Wintreath Foreign Update 9 - Spring 2016 (I know it's late!)
Government of Wintreath
Monarch: Wintermoot
Jarl of Culture: Pengu
Jarl of Defense: Chanku
Jarl of Foreign Affairs: Wintermoot
Jarl of Integration: Vacant
Jarl of WA Affairs: Reon
Revocation of Govindia's Citizenship
Written by Sapphiron
The Storting deliberates the matter at hand. Within 48 hours after the announcement of the fifteenth Underhusen election results, there was a re-emergence of public discussions regarding the revocation of Govindia’s citizenship. Unlike last year, such an occurrence was hardly surprising, for it was preceded by a firm warning during the campaign period not to abuse the moderation reporting tool to report candidates “for refusing to answer campaign questions” as well as an indefinite ban from the IRC for persistent harassment (repeatedly demanding an apology and resorting to personal attacks for declining to answer his queries) against a fellow Wintrean despite repeated warnings and being placed on probation.
On the 19th of April, after much discussion amongst the members of the Storting, the revocation bill was put to a vote in the Underhusen, and passed with 4 ayes and 3 abstains. On the 20th of April, the revocation bill was presented to the Overhusen, and passed with unanimous support. With the approval of both the lower and upper legislative chamber, Govindia’s citizenship was officially revoked under Article 2.4 of the Citizenship and Demonym Act.
It should be noted that as members of a region founded on the principles of liberty, equality, freedom and compassion, the Storting recognises the revocation of citizenship as a solemn issue, and has pursued all other avenues of action. While Govindia’s less than desirable behaviour may have been unintentional, many members of the community have stepped in or at least tried to ameliorate the situation. After giving numerous second chances, it is certainly regrettable to declare that little to no visible changes have been observed, and that a citizenship revocation has been deemed to be necessary. In the words of the Overhusen Chairman Wuufu, "This is not a removal from this community in full, and shouldn't be seen as such, but instead it should give you (Govindia) the motivation to effect change."
Storting Passes Five-Post Citizenship Requirement
Written by Wintermoot
The Citizenship Integration Amendment Act will alter the path to Citizenship. The Storting recently passed a requirement that prospective Citizens have five posts on the regional off-site forum, including their Citizenship application, before becoming a Citizen.
The requirement was originally suggested by Wintermoot, who pointed out that nearly a third of all former Citizens had only made one post: their Citizenship application. The requirement was suggested to encourage prospective Citizens to interact with the community and get involved in the region before becoming deciding to become a Citizen, pointing out that as a region whose cultural and discussion areas are open to anyone with an account, Wintreath was better suited for this sort of requirement than many others.
On the other hand, the proposal was opposed by several Citizens, including HannahB and Chanku, who expressed concerns that the requirement could intimidate prospective Citizens who would otherwise have become involved in the community anyway. Both stated that had there been a similar requirement when they had joined, they would have been more hesitant to join to begin with.
Ultimately, after several weeks of discussion, the proposal passed the Underhusen 6-1 and then passed the Overhusen 3-1 (with one Peer not voting). During the course of the discussion, several other measures were taken to streamline the Citizenship process, including allowing the entire Cabinet to process Citizenship applications in order to allow for quicker approvals, simplifying the Citizenship form, and overhauling the regional forums to be easier to understand by new members.
Updates in Wintrean Government
Written by Wintermoot
Ch-ch-changes... The Storting | Elections for the lower chamber of the legislature, the Underhusen, were held during the first week of June...issues that arose for the election was the relative inactivity of the Underhusen in the previous term and the on-going Constitutional Convention for reforming the legislature which has dragged on since November. Several candidates ran non-serious campaigns, such as Crushita/Eldarion's campaign to "have Patatoism declared the official religion of Wintreath". At the conclusion of the elections, which included a three-way runoff vote, Barnes, Reux, Laurentus, tatte, and BraveSirRobin won election, defeating Chanku, xXHydraXx, and Crushita. At the same time, the Monarch saw fit to make a change the upper chamber of the legislature, the Overhusen, replacing Colberius X, who had fallen inactive, with Aragonn.
The full election announcement can be read here.
The Monarchy | The Monarchy has also made a number of changes in the Riksråd (Cabinet) and subordinate guilds, based on the Monarch's Spring State of the Region Address pledge to create a more active and contributing Cabinet.
On June 9th, the Monarch formally removed long-time Jarl of Integration Point Breeze, who had been inactive for several months. On July 5th, Point Breeze was also removed from the post of Thane of World Assembly Affairs, after his Citizenship nation ceased to exist and he could no longer serve as Vice-Delegate. Both offices remain vacant at this time, and a search is underway for someone to fill those positions, as well as the positions of guildmasters for the recruitment and mentoring guilds, which are part of the Ministry of Integration. You can read the full announcement here.
Then on July 3rd, the Monarch announced the appointment of Emoticonius as Thane of Foreign Affairs, with the responsibility for ensuring that our embassies remained active and for assisting in the creation of unique initiatives to make our embassies stand out. As you may know, Emoticionius, also known as The Church of Satan, is the person responsible behind the puzzles that have been posted in our embassies, which have proven very successful in many regions.
The Monarch also announced the Ministry of Culture's appointment of Aragonn as Guildmaster of the Roleplayers Guild, by far Wintreath's most successful and active guild. As Guildmaster, Aragonn will work to maintain and expand our roleplays, as well as take part in discussions related to roleplaying in the region. Aragonn has been involved in the guild since its creation in November 2015, and has also been involved in roleplaying in the region of New Hyperion as its Lord of Culture. You can read the full announcements here.
While there has been a noted decline in activity throughout the region and NationStates, with these changes the government of Wintreath is set to weather the storm.
Cipher Pol Ice
Written by Emoticonius
The North Pacific working around the clock to crack the Wintreath embassy code May 29, 2016 | Regions across NationStates discover an encrypted message within Wintreath embassies. Some Wintreath embassies are met with replies of "What?!" and "This is not clear communication." Others however decoded the message which revealed a new initiative from Wintreath. The initiative itself was conceived and proposed by Wintreath citizen Emoticonius, better known as The Church of Satan and each encryption personally assembled by him. In order to give Wintreath embassies more purpose and (inadvertently) more activity, these same embassies will be receiving monthly encryptions, puzzles if you will. This was met largely with intrigue and enthusiasm although it was also met with bewilderment and confusion in others.
June 1, 2016 | The next monthly puzzle is sent out. Drastically difficult compared to the introductory encryption, regions began working towards cracking the code and reaching the end. Several aneurysms later, New Hyperion became the first region to crack the codes and reach the end. The North Pacific and Renegade Islands Alliance would soon follow, however no other region has managed to do the same as of yet.
Here we are in July now. Last month's puzzle was only solved by a few regions. Congratulations New Hyperion (honorable mentions: taulover), Renegade Islands Alliance (honorable mentions: Tangaroa) and The North Pacific (honorable mentions: Praetor). Below is a step-by-step walkthrough of last month's puzzle, for those that would rather just see the answers:
Spoiler
This transposition cipher has each letter moved forward 123,456,789 times, a nine character number chosen because there are nine columns. The message was written to read horizontally originally, but somehow it was decrypted to read vertically, lol. It reads "On the Wintreath forum go to Summersend Hills within The Registry of Things Past and read the most recent post. The password is ALOHOMORA." The closing statement by Wintermoot contains a link to a password-protected page on the Wintreath website, www.wintreath.com/mercury which by now may not be up anymore.It contains (or use to contain, in the future, hello future NSers!) the following binary message:
01010010 01100101 01110100 01110101 01110010 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100111 01101001 01101110 01101110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110111 01101000 01101001 01100011 01101000 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01101110 01100001 01101101 01100101 01100100 00101110 00100000 01001111 01101110 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01101110 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110110 01100101 01100001 01101100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101110 01100100 01100101 01101101 01101110 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01100001 01110011 00100000 01101111 01101100 01100100 00100000 01100001 01110011 00100000 01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01000001 01101100 01101101 01101001 01100111 01101000 01110100 01111001 00100000 01011011 01110110 01101001 01101111 01101100 01100101 01110100 01011101 00101110 This translates to "Return to the beginning of that which cannot be named. Only then can you reveal the rivalry that predates The Almighty [violet]."
It's apparently not as widely known as The Church of Satan thought, but [violet] has been in NS since at least January of 2003, which you can discover if you search for [violet] in the boneyard. It will tell you the nation belonged to an administrator. [violet]'s profile on the NS forum says she's been around since 2009 and this mislead everyone. Moving on, "that which cannot be named" is a reference to the WA's predecessor, The UN, which is specifically referred to as "the bureaucracy that cannot be named" on the General Assembly's and Security Council's list of resolutions. At the beginning of the historical resolutions, the first resolution is "Fight The Axis of Evil" drafted by Maxtopia (Max Barry himself). One of Wintreath's long time citizens is Axis of Evil, also known as Joshus Bluteisen. He was the answer.
IRC Quote of the Season
<Laurentus>: Anyway, what were you about to say about Occam's Razor, Hannah?
<Evelynx>: we decided that osama bin laden was, under the simplest possible explanation of the available evidence
<Evelynx>: being kept prisoner in order to make an abraham lincoln, hitler, osama bin laden hybrid
<Laurentus>: Oh god. I suspected as much.
Thanks for reading!
