Project M.O.S.E.S.
Project M.O.S.E.S., often abbreviated as MOSES or The Project, is a megastructure constructed by HUM to provide a land bridge between their territorial holdings in Properpolis and Etel Metsia. The build consists of glass walls spanning the height from the seafloor to the ocean, forty blocks apart, with the area between being drained of ocean water and "terraformed" via covering the gravel seafloor with dirt, grass, trees, and other flora.
The acronym in the name stands for Move Ocean So Etel-metsia is Secure.
Notable features of M.O.S.E.S. include two shipwrecks (one of which is fully preserved and another which the glass wall cuts in half), an ocean ravine which has been turned into a river, and a restored island which previously had been devastated due to sand mining.
Background
Land Woes
Upon the merger between HUM and Etel Metsia, the Hummite government sought to connect their capital city to the sizeable lands acquired in Etel Metsia to the southwest in order to aid in transportation of resources and infrastructural development, as well as encourage settlement in the area. However, the lands to the west that would connect the two are claimed by Montrose, and concern similar lands to those that negotiations had already fallen through regarding attempts to de-enclave the Hummite settlement of Iris. As a last resort, proposals were made to exchange culturally significant lands like the ruins of the Icedale Guild for a contiguous corridor. These were roundly rejected by Montrose, so the dream for over-land local development beyond the limits of the capital city seemed to be in grim condition.
Northern Inspiration
Around this time, Flashy10 of Kingdom of Vailan had completed a massive project to create a lake out of a mountainous valley to the north of Fjall, their capital city. Appreciating this instance of Vailan's "Think and Do" mentality and the "big lake energy" such a construction emanated, Hummite GoatWhisperer began to devise a strategy to accomplish the inverse to connect HUM's disparate land holdings. He noted that, while they were disallowed from expanding their territorial holdings, the state owned a large swathe of oceanic territory that was situated between the landmasses. While a much easier project to accomplish would be to simply build out dirt islands over the ocean to form land, GoatWhisperer felt that the "bending of nature to our will" would exemplify the strength of HUM and be a more remarkable feat, creating a world wonder that would help grow HUM's reputation for accomplishing the unthinkable.
Proposal
On 10/05/2021, GoatWhisperer announced he had a "harebrained scheme" for the Hummite population's consideration. He pitched it thus:
"This is a rough, rough approximation... but the core of the idea is to wall off and drain a portion of ocean. We could even cover the land in grass, trees, wildlife to make it appear natural. With a pinch of terraforming, this would create a bridge of usable land running from Proper to Etel Metsia, allowing roads and other over-land development to be built between them. We could also expand the corridor in the future should we desire. While this would be quite the project, my thought to make it doable would be to split the corridor into smaller portions and filling these sections with wooden planks. Wouldn't require much skill. Once the water is displaced it's a simple matter of burning the wood out. This would probably be cheaper and easier than attempting to do it with sponges or something, though that's also an option.
The proposal was met with significant praise. Then-Chancellor ClapYoThighs deemed it a "HUM Level Project" and suggested HUM "make some fancy ass glass walls that hold it all in. Gonna be like Rapture on Crack." Hummites doctorspaghetti, argetlam04, and coolnut10 also spoke in favor. As such, it was adopted as a national project.
Construction
The construction of the Project, from the first laying of outlines to the last portions of water being removed, took a year and three months. Terraforming efforts are ongoing. Constructing the Project was very labor intensive, with the majority of water requiring hand-placed wooden planks to be removed before the sections would be set alight to remove the wood. Sponges could not be used, as the limited quantity available and time required to dry them out when the would make them ineffective at the scale MOSES required.
This process was made easier when argetlam04 created floating piston machines (called MOSES machines) which could drain water as they moved along, however these machines only worked in straight paths with significant depth, and stopped when the highest level of seafloor was reached. There was some controversy over the legality of these machines due to the "no floating structures" rule that was in place at this time, but this was a misunderstanding - piston machines themselves were fine, and structures suspended in water were fine (see the numerous boats built around the world), only structures floating in the air without supports were a problem whether piston machines or not. Since these machines remained "supported" by the water underneath them as they worked, they were completely legal within the rules of the server.
Outside of the geometrically simple portions the MOSES machines could handle, the water in MOSES was drained by hand, block by block.
Timeline
The following timeline is not exhaustive, but attempts to list the major contributions to the Project and dates they occurred.
- On 11/10/2021, doctorspaghetti drew up plans for the bounds of the structure and laid down the first bone blocks to demonstrate the path, beginning the construction phase. On this date, argetlam04 also built the first MOSES machine prototypes.
- On 11/24/2021, Coblue volunteered to use his experience building circles to revise the curve.
- On 12/28/2021, the entirety of the bone blocks placed down in order to guide the construction of the walls were discovered to be torn down and stolen, setting back construction significantly. In addition, all the bone blocks from the chests at the worksite were stolen, hampering the ability of Hummites to rebuild it. Interestingly, the glass walls that had been placed were not damaged. Due to a window of at least ~three days and at most ten days in which the crime could have taken place, investigations were not pursued heavily and the perpetrator of this act has still not been identified.
- On 12/29/2021, argetlam04 began utilizing a fleet of MOSES machines to drain water in full force for the first time.
- On 3/09/2022, doctorspaghetti laid down a layer of dirt, grew grass, and planted trees in the first section of the Project which had been drained.
- On 3/10/2022, Coblue once again used his expertise to reconstruct the curve. Hummites worked to rebuild the remainder of the guidelines where the glass walls still needed to be built.
- On 3/13/2022, doctorspaghetti reconstructed the island in the middle of the Project which had originally been flattened by the prolific sand-mining company Dinoking93 Excavation Incorporated in 2018, adding sand, grass, and a singular tree.
- On 3/31/2022, AbstractEgg drained the majority of the curve portion of the Project.
- On 7/11/2022, GoatWhisperer completed the placement of glass walls along the bone blocks from the curve to Etel Metsia.
- On 7/15/2022, catpaco assisted GoatWhisperer in completing drainage of sections immediately pre-curve, which were some of the deepest areas in the project. This resulted in water being completely cleared from the Properpolis entrance of the Project to the island in the middle of the Project.
- On 1/04/2023, argetlam04 removed "a TON of water, like literally all that I can with machines from the first segment" of the last third of the Project.
- On 1/15/2023, coolnut10 made significant progress on laying wood in the remaining water immediately after the curve island.
- On 2/12/2023, GoatWhisperer filled in wood just over the halfway point of the "last leg" and burned out all wood currently placed.
- On 2/12/2023, argetlam04 completed the draining of all water available to be drained via MOSES machines, stating "machines are no longer useful for Moses. Any and all water you see should be filled."
- On 2/13/2023, GoatWhisperer completed draining of the rest of the water on the Etel Metsian side, completing the water draining of the Project, declaring "Project MOSES is now dry as a bone."