Osiris | Danburg Seized!

[Adytus]

Hail!

[RiderSyl]

*checks endorsement counts*

Does this mean Syberis will finally start tarting?

You would be focused on endo counts after this announcement.

[Altmoras]

Unless you plan on abdicating to Adytus, Syberis had better learn where the endorse button is.

[RiderSyl]

Unless you plan on abdicating to Adytus, Syberis had better learn where the endorse button is.

Stop stealing Tim's material.

[Altmoras]

Unless you plan on abdicating to Adytus, Syberis had better learn where the endorse button is.

Stop stealing Tim's material.

Mine was way better.

[Canton Empire]

Stop stealing Tim's material.

Mine was way better.

Can confirm.

[United Federated States of Omega]

For Immediate Release
June 2017 Osiris Election Results

The Osirian Fraternal Order recently held its sixth election under its current structure of governance. The election was for the Chief Scribe, the chairman of the Council of Scribes, and the Chief Vizier, the head of government for the OFO.

Adytus was reelected to a second term as Chief Scribe with 8 votes in favor and 3 abstaining. When speaking about his new term he said: “I'm excited to keep the Council working effectively and encouraging new ideas from the community”! The entire community is very excited to see the Council of Scribes hard at work over the coming term.

Altino was elected to the position of Chief Vizier with 2/3rds of all votes cast in the election. She said, regarding the upcoming term “[t]his term, we're taking a heavy focus on Osiris as a region, internally. We have a heavily integrated and reliable core group of players who can be trusted to run this region, and now we're turning their talents toward training up a new generation begin their own careers. The life of a region is in the people who will serve as its future, and Osiris is eager to help those people learn and progress quickly. We'll boost our cultural department and use that to kickstart Osiris' next generation of players.”

Altino has also already announced her cabinet. They are as follows:

Community Affairs
Vizier: Wrektopia
Sub-Vizier of Citizenship: Syberis
Sub-Vizier of Cool Designs: Imki

Foreign Affairs
Vizier: Kowassati
Sub-Vizier of Public Relations: Omega

Military
Marshal General: Greyghost
Sub-Vizier: Wymondham

Word Assembly Affairs
Vizier: Adytus

[Roavin]

How does Osiris stand on the current conflict in Lazarus?

[Neo Kervoskia]

How does Osiris stand on the current conflict in Lazarus?

On Recent Events in Lazarus

---

We wish to reiterate our position on the recent events in our sister Sinker.

We ain't in this rodeo, boys.

Pharaoh of the Osiris Fraternal Order

[Canton Empire]

How does Osiris stand on the current conflict in Lazarus?

On Recent Events in Lazarus

---

We wish to reiterate our position on the recent events in our sister Sinker.

We ain't in this rodeo, boys.

Pharaoh of the Osiris Fraternal Order

This is the finest foreign policy post I've ever seen in my 3 years on NS.

[Alkasia]

~snippity snip~

This is the finest foreign policy post I've ever seen in my 3 years on NS.

I'm quite a fan as well.

[Kanglia]

Well, that was a great post on foreign policy. I rate it a solid 10/10

[Drasnia]

I give it a perfect 5/7. Would read again.

...

Just did. Pretty great.

[The Sygian]

We will miss you, NK..

But Syb is awsum!

[Syberis]

We will miss you, NK..

But Syb is awsum!

No. Osirus is awsum.

[Altmoras]

How does Osiris stand on the current conflict in Lazarus?

On Recent Events in Lazarus

---

We wish to reiterate our position on the recent events in our sister Sinker.

We ain't in this rodeo, boys.

Pharaoh of the Osiris Fraternal Order

Best statement I've seen yet.

[Roavin]

Dammit NK, I was setting myself up for some spicy shitposting and then you have to turn around and be awesome

[Cormactopia Prime]

And I think NK has now surpassed me for best Pharaoh of Osiris with that statement.

[Escade]

(and you have to imagine it in that Southern accent)

[Aclion]

(and you have to imagine it in that Southern accent)

Don't forget the sound effects

[Altinsane]

Header courtesy of Imki

April 2018

On Sinkerism: An Introduction
By Syberis

Recent philosophical thought on Sinkers and their rule has largely been thought of in terms of Feederdom, as if Sinkers are, mechanically, identical to Feeders. While one of the core mechanics - the lack of founder - is shared by both the Sinkers and the Feeders, treating Feeders and Sinkers as identical entities that require the same skills to rule is as foolish as comparing The East Pacific to Warzone Australia. Such fundamentally flawed thinking ignores a large amount of the intricacies that make Sinkers a unique challenge, both to live in and to rule.

To begin with, however, we must define the Sinkers. Surprisingly, this is actually an undertaking that allows for two distinct sets of regions. For the sake of these writings, Sinkers are defined as the game-created regions in which nations are refounded after ceasing to exist. These regions are Lazarus, Balder, and Osiris. While there is a case made by notable players and historians that Sinkers should be defined as those regions given the Sinker tag, which would include The Rejected Realms, the inability to ban or eject nations from The Rejected Realms leads me to define it differently for the purposes of these writings.
This is done in no small part because the nature of The Rejected Realms is fundamentally different from that of the Sinkers. While they face many of the same problems, a lack of refounded nations and a lack of banning as a game mechanism makes the region different enough from the other three that adding it to the list would prove not only troublesome, but would also fail to do The Rejected Realms justice. They are the only region in which democracy can truly thrive as a matter of mechanics, instead of at the whim of the government, and so a different approach is necessary.

Let us begin on the most basic facts of Sinkers in a bit more depth. While nations are born in any of the 5 Feeder regions, no nation is born in a Sinker. For a nation to exist in a Sinker naturally, it must first die as a result of inaction. It must be left to rot, abandoned, and then later remembered and returned to activity. As most Nations born are left to collapse, this does create a large potential pool of nations who if they are remembered might be reborn in a Sinker. However, a nation who has already been forgotten once is not likely to sustain any permanent activity. The Sinkers are at any time filled with reborn nations that themselves become abandoned or neglected quickly, their rulers leaving them to die again and be forgotten.

The nature of Sinkers as a place of rebirth creates an interesting problem. While every single nation is born a Feederite, no nation is born a Sinkerite. No nation is even inherently refounded as a Sinkerite. Every nation born in a Sinker has at one point had another home. Thus, to become a Sinkerite, a refounded nation must look at the community in which it is reborn and embrace it, lest they fall into inactivity or join another region.
Sinkers, when operating at peak efficiency, serve an important role within the world. A well-run and strong Sinker is itself critical to the reintroduction of many players to the game. A strong community motivates rulers to maintain a grip on their nation, and maintain basic activity which allows them to rejoin. When that does not happen, then the onus falls upon other regions to recruit rulers during their brief spurt of re-activity, and hopefully retain any individual.

There is a danger, however. The lower community involvement and lower endorsement count of Sinkers put them in a prime position to be hijacked by forces who seek to use this refounding nature for their own gain. While not as potentially profitable as holding a Feeder, holding a Sinker allows a User-Created Region or Feeder to use these reborn nations as an additional pool of recruits.

While, in theory, all regions have a chance of recruiting these nations, the propaganda of the holding region is thrust into the forefront. While other recruitment tools are limited to Telegrams and Regional Message Boards, the propaganda of the holding region can be kept front and center, and is the first thing a reborn nation will be exposed to when they begin to explore the outside world.
Because of this, it is imperative that a Sinker be held by a community that is both loyal to the Sinker first, and dedicated when it comes to engagement and retention. A strong Sinker will nurture these reborn individuals, these newborn nations, and give them a choice between exploring the outside world or joining them to nurture the next batch of refounded nations. To do anything else critically weakens the world as a whole. Those that would hold a Sinker for the sake of conquering, or for prestige, are not only doing the Sinker a disservice, but the world as a whole.

Osiran Spotlight: Koth
By Altinsane

Koth is Osiris’ Root Admin both on the forum and on Discord. An old Osiran, he’s stuck by Osiris through many governmental changes and assisted in the region’s growth. Today he serves as a sounding board to Osiran leadership and one of the biggest voices in Osiris administrative decisions.


What’s made you stay in Osiris all this time?

I suppose what's kept me around is a sense of loyalty to the thing I helped create, and the desire to keep it stable in my small way as much as I can.


What have you done in Osiris that you’ve been most proud of?

Banjecting Biyah during the founding coup, if I had to choose a specific moment. The whole coup is something I'm proud of, I was just learning how to program at the time and I had used a little influence calculator that I built to judge how long it would take for all the involved nations to be able to banject who we needed to. Even though the coup was extracurricular in my career as a raider, it helped me become a better tactician.


Do you feel like NS is a much different place than it was when you began playing?

Yeah. When I started, raiders were underdogs clinging to relevance and Halcones had recently popularized tag raiding. Unibotian moralism was of course at an all-time high as the UDL dominated the defendersphere. IRC and MSN were how everyone communicated, and raiders and defenders only met in public IRC channels like, funnily enough, #osiris. The more things change, though, the more some thigns just stay the same.


Are there things that you're happy to see aren't happening on NS anymore? Or things that you think were a mistake to leave behind?

Yes, but the things I'm happy to see left behind are mostly OOC-related drama arcs I don't feel need to be put on blast here. Those things should be left in the past, not glorified. As for things that were a mistake to leave behind, I'm not really sure. Things tend to evolve for a reason, and there isn't much practical value to anything from way back when that hasn't been improved on now.


What about in Osiris specifically?

Osiris is microcosm of what I mentioned in my last answer: what's in the past is left there for a reason for the most part. Osiris has experimented with tons of governmental forms and community organizations, and all too often it devolved into petty backstabbing and power struggles through factionalization. Only at certain parts of Osiran history can I say all Osirans were working together with the same goals for the region.


Tell me a little bit about your greater NS career.

My Gameplay career started when I finally decided to look a little closer at the region I'd been in for year or so, The Imperial Legion. It was pretty dead, but I was just in time to be recruited to its successor region, Exshaw. This is where I met Cormac.
We were both new to Gameplay and he decided to make his own region called Asgard, and many of the active folk from Exshaw left to join us. This is where I learned to raid for real, having only reason DEN guides from 2005 until that point. Long story short that region got destroyed so me and my best friend Venico founded The Brotherhood of Malice while Cormac hung around the UDL and eventually Osiris.
I ended up in The Black Hawks to learn proper raiding, and then The Black Riders, both of which I became high leadership in. Since this is the abridged version, I'll just say that I ended up in Osiris as well and helped with some interior design decisions


What do you enjoy doing the most on NS?

People are supposed to enjoy NS? News to me. In all seriousness I like to meet new people and talk about all of the weird shit we get up to on the R/D side of things. I'm the kind of guy that watches the narratives play out and maybe eggs them on from the sidelines but I'm not all about getting into the thick of drama anymore.


Did you have a mentor?

I'm sure Halcones would like to make himself believe that he was my "mentor", but I never was all about the dynamic he tried to establish between us. If I am gonna call anyone a mentor, it would be SunRawr or Jakker. They helped me understand the dynamics of the raider groups and what it means to be a professional raider, not just a troll.
Mainly though, I taught myself a lot through reading old shit around the game and dicking around with Cormac and the other Asgardians. If you're new to NS, have fun being a noob, there's no rush to become the next big name in GP or anything. Figure out who you are as a player before letting others "teach" you.

Minecraft Nations
By Ophiuchus the Snake Charmer

Hello Citizens of Osiris! I would like you to all know that Osiris nations is officially out!


If you don't know what it is, its a Minecraft world that functions with world leaders enabling each world leader to have their own land and the ability to rule it as they see fit. People joining the game in progress are required to belong to a Nation for at least a month, or be an active player in the world. All nations must have clearly defined land. In order to be legitimate, it must be shown on a map, and circled on that same map. Nations can't just claim whatever land they want whenever they want and not use it though, the land has to be used in some form or fashion.


The world finally opened on March 4th, 2018 and has been talked about and hyped up since the end of October 2017. The world is in its hardest difficulty with no cheating, meaning that mobs can kill you and destroy stuff you build, meaning that players will need to properly light areas and it would be a good idea of them to build walls to make their cities safer. The current Nation leaders are Ani (Ophiuchus), Josh, Wym, Drac, and Overthinkers. Ani’s nation is the most active nation, it currently has two members. Josh has the most most members in the the game, currently having four members including himself. Overthinkers is tied with second place, having two members. The world population is currently at 10, with Rigel being the newest member to join.


The world has been open quite a few times and in that time span, a lot has happened. For Example, several of Josh's citizens have been having trouble finding their way back to their nation, which is pretty close to spawn. Just heading north of spawn and slightly to the east will bring you to it. Ani and his one citizen have been collecting resources from the nether and have a few farms, and mob spawners. He ran into a glitch when a slime jumped on his farm, causing thousands of potatoes to spawn until the crops were broken. He also has started making potions. He is currently planning a trip to The End to defeat the End Dragon before finally settling.


This is the news for Osiris nations, tune in next time for more info!

NationStates: The Gathering
By Dragonian Alliance

This year’s April Fools brought about much joy. In years past we have had a feature involving bitcoin mining, zombie apocalypse, nuclear war, and even a dating service. This year we had Nation States: The Gathering. As a commentary on card collecting, loot boxes, and microtransactions, we had this April Fools the pointless task of gathering cards with pictures and summary of nations. Allowing for all the joy and love of gambling to be experienced, without the involvement of real money. In total almost four million cards were found and nearly two million were promptly junked for value. Over fifty thousand nations participated in the event exchanging cards over two hundred thousand times. This was truly a distinguished event to spend in the long hours between issues.

In the first few hours of the event, a question fell upon Osiris. What were we to do with this task? We were given little direction, but many tools, cards to collect, and the ability to revel in the jealousy of others. Altinsane was one of the first to suggest gathering all Osiran cards. She was moderately successful. By my count two hundred twenty one of her cards were from Osiris, perhaps more if the nations did not promptly cease to exist. In the end, our heiress apparent collected 3.4% of Osiris into her deck. Tiparu managed to gather 15 Tiparu cards, driving up the value of his card. The Imperium of Josh in a fanatical show of devotion, collected 11 copies of our Pharaoh Syberis, and made the card one of the most valuable in the region to the few lucky enough to snipe the card when the Imperium of Josh wasn’t looking or was low on deck value to liquidate. One of the highlights of the region, however, was if you followed the story of Tethys 13. In a play that took nearly all week, Tethys 13 ended with 13 Tethys 13 cards spending 13.33 monies, with 13 Tethys 13 cards remaining in the world. Lastly, the Dragonian Alliance collected all five pieces of the region’s version of Exodia, the nations of the three Guardians, Heiress Apparent, and Pharaoh. Upon revealing the collection of Exodia to Tethys 13, the Dragonian Alliance promptly obliterated Tethys 13, wiping out his achievement of 13 Tethys 13 cards. As a side fact, the Exodia card set was designed as a reference to Osiris in the show Yu-Gi-Oh.

As of April 7th, 2018 trading of the cards has ceased. Max Barry has released news and promise of a new announcement, explaining how this gathering of cards could be made a permanent feature on to the site. In the end the cards were simple and pointless, making this one of the best April Fool’s Day features given to us by Nation States in these 15 years.

A Walk Through History: Part 2
By Bellahtrix

RA: The Sun God

The Sun is the most integral part of our lives. Our Crops live and die by it. Is it any surprise that the most important God in the Egyptian Pantheon is the Sun God Ra?

RA

God of the Sun and the God of Creation. Creator of the other Egyptian Gods

Common Symbols: The Golden Sun Disk above the image of a Hawk with wings spread.

Common Description: Ra is typically represented as a being with the body of a man but with the head of a Hawk, a glowing, golden Sun Disk hovering above his head to show his status as the Sun God.

Common ways of Honoring and Worshiping Ra: In the Fourth Dynasty is when the Worship of Ra really picked up. From this point forward, Pharaohs were thought of as Manifestations of Ra and were worshiped as such. Pyramids and Obelisks and Temples were built in his name. Kings and Pharaoh's would send tithes to the Temples of Ra to gain the favor of the Sun God so that he would bless them with long growing seasons.

Every morning, Ra the Sun God would begin his journey across the sky in The Atet (The Sun Barge). As he journeyed across the sky, he was met by twelve guardian deities. As he passed them, it would mark a new hour. When sunset came, he would then pass into the underworld where he would fight destructive monsters as he kept the Atet safe. When he was successful the next Dawn, he would appear on the Eastern Horizon to begin the process again.

[Gibraltarica]

Excellent update and truly inspiring thoughts from the Pharaoh.

[Malphe]

Interesting segment on Koth.

[RiderSyl]

Interesting segment on Koth.

Duh it was interesting. Koth is a hidden gem on NS!

[Pergamon]

I really liked the thoughts on Sinkerism.