One of the final actions of my term will be to nominate Cappedore, AKA Tommo, for Vizier.
Cappedore has been with us for many years, and is a frequent contributor to high Executive offices. He’s found himself in nearly every office of the Executive, as well as the legislature and Deputy Provostship. My experience with him during the Delegacy has been nothing but positive, and I believe he is well-suited in both experience and demeanor to serve on the security council.
INB4 There’s sometimes a sentiment expressed that we have “many” or “enough” Viziers. I personally prefer a vision of TEP where the Viziers are a body as large and diverse as they are, and deliver a broad and democratic outlook to governing the security council. I also prefer an environment where influence is widely and generously dispersed across such a large group of people that we all trust to safeguard it, because this is a very daunting obstacle for anyone who would want to turn this region into a monolithic autocracy.
We are gaining interregional influence and, with it, many enemies. Just earlier in this Delegacy, we saw a member of our cabinet be unmasked as a subversive who invaded our allies. We’ve been privy to LWU and NPO logs in the recent past which show foreign enemies conspiring against us. We’ve seen leaks from our private chats. We’ve seen moves within our region to enact comprehensive reforms to our security that may further push our existing enemies to act against us, lest they wait too long and it become impossible. EPSA is stronger than ever, revitalized in the span of mere months. I hope that, before anyone tries to argue that we have too many Viziers and not enough soldiers, these facts are taken into account. As Viziers, we know many things about the state of our regional security, and none of them suggest, as I unfortunately expect some to argue here, that we would be better off with less Viziers.
For all such Magisters, let me tell you a little story. In Urth, many years ago, we had very few species other than humans. Then, slowly, more and more people wanted to expand the breadth of our roleplay. A new community submission, feedback, and voting system was introduced. Many pushed back, saying that there were already too many nonhuman species on Urth. A lesson that took them years to learn, if they’ve even learned it at all, is that this argument never works. You can soapbox and grandstand all you want about how we’ve exceeded the ideal number, or we’re perfect right now, but the fact of it is that if you don’t ACTUALLY have ANY argument against an item up for vote, you will accomplish nothing by grumbling about how there’s too many.
If you cannot deny Cappedore’s trustworthiness, his dedication, his intelligence, his status in our communities, his experience, his history, his character, or his nomination, I urge you to not apeak against his nomination. If you want a maximum Vizier count, try legislating it, not grumbling each and every time someone is identified and nominated by the Delegate as a good candidate with the blessing of the Praesidium.
I would like to ask Cappedore if you have enough time for this role.
Your activity has been sporadic at times, no doubt because of irl commitments. Yet this has made it quite hard to work with you. I have DMed you at times and gone unanswered. One of the HG months, I’ve had to poke you for 3 days straight with no response to create the discord event.
How can you reassure us of your activity going forward?
Since Aiv wishes to bring up about grandstanding and the amount of viziers, then I too shall have a part to say.
The security team that we entrust the region to during emergencies is supposed to be trustworthy, efficient and fast moving. By virtue of this, small groups come to decisions and consensus faster than large groups.
When you have a large group, what happens is bloat, excess and needless debates. The very opposite of a lean and mean machine. There are gains to be made from diversity, but those gains are rapidly lost as the group grows and grows into needless bickering over minor arguments.
Diversity can be found in a council of 3. More diversity can be found in a council of 5. It gets extremely large at 10, and continues on. Perhaps we don’t know what the viziers are doing behind closed doors, but does the council really need more than 10 individuals do to the work? Or is it the case that the council needs to have a proper frank conversation within itself about who needs to do more to pick up the slack, and who needs to step down.
I’ve had a pretty shitty day Luck so I’m going to be blunt and a little mean with you: If that’s how you think the Praesidium works, then you know nothing about it, certainly not nearly enough to be trying to direct it according to your misguided whims. I think you’re in a great niche with FA and EPSA but I think your pride stands in the way of you going above and beyond that niche. If you bothered to listen and ask questions at all, instead of jumping to hasty, ungenerous conclusions implicating that the Praesidium isn’t doing its job, then I would be more inclined to take your opinion under serious counsel, but because that’s not what happens ever, I’ll just let it go out of my other ear, and regional security will be all the stronger for it.
And I challenge anyone who questions our Viziers’ ability to do our jobs to point to an invasion, a coup, an infiltration, a propaganda machine, or a smear campaign that we haven’t stopped.
I appreciate the questions regarding my regional activity aren’t particularly unfounded. From September 2025 - December 2025 I was going through a particularly rough period and I do agree my activity took a massive dip between those dates; it was partly due to why I pulled out of the October 2025 Delegate election. But I can guarantee you, if I felt like I didn’t have the time or activity spread for a role as important as this, I wouldn’t be so eager about taking it one. Hence why I ultimately chose not to run for Delegate.
Yes, I am a very busy person both IRL and on NS but this doesn’t impede on my ability to uphold activity on NS. A lot of our recent correspondence has been about EPSA involvement and I have had little to no interest in pursuing any further EPSA-related activity, after a brief stint in 2022 I decided the venture was not to my best talents.
If I felt like my activity would be a hinderence to the region as Vizier, I would not keep my post. But my circumstances now and going forward are much brighter and my commitments to the region are imperative. I consider TEP very much a second home. So in response to your question about activity, there’s nothing to fear. My activity is incredibly unlikely to decrease in future, barring any disasters.
In response to what you asked me on Discord about my activity in UTEP, I will admit little progress has been made in those regards, albeit I’ve been starting to think about articles to write in my area of expertise (i.e. I intend soon to begin brainstorming ideas studying the use of AI in creative arts). #soon
Regarding the “number of Viziers” debate, both sides have a point.
It is true that our Praesidium has risen to address a particular difficult suite of threats.
It is also true that our Praesidium has a lot of debate on security measures that would probably not occur so often (and thus have more faster security actions) compared to a smaller security body. And that our Praesidium is extremely large.
Both are true.
I think at that point it comes down to our priorities. The more members we add, the more viewpoints/perspectives we add, and the (potentially slower) our body’s response can be. The fact is that we’ve mostly been lucky in that there’s been pretty general consensus on security decisions and really arguments mostly come down to the final details. We have not yet had a key division in the general paths for a security decision, but that may not be guaranteed in the future.
However, I think AMOM has a point. Our Praesidium’s large numbers makes it pretty much invulnerable to any form of reasonable infiltration. That’s a major security benefit, point blank.
All that being said, while I think LL’s point has merit, I do also think it isn’t as big a concern. Yes, the Praesidium has a whole lot of debates, but the SOP clearly has voting proceedures and (in emergencies) primacy given to the GV to decide Prae direction. At the end of the day we’re unlikely to gridlock, which I think would be the biggest concern with a big security council body. And we can implement processes to overcome gridlock should that ever occur.
On the other hand, there isn’t really a way to mitigate a small number of Viziers. The more Viziers we have, the better we are (so long as we make being Vizier a difficult position to get, which it really still is at present). So I’m fine with adding in more Viziers.
I concur with Aivintis in that this nomination thread is not the appropriate venue to discuss capping the membership of the Praesidium. I am willing to open discussion on that matter as soon as tomorrow if the Magisterium so wishes it done, but this is not the appropriate venue to discuss that matter. This is Tommo’s nomination thread, and the nomination at hand should remain the subject matter in this thread.
This said, Tommo has answered my only notable concern - that which matches Lucklife in that the nominee missed several Magisterium votes in the last several months and found himself on the suspended list multiple times. If the nominee can guarantee this sort of thing will not continue and/or impact his work in the Praesidium, I have no qualms whatsoever to the nomination.
I’ve been a Vizier for over a decade now. I know the difference between when we had something like 4 viziers or less, and what we have now. There’s no contest that our current situation is a lot safer than only having a low single-digit amount of Viziers.
Due to the passage of [N-2026-9] Confirmation of Cappedore as Vizier, this discussion topic has been closed per the Standing Orders of the Magisterium. If further discussions are desired on this topic, please contact a member of the Office of the Provost to reopen this topic.