Amaranth

Gah! I know! Shocker! Truth is, Amaranth is coming back, after nearly three years of being in the darkness. In June 2022, I begun this region on a whim. That whim grew into a dream, the dream to begin one of the largest newer regions to come out of 2020s NationStates. In many ways, Amaranth was an experiment. Did I have high hopes for it? Almost certainly. Did it go the way I expected it to? No, absolutely not.

In many ways, one of the main things that set me back was my leadership. Founding a region on this site is hard, hard work. I learnt that the very hard way when in September 2022 I was forced to close up shop because the spark that was fueling the beating heart of Amaranth had depleted and the heart had, let's just say, stopped beating long before that anyway.

When I first founded the region in 2022, it was pretty much just me. The entire constitution was written by me, the entire structure of the region was conjured up by me, the entire roleplay (from the map to the little graphical factbook that was made for it) was created by me; so, in many ways, for Amaranth to have grown as quickly as it did when it was quite literally a product of my own design is impressive to me. Maybe it's a little pathetic to some of the larger regions on this site, many of whom have also been the product of solely one person.

I think somebody once described Amaranth as a "little dictatorship" that I had running. It was a little insulting at first, but Wayne sorta hit the nail on the head with this one. Amaranth is, for lack of a better term, my dictatorship. It cannot fully function without my 100% involvement, or undivided attention, despite my desires for Amaranth to stand out as a beacon / paradise of liberty and democracy on NationStates. Lol. Sometimes, you gotta be pragmatic in order to keep things alive.

Why now? Whatever for?

You want the truth? This was another whim. Perhaps starting regions on whims is a bad idea? Perhaps, Amaranth 2 electric boogaloo is just as destined to fall as its predecessor was. But we're starting the region with more manpower now. We have already begun throwing around ideas for how the region should be run and there's been a large group effort on our end to establish a regional roleplay that works for everybody. So bring what little hope you can out of that!

Second, ever since Amaranth fell in September 2022, I've been actively participating in the bureaucracy of The East Pacific. In October 2024, I became the Vice Delegate, meaning my position in the region is more important than ever before. But I'm a bit of a workaholic with these things; as well as the endless tsunami of real-life priorities, I like to keep myself busy in the online world, too. Otherwise I'm staring at a screen with little to no substance. So in many ways, becoming Vice Delegate of TEP has allowed me to focus on my other passions in TEP and on a broader scale in NS.

Third, why did SO many Amaranth members stick around even though I had left? It still baffles me that for two whole years, there was still a small community here that regularly visited the site despite not having an active region to indulge in. Despite all the countless raid attempts, too! And despite my attempt at establishing the "successor region" of Diaguandri (which I suppose you could now call a "soulless husk"). Thanks to the small group who stuck around, you gave me hope that the dream of Amaranth hadn't died, it just simply wasn't ready. <3

What can we expect going forward?

An incredibly slow transitional government period. The idea of breathing new life into this region is still very fresh, and it's early days. There's currently absolutely no telling where the region will move going forward, or if it will even be able to reclaim, or even bypass, its former glory. But there's no rush, we all have lives outside of NS, and the current provisional government is a small community of my closest friends. So in many ways, we all understand eachother and there's a cute sense of commitment there. We've put a lot of time into creating a regional map and figuring out how the roleplay is going to work, and none of us want that dedication or time to go to waste.

We're also working out a new structure for the region, and a brand-spanking new codex! How fun!

There's a lot of hope going into this moving forward. Hopefully, we can work together to finally make something of this. <3