The Western Post - June 2023

Oh $#!?, We Went To The Wrong Pride, Somebody Help Us

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By Amanda Holder of Podium

In celebration of this year’s Pride Month, we layabouts at the Western Post decided it was about time to get some fresh air for once, and what better way to do that than do some on-the-ground reporting at the Eighburn Pride Festival? Unfortunately, since Leon wrecked the news van last week trying to drive it over rows of buses and through rings of fire again, we had to call ourselves a taxi instead. At first, I was worried the gruff, unsmiling cabbie couldn’t understand where we wanted to go, but he grinned and nodded once he heard us say ‘Pride’ before slamming his foot on the gas. Fifteen near misses, four fender benders, and one slightly traumatized cow later, he dropped us off in front of the zoo, gesturing with his hands and mouth like a bear and giving us a thumbs up, then driving away. Thinking that was his way of saying the ‘bears’ would be through there, we pressed on past the pillars and came to a fenced-off enclosure set a few metres into the ground. Because Gertrude said it must be one of those ‘mosh pits’ her friend’s cousin’s barber’s twin sister’s uncle’s gay nephew had mentioned that one time six years ago, and with no other leads, we decided to hop the fence and find someone to interview for the article.

What we came across, however, were not fake bears, but real lions. Very real, and very hungry, lions. Burt stepped forward and tried talking to them in the ancient Manhattanese tongue, but as these were Brooklynnian lions, they promptly tore him to shreds in a fit of rage. For whatever reason, our token Zoomer intern Timmy then pulled a blueprint out of nowhere and began jumping and twisting about on the spot, but he could only shout something about his dog’s water before he was downed as well. Quentin and Isabella, our camera crew, were calm and collected in the face of all this, much like a cat coming across a cucumber - which is to say, not at all. As I write this, I've managed to trick the pride of lions by keeping completely still in front of the enclosure’s stone wall and repeating “wall” in a deep voice, though I can’t decide whether my thirst or my thighs will kill me first. In a small spot of good fortune, I’ve managed to negotiate with the chimpanzees across the pavilion using sign language to bring this notebook back to the Western Post, in exchange for the rights to my likeness for a crypto-related scheme of theirs. If I don’t make it out of here alive, please tell my wife to tell our boyfriend that I love them both. Amanda Holder, WPN.

SUPER SECRET LINK

https://youtu.be/aotlEpmAFVQ

June '23 West Pacific Crossword

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By Sekiya

Complete this crossword online

Down
1. First nation in TWP to be condemned
4. Wrote the first Manners of Governance
5. Allegedly looks like the founder of The Sasquatch Republic
6. Has hosted versions of TWP forums since 2006
7. Center of the map and largest economy in the RP world
8. The historical center of the Roleplay world
11. Founder of Punday Monday
12. Organiser of several TWP sports events
13. Editor of the Western Post
14. Served the longest single delegacy in TWP
17. Their citizens could think less
18. Newest staff of the Western Post
19. The eyes of the West
21. (19) wants but cannot have a certain region of this continent
24. Led a coup in the region in 2005
25. Condemned for multiple coups in feeders
26. All your ___ belong to Darkesia
29. Creator of the Snark Quest comic

Across
2. The newest continent on the map
3. Created the position of Guardian
9. Started the regional radio The West on the Waves
10. This continent has the largest freshwater lake
15. Commander of TWPAF
16. Continent originally reserved for TWPAF
20. Has the most terms of delegate in the region
22. #1 Exporter of Violet Tea probably
23. Master of the trebuchet and King of Snark
27. Currently holds the position they were the inaugural holder of
28. Also known as Aukera
30. The name of the TWP Roleplay world

Editor's Note: This crossword seeks to represent different aspects of the West Pacific, from general knowledge to specific areas such as regional roleplay and history! If you need more hints and context, checking dispatches such as the Index of TWP Delegates, Library of Regional Commendations, and the Guide to the Map and Roleplay may perhaps be a big help. Perhaps it even inspires you to get more involved in those areas!

Send your finished answers to The West Pacific Master Dispatch to be featured in next month's paper!

Introduction

June is an extraordinary month of celebration for the LGBTQ+ community worldwide. As we delve into the rich history of LGBTQ+ Pride Month, we are reminded of the significance of this annual event in fostering acceptance, promoting equality, and building inclusive communities.

Pride Month holds immense significance as a time of celebration, reflection, and action. It serves as a testament to the courage and resilience of those who have fought and are still fighting for justice and equality. It is a month to recognize the progress made in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights while acknowledging the challenges that persist. Throughout the month, vibrant pride events, parades, rallies, and festivals take place globally, providing platforms for individuals to come together, raise awareness, and demand equality. Pride Month emphasizes the importance of diversity, inclusivity, and understanding, fostering a society where all individuals can live authentically and without fear of discrimination.

So, this is definitely a very important month. But why June? The story started in June 1969, following a police raid on New York’s Stonewall Inn, a popular destination for the queer community. Sick of the constant discriminatory laws and constant discrimination, huge acts of defiance sparked a wave of activism, lighting the flame of the global LGBTQ+ movement in their fight for rights.

A year later, the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots marked the birth of the modern LGBTQ+ pride movement. It was during this time that the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, named after the street where the Stonewall Inn stood, became a symbol of commemoration and resilience. This march laid the foundation for what we now know as Pride Month. Since then, June has become a powerful month for the LGBTQ+ community to celebrate their identity, honour their history, and advocate for their rights.

As we celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride Month, we pay tribute to the transformative events of the Stonewall Riots and the resilience of the LGBT+ community. Pride Month signifies a collective commitment to equality, acceptance, and love. It serves as a call to action for all of us to advocate for change, challenge discrimination, and support the rights and well-being of all LGBT+ individuals. In order to celebrate, the yearly TWPride celebration features events and contests to interest everyone this year, so have a look at the events below and have fun!

TWPride Art Event

Show your support of LGBTQ+ people by flying Pride colors in your flag throughout the month! You can also post flags and other Pride artwork in our Discord Server's channel #the_western_artists. A dispatch will be made at the end of the work to display all artwork! See more details in this post by our delegate Overthinkers.

The Great TWPride Bake Off

Bake something and be proud of what you've baked! During the entire month, feel free to share both recipes and photos of your work for other TWPers to appreciate.

TWPride Card Contest

Collect LGBTQ+ related cards in celebration of Pride Month, such as nations with Pride flags, symbols, and other references on them! Submissions are open from the 3rd to the 31st on the Regional Message Board, all one needs to do is to link the collection and write the tag #TWPrideContest in the post, with explanation of collection details optional.

Questions of the Now & Polls

Today in the West posts will often feature questions and sometimes even a poll, and everyone can participate! We have also chosen to observe some special days such as LGBTQ Families Day (June 1), Pulse Remembrance (June 12), Juneteenth (June 19), LGBT Equality Day (June 26), Stonewall Anniversary (June 28), and Queer Youth of Faith Day (June 30).

Of course, there's much more to come, therefore look for new topics and fun things on the RMB and keep your watch for further announcements throughout June! Links to event announcements will be updated here as they are made.

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Catalog of Diaries: April 2023 ● May 2023

Every day I am amazed by how much my real-life job parallels my NS job, and vice versa. For those who don’t know, I work in rural development. So in both realms, I get to stare at a computer for hours, explain basic concepts to people twenty times over, be accused of staging coups, and be exasperated at the inefficiency of democratically-elected partners.

I kid (not really), but the real truth is that a lot of the concepts I learned in NS community building are echoed in, well, real-life community building. And in the public sector as much as in NationStates, you find that in order for progress to be made, you have to have a unified vision.

As the chief executive, you have to have a coherent vision throughout your work. Otherwise, you may be doing a lot of things, but in a disjointed and disorganized manner. But not only do you have to see the big picture, you have to make sure your underlings and stakeholders are seeing the same big picture. Otherwise, they will each be pulling in different directions (sometimes in good faith, sometimes not). Investors are attracted to places where everyone is on the same page. They will be put off when that is not the case.

Let’s put this in NationStates terms. Defenders, as a whole, have been strong because they are (militarily, and sometimes only militarily) working towards the same goal. On the flip side, the Brotherhood of Malice saw success when they put out a clear philosophy of raiding (flawed as it is) that other raider and raider-leaning regions could rally behind.

In April’s issue I touched on identity, and this goes hand in hand with vision. Your identity informs your vision, your vision guides your actions, your actions reinforce your identity. If you are active in our region’s government or military, you get to see this first hand. And it’s only going to become more evident as my term progresses.

In the nearly three months since my term started, I have been in several discussions with our Cabinet to refine our vision. There’s been open communication, and sometimes civil disagreement, but all in all we understand how critical it is. As citizens of the West, you all have a hand in making that vision reality. If you don’t know what that is yet, the door is open for you to get involved and learn.

Like a small town, a region requires everyone pulling in the same direction. A town or region with direction will attract the right people and expand. A town or region without direction will flounder and die out. A mindset of “that’s just how it is” stifles development. A mindset of “this is what can be”, especially one that stays true to the community’s character, fuels growth.

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In the October 2020, October 2021 and August 2022 editions of the Western Post, I wrote about notable card collections in the West Pacific, and now it's time to write another feature about card collections that have arisen since then! They are groups of cards pertaining to a certain theme, and come in all types and sizes in the card universe, several of them certainly deserving of recognition. For those not in the know, I also maintain the Collection Collection v2 thread in the NationStates forums, meaning that I often look at collections to see if they're worthy of inclusion.

In the previous edition, I also commented on the sorry state of trading cards at that moment, mentioning that the Trading Cards Anti-Laundering System (TCALS) was disabled and cards organizations were struggling with retention of members since the number of active traders dwindled. Fortunately since then, the community is now at a much better place! Of course, much of this is due to the long-awaited Season 3, which was released in November last year to celebrate twenty years of the game, and was also the topic of an article I wrote last December.

Here in the West, however, it is also the result of a push during the second half of my delegacy to finally achieve a regular monthly system of card contests in order to fight inactivity, which has been extremely successful! Recent contests far overshadowing previous ones in participation numbers, reaching as high as seven entries, and the Card Club has also welcomed Laudesia to the planning of events, a much appreciated help. Owing to this context, this article will seek to feature Season 3 collections as well as mention a few noteworthy entries that have been made for our monthly contests, although of course not limiting itself to only these. It features some of the collectors already listed in previous editions, but also new traders to the scene, so let's see the ten (excluding myself) traders that have made the cut this time around!

Giovanniland

Since the third season arrived, my flagship collection has been of course The West Pacific Season 3! At the time the season arrived, the region had over nine thousand cards inscribed with its region name, far outmatching Season 2's nearly seven thousand and Season 1's nine hundred (although Season 1 had far less cards because they were dynamic for several months and many residents ceased to exist, turning them into ex-nations which are unique to that season). Determined to set a new record in the completion of a feeder's regional collection, I quickly placed thousands of bids, and currently look well on the way of beating the 1 year and 4 months that took for me to complete Season 2, with only a single card out of a total of 9,432 lacking. As I write, a nation has recently found the last card I need, called Cassiala, meaning that if they sell soon I'll have then completed it in less than seven months.

Another notable aspect of the Season 3 regional collection for TWP is that it features the region's first legendary cards, namely Giovanniland (myself), The Holy Principality of Saint Mark, and Laudesia! Beyond this wonderful display of nearly ten thousand cards, I have also created other regional collections for regions which are relevant to me, such as TWPAF's new jump point Empire of Love and the NS family-focused region Edlhus, as well as completing the Doll Guldur collection for all seasons with the help of Koem Kab who sold the three last cards I needed. Other highlights are the Lavender Delegate's Fields, with cards referring to the lavender or having lavender tones in their flag as an allusion to the lavender theme of my delegacy, and the TWP Roleplay collection, featuring active and NPC nations that are on the Esferos world map as well as other roleplay-related cards such as administrative divisions and cultural aspects.

A screenshot of my Lavender Delegate's Fields.

Varanius

Varanius continues prevalent in the trading cards world, returning to their status in the top 10 after increasing the value of their own card and currently standing at 2nd most valuable regionally and 6th in the world. One of Vara's recent projects is a collection of cards with the Site Supporter, Postmaster or Postmaster-General badges, a way to contribute financially to the game and in return receiving some perks as well as a badge in the national page and card, which is only starting but has the potential of reaching well in the thousands in regards to the amount of cards. Vara has also sought to collect several copies of his Season 3 card just like me, with a notable upgrade from uncommon to epic rarity and an animated card featuring lots of eyes. Other collections by Vara include a collection of legendary cards that Vara maintains the value of, and of course the traditional friends collection that is often a mainstay of many trading cards decks.

Fhaengshia

Also featured in the two previous articles, Fhaengshia has expanded the diverse range of collections it offers! Continuing their trend of collecting all cards with the Delegate badge in every season, their complete display of Season 3 Delegates includes over a thousand cards. The interest on World Assembly related themes is also exemplified by the collection called "Two Sides of a Coin", which assembles cards with both the Commendation and Condemnation badges, and another by a funny title of "Bicycle... no, Bise... no, Bicaramel... no, Bicameralism, got it", dedicated to those who have authored proposals for both chambers of the WA (the General Assembly and Security Council).

Of course, being a collector of legendary cards, Fhaeng also started early in the season their own collection of Season 3 Legendaries, having already collected all from Season 2. Fhaeng is currently one card short of the goal, being part of a number of collectors that have stumbled on a particularly card called Annihilators of Chan Island (AoCI for short) that is very rare and even has bids of the maximum value possible, ten thousand bank.

Apexiala

Apexiala is a very prolific collector, perhaps even more so than myself, owing to the extremely diverse and large number of collections they have! Several of their collections are featured in the Collection Collection Thread, for example Anime & Arts being the largest of the dozens of anime collections seen out there with over ten thousand cards, Femme featuring cards whose flags are photographic images of women, the Apexiala Wildlife Reserve deck displaying cards with real life animals as flags, and of course the LGBT collection that I mentioned last time, but also deserves a special mention especially due to Pride Month.

These four collections all have at least a thousand cards each, meaning that in the aforementioned thread they get to be part of the Volume Collections category, but that's not all! Other notable collections include the Politics one, fitting for a political simulator game like NationStates. Apex also owns multiple nations created for collections following a broader theme, like the Wildlife Reserve I mentioned above, for example Apexiala Diplomatic Relations, Apexiala Gallery of Art, Apexiala Department of Defense, Apexiala Cultural Heritage and Apexiala Nature Reserve! Last but not least, their participation in regional card contests also deserves a mention, such as their winning entry in last year's TWPride Card Contest with the Trans Pride collection, and also participation in the Wild Card Scavenger Hunt with their collection named Scavengers of the Wild West Pacific.

The first page out of 339 from Apexiala's Anime & Arts collection.

Laudesia

Now, for a change of pace in comparison to the previous snapshot, we have a new collector! Laudesia, which I mentioned earlier as a great player to organize Card Club contests together with, and also one of the region's three legendary cards, also has several interesting collections of their own for all to appreciate. Mentioning big collections first, they have of course collected all Season 2 legendaries, but are also an avid Epic cards collector with their nation Lauds Epics, which owns complete Season 2 and Season 3 sets, as well as most from Season 1. Beyond these, also worthy of mention are some regional collections, for example Uniterra and The United Ascendancy, and also a cool idea they made to collect all cards which were Ultra-Rare in Season 1, Epic in Season 2, and finally Legendary in Season 3, dubbed the Linear Progression Project.

Montrandec

Another new trader to the TWP Card Collection Spotlight, Montrandec also has several collections to offer! They have significant progress on rarity collections, with over three quarters of Season 2 legendaries collected and also a significant amount for Season 3 legendaries and epics. However, I'd say that their most notable and unique collection is the one called The Lost City of El Dorado, a display of the skilled artwork traders that had a top 1% badge on the International Artwork (deck value) stat at the start of Season 3, a very interesting and also self-referencing project. Montrandec also notably won two Card Club contests in a row last year, the TWP Delegates' Card Contest during August and the Wild Card Scavenger Hunt during September! Although these collections are no longer available, it is a remarkable feat worth noting here.

Mediobogdum

Appearing in the 2020 and 2021 editions, but not in the most recent one, the Lord of Doll Guldur Mediobogdum makes a return! Undoubtedly, their most recent success has been completing a collection of all Season 3 epics in the puppet Honor Guard Mediobogdum, joining Laudesia mentioned above and Kwisatz Carderach as nations of TWP that have achieved such feat. Medio is also a participant of regional collection contests, and they notably won the Wassailing Card Contest that at the time set a new record of seven entries! Medio joined with the The Wassailing Pacific Pirate Christmas Drinks Cabinet and Sozzled Santa's Wassailing Christmas collections, creatively collecting cards related to the 12 Days of Christmas song and to drinks that they'd have in the Wassailing Pacific during Christmas. Yet another interesting collection is that called Ambitious Girls, one of few examples of a joint collection work! Medio collaborated with Fauzjhia to gather cards of the Ambition region depicting girls, in total amassing more than three thousand cards.

The start of Medio's complete Season 3 epics collection.

Rengum in Lingo

Moving on to other new additions to the spotlight, we have Rengum in Lingo! They are a regular participant in the Card Club's contests, and just like Montrandec mentioned above, Rengum also has a back-to-back win to call their own—they won the Avian Celebration Card Contest hosted to celebrate one year of my delegacy back in January, through not only collecting both avian flags and real life birds but also using lavender and purple colors for the delegacy connection; and then the Valentine's Card Contest in February, with an unique spin on the theme by collecting cards related to Saint Valentine's story in a snarky and humorous way. These are no longer available, but you can still see some of their other contest entries, for example The Bestiary collection and its accompanying dispatch for the Mythical Card Contest, and Crows and other members of the Corvus family for the Family Card Contest.

Fotisdia

As just mentioned in the Card Club Update article, Fotisdia's entry for the Family Card Contest was the winning entry, collecting not only cards mentioning the family and its members, but also creative choices such as cards representing family-related deities and royal families. They also came third in the previous month's TWP 20th Anniversary Contest, with a collection featuring notable nations from the region and a plurality of regional flags. Beyond regional contests, their deck also includes several displays dedicated to cards from various regions of the world, as well as some other interesting themes such as Chess cards (including a fair few of my puppet nations) and Greek mythology gods!

Hongg Kong

In a similar way to Fotisdia, Hongg Kong has started to participate in regional contests more recently and so far has knocked it out of the park with excellent submissions! After all they were the winner of the aforementioned contest celebrating our twentieth anniversary, rising above six other entries. Their collection, called "live, love, twp20", showcased various aspects of the region, including community members and a diverse set of regional and military flags including customized versions of them. After that, their most recent collection "unconditional love towards the most magical, terrifying, loving, and best person in the world" netted them second place for the Family Card Contest, in which they assembling nearly a hundred cards related to mothers in celebration of Mother's Day. Furthermore, through their self-collection, they also form together with Varanius, Fhaengshia and Montrandec a quartet of collectors mentioned in this article that all have animated Season 3 cards and collect them.

Hongg Kong's winning entry for the TWP 20th Anniversary Contest.

Con Nihawitan

Last but not least, Con Nihawitan's deck is an example of the fact that value may often deceive. A look at their cards and deck value may make one think of an uninspiring collection, but in fact Nihawitan has been one of the most prolific participants in the Card Club's contests for the past year! They entered the competitions arena last year's TWPride Card Contest, then took a break for the August and September card collections, and have since then been at full steam, participating every month. After reappearing and joining the N-Day & Z-Day Card Contest, they won the Cards Within Cards Scavenger Hunt, an event about cards that self-reference the trading cards game! Nihawitan has also fared well in more recent contests and even reached the podium several times, for example third place in the Valentine's Card Contest by focusing on cards with the word Valentine as well as hearts and cupids, and second place in the TWP 20th Anniversary Contest with a collection focusing on cards mentioning TWP, meritocracy and snark in nation names and mottos.

That's it for this article! I recommend checking all collections I have mentioned in this article if you haven't already, and of course other collections curated by TWPers that I may not have mentioned here. If you wish to build a collection and need help with that, be sure to join our regional Discord server and ask questions at #twp-card-central, the home of every TWP card collector. Thanks for reading the article, and stay tuned for more card-related articles in the future!

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The Esferos F1 World Championships logo by United Adaikes.

In the previous edition, we in the Western Post covered the 4th Rugby World Cup, a very successful sports roleplay event in the TWP Roleplay community. This high activity event has been followed by another type of sport, namely a Formula One style event called the Esferos F1 World Championships! For those not in the know, F1 is a fast-paced car racing sport where highly skilled drivers compete in specially designed cars, combining speed, skill, and teamwork to create thrilling races, and now we’re glad to write about its arrival to Esferos!

Sign-ups

Before talking about the event itself, it's important to note that there are a few key aspects that are different from other sports tournaments that have happened in Esferos before. The out of character sign-ups were divided into several parts such as drivers, circuits, teams, engines and tires, with some advantages for Veteran Storytellers (those who have contributed extensively to Esferos lore) such as being able to sign a second driver.

Signups were announced and organized by Loremaster of Sport UA, and had to include a fair amount of details, ranging from written descriptions to mathematical statistics to be used in the scorinator. Drivers, for example, required among other things a driver’s bio and three aspects called reliability, aggression, and technique, individually ranging from 2 to 5 and adding up to 12 at most. A similar process happened for teams, although with the three stats being called reliability, acceleration, and turning instead.

The Lux Litore Circuit in The Holy Principality of Saint Mark, which hosts the Austra Grand Prix.

Roleplayers could also submit a circuit in their nation to be part of their championships, requiring artwork depicting the circuit’s shape as well as several values such as length, track aggressiveness and technicality (which had to add up to 10), overtaking difficulty and margin for error (these last two ranging from 0.1 meaning easy or forgiving to 5 meaning difficult or treacherous). Last but not least, the option to submit tires and engines was also available, although not all would be chosen to be official sponsors. Both of them needed scores for some aspects that shouldn’t add up to more than zero, namely reliability, actuation and tare for engines; and reliability and traction for tires, providing for some balancing.

The signup period lasted for just under a month, from April 16 to May 14. Although some nations only entered in selected categories, a total of fourteen entries were made: Arifiyyah, Aukera, Cambria, Fauthur, Giovanniland, Hertfordshire and Jammbo, Hezur, Larxia, Rivalfiume, Sekiya, Teralyon, The Holy Principality of Saint Mark, United Adaikes and Zoran. All in all, these nations together entered a total of 23 drivers, 13 circuits, 13 teams, 11 engines, and 10 tires, all of which can be seen in the signups thread linked above.

Pre-Season

After the end of signups, the in character thread was announced by UA! The first post of the thread contains a lot of relevant information, for example the official calendar for the event starting with the Pre-Season from May 21 to June 24, during which participants introduce drivers, teams, engines and tires, and deals happen such as hiring of drivers and engine & tire choices by teams. It’s important to note the difference that while "sign-ups" mean the out-of-character entry by nations’ drivers, circuits, teams, engines and tires into the event, "signings" mean the in-character deals mentioned above. Furthermore, while all teams were granted licenses to participate and will continue to have them so long as they sign up at least one driver, only five official suppliers were each chosen for engines and tires.

In regards to the engine suppliers chosen, these were LampadatiGP from the Larxian manufacturer Lampadati Auto, U-77 from Sekiya’s Eckhard-Walter, Velite 1420 from the Giovannilandian company Quintana-Urbolina, Viktoria-RKO F1 M2x0 E Performance from the Viktoria-RKO manufacturer from Cambria, and Y2J HITC from Teralyon’s Erunius. Aside from Sekiya, the other nations also had tire manufacturers qualify to be suppliers—Virelli from Larxia, Giovagoma from Giovanniland, Konti DX Zero from Cambria and Fenris NWO Stinger from Teralyon. The other spot was then filled by the Eclipse tire manufacturer hailing from Hertfordshire and Jammbo.

Last but not least, the pre-season and regular season’s schedules were also informed to all participants in the post. The nations of Larxia, Giovanniland and Cambria volunteered to host the Polaris, Aura and Andolia Test Events for the pre-season during June, which will serve to test the skill of drivers and teams, as well as the efficacy of their chosen engines and tires. After that, the regular season starts also in Larxia, with the Larxian Grand Prix at the end of June and start of July, all the way down to the last event, the Hertfordshire-Jammbo Grand Prix which will happen April of the next year. The full calendar is displayed below:

The Stories So Far

Although only two weeks have passed since the in character thread was posted, and all of the pre-season’s test matches are still yet to come, several participants have already tried their hand at writing roleplay posts! A few posts were made after the initial announcement but before the pre-season’s official start on May 21, talking for example about drivers’ expectatives looking forward for this first-time event, and the happiness or dismay from engine & tire manufacturers’ CEOs at seeing their products qualify or not to the official list of suppliers. For the teams whose nations were not represented in the list of engines and/or tires, lively discussion on the merits and disadvantages of the available choices were also portrayed in roleplay.

More recently, after the pre-season has officially started, teams have begun to seek contracts with engine and tire suppliers as well as make moves to hire drivers. Kicking off the list of deals was the Saint Mark Vola Aurum team, signing the two Saint Markan drivers Ari Dasher and Celerio Dasher to join the team, followed by Giovanniland’s Las Lavandas accepting the nation’s two most famous drivers, Sabina Dawa-Gyatso and Lukas Taval-Sabino, in a celebration led by the team’s principal Severa Alva-Oriene.

Furthermore, the respective Giovannilandian engine and tire manufacturers, Quintana-Urbolina and Giovagoma, led the first product advertisements and have been quite successful so far! Not only the nation’s own Las Lavandas team has adopted them, but Eckhard-Walter Racing from Sekiya also entered a contract with Giovagoma for tires, and the Vola Aurum chose to sign deals with both the engine and tire providers. For the latter, I also collaborated with Halo (Saint Mark) to write together two roleplay posts, one depicting the initial meeting between the companies' representants and the Vola Aurum leadership, and the other describing a beautiful dinner that took place right after, featuring meals from the Saint Markan cuisine and also friendly conversation that led to the finalization of business details and the beginning of new friendships.

Advertisements I made for the Giovannilandian engine and tire companies. Full versions available here

In conclusion, the Esferos F1 World Championships have already seen a fair amount of participation, though of course, this is only the start of something much greater, with the pre-season test races and all of the regular season’s events yet to come! I look forward to seeing many more roleplay posts, especially to continue the success that the TWP RP community saw during the 4th Rugby World Cup, with the Western Post also looking to cover more of what’s to come in future articles as it has done in the past.

Last but not least, I invite everyone who wants to join in the fun to consider joining TWP Roleplay! Although Esferos F1 is already ongoing, applying for the map right now will open the doors of worldbuilding to you and offer the possibility of signing up to participate in future sports roleplay events. Read the TWP Roleplay Dispatch for more information on our RP and how to join the map, and consider joining both the main TWP server and our roleplay server, we hope to see you there!

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All your chocolate belongs to Darkesia
The Western Post Staff - Delegate: Overthinkers - Editors: Fujai and Giovanniland - Staff: Blue Bubble, Bran Astor, Fauthur, Gryphonian Alliance, Occidius, Podium, Sekiya, Teralyon, The Holy Principality of Saint Mark, United Adaikes, Varanius, Zoran, and YOU
All your chocolate belongs to Darkesia

spooky!