Bran Astor

Sounds like you guys had a hell of a blast!

Have you ever sat back in the evenings, eyes closed and your favorite "lets be evil" hat on, and wished that you could only be given the opportunity to relentlessly barrage NationStates with nuclear missiles that left even the moderators shaken? Yeah. Me too. Gracefully, we were recently given such a chance! For NationStates' second Nuke Day, The West Pacific teamed up with Osiris, The East Pacific, and Karma to form a Superfaction. The designated server for the event reached nearly a hundred members and our faction had nearly 1,300 nations in it. Needless to say, we dominated. 

Onlookers watch in fear as Syberian Badgers with Caek ransack their nations with nukes
SBC spent the entire first half of the game at the top of the leaderboard. The most common complaint from our team was from those making Shields - the world was too afraid of the massive arsenal of Nukes we were gathering to even shoot at us, and their jobs seemed boring because of it. We spent hours blowing other factions to smithereens and being begged for mercy. Here are just a few of the messages we received from enemy factions in their desperate attempts to end our waves of nukes: 

- Founder of The Peoples Red Army. We did not have mercy. They were destroyed.

- Member of USSF. Hint: No.

- Member UPPERCUT. We did accept this one! GCRs gotta stick together.

- Member UDS. We didn't ally with them, but did cease fire and switch targets as good faith to UPPERCUT.

- Member The Galactic Defense Force. Easy target, man, sorry!
 
SBC finished off the event with alliances with UPPERCUT, Glitter Squad, Friendship and Explosives, and Collaborating Defensive Alliance. We remained on the Leaderboard until around 6am, when the leaders of SBC finally had to call it quits and go to sleep. We couldn't stay up forever! We awoke to find ourselves to have fallen all the way down to 26th place and though we fought valiantly, there wasn't enough time on the clock to make it back onto the Leaderboard. That's what we get for sleeping until an hour before the event ends... Still, SBC managed to dredge itself up from 26th place all the way to 15th place in the span of 30 minutes! A glorious victory, if I do say so myself. We even managed to absolutely cream the Mods' faction, DEAT From Above, and will forever be memorialized as aggressors to their faction and also the guys who ultimately blew the place up.
 

Mods angrily grumble as SBC steals their caek and nukes their houses
 
SBC ended the game with the 3rd most nations and 3rd most strikes (nukes that landed successfully) in the entire game, but with the most nuclear radiation in the game, with nearly 20,000 more radiation than the next closest faction - Jak Attack, who were the big faction to beat during our last Nuke Day in April. Despite being very obviously the key faction to attack, SBC managed to keep on the Top 20 and take the world by storm! Everyone did a very good job, and we can't wait to do that much better next year. 
 
Special thanks to @Chron for staying up until 5am with me to help keep us on the leaderboard, @Les Claypool for sneaking behind enemy lines and turning factions who were on our backs against each other, and @Maria Isaraider for being the best and most dedicated nuke sender in the faction! 
 
Please feel free to take this forum badge that @Bran Astor made for everyone in TWPAF who participated in the event! Once again, great job everyone!

 

Invitation to Summersend Festival


Venue construction is already ongoing!


For the third year, Wintreath is hosting the Summersend Festival, our annual festival to celebrate the end of summer and the approach of cooler weather with fun and games for everyone! The festival will start on Friday, August 18th and run until Sunday, August 27th, and will include forum games, contests, discussions, roleplaying, scheduled gaming sessions, and more! Every year the Summersend Festival gets bigger and better, and I believe that this year will be no exception...if you have a chance, consider coming over for some of the fun and enjoy the festival with us. We'd be honoured to have you as our guest. We'll provide a link to the festival area as soon as it's open, but if you would like to make or update an account beforehand, our forum is located here.  Hope to see you there!

I look forward to seeing you, then! And thank you for the invitation to post on your RMB. It's very gracious of you.

I'm going to respectfully disagree. IRC was essentially the same as Discord, but without the bells and whistles (Skype is terrible, though). That being said, I used IRC, AIM, and MSN for years to communicate with others, across a wide variety of time zones, including the UK and Australia, and the eastern US for that matter. Being on the West Coast doesn't always make the timing right for me to have conversations with people in this country, but I managed on IRC, and now on Discord. The point, though, the chat systems are functional, and they can work.
I do agree that the forums have helped in the past, I always advocated for forums. But, I disagree that Discord has killed forums, or anything like that. Forum usage had been down for a while. That's part of why I never came home to stay before. There wasn't consistent activity on the forum that I could see that would be easy to start participating in, maybe just some spam games, I was still logged into IRC but it was mostly not used, Skype was sort of used, and the RMB was difficult to break into, even for me, and sometimes what I saw was not what I remembered this region to be.
But, anyways, I do think the forum and Discord can coexist, just the same way forum and IRC did for so long.

*wipes the dripping sarcasm off his shirt* 
There was a time when the only thing you had was the RMB and TGs. Then regions started using forums. Then they got into IRC and Skype. Now Discord has supplanted (only) IRC and Skype.
If you don't accept and embrace new ways of doing things (especially when everyone else is using those tools) you risk being left behind in the dustbin of history.
Better?

Last week I dismissed four Guardians from their posts. The action itself is not what caused issue, but rather the manner in which I handled the dismissals. Each Guardian has served TWP with honor and distinction and I failed to treat them with the respect and dignity their service demanded.
Their devotion to TWP is unquestionable and their professional character is beyond reproach. Failure to recognize that - however temporary - constitutes a gross misjudgment on my part.
I want to personally apologize to Elegarth, Yy4u, Wickedly Evil People, and Bhang Bhang Duc. Furthermore, I would like to apologize to the rest of the region for the undue stress and anxiety caused by this situation.
Going forward, I pledge to earn back the trust in me that has been shaken, and to continue to serve the region and her interests to the best of my abilities.

Look at those cars! My horse is quiet and reliable.
Airplanes! Bah. If man were meant to fly he would have wings.
Television! Who needs another box in the house when I can listen to music and the news just fine on my radio.
Computers! All I need is a pad of paper, a pencil, and a good mailman.
Discord! Skype is fine on occasion but nothing important should be done outside of Telegrams, the RMB, and the Forums.

Nation in The West Pacific: Bran Astor
World Assembly (WA) Nation: Bran Astor

Please list any other names or aliases you use in NationStates: My other nations are known as British Grand Pacific, BGP
Please list regions or organizations with which you are currently affiliated as a resident, citizen, or member: non-citizen adviser to Aelitia (TEP delegate).

Please list regions or organizations with which you have in the past been affiliated as a resident, citizen, or member: The East Pacific, The South Pacific, Kingdom of Alexandria.

Would you like to join (check all that you wish to join)...

[ ] The West Pacific Armed Forces
[ ] Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ambassador Corp
[ ] The West Pacifican Newspaper Staff
[X] Ministry of Recruitment and Citizenry Staff
[ ] Ministry of Internal Affairs Staff

Please swear the following oath of citizenship:

I, Bran Astor, swear that I have, to the best of my knowledge, been completely truthful in applying for citizenship in The West Pacific and that I have no other NationStates identity that has not been made known in this application. I swear my allegiance to The West Pacific and its citizens, and I swear not to engage in hostilities against The West Pacific or to violate The Manners of Governance, the constitution of The West Pacific, or any laws made pursuant to that constitution.

All approved!  Welcome to the Hall!

I think I've got the title. This was given to me by Aelitia, the Delegate of The East Pacific.
The Manners of Governance of The West Pacific or The Manners for short. It has an official ring to it. And describes the document as it is more of a statement of government rather than a codified set of laws that you would find in a charter or constitution.