Tom Paine

Tom Paine
Speaker of the House
Badges/Roles:	Citizen, Content Editor (Helios), moderator
Patron:	imb39
Patron of:	MasterAdnin, Scorch, Saint-Germain, Pnutmaster, Blau&Gruen, Ferrets54, Honeohvovohaestse, Pallida Mors

Tom Paine is presently in his 11th month of editing the Helios, and his fourth name. He resigned during his second term as Speaker of the House. An active user of the Total War Center forums, he attempts to be helpful (often failing, according to some of his critics) or just post interesting things; this tendency has led to being a moderator of the Common Community (under protest) for a period of about 9 months, from June 2006 to March 2007, to being one of the pioneer Librarians sought out by Tacticalwithdrawal for the Scriptorium, and to his three terms (the third foreshortened by a resignation) as a member of the Consilium de Civitate as well as his current roles.

Tom is what many describe as the archetypal TWCrack addict; having arrived for the Existence of God thread, in which he first posted (with a quadruple post), he has posted in all manner of topics excluding TW ones, having never played a TW game, and has risen to have the highest post count of any member; in fact, this has caused confusion to many a member, and the story of how he originally entered the site has been told many a time. Rapidly after joining he was noticed and proposed for patronisation by cunobelin, and was voted by the staff of the day to the rank of Citizen. Since then he has been active in all areas of the Curia, often changing his mind on issues after the fact due to a stubborn unwillingness to admit, in debate, that he is inaccurate; this is part of the reason for his tremendous postcount, alongside often engaging in one-on-one public debate with users, especially Ummon and Carach.

During Archer's reign as Imperator, Tom acted in conflicting capacities both supporting and attacking Archer at different times; despite this, it was during Archer's reign that he finally agreed to be a moderator, and although senior staff were at the time somewhat dubious on the matter, later events showed him to be a hardworking and effective moderator, if somewhat strict; run-ins with Ferrets54 showed his weaknesses starkly.

More recently he played a minor role in the Staff Rebellion, minor to the point of being a late addition with little input into the process (although, as usual, he shouted louder than most others); during The Purchase, however, he was in close contact with imb39 and other members of those attacking ON, posting often and under a variety of alternate accounts; he refused to delete Helios work in protest, however, feeling that it was his writers' right to decide if they wished to do so.

After the purchase of the site and during the reorganisation, Tom along with Perikles and imb39 undertook the onerous task of rewriting the Constitution, and arrived at a compromise document that the Black Prince rewrote as being unspecific. However, the main principles of staff and Council organisation were as Tom had campaigned for with imb39 over MSN. He ran for Speaker in the first such election, but lost to Obi Wan Asterix; however, in both the second and third, he won, and currently acts as Speaker, a role he intends to resign effective November the 5th, for symbolic reasons.

Tom has an unparalelled habit of changing his user name, once per 10,000 posts. His original user name was Squeakus Maximus; during his "teen" post period, he requested this to be changed to the Grim Squeaker or tGS in homage to a character created by Terry Pratchett. His most recent incarnation, in the 20s, was Ozymandias, and although he was called Ozy during this period the name has already begun to die out in favour of TP or Tom.

He has been an active member of the dynastic games involved with the Curia, beginning his patronage under cunobelin, switching to that of the Black Prince, before finally settling on that of imb39; he has also patronised a total of 10 clients, of whom three have since moved on (two to other patrons, one resigning his rank wholly) and is still attempting to increase the size of his brood.

See Also

• Profile on TWC

This article is about a member of TWC. Members are usually responsible for updating their own pages as they wish, therefore the information shown may not be up-to-date. For current staff list see here. For current citizens list see here.