Kiwi Trade Federation

Introduction
Howdy and welcome to the Kiwi Trade Federation! As of 9/26/20, we stand as the 3rd most populated country in the VE discord, have the largest discord for an independent nation, and the largest nation/town in the VE server. We own all of New Zealand and our capitol is built around Mt. Taranaki.

Background
When our group came together to decide on a name, we went with the Kiwi Trade Federation, because Kiwis are a highlight of New Zealand and we wanted to operate as a democratic federation with provinces. So, we promote primary trade between provinces with different production focuses, with international trade as a secondary with taxation.

The Discord and Initial Buildup (7/30/20-9/25/20)
The Kiwi Trade Federation was originally going to be called the "Blue Lion Confederation" taking inspiration from the game Fire Emblem: Three Houses and was going to be based in Madagascar. However, Madagascar was already taken, along with many other island nations. So, we turned to New Zealand, which at the time wasn't taken. While the discord server had been made on 6/4/20, the nation was founded on July 30th 2020 by themaniac125, Eris, K4747, Chris-Chan, mountainpreacher, and Lemarq. New members trickled in one by one until Kiwi became the 3rd largest country.

Chapter of Humble Beginnings (9/25/20-X)
On September 25 VE had officially launched. In attempts to get an early start for the country, K4747 and Jaycrazy had managed to log in before the server filled up. They managed to warp to East Australia, where they swam the Tasman Sea together and landed on the southwest corner of the island, where Southland District is. K4747 had connection issues, so he had to re-swim the ocean at least 3 times. From there, they made a temporary tree base. They weren't able to get to the North Island to found the capitol, mostly because there wasn't a dynmap available at release. So they waited until themaniac was able to get on, which wouldn't be for another couple hours. When themaniac finally got online he was able to tpa to Jaycrazy, and make a boat to follow the northern coastline to Farewell Spit. From there he went northeast and landed directly at Mt. Taranaki District. The capitol of Kiwi, Kovaki, was then founded. A lot of people from Kiwi were able to log on and join the town. However, the towny system got corrupted about 3-4 hours after launch, was shut down again, and reset the next day. So that meant Kovaki was deleted. Luckily, themaniac had a /home set there and just tpa'd everyone there. Kovaki, Kiwi was re-founded and still stands. From that point progress continued. Since release, Kovaki and Kiwi have a population of 14 and was the largest town and nation in the game. Although it may not stay that way, it was a good start for them. Themaniac was a dedicated enough player to where he played all day on September 26. Kovaki had some great day-one progress. Some notable players are Moosetehcat, who was helpful with building houses. Spons and Thunderbird helped a lot with mining. Tunelesssky and cookie did a lot of tree-clearing. Mellissa and Jaycrazy were expert landscapers. Pug was not only a great farmer, but designed a beautiful farm.

1. Hath the Haunter

Since the re-founding of Kovaki on day two of VE's release, Kiwi had experienced many encounters with one of the owners, Hath. Although we don't totally know why, this much is clear: He was definitely bored. The first time Hath had visited Kovaki was when he was checking up on everyone. Making sure people weren't cheating, breaking rules, etc. When he had arrived we were just setting up the community chests. He came back a few minutes later when themaniac had said he was going to burn the trees instead of chopping them down. Hath quickly stated that the fire would create more lag, and that he would help them out by using world edit to clear the leaves and trees. To our gratitude he did it very quickly, and we were able to continue development. Everyone was working hard for the next couple hours when Hath decided to show up once more. This time, he awarded Kiwi with 64 diamond blocks. Themaniac was confused as to how they had earned it, but Hath said it was because of the dedication of the Kiwis and because they were playing with lag without complaining. The diamonds definitely helped to boost Kiwi's economy, and everyone was equipped with free diamond tools. However, right when things looked to be at their greatest, it wasn't. Some took notice to the kill feed and saw that Hath was killing people with potions. It wasn't long before he made it to Kovaki while invisible, and dropped potions all over the city. Most were able to escape by taking cover in the trees, but some had died. There was then another hour period where Hath left us alone, but he returned as a pig. Themaniac knew what was up since he saw people dying to explosions by Hath. hath decided to use potions once more but was unsuccessful in killing anyone. We had thought it was over, so we went back to business. We were putting dirt in the community chest when the entire nation of Argentina teleported to Kovaki. We immediately knew it was Hath's doing. He then demanded that we enable pvp, and that they were robbing us. "HANDS UP! EMPTY THE CHESTS" were some of his words. At this point, themaniac was geting tired of this and told everyone in the Kiwi discord to temporarily log out before something bad happened. It should be noted that Hath was the aggressive one, and that the rest of the Argentineans also refused to enable pvp. They stuck around for a bit, but after 10 minutes or so they all started to tp home. Thus, was the end of the Haunting of Hath. Our interactions didn't stop there though, as you'll see in the next section. Later that day Hath commended themaniac for his dedication to the server for playing all day, and joked about giving him navigator rank.

2. Criminal Backgrounds

During the building of the first 4 starter houses in Kovaki, there were 2 players that were asking people if they could join their town/nation. These players were Legosaintam and Upsetmoosemilk. Now this is an interesting story seeing as how apparently both of these players were from the original VE. They eventually got around to asking us, and I saw nothing wrong with it since Kiwi's invites only closed the day after release. So, I invited both of them. Themaniac had put 7 blocks of diamonds in a chest with iron for public use, because he trusted his people to use their shared resources wisely. Well, it wasn't long until he noticed that all the diamonds and iron went missing. Themaniac then sent out an inquiry ping to the Kiwi discord, and thus began an Among Us style investigation. It is against the rules to steal, so whoever had taken those diamonds, and lied about it, was going to get banned. Our first suspects were the two newbies. Lego made himself suspicious when he logged out every time I tried to talk to him, and upsetmoosemilk apparently was a thief in the old VE. It also didn't help to see that the leader of China got banned while this was happening because he was trying to frame upsetmoosemilk for his past criminal acts. We eventually got to talk to Lego when he logged back in. he claimed that he hadn't stolen the diamonds or iron, and confirmed that upsetmoosemilk had a "track record" for stealing in the old VE. Lego made himself more suspicious when he started accusing upsetmoosemilk and rambled on about how he had no reason to steal and stuff. So, what to do? Well, Moosetehcat contacted Hath and said that someone was stealing our stuff. Hath then did an inventory check for both of them and found the diamonds and iron in Lego's inventory. Hath then returned the items, and asked us what we wanted to do with him. Themaniac consulted the discord, and we agreed that he had stolen and lied to us, so he deserved a ban. Lego apparently tried asking for an unban, and we once again stated that he got what he deserved. After that themaniac removed both upsetmoosemilk and lego from the town. It was at that point we realized that we can't just let anyone in, and that we need to enforce our rule of keeping our nation closed.

Member List
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OBQdL62FH3I5dkJObXQUB_rMtpLe9ad02wr6QiYfWTA/edit?usp=sharing

Provinces
As of 9/26/20 we have our one capitol city Kovaki, and K4747 has a tree base on the southwestern corner of the southern island. Neither of these classify as a province though.