Haiyo folks! Yesterday marked a special moment for The Grey Wardens as the Featured Warden series passes 1 Year since its first edition released! As a special treat, a group interview was held between Altmoras, Izhtat, Ostrovsky, and Pyrohy.
The link for the new edition can be found below:
March Featured Warden: 1 Year Edition!
Or if you don't want to be redirected...
Special Edition: March 2023
To celebrate one year since the revival of the Featured Warden issues, this month’s version takes a new spin on the article. For March’s (it’s still March where I am!) Featured Warden, we have four guests for this interview. Our guests are a mix of old and new Wardens alike, being Warden-Commander Altmoras, Warden-Lieutenant Pyrohy, Senior Warden Ostrovskiy, and Warden Izhtat. Getting this done was a bit chaotic, but we hope you enjoy!
Quebecshire: Hello everyone and welcome to March’s Featured Warden! This time around we have a different type of interview, with four attendees. Could everyone please introduce themselves, with a small bit of information about themselves and their time in TGW?
Ostrovskiy: Hi, I’m Ostrovskiy (which is a bit of a mouthful, so call me Ostro). I’m a person who enjoys history and skiing. I also spend too much time online ;). I became a defender on December 18, 2022, when Makasta recruited me for the lib of New Westphalia. A few days later, Kria gave me a sales pitch for TGW, and I decided to join. Since then, I’d like to think I’ve gotten settled into the community, and it’s been a blast the whole time!
Izhtat: Absolutely! I’m Izhtat, I’ve been playing NS since late September 2022, and I got started in TGW — and gameplay at large — in mid-November 2022. Shortly after I joined, I became a Guardian and joined the Foreign Affairs staff. I started settling into the role of a Warden in mid-January 2023, during the invasion of Islamic States. Since then, I’ve been working on being a better defender overall, and recently became a Guardian Officer! Outside of NS, I have pretty broad interests in STEM as well as history, politics, and philosophy. Like Ostro, I enjoy skiing when I get the chance, though unfortunately that doesn’t happen often given the location I’m in.
Pyrohy: Hey! I’ve gone under a few variations of my screen name over the years, but most of the order calls me Pyro; that much has remained consistent, lol. I’ve been on NS for close to a decade now, with my humble beginnings in a long-dead fash-y RP region founded by a person I attended school with. Myself and a few others were roped in on the premise of “check out this kooky browser game!” And when we realized where we landed, we jumped ship almost immediately and founded a new region: Isles of Holy Order of the Holy Potato. We were there for a good while doing nation RP before we fell victim to a Red Fleet tag raid, probably sometime around late 2015/ early 2016. That, believe it or not, was the catalyst for my entry into R/D. My first attempt to contribute to the greater cause of defending came in the form of the Potatoist Union, an org comprised of me and myself attempting to detag one region per update. That lasted all of about a month before I took the leap of joining different communities to find bigger fish to fry. I went through a slew of ideological, indie, and through-and-through dog water noob organizations before finally landing with TGW. I had joined with the intent of learning to lead my own indie org, and stuck around when I realized how much I enjoyed my experience. While I made strides and was subsequently acknowledged for the effort, I was pushing myself to exhaustion with what I was juggling IRL. It lead a bit of unraveling, and by early 2018 I had completely burned myself out and needed to completely divest from most of my obligations online. Fortunately, that turning point and draw-down ended up working out, and bridges weren’t so burned that I couldn’t rebuild them to eventually make a slow re-entry around 21. While I’m not near as active as I used to be, I’m at a point where I’ve found a relatively healthy balance in playing. It may make me command’s resident slacker, but it also means I’m always there to heed the call and contribute wherever I can.
Altmoras: I’m Altmoras, I joined TGW as a complete R/D noob a few weeks after the launch of the 2016 reboot. For a general history on my gameplay career you can read my commendation. More specific to TGW I became a Constable 3 weeks after joining the Order (we didn’t have Lieutenants back then) and a Warden-Commander about 5 weeks after that. That probably sounds like quite the speedrun given how much longer the promotion path has been for immensely talented and brilliant players like Grea Kriopia, Luca, and Varax, but the context of the time was vastly different. Defending was neck deep in [redacted] both militarily and politically at the time, and the Wardens weren’t yet the cornerstone we would eventually become either; back then we were just one in a line of defending projects by our founder Benevolent Thomas, all of which including TGW 1.0 had eventually petered out. Within this context anyone with the skill and the will could rise up extremely quickly, which I did.
Roughly 5 months after the reboot of TGW Thomas quit the game, this was probably the most critical point in the history of the organization, and when the dust settled our Chamberlain had departed the Order as well as our founder. But the remaining triumvirate of Deadeye Jack, Tim, and myself successfully navigated this low point and elevated my fellow noob Roavin to the position of First Warden. During this shuffle I took the position of High Constable and became the de facto head of the Order until the end of Roavin’s term as The South Pacific’s Minister of Military Affairs (they were too cool to call it Minister of Defense then). During my time as the big boss we were in a low period for numbers and activity so I sought out unconventional activity and partnerships for defending, largely centering on offensive operations against fascist regions alongside independent, leftist, and raider partners. We still defended, but we could and did fail to liberate 25e holds if the bans were good enough because our numbers were just so low. The culmination of this era was the invasion of Femdom Empire I ordered, think of a siege but instead of trying to save a region we were trying to destroy it, and instead of lasting a week or two it lasted a whole month. We ultimately failed to achieve our objective, but the aftereffects of that operation are still being felt to this day, the defection of Nakari to TGW is a good example of one such effect.
In January 2017 I pulled a Thomas and also quit the game, but TGW was on solid footing and didn’t miss a beat growing throughout the year, especially after both Thomas and myself returned to command later that year. I didn’t really do anything of historical note during this time so let’s skip forward. By November 2018 we were in another period of inactivity, the GOAT Haku had joined the good guys, but other than that we were pretty weak. Having been inactive (which is how I spend most of my time) I came out of hibernation at that time and facilitated the entry of Merlin and Haku to Warden Command, as well as the development and deployment of Haku’s API recruitment script which has grown and maintained our gameside population ever since.
I effectively stopped playing again until 2021 when repeated insistences from Haku and Tim that my boot was needed on tagger necks eventually wore me down enough to come back and give the legal and based script Reliant a shot. 2021 was the longest continuous active period in my NS career and TGW absolutely dominated throughout, which was fun. Most of our success is the work of other people but two things from this time I can take credit for are the creation of The Amaranthine Isles and The Frontier, and the shift from a paperless foreign policy to one where we sign alliances with our friends.
My period of activity came to an end with site staff’s insistence on spending months holding The Sword of Damocles over my head for having the audacity to press a button 5 times in 1 second. That saga ended for the mods when they WA banned and immediately unbanned myself, Luca, and GK, but for me the clarity it provided still persists. There’s so many sources of entertainment in the world, why would I keep spending hours daily on a game that irrationally penalizes me in the stupidest way possible for doing nothing wrong? Now I’m back in the armchair as delegate of The Amaranthine Isles, having passed the founder on to Nakari. I spend maybe 2 minutes a day on NS outside of N-Day, and I feel great.
Quebecshire: Thank you for your introductions everyone! In your time in the Wardens, do each of you have any particular favorite aspect or niche?
Ostrovskiy: Honestly, there are plenty of amazing parts of TGW. Although if I had to choose, my favorite would probably be the whole process of becoming a full Warden
Izhtat: I’d say the Warden community is what I like the most. Although I’ve only been in TGW for about 4 months, and have only been a Warden for about 2, I already feel comfortable with my fellow Wardens, who have been incredibly helpful in guiding me in the ways of R/D. Although I certainly have much, much more to learn, I’ve come to understand the game in a way that I don’t think I would’ve were I in a less specialized community. Although other aspects of gameplay do attract me, I think starting my R/D journey in such a specialized region as TGW has helped me focus on R/D, learn closely with all-time legends, and even provide occasional guidance to newer Wardens and other defenders when I can. In my eyes, TGW strikes the right balance between a meritocratic military organization and an amicable learning community in which everyone dedicated to the cause can benefit, and that’s the type of place I want to be in — it gives me the opportunity to improve my skills with help from incredibly skilled defenders and perhaps take on more leadership roles as I improve.
Ostrovskiy: Wowee. You should write SC resolutions. beautiful writing
Izhtat: Thanks, haha. I don’t think I’m nearly well-versed enough in NS history yet to be able to write good resolutions, but it’s definitely something I’d like to get into at a later date.
Ostrovskiy: I’m reasonably sure that no resolution ever has been written off the top of a person’s head. There’s a reason research exists
Izhtat: I mean, that’s completely fair. I’m just working on building connections within NS at the moment, which probably goes a long way towards the type of research that goes into well-written SC resolutions.
Quebecshire: Does anyone else want to chime in on that?
Pyrohy: Yep, in the morning
Altmoras: The people I’ve met, NS as a game is pretty barebones, but the connections and interactions I’ve had here stick with me. Even though I’m the ultimate feline friend and barely talk to any of them ever.
Izhtat: I definitely get that — just about everything on the site is player-driven, and I think that really helps players’ creative expression and passion shine as much as possible. And it creates a strong community as well, as you mentioned.
Ostrovskiy: Izh and Alt good talkers, yes yes yes. I bad talker, yes yes yes. Agree with Izh and Alt, yes yes yes
Izhtat: What! You are not a bad talker!
Ostrovskiy: Lol everyone always says that but I really am. Like, those like beautiful words that pour out of people sometimes - not me.
Quebecshire: So you’ve all been here for all at least a little bit and spent some good time here. Does anyone have a favorite operation and why? The reasons for it can be anything from the result to the people involved, just let us know about it!
Ostrovskiy: Lol my favorite operation was definitely the siege of England. Maybe it’s recency bias, but just the sheer amount of dedication that went into it all. From the commitment of our leadership to the region and the lib, to the unbelievable amount of people, people with lives, who decided to partake in this enormous liberating task. The week of battle, where so many people showed up every. single. update. for the cause, and where so many more showed up for a part. I’m confident that history will put down England as the major event of the year (unless the raiders decide to coup a GCR this year
), and that many a commend will mention the fight. And, of course, it’s the only big siege since I joined TGW
Quebecshire: Anyone else?
Izhtat: Well, England is certainly the biggest siege by far since I joined TGW, just like Ostro. I really appreciated having so many new people show up for the siege, both Wardens and other defenders. I was lightly involved in some of these efforts, reaching out to people off-update and getting more liberators. Because it was during my spring break, I was able to attend almost every update during that time, and it was great to see people so engaged in the fight for England. We definitely have gotten a fair amount of new consistent updaters from the recruitment/conscription efforts during the siege, and I definitely learned a lot myself about basic R/D strategy throughout that week. Plus, I can’t exactly complain about getting TiC, and getting a taste of leadership, if fleeting and limited, was certainly fun as well.
Ostrovskiy: TiC! Izhtat is based
Quebecshire: Izhtat was definitely a big help during the England siege. As a newer member more or less thrown into the fire for that, how was the experiencing of helping keep things under control during such a big operation, Izhtat?
Izhtat: So, for the update that I was given TiC, the experience didn’t actually change a whole lot compared to what it was like during the rest of the siege — the main thing I can recall in particular being different was that I did an Updating ping. And also the pink name. But I think the overall experience that I had with the England siege was really defined in large part by the first few updates. As a relatively new defender, I didn’t really know what was going on at first, to be entirely honest, at least in terms of what exactly our overall strategy was, other than getting enough endorsements in one go all at once (which is, of course, not exactly how sieges work). However, I was soon able to pick up on a general idea of what we were doing, and once I understood, at least at a basic level, the motivation for all of the different move and endorsement orders that tended to vary by update, I wanted to do my best to help others. Like I mentioned earlier, I loved seeing so many new people showing up to liberate England during this time. Of course, with lots of newcomers come lots of questions, and while more experienced defenders could certainly address their concerns, I wanted to help out in any way I could. I’d say I was also galvanized by the energy of many of my fellow defenders, such as Concrete Slab, and wanted to pass that on to others. Crowd control tends to be an issue whenever many new people join, so I wanted to help mitigate that, especially since this was a huge operation where we needed every person we could get.
Overall, I enjoyed the experience of taking charge in some ways. While I certainly wasn’t involved in the strategy behind the siege, I did enjoy it. While it can be somewhat stressful at times, it also felt quite rewarding because of how enthusiastic people were about the siege.
Ostrovskiy: You’re awesome, Izh, never forget that
Altmoras: Operation Precognition, every raider and indie region of the era gave TBH a blank cheque to lead their troops wherever TBH wanted. TBH chose European Union, which was at the time the founderless region with the highest Delegate endos. Being a TBH op their chat leaked like a sieve and we comfortably premoved it so early that they didn’t even bother giving their go command. Despite this they soldiered on and got ready for their backup target which I believe was Equestria, we premoved that too and what was supposed to be the largest non-antifascist raid of that year turned into a giant fart.
This operation sticks out to me because of how hilarious the aftereffects were, the longest lasting one was the creation of Vinny D, a native of European Union who wasn’t a fan of being attacked. But there was also the sheer comedy of two of the independent regions involved (you know who you are) having forum consulates with European Union, which were subsequently shuttered for obvious reasons. Those two regions then turned around and blamed Thomas for fouling relations between them and EU for daring to defend it from their attempted invasion.
Quebecshire: That makes sense, and I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it! Unfortunately we’re nearly out of time, so does anyone want to make some closing comments on their time in TGW?
Ostrovskiy: I’d just like to say that TGW is an amazing experience, and that it’s a good region to be. Wait. How many updates do I come to? How much time to I spend on NS?
Pyrohy: (gonna catch up real quick sorry) There’s always been a sense that while folks come and go, TGW has a good track record of attracting people that are genuine and kind to each other; people that care about the person, not the player. Also, a little nugget from behind the scenes: I’ve loved the various approaches to community-building the command team has implemented over the years, it’s exciting to have the privilege of snooping in on some of the conversations surrounding planning, development, and exploring avenues for growth.
Izhtat: Overall, I’m not sure there’s a whole lot to add on to what I and others have said so far. I really appreciate all of the work that every person in the TGW community - Warden or otherwise - has done, and I’m glad to be a part of it! I’ve received so much support from so many people here as I start and continue my NS journey, and I hope that I can prove a sufficient help in return in the future.
Pyrohy: My most enjoyed probably have to be any of the liberations from around the Spear Danes/ Femdom era of operation. In those days, the salt mines ran at full capacity, and it was a whole lot of fun to be involved and around for post-op hang-out calls to just chat and game with people. My most notable, unfortunately, is the enshrinement of TMC as a relic of a bygone era. It was the only other place I returned to after dropping from NS for a hot minute. I’m eternally grateful for the stellar turnout and passion from all behind the attempt to keep it out of raider hands for as long as possible.
Pyrohy: Updates continue until morale improves
Ostrovskiy: dw im still coming
Pyrohy: If it weren’t for inspired individuals like the two of you, AurA, Wolf, and Owen, to name a few I’ve recently witnessed, we’d just be a crotchety old-folks home filled with armchair activists with nothing better to do than yell at clouds and reminisce about how things used to be. It’s felt like many of the recruits that arrived at the gates of Weisshaupt in the past year or so have been both capable and driven. It’s inspiring to see how quickly you’ve all acclimated and found ways become involved in strengthening the community. The community appreciates you, too!
Quebecshire: [You all have until 6pm EST to give final comments, for those who haven’t]
Ostrovskiy: Thanks for having me! It’s been an honor.
Izhtat: Thanks for the interview! It was fun to talk with you all!
Altmoras: What the did you just say about me, you little fenda? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in The Black Riders, and I’ve been involved in numerous brazen stealth raids on Christmas, and I have over 300 confirmed switchers. I am trained in banhammer warfare and I’m the top banjecter in the entirety of raiderdom. You are nothing to me but just another fenda. I will banject you the out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on NationStates, mark my ing words. You think you can get away with saying that to me over IRC? Think again, . As we speak I am contacting my secret network of sleepers across NS and your switchers are being dossiered right now so you better prepare for the storm, removed. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your NSGP career. You’re dead, fenda trash. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can ban you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s without NS++. Not only am I extensively trained in manually triggering, but I have access to the entire arsenal of 20XX and Predator and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable off the face of this region, you little . If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn . I will fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re dead, Warden.
