Independent Interstate Society



The Independent Interstate Society, shortened IIS, is a highly active nether highway repair organization that has the stated goal of steadily expanding all highways in a uniform, functional obsidian design, while also performing regular repairs on them to ensure the best possible highway experience. Their work includes repairing and expanding the existing highways, as well as constructing ring-roads that connect them and building milestones.

Activities
The group was founded by TheFifthAge because other highway reconstruction groups like SIG were considered to be dead or highly inactive, and out of a dissatisfaction with the state of most, if not all, of the highways. The group builds roads in all the 8 regular directions, 4 blocks wide with 1-block-high walls, entirely out of obsidian.The first real activity of IIS's repair effort was just its leader building the +X -Z highway all the way to 80k; he then realized it might be a good idea to get a group together to start doing this in a more organized way.

In its first weeks of existence, the IIS sent out repair and building crews to rework/restyle the existing disheveled highways into their specific template, and simultaneously have people extend them further. Members are encouraged to share screenshots of their work, and also their server statistics, to track their obsidian building. Since its founding, IIS has already built over 250k of highway, and its members collectively have placed at least half a million obsidian.

Another large part of their construction effort is focused on ring roads, which are horizontal highways that connect all the 8 highways at specific intersections. The planned ring roads are 500; 1,000; 5,000; 10,000; 25,000; and 50,000; out of those, only the first three have been fully completed. The group's official policy is to destroy all portals and other obstructions blocking the highway, to better accommodate elytra flight (the group therefore encourages exit portals to be built a ways next to the road, and not directly on it).

TheFifthAge has been quoted as saying that the group repairs highway griefs faster than any griefer can inflict them, and the group generally has a "sure, grief all you want" attitude.

On August 30th 2019, the group finished their first main milestone goal: to extend all highways to at least 20k. Their next group event was a contest for its members to build 25k milestones.

After a few weeks of steady repairs and advertising their cause through signs, chat and discord, the group grew exponentially, and its discord now houses almost a thousand people, although definitely not all of them are actively participating in the building effort.

Relations
IIS is a neutral organisation and does not care for faction drama. The group does not want to take part in any ongoing wars, beefs or conflicts, but are willing to work with anyone and everyone, as long as they want to help build roads. This means they interact with a lot of the spawnfags and also groups likr Conquest, The Emperium and VoCo ; however, IIS does not want any official "allied" or "enemy" status with any of these groups, specifically so that they can work with whomever chooses.

The group also does not see highway maintenance as inherently pro-newfag, and does not in any way restrain its members from killing new players, raiding stashes, being active in war/raiding groups, or anything. In fact, IIS may be one of the only groups around where hardcore spawncampers work side-by-side with fresh newfags on a project of this scope.