Politics: five seats of power, won by your votes

Vana'diel has never had a government. Starting this patch it has five seats of power, and every one of them is decided by you: the Crown of Vana'diel, the Mayors of Bastok, San d'Oria and Windurst, and the Royal Treasurer. They are won by a vote of every eligible account, held on a fixed season clock, and the people who win them get powers the rest of the server does not have.

Open it with /politics. Everything it does also works typed as !politics.

The season

Politics runs on a four-week season, the same for everyone, counted from September 14 at midnight UTC.

• Week one is nominations. Anyone who meets a seat's requirements files for it, pays a filing fee the server holds until the count, and writes a short platform.
• Week two is the campaign. Candidates set pledges, seated officeholders hand out public endorsements, and everyone argues in chat.
• Then a 72-hour poll. Every eligible account casts a secret ballot in every race. Ballots are ranked: name a first choice, a second, a third, and the count runs instant runoffs until someone holds a majority.
• The count happens at the end of the poll, automatically, and the winners take their seats on the spot. Mayors and the Treasurer race every season. The Crown races every second season and reigns for two.

The window shows you where the clock is, what you may do right now, and why not when you may not.

The seats and what they can do

Every power is a bounded pick from a menu with a cooldown, and every use of it is broadcast to the whole server and written into the Chronicle. Nothing an officeholder does is quiet, and the server owner can veto any act.

The Crown of Vana'diel. Once a week the Crown issues a royal decree, a 24-hour world buff for everyone: more combat experience, more capacity points, more fame, five percent off every shop, or free chocobo rentals. The Crown can indict a player, marking them Wanted for 72 hours with a fine, and can pardon one. The Crown names a Public Enemy each week: a Dungeon or Legend tier Nemesis monster with a bounty from the Treasury, a quarter of it to each of the first four accounts to kill it. And the Crown can veto the Treasurer's knobs within a day of them being turned.

The Mayors. Each Mayor declares a week-long festival in their own town: five percent off the town's shops, free rentals at the town's stable, or a fame bonus in the town's area. A Mayor can call a town hall, a half-hour window where anyone standing in the city can attend and be counted, with a little fame for showing up. And a Mayor can always teleport home.

The Royal Treasurer. The Treasurer sets the mercenary board's cut and the price of travel through the port window, inside bands. The Treasurer spends the Treasury on civic projects: a stimulus that pays every account that logs in over the next two days, or a Drift Coin bonus on every contract for two days.

The Treasury is fed by losing candidates' filing fees, a cut of refunded pledges and indictment fines. Its balance and every movement are public.

What it takes to run

The gates are the server's own, and they are steep on purpose.

• A Mayor needs fame level 9 in that town, level 75 on the character that files, twenty Drift Board contracts completed this season, an account at least two weeks old, and a filing fee of 250,000 gil.
• The Treasurer needs 100 in every craft on the filing character, or a market record: twenty-five buy orders filled this season and twenty-five million gil of lifetime market sales on the account. The fee is 500,000.
• The Crown needs a full term in another seat first, plus one of three feats on the account: the Gauntlet's fiftieth floor cleared, the Last Verse of Chains of Promathia, or a Legend tier Nemesis kill. The account must be two months old and the fee is five million gil. The winner of the popular vote also needs two of the three seated Mayors behind them, or the throne stays with the Regent.

Every fee comes back to a winner. A loser's fee goes to the Treasury. If a race ends with the Regent, because nobody filed, fewer than five people voted, or the Crown could not find its Mayors, every filing is returned in full.

What it takes to vote

One account, one vote, in every race. Your account must have been created before the season began and have three hours of play on it. Staff accounts neither run nor vote.

Your vote can carry a bonus. In a Mayor's race, fame level 4 in that town adds one vote and level 7 adds two. In the Crown and Treasurer races, twenty Drift Board contracts this season add one and sixty add two. Nobody outvotes three regulars, and your ballot is secret: the server never tells anyone, including the window, how another account voted.

Accounts that log in from the same address during a season share one base vote between them. Your alts are you.

Pledges

A candidate may pledge gil to the voters of their race. The server holds it. If the candidate wins, the pledge is split evenly among every account that voted in that race. If they lose, ninety percent comes back and the Treasury keeps the rest. The pledge is public and the ballot is secret, so it pays everyone and buys nobody.

Anything the system owes you, a refund, a pledge share, a bounty or a stimulus, waits in your account until you press Claim in the window or type !politics claim on any character.

The Chronicle and the title

Every reign, every act, every indictment and every pardon is written into the Chronicle, an append-only record you can read from the window at any time. Nothing edits it. On a server this size the history is the point: who taxed whom, who pardoned whom, and who got voted out for it.

Officeholders also wear the seat as their title. The launcher update that ships with this post adds the five title names to your client, so a Mayor reads as Mayor of Windurst in their title, not as a blank line. Update the launcher and the titles appear on the next launch.

The short version

• Update the launcher, log in, and open /politics.
• From September 14, file for a seat if you qualify, set a platform, pledge if you like.
• Vote in every race during the poll. Rank your choices.
• Claim what you are owed, read the Chronicle, and hold your officials to it.

The first Crown race is in the second season, because the Crown needs a full term served in another seat first. Season one is for the Mayors and the Treasurer. Choose well.