The New Pacific Order Turns 20 - Commentary from Francos Spain

[Manson]

Later published in this dispatch in order to commemorate the New Pacific Order’s 20th anniversary, this text, which initially was an RMB post posted on August 29, 2023, details Francos Spain’s rise to power in the Pacific as well as information about the site’s oldest region’s earliest history. Prior to this post, Francos Spain hadn’t been on the site since around 2004, with him spreading rumors about his “death” in order to distance himself from the game.

Greetings Pacificans!

I would like to begin by congratulating members of the NPO and all residents of the Pacific on the momentous occasion of the 20th anniversary of Revolution coming to the region. The spirit of independence, strength, and belonging that has existed since the early days has clearly only grown stronger with time. I dedicate this post to all Pacificans, to all NPO leaders present and past, to the current Senate, to all those who have built this institution over the last 20 years, including those who have already come and gone and may never even read these words. You are all the reason why this community still thrives, and I am proud and grateful to be a witness to it once again.

It’s now been over 19 years since Francos Spain was playing an active role in the region. After all this time, I feel it’s finally appropriate for me to share my memories and clarify some unanswered (and misanswered) questions from those heady days of the early/mid-2000s. I will start by going over the exact circumstances that surrounded my exit from the game. I will then attempt to recap how the events that would become known as the August Revolution came to pass, and provide details of those first 10 months of the NPO, as well as the final days of this nation in the game. I will also shed light on myself personally as well as my relationship to some other players inside and outside the game. It must be stated that these events took place a long time ago and my memory is hardly perfect, however I will do as good of a job as I can in recalling the exact details.

What I know for sure is that I owe a tremendous apology for the terrible circumstances under which I stopped playing NationStates in the summer of 2004. It was an act of immaturity and impulsiveness stemming from an inability to handle the mounting pressures of both in-game and real life events. I deeply apologize to all those who were around during that time, regardless of what our relationship was with each other. There is no excuse for putting something like that into the world and I have long regretted this course of action. For those who have no idea what I’m referring to, in July of 2004, feeling overwhelmed and burnt out, I asked my real life friend behind the nation of Poskrebyshev to submit a private message to a couple individuals stating that I, the player behind Francos Spain, had committed suicide. It was an incredibly messed up thing to do, and even though this is “just the internet”, that is still a traumatic thing to put on people. Of course, the internet has long been known for people falsely spreading news of their own death in online communities; however this false claim had credence among the small group of NPO associates who were aware that I had (for real) suffered the loss of a sibling to suicide in March of 2004. I by no means use this as an excuse to justify my behavior several months later, however I feel it is necessary to mention within the full context of a stressful and complicated time. The finality of the false story of my demise that was spread was meant to ensure I would never return to the game, even if I had wanted to. But I did reach out to a few of those I had felt especially bad about hurting some time later, who I knew would spread the word that the original story was untrue. These contacts continued and I was even able to meet three of them in person over the next several years (including the players behind Bertram Stantrous, Mammothistan, and The Savage Lands). I have continued to periodically pop in and out of NationStates in various forms and with various projects, but never resurrected Francos Spain (except a single log in 10 years ago as a commemoration), partially because I was so impressed at how amazing the region has done since this nation originally ceased to exist. I do not plan to become active here again, nor do I expect any special treatment from anyone – I just wanted the opportunity to finally share my voice.

One way to do so is to lay out my recollections of the most ancient of history. How exactly did the NPO start, and where did its early members come from? Much has been written about the events surrounding Francos Spain’s ascent to the delegacy and a generally accepted history has coalesced over the years, however I will now attempt to provide some missing details and make corrections to commonly held inaccuracies.

It starts sometime in the spring of 2003. As has been speculated, several predecessor delegates of the Pacific belonged to me (and a real life friend). I found the Pacific’s age and size to give it a special kind of allure, and attempting to become its delegate seemed like one of the greatest challenges one could pursue within the game at that time. The first nation I tried this with was called Sudeten (which history has somehow misremembered as “Sudetenland”). It didn’t take long after an aggressive endorsement and telegram campaign before this nation rose to the delegacy. However, there was no actual game plan of what to do after achieving this goal, and not knowing where to go from there, but hoping to go out with some kind of a bang, I raised a flag of Saddam Hussein just to see people’s reactions (this was during the early days of the US invasion of Iraq). It got pretty much the response I anticipated, and having had my fun, I did not attempt to stem the rapid loss of endorsements which I immediately began to experience, and simply lost the delegacy. Eventually, a real life friend of mine founded a nation and also took his turn at endorsement swapping his way to the top of the Pacific – that nation was InfernoIce. This nation was deleted after a few days as delegate, but later restored by the moderators, having lost the delegacy of the Pacific in the interim. My memory gets a bit hazy, but I think -Ukraine- was similar to the first time around, just to see if I could do it again. That one got elected and I believe put the Saddam flag up again. I honestly don’t remember how it ended, but in any event neither myself nor my friend InfernoIce had taken any of our three combined captures of the delegacy seriously when we had it, and we moved on to other pursuits within the game.

Nevertheless, having already taken control of the Pacific multiple times, the region developed a sentimental value to me and I continued to keep my eye on it. Myself, InfernoIce, and a third real life friend (who would later found the nation of Poskrebyshev and in fact was the person who introduced me to NationStates) had been dabbling elsewhere within the game, and one of our aims was to try to found regions named after real world countries. One of the regions we were able to successfully found was Spain. I wanted to have a nation prepared for the refounding when it became available, and without much thought, I created a nation called Francos Spain. It was originally intended only to be one of many placeholders in our combined collection of puppets, however after most of our nations were deleted due to rules violations (we had used each other’s computers and got flagged as multis), all of my several dozen nations were deleted with only, I believe, three exceptions. One of these exceptions was the nation of Francos Spain, which through sheer chance survived this purge.

Eventually the bug bit me again to try to take over the Pacific yet another time, however I didn’t want to do it with a newly created nation – I preferred one that had already developed a decent population (in those days a 1-2 month old nation was considered senior enough). Of my three surviving nations with an established population, I more or less arbitrarily chose Francos Spain. I guess I just thought it had a nicer ring than my other two “survivors”. Francos Spain indeed remained founder of the region of Spain for a short period after becoming Delegate in the Pacific, and when I later realized this could be a political liability (potential accusations of not being a “native” in an era when that was still a thing), I emptied the region of Spain and someone else promptly refounded it.

Francos Spain was moved into the Pacific and the same tactic was used as previously -- short and sweet telegrams, directly to the point. I rapidly collected endorsements, however by this time the regional government of the Pacific had become much more organized (earlier ones did not have an off-site forum, or appointed deputies, etc). This made the task of catching up to the sitting delegate, Thedoc, an uphill task. But as it turns out, many of the Pacific’s UN (WA) members had very recently left the region on a temporary assignment with an anti-raiding group they called the Pacific Army. This reduced Thedoc’s endorsement total, and when Francos Spain pulled neck and neck with him, Thedoc ejected his rival from the region. Understanding the mechanics of the game through months of experience and experimentation, I relocated from region to region to avoid being present during any region’s update, which would have resulted in all my endorsements in the Pacific being reset. (I had compiled a list of dozens of regions with their respective update times which I used to inflate the population of another of my puppets called Josifovich, which consequently had the highest population of any nation in the game for a period of time. Come to think of it, it’s entirely possible I region-hopped to pad Francos Spain’s population a bit more before moving to the Pacific, but I have no specific recollection of doing so). Anyway, for reasons unknown, but of great consequence, Thedoc found it in his heart to remove Francos Spain from the regional ban list after having ejected it. I moved back to the Pacific shortly before the region was set to update in the early hours of August 28, and immediately compared my endorsements to Thedoc’s, only to be disappointed to see I was one endorsement short (371 to 370, according to my contemporary records) with no time to try to campaign for more. I remained in the region, wallowing a bit at the tantalizingly close margin and wondering how I might manage to survive to fight another day. However, as fate would have it that night, precisely two of Thedoc’s endorsers ceased to exist due to inactivity when the region updated (or had ceased to exist on the previous update but weren’t cleared out until this one). That put my nation ahead by one, and I again found myself at the helm of the Pacific.

Other than changing the factbook entry to take a jab at Thedoc and his ousted government, I still did not know exactly what direction to take the region in. I did take notice that there were several nations on the regional message board actively supporting me and viewing my ascent as a liberation (I think they were genuinely mad Thedoc had ejected me previously). This of course was among a sea of many more perplexed and outraged members of Thedoc’s government who immediately set about trying to remove me from office. I began to consider properly establishing a long-term presence and to develop and organize within the region. I invited my real life friends to join the Pacific with me and help found a new regional government, and they (InfernoIce and Poskrebyshev) obliged. We hung out together in real life discussing our plans to develop the region; the name New Pacific Order was chosen and Posk created a forum. I continued to be impressed by the genuine enthusiasm and support of some members of the region and we further leaned into it. We set ourselves up in ideological opposition to the government we had displaced, on the analogy of any number of real world revolutions that had occurred throughout the 20th century. (For what it’s worth, despite the name of my nation and its heavy-handed style, I have always opposed strongmen, autocracies, and police states in the real world, and part of the original fun of NationStates was messing with people who conflated in-game politics with those in real life).

In another unexpected development, there had apparently been some disillusionment (and finger pointing) among the old Pacific government that had been replaced, and one of its high-ranking members privately reached out to me and we established a cordial relationship via telegrams. That player had a real life move coming up that would make it difficult for him to be online for a short while, and he offered me access to his forum account on the old Pacific government’s boards. I was able to lurk as a fly on the wall and read every counterattack plan they discussed, making it that much easier to defend against them, which solidified our hold on power. When this player finally returned, he was so surprised and impressed that I hadn’t exploited this access to embarrass him or discredit the group that he offered to join the NPO in a full time capacity. Months later, under the new identity of Unlimited, he became a Senator.

Due to a sustained, aggressive campaign against my endorsers, my grip on the delegacy remained precarious with my endorsement total hovering at a low of about 80, and there were several times where the NPO was almost toppled in its infancy. One was a stealth invasion led by a puppet of The Savage Lands called Master Of The Universe. This player had methodically tracked my login times, and strategically only entered the region to campaign for endorsements during hours when I was typically inactive. He would then relocate out of the region before I returned, then region hop to avoid updates before coming back again. I did not discover this nation myself, however it was brought to my attention by another independent group active elsewhere on NationStates which had admired what the NPO was doing, but had not directly contacted any of us until they noticed Master Of The Universe had silently overtaken Francos Spain’s endorsement total. Once brought to my attention, I stayed online until the update, and seconds before it was set to occur MotU moved into the Pacific and had another nation spam the regional happenings to clear his name from view. But of course he was summarily ejected before the update. I was extremely grateful for the assistance provided by that outside group in identifying and neutralizing this threat, and joined their offsite forum. Our relationship continued to grow until they offered one of their own to join the NPO and become a Senator. Normally I would have been paranoid to take in somebody I didn’t have extensive contact with online, however I felt so indebted that I put my caution aside and accepted Mammothistan into the region and the Senate.

The Savage Lands later made another attempt to invade the Pacific, this time having dozens of nations endorse his nation outside the Pacific, then having those endorser nations slowly trickle into the Pacific before moving his own nation in. He could not wait until update time for personal reasons that night, and moved in with plenty of time for me to react. Instead of ejecting him, I ejected his scores of endorsers, then proceeded to endorse him myself. When he woke up the next morning and logged in, he was initially shocked and excited to see he was still in the Pacific. But upon scrolling down and seeing that he had precisely three endorsers – Francos Spain, InfernoIce, and Poskrebyshev, he told me he was more amused than disappointed, and from that point forward we became friends.

The next most dangerous invasion was by what would become the largest multi-attack in the history of the game up to that point. A player whose primary nation was Bleasdale created dozens of puppets in the Pacific, signed them up to the UN, and then endorsed himself. These puppets were identified and reported to the mods before an update could occur, and Bleasdale and all of the puppets used for the invasion were summarily deleted. A monthly holiday called “Day of Pacific Triumph” was inaugurated to commemorate this event. Also, once during a crash when NationStates was down for about 36 hours, the nation of Francos Spain was deleted. This was later claimed to be due to a “glitch” (which strangely did not affect any of the other tens of thousands of nations in the game), and my nation was resurrected. Fortunately, InfernoIce was second in endorsements and temporarily inherited the reins of power, and the NPO was able to persevere. These stories show the tenuousness of those early days, and hopefully serve as a reminder that no one should ever take the amazing modern Pacific region for granted.

Eventually the invasions stopped (there’s a story behind that too, but this post is already tl;dr), and so the NPO continued to develop and expand active membership, with the security of Francos Spain’s eventually reaching over 600 endorsements. This “Pax Pacifica” continued for months until the dramatic events that led to my departure from the game. I will go over this section in the most cursory manner due to the fact that this period of the NPO’s history is where my memory is the haziest, and unlike the earlier days, I did not save many files on my computer documenting the details of these events. The short version is that NPO Senator Sir Paul had taken it upon himself to create a puppet nation called UPS Rail (an anagram of his primary nation), move into the North Pacific (an avowed if straggler foe of the NPO), and ingratiate himself among that community until he gained enough trust to try to make a push for the delegacy. Sir Paul however wound up developing an affection for those he had come there to deceive, and was uncomfortable carrying out a revolution against them. So machinations were put in place to have a puppet called Great Bight, controlled by Mammothistan, move into the North Pacific and coordinate a transfer of power with UPS Rail, whereupon Mammothistan was to declare military victory over one of our most aggressive and intractable adversaries, and compel them to sign a lasting peace treaty with the NPO. Mammothistan did not carry out the mission as planned however, and I eventually moved into the North Pacific myself to try to sort things out. The situation continued to deteriorate until I became so frustrated and overwhelmed that one day I decided not to log into NationStates. The next day, I decided not to log in again. And so it continued, originally unplanned, that Francos Spain’s activity in the game would cease entirely, as detailed earlier in this post.

It would have been impossible to imagine that all those dramatic events could have led to the Pacific in its current form, having long persevered, and clearly stronger and more vibrant than ever, indeed existing on a level well beyond anything conceivable in the early days. Over ninety-five percent of the NPO’s 20-year history is the post-Franco era -- you have all accomplished wonders I can’t even begin to fathom, and I therefore salute all those who have built and sustained this impressive community through to the present day. Thank you, and long live the New Pacific Order!