A Letter From God
My friends,
It is my honor to welcome you into my home. In many ways, public service is a public trust, and it has been my privilege to serve as your God for the past several billion years. But, as times change and the world grows, the ability for an absolute monarchy to effectively govern the world diminishes.
This is not a resignation letter — far from it — but as the past few thousand years have shown, perhaps it is time for me to take a step out of the limelight. As we transition the world from an absolute rule by one God to a constitutional system based on the rule of law, I welcome you to play a role in crafting a new way of eternal governance.
To that end, I am delighted to establish the new office of the Divine Government. Hand picked, the Divine Government will consist of the best and brightest bureaucrats, now tasked with creating a government that can effectively govern the world without my intervention.
We have much work ahead of us, but I know that you are up to the task. I look forward to taking a more relaxed role in the coming millennia, and can't wait to see how you will govern.Yours,
Father Almighty
King of the Universe
Welcome!
You have been chosen by God to participate in His Divine Government. As has been rumored for a while now, God will be taking a step back from ruling the universe as we transition to more of a constitutional monarchy. Some say the scandals that have rocked his reign from time to time did him in, while others insist that overseeing all of heaven and earth just gets to you after a while. Whatever the reason behind it, everyone agrees that this is a step in the right direction.
However, we don't have much to go off of in terms of how exactly we do this. For years God has dealt with everything — life, death, nature — on His own. The devolution of these powers to a group of the brightest divine bureaucrats was always going to be contentious. But the show must go on, and somebody's got to play in it. Here are a few of the pressing matters:
Constitution
We have to start somewhere, and a lot of folks say a constitution is somewhere to start. Laying out the groundwork for who governs and how could be an important place to begin ruling the universe. Maybe this will look like a typical government's constitution — legislature, executive, judiciary — or maybe something more like a corporation's, a nonprofit's, a church's. That'll be up to you (as will if we even need one at all).
Law
Way back when, God would just rule based on tradition: ie, "the way we've always done things." People are going to expect more of a rule-of-law based system this time around. How it's drafted and who writes it will need to be decided, since we can't just have a free-for-all, and of course somebody will need to implement it. As for the content — well, God is all-powerful, so it can really be anything. But some things we really ought to touch on are the creation of life, the procedures after death, and the forces of nature. And, sure, we can create planets in our spare time.
Budget
We're not necessarily working with money, but we do have limited resources. Just like you and me, everyone who's going to work for this government lived and, at some point, died. That means we have about 108 billion people we can give work to. That doesn't mean we should employ everyone (we would have a lot of people sitting around), but depending on how complex we plan on making this divine government, we'll probably need to employ anywhere from 1% to 10% of souls. And before you mention it, the angels are busy with the internal governance of heaven. Our business is not to overlap.
We need to govern wisely. This is a huge undertaking, but the big guy wouldn't have trusted us with it if He didn't think we could manage to get it right. We're building a government for the ages here, folks. Let's get to work.
Rules + OOC
In brief, this is a roleplay where we play God: collectively, as a government. It's fundamentally a roleplay that's more about government than it is about politics — I'll regularly report on the consequences of the divine government's decisions and, since public administration is hard work, some things are sure to slip through the cracks. I'll also keep updated records on everything the government has done. Hopefully this will last a while and we'll be able to have a record of everything accomplished by the end of it. Now, the rules:
1. OP Rights. I reserve the right, as OP, to control this roleplay in order to make it better for everyone participating. That includes enforcing these rules. In this case, the OP is literally God (and/or an archival intern).
2. Real Life Characters. Characters can be completely fictional. But, since every character is someone who was once alive and now has died, they don't have to be. However, I will hold real life characters to high standards of mirroring their real-life personalities.
3. Posting Frequency. Post regularly. If you can't, let everyone know.
4. Cheating. Please don't cheat: this means no substantively editing posts after you make them, no godmodding, no metagaming, and no looking things up when your character is in a situation that they wouldn't be able to do the same.
5. Respect. Respect other players, respect the roleplay, and follow NS site rules.
6. Major Events. Everyone has broad authority to worldbuild, especially if they run a department or have a bunch of characters. That said, please run major or particularly consequential things by me, or by any players they affect; eg, if you were going to (somehow) kill another character.
7. What Religion Is This? Reply hazy, ask again later.
Applications
Character Application (required)
To start off, everyone's current occupation should be "Constitutional Commissioner," as that's the only job that exists as of right now.
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[b]Account Name:[/b] *ADD NS ACCOUNT NAME HERE*
[b]Occupation:[/b] *ADD OCCUPATION HERE*
[b]Faction (if applicable):[/b] *ADD FACTION HERE*
[b]Family:[/b] *ADD SPOUSE/CHILDREN HERE*
[b]Background:[/b] *ADD BACKGROUND HERE*
[b]Faith:[/b] *ADD FAITH HERE*
[b]Miscellaneous[/b]
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Characters (under construction)
Constitutional Commission
Chairman Vienna Eliot (Vienna Eliot)
Commissioner George H.W. Bush (Serbia-Macedonia)
Commissioner Thomas More (The New Teutonic Order)
Commissioner Xebec Tremont (New Cobastheia)
Commissioner Mark Johnson (Helowi)
Commissioner Harold Holt (Arkhastok)
Commissioner Alexandr Torenov (Amuaplye)
Representative Azimuth (Labstoska)
Office of the Archivist
Archival Intern Clint Webb (Vienna Eliot)