Columbia

The Empire of Columbia, also known as the Third Empire of Columbia, is a sovereign nation located deep in the Northwestern quadrant. It is governed primarily by a President with sweeping authority and jurisdiction, representing a hereditary monarch, the Emperor. The pride of Columbia is its beautiful capital city of Rotterdam, its smaller side communities, and its unique culture and national spirit.

The Empire of Columbia was founded in its current form on October 7th, 2017, and its current constitution was ratified on February 11th, 2018, however there were several versions of Columbia before that.

Devoted 3.0
The early history of Columbia begins in April of Devoted 3.0, when leaders of the (then) Empire of Caledonia, United Federation of Normandy, Kingdom of Jyrssa, and Free State of Astronya, came together to form the First Columbian Empire. This was the result of a few weeks of scheming between Chancellor kdeeks of Normandy and Emperor Onederful of Caledonia. Leaders of the United Federation, such as Hamboy_Jr, were also consulted about the unification of Northwestern territories to form Columbia, but did not all desire to join. Serious planning for the country began around April 25th, including the submission of ideas for the capital city and the formation of a government. The Columbian Empire was based on a council of Grand Princes, who would elect amongst themselves one Emperor in a cycle of elections which occurred once every two months. Grand Princes would transfer the title to one another depending on the results of the vote. Columbia was further expanded when the empire's leaders offered a position as the third Grand Prince to King Zebra of Jyrrsa, who accepted the position and annexation of his kingdom's territory into the Columbian Empire. Additionally, the three leaders plotted to annex the Free State of Astronya, headed by Supreme Leader shadedoom, into the empire by means of coercion or military force. After several days of debate, shadedoom agreed to join Columbia as the fourth Grand Prince and allowed Astronya to become an autonomous district. Once fully united, the Columbian Empire was quick to declare independence from Chanada, who claimed much of its land, and invade the small state of Olympus which refused to be subjugated. The war began on May 3rd, as the volunteer Two Minute Militia formed of Astronyan citizens, and marched on the capital city of the Olympians. Coming only two days after the May 1st Conflict, in which Astronya had previously occupied the capital of Olympus and seized its colors, Astronyans were delighted to have another shot at their Southern rivals. The force was quick to act, and pearled three Olympian leaders within five minutes, then continuing to drive all other citizens away from the country until the city-state was fully occupied. After this, Columbia declined on Devoted 3.0 due to a lack of activity, not having a national Discord server until late in its existence, and the emergence of CivEx 3.0 as a server.

CivEx 3.0
The story of Columbia continued on the CivEx 3.0 server as the core population of Columbia reorganized, created a Discord server, and moved over. While the Columbian Empire on Devoted 3.0 was intended to resemble an imperialistic model of the United States of America, the leaders of Columbia decided to change directions a bit and model the new Columbian state on the Confederate States of America, installing a government which was much more tolerant of local autonomy over national power. Thus began the Confederate States of Columbia, alternatively known as the Columbian Confederacy. The leaders of this Columbian state were the same four oligarchs as from Devoted 3.0, now also adding Hamboy_Jr officially to their ranks, however this time they decided to rebrand themselves as Councilors and abolish the system of rotating authority, making a five way council of equal members. Upon joining the server, Columbians rallied to the center of the map, gathered basic resources, and made a long hike West to claim lands that would eventually become the Syndicate of Co-Prosperity. The key tool Columbians used to recruit new members was to tell them simply, "You have been annexed by the Confederate States of Columbia," and many new citizens willingly joined as a result of this. After a few days of living in the Southwest of the map, the Syndicate settlers in the region became aggravated that we were on what they considered their land, and seeing the complete lack of resources and fertility of the area, Columbia decided to move to the Northwest and settle a long peninsula in the area. There was a brief border dispute with the neighboring state of Arcation, but it was resolved quickly and in Columbia's favor. The oligarchs then divided land and responsibilities, founding the states of: Tennessee, Carolina, Louisiana, and Virginia. A nearby ice mountains continent was also annexed and dubbed Alaska, leadership of it being awarded to NeoTide_, as was the inactive nation of Icenia which became a colony of Columbia, and the far-flung colony of Pasadena led by wittle_wubzy. More autonomous territories were carved out of existing states, including the Autonomous Island of Seminole, and the Leylin Farmers. By then, the population was booming to a height of 34 citizens, but it also proved to be problematic in terms of national supplies and infrastructure. During all of this time of internal political change and restructuring, the nation's infrastructure struggled to be erected, essentially being limited to a large mining pit under Tennessee, a couple small buildings in Nashville, Tennessee, a couple buildings in Alaska, and a sizable but limited farm in Carolina. Additionally, members struggled to get allegiance, and to get materials like clay and melons because of badmin crimes. The struggle for allegiance was particularly troublesome, because Columbia had decided to align itself with the Consulate of Varsany, a state in dispute with Arcation. Arcation, being a very powerful militaristic state, was able to easily overrun Varsany and the limited Columbian aid that was sent due to the PvP restrictions of non-allegiant players.

Eventually, Columbian unity would fall out of the frying pan and into the fire, with the betrayal of Councilor Onederful and Provincial Administrator wittle_wubzy. For quite a while Onederful had been being coached by inactive Channer lunatic bgbba about why he thought Columbia was a horrible nation and why he should betray the state. Onederful took his advice one day, stole all of Columbia's most precious items that the players had all grinded for, including many stacks of obsidian acquired by Herr_Speer, and secretly dropchested it far away. He proceeded to lock everyone out of the national citadel groups, delete the national discord, and go inactive after that. wittle_wubzy then announced the illegal secession of Pasadena from the country. What they thought would destroy Columbia forever only made it rally together stronger. The country quickly made a response via the national news service BOX News, and began an ultimately unsuccessful hunt for Onederful and wittle_wubzy. A few days later wittle_wubzy begged to be allowed back in Columbia, but was rejected for his treasonous acts. Although national spirits were high at the time, a growing movement for reformation sprouted from the base of non-government citizens, advocating for a democratic form of government in which they would get a say and be able to elect a President of Columbia, because the history of Columbia on CivEx 3.0 had proven that the council of five oligarchs, who constantly disagreed and formed voting blocks which vetoed anything from happening, was not a well-functioning form of government. The population and oligarchy agreed to a compromise after much debate, and thus began the drafting of the first ever Constitution of Columbia. This process was promising, however CivEx 3.0 quickly died due to the release of CivClassic 2.0 and the rampant badmin crimes from the CivEx team. Columbia did not move over to CivClassic 2.0 when it came out because of a lack of citizen spirit to continue with the nation.

CivClassic 2.0: Part 1
Following the shutdown of CivEx 3.0, a few citizens of Columbia moved over to CivClassic 2.0 and joined different nations. Most Columbians, however, went into a state of inactivity and retirement. Around the end of the Summer of 2017, shadedoom began playing on Devoted 3.0 once again in a new micronation he led called the Kingdom of Reidos. This return to the CivCraft genre of servers led him to reach out to his fellow former leader of Columbia, kdeeks, after a couple of months. Together, the two of them decided to bring Columbia back to life and move it over to CivClassic 2.0 as a whole. Once they had contacted many former citizens from CivEx 3.0 and Devoted 3.0 and convinced them to return, they set out to find an area of the map to claim and settle in. After much discussion, shadedoom scouted a set of islands in the deep Northwest of the map, which became Columbia's new home. This location was chosen largely because of its large plains biomes which were ideal for building cities, and because after just a few days of being on the server, the Somber War broke out, the initial action of which was occurring in the Southern hemisphere; Columbia wanted to be out of the way of the war. The people of Columbia initially chose to found the country as an absolute monarchy, the Grand Duchy of Columbia, and shadedoom pushed kdeeks to be the Grand Duke of the country. A council of nobles known as the Fürsten was formed to advise Grand Duke kdeeks, consisting of Just_Matter, shadedoom, and NeoTide_.

Construction quickly began on a new capital city on the main island of the country. After much dispute, the city was named Rotterdam, after the real life Dutch port city of Rotterdam. The concept was that it would be a mid-1700s to mid-1800s style port city with a prosperous waterfront district and harbor with ships. However, the humble beginnings of the city were in a neighborhood to the Southwest that would become known as Hamlet. This neighborhood was mostly built by, and was a simple assortment of wooden buildings in an agrarian setting. Soon after settling the small township of Hamlet, Columbia began work on mining to fill its national coffers, as well as digging rails to connect itself to the international community. Rotterdam slowly developed into a more urban looking environment with a few large buildings and a central town square being constructed, and other small settlements began to pop up around the country as well. One of these early townships was called Apoland, which was in the Northwest of Columbia. Apoland was very controversial in the beginning because it was illegally settled on the private estate of Fürst shadedoom, which was known at the time as Cascadia. It was a misunderstanding that occurred because shadedoom had been fairly inactive for a month or two at that point, and the other Fürsten gave the area to Aposii and Green_Trump not realizing shadedoom owned it. The situation was resolved with shadedoom being given a new estate he named Lëtzebuerg in the Southwest of Columbia, and Aposii and Green_Trump being allowed to keep the island Apoland was settled on, which they renamed to Zeeland. Because shadedoom had been inactive, however, the Fürsten Just_Matter and NeoTide_ refused to allow him to claim the title of Fürst anymore. However, because he was a founder and longtime member of Columbia, shadedoom was given a lower title of nobility by Grand Duke kdeeks, and made into a Margrave. Thus the estate of Lëtzebuerg became the autonomous Margravate of Lëtzebuerg. After these disputes were settled, the country was peaceful and stable for a while, with Rotterdam and Apoland continuing to see progress, and the Fürsten working on establishing farms and the first semblances of EXP-producing infrastructure.

However, as 2018 approached the server, Columbia began to face internal problems. The biggest of these was that Grand Duke kdeeks wasn't actually very active or involved in the leadership and public works of Columbia. The nobility and common citizenry alike were growing increasinbly frustrated with his lack of output, and something had to be done. In late December, key members of Columbia sat down to discuss political reform, and a document called the New Year's Compromise was ratified across all classes of the Grand Duchy. The document effectively turned Columbia into a very rough version of a constitutional monarchy, with a powerful Chancellor at the head of the country, but kdeeks keeping his position as Grand Duke with much more limited powers. The first election for Chancellor of Columbia saw Just_Matter win and become the first of the new democratically elected leaders of the Grand Duchy. He chose NeoTide_ as his Vice Chancellor, a position that didn't legally exist but would be carried forward since then as a constitutional tradition.

History of the Unitary Federation of Columbia on Expand to be written.

History of the Lusitan Occupation on CivClassics 2.0 to be written.

History of the restoration and Second Empire of Columbia on CivClassics 2.0 to be written.

CivClassic 2.0: Part 2
After leaving NATO, Columbia attempted to return to a peaceful lifestyle, permitting people who had left the nation to escape the war to return. Notably the Rhodesians came to Columbia wanting to escape the endless bombardment of Hjaltland Raids against their vault and city. Kdeeks was one of these Rhodesians, being present previously, he quickly gained power and helped the Rhodesians get a leg up within Columbian Politics. While this all seemed good and well, there was a few notable incidents that caused this group of players to begin pushing away from Emperor Shadedoom, and the other citizens of Columbia. The Rhodesians created the experience complex of "Rhodes" in the northernmost tip of Columbia, however this complex came under fire after it was reinforced under different groups from Columbian Federal groups. Which the complex was originally supposed to be constructed on. After much debate, both sides chose to permit 3 citizens of Columbia ownership on all groups including federal ones. Those 3 citizens would be Shadedoom, lemuractionnews, and kdeeks. This helped prevent the possibility of a civil war for some time. However the peace provided from the agreement was short. Robokaiser, a known leader of the NATO alliance, pearled kdeeks. Amongst the confusion of the incident, things began getting thrown around, shadedoom was occupied due to unknown reasons, unable to respond to what questions his citizens were asking him. Robokaiser chose to release supposed "evidence" of shadedoom requesting NATO to pearl kdeeks, in an attempt to punish him for crimes that shadedoom later found out kdeeks did not commit. Shadedoom when he was able to get online, provided evidence to kdeeks that he had in-fact ordered NATO to not pearl kdeeks, as he had found out that kdeeks had not committed the crimes he had accused him of. Kdeeks chose to not believe shade, resulting in the beginning of the Columbian Bush War.

Kdeeks began this war by initially removing shadedoom and many other Columbians off of every single group he had access to, including federal groups he did not own. Utilizing a group merging bug that had never been patched he was able to steal the groups out from under shadedoom. The admins chose not to revoke such thing, since it had been done many times in the past. Shadedoom and most of the other columbians who had been removed fled to nearby Valyria, which had escaped the groups being stolen. lemuractionnews was not removed as an owner on most of the groups, due to kdeeks believing that lemur would choose his side as opposed to shadedoom. Against kdeeks best judgement lemuractionnews proceeded to steal a few of the groups before he in turn was removed from the rest. Lemur quit immediately afterwords choosing to take a break rather than watch what he believed would likely be the end of Columbia.

Shadedoom initially attempted to negotiate with kdeeks, however the demands requested by the Rhodesians and Kdeeks were far too much to ask of him, as well as they always ended with him never being permitted on the groups ever again. At this point, shadedoom considered the groups lost. He chose to prepare Valyria for the soon incoming attack that would likely be the Rhodesians attempt at securing shadedooms pearl. This in turn forced shadedoom to request the valyrians help, and kick Columbia back into overdrive in order to retake the homeland.

Currently, international support for both sides was not clear. The UDF supported Shadedoom due to his past relations with them, the Entente, was busy with the Laconia conflict, and NATO seemed to be confused as to which side to support. Two foreign nationals from Nyasaland, Kaloa_HG and Aivius chose to help Columbia out with its situation. Leading NATO to believe that Entente was backing the Oomist Faction.

The conflict continued on for some time, until in an poor attempt to attack the Crucible, all of the Rhodesian attackers except for Gthomas4 were pearled. (I'd reccomend reading The Columbian Bush War for more information on this conflict.)

This in turn ended the Columbian Bush War, however without the groups to the main city Rotterdam and its vault Sempiternal, it would remain a hot pit of dangerous traps and conflict until the near future.

NATO Attack
In the late hours of a cold January night, Doommad and Kaloa_HG traveled to Rotterdam, in an attempt to have some new players who had accidentally stumbled into the hostile lands leave. During this attempt to have these new players leave, Doommad and Kaloa_HG were attacked by Urban_2 a known NATO account. Shadedoom contacted NATO leader Hantzu and requested to know what was going on, only to be bombarded with insults and useless chatter about how he had supposedly 'betrayed' him and such. In turn forcing Shadedoom to assist the UDF and Entente forces in attacking Pinkerton. During the attempted first recovery of Rhodes, Columbian and UDF forces found a tunnel that supposedly went all the way to the Hallow vault, an exile scout was sent down the tunnel, only to be killed by a city bastion bouncing them into stone. Due to the fact that this tunnel had seemingly gone all the way to the ~2000 block city bastion perimeter of the Hallow vault, it seemed viable that it may go all the way to the vault, however Shadedoom chose to ignore this in hopes that initially NATO would not attack them.

The conflict escalated, after Kaloa_HG caught Robokaiser attempting to remove a logbox placed in Polska by Mir and Entente forces, Kaloa_HG watched Robokaiser run away, presumably to a bunker. Then chose to leave. Only 30 minutes later, Robokaiser began entering Valyrian land, despite being instructed to leave. Kaloa_HG was forced to go out and fight Robokaiser on the bridge to Polska, until Doommad and DefectedHeart arrived to help push Robo back. This caused NATO to have the realization that Columbia would not take being attacked sitting down, forcing NATO to push their entire PvP force to southern Valyria, where they began a nearly 2 month offensive on the city. Valyria City at the end of these 2 months had withstood numerous attacks, several obsidian bombings, and a massive sky platform spanning over 500 blocks.

The Crucible, which was initially to have been thought to only win the Columbian Bush War was now being prepared for a potential vault defense against NATO forces, and eventually that attack the Columbians predicted came. In the early morning hours of Febuary 12th after an insider obby bombed half the half finished vault to kingdom come, NATO finally attacked. Entente and Mirian forces were summoned off of their Laconian and Pinkerton battlegrounds, the entire coalition was moving to Columbia to begin a defense of the Crucible. NATO had chosen to do a ground attack, with roughly ~30 PvPers on standby. Initially Jayms an Entente fighter arrived at the vault and immediately potted up and began fighting the entire fighting force of NATO. This attack surprised the NATO forces and caused them to move back. This permitted time for the Mirians to grab resources from nearby bunkers leftover from when they had sieged Columbia only a year earlier. Eventually, the fighters arrived, and began to mount an offensive against the NATO forces who were now pushing back towards the vault. During a surge into NATO's ground tunnel, Coalition forces successfully blocked up the entrance they used and managed to block a few NATO fighters in, who quickly escaped via pearling into the NATO side of the tunnel. However, BennyZ found Bob_The_Builder cowering in a corner due to him being unable to escape. BennyZ and S4NTA, _theJKH_ all ganged up on Bob and caused him to drop after only 45 seconds of fighting. Quickly causing NATO forces to retreat, causing the NATO siege on the Crucible to fail.

After NATO's attack against the crucible failed, they resorted back to bombing the Valyrian City as much as they could, until finally Coalition forces were forced to mount a 2 tier skybridge against Polska City, forcing NATO forces to be flushed out. This permitted Columbia to return to cleaning up Valyria City, and allowed Polska, now Augska, to be back under Columbian control.

Current Structure
To Be Written

Geography
Columbia in general consists of primarily mountainous terrain, with various coastal plains and lowland areas surrounding in all directions. There is a large inland lake, known as Lake Columbia, which is fed by the Sisters River which runs adjacent to the City of Rotterdam. Additionally, there are several smaller islands scattered around the empire, as well as a small marshland exclave bordering Southern Coventhia and Impasse.

The heart of the empire is the capital City of Rotterdam, which boasts grand, imperial architecture, the Columbian national government, and the Columbian monarchy. There are several smaller settlements and unique regions of Columbia as well, with varying architectural and cultural standards of their own.

Greater Rotterdam Area
Motto: Jewel of the Empire.

Capital: Rotterdam

Region consists of all urban development associated with the city of Rotterdam including the urban core, suburbs, and outlying zones.

Rottoschoss
Motto: For king, god and fatherland, shalt I serve.

Capital: N/A (Rural District of Rotterdam)

Region consists of the mountainous area North of Rotterdam, notable for being the only region to lack any major urban centre due to its primary role being the resource support of the national capital, and as a place for overflow population settlement.

Lëtzebuerg
Main page: Lëtzebuerg Motto: Pride in unity.

Capital: Shiedstad

Originally an autonomous fiefdom, Lëtzebuerg was reincorporated as a normal region of Columbia following early reforms in Chancellor shadedoom's first term, which aimed at unifying the nation's population by abolishing the noble class of citizens.

The Kingdom of Apoland
Motto: Long live the Apolish Isles!

Capital: Apoland

Originally another autonomous fiefdom, Zeeland was reincorporated as a normal region of Columbia following the inactivity and removal of Aposii and Green_Trump, its primary overseers. Its capital of Apoland has since been given standard township status, and granted as a personal estate to lemuractionnews, who serves as its King.

Marshton (Colony)
Motto: How bad can this possibly be?

Capital: HaecCorp

Marshton was first acquired in the early days of Columbia under the absolute government of Emperor kdeeks, which preceded the Chancellery system Columbia now enjoys, as a means of producing cocoa beans, pumpkins, and vines, which are all essential ingredients to some EXP recipes. It has since been repurchased from Coventhia, and used as an agricultural area to support modern Columbian EXP production efforts.

Augska (Colony)
Motto: R.I.P. Augska. Robokaiser, please come back.

Capital: Spideria

Augska was formerly an independent nation in the earlier days of the server, based around lands Southeast of Columbia's heartland. It had since gone inactive, and was annexed in full into the First Empire of Columbia. When the First Empire dissolved for a period of two months, Augskan lands remained unclaimed by foreign powers until the Columbian Homeward Migration saw the reestablishment of Columbia's claim over select Augskan lands under the Second Empire. Later on, Coventhia partitioned much of what remained of Augskan territory, including their old capital city, Augska City. The Columbian colony of Augska now consists of solely the large mesa island in the Southeast of Columbia.

Virginia
Motto: Who the fuck doesn't reinforce?!?!?

Capital: Rickmond

Formerly an illegal colony of Columbia's infamous and expansionist far-northern rival Kaiserreich, Xylvania is an old, mountainous province stretching from the relatively fertile Sylvanian plateau to the poorly charted and almost inhospitable lands far to the north; which are empty aside from the odd village of shepherds, woodcutters and fishermen. Norfolk itself is an ancient city, boasting a single central road running its length and many old medieval houses and taverns.

After the pearling of regional overseer Labigcheese, Virginia, then renamed Bohemia, was granted to YourAverageRick upon his joining Columbia as a pet project.

For some god forsaken reason, Labig didn't reinforce a thing, and due to Rick's desire to not have to CTR literally everything, he began tearing out old structures and making plans for new, greater, villages.

Work was postponed indefinitely due to a fun cocktail of Rick's burnout with civ and the Columbian Bush War, but plans are ambitious.

Zimbabwe

Motto: Nothing but rubble and suffering.

Capital: Detroit

Formerly Rhodes, the industrial hub of Columbia, after Kdeeks and pds0303, the regional overseers, ass fucked literally everyone and got pearled in an extremely embarrassing way at the Valyria Vault, it was leveled, looted, and disabled by the returning Columbians.

The region soon was renamed - Rick suggested naming it Michigan because it's a post-industrial hellhole, however KnotNSA went with Zimbabwe.

Culture
Columbia has a rich cultural tapestry, with many traditions such as gposting, cornposting, and other kinds of shitposting.