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Scheduled release date: August 1

A reminder that every article you write in the Orendi is worth 1 point from the Monarch's Game Bag (equivalent to 1/2 a Silver Reward)!

Potential article ideas:
Culture Review - Werewolf XV, new RPs?
RP coverage
Storting legislation
Something from the Posh Penguin (or Wintreath Gazette)
Robin Corp vs. Corp Trader on the Minecraft server

@Katie may I use/adapt your UH midterm report for the Orendi? (If I want to make any edits to fit the different audience, I'll be sure to run it through you first.)

@Gerrick would you mind covering Summersend again? (Oh wow it's already been a year since that Culture Review.) If not it's fine.

Yeah, I can do that. If anyone else wants to write about any of the games/contests below, just let me know so that we don't both write the same thing.

Topics I'll likely write about:
Rewards Tent/Raffles
Post Count Contest
Royal Couple*
One Night Ultimate Werewolf
Arena
Murder on Mystery Street
Escape Room*
Spam Wars*
Monster Dating Game
40 Questions

*If they get finished before this gets sent out.

Thanks!

I mean you can talk about them as they are ongoing.

And I'm still quite busy so this may take a while.

I'd be willing to write about the games that I hosted.

@Katie may I use/adapt your UH midterm report for the Orendi? (If I want to make any edits to fit the different audience, I'll be sure to run it through you first.)

Sure but be sure to credit me if you’re asked

@Katie may I use/adapt your UH midterm report for the Orendi? (If I want to make any edits to fit the different audience, I'll be sure to run it through you first.)

Sure but be sure to credit me if you’re asked

I mean of course, you'll probably be the sole person in the byline unless I work it into a larger piece.

The Culture Review
by Gerrick
(Link to image: http://wintreath.com/graphics/orendi/moc_logo_lg13.png)

This is the seventh installment (and second Summersend Festival Special Edition) of the Culture Review, written by me, Wintreath’s Jarl of Culture. I’ll be talking briefly about some of the contests and forum games that took place during the Spooky-themed, fourth annual Summersend Festival. Though the festival was originally scheduled to take place from Friday, August 17, to Sunday, August 26, several games exceeded this timeframe, with the final festival games ending on Saturday, September 14. I'd like to personally thank everyone who took part in the festival, especially El Fiji Grande and Almonaster, who visited us from other regions, as well as those who created and hosted forum games and other activities!

The Monarch’s Game Bag is a list of over 200 spare Steam keys for PC games that Wintermoot and other citizens have donated to the region over the years. While it usually serves as a reward for those citizens who perform civil service duties for the region, during the Summersend Festival it also supplied rewards in the Spooky Festival Rewards Tent for those who won or participated in the many contests, forum games, spam games, and discussions. Each time someone participated in a new activity, they got a raffle ticket, which they could then use to enter into either of the two raffles to win free Steam keys – the winners of which were announced at the end of the festival. Those who won any of the contests got tokens, which could then be used to redeem Steam keys as well. By the end of the festival, four people redeemed the following games: A Hat in Time, NBA 2K17, This War of Mine, and Contagion. We also saw quite a bit of generosity from several people as they gave their tokens to others so that they could afford to redeem games.

The Post Count Contest was started up near the beginning of the festival where people could guess how many posts they thought there would be by the original official end of the festival on Sunday, August 26 (as I wasn’t sure how long the festival games would continue on past this date). Since it’d be easier to guess as time went on, submissions would only be accepted during the first five days of the festival. There ended up being some confusion on the wording of the rules – “Whomever has the guess closest to the actual number of posts in the forum without going over will win the contest” (which I meant to explain The Price is Right rules) – and so some made their guesses thinking their guess needed to be greater than the actual final post count or that their guess just needed to be closest to the final post count. Consequently, guesses spanned from 1,000 to 10,000. But by midnight of the last day, the total festival post count reached 3,183 posts, making Red Mones the winner with a guess of 3,100. And by the time the final festival games were over, the posts reached 4,417. With the previous Summersend Festivals reaching 568, 1069, and 2670 posts, I think this year’s festival was a success.

The Royal Couple of Summersend was a new contest created by Wintermoot as a sort of prom king and queen of the festival. Six different couples were nominated, but shortly after voting opened, a clear favorite took the lead. This couple, BraveSirRobin and Crushita, won the contest with two-thirds of the votes for their chemistry working together during the Spam Wars and subsequently breaking the forums with the amount of bandwidth they were using.

Spam Wars is a new game created by Wintermoot that utilized a forum-integrated game board. The game board consisted of 16 tiles (4x4), each representing their own spam point game. Players needed only post the coordinates of a tile, and then the game board would automatically update, giving the player a point on that tile. Players could not double-post, though, so they’d need to wait for someone else to post in order to gain another point. Whomever had the most points on a tile claimed the tile, and then whomever had the most tiles claimed by the end of the festival would win. The game quickly became popular: just a few hours after the start of the game, people posted so quickly that the game was using 80% of the forum website’s server CPU and around 120MB of bandwidth per minute, causing the forums to be temporarily shut down. After the website was brought back up, a new rule was put in place, limiting the frequency of posts from the same person to once every 30 seconds in order to help curb the CPU usage. By the end of the game on September 14, there were 3,421 posts made in the game thread, and El Fiji Grande was named the winner with five tiles claimed.

One Night Ultimate Werewolf is a condensed version of the classic forum game Werewolf (aka Mafia) that was hosted by taulover. The nine players were randomly assigned roles that gave special powers useful either in the single night or day phase. A few of the roles made players members of the Werewolf team, who posed as Villagers (everyone else) to survive until the end of the game. In the night phase, players used their powers if possible, usually to scan what other players’ roles were. During the day phase, players all voted to kill one player – if the voted player was a Werewolf, then the Villagers won, and if the player was not a Werewolf, then the Werewolves won. At the start of the day phase, North was the first to cast a vote for another player, which caused some players to believe he was a werewolf and other players to believe he was a role that only won if killed. After players scrambled to get more information out of each other, the votes were cast, and North was killed. As North turned out to be a Villager, the Werewolves – consisting of Hydra, Crushita, BraveSirRobin, and Kane lives – won the game.

Arena is a forum game of strategy and chance that I adapted for Wintreath where players choose RPG classes with special abilities that they then use to fight to the death. At the start of each round, players are given a roll for initiative, which decides the combat order for the round. Players then send me their actions, which I roll for damage and then announce the results in-character in graphic detail. This match was a free-for-all, and the classes and arena were made to fit the spooky theme of the festival, with classes such as Necromancer, Vampire, Grave Robber, and Witch Doctor. Nine players fought, and after ten rounds, the Conjurer Mysterio, played by Syraj, was the only player left standing and so won the game.

Murder on Mystery Street is a new murder-mystery forum game created by North where players take on the role of detectives and question a slew of suspects to figure out who murdered the victim. At the start, players were given a dossier of each suspect, a statement from each suspect that explained where they were during the possible timeframe of the murder, and a map that showed the layout of the buildings on Mystery Street. The eight players then interrogated the suspects (played by North) on inconsistencies about their statements, who and what they saw throughout the timeframe, and any other questions that might help narrow down the suspects. By the time of the deadline, accusations against two of the seven suspects were made, but they were incorrect, and the murderer got away.

Wintreath Escape Room is a text-based puzzle game created by Elbbsas based on real-world escape rooms where participants solve puzzles and riddles located within a locked room to escape. This escape room was a cabin in an abandoned cruise ship with water slowly pouring into the room from a hole in the wall. Six players worked together to solve the puzzles, which included figuring out the passcodes for various locks on doors and safes, finding small magnetic tiles to place on a strange picture, a logic puzzle tied to a switch system, a math puzzle tied to a pulley/bucket system, and lots of riddles. An in-game mechanism was also put in place to help give hints with the solving of riddles. Eventually, on September 14, we were finally able to crack the final puzzles, excitedly exit the room, and escape to safety.

40 Questions

This game is just 20 questions but with 40 questions.  Whoever is leading the game thinks of something and it is the player's job to guess what that is by asking yes or no questions.  The catch is that the players are limited to 20(in this case 40) questions.  I took the spooky summer theme into account when I ran this game and let everybody know when it started.  The answer was Jaws and taulover won the game for the participants by guessing Bruce the Shark from Jaws.  That was the twentieth question so the players were very successful overall with this one despite the confusion caused when I said the animal didn't have a spine.  It was fun to host and I would guess that it was also fun to play but I can't speak for the players.

Monster Seeking Monster Rip-Off a.k.a. a Monster Dating Game
This dating game was based off of the Jackbox game Monster Seeking Monster.  That game is a dating game played like other Jackbox games by going to jackbox.tv and entering the room code and a name to join whatever game has that room code.  It works by sending a limited number of messages to players in each night in an attempt to secure a date for each of the six nights.  The reason for the monster motif is because each player is secretly a monster disguised as a human and each monster has some abilities which affect the scores of each player when dates happen.  Now you may be wondering why a dating game has scores, well that is how its a game but I don't really have an explanation for that .  I tried to base my game off of that game and it seemed to go fairly well.  The winner of the game was the Leprechaun El Fiji Grande.  Most players were able to get at least three dates out of the six possible nights that they could have dated on.



This is a WIP since this is my first time writing a newspaper article. (I am not sure how I am supposed to write this, otherwise it wouldn't be a WIP )  Criticism will be appreciated.

Thanks Kane! If you're following a similar format to Gerrick rather than doing something different/separate from it, we can probably put that by/with the Culture Review with an addendum, perhaps:

And here we have Kane lives to talk about the two games he hosted during Summersend!


Also, @Gerrick @Emoticonius could we feature your foods in this Orendi issue? That article ran very well last time, Wintermoot tells me, so perhaps a second article of this type would be good to do.

Yeah, I'm cool with that.

Gerrick, Emoticonius could we feature your foods in this Orendi issue? That article ran very well last time, Wintermoot tells me, so perhaps a second article of this type would be good to do.

By all means please do. ^_^

Unfortunately, I've had some writer's block when it comes to writing for this edition. =/

I have an idea though...we could revive Citizen's Corner with thoughts from @Katie if she feels up to it. She's a relative newcomer to the region that has definitely made her mark on the region quickly, being the first person to win Wintreath's Finest twice in the same month (as herself and as a Summersend contributor).

I have an idea though...we could revive Citizen's Corner with thoughts from @Katie if she feels up to it.

Sure, I'd be up to that. I'll look at some older issues tomorrow or Thursday and see what I can come up with. :-)

Sorting Out the Storting
A Recap of Recent Wintrean Legislative Events
by Katie & taulover

Hello friends and allies! I, taulover, am back once more, to discuss our most recent Storting term!

In the August Underhusen election, six candidates stood for election (vying for the default five seats, as no seating legislation had been passed):

• Chanku, the incumbent Speaker pro tempore, ran on a platform of reforming the legal codes, such as introducing an explicit supremacy clause to the Fundamental Laws.
• North ran with the aim of combating inactivity in the Underhusen.
• Evanlicious, a newcomer to the region, ran with the desire to help others in the region.
• Syraj, another relative newcomer, ran on the platform of trying to make the laws more accessible to the citizenry.
• Katie, also somewhat new to the region but having already become quite involved in the community by this time, ran to get involved in the laws and legal procedure of Wintreath.
• Crushita ran with his usual anti-Underhusen platform (in addition to seeking to help with writing/voting on laws in the meantime).

In the end, Chanku, North, Evanlicious, Syraj, and Katie were elected to the Underhusen. Chanku was voted Speaker, and appointed Syraj as Speaker pro tempore and Katie as Officer of Information. After several weeks, Evanlicious resigned due to being busy in other things in his life, and in a special election, Crushita stood and won by default.

And now, we have Katie, Officer of Information, here to cover the legislation and events of this past term!

• 07.08.2018 – After the standard scheduled Underhusen elections, Chanku, North, Syraj, Katie, and Evanlicious are elected. Crushita did not win, sadly, but their efforts were much appreciated. Notably, Katie was included on all 13 votes cast, the most of any candidate.
  
• 11.8.2018 – Chanku is elected as the Chair of the Underhusen. He wins 3-2 over North via a tie-breaker vote that he cast himself.
  
• 13.8.2018 – Speaker Chanku appoints Syraj as Chair Pro Tempore and Katie as Officer of Information. A brief controversy arises regarding the speaker possibly having promised Katie the OoI position, but the Speaker assured those in doubt that he would have chosen someone else had he seen their merit to be greater.
  
• 23.8.2018 – Speaker Chanku activates Pro Tempore Syraj’s chairing powers due to a Leave of Absence. This lasted from August 23rd at 2:29 AM EST to August 24th at 6:35 PM EST.
  
• 28.8.2018 – Speaker Chanku declares Evanlicious to be inactive, citing a lack of activity, specifically that he had not posted a single message on the Wintreath forums since the Speaker Elections concluded on August 11th. Attempts were made to contact Evanlicious through NS Telegrams soon afterward.
  
• 04.9.2018 – Evanlicious resigns as Skrifa, triggering a special election that will take place at a date to be later determined. Ergo he is removed from the inactivity list.
  
• 13.09.2018 – Crushita wins the Underhusen Special Election by default and fills the position vacated by former Skrifa Evanlicious.
  
• 07.10.2018 - After a long and productive term, the 29th term officially ends with the election of the 30th Underhusen consisting of Chanku, North, Syraj, Katie, and Laurentus. Long-time Skrifa Crushita loses yet again, and the respectable Pengu comes in last place.
  

Bill Title	Author	Introduced On	Status
Fundamental Laws Supremacy Amendment Act 1	Chanku	11.8.2018	PASSED 4-0-0-1; OH PASSED 3-0-0-2
Procedural Rules Error Correction Act 2	Chanku	11.8.2018	PASSED 4-0-0-1
Underhusen Style and Honours Act 3	Syraj	12.8.2018	TABLED
Authorization of Direct Management of Culture Act 4	Katie	14.8.2018	FAILED 0-3-0-2
Reon Commendation Act	North	14.8.2018	PASSED 3-1-0-1; OH PASSED 5-0-0-0
Authorization of Direct Management of Culture Act (revision 1)	Katie	18.8.2018	PASSED 3-0-1-1; OH FAILED 0-4-1-0
Speaker Election Amendment Act 5	North	20.8.2018	TABLED
The Persona Non Grata Amendment Act 6	Syraj	20.8.2018	PASSED 3-1-0-1; OH FAILED 0-4-0-1
Seating Act of The Thirtieth Session of The Underhusen7	North	05.9.2018	FAILED 1-3-0-0
Seating Act for the Thirtieth Underhusen7	North	09.9.2018	PASSED 4-0-1-0
Criminal Code8	Chanku	10.9.2018	[color= cornflowerblue]TABLED[/color]
Citizenship Requirements Ratification Act9	Chanku	14.9.2018	DEAD

notes

• adds a 13th article to the Fundamental Laws.
• corrects a wording issue in Section 11(b) of the Procedural Rules of the Underhusen.
• adds a 4th section to what is presumably the Underhusen Styles and Honours Act.
• reintroduces a bill tabled during the 28th Storting.
• closes a possible loophole in Speaker Election procedures.
• modifies and adds a 6th section to the Persona Non Grata Act.
• sets the number of Skrifa for the 30th term Underhusen.
• completely rewrites the Wintreath Criminal Code.
• makes changes to the requirements for maintaining one’s citizenship.

And finally, I’d like to go in-depth into some of the important or controversial events this term.

The Fundamental Laws Supremacy Amendment Act
This session saw the reintroduction of the Fundamental Laws Supremacy Amendment Act, which had been introduced during the Twenty-Eighth session by current Speaker of the Underhusen Chanku L. Kaizer. It was reintroduced to the floor of the Underhusen on August 11th by Speaker Chanku. The act seeks to explicitly establish the Fundamental Laws, our constitution, as above any other law or document, to fix a potential loophole in the current system. The current system would technically allow the Storting to legally alter the Fundamental Laws with statutory law, as the Storting has the power to pass laws in all matters, with the supremacy of the Fundamental Laws is only a legal norm and custom.

The amendment itself explicitly declares that a law that conflicts with the Fundamental Laws is invalid. This also extends to decrees and rulings to protect the Fundamental Laws. While this situation would ultimately be fruitless, it would be legally possible to do it which is concerning enough none-the-less. Additionally, it makes it harder for a bad actor, or a group of bad actors, to harm Wintreath.

Upon being reintroduced, the bill provoked some discussion and reactions, with some clarifications being made, and it was quickly moved to a vote. Upon voting on the act, it was almost unanimously passed the Underhusen, with Evanlicious not voting. The act passed the Overhusen with a majority of three, the other two peers (Aragonn and Cinciri) abstaining. As such this amendment will now be moved to a vote by the Citizenry during the next election, where it is to be seen if it will be passed or rejected, although there is currently no opposition to this amendment.

The Persona-Non-Grata Amendment Act
The Persona Non Grata Amendment Act was proposed to the floor of the Underhusen on August 20th by Skrifa Syraj. Its original stated purpose was to give overriding rights to the Monarch and the Storting regarding each other’s PNG declarations, citing a potential misuse of the current system by a “bad Storting” that would necessitate an appeal by the Monarch. Immediately fellow Skrifa were sceptical, but Skrifa Katie attempted to bring a compromise by making such an appellate process more difficult.

The topic was also highly debated in its thread in the Citizen’s Platform. Thane of Dispatches taulover expressed, in response to Skrifa Katie’s rebuttal of the Speaker’s arguments, the concern that since the Storting and the Monarchy are separated to the point that they cannot interfere with each other, increasing more checks may increase the amount of interference. “The Overhusen represents the Monarch”, as taulover says, suggesting that any actions by such a “bad Storting” could be overruled by the Monarch’s representatives.

In the end, the act passed the Underhusen with only Speaker Chanku voting against. Skrifa North originally abstained but switched his vote to “aye”, citing Evanlicious’ inactivity and intent to expedite the passage of the bill. The bill failed the Overhusen with a unanimous “nay” vote. An oft-quoted source for their opposition to the bill was Speaker Chanku’s initial arguments regarding the bill’s pitfalls.

The Speaker Election Amendment Act
The Speaker Election Amendment Act was presented to the floor of the Underhusen on August 20th by Skrifa North. It was intended (at least from what can be ascertained) to address the issue of tiebreaking in Underhusen Speaker elections by introducing 3 tie-breaking ballots and allowing the Monarch a tie-break vote in the event of the failure of the extra ballots.

Quite quickly, many questions arose from fellow Skrifa. Skrifa Katie was concerned that the wording of the bill implied that there were already multiple ballots, and Speaker Chanku cited a clause of the Fundamental Laws that states the Underhusen must elect a member of their own.

Intense debate lasted for more than 48 hours before Skrifa North motioned to table the resolution. The motion passed with the seconds of Katie and Syraj. It is unknown at what future date the Underhusen may return to this legislation and what solutions they may come up with.

The Criminal Code
The Criminal Code was the piece de resistance of Speaker Chanku, the magnum opus if you will. Its intention was to completely rewrite the criminal laws of Wintreath and institute a system that, according to the Speaker, made more sense and was simpler to navigate.

To quote the Speaker: “The main changes are the renaming of the three categories to Misdemeanors, Felonies, and Capital Crimes. Felonies have been split into three categories, called Classes, each one being more severe than the last. Certain Statutes have been extended, with others lowered. I have also criminalized a few new crimes, and reworded existing crimes.”

There were several concerns raised, both within the Discord chat and on the thread itself, ranging from the definition of “aggression” to the scope of the punishments for conspiracy. Sadly, the Speaker did not respond to many of these concerns and… as per the Procedural Rules, a motion was required to be made after 5 days, which in this case was to table the law. This law may very well make an appearance again in following sessions, so be sure to keep an eye out.
@Katie does this look okay to you?