Iām glad this more organised thread has popped up, and Iām glad to see so much input from the RMB community, my community, even if it might have come about in a such a miserable context.
I have been an RMBer since the day I arrived in 2018. I have spent an embarrassingly long time during my teenage years writing roleplays, making maps, designing factbooks, flags, artwork, you name it. I had fond memories of staying up until the early hours of the morning so I could take part in roleplay talk with americans in now long-abandoned voice chats. I would go on holiday with family, seeing the sights of the world, only to sit in the hotel room and write the worst diplomatic RPs you have ever seen. I have pulled all-nighters reworking my home dispatch for the 80th time, and woken up at 6 in the morning to do a map update I foolishly promised the day prior. I have given my best years to this community and while it hurts to see a few fellow members label me as merely a āforumiteā or having abandoned the RMB altogether, I know thatās just not true.
I feel I can empathise with any movement that pins the government as uncaring, inherently controlling or elitist. After all, it was me who lead the charge against the government in the RMB for years. I am, in all likelihood, partially responsible for the divide that continues to this day. I know intimately how a lot of those giving their opinions today feel, because I was you. I used to spend a lot of my time complaining about how the government was made up of Urthers who didnāt give a damn about Valsora. I did my best to segment the RMB community into its own corner. I couldnāt have given any less of a damn about what happened outside of TEP, it was the RMB over anything and everything else.
Of course, now Iāve matured a bit, I can see how much of a dumbass I was about it all. I have to look back at the torrent of messages I posted in the Discord and on the RMB and cringe a bit, watching myself deliberately ignore any and all efforts of outreach made due to my entrenched beliefs, watching myself blame my region-ban for blatantly racist rhetoric and a neo-nazi symbol-laden flag (ironically, that was actually unintentional) and pin it simply on big evil government who wanted to silence me because I spoke critically of them. I felt that almost comically when we made the decision to proscribe Cordone. Again I saw myself involved in a region ban involving racism and bigotry, which was not only just cruel, but genuinely hurt and impacted others. I again found myself involved with persons who believed it was their criticism of the regional government that lead to their ban, not their behaviour. Only this time, I was standing on the other side of the glass. It was privately quite embarrassing for me, and while Iād like to think I serve as a model that not every edgy teenage racist is a lost cause, I must confess I never got a hundred-second chances and an exceptionally long leash.
I think the OOC case speaks for itself. This is a group of exiled TEPers, all booted for varying levels of bigotry and/or bullying. It sucks, because they were friends to a lot of us, I was pretty close with a lot of them too, but we eventually had to cut the cord and it was undeniably the right call. I often find myself questioning why so many community members are so desperate to get back onto an RMB with people like this, but I can only chalk it up to maybe others just had much deeper friendships, or maybe others can look past their actions, while I suppose I cannot. Iām not here to tell you who you can and canāt be friends with, you can do whatever youād like regardless of how I feel, but the question nonetheless is worth raising to me, if only to sate my curiosity.
So with the OOC question out of the way, and pretty impossible to disagree with, it drifts into the IC reasoning. The Praesidium is an IC body after all, meaning as weird as it sounds, we focus our attention not on out-of-character behaviour, which we leave to moderation, but to in-character actions. This is where the case to some becomes weaker, after all, wasnāt this group exiled for out-of-character bigotry, where do the IC actions come in?
There are a few parts to this, but I think itās fair to say it largely centres around Vussul, or Nociav, whatever name you know him by. To go over the obvious again, Vussul left TEP in disgrace at the end of 2024 / start of 2025, after deliberately and maliciously destroying a vast swathe of our regional infrastructure, the worst destruction TEP has seen in years, from any inside or outside foe. He took away his bot, which TEP relied on to run much of its operations, wiped our dispatch network and replaced it with a comical and fabricated conspiracy theory about an elite ācabalā which operated from the Spice Girls Discord, which is, in reality a retirement home where we usually just talk casually about NS and share what weāre up to in real life. Vussul knowingly perpetrated this lie and did his upmost to have our democratically elected regional government toppled and destroyed. In his efforts, he repeatedly telegrammed every resident of The East Pacific and replaced every dispatch we had with a shoddy copy-paste of the same rambling. He hijacked multiple government owned nations while he was at it, shipping them far from TEP to his own storage. These actions destroyed countless hours of tireless work from a swathe of people within our region, myself included. To have all the hard work weād put into designing a new dispatch system, REWARD program, hussar system, awards system and having all the consultative process weād worked on amount to nothing was entirely demoralising. Thankfully, we were able to get a good portion of it back through sheer luck, however this to me seems irrelevant as Vussulās intention was simply to destroy it regardless of the fact much of it was not his work.
Seeing this delightful individual now homeless, Cordone took it upon themselves to immediately welcome Vussul into their leadership group with no delay. At this point, the proscription justifies itself. Cordone positioned itself in its earliest days to be a thorn in the side of TEP. They recruited the man responsible for vast destruction in our region, not once distancing themselves from it, but instead embracing it. They continued to speak about TEP in public spaces, downplaying the behaviour that got many of them banned, and attempting to establish themselves as a genuine GP entity, as they continue to do today. They grew quickly, and continue to grow today as a frontier with an exceedingly high magnetism rate. Not long after Vussulās arrival, he took it upon himself as a newly appointed Cordonite leader to raid and occupy one of TEPās historical associated regions, The Confederated East Pacific, which remains under Cordonite occupation to this day. This region was founded by the founder of modern TEP, 1 Infinite Loop, who intended for the region to serve as TEPās new home should we ever find ourselves occupied by an invading force.
While Cordone vocalised a painfully limp disagreement with Vussulās actions, as far as we can see, they did nothing whatsoever to stop him, apologise for his action, or remove him from their leadership group in any way, tacitly shrugging their shoulders at a direct IC attack on TEP. How at this point can anyone oppose TEP acting in retaliation to this region? Since this occured, Cordonites have, on more than one occasion, been discovered recruiting TEPers. Rajyam, a former Maham Pact exile who at the time was also a key figure in Cordone, was screenshotted sending out Discord links encouraging TEPers to join Cordone.
I have seen the argument made a few times recently that since no-one can prove Cordone has directly attacked or publicly acted with malice towards The East Pacific since, that they simply mustnāt have plans to do so, or have no intentions of it. This isnāt a compelling argument to me at all. By this logic, we can assume anyone who wishes to do harm to The East Pacific but does not directly threaten it must be a non-issue. If we applied this logic to every potential threat, we would have long ago found ourselves occupied by some outside force. The Praesidium is a security body, tasked with securing the region from threats. Cordone is not the only region we are dealing with, most recently AMOM lead strong efforts in the Praesidium to root out suspected traitors within TEP originating from Lone Wolves United, a region which not unlike Cordone has in the past sought to do us harm. I donāt see how TEP endures punch after punch here and simply shrugs and lets them do as they please. We needed to take action, and we did, and I still firmly believe that just because itās gone quiet, doesnāt mean theyāve given up. If anything, now that Cordone is a frontier, with a massive magnetism rate, this will only embolden them as they continue to grow larger.
I believe that some, not all, members protesting the proscription do not fully understand that it does not forbid contact with Cordone or itās members, it doesnāt mean you canāt be in their Discord, it doesnāt mean you canāt RP on Erene from a puppet region (which many people do currently). It purely means you cannot have a nation in TEP and a nation in Cordone concurrently, that is it. Unless youāre one of the specifically proscribed individuals (i.e vussul) you are free to be in TEP, so long as you donāt have an alt physically inside the region of Cordone.
I havenāt yet received much of a clarification as to why it is so vital that members have secondary nations residing in Cordone. Perhaps Iām getting ahead of myself though, let me clarify why weāre cool with something like Discord membership but not having an alt on-site. Essentially it boils down to limiting Cordoneās population and membership figures. Given we have established all of these things about Cordone, theyāre quite obviously positioned as an adversary to TEP. As such, weād like to do what we can within our power to ensure this adversary doesnāt grow larger. As I said, they have a high spawn rate, and the larger their region gets, the more emboldened theyāll become. We canāt do jack about people being in their Discord, thatās impossible to police, and even if we wanted to, itās not really hurting us. However, if you place an alt in there, you give Cordone another member on-site, and their population grows, and the more active their RMB gets. The larger they are, and the more active their RMB is, the more new spawns might be inclined to stay or move there, the more members they have, the larger a security risk theyād pose to TEP. We cannot forget that while the average new mover to Cordone might just be your average Joe who more than likely doesnāt give a damn about TEP, their leadership is still composed of people who despise us, and some (vussul) have demonstrated theyāre more than comfortable attacking us directly and covertly. What happens if Cordone grows to a point where it can host itās own military, a splinter region that feels spited by TEP with a military force behind it is quite clearly an issue for us that we simply donāt want.
Therefore, given we understand the majority of Cordoneās activity comes from former TEPers or cross-membership between individuals who have nations in both regions, we want to cut off that supply from them, to slow their growth and minimise the risk they pose to us. If they want to build themselves a big region, thatās, to an extent, out of our control, but weāre obviously not going to let them do it off the back of our members. This isnāt about telling RMBers they canāt talk to Cordonites, itās not about locking them away because they might reveal a secret dark truth about us, itās purely how the game works. This kind of behaviour is not at all unusual in the GP space, and while we canāt expect a community which is largely centered around RP to fully embrace that, we as a Praesidium have to make decisions taking a wider scope of NS into account.
As it stands, and as we intend to keep it, you can still talk to Cordonites whenever you want, you can join their Discord, hang out with them, talk shit, join their voice chats, play games together, you can RP on their map via puppet storage regions (they are doing this currently, you do not have to be in Cordone to be on Erene, as far as we can see) or on Discord if youāre so inclined, you can literally do anything theyāll let you, EXCEPT we wonāt allow you to have a puppet account in their region, that is all this proscription actually does. All you will gain from repealing this proscription is the ability to put a puppet in Cordone, thatās it.
I understand why people are upset, and I concede that the Praesidium couldāve done a much better job consulting the RMB community on this, Iāll take the flak for that. Iām an RMBer and realistically Iām the most obvious rep between the Praesidium and this community. We should have been clearer with you all when we put the wheels in motion on this, whether it was a security matter or not. We underestimated the concern you guys had, and should have understood that thereād be frustration and concern when it involved people who we were/are all close to and weāll take that into account in future. Weāve gone a step further and weāre in the process of putting forward another RMBer to the Praesidium, and elsewhere the government is re-establishing an RMB Ambassador to act as a spokesperson on RMB affairs and to have someone constantly in the room representing the RMBās opinion on government matters. I have also heard some speak of an RMB council, though Iām not sure what that is or if itās something being pursued, so Iāll leave that for more in-the-know voices.
Weāre not all going to agree on this in the end, that much is clear, but we should take a moment to tone down the rhetoric and try and understand both sides, even if weāre frustrated or concerned. I apologise if previously I have come across poorly when arguing my opinion, but hopefully this textwall Iāve spent the last two hours writing will lay my points out clearly and lay concern to rest. I have a lot more to say on the RMB and itās relationship with the wider region, but perhaps thatās something for a later day.
Thanks for your time.
that darn UI needs some updating