking place in the Warzone Airspace appears to have ended in a hostile takeover of the region and the installation of a puppet regime, called the Kingdom of the Clouds, to rule over the family-owned territory.

Planning for the reunion had been underway for some time, but the location had been decided spur of the moment as Kyossons trickled into what appeared to be a deserted slice of land. Over the course of 12 hours, many prominent members of the family showed up to celebrate, included former Rejected Realms delegate (as well as family patriarch) Kyorgia, as well as various figures from across the world like Agalaesia, BowShot, and Phoenix.

Sometime past midnight partying began over Matriarch's recent ascension to the Rejected Delegacy, and soon the horde of rowdy family members descended upon the region's center of government, which had been abandoned months earlier, and staked their claim to the dilapidated ruins. A new government was established and the region was inducted into the Kyosson Empire, whose other holdings include Kyorgia Puppet Storage and The Rejected Realms (although this second claim is disputed).

The new government was to be named the Kingdom of the Clouds, with Agalaesia serving as the Chancellor of the new region, Kyorgia as the delegate and marquess, and BowShot as the Captain of the Royal Guard. The government stayed in power for around a week until the former owners of the land, the diabolical corporate lawyers of LazCorp descended back upon their territory to reclaim it. Leaders from Osiris and the LWU also arrived with LazCorp to aid in the negotiations.

The Kyosson family sent their Chancellor to negotiate but he unfortunately got stuck in a bathtub and was unable to attend, so the Marquess was sent instead. Neither side reached an agreement but LazCorp's lawyers ended up succeeding in one goal - their legal jargon and legalese bored the Kyosson family to death, and so they departed the region after a short reign as it's rulers.

Partnership for Sovereignty

News | WRITTEN BY Toerana | EDITED BY Crowheim

The Partnership for Sovereignty, the new World Assembly Bloc on the scene is made up of some of NationStates’ largest and most influential Defender oriented regions. Originally founded by three, prominent defender regions, the Rejected Realms, the South Pacific and 10,000 Islands approximately a month ago, and it has grown to include 6 members, seeing The Union of Democratic States, the Free Nations Region and Spiritus. Its principles are based around core defender beliefs to a region’s right to Self Determination, the growth and encouragement of positive communities and a “respect for the World Assembly and its processes.” This is most notable, as the WA Bloc’s charter explicitly states their opposition to the practice of “approval raiding,” and requires member states act against it. [1] Alongside this, its charter automatically expels any member region that “declares a formal raiding alignment,” [2] solidifying the Bloc as a defender organisation.

Its 6 member regions add up to a total of 17,200 nations, with the combined voting power of the region’s delegates being over 1,580 votes. This places the bloc below WALL in voting power, seeing WALL have approximately 430 votes more than the Partnership.

So far, the Partnership has published 3 recommendations for the Security Council, with two of them relating to the Embassy and its liberation, and the third being a recommendation against Commend HEM, on the grounds of King hem’s involvement in raider regions and organisations.

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