Independent Interstate Society

The Independent Interstate Society (IIS) was a Nether highway repair group that was dedicated to expansion and maintenance of the Nether highways from mid-2019 until its disbandment in November 2020, after which most of the remaining builders migrated to the Highway Workers Union and/or Motorway Extension Gurus.

While Nether roads always existed in some form, IIS members' wide use of baritone and Schematica to automatically dig tunnels, build wide obsidian roads, and clear blockage, allowed the group at its peak to claim the title of most prolific Nether highway group in 2b2t's history. Aside from extension and clearing of the main highways, they were especially notable for converting the ring roads from small tunnels into full-sized obsidian highways.

History
The founding members of the North East Highway Group, the precursor to what would become the IIS, were TheFifthAge and Adam8067; the IIS was founded by TheFifthAge, Adam8067, CoziePanda, Eddie123 and Maxed/5K5K shortly after.

The first real activity of IIS's repair effort was just its leader building the +X, -Z diagonal highway solo from near Spawn to 35k, where Adam8067 then joined the effort and together, with some help, built the highway all the way to 80k.

The group's leaders initially joined SIG and tried to claim credit for work they had already completed on said highway, but since they had already completed more repairs than the SIG credit system was designed to deal with, they ran into obstacles like rankup bureaucracy and a need for recorded screenshots every 100 blocks, which seemed counterproductive. Furthermore, SIG's policies on repairs did not specify whether one had to use obsidian, which led to roads looking like patchwork netherrack-cobble bridges without walls, easily destroyed by withers and even people with TNT and/or pickaxes. All of these things led to the IIS being founded as a much more loosely managed, independent highway group.

In its first few weeks of existence, the IIS sent out repair and building crews to rework/restyle the existing disheveled highways into the IIS's specific template. Because the highways had not been properly tended to for some time, this task included the destruction of a lot of highway as well, since many of the main roads were built in mismatched styles. However, after this was done, repair and restoration on the highways became significantly easier. People interested in contributing something to 2b2t flocked to the group during this time as they shared this vision of a standardized, clean Nether highway network.

From late August through September 2019, the group saw a massive influx of players that necessitated large-scale reworks of the role system and a more invested obsidian delivery system. Around November and December, the group's player count stabilized right around 1,800 members and remained constant since.

On August 30, 2019, the group finished their first main milestone goal: to extend their highways to at least 20k in all directions. In October 2019, Rageland Renovations, also known as the Anti-IIS, was founded by Steve3 with several members from the Backstreet Boys and Point Zenith to ruin the IIS highways. The group became known for using slave labor to block large sections of the -Z highway with obsidian, a tactic that was significantly more effective than breaking up the roads using withers. The IIS has since removed 100,000+ obsidian placed by Rageland, and as of December 2019, all roads were cleared and Rageland gave up trying.

Other highways have also been blocked using obsidian and marked with "road closed" map arts at various times since IIS's founding, but there were few incidents where these griefs were consistently rebuilt after IIS's road repairs.

In November 2019, chunkbanning was being utilized to block the highways in some places, but this was patched (in the Nether) by Hause in December.

As of November 2019, the four main axis highways all extended to at least 50k, with the northeast diagonal highway still leading at over 250k. IIS consequently focused its efforts on reaching 50k for all diagonal highways, as well as repairing and maintaining the existing ones.

In January 2020, due to the influx of YouTubers, the IIS came to an agreement with the Infinity Incursion to allow them to grief everything within the first 1,000 blocks of Spawn, though excluding the 1,000 ring road. This included all highways and ring roads within that distance, and IIS recommended that everyone should ignore that area. This agreement came to an end on May 3, 2020, when the IIS announced they would once again repair the highways within the first 1,000 blocks of Spawn, because of the beliefs that the blockade no longer served a purpose, and that the Infinity Incursion and its allies stepped past their boundaries and griefed past the first 1,000 blocks at Spawn, causing extra work for the IIS.

On January 30, 2020, IIS successfully finished extending all 8 directional highways out to 50k. There was supposed to be a meet-up at Spawn later that day but was disrupted due to griefers and spawnfags. As of March 2020, all eight obsidian highways reached out to at least 50k Nether, with the +X highway reaching out to over one million Overworld (125k+ Nether). As of April 21, 2020, the IIS finished extending all four axis highways 125k out, or 1 million Overworld. This marked a major milestone in IIS as the majority of 2b2t travel is done within the first million.

During the time of its highest activity, some IIS members expressed frustration that their efforts were not being acknowledged by YouTubers such as Fit making dramatized videos about the highways, with most of their work instead being wrongly attributed to SIG. For a time, SalC1 expressed interest in making a video specifically dedicated to the IIS; however, since the group wasn't sure they could handle the influx of players as a result of being featured on YouTube, this video never materialized before the group's eventual dissolution.

In September 2020, IIS underwent new ownership, headed by Snow710, who took over after TheFifthAge was inactive for a period of several months. Under him, IIS Kings gave suggestions on the new course of the IIS. Snow710 stated, "Fifth and I got in an argument and I removed some roles to clean up the discord, but he got mad and left completely. He gave me owner, so I have decided to make the IIS active again."

As of October 21, 2020, IIS finished all eight highways to 125k, or 1 million Overworld. This was another major milestone and the major goal that the IIS hoped to accomplish within its lifetime.

As of November 17, 2020, the IIS officially disbanded due to growing tensions and inactivity among various players associated with the group. IIS bowed out and gave way to the birth of the Highway Workers Union, as well as some members transferring to the Motorway Extension Gurus, where they are to this day.

Activities
The IIS built and maintained the Nether highway in all eight regular directions: the four axis highways and four diagonal highways. Portals and other obstructions on the road such as banners and random blocks were removed during routine repair runs.

Another part of the group's construction effort was focused on the ring roads, highways that connect all the eight highways at specific intersections, which allow travellers to completely avoid the Spawn region when travelling to a different axis. Some of these ring roads already existed as 1x2 tunnels, but the IIS expanded them into full-blown obsidian highways, albeit slightly less wide than the main axis highways. The roads IIS built were made with Elytra flight in mind, meaning they were meant to be spacious and unobstructed. The ring roads that IIS constructed are located 1k, 2.5k, 5k, 10k, 15k, 20k, 25k, and 50k out. Some of these ring roads were added to help Nether renders to be done, many of which were made by IronException. IIS also periodically maintained several roads within 1k, although none of these were long-lasting.

As a result of the many public dupes during the period of IIS's activity, materials were almost always readily available. The IIS set up a network in its Discord server where members could request shulkers of ender chests to be delivered to them by the group's core team, and they received donators who stepped forward to fund the group's activities.

IIS did not participate in faction conflicts during its existence, even though they regularly interacted with groups such as Conquest, The Emperium, the Infinity Incursion, and the Vortex Coalition, as well as various Spawnfags. There was much emphasis on recruitment, especially new players. Members were encouraged to share screenshots of their work, but this was not required as group members were not rewarded for working on individual projects, but instead thanked for helping with the group in general.

With regards to highway griefing, the group's founder TheFifthAge had been quoted as saying that the IIS repairs roads faster than any griefer can grief them, and the group generally has a "sure, whatever ok" attitude to highway griefing (members have expressed that without highway griefers, "IIS would be out of a job").

Relations
The IIS aimed to be friendly with all groups. They had no negative relations, except against Team Sexy for their intentional and deliberate highway griefing. This relation had died, however, as the +X had been cleaned afterward and was not re-griefed.

In early 2020, Team Sexy began an attack on the Nether Highways via a mass-clog of the highways. The IIS was quick to counteract using withers and normal pickaxes, but Team Sexy continued to persist. This event eventually ended as the operation stopped, and other groups like HWU stepped in to assist as well.

A dramatic video explaining this can be found here. The normal one can be found here.