Invicta

Invicta is a builder faction founded and led by RasmusB. The group is best known for the construction of the city build Providentia, a large-scale project worked on for over 5 months.

Invicta had good relations with most older factions on the server due to their status as a peaceful builder faction. Their only known opponents were The Grey, who attempted a grief of Providentia, and the Kingdom of Sweden.

History
Invicta was formed on 29 August 2019 by RasmusB, who was joined a few days later by carl1909, whose journey became troubled after dying 19,000 Nether blocks into his trip, having not set a bed spawn beforehand.

RasmusB and Carl started the construction of Providentia on 1 September 2019. It was divided into two districts - the Old District, with Medieval themed buildings, and the New District, with buildings in the Baroque style.

While constructing an embassy at The Varden in January 2020, RasmusB was helped by one of its members, Kiddu, who had previously expressed an interest in visiting Providentia. When The Varden fell apart shortly thereafter after due to a Valhalla raid, RasmusB recruited Kiddu into Invicta.

Self-Grief of Providentia
Throughout January and February 2020, The Grey had been trying to find a large and well-known base to grief in order to gain more relevance. In early February, a high-ranking Grey member, Tarqshark, claimed to have left the group, and approached Kiddu, asking to join Invicta. RasmusB and Carl had been getting drained from working on the Providentia project for nearly six months, and so they let Tarq into the group on 13 February despite it being an obvious ploy by The Grey.

Tarq informed the Invicta members that he would not be able to play until 17 February, meaning The Grey were likely not going to hit the base until that date. In order to buy more time, RasmusB fed Tarq fake info that large amounts of valuables would be transported to Providentia from RasmusB's personal stash late on the 18th.

On 15 February, Rasmus, Kiddu, and Carl stripped the base of all valuables, filling their enderchests with valuables such as diamond blocks, relics from the museum, and the 5x5 map of Providentia. The following day, the three gathered in the City Hall to begin the destruction of the city. After an annoyingly long rainstorm, they split off to burn various parts of the base, with RasmusB using up a shulker of flint and steel. Then the destruction continued with areas being blown up with TNT and a wither spawned by Kiddu, and the important buildings lavacasted. Kiddu and Carl left the area, but RasmusB continued to lavacast the base through the night. He was later joined by Pulque, who wanted to say a final goodbye to Providentia before its destruction and helped RasmusB with lavacasting for a few hours. The following morning, Tarq logged on to see both Providentia and The Grey's plans destroyed.

A new Era for Invicta
On February 18th, 2 days after the Providentia grief, Ras and Kiddu arrived at the new base location and founded the new home of Invicta - Glaciagrad. The other members: carl1909, Dovakaen and Soosh later arrived. With a fresh base and nothing to lose, it was decided among the current members, that a major member expansion would be a good idea. Over time, Invicta recruited more than 10 new members and quickly turned into a powerhouse of well-known Purity players. The group currently had 16 members, consisting of builders, map-artists, PVPers, Redstone/farm-oriented players and more.

Not much was known about this base among the general playerbase, only rumors.

Glaciagrad
Glaciagrad was primarily built in a snowy tundra biome, leading to the name. While screenshots of the base were kept extremely limited due to fear of coordinate leaks, the base nevertheless built up a major reputation in the player base. Its large storage and its negative effect on client FPS became one of Purity's most common memes, and the size of its builds was reputed as far larger than any other base.

A number of Glaciagrad's builds are still discussed even by outsiders. Notable among things are:


 * Hallofvalor-inside-withcloud.pnggcraft's Hall of Valor, controversial and alternately praised and criticized for its enormous size and composition of almost entirely undifferentiated stone blocks.
 * 2020-08-27 16.28.59.png's Zora's Domain, a favorite build of many of Purity's staff, praised for both thematic coolness and build quality.
 * Glaciagrad-actuallybestbuild.png's fighter jet hangers, a smaller modern build completed off-the-cuff during the creation of the Tuborg mapart.

Outside the snowy tundra biome, Glaciagrad featured a large mapart district in the ocean to the south, with Jake and OwO being among its most prolific creators, as well as a large farming district to the east. However, much of the block production for Glaciagrad's enormous builds was done elsewhere, most notably the factory base of Panta Rei, approximately 100k away in the same quadrant.

Glaciagrad's members began its self-grief approximately 15 October 2021 following the grief of Panta Rei. After self-griefing many of the larger builds and almost all farms, the self-grief was announced on 22 October and a number of screenshots and this video of the base were released: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJADnVk3vWg&t Quite a bit of the base remained after the self-grief. Notably, both Hall of Valor and the fighter jet hangars remained, as did a number of the smaller builds and the vast majority of maparts.

The corner base
Evacuating Glaciagrad, Invicta founded a new base towards one corner of the map, more than four hundred thousand blocks from spawn on both X and Y. At this point, they picked up new member Pickleseidon, a refugee from Panta Rei, and would later add Starbaron and sonickmonx to their ranks. Their membership boom at this time was less than their previous boom after Providentia, but still significant.

Shortly after arriving at the new base, an Invicta member stumbled upon another base close to the world corner: Los Dungeles.

Los Dungeles was to be griefed to the ground by NSO within the coming weeks. The finding of this base shocked Invicta, and brought to mind the dangers of basing near the diagonal and near the world border. The current focus of both megabase builders and megabase hunters in the region within 100k from the world border became a concern, and Invicta moved closer in.

The new base
Invicta next based closer to spawn in the same quadrant, within the 400k line and away from the diagonal. This base was to combine the grand megafarms of Panta Rei and the extensive maparts and megabuilds of Glaciagrad. More notable projects included:


 * Newbase-city.png city. A large collection of buildings in a late medieval style, collected between two cylindrical walls.
 * Newbase-mansion-garden.pngNewbase-storage.png mansion. A neo-classical building surrounded by opulent gardens; a favorite build of many Invicta members and the main entrance to the main storage.
 * Newbase-shipwreck.png shipwreck. Praised by many as among the coolest builds thematically.

While the new base's maparts and farms were grand, build size suffered compared to Glaciagrad. In the words of member sonickmonx, "that's really what the letdown was--how inactive we were". Invicta would add new members Contom and Splash towards the end of this period, but this did not significantly resolve their building lethargy. The new base was to be destroyed on 18 August 2021, the day of Purity's switch to 1.17.1. NSO would lead the charge as the server came up on the new version, exfiltrating hundreds of shulkers from the base before levelling large portions of it, particularly emphasizing the megafarms it characterized as a lag machine, reporting a 5 TPS drop upon loading the farms.

The future
What the future holds for Invicta is unclear, but what remains certain is that it shall be shrouded in mystery until their next base is revealed to the world in all its possible grandeur.