View Topic

The Monarch's Weekend Review
The Monarch's Reflections on the Week Gone By

Greetings, Wintreath!
It was fun writing out the first Monarch's Review, and it got enough positive feedback that I've decided to do it again! After not having the time last weekend, I'm doing it a little differently now. Instead of trying to write out the whole thing at once, I'm doing bits and pieces throughout the week as things happen, so that it's less of a challenge for me to put together. It happens to be Thursday as I write this portion out.

I wish I could say the world in general is as fun right now, but without a doubt the topic that has been on our minds the most this week is the growing coronavirus threat. We've been very fortunate to not have anyone in our regular community come down with it at this time, but nonetheless it has impacted us all in some way, and never seems far from our minds. I know I have to resist the urge to constantly check live updates on CNN or the Johns Hopkins coronavirus map.

I hope that in these worrying and even scary times we can remain an oasis of friendship, cheer, and fun. At a time when we're told to practice social distancing and isolation, it's more important than ever that we hold our virtual friendships even closer, like the friendships we have forged here in Wintreath. And if you haven't had some a chance to forge some friendships of your own, it's not too late! Hang out with us on the regional Discord, and you're sure to find a friend among us soon.

With that in mind, our region hasn't been entirely overtaken by offline gloom. In fact, we've had a little bit of fun, a little bit of warmheartedness, and even a little bit of drama. Read on to find out more!

Your Monarch, with pride <3
-Wintermoot


Underhusen Elections Open
Nominations are open for the upcoming Underhusen election, which begins on April 1st! The Underhusen is the lower, elected chamber of the legislature, which is the first chamber to consider all legislation and the only chamber that can amend it. If you are interested in running or just want to check out who has already thrown their hat in the ring, the election forum is here!. Nominations will remain open until April 1st, at which point voting will be open until April 7th.

Keeping up With the Minecrafters
A lot has happened with the Minecraft server in the past few days. First, we upgraded to the latest version, from 1.13.2 to 1.15.2. This was an initial success, but it was quickly discovered that the new version takes much more memory to run smoothly, which would have been cost-prohibitive to upgrade through our current host. As it so happens, trader happened to have his own Minecraft server hosting, and he was very generous in offering to host the server. The move was just completed today, and while there remains much work to be done to get everything going again, so far the move has been a success.

If you recall, several months back trader also began donating to the region, effectively covering the cost of hosting the Minecraft server at a time when I was considering axing it entirely. It's safe to say that Wintreath Minecraft might not exist today without him, and now his generosity will allow us to take the server to the next level. If you've been enjoying the server recently, please take time to thank him. I for one truly appreciate everything he has done to help keep the server running and make it thrive.

Thane Elections (Finally) Finish
Speaking of elections, the Thane elections that were running finally concluded after a run-off election for Thane of Integration, which despite a record breaking number of ballots resulted in a tie of 16-16. Ultimately, Mathyland won the resulting run-off election, and I then appointed Laurentus as a reconciliation advisor to ensure that the lessons of the Reconciliation are present in the guides, policies, and actions of the Cabinet. So in a way, I suppose everyone won in that case!

Prince trader! Fabulous he...
At the beginning of the last week, families briefly took a prominent role in our regional chat, and the Royal Family is no exception as last week I had the immense honour of welcoming my close friend trader into the Royal Family! This is the first time that there has been a royal other than myself in several years, and it feels really good to have a good friend in the family with me.

For those that were wondering, according to Decree 005 this makes him “His Highness, Mercury Kaizer-Kestar, Prince of Wintreath”. xD

The Roleplay Academy Opens!
What do you do when roleplay is a main interest in the region but so many people don’t know how to roleplay? Start a roleplay academy, of course, and this is exactly what Jarl of Culture Ruguo and Thane of Roleplay Excalibur have done! The Academy for Roleplaying Things and Stuff (ARTS) offers different levels of instruction, from snowflake level for those who know absolutely nothing about roleplay (like me) to mentor level for those who think they have what it takes to become an instructor themselves.

As a student in the first snowflake-level course, I’ve found the lessons to be both fun and challenging. Ruguo has been an amazing instructor, and from what I’ve seen in the second course going on Excalibur seems to be pretty great too. If you’re interested in the academy or want to learn more about how to roleplay, I highly recommend you check out the academy and sign up for one of the courses!

New #coronavirus Discord Channel
As I mentioned before, the coronavirus situation has by far been the most discussed topic in our community lately, so much so that it has warranted its own channel on our Discord server. You can now go to the #coronavirus channel to discuss anything related to it, from the politics of it to news of its spread to your personal experiences with it (and most of us have personal experiences at this point, if only through being stuck at home). If you would like to chat about it and you’re not on our Discord already, feel free to join it here.

Surviving Social Distancing
One impact that the coronavirus has had on everyone is through the need to keep isolated from other people, and after a few weeks of it a lot of the people I talk to are starting to feel the strain. Because of that, I wrote a guide with some tips on overcoming the challenges of being physically away from everyone, which you can here. I hope that these tips are helpful and that we can figure out how to implement some of them here in our community over the next week.

Welcome back, Weissreich and Izu!
We have been very fortunate to have a lot of faces return to the region in the past month: first those who left in November and afterwards, then Charax, and now two other prominent members have returned. Izu was a regular on the regional Discord for a long time until last year, while Weissreich was active very early in the region’s history...being a key figure in the establishment of Wintreath’s legal system and having been named first as a noble of the region and then as a Paragon after his departure from the region. Welcome back to both of you!

I wish that it were under better circumstances, but perhaps a silver lining in all this coronavirus mess is that with so many people stuck at home, some old faces finally have the time to return to us.

A Victory Against Werewolves!
What I predicted in the last Review came to pass, and soon after my last Review the villagers of the last Werewolf game lynched the last wolf and declared victory in the game! This was a fun game all around; however after the game it became known that key players had taken advantage of the Who’s Online page to see who was sending personal messages on the forums during the night phase, with the assumption that those players would be wolves. As a result, the Who’s Online page no longer displays when someone is reading or sending a PM.

Welcome, Weary Nation
This past week we completely overhauled the welcome telegram that gets sent out to nations when they move into the region! The previous telegram was originally written soon after the region was founded in 2013, and while the names were updated over time, the telegram was showing its age (for one, I haven’t been a Stark in over six years, lol). The new telegram is fresh, up to date, and much more comprehensive, so hopefully it will be more helpful to new nations. You can check out the new telegram here.

The New Western Empire Debacle
As discussed in the statement here, Wintreath established relations with the NWE, only to withdraw from them days later. In hindsight, it’s obvious that this was the result of rushing into relations. Given our own history, it’s easy to assume that it’s true when another region claims they’ve been unfairly slandered due to personal grudges. But taking more time to vet them out before establishing relations would have done both regions much better, and I imagine that this has been a learning experience on our end.

Its sad that after all those paragraphs nobody replied. So i am doing so now.

*claps*