Iris
Iris is a walled village that argetlam04 lives in. It is an island owned by HUM. The name "Iris" is for the purple flower that symbolizes wisdom and bravery. It has evolved many times over its existence, which are detailed below:
Iterations:
Iris 1:
The first Iris was argetlam04's first ever project on Elgeis. It took him many days to flatten the part of the island that needed it, gather resources, build, and furnish it. It was a two by five chunk rectangle, created to best use the 10 claims allotted for his estate by the Montrosian Constitution. Inside of the wall, that ran along the edge of the chunk boundaries, argetlam04 created five houses, a square for villagers, and his own house, Castle Iris. Villagers were intended to live in the houses and stalls in the square, but that ultimately failed. Castle Iris was completely surrounded by obsidian as all of argetlam04's valuables were inside of it. Some months after its finish, argetlam04 and Abstacious flattened the rest of Iris to turn into farms. A giant memorial to the toeGANG deity, Brain Stem, was also erected to the north of Iris out of black wool; it stands there to this day. The general layout of Iris 1, with minor changes, remained from argetlam04's date of joining, February 17th, 2019, to the end of the Great Western War.
Iris 2:
Construction of Iris 2:
Iris 1 was attacked and aesthetically destroyed by Vailan in the Great Western War. Castle Iris was not penetrated because of its obsidian casing but the houses and square were destroyed. Much landscaping had to be done to repair the ground under Castle Iris, and argetlam04's ultimate decision was to scrap the old design in favor of a new one. It was to be a three by three chunk square, keeping the walls on the bottom right side unchanged. The whole thing would be occupied by a square for villagers, centered around four beacons in a tower. No one knows where argetlam04 moved his valuables after ender chests were removed.
Additions to Iris 2:
After the completion of the walls, many aspects were added to and around Iris 2. A passive bamboo farm, semi-AFK tree farm, and eventually a feather and chicken farm was added. The largest addition around Iris 2 was a glass dome for bees. It has three rings of jungle trees with increasing height which were surrounded by many flowers—predominately alliums—for the bees to pollinate.
Iris 3:
Construction of the Village:
Planning of Iris 3 began on March 12th, 2020, and construction began the day after. There was no specific reason for this redesign, but argetlam04 had just finished updating the MID and had some ideas he wanted to implement. The intent was to have a fully functioning industrial villager trading area on the island that was better than that of any other nation on the server. The whole island was to be walled in which required the edges to be geometric, the villager stalls to be removed, and various smart villager farms to be instated from top to bottom. Upon completion, Iris contained a fully automatic villager breeder, a tree farm, a sheep farm, a super smelter, a cow shed, a weapon of mass destruction, two villager vending machines, a regular villager trading hall, and a square. The bulk of construction for Iris 3 ended on June 18th, but CreeperColder finished the last part, a nature walk, on July 27th.
Construction of the Castle
After finishing the village area of Iris 3, argetlam04 decided to add a castle where Iris 2 used to be. The castle is named Castle Iris 2. Construction of that castle began on June 16th. Argetlam04 built the castle in a creative testing world before implementing it in Elgeis. something that took many days to perfect. Castle Iris 2 consists of five main walls in the shape of a pentagon with a gate at the tip of it. In its center lies a tall tower with a viewing house on top.
Additions/modifications
A few notable additions and modifications to Iris made since the finishing of the Castle Iris 2 are arget's moving of the villager breeder and replacing it with arget Museum. The villager breeder was moved to an island south of Iris, which is currently owned by Montrose. The museum that replaced it, finished on August 20th, 2020, is a collection of historical artifacts displayed for public viewing.
The Iris Question
Secession from Montrose
When argetlam04 seceded from Montrose on November 11th, 2020, he had to ask Montrosian Assembly to allow him to do so, as this constituted ceding land to another country (HUM). Montrosian Assembly voted on the following three terms:
- Arget will be allowed to keep the island of Iris, defined as the extent of its walls and the Brainstem monument, so long as he remains in the SU.
- If he leaves the server, the SU, or deliberately abandons Iris, it will be ceded back to Montrose.
- If, for whatever reason, the SU ceases to exist, this applies for if he stays in HUM.
While the Montrosian Assembly made it clear these were the only terms under which they would agree to allow argetlam04 to retain the home and the production facilities he had built, these stipulations were controversial with the inhabitants of Iris, as the Montrosian Assembly has not required perpetual restrictions of any estate that has opted to leave the Commonwealth before or since, such as Wohlstand, Saru, and Windiya, all of which went on to merge with other nations. Among other factors, these restrictions, and Assembly's repeated rejection of Hummite attempts to negotiate to resolve them, contributed to the formation of a significant diplomatic schism between the formerly-unified nations.
Montrose maintained that the circumstances of argetlam04's secession were fundamentally different from those of other Montrosian estates. Iris was the only one settled in previously-held, core Montrosian land. Wohlstand, Saru, Windiya, and a number of other estates formerly or currently in Montrose all existed as independent entities before their merging. These allegedly-unusual stipulations surrounding Iris were implemented to ensure that Iris's status was argetlam04's home, rather than an uninhabited exclave.
The Iris Question Answered
In April of 2023, HUM engaged in a renewed push for a diplomatic settlement, and were once again rebuked. Some Montrosians such as Chipt and Mania_Man voiced support for a resolution and sympathized with HUM's plight, but the majority of voices refused to consider any kind of land deal. HUM then revealed privately, in the embassy, documented evidence of untruths about their efforts that were spoken by Montrosian leadership to citizens in internals as well as in back channels of allegedly apolitical international organizations like the West Sea Confederation. These were dismissed as, at most, "perhaps exaggerations", and it was denied that there was any kind of "pattern of misinformation", after which Montrosian citizens sent gifs of babies crying and suggested burning down Iris to resolve the situation (later claimed to be "a joke to lighten the mood"). Any proposal to resolve the enclave or simply allow argetlam04 to own his home outright were dismissed out of hand.
At this point, HUM went to #mc-world-news with the evidence and called publicly for the behavior to be discontinued. The contents are displayed below, and condemn the behavior with screenshots of Montrosians' conduct in embassies, internal Montrosian channels, and private channels in the WSC.
- The contents of the callout announcement HUM made in #mc-world-news following the diplomatic breakdown of their latest attempt at negotiations.
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Soon thereafter, the Shaxian Empire and Ozai posted messages in support of HUM's quest to resolve the Iris Question. Slightly more than half an hour later, Montrosian leader FlyingGMM posted an announcement admitting the pattern of wrongdoing and that the remarks were untrue.
After the public callout, Montrose apologized again privately, and returned to talks with a less hardline stance toward a solution. A number of deals were proposed at first which involved Montrose owning land in the south of Etel Metsia, and suggestions were made that HUM should give up more land than whatever they receive due to its value, which received a fervent rebuttal from GoatWhisperer going over the similarity of current offers to taunt offers made in the past, discussion of previous Montrosian definitions of "border gore", and HUM's historical lack of access to land. This rebuttal appeared to be a watershed moment for the negotiations, as the points made and their subsequent discussions appeared to break through to FlyingGMM and other Montrosians.
- The rebuttal by GoatWhisperer and subsequent counteroffer by FlyingGMM which eventually led to the resolution of the Iris Question.
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The final sticking points came from two Montrosians who appeared opposed to the deal. The first was visiphon, who had weighed in extensively in the past, and now announced he had long-standing plans to develop caves and the ravines they fed into under the area into cities that he had not mentioned in the previous days of the debates. With this being the reason HUM could not seek to obtain the western portion of the patch of woods they sought, GoatWhisperer suggested surveying be conducted to find where these caves were. Days went by and visiphon did not complete the surveying, so GoatWhisperer went to the area to conduct it himself with the directions provided by visiphon. The surveying revealed that the entrance to the caves was actually in the Eastern portion of the land, that the caves ran south directly into existing Hummite land, and the ravines also existed substantially within HUM's land, meaning visiphon would have to have HUM's permission to develop them rather than the inverse. With this issue settled, discussions lulled again for a few days before another Montrosian, Abstacious, raised an issue over items he had lent and were not returned "years ago" from argetlam04, stating "if we're gonna talk about a land deal, let's talk about an item deal." Having been unaware of this issue since it had not been mentioned in the years since, HUM affirmed that they would find these items and return them, and with that the Assembly of Montrose began voting. On May 3rd, 2023, the Iris Accords passed the Montrosian Assembly, having been previously ratified by the Hummite Ecclesia the Accords were now fully in force. The following land exchanges were made:
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Territory ceded to Montrose by HUM
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Territory ceded to HUM by Montrose
The first full day of Iris's liberation, May 4, was voted by the Hummite Ecclesia to be a national holiday called Iris Day, a day "to remember the historic marginalization of our people and our resilience to overcome it." To celebrate this event, GoatWhisperer of HUM published a "ℍ 𝕌 𝕄 𝕎 𝔸 𝕍 𝔼" video showing the adversity faced by the Hummites in the years of their quest for this solution and their resilience to keep going regardless: https://youtu.be/cxw48rveD_o