Pre-Civ History of Cortesia Del Mar

The history of Cortesia Del Mar spans four years before the nation established itself on its first Civ server (CivClassic 2.0) in January 2021. This history is complex and far removed from the typical circumstances of Civ servers, and has a variety of impacts on the nation to the present. Foundation (Unknown date, early 2017) Cortesian pre-Civ history begins on an indeterminate date in early 2017. The exact date of Cortesia Del Mar's foundation has been lost alongside the hard drive of IceCarim's old computer. Cortesia Del Mar was founded by President IceCarim and an individual named MarioFanSG2 on a large Towny server called RebirthCraft, on a subserver called Towny Awakened. Core members of the nation, such as Vice President caganair, yodabird19, Aid711, and Brick_WallGaming, appeared in the following months. The nation's government was hastily constructed without great consideration for bureaucratic resilience, and consisted of two houses of government: the Cabinet and the Executive Committee, both of which nominated players to themselves without input from the populace.

First Ascendancy (June 2017 - December 2017) Cortesia Del Mar grew in size, population, and wealth at a steady rate until mid 2017, in which Cortesia's capacity dramatically expanded with the recruitment of adept grinders Ragsmel and TheMadShadowLord, and shortly thereafter their mutual friend Zhuge; this trio in turn recruited several members of their external friend group, which would come to be known as "the Clique". The Cortesian population ballooned from ~15 members to ~60, becoming the fourth-largest town by population on RebirthCraft and playing a key role in the formation of the Towny Awakened United Towns (TAUT), an alliance of the server's largest towns. Ragsmel and Zhuge especially boosted the town's productivity through pay-to-win donation shop purchases; in December 2017, the duo broke the RebirthCraft economy on Cortesia Del Mar's behalf by opening a public shop that exploited the high server-shop selling price of snowballs via a large array of purchased snow golem spawners.

The Clique (August 2017 - April 2018) Ragsmel and Zhuge's clique of friends quickly flooded the Cortesian government - first the Cabinet, and soon after the Executive Committee; this, due to their large member count, granted the group extreme sway over Cortesia's vulnerable republican structure, as they were able to organize outside of Cortesian channels and vote as a unit. The first notable exercise of this power came on August 6 2017, when TheMadShadowLord fell out with the Clique, and was promptly put on trial and exiled from the nation, in what is considered by the current Cortesian government to be a miscarriage of justice; TheMadShadowLord was later allowed back into Cortesia via a compromise between the Clique and President IceCarim. The Clique again warped the Cortesian government on October 6 2017, when former Vice President caganair's retirement gave way to a heated three-way race for the Vice Presidency between Ragsmel, TheMadShadowLord, and yodabird19, which was unceremoniously settled with the inauguration of the "Vice Triumvirate"; IceCarim insisted in DMs that yodabird19 was "the real...VP", but the Vice Triumvirate was relegated to a formality in practice. This power would persist, causing similar issues until the end of the first Cortesian Republic; IceCarim and yodabird19 increasingly found themselves uncomfortably manipulating national politics and playing members against one another in order to maintain Cortesian stability, a secret program retroactively deemed "the web of lies".

Independence Day (April 1, 2018) In February 2018, RebirthCraft was unexpectedly sold for college money by its inactive owner to an incompetent duo, which led to the server's almost immediate demise. In the ensuing First Interim Period, Cortesia Del Mar lost almost all of its members outside of the Executive Committee, and tensions within the remaining government were amplified. Cortesia Del Mar began searching for a new server on which to play; on March 3 2018, yodabird19 was banned from the Clique's favored server, ArcticWorlds, for criticizing a typo in a spawn hologram; this had no effect on the Clique's desire to move there. In response, on March 17, IceCarim, yodabird19, Brick_WallGaming, Aid711, and an assortment of other Cortesians plotted to separate from the existing Cortesian republic; this plan was executed on April 1, 2018 (a date deliberately chosen for its comedic value). The initial plan for the revolution consisted of involved government officials solemnly posting thoughtful resignation messages and leaving, but due to the Cortesian President (and owner of the Cortesian Discord server)'s involvement in the revolution, this was able to quickly devolve into hundreds of @everyone pings. All Clique members were forcibly purged from the Cortesian discord, and most were never heard from afterwards.

Fading (March 17, 2018 - September 23, 2018) The new Cortesian state moved to its preferred server Maestrea, a complex Towny server where it accomplished little; the server accidentally reset on July 24, 2018. Cortesia searched for other servers, most notably a nascent server called Wolfpack, which collapsed on September 21 2018 due to internal struggles among the developers. On September 23 2018, with Cortesia Del Mar once again serverless, yodabird19 proffered a server that he had been playing independently, StarLegacy which the Secretariat (the renamed Executive Committee) ravenously agreed to join.

A New Hope (September 23, 2018 - December 21, 2018) StarLegacy represented a sudden divergence from the Towny environment that Cortesia was used to; StarLegacy was a warfare-heavy space server, so Cortesians sheltered with the nation of which yodabird19 had independently been a member, Exerticus. The Cortesians almost immediately founded a settlement under the Exercitan banner, and rose rapidly through the nation's ranks. On December 21 2018, the Settlement of Cortesia Del Mar declared "amicable" independence, forming a Cortesian nation; the four core Cortesians - IceCarim, yodabird19, Aid711, and Brick_WallGaming - spread out to each form their own settlements on different StarLegacy planets, which were between 20 and 60 minutes of travel time apart.

Second Ascendancy (December 21, 2018 - April 29, 2019) The young Cortesia immediately negotiated itself into the alliance of which Exercitus was already a part, the behemoth Andromedan Republic, which had been formed shortly before Cortesia arrived on StarLegacy as a coalition against several self-proclaimed "pirate" (shitter) nations. The Andromedan Republic consisted of most influential nations on StarLegacy at the time, including the server owner's nation Arimfea. Cortesia's first months on the server were prosperous, with settlements both growing and expanding in number; the nation recruited an enormous number of native StarLegacy players, of which some were far more experienced on the server than the Cortesian government. Within the Andromedan Republic, Cortesia Del Mar specialized in diplomacy; Cortesian officials conducted diplomacy with outside groups, managed frequent internal crises, and joined various Andromedan Republic organizations, such as its newspaper and intelligence agency. On February 3 2019, TheMadShadowLord, now named TurquoisesLight, rediscovered Cortesia Del Mar and joined yodabird19's underwater settlement of Aquosum. This period of growth, retroactively named the Second Ascendancy, ended with two major separations of players from Cortesia. On April 29 2019, several experienced Cortesians, as well as TurquoisesLight, left Cortesia in favor of upstart mercantile nation VEGA, which was increasingly dominated by former members of the "pirate" nations that the Andromedan Republic once defeated; on May 10 2019, a number of Cortesian recruits seceded, alongside their settlements, to form the nation of Orovika, citing "how bureaucratic Cortesia felt". This population collapse stunted Cortesia's general ascendancy, but left its diplomatic sway largely intact.

Playing Discord (March 21, 2019 - September 15, 2019) As Cortesia became enmeshed in StarLegacy's aggressive political environment, its leaders found themselves heading questionable war efforts, unscrupulous espionage missions, and tense negotiations. This unpleasant political environment led to increasing disdain among Cortesians for StarLegacy, punctuated by increasingly volatile intermittent nationwide crises of faith. From June 18 to July 1 2019, VEGA, the self-proclaimed "mercantile" nation (of which TurquoisesLight was still a member), engaged the Andromedan Republic in a serverwide war, which the Andromedan Republic unequivocally lost; however, due to StarLegacy's server-enforced claims, the alliance was not destroyed - merely demoralized; the peace deal which ended this First VEGA War was struck by Andromedan Republic chancellor Emeris4017 without consulting the rest of the alliance, a scandal which led to her resignation from the position. On July 18 2019, IceCarim was elected Chancellor of the Andromedan Republic; eight days later, VEGA went back on its peace deal, triggering the Second VEGA War. This war was unceremoniously cut short on August 10 2019, when logs of the StarLegacy staff chat were leaked showing server owner and Andromedan Republic leading figure MicleBrick threatening to delete StarLegacy should his alliance lose again, prompting to a hasty draw to the war. Cortesia Del Mar quickly became fed up with StarLegacy, and on September 15 2019 departed from the server, with IceCarim's famous resignation message describing the experience as "playing Discord".

The Second Interim Period (September 15, 2019 - January 27, 2020) Cortesia entered its Second Interim Period dissatisfied, unstable, and impatient to find another server; however, rather than being short, the Second Interim Period lasted for over four months. Cortesia Del Mar examined a wide array of servers (even encountering CivClassic 2.0, but dismissing it as "factions"), but found fault in all of them. At one point, the nation even succumbed to a StarLegacy relapse, and half-heartedly played the server for another week. The Second Interim Period was marked by constant tumult within the Secretariat (which was, as in the First Interim Period, the center of activity within Cortesia), and there arose an increasing sense of hopelessness among the Cortesian core. On October 13th 2019, shortly after the resolution of an incident involving Aid711 briefly rage-quitting the serverless nation and being begged to return, yodabird19 remarked privately to IceCarim that "CDM is laced with dynamite all directions rn; so far we’ve contained each explosion". In November 2019, Cortesia discovered a nations server called MCAtlas, but abandoned it, before returning in January 2020 out of what was later identified as desperation.

Atlas (January 27, 2020 - October 5th, 2020) Cortesia Del Mar established itself on Atlas on January 27 2020, shortly before the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Despite the new wealth of available time presented by these early months, Cortesia's time on Atlas was one of long-lasting stagnation. Though Cortesia's ostensible goal on Atlas was to build nice cities, Cortesia never effectively planned nor efficiently gathered the requisite materials to do so, resulting instead in a series of semi-abandoned nascent towns. On March 15 2020, in an indicent similar to those during the Second Interim Period, Aid711 rage-quit Cortesia over disagreements on how to proceed with building the nation's capital; rather than beg for his return, the Cortesian secretariat agreed unanimously to notify Aid711 that "your presence is no longer requested in the nation of Cortesia Del Mar" (a line which has since become an iconic quote). yodabird19 was Cortesia's only consistently active member on Atlas, and, seeing his nation inactive, turned instead to invigorating the wider Atlas community with an array of community projects, such as the Atlian International Rail Project (AIRP), Atlas History Project (AHP), and Atlas Political and Economic Symposium for Hosting International Telecommunication (APESHIT, a CivUN equivalent). When on June 6 2020 the server's admins released an overwhelmingly disliked update which rapidly reverted unvisited land to its natural state, destroying the server's rails and ruins, what existed of Cortesia focused its attention instead on diplomacy, forming the Dawn Alliance with the Atlian nations of Insula and Morvia on June 9 2020; the Alliance was nonconsensually dragged into a war with the E [sic] alliance on July 13 2020, and collapsed from internal disagreement a week later (Cortesia Del Mar recruited Morvian Minister of Foreign Affairs Vedd as a result of this crisis). After this, with all interests on the server blocked, what remained of Cortesian activity on Atlas vanished. yodabird19 remained active solely out of a desire to preserve and perpetuate Cortesia Del Mar, and began to quietly server-search without the knowledge of the rest of the nation. The cracks in Atlas as a server began to show, and were brought to a crescendo when prominent Atlian easy_beans initiated a serverwide petition movement on September 21 2020 in which yodabird19 became extensively involved; the movement was denied by the Atlas admins, and so, on October 5th 2020, Cortesia Del Mar finally formally left Atlas. Cortesia concluded its Atlian presence with two somber Atheran Times op-eds by yodabird19 and IceCarim, and by exploding its Atlian capital.

The Third Interim Period (October 5th, 2020 - January 2nd, 2021) Before joining CivClassic 2.0, Cortesia Del Mar first examined a variety of adjacent servers, both ancestors and descendants of Atlas, but found each an unsuitable home. Cortesia long considered Loka, progenitor of Atlas and warfare-heavy combat server, to be its ultimate destination; however, a lengthy three-day debate between IceCarim and yodabird19 concluded on December 21 2021 with the determination that Loka was unsuitable and that CivClassic 2.0 would be Cortesia's next home. Cortesians examining CivClassic unexpectedly encountered the independent NFN OMN of New Sol in the +,+, led by former StarLegacy ally EngineeringBean; New Sol agreed to merge into Cortesia. Cortesia Del Mar was officially founded on CivClassic on January 2 2021.