Icenia (Civcraft 2.0)

The Republic of Icenia was a democratic republic located at (-6500,-6500) that gained its independence on July 8th 2015 from the Commonwealth of the Kaiserinreich through a peaceful and democratic referendum. On 13th November Icenia would join the United Volterran Empire and the Republic was dissolved, though it would later return on Civclassic as the Second Republic of Icenia.

Pre-Icenia
Before the founding of Icenia the region had been mostly ignored for most of 2.0 with the exception of a couple of newfriend settlements, most notably the City State of Fort Pike, a small stone brick fort built by Ipslore during the early days of 2.0 during a period where there was no snow in Icenia. This fort would later be demolished to make room for the Fort Pike Memorial Park where a original Fort Pike furnace can still be found today.

The land would later be acquired by the Kaiserinreich and was referred to as New Swabia on official maps.

Founding of Icenia and growth under the Kaiserinreich
Icenia was founded on May 7th 2015 by ChrisChrispie as a new trading-focused city within the Kaiserinreich shortly after it had declared independence from S.P.Q.R. The location of the city was chosen do to its close proximity to Orion and its safe distance from the nations Kaiserin was fighting at the time. The general idea was that it would be a so called "buffer state" for Kaiserinreich, which had recently attempted to build one in SPQR's desert only to be pushed back within a day.

ChrisChrispie began developing the region shortly after, building several farms and buildings, however the town only began to grow nearly one month after its foundation when new players started to be invited to work and live in the region, resulting in population growth that was much faster than expected. This led to Icenia quickly becoming the largest city within Kaiserinreich. It also resulted in tensions with the national government as the new citizens of Icenia began seeing the smaller central government and its policies as being prejudicial to the city.

Thus two different factions were formed within Kaiserinreich, one that believed that Icenia was being held back by their parent nation and that it would continue do be so until it became independent, and another that believed that the current problems of the nation could be solved by a series of reforms within the leadership and organization of the country and that independence would only serve to hurt both nations. The second route was attempted, with ChrisChrispie becoming the chancellor of Kaiserich. However, after a failed attempt to join the preeminent alliance in the region, The GNA, Icenia decided to take another route.

A referendum was finally held on July 8th, 2015. 100% of active Icenians voted for Independence.

Shortly after declaring independence Icenia joined the GNA and started a &quot;flag burning party&quot; to celebrate independence, inviting people from all around the server to join the celebration where the old flag of the Kaiserinreich would be burned and replaced by the new Icenian flag. However this celebration would not be without problems as it was discovered that the old flag was stone reinforced under a foreign group, forcing the flag to be tediously destroyed by hand instead of quickly burned as planned.

Post Independence
After leaving Kaiserin, Icenia experienced a massive wave of attention on the civcraft subreddit. Shortly after Icenia experienced a massive population boom due to word spreading about the city through more established areas of the server as well as shilling on the subreddit by droidjoe, chrischrispie, and smal. As Icenia began to grow so did the size of the city and the need for more materials. Several citizens of Icenia went out of their way to help expand the cities growing influence by working on massive infrastructure projects to link Icenia to the world and modernize the state. These projects included a rail line to Orion as well as an ice road to orion, expanding the growing oak sapling industry, and making the overall city much nicer than when it was first established.

Icenia bought land from Aeon around July 20th of 2015 the day of Aeon's annexation of Kaiserin. This land included the cities of Philomel and Port Norden. Also around the same time Icenia was given a decent amount of land south of Icenia Island by NovaCeasar. This land went almost of Hogekleif. For several weeks talks were had with Vienna as well to merge with Icenia. However this never happened due to the differences between the states and ultimately it was decided that the two nations would have a strong alliance.

Icenia's fairly peaceful post-independence history was rocked by a series of events in early-to-mid August, from the VirtuousResolve Incident, when in response to provocation a newfriend went on a rampage, the Great Fire of Icenia, when yet another disgruntled newfriend set alight much of the wooden city, causing severe damages, and most severely the events of August 20th, when political tension and widespread disapproval of a Council of Three member, DroidJoe, combined with a murder and a pearling, lead to the brink of civil war.

August-September Wave and The Great Crime Spree
Following the VirtuousResolve incident and the August 20th unrest Icenia experienced another wave of new players coming into the town. Although smaller then the earlier wave, it pushed Icenia's population past 50 and the city became the largest population center of the -,-. Many of the older players in Icenia also became established, creating different shops and making more and more money. Examples of this were HadronNinja-who developed a vast gold industry in Icenia, Cychotic who developed Snowpoint and his company, Malatestas who brought the first horses into Icenia, and BritishWanderer who developed the IBC. This wave was however met with a great deal of crime mostly coming from alt-raiders of Wheatcrew. The first incident took place during the middle of a slow friday afternoon.

Icenia-then still mostly unsnitched and unbastioned-had skybridges built over it and lava was dumped upon the newfriend district, destroying many homes and damaging countless others. The city was then quickly cleaned up, but the perpetrator was never found. Later Wheatcrew members came into Icenia and started to randomkill various citizens in the town. They were soon forced out by the valiant efforts of YoshiSama, and although Yoshi was killed in the action, Wheatcrew went on to different population centers. The second lava bombing was a smaller, but more widespread and culturally damaging effort. During the late night, and in the same style as the previous lava bombing, Icenia was rocked by fire. Damages in this fire were limited but destructive with older districts this time having considerable damage. The result of this grief was Icenia being put on lockdown and the mass building of snitches and bastions to protect the city. Finally. in very early September Icenia opened back up to the general public.

Leakgate
During the late August unrest Icenia also had internal political drama-mainly involving September senate elections and different visions people wanted for Icenia. The September election was different from the August election in many ways-there were only 3 seats for senate in Icenia due to Icenia being divided up into districts to fit the new senate into the system. The result was that 8 people ran for 3 seats in the city of Icenia. Some of these players were established individuals who aligned with DroidJoe and ChrisChrispie. Others were new players to Icenia who aligned themselves with Cychotic and other new players. A third group of BIP leaning people also emerged. In the end the three seats were won by more traditional candidates which caused much anger in the BIP and new player leaning candidates. Some called the election frauded. A third party had to be brought in to prove that the modmailed votes were correct and that the right candidates won. When it was found out that the results-although somewhat off-were correct the individuals said that the election was still poorly put together.

Shortly after the election fiasco tyler15555-a longtime citizen of Icenia and member of the BIP-leaked skype chats from various interests groups in Icenia to expose &quot;corruption &quot; between the different branches and threatened to release the main Icenian skype group to the general public in order to embarrass the established players in Icenia who he saw as corrupt. He later decided not to do this and moved to SPQR. As a result of the drama other players moved out of Icenia such as Uncomplimentary, and Dr_Nein (who would later return to Icenia upon the drama dying down). In the end the city was brought closer together as a result of the fiasco.

Collapse
After multiple waves of greifing including lava bombing and alt-raiding Icenia was hit by an extensive obsidian greif. Dozens of stone and iron reinforced blocks were placed around the town. The collapse of Icenia can be attributed to the constant greifing, the obsidian greif can be seen as the tipping point for many citizens. After this event many citizens left to found Eslar or joined other nations such as Volterra, SPQR or Aeon. The added political unrest in the city and general distrust of the government are also factors that contributed to the downfall of Icenia.

Upon the end of 2.0 it was revealed that a large portion of the griefings and raids that affected Icenia during this period were the result of AltRaids done by members of Volterra, Eslar and Hjaltland, among others, with the ultimate goal of weakening the state so that it could be taken over.

Presidential Elections and union with Volterra
With a large part of Icenia's decline being blamed on the nation's ineffective council based government system it was decided that the council should be replaced with a single president elected through popular vote. In 13th November British Wanderer was elected President of Icenia through an overwhelming majority and proceeded to make the Icenian Republic join the Volterran Empire in the same day.

Over the next few weeks the population of Icenia would continue to decline until the city became abandoned by the end of 2.0, the Icenia district within Volterran would eventually be dissolved and it's lands were given to Eslar.

Politics
On July 29th, 2015, Smal, DroidJoe and ChrisChrispie ratified the Icenian Constitution. The constitution put in place the leading authority of Icenia as the council of three and than put in place a lower congress that allowed for checks and balances within the government of Icenia. This congress would be democratically elected. Elections for congress officially started on July 29th, 2015 and many of Icenias citizens decided to throw their hat in the ring for the election.

Icenia is a GNA member-state and has strong diplomatic relations with Balkania, SPQR, Volterra, FSR, Senntisten, Terminus, and Hjatland.

Icenia also has built embassies in Mount Augusta and Balkania and plans on expanding more embassies into Nipplerock, SPQR, Senntisten, and Volterra in the near future. In Icenia itself /pol/ynesia has built an embassy as well as Balkania and Volterra. Volterra's embassy is known as the largest free standing structure in Icenia and can be seen from all points of the city.

On October 20th DroidJoe was removed from the council of three by vote from the other 2 members of the council, he was then replaced by BritishWanderer.

Geography


As seen in the map above, Icenia was divided into ten internal divisions.


 * City of Icenia - The flat, tundra island first known as "New Swabia" that is the centre of Icenia. The City of Icenia, the nation's capital and main population centre, sprawls along the northern coast, with the interior and south mostly remaining undeveloped aside from slowly creeping housing projects and farms.
 * Faming District - To feed Icenia and produce the vast amounts of lumber needed for the architectural style, a small peninsula branching off southeast from Lhasa has been converted into a general farming complex, producing wheat, potatoes, carrots, dark oak, spruce, and also containing a small pig/cow farm. Along with the Farming District and Gapplar, this is one of the three core territories that Icenia when it seceded from the Kaiserinreich.
 * Gapplar - The southern half of the island known to Icenians as Gapplar and Volterra as Eslenti, Gapplar is mostly undeveloped aside from a few scattered houses and a large bridge linking it to Icenia City.
 * Eslenti - The long-divided island of Gapplar/Eslenti has been reunited after the purchase of Eslenti from Volterra for 256d in August 2015. Eslenti remains mostly undeveloped, but it is planned to either be a residential or farming district.
 * The Wastelands - The vast, undeveloped snowy wastelands south of Icenia City. There are few buildings here aside from a number of abandoned, windblown shacks and a handful of small outposts.
 * Lhasa - A secluded Tibbetan Buddhist Kingdom hidden away in the hostile mountainous terrain between the Farming District and Port Norden - Along with Icenia City and Vienna, it is the third inhabited territory of Icenia.
 * Philomel/Eslar - A piece of history frozen in time, the flat stretch of lightly-forested snowy plains known as Philomel has seen little development since it's acquisition in July 2015 as part of the Port Norden Purchase. It has a Kaiserinreich-era road running through the territory, in addition to the uninhabited but beautiful sleepy town of Philomel from which it derives it's name, also presumably built some time during the Kaiserinreich era. The town would later be renamed Eslar and would be greatly expanded by a local government lead by 2withyoda, BritishWanderer and tyler15555.
 * Port Norden and Port Norden National Park - While separate internal divisions, they are being grouped here for simplicity's sake - Port Norden is the Kaiserinreich-era bay fortress that has remained largely untouched since the Port Norden Purchase, though may be absorbed into Lhasa at some time in future. Port Norden National Park is a stretch of beaches along the northernmost coastline specially preserved from sandmining by the Icenian government.
 * Vienna - The autonomous city of Vienna, one of Icenia's three populated settlements, brought into the fold with the Viennia-Icenia unification in early August 2015. It is a vast land, mostly undeveloped hills and valleys aside from the small Kaiserinreich-era city of Vienna near it's centre, slowly being restored and rebuilt.

Economy
Icenia's main exports are spruce wood and ice.