ANAIA REGIONAL MAP & CLAIM THREAD
Welcome to the regional map thread for Anaia! Our home region is a very special place - a place with a rich history of roleplay and worldbuilding, a place with a vast diversity of cultures, settings, and species, and a place with a friendly, welcoming community active at all hours of the day.
What sets Anaia apart from all the other regions with a rich history, diversity, and a welcoming community - aside from an unhealthy obsession with foxes - is our presence in NS Sports. Anaians have won more than 30 major titles across all manner of sports including several codes of football, cricket, baseball, basketball, and ice hockey. Anaian nations have hosted countless events from the World Cup to the Olympic Games. We also have active regional championships in both soccer and cricket, and a thriving domestic sports club scene.
If this is the sort of thing that might interest you, come and have a look around! Read on for information on how you, too, can join in with our nonsense:
ANAIA REGIONAL MAP VERSION 1.4
(click on the map, or here, for a better view!)
RULES & REGULATIONS
You are eligible to claim a place on the map if you have been in the region for longer than thirty days, and have also demonstrated a commitment to Anaia through roleplay.
The roleplay requirement is, to a degree, subjective - a single, brief factbook or a roster with little additional context will likely fall short - but you have a lot of flexibility in how you can meet it. You can sign up for an open tournament (such as the World Cup) or a regional sports tournament (such as the CAFA Cup) and post an outline of your nation and introduce key figures in your team; you can create factbooks about your nation's culture and how it came to be; you can roleplay about your nation's current events on the regional message board; you can find some way to introduce yourself that is none of the above methods. However you do it, you should be able to provide enough information for your regionmates to get an idea of who their new neighbour is, and how we can interact going forward.
You can only claim a maximum of one grid square of area. This applies to you, the user - you can have multiple nations in Anaia, but their total area must not exceed one grid square.
This is a little flexible on how the area of a nation is defined; claims involving islands will not be judged solely on the area that is above the waves, and owing to the circumstances in which Anaia came to be, some nations are already bigger than this. However, one grid square is really quite a lot of nation; the map of Anaia is not in any way to scale, with different nations having different ideas of their own size, and hopefully there are enough potential roleplay opportunities presented by the map that one grid square will be enough area for you.
You may need to ask neighbouring nations before moving in right next to them, or affecting an important part of their established canon.
There should, in practice, not really be any problems with this; eighteen years of experience with NationStates has shown that most nations will be happy for new people to move in next door, especially if they are new nations eager to take part. This rule exists mainly because for many nations, they are to an extent defined by who they share borders with, and there have been cases in the past where wildly diverging roleplay preferences have led to OOC conflict. However, the rule will not allow you to remain isolated forever; it would be unreasonable to insist that nobody can ever share a border with you, and sooner or later you should expect to have neighbours.
You can expand beyond your initial claim, but you will need to justify the additional claims by roleplaying how they came about, and vast colonial empires may be subject to a veto.
This basically exists because the map, as large as it is, is ultimately a finite area; there should be enough space for anyone to realise their vision for their nation as long as nobody is too greedy. Accordingly you should only claim areas that you actually intend to use, and other nations in the area you are claiming are likely to be consulted before the claim is approved. If your expansion plans take you above the claim limit of one grid square, then this will need very compelling reasons, and the consultation over whether to allow it may include the whole of Anaia; you should also expect the cartographer's discretion (see below) to be applied very strictly in these cases.
You make all claims subject to the discretion of the mapmaker and should there be a dispute about your claim, their decision will be final.
The regional cartographer is ultimately the one who applies pixels to canvas and controls what is displayed on the map of Anaia, and while the above rules will apply to almost all claims you can think of, ultimately, any claim and the details of it is up to them. As with the consent rule, above, this should rarely be an issue, but if you surprise the cartographer with your brilliant exploitation of a loophole, your nation may never see the map. You should include the secret word "dreadnaut" somewhere in your map claim as proof that you've read these rules and understood them.
MAKING A NEW CLAIM
If you're okay with all of the above and still want to make a claim; that's great! Please post your claim in this thread, including both the area you're claiming and the location (and name) of your capital city.
Make sure you provide enough information to be able to work out what you're claiming - if you can describe the borders, that works; if you can draw the area that you're hoping to claim, that's also good. Bear in mind that you don't necessarily need to be limited by the existing geography; coastlines can be reshaped and islands can be created according to your specifications, if you have a clear vision for what you want.
Once your claim is approved, and assuming you continue to remain active in Anaia, it will be included in the next update. These will happen at least twice a year, but will probably be more frequent when there is more map activity to include - please do bear in mind though that all of us are contributing to this game in our own free time, and we do have lives to live outside of it!
UPDATING AN EXISTING CLAIM
Adjustments or expansions to existing map claims should also be made in this thread, although very minor alterations (such as flag or capital city changes) can also be directly requested via telegram. If you are planning a major expansion of your borders, or to establish colonies of a nation that already exists in Anaia, be mindful that you will need to roleplay the new additions and of the above-mentioned size limit. (Basically, don't be greedy!)
It may help to pre-emptively consult other nations that might be affected, and/or the cartographer, before making a request, just so you don't unknowingly step on anyone's toes - you'll generally find most Anaians to be supportive of the idea of having new neighbours, particularly actively roleplayed ones.
If your nation ceases to exist or leaves the region, its spot on the map will normally be retained for the next map update, but will be returned to unclaimed land (or, if appropriate, ocean) after this. Nations that have particular historical or cultural importance to the region may have their land area reserved permanently, with a grey boundary on the map, but this will not generally be applied as a matter of course - we want to avoid the situation seen in some existing regions where entire swathes of desirable territory are occupied by long-departed nations.
IN SUMMARY
If you're interested in seeing your name literally up in lights, you can make a claim on the Anaian map, as long as you;
- have been in the region more than thirty days and roleplayed about your nation;
- keep your claim to less than one grid square in size;
- ask the neighbours first before moving in (if you have any);
- if you plan on expanding, roleplay the expansion and don't be too greedy;
- accept the authority of the cartographer, and
- include the secret word!
If you have any further queries, please feel to get in touch with the cartographer (currently, The Plough Islands) via telegram. Thank you for reading to the end, and happy claiming!
[/spoiler]
