GymSock17

GymSock17 is a veteran player on EarthMC. He first joined the server on the 4th of June, 2017, during the Classic Era, and has been active on every map ever since.

Classic

Beginnings

When GymSock17 first logged in, he took a look at the DynMap to see what land was available. He spawned in Europe, which was dominated by a player named Adolf_Hitlar. With a name like that, Gym didn't want to get involved and decided to look elsewhere. He sailed around the African continent. During this journey, Gym was attacked by players when arriving at a town in the Mozambique Channel, narrowly escaping while being shot at with arrows. He decided that the only practical answer was to settle somewhere other players had not yet touched. Looking around the DynMap, he decided that the Indonesia was largely undisturbed and decided to settle on an island in the area. There, he chose the island of Timor, founding a town with the island's name on the eastern tip of the island.

Timor became a project of GymSock17's. The island was thick with jungle trees that housed many hostile mobs in the night, and Gym began to clear the island for construction. Soon, enough of the eastern side of Timor was cleared of Jungle that Gym built a house for himself and a pier. Gym was quite happy with how things were turning out. He had found his tropical island paradise.

Rise of Timor

The jungle was beaten back, one chopped tree at a time. Timor became the only town in the region, other towns in the islands having been abandoned and dissolved, a beacon of civilization in the wilderness. GymSock invited a personal friend to the town, bringing the population of Timor up to 2. It wasn't long before other nations began courting GymSock to get him to join their nation. Nations worked differently on Classic, where there were no restrictions on how far a town was from a nation's capital to join it. Eventually, he decided join his first nation, Prestige WorldWide. The envoy who contacted him was friendly, and the nation bonus was nice.

Nova

Return to Nova

GymSock17 made his return to EarthMC on Terra Nova months after the map launched. YellowVictini, his old friend in the real world and supporter on Classic, invited him back, needing someone to hold a contested area in the Balkans on behalf of Byzantium. With Yellow being a friend and all that he had done for GymSock on Classic, GymSock felt obligated to support him, and agreed to return to the server. The town the Byzantines wanted Gym to take over had an inactive own and was part of a rival nation, so they asked him to cozy up to that nation's ruler and get him to hand the town over to him. Once that had been done, he had orders to spy on another smaller nation in the region by becoming friendly with the leader of said nation.

Gym was asked to take up residence in a town with an inactive mayor. Unfortunately, this mayor, running the town for the nation he was tasked to spy on did not log into the town in time, and it fell into ruin. Gym was forced to reclaim the town, chunk by chunk. He gave it the name of Konjic, after a town of the same name in the real world in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as Gym's town was close to its approximate location in-game. Since the town had to be relcaimed, the town's buildings and infrastructure were damaged by looters and scavengers. Eventually GymSock17 had reclaimed the entirety of the town hall and began to expand outwards to the remaining buildings.

Aurora

Start on Aurora

With a fresh start at hand, GymSock17 joined Terra Aurora at its Premium release. His time on Nova in continental Europe, a place with rapidly changing allegiances, wars, and countless land disputes, saw Gym disillusioned with trying to set up on the continent. He looked elsewhere, wanting to settle somewhere he could be left alone with his friends to build what they want. On the first day, he made his way to the Canary Islands, where he logged off for the night. The next day, a town was founded on the island he had logged off on, so he decided to look elsewhere once again. He decided to go further south and settled on the islands of Cape Verde.

Nostra

Start on Nostra

GymSock17 signed onto Terra Nostra on its Premium start date, the 17th of April 2026. He was impressed with how much more stable the launch was compared to Aurora four years prior. Unsure of where to settle, Gym spent the first few days wandering the map solo, gathering resources, only having what he could carry on his back. He sailed oceans, wandered towns and shops, seeing if anywhere spoke out to him. He wanted an island. Just one island this time, unlike having to manage a multitude of them like he had in Aurora with Cape Verde. Nostra was not like Aurora, however. It was much vaster, its size dwarfed Aurora and Nova, and humbled the old Classic map.