Cape Verde

Cape Verde is a town on the Terra Aurora map, located on the archipelago and island country of the same name in the real world. It is run by veteran player GymSock17. Its location far off the African coast leaves the town fairly isolated, but it a popular stop amongst travelers who are crossing the Atlantic in the area as the town's borders can provide protection in an otherwise largely unclaimed area.

Origins

Looking for somewhere to found a town, GymSock17 purchased Premium and joined the Terra Aurora map opening day on the 1st of May 2022. After waiting for hours and repeated map crashes, Gym was able to get on and walked through Mongolia and into the Gobi Desert, when he received an invite to Germany by his long-time friend from the real world, YellowVictini. Yellow wanted Gym to stay in Germany with him and start a town together in East Prussia, but Gym was tired of the peasants and detritus that infected Europe on Terra Nova and expected it wouldn't take long for the same thing to happen again on the new map, so he sailed out from the Baltic Sea, through the Straits of Denmark, North Sea, and the English Channel into the Pacific. From there, he sailed to the Canary Islands, intending to start a town on Grand Canary. However, it was getting late, and Gym had to log off for the day to go to work. When he came back the next day, some fool had already placed a claim on the island (this fool would later lose it for not logging back in on time like an idiot). Gym decided that even the Canary Islands were too big of a target and too massive to claim for his own, and decided to sail south, to the southernmost of the Macaronesia archipelago, the Cape Verde Islands.

After arriving and setting up a hidden base camp, Gym got off once again for the day. The next morning, Gym got on and finally scrapped together enough gold and founded his town, which he simply named Cape Verde. Immediately, Gym got to work on building infrastructure and expanding the town's claims to the rest of the island of Santiago, the largest island in the archipelago.

Once Santiago was brought under the town in its entirety, the town began to expand towards the other islands of the archipelago. First bringing together the southern island chain, then the northern chain.

Islands

Cape Verde exists on an archipelago of islands, home to various structures and purposes.

Isle of Brave & Dry Islets

The Isle of Brave currently has no structures on the island, nor do the tiny Dry Islets to the north of the island.

Isle of Fire

The Isle of Fire is a volcanic island. It home to the Volcanic Mine, the main mining facility for the archipelago. To the east of the island, the Cape Verde Arena is currently under construction. The 16-chunk stadium will be capable of hosting various PvP events, has working redstone gates, a glass roof for natural lighting, and redstone lights that toggle on and off in accordance with the time of day. Scorchbound's Stronghold is located underneath the island, built out of a hollowed-out base discovered there by GymSock17 in November 2022, whose original creator is unknown.

Santiago

Santiago is the main island of Cape Verde. The island is home to the town's spawn, hosts a visitor center, a terrace farm, GymSock17's house, Santiago Square, HawtDawg__'s Tower, the former Santiago Mine, and two piers, one on the north end of the island and the other on the south.

May Island

May Island houses the May Island Facility, which is home to various farm animals. It also has a glowberry vineyard.

Goodview

Goodview Island is home to the archipelago's rest station for travelers to rest safely in protected claim on their journeys should they decide or need to do so. On the north shore of the island, there is a monument to the Cabo Santa Maria, a Spanish cargo ship that crash in the area in the real world during a storm in 1968 enroute to Brazil. The monument is commemorated to the wreck site how the people of the island who spent several months helping to safely unload the ship's cargo so it could continue on its journey What is left of the wreck in the real world is still there today, most of it lost to the sea due to being battered by the ocean waves of the Atlantic for over half century.

Salt Island

Salt Island is largely empty, save for a pier for landing on the eastern side of the island and a small cobblestone ruin built by an unknown player a long time ago.

Saint Nicholas

Saint Nicholas is largely covered in trees. The island has a Japanese-styled house on the east end of the island constructed in December 2022. The island a pier on the west end connected to the road that crosses the island east-west.

Saint Lucy

Saint Lucy along with the two nearby islets are uninhabited. Saint Lucy itself is protected as a nature reserve, with trees, flowers, tall grass, and a number of different animals, primarily parrots.

Saint Vincent

Saint Vincent is largely empty, save for a pier on the southeast end of the island, and a road that covers the island east-west.

Saint Anthony

Saint Anthony, the second-largest island in the archipelago, is almost entirely undisturbed from how it appears from the day the Aurora map launched because the island has been illegally occupied by a squatter. This lone squatter is an enigma, as they do not move their character, they do not talk, they do not mine, they do not build. All they do is long in every day, vote, and log off. They do this every single day with no exceptions and have done so for over two years now. Any and all attempts to message the squatter through signs placed in their controlled vicinity and by messaging in-game have all gone unanswered. If they are in the EarthMC Discord, they are not under their in-game name, making it unclear who they are, and not able to be contacted.

Economy

The primary economic activity on Cape Verde is farming, fishing and tourism.

Farming

The main island in the archipelago, Santiago, is home to a terrace farm which is used to grow sugarcane, wheat and potatoes. There is also an underwater dome next to the island connected to GymSock17's house that grows beets.

Fishing

Being surrounded by ocean, fishing naturally became a cornerstone of the Cape Verdean economy.

Tourism

The island's presence of providing protected claim areas that can act as a rest stop for players travelling across the Atlantic. The island of Goodview (Boa Vista) is home to a dedicated rest stop for players to use as shelter should they ever need it.