City of the Divine Lord, Wilbur

City of the Divine Lord, Wilbur
Place
Name: City of the Divine Lord, Wilbur
In-game name:
Alts: Wilburia
Status: Griefed and Abandoned
Date:
First joined:
Last seen:
Formed: January 24th, 2020
Abandoned: May 6th, 2020
Disbanded:
Location:
Coords: x: 537652, z: 15250812
Members: ostrich1414, Zepheron, cheesy_chips22, Porkington
Clans: The Order of Wilbur
Bases:
Schematic: {{{schematic}}}

The City of the Divine Lord, Wilbur (commonly known as "Wilburia") is a city founded by ostrich1414 on January 24th, 2020. Unlike any of ostrich1414's previous cities, Wilburia is fully governed and dictated by one religion, The Order of Wilbur, which forms the culture, society and politics of the city. Wilburia aims to honor the name of the one true god, Wilbur, whilst simultaneously forming a fully-functional, self-sufficient city with an effective industry and Wilburian-style infrastructure. Much like his previous cities, Wilburia adheres to a modern city theme.

On May 6th, 2020, AntHand and egnaroky located the city and forcefully annexed it for their team, the Caudices. This was met with extreme backlash from the SimPvP community and their claims were immediately rejected, but the compromising of the city ultimately led Wilburia to be evacuated and abandoned.

On January 19th, 2021, ostrich1414 and Zepheron returned to Wilburia to fully grief the dormant base once and for all. This destruction was due to the city having been discovered by an x-rayer known as 39Y, who then leaked the coordinates to several 2b2t players and planned on griefing it.

History

Dawn of a New Era

After the fall and abandonment of Yittrium in early January 2020, ostrich1414 found himself in a precarious situation: he was homeless, poor, and lacking any direction in SimPvP. Since he had wanted to work on a solo base for some time, he took this new opportunity to start fresh and begin a new city, eager to leave behind the death and destruction of his bases in 2019. In fact, when deciding on a new location and theme for his new city, ostrich1414 was struck by a vision - a vision of Wilbur, calling out for ostrich1414 to establish a base in his honor. Thus, ostrich1414 would decide to do so, and discovered a location to settle at.

On January 24th, the City of the Divine Lord, Wilbur - more commonly known as "Wilburia" - was born. Ostrich1414 spent the first few days completely flattening out the terrain of the plains biome he had chosen, as his city plan he envisioned required a flat, clean landmass. Next, ostrich1414 began construction of Wilburia's first major build: a statue of the Holy Lord Wilbur himself. This statue would become the centerpiece of the city, serving as its main plaza and landmark.

Pre-City Demolition

After the statue's completion, ostrich1414 began work on the first two buildings of the city, as well as a portion of its road system. With a strict city plan in mind, ostrich1414 had high expectations; unfortunately, the result of his work would prove to be less than stellar. Within a day of their construction, ostrich1414 completely tore down and removed the two buildings he had created, unsatisfied by the results.

From Solo Base to Growing City

While ostrich1414 had originally founded Wilburia with the intentions of starting a solo base, he soon realized one major thing: he needed help. Viewing Wilburia as potential to start something new and amazing, ostrich1414 required the assistance of others; thus, between late January and early February, ostrich1414 would recruit three new members to the base, each possessing a skill that would be crucial in helping Wilburia grow.

Zepheron would be the first member invited to Wilburia; he was soon followed by both cheesy_chips22 and Porkington, respectively, both of whom ostrich1414 had based with before. Now that a solid playerbase had been assembled, Wilburia began to grow exponentially as ostrich1414's vision of the city center was being fleshed out.

Around the central Wilbur statue, four new skyscrapers were erected: two by ostrich1414, one by Zepheron and one by cheesy_chips22. This zone of the city would be meticulously planned and calculated, becoming ostrich1414's first true planned city as the crew made the correct measures to ensure the city plan lived up to its proposed standards. Each skyscraper would have a function, ranging from agriculture to storage to office spaces. As the city was already growing exponentially within a little over a week after its inception, Wilburia was showing great promise for the future.

Meanwhile, Wilburia would also be working on building its reputation and its industry. Zepheron would take a key position in handling the city's growing farm production as ostrich1414 established a formal alliance with VetoTheNeato's city, Takyon. Despite having originally been proposed as a small solo base, Wilburia was quickly turning into a global city.

A Secret Power

While ostrich1414's previous cities had been very public and high-profile, Wilburia prided itself in taking a much more subtle, secretive approach. No new images of the city's progress were released for months, and very little was discussed about the goings-on within the city to others. Furthermore, Wilburia stayed relatively neutral on most diplomatic issues. Behind the secrecy, however, Wilburia was flourishing, and between February - March 2020 it was growing into a truly magnificent city.

As the city's center began to take form, plans for a massive temple and an intricate museum on each end of the Wilbur statue were designed. Zepheron handled the Wilburian temple, while cheesy_chips22 and ostrich1414 worked on the museum. Each of these two megabuilds boasted a unique design that would make them the forefronts of the city: the temple was extremely tall, making it the tallest building in the city at 256 blocks, and it would serve as the focal point of city affairs due to its theocratic government. The museum, intricate in design, would be the only building in Wilburia to not embrace a modern theme, which complemented its purpose of housing several historic artifacts and items.

Outside of these two major projects, growth around the city center as a whole progressed rapidly. Several new skyscrapers were constructed, ranging from a portal hub to an apartment building to a nether wart farm, Furthermore, Zepheron focused on designing the city's villager hall, which would soon be adapted into a multi-use line of rowhouse-style buildings. A villager breeder and potion brewery were also constructed, and ostrich1414 built an automatic sheep farm behind it. The city's first out-of-bounds farm was also created: an endermen farm, built by Zepheron and ostrich1414. Not only was Wilburia's cityscape growing immensely, but so was its distinctiveness: there was a clear city center, liner and meticulously planned, with an industrial side and a commercial/residential side.

Wilburia Goes to War

Between early February to March 29th, 2020, the City of the Divine Lord, Wilbur officially participated in The Byzantium War, marking one of the only times the city made a public political announcement. The war came as a result of members of the base Byzantium raiding Yittrium back in January 2020. While Yittrium's former members decided to simply move on, Byzantium continued to harass and mock them about their raid of the city, a fact which still rendered many Yittriumites angry.

Since both cheesy_chips22 and ostrich1414 were former Yittrium members, the two were severely angered by this. Along with Zepheron, Wilburia traveled to Byzantium's former base, Triterrus, on February 17th, 2020. AntHand later joined, and together, they raided and annexed the base, claiming it as their own in defiance against Byzantium.

After continued mockery from Byzantium and increased tensions between the two, ostrich1414 and cheesy_chips22, along with others, returned to Triterrus a few days later on February 23rd, this time severely griefing the city. Shortly afterwards, the City of the Divine Lord, Wilbur officially declared war on Byzantium, who, in turn, declared war on them.

After the raid and grief of Triterrus, the Byzantium War continued amidst high tensions. Byzantium members would later grief the city of Yittrium in response on February 25th, and a small fight would break out in the city. Much later, on March 28th, Antzakes1's base would be griefed by Byzantium. Nonetheless, the war would decrease in activity and popularity for much of March, and peace was finally achieved on March 29th, 2020, when Wilburia officially made peace with Byzantium, ending the war.

An Emphasis on Quality

After the end of the Byzantium War, Wilburia was able to return to its normal affairs, this time putting a severe focus on quality and productivity. The temple and museum, the city's two major megabuilds, were continued. While the museum's exterior would ultimately be finished, the temple would stagnate due to its use of rare and expensive materials. Still, these two builds left an impressive mark on the cityscape.

Furthermore, many new high-quality buildings were constructed. After the server updated to 1.15.2 on April 1st, Wilburia found itself in need of a bee farm. Instead of creating a small farm, cheesy_chips22 constructed a massive dome, modeled after a beehive, to house a bee farm. This was a spur-of-the-moment megabuild that soon left a major impression on the city, becoming one of its finest builds. The interior of the yellow-orange glass dome house a lush, serene natural setting with dozens of bee hives and nests scattered across the terrain. Beneath that was cheesy_chips22's laboratory, an industrial chamber that included unique features from an auto-smelter to an imported shulker named "Shulkira".

Other brand-new high-quality farms would be introduced between mid-March - April, many of which were built by Zepheron and ostrich1414. The most impressive of these farms was Wilburia's gold farm, which required the collection of six double chests worth of obsidian--a monumental task carried out by Zepheron, ostrich1414 and cheesy_chips22 manually. Other new innovations were the city's gunpowder farm, a raid farm, a sugar cane farm, a bamboo farm, and a kelp farm. The city's villager trades were also strengthened to ensure the ability to manufacture god sets easily.

By late April 2020, Wilburia was one of the server's wealthiest and most powerful bases, while still maintaining a low-profile. It was also one of the highest-quality bases on the server, with the city's members taking great care in ensuring quality was maintained.

The Stonetown Incident

Wilburia faced its second biggest diplomatic dispute when, between April 15th and April 16th, The Stonetown Incident occurred. This resulted from ostrich1414 attempting to persuade the members of Wilburia to help annex Stonetown due to its religious and historic importance to the Order of Wilbur. Porkington was angered by this, believing it was an attempt to exert power over his city due to a lack of respect, and in retaliation, he handed over the deed to to Stonetown to Lord1--the leader of the Church of Francis, Wilbur's longtime rival.

The Church of Francis immediately annexed Stonetown, which prompted ostrich1414 and Zepheron to angrily retake it for themselves, removing all Francillian banners and replacing them with Wilburian banners and signs. In return, Lord1 removed these new placements, once again exerting his authority over the town and threatening destruction should Wilburia continue to reject their rule over Stonetown. By this point, tensions were rising higher as the prospect of a second Holy War neared closer and closer.

Eventually, later that day, ostrich1414 and Lord1 met in Verillium to ease tensions and avoid another war. While the peace conference was successful, it resulted in ostrich1414 revealing his secret alt, CranberryWarrior, to Lord1. However, the crisis was averted and Porkington and the rest of Wilburia reunited, hoping to move forward from the incident.

A Base Taken Prematurely

Between late April-early May, Wilburia's growth was somewhat more stagnant than before as its members took a short break, but their ambitions to continue progress on the city were still high. Ostrich1414 began work on yet another skyscraper as cheesy_chips22 constructed a helicopter and an Italian restaurant. Zepheron created an iron farm and began to finish his temple. Progress was slow, but interest was being renewed, and the city was looking more impressive than ever before.

Unfortunately, behind the scenes, there was a paranoia within Wilburia: the members believed that AntHand and egnaroky, members of the Caudices, had the coordinates to Wilburia. For weeks, this was merely a suspicion, but things soon turned for the worse when, on May 6th, egnaroky DM'd ostrich1414 the coordinates to the city before arriving in Wilburia in person while he and cheesy_chips22 were there.

AntHand and egnaroky stated that, while they had no plans to grief or raid the city, they were nonetheless forcing it into a new "Caudicean Empire", claiming that it was for "peace and unity". This was very negatively received by all Wilburians, who immediately rejected their claims and refused to recognize their authority over the city. This also effectively killed their motivation to continue building at Wilburia, and the city was in the process of being abandoned. Despite AntHand and egnaroky continuously claiming there was no reason to abandon the base, the Wilburians knew it was compromised and at a high risk of being destroyed. It took nearly a year for the method behind Wilburia's discovery to fully come to light: you can read how they did it here.

This also resulted into an investigation on how Wilburia's coordinates were found in the first place. DakkaDok stated that AntHand and egnaroky used a legal vanilla mechanic to track down the location, but many SimPvP players were skeptical, especially due to their claims of being able to find any almost any base on SimPvP. Things only worsened when the Caudices later annexed Wilburia's sister city, Takyon, and stated that full abandonment would result in an actual occupation.

Unfortunately, Wilburia would be yet another major city to fall during the Second Burning Age of SimPvP's history. While it was a wealthy and powerful base that emphasized quality and meticulous planning over everything else, it was nonetheless taken prematurely, only lasting roughly four months. The community was outraged, and the secretive city was now revealed to the public.

Final Destruction

For months, Wilburia lay untouched and dormant, only being used sporadically by its former members for materials and farms. In late 2020, however, the city was discovered by a player named 39Y after he found a portal linking to it (this was later revealed to be x-ray and he was jailed). 39Y lived at Wilburia up until January 2021, when he finally decided to leak the coordinates to fellow 2b2t players and devised a plan to grief the city. In fact, he had already started griefing, with the storage skyscraper and cheesy_chips22's helicopter destroyed by him.

Ostrich1414 caught wind of this after discovering 39Y in the act, already having been suspicious of him for x-ray. Neither ostrich1414 or Zepheron wanted to let a 2b2t hacker have the satisfaction of griefing their megacity, so they decided that it was best to grief the abandoned city for themselves and lay it to rest once and for all. Thus, on January 19th, 2021, Zepheron arrived at Wilburia and griefed a large majority of the city, with ostrich1414 later arriving to destroy the last few remaining bits.

Ostrich1414 was also joined by clipchip and Korijenkins, with AntHand even later arriving, all of whom showed their respects to the fallen city. With Wilburia having been abandoned months prior, and now officially destroyed, ostrich1414 and Zepheron were able to finally be assured that no one else would have the satisfaction of griefing their beloved city. Zeheron's account of the grief can be found here [1] and ostrich1414's here [2].

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