Astral Order

The Astral Order is a group dedicated to creating lasting friendship, building, and developing a positive community on 2b2t.

ASTRAL HISTORY

Jay_monroe's Account (From his Page):

The original Astral Order started due to inter-group conflict in the Church of Eden (also referred to as The Church or Eden). The Church failed due to a myriad of reasons. These reasons included political chaos, lack of a clear sense of direction and constant cycles of base creation and destruction. Political infighting regarding the future of the group came to a head the night of December 19th, 2017. After a buildup of frustration between factions within the Church of Eden, LordGalvatronMC and Jay conceived a plan to execute a coup. That evening, Jay famously declared "I am the Senate" and subsequently leaving the Church of Eden's discord. Meanwhile, LordGalvatronMC created the Astral Order discord. After several hours of moving members of the Church to the Astral discord, the Church of Eden's discord was deleted which secured Jay and LordGalvatronMC in leadership positions.

In the first few weeks into January, a major power vacuum led to competition for power from former Church leadership. Jay, Lord GalvatronMC, FreefieldWaririor, Viper and others all wanted a piece of the power. Through consultation with the Dark Emperor, Jay convinced others in leadership positions to accept a council system where everyone within the council would have equal say and all decisions would be made through consensus or voting. In February 2018, the group started their first base, named Malachor. At this time, the Council experienced instability with infighting between some council members. Arguments led to a full-blown leadership crisis in late February, 2018. Due to incitement of public drama, Fronk the Fish was demoted. Fronk felt he was unjustly demoted and decided to leak the coordinates to Malachor and a handful of other outposts. Within hours, Malachor and other structures were destroyed by Retronautx, IHackedWalmart and Armorsmith.

Following the leadership crisis and Grief of Malachor in February 2018, The group entered a brief decline; however, with increasing stability of the Council, the Council would pull the group out of it's a recession with the establishment of The Monastery and a steady climb in member count. The Monastery base has survived grief attempts due to valiant defense efforts made by Ghost and other Astral affiliates. February through April 2018 was characterized through strong increase in notable players and Council members. This would include: Stadhouder, iMems, Unia, and Sjoerd, among others. This also included the creation of all of the iconic symbols of the Astral Order. Jay created the name Astral Order and Stadhouder created the banner and obsidian sigil. At this time, members were scattered around 2b2t with no central hub. Another base on the server, called Lugdunum, was founded by Giganox and Stadhouder in late March. Jay, in fear that the group was becoming increasingly inactive, wanted to consolidate power into an executive role for the purpose of gathering people into a central location and increasing activity. Jay rallied over 2/3 of member base to approve of his position as Astral Lord. Within two days, this was accomplished. Afterward, Jay called on all members of the group to report to Lugdunum to begin building. bring more activity to the group.

However, Jay's powers were generally undefined as the Astral Lord. Due to a handful of members verbalizing their dislike for the Astral Lord, Jay lost popular support, stepping down as a consequence. This week was labeled as the Interregnum due to a lack of the Astral Lord. On the contrary, more people favored the Astral Lord over no Astral Lord which ultimately led to Jay taking the mantle of Astral Lord again. However, the Astral Lord was slightly different - instead of having ultimate executive powers, the Astral Lord was designated to act as a figurehead of the Astral Order. Meanwhile, some members of the Council resented and distrusted the power Jay exerted over the group at the head of which was iMems.

Over the course of the summer of 2018, tensions rose between iMems, Jay and LordGalvatronMC. Voting blocks emerged with iMems and Giganox representing a conservative view, Jay and Galvatron representing a liberal view and Stadhouder representing the center view. During this time, Stadhouder excelled as a Council member gathering substantially heavier traffic to the discord and increasing overall activity. During this time, the group's population shifted from predominantly Americans to Europeans. This led to an increasing difficulty of Jay and Galvatron to keep tabs on the majority of the group. Smaller bases were created around this time under the the leadership of Celestia (a rank) Digandbuilder (i.e, DigMC) and Whitblue, both small Youtubers. With Lugdunum's population booming, the Council wanted to stem the flow of new members into Lugdunum. This resulted in heavy investment into smaller recruit bases in May through September 2018. However, these bases, including Nazereth, Emona, Exetium, and many others, failed due to poor leadership or incompetent recruits, in turn lowering morale. The failure of bases in addition to inter-group conflict with the Council led to a decay in membership and activity. By the end of September 2018, Astral lost WitBlue, DigMC and iMems, further decreasing activity. So much activity was caused by the infighting between Galvatron and iMems that when iMems left, the chat fell relatively silent for months.

Fall 2018 was characterized by a grinding halt of almost all activity in the discord and on the server. The group had scars that refused to heal - activity continued to dwindle slowly despite efforts on behalf of Council. Due to the massive infighting between Galvatron and iMems, the relationship between Jay and Galvatron deteriorated. During the infighting, Jay oftentimes chastised GalvatronMC privately to show restraint to avoid creating public drama with iMems. As the summer came to a close, the chastising had increased in frequency and harshness. This continued into the Fall of 2018 and led to dissonance and miscommunication within the Council. LordGalvatronMC acted independently of the Council which resulted in the remaining member base to be separated. No known major bases were created during this time.

During mid-December, a recruit project to rebuild Beefy Town was taken on. Celestia, Meteorites and Council members all contributed to rebuilding Beefy Town. On December 18th, 2018, LordGalvatronMC interviewed and accepted a new recruit as a Meteorite into Astral. This interview was contrary to tradition, as GalvatronMC interviewed the recruit alone late at night without a microphone. This individual turned out to be iMems, unknown at the time. On December 19th, 2018, Astral celebrated its first year anniversary on 2b2t. As everyone was celebrating, Jay linked a picture of the reconstructed Beefy Town into general chat. iMems took the opportunity to take the coordinates to destroy Beefy Town. Members of the Order present at the base saw someone begin to destroy the base. Jay, suspicious of the timing of the grief, investigated further into new entries into the discord and discovered the new recruit. With enough investigation, most people in the group came to the consensus that iMems insided Astral and griefed Beefy Town with the help of friends and the Backstreet Boys.

An original and mildly edited account of the relationship between the Backstreet Boys and Astral is presented below:

"Since the creation of the Backstreet Boys a supposed "war" has been going between the Backstreet Boys and the Astral Order. The two groups both held a disliking towards one another due to the actions of jay and Galvatron. The war between these two groups is quite peaceful and not even that much of a war at all [even though] they have both griefed each other and have done some damage to one another. In December 2018, a player called Ethan5914, a friend of iMems from the 7th Incursion, found an Astral base for lower ranking members and sent coordinates to iMems and Dig. Dig streamed at spawn and in that stream, he and a few others, including iMems and Ethan, went there and players named SteamPunk and DanThePokemario spotted them and reported it to the Astral Council but as DanThePokemario was also in the Backstreet Boys and he had coordinates to their base too. DanThePokemario was kicked out of the group as a precaution, but he was annoyed at this so he leaked coords to the group's base. The Astral base leaked by Ethan and the Backstreet base leaked by DanThePokemario were both griefed, In retaliation to the Backstreet Boys spawn base getting griefed, iMems, Opwolfy and Cityboss1 went and griefed the Astral Order's main base [Lugdunum]. The Astral Order currently has not recovered from this still and is in a long state of repair. It is unknown if the Astral Order will disband in the future or not. The Astral Order and the Backstreet Boys no longer consider each other as enemies after Galvatron's departure and are now neutral."

~anonymous, as written on the Backstreet Boys' Wikipedia page.

On December 20th, 2018, Jay and other high ranking members convened privately in a call. Though Jay never supported griefing of anyone's base, he ordered DanThePokemario and Beef to destroy a Backstreet Boy's base. A few days later it was discovered that the Backstreet Boys destroyed Lugdunum. As the Astral Lord, Jay became increasingly comfortable with making executive decisions, which included the grief of the Backstreet Boy's base. This fact, coupled with the destruction of Lugdunum, led to a complete loss of popular support for Jay as the Astral Lord, and led to fighting with a large faction of the group itself and with LordGalvatronMC. Sensing this sense of public distrust, Jay stepped down as the Astral Lord. A few days later, the Council almost unanimously decided to demote Jay temporarily from Council to Celestium. Jay accepted his punishment; however, he did not feel LordGalvatronMC was held to the same standard as his negligence allowed iMems into the group. Failure to accept accountability for his mistake, election of a new Council member without input from Jay, and a lack of a clear date to promote Jay back to Council led to his departure from the discord on January 12th, 2019.

After Jay left the discord, LordKai became a Council member. The group experienced an ever decreasing number of active players, and it appeared that Astral was going to end. As a Council member, LordKai managed to establish a new base where everyone collected together into a single location. Meanwhile, Jay had started a separate Astral Discord on January 12th, 2012. A handful of people who continued to trust Jay entered the discord and simultaneously in both Astrals. The time from January 12th, 2019 to February 23rd, 2019 would be referred to as The Schism. Jay made little headway in his version of the Astral discord and became virtually inactive until approximately February 23rd, 2019. Jay with Unia planned an aggressive campaign to convince the remaining members of the original Astral Order to join the new Order, to give new rights for Celestia, to publicly advertise the Order and to gain inter-server legitimacy from groups like the Emperium. Within days, their campaign worked. With approximately 70% of the original member within their control, Jay declared their plan a success, and The Schism came to a close. The new Astral Order (also referred to as the Astral Republic) had a slightly different set-up from the original Astral Order. This included a bicameral system where the Council acted as the upper house and the Celestial Guardians as the lower house. Additional reforms included a modification of the interview process, criterion-referenced assessments to assist in the determination of eligibility for promotions, and the introduction of an Astral Judge to administer justice.

March 2019 was characterized by the establishment of a Celestium base. Though only a handful of participants engaged in the build project, activity began to increase. By early April, Jay recognized that a lack of new blood was adversely affecting activity in the discord, so he began to advertise more often. Within weeks, four to five new people had entered the server. May up through June continued to show an upward trajectory in member count with the establishment of two new successful bases, an abundance of activity in the discord, and an unprecedented era of peace.

LordGalvaltronMC's Account (unedited):

Founded December 20th of 2017 by jay_monroe and LordGalvatronMC after the collapse of The Church of Eden, The duo invited former church members and began construction of a base known as Malachor. The group was fairly inactive the activity consisting mostly of the council and a few lower ranks. Tensions rose over how to handle this inactivity causing SuperViperMan to leave not long before the group joined the UGE(United Group Embassy). Group activity stayed about the same despite growth due to joining the UGE and recruiting attempts,until about mid February. SuperViperMan had rejoined the group at the lowest rank and earned a promotion which FronkTheHuman was against due to being salty about him leaving before. Eventually it got to the point where Fronk took these frustrations out on Viper by demoting him and arguing with his fellow council members resulting in his demotion. He then left the order and leaked Malachor, which lead to it being greifed by Retronautx, IHackedWalmart, and Armorsmith. After the greifing of Malachor jay_monroe and LordGalvatronMC fed up with the inactivity ordered the lower ranks to a new base dubbed The Monastery founded by jay_monroe, LordGalvatronMC, and SuperViperMan. The Monastery grew to be a fairly large base focused on more quality builds and activity grew with decisions to prevent mistakes like those during the early days from ever happening again. After the Monastery was slowly abandoned in favor of a new main base dubbed Lugdunum, the group experienced a massive spike in applicants and growth. The group later experienced a sort of crash after the group got too big and consistent arguing resulted due to tensions between iMems and some in council which indirectly pushed some members to go inactive or consider leaving. Following some internal drama involving digandbuilder over his behavior and YouTube channel, iMems and council argued resulting in iMems leaving out of anger. The group is currently going through a series of changes to fix problems made aware by the previously mentioned drama.

ORGANIZATION

Astral Guardians - An elected leadership position, The Guardians act as figure heads and leaders to the group. Every two months an election is held by the celestia on who they want as a guardian.

Celestium - Celestium is the main member rank of Astral. They are also the only ones in Astral who can vote.

Meteorites - Comets who are well-liked by the community and are trusted to participate in more demanding projects.

Comets - Individuals who pass an initial interview process who participate in group build projects.

INTER-GROUP RELATIONS

The Society: Friendly

VoCo : Neutral

Emperium : Allies

Highland : Neutral

Last Templar : Neutral

Spawn Masons : Neutral

Exodus : Friendly

Point Zenith : Neutral

The Backstreet Boys : Neutral