[#3] An Ancient Egyptian: Cormac A Stark (2022)

[Malphe]

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Authored by All Wild Things, posted for the utility of the OHL on 21 November, 2022 by Cretanja on behalf of the original author. This is an overview of the player Cormactopia made after they were made Delete on Sight from NationStates. Cormac is a critical player in Osiran history, and this does provide a strong, if brief, overview of their career and DoS. Punctuation has been edited slightly to fit into the BBCode of the Osiris forum. Please note that this one contains sensitive content.

Archived NationStates Dispatch Source
Author: All Wild Things
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An Ancient Egyptian: Cormac A Stark

After almost a decade of creating waves across NationStates the ever outspoken Cormac, three-time Pharaoh of Osiris, committed "#SuicideByMod" on 4 October 2021.

Posting in the Technical thread "TRR Mute Button" at 11:20 UTC-8, Cormac railed against site moderation standards. They ended their post with the words:

"But most of all, Max Barry is human garbage. An absolute dumpster fire of a human being. Because ultimately this is all his responsibility, and all his fault. He is the one, we've been told before, who insists that the most vile people imaginable -- actual Nazis -- be able to use his website as a platform for their hate speech, whenever they can manage to cleverly disguise it to conform to the site's lousy rules, and use his website as recruitment grounds to turn impressionable young minds to hatred and violence. That's what Max Barry is responsible for doing, and he does it while collecting the money you give him from advertisement and stamps, with a smile on his face like the capitalist swine he is. Think about that and think about whether you want to keep contributing to him.

I don't. I'm done.

So f*ck you, Sedge. F*ck you, Crazy girl. F*ck you, [violet]. But above all, for all the people who have been brought to tears and worse by the things that happen on your website, whose mental health you have jeopardized, and whose very lives you have endangered, f*ck you Max Barry.

#CancelNationStates"

During the next two hours, Cormac made short posts on two Moderation threads, further expressing their dissatisfaction.

At 12pm, Cormac indicated on the East Pacific's Gameplay thread that they expected to become Delete on Sight. They had changed their forum signature, and also their nation's pre-title and motto in an attempt to get deleted. They went further, breaking the rule on not using "Moderator red text".

At 1pm, Cormac was forum banned. A further sixteen minutes, and they were puppet swept (had all their nations deleted), and later was confirmed as DoS.

Cormac later returned as new puppet Cancel NationStates to submit a Security Council Declaration also named "Cancel NationStates". This new nation was of course also deleted.

So who was Cormac? In their own words:
"I'm Cormactopia Prime, aka Cormac Skollvaldr, three time former Pharaoh of Osiris, former raider, former defender, former imperialist, former independent, former(?) Francoist, former communist rainbow, writer of much legislation, and all around controversy artist."

"I've been a Senator in Europeia, Cabinet Secretary in TNI, Foreign Secretary in The LKE, Lieutenant in the UDL, Chair of the Assembly in TSP, Assembly Speaker in Lazarus. I commanded Balder's military for a while. I was a General in The Brotherhood of Malice, and a Corporal in The Black Hawks. That's not even everything, just what I remember off the top of my head."

Cormac's NS career started in early 2012 in imperialist region Exshaw. They soon founded their own region, Asgard, which achieved notoriety by invading Christmas on 4 July 2012. With a Security Council Liberation passed on the 26th, Asgard gave up the occupation on the 30th. Detail on the raid and the aftermath can be found here. Changing Gameplay alignments, Cormac joined the United Defender League (UDL) in September 2012.

On 27 June 2013, Cormac A Stark was elected Pharaoh of the Kemetic Republic of Osiris. However a coup by The Dourian Embassy prevented them taking the delegacy. The Dourian Embassy had given their password to raider Durkadurkiranistan II (founder of Exshaw, also known as JAL), who worked with Gatesville to take Osiris. By 28th July, Durk and Cormac had negotiated settlement allowing Cormac to finally become delegate. Their delegacy lasted a month.

Cormac's delegacy ended in unusual circumstances. Cormac "changed the WFE and the flag claiming the region as a colony of Exshaw, suppressed RMB posts, banjected a few nations and initiated the closure of all the in-game embassies - before apologising for [their] actions, reversing what they did and resigning/leaving."

Real-life pressures were suspected to have triggered their behaviour. In a 2018 interview with The Stalker for Hell's Bells, Cormac said:
"I regret stepping down as Pharaoh in September 2013 and supporting Astarial's dissolution of the Kemetic Republic of Osiris, which eventually lead to the Osiris Fraternal Order in December 2013, and then to another coup in April 2016. All of that really paved the way for the less active situation that exists in Osiris right now."

Ever contradictory though, Cormac says in a 2019 interview with Escade for Gameplay Magazine that their favourite moment was: "definitely the establishment of OFO 1.0 in December 2013. Aside from putting Osiris on the long path to stability, it was also just the coolest thing I've ever done in this game, and it was something I got to share with Koth and Venico, who were my best friends in this game."

Cormac returned as Osiris delegate on 28 July 2014. By this time the Kemetic Republic of Osiris had been replaced by the Osiris Fraternal Order. Cormac had a historic low endorsement count. Seeing this, General Aperi of the Lazarene Liberation Army commented "Go endotart man, I'm starting to get ideas". Cormac saw this as a threat to their delegacy, and a reason to declare war on the People's Republic of Lazarus. After two months as delegate, Cormac resigned due to real life pressures.

In April 2016, Pharaoh Tim Stark was stepping down to make way for a democratically elected candidate. However voting irregularities caused a change of mind. It was agreed to transfer power to Cormac, and to change the Osiris Fraternal Order from a democracy to a monarchy. Cormactopia ii became delegate on 22 May 2016, and held the position for 198 days. During this time Osiris had it's fifth anniversary. On 17 November, Cormac abdicated, though remained delegate until 6 December when changing endo-counts finally transfered power to the new Pharaoh.

Cormac's journalism as The Miniluv Messenger broke explosive Gameplay news stories. Their series of 34 articles started in January 2014, with the last published in October 2019.

Attempts to "Commend Cormac" in the Security Council were made as early as August and September 2014. In the first of those drafting threads, Benevolent Thomas opines: "Cormac doesn't deserve to be commended nor does [Cormac] deserve condemnation."

By the second proposal, he had changed his mind: "I wonder if it would be possible to Commend and then Condemn Cormac using the exact same body of text for the different proposals? That would really make this whole thing complete."

Three years later in 2017, Benevolent Thomas raises this again as a suggestion: "Back to back Condemn/Commend Cormac proposals could be fun."

In 2018, Solorni raises this idea once more: "What if we write two very similar proposals that are mirror images of each other to both commend and condemn Cormac. I think [Cormac] deserves both and is the most fitting player I can think for this honour."

Tim-Opolis drafted a new "Commend Cormactopia Prime" in January 2019, noting that one of the issues with the draft was deciding what to leave out.

Tim's draft detailed the eight SC resolutions Cormac had authored to that point, and the three he had co-authored. Cormac also authored a GA repeal in 2013. Far more significantly, he authored the Security Council's first Declaration, "Advancement Of Anti-Fascist Action, passed in July 2021.

This Declaration was one of many stands that Cormac took against intolerance. In the real world, on 12 June 2016, a homophobe murdered 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, and injured 53 more. Hashtag #LoveIsLove trended on social media as a sign of solidarity. Cormac brought that campaign into NationStates. Although the campaign only lasted two weeks, five years on, the campaign dispatch is still one of the most upvoted dispatches in NS history. As Pharaoh, Cormac signed Osiris up to anti-Nazi organisation CAIN on 31 October 2016. And of course, their anti-Nazi stance featured heavily in his suicide-by-mod note.