Following recent reports, investigations have revealed that both The Black Riders and The Land Of Kings And Emperors have been using an illegal recruitment script, and as such both regions have been banned from all telegram recruiting for 3 months.

Telegram recruiting offers recruiters three channels: TG Stamps (which you have to buy), API (which you can use scripts for), and Manual (sending 1-to-1 TGs in-game, with or without a TG template). These are balanced so that Manual recruiters aren't squeezed out by Stamp buyers and API bots: in practical terms, this means that recruitment messages sent Manually tend arrive a bit faster than via Stamps and the API, because there are fewer of them.

It is absolutely prohibited by the Script Rules to use a script to fake manual recruitment, and the only reason for doing so is to cheat the game and disadvantage legitimate recruiters.

Both The Black Riders and The Land of Kings and Emperors have been using an illegal script that faked Manual recruitment for a sustained period of time. This script was developed with the DOS player Anur-Sanur/Frak.

As punishment, both The Black Riders and The Land of Kings and Emperors have been banned from all telegram recruiting for a period of 3 months. This includes recruiting via API, manual telegrams and stamps*. The punishment has been enacted already by the administrators and starts today. Any attempt to evade this block (for example by recruiting for 'proxy regions') will result in an extension of the block by 1 month per attempt, as well as severe punishment for all players involved.

The player 'Bob Moran' has had all his nations deleted as punishment for using this script and for working with the DOS player Anur-Sanur/Frak, and we are currently considering DOS status for him as well. Bob Moran is recommended to contact us as soon as possible to explain his actions, and to post a public apology for his rules violations, or he will not be allowed to continue to use this site.

If you have questions, they may be asked in this thread. As ever, gloating is prohibited and will result in warnings.

The Land of Kings and Emperors Government has seen a statement released by the NationStates Moderators announcing that the player Bob Moran has been operating an illegal recruitment script for two regions: The Black Riders and the LKE. The Moderators announced that the Administrators had imposed a sanction of a 3 month ban on all recruiting from the LKE as a punishment for Bob Moran’s illegal script.

The only form of automated recruitment sanctioned by the LKE has been a legal API recruitment script on Onderkelkia’s nation. This has been in continuous operation since 2013. Bob Moran had no involvement with this script and he had no access to our API key. No one else in the LKE had any knowledge of Bob Moran’s actions. Bob Moran was appointed Chief of the Imperial General Staff at the end of January 2015 and Interior Minister in 8th March, but neither of these positions entitled him to act in the way he did on behalf of the LKE. We had no knowledge of association with Anur-Sanur/Frak at the time when he was appointed to these positions.

We condemn Bob Moran’s actions. Indeed we are in a state of total shock and outrage over them. Of the many treasons to befall the LKE over its near decade long history, this is the worst. Now the Moderators have confirmed his wrongdoing, he has been banished for life from The LKE by the Emperor under Lettre de Cachet 0007. This is only the second time this extremely grave extrajudicial procedure has been used to ban a citizen since 2007.

The Moderator announcement added that Bob Moran’s script was developed in concert with the DOS player Anur-Sanur/Frak. It is known Anur-Sanur/Frak despised the LKE, as well as the Emperor as an individual. It is extremely unlikely that he would have carried out any actions with the intention of helping us. If Bob Moran was working with Anur-Sanur/Frak, then it is quite possible that their actions were intended to ultimately damage the LKE.

We stand ready to assist with any investigation into Bob Moran’s actions.

We note the Administrators’ punishment of a three month ban on recruitment imposed against the LKE. We have concerns about the fact that this ban was announced before any investigation into whether anyone else in the LKE was aware of Bob Moran’s actions, especially as Sedgistan’s announcement referred to the LKE as a whole using the script: in fact the LKE merely (for the time before it was discovered) unknowingly benefited from the script, rather than having used it. We will be submitting an appeal against this ban on three grounds:

1. It offends all principles of fairness and natural justice for collective punishment to be imposed on the entire LKE, in the absence of any intention, knowledge, recklessness or negligence for operating the script on our part. Apart from the fact we knew nothing about it, there is no way the LKE could have detected what Bob Moran was doing any-more than the Moderators did prior to Bob Moran’s involvement with Anur-Sanur/Frak being publicly aired. Any level of sanction is therefore unfair to the LKE. The LKE as a region has been committed to this site for 10 years; our players don’t deserve to be treated unfairly simply to set an example when we have done nothing wrong.

2. The 3 month ban on recruitment was surely intended to go beyond the question of correcting the number of additional nations gained from Bob Moran’s illegal script, to also include elements of retribution and deterrence. Therefore it cannot be said that the LKE is merely being deprived of what Bob Moran gave it. It is additionally very hard to calculate the precise number of nations that the LKE would be deprived of with any period of recruitment restriction. The Moderators have yet to disclose to us, despite a request, precisely how long Bob Moran’s LKE script was in operation.

3. If regions can be sanctioned for actions over which they had no control, the actions of one player (who was potentially undertaking an act of sabotage against them), then this provides an incentive for individuals to carry out illegal recruitment on behalf of regions they dislike in order to cause them damage. This action could therefore be said to encourage rather than deter rule-breaking.

We hope that that the Administrators will review and reverse their decision on the matter.

Onder Kelkia, Emperor
HEM Tiberius, Crown Prince
Cephal Talleyrand, Prince Imperial
Wilhelm Somerset, Lord Protector
Josh Sebastian, Prime Minister

The following statement concerns the recruitment block imposed by NationStates administrators against The Land of Kings and Emperors. The statement is released on behalf of a coalition of The LKE's close allies. The LKE is grateful to its allies for their staunch support.


If Bob Moran had never used an illegal recruitment script, the LKE population would likely be roughly 400 nations today. Today the LKE population stands at precisely 400 nations. To the extent that a recruitment block is justified as a measure of population correction, its purpose has been fulfilled. The moment has come to end it. Therefore, as allies of The Land of Kings and Emperors, we call on the NationStates Administrators to rescind the recruitment block on the LKE.

Why would the LKE population likely be at 400 nations today, if Bob Moran had never acted? We assume that Bob Moran began his illegal script around 25th January, which is the first time he posted that he was performing manual recruitment on the LKE forum and coincides with the beginning of the population uplift shown on a graph produced by [violet]. Unfortunately, no more precise date for when the illegal script began has been made available, despite repeated requests from the LKE. On this assumption, the LKE population was approximately 320 nations prior to the illegal script.

However, we also have to consider the recruitment that would have been performed by the LKE’s legal API recruitment script between 25th January and 27th April, when the recruitment block was imposed, if Bob Moran’s illegal script had never been in operation. Between 25th January and 27th April, the NS population has increased by 25% from 113,000 nations to 140,000 nations. If the LKE had merely followed that increase, its population would have risen to 400 nations by 27th April. In the same time period, similar regions to the LKE experienced greater increases. For instance, the population of Albion rose by 50% and the population of TNI rose by 35%. The population of Europeia rose by a lower proportion but by 200 nations in absolute terms.

It is therefore entirely reasonable to assume that the LKE would have benefited from a 25% increase in population to 400 nations through the operation of its legal API recruitment script. 400 nations is in fact a conservative proposition. If the LKE had followed TNI’s trend between 25th January and 27th April, it would have enjoyed a population rise to 430 nations; TNI did not increase their manual recruitment methods during that period. If we calculate the increase from 25th January to the present day, the NS population has increased by 29%, which would put the LKE on 412. With the recruitment block having brought the LKE population to 400 nations, the day has therefore come for the NationStates Administrators to accept that the job of correcting the LKE’s population is done.

If the recruitment block continues to be in effect until 27th July, we believe it probable that the LKE population will end up at the level of only 170-210 nations. This is significantly below where it would otherwise have been if it had not been for Bob Moran’s illegal actions. It is also significantly below where the LKE population roughly stood on 25th January, namely 320 nations. The effect of the three month recruitment ban is therefore disproportionate to the level of harm caused by Bob Moran.

When the Emperor of the LKE raised the disproportional impact of the recruitment block with [violet], she partly agreed but added that the LKE’s argument amounted to saying “if you hadn't been stealing that TV, you would have been handing out soup at the homeless shelter”. Her point was that the effect of Bob Moran’s script was such as to block legitimate telegrams sent by the LKE’s API recruitment script, as manual telegrams take precedence over API telegrams when recruitment telegrams are distributed.

The LKE is not culpable for the fact that Bob Moran’s caused its legitimate recruitment script to cease to function. The fundamental point here is that the LKE didn’t “steal the TV”; Bob Moran did, without their knowledge or consent. It is accordingly unfair to go to great lengths to reverse only those effects of Bob Moran’s actions which benefited the LKE, while leaving those effects of Bob Moran’s actions which damaged the LKE in effect.

There are legitimate arguments over whether or not it was appropriate to impose a recruitment sanction on the LKE as a region - up to the point where its population was corrected to where it otherwise would have been if Bob Moran’s actions had never taken place. We believe that this course of action is highly problematic, not least because region-wide sanctions for individual behaviour lead to innocent parties being punished and the risk of individuals deliberately bringing sanctions onto region. We believe the LKE’s case to be such an unfortunate situation, as they had no way of knowing what Bob Moran was doing. The number of telegrams blocked shown on the LKE API telegram (11,800), examined retrospectively by the Emperor, was entirely consistent with additional manual recruitment for a telegram that had been in operation since July 2013. Yet we accept that there is a wider imperative to ensure that population levels are fair and imposing a recruitment block in order to achieve such a population reduction can be realistically defended.

However, the population reduction caused by the recruitment block once the LKE falls below 400 nations does not fall into that grey area. It is undeniably unfair, because it goes beyond the purposes of population correction, without the LKE being itself culpable. Today, the LKE population is essentially at the population level where it in all likelihood otherwise would have been if Bob Moran had never instituted an illegal script. The population correction has been achieved, the Administrators have done their job and it is time to lift the recruitment block.

This is not mere pedantry. A 400-nation region is in the top 20 user-created regions. A region with 200 nations is not even in the top 50 user-created regions. The difference in effect of applying a proportional correction and applying a disproportional punishment is dramatic and meaningful in gameplay terms. The LKE has not been at the level of 200 nations since early 2011, in the first few months of the present Emperor’s reign. The effect of continuing with a disproportionate recruitment block will be to reverse years of progress achieved by the LKE and its players. These players have committed themselves to this game. They have invested a great deal of time in it. The LKE itself has been invested in this game since October 2005. They do not deserve to have their population decimated beyond the point where it can be plausibly justified as simply reversing Bob Moran’s actions.

Accordingly, with the LKE at 400 nations, we call for the rescission of the recruitment block.

Writinglegend, President of Europeia
Darkesia, Delegate of The West Pacific
Rach Eriksen, Queen of Balder
George VI, King-Emperor of The Kingdom of Great Britain
James III & VIII, King of United Kingdom
Lynneiah, Acting Inquisitor of The New Inquisition
John Norfolk, Prime Minister of British Isles
Richard I, King of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands