Perspectives on Lazarus and the NLO
I considered for a long time where I would start, in terms of how to introduce the entire concept of what Im going to discuss today. I decided that it would probably be simplest to dive right in, to when I joined Lazarus in 2013. I am sure there are several people who will disagree with my recounting of the past several years of Lazarus history, but I aim to give my own personal perspective and (I should hope) a more or less neutral voice in the conversation.
I will admit that at the time, I joined the region at the urging of Feux and (If I remember correctly) Milograd, who I had developed a friendship with at the time. At the time, Lazarus was extremely inactive. Even more so than it is right now. The regional delegacy, as I understand it, was simply handed around between a small handful of people willing to take on the job. Several months would go by where there would be less than ten posts on the entire forum over a whole month.
In the middle of 2013, Milograd and Feux, who had convinced Harmoneia as well, resolved to change that. Their first action was to remove prominent imperialists from the region. This included members like NES and Viktoria Gryffyn. It seems that that was done mostly to halt any impediments on their change. If they wanted to make the radical change that they were about to, they could not have people so diametrically opposed to them. Im not going to make a judgment on whether this was the right thing to do or not, but thats simply the reality of their position. The Emerald Council, Lazarus legislature at the time, voted to remove imperialists from the region, and then Milograd and Harmoneia got the region to establish the Peoples Republic of Lazarus.
I am going to openly say that I believe that on the whole the PRL was one of the best times ever for Lazarus. There were many people who came out to participate in the region and really took up the culture and made it something fun. Despite some minor bumps in the road, the PRL got people actually interested in the region, and activity was at its absolute zenith at this time. For the first time in a long time, Lazarus had actually mattered to people. I believe it was an incredible success in that regard. There were a series of leaders who really were conducive to that sort of activity. Harmoneia, then Milograd, then Kazmr, and then myself, all worked hard to foster the culture and enthusiasm that really carried through 2013 and most of 2014.
However, after I served for three and a half months and resigned in October 2014, a decline began. It started with Milograd being elected as Chairman again, despite being totally absent from the region for nearly an entire year. Milograd never took the delegacy, admittedly because of an issue with his RL health. The Committee for Public Safety used an arcane part of Lazarus law to declare Stujenske the Chairman because he was the longest serving citizen at the time, coupled with the fact that he was the Vice Chairman. Or something like that, I cant really go check my facts because I dont have access to that part of the last forum anymore. We were assured by Feux that Stujenske had a fire in his belly to keep Lazarus looking great, so we all didnt think much of it and left Stujenske to do his thing. It turns out that that was apparently a huge mistake.
During this time I had struck a great rapport with Feux, and I was a budding member of the New Pacific Order, and Feux confided a lot of the Senates business with me and various developments within the inner workings of the NPO government. I shared a lot of my dissatisfaction about Stujenskes failures with him, but he assured me that he really wanted to make things better. Feux was an extreme careerist, and, in hindsight, I imagine he was so driven purely by ambition that he was willing to tell me just about anything to placate me while they shored up influence in Lazarus. I largely took a break from nationstates during some RL transitions, and during that time they ejected high influence nations from the region for reasons that were quite obviously pulled out of the rectum. If people had seen the warning signs, they would have noticed something strange going on in the region, but there really wasnt anyone to see anything. During Stujenskes Chairmanship, activity grinded to a halt. I returned in spring of 2015, and was obviously a bit struck by what had happened to the region. I began to publicly question the actions taken by Stujenske, such as the banjection of some of the higher influenced nations and the dissolution by decree of the legislature. I was warned privately to quiet down about the violations of the law, but I refused to. The following events all happened within a span of a few hours, where I was stripped of my administrator rights on the forum, the judicial system was dissolved, members of the legislature were banned for trying to start a recall vote, and parts of the constitution were deleted from the forum.
I believe most people know about the coup resistance efforts afterward. I just want to take a little time to thank again Eluvatar, Asta, Guy, Myroria, Gulliver, Klopstock, Kazmr, and anyone else who helped out with that. It was a very trying time for me and most of the resistance I was able to cobble together and it wouldn’t have succeeded without your help. Since the coup, Lazarus has had some success, but I believe most will admit that there have been some troubles in Lazarus recently that will have to be resolved in terms of activity.
I do believe that there had always been a goal of an NPO takeover of Lazarus from the beginning, despite the insistence that there hadn’t been. Kazmr and I had some discussions in the past with Feux, that in hindsight sort of reveal that Feux had a bigger goal that almost certainly involved an NPO takeover of either Lazarus or Osiris. The logs were erased from my computer, but if Kazmr still has them and wants to post them, I wouldnt be opposed with him sharing them. Feux really, really wanted to be the Emperor of the NPO. Everyone in the NPO Senate knew that Krulltopia was going to retire at that point, and they were trying to set themselves up to replace him. I think that Feux really did not care one iota for the people of Lazarus, but only about becoming the NPO Emperor. I had believed, up until the coup, that we were truly friends, but it is obvious to me now that he did nothing but manipulate me and lie to me about several different things (probably too much to mention in this one lecture), so the coup and the realization in hindsight that I had been so badly manipulated to believe some things was very upsetting to me, and it fed my desire to beat the coup even more. I think its obvious that that was why Milograd and AMOM returned, who just happened to be NPO Senators also. As much as AMOM would try to insist that the coup was not planned at all, I believe it was a long term goal by several members of the NPO taken over a long period of time, beginning with the ejection of the imperialists from Lazarus. And, as I understand it, everything had to be approved by Krulltopia, so things had to be approved in advance.
The 2015 Lazarus coup was something that you typically dont seein GCRs. An autocoup turned into the domination by the government of another region. I think it really did extreme damage to Lazarus in general, especially given the robust and entertaining culture of the Peoples Republic of Lazarus. Obviously we had to do away with that system of government, because it was irreparably tarnished by the NPO. I dont know how things might have been different if the coup did not happen, but it goes without saying that the NPO coup of Lazarus was a damaging major event that brought many things to the surface about Lazarus and those involved, that we are probably still recovering from today.
I would love to answer any questions by anyone interested in asking one.
I hope you enjoy reading this lecture, and please feel free to let me know how I did.
100% truth.