As some of you may know, I am attempting to write a history book about my past experience with Talossa. It's title is "The Resident Miracle Worker and his downfall". It currently sits 131 pages, 46,939 words and is only perhaps 30-50% done.
There are talks currently going on about opening Talossa to diplomacy with other micronations, which is something which I think it a really, really bad idea. And yet, I am in favor of resurrecting ESTO, most likely with the name LOSS this time around.
In this article of Beric'ht, I present you with an extract of my book, the chapter entitled "Just what the hell is ESTO". By the time of publication, it might be revised, but this is how it stands at this moment:
ESTO was, put plainly, the number 1 weapon of retaliation of the Republic against the Kingdom and King Ben’s attacks.
I am pretty sure other Republic citizens will disagree with me, but ESTO was a devilish plan to get back at Ben while showing the Republic as the true Talossa.
If you know your Talossan history books, LOSS (The League of Secessionist States) was the first United Nation of micronations.
Sure, if I recall, LOSS was only for Micronations that had been inspired directly or indirectly by Ben himself, but it was still a major landmark.
ESTO was the brain child of Dal Nava and I, born out of our many phone conversations following my decision to start a micronation league (which I did like every other project: I registered a domain name, micronation-league.com, made a website, and then asked for comments).
My idea simply to start a forum for micronations to talk to each other, while showing leadership from the Republic to distinguish ourselves from the Kingdom.
I have no idea who between Dal Nava and I first came up with the idea of resurrecting LOSS from that idea but I know the brilliant name “Ephemeral States Treaty Organization” was Dal Nava’s idea, and that basing it on a mix between the UN and NATO charters was mine.
I was then the foreign affairs minister of the Republic of Talossa and one of the things in which the Republic differed from the Kingdom was an open-door policy toward other micronations, something which, honestly, I was not 100% comfortable with.
You see, one of the important things to keep it mind, is that there were (are probably still are) 3 main types of micronations out there:
• Serious micronations devoted to nation building who want peaceful exchange of ideas with other micronation (or isolation)
• Bug nations ran from a mad man running the micronation and looking at bullying others, usually because micronations are a war/roly playing game for him or them.
• Semi-serious micronations who either want to truly run a piece of land (like Sealand) or which are in effect, scams (like the one whose name escapes me that charged $5 or so for citizenship with thousands of college students joining just to be part of the trend.
It was clear the only type of micronation the Republic wanted to deal with was of the first kind, but between you and I, the pre-2005 Kingdom of Talossa was styling itself as a serious micronation while in reality being run from a King who wanted to rule a bug nation.
Don’t kid yourself… the citizens of the Kingdom had indeed joined it to either take serious attempts at nation building (the derivatists) or for the pure fun of belonging to a community (the peculiarists), but Ben was clearly in it for playing sick games with his subjects.
If you didn’t believe it before reading my book, I hope I managed to convince you.
Don’t get me wrong, Ben is an amazing person capable of warmth and friendship with great ideas and no fear of working hard to achieve his goals.
But the history of Talossa under his care if the history of turning citizens into enemies and as a result, there was no way Ben’s Kingdom of Talossa could have serious relationships with other micronations.
This is something that was clear to both Dal Nava and I: one of the best ways for the Republic to thrive and get notices was to build the successor to LOSS with the Republic as the founding member.
I had previously begun working hard at establishing diplomatic relations with other micronations and realized that many of them were jealous of some of the things that the Kingdom had for granted:
• A long rich history, which the Republic still clung to
• Over 10 active citizens, which was rare since most micronations had less than 5 citizens
• A privately hosted forum (Witt X)
• A rich database for voting and tracking laws
• Fast web hosting servers with actual domain names in a time where many micronations were on free sites like Geocities
I know, you will say that I am making this up, but I am not! 2005 was a very different period during which it was very easy to have an ugly free website and very hard to have a nice looking one.
Indeed, the first talks proceeding ESTO were for my own initiative: the Micronation-league and one of the key comments from other micronations was how professional the Republic websites looked compared to theirs.
I won’t hide that I am president (then and now) of a web hosting and development company, so I offered to members of the micronation league (which was becoming ESTO) major rebates on our own hosting plan.
Dal Nava was then loosely working for my company as a web designer and we were planning to help make other micronation websites look great in exchange for a little money but more importantly, gain a leadership position in the micronation world for the Republic.
And that is the end of that specific chapter. Over the next few chapters, I post a few documents about ESTO, like an interview for Talossa Weekly and details of secret talks to incorporate a very special Micronation: The Kingdom of Talossa!
I also list no less than 13 other micronations who had then officially applied to join ESTO. To know more, sadly, you'll need to either wait for new snippets in Beric'ht or for the eventual publication of my book
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