Nostra:Philadelphia
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Overview
Philadelphia is the largest town by number of chunks in the state of Pennsylvania, and ranks 5th largest in the North American continent, trailing behind Chicago, New York City, Montreal, and Miami. As of October 17th, 2026, Philadelphia sits at 723 chunks, situated in the southeast corner of Pennsylvania. It claims into the northern regions of Maryland and Delaware, and along the beginning stretch of both the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers.
Philadelphia was founded within the first 24 hours of the Terra Nostra opening, at 3:52 EST by __naagy, the first mayor and an influential individual in the town.
History
Planning and Founding
In August of 2025, Mattbob153, thickman, and __naagy, who had spent all of Terra Aurora as owners of the town of Indianapolis and the nation of Indiana, started developing plans for their new town in Terra Nostra. The three very quickly landed on Philadelphia, as it was close to home for all three. __naagy had always wanted to make Philadelphia on Terra Aurora, however it was occupied or ruined for most of Terra Aurora and Mattbob153 was committed to maintaining Indiana. In December of 2025, Mattbob153 began designing a few buildings that they would make once the town was formed. By the time Terra Nostra opened for early access, Mattbob153 had designed Independence Hall, Reading Terminal, and a few rowhome designs. __naagy decided to purchase premium in order to receive early access to the server to ensure he would be the first one to take the town of Philadelphia, as they could not afford losing the town to someone else. __naagy joined the server immediately after early access opened, and spawned in British Columbia. He spent the next few hours racing across the continent and collecting gold. Philadelphia was officially founded at 3:52pm EST on opening day, and the town proceeded to join The Commonwealth of America 2 days after its founding. While __naagy worked to gather resources and constructed Independence Hall during early access, Mattbob153 wouldn't join until the server opened to the public on May 1st, 2026, and thickman followed on May 2nd.
Early Beginnings
Philadelphia spent the first half of May pretty stagnant, as everyone was focused on college. Once Mattbob153 and __naagy's finals ended, they began rapidly constructing several major landmarks and heavily recruiting residents. In this period of late May and early June, City Hall, Reading Terminal Market, a majority of the prebuilt shops, and the Comcast Technology Center was all built. While __naagy held mayor, Mattbob153, thickman, and another friend Drewbob_28_ were given councillor as __naagy didn't feel like setting up specific permissions. __naagy spent most of his time when not building to heavily recruit new residents, and Philadelphia exploded in population and was steadily in the top 5-15 largest cities in the United States by both population and claims. During this time, several notable members like yergmite, VreikOG, alktat, and crabofcrabland joined. By early June, Mattbob153 and __naagy joined the America Discord to involve themselves in national politics. While Mattbob153 tried to get involved in the Public Works department, __naagy very quickly made enemies with thearbysworker, mayor of St. Willis, and later Conleft, mayor of Delaware, both of which will become important later. Mattbob153 would later represent Philadelphia in the 2nd and 3rd Congress and later Secretary of Public Works under Presidents sayerleft and Flippizzacake.
American Civil War
Around mid June, a bill was introduced in Congress to kick Delaware from the nation as a result of them hunting and trapping several citizens and allies. Mattbob153 strongly opposed the bill, knowing kicking them would further provoke problems. Delaware, under leadership of Conleft, subsequently left the nation and a little over a week later formed their own nation of USA. At the same time, thearbysworker, who was trying to provoke conflict as his town was completely isolated on the Delmarva peninsula and surrounded by Delaware, tried causing conflict between __naagy, Baltimore, and Delaware. Baltimore would later get tired of thearbysworker's accusations and sold the town to Delaware. This sounded the alarms for Philadelphia, as towns all around it began caving to Delaware/USA and Delaware began expanding northward. __naagy was in the planning stages for Citizens Bank Park at this time and initially planned on building it south of City Hall, however not all of the land for it was claimed. The Philadelphia government decided to try and rapidly claim the south side of town to prevent Delaware from disrupting the construction of Citizens Bank Park, however they did not have enough gold to do so and __naagy sent a provoking message to Conleft telling Delaware to stay in their place. This resulted in Delaware forming the claimblock of Delaware-Border right on the canal to prevent Philadelphia expansion southward and a few days later they formed the town of Pennsylvania to the southwest, directly interfering with the Citizens Bank Park plans.
Due to the nature of both towns being formed solely to prevent Philadelphia's expansion, they were both reported by __naagy as claimblocks. The town of Delaware-Border was deleted as a result, but almost immediately after Pennsylvania reclaimed the territory and further expanded along the border, blocking Philadelphia from expanding anywhere to the southwest side of town. Due to poor communication from __naagy and a lack of mod response for an extended period of time, the town of Pennsylvania was allowed to remain and further expanded westward to the Susquehanna. Philadelphia was able to raise funds from several citizens of both the town and nation to help counteract by claiming themselves and preventing Pennsylvania from intruding any further into Philadelphia's city plans, even despite the lack of national assistance as America's government was very midwest-centric at the time. Pressure from Mattbob153 and others caused __naagy to step down from mayor after being a main instigator in the conflict and Mattbob153 would take his place as mayor on July 1st, 2026. Under Mattbob153's control, Philadelphia pushed for peace and an end to the conflict and constructed a border wall a week later to prevent people crossing into Delaware and being trapped/hunted. On July 11th, 2026, the treaty of Philadelphia was signed, putting an end to the conflict and was largely written by Philadelphia resident alktat. The border wall remained standing for another month, until the collapse of the USA on August 2nd, 2026. During this time, USA sold off nearly all of its towns, including Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Baltimore.
Post Conflict and Decline
The town of Pennsylvania was purchased soon after going up for sale, with the help of HibachiBeamz, town funds, and several other personal investments. The Delaware infrastructure was subsequently demolished and redeveloped. Newly appointed councillor alktat was chosen as the holder for Pennsylvania until the towns could be merged, and he renamed Pennsylvania to South_Philly. Until the towns can officially merge, they operate as a joint city where residents of one can have plots in either city and all infrastructure projects are done together. Early on in the American Civil War, resident VreikOG was promoted to councillor to help assist Mattbob153, thickman, and __naagy. Drewbob_28_ was demoted to builder at this time as Mattbob153 redid the city permissions that __naagy had neglected. alktat was promoted a few weeks later to help assist with the infrastructure projects, as he was in the middle of constructing the ice rail system for both the town and nation, and finally yergmite was promoted right around the time Pennsylvania was purchased from USA. VreikOG left Phildelphia in late July to pursue his dream of creating Broken_Bow, Nebraska and would later become the 5th President of America before moving to Svalbard in late September. By August, thickman and __naagy both went inactive for work and school, and Mattbob153 went semi-inactive as well. This led alktat and yergmite to oversee the towns over a month, and alktat would become 6th President of America during this time. Philadelphia would fall into overclaim and drop from around 90 active residents at its peak to 40. Activity would slowly pick up, and as of October 17th, 2026, Philadelphia has 45 active residents and is currently in the process of recruiting and stockpiling gold for an eventual merger of South_Philly and Philadelphia.
General Information
Buildings
Philadelphia is one of the most developed towns in the United States, and comprises of several real-life buildings that have been recreated in game. Some examples are Independence Hall, Museum of Art, Citizens Bank Park, Reading Terminal Market, City Hall, and several skyscrapers. On top of these landmark buildings, Philadelphia has several prebuilt shop plots surrounding the eastern half of City Hall that can be purchased by anyone on the server. South of these shops are reserved embassy plots for any interested nations. There are also several plots available for residents to build their own homes.
Largest Buildings (by height):
- Comcast Technology Center (__naagy/Mattbob153/VreikOG/others) - 183 blocks
- Comcast Center (__naagy) - 180 blocks
- 1 Liberty Place (yergmite) - 177 blocks
- 2 Liberty Place (yergmite) - 160 blocks
- Philadelphia City Hall (__naagy) - 85 blocks
Infrastructure
Philadelphia has numerous public transportation in its borders, most notably an entire subway system. The subway system (Figure 3) connects a majority of the Philadelphia metro through a series of 1x2 blue ice tunnels. These are accessible via various sidewalk entrances laid out across the city. Philadelphia is also home to a major station on the national ice boat highway. Located under 30th Street Station, this station features a dual-bore system that connects to the expansive Atlantic Line linking Philadelphia to several major American cities. There is also an ice-minecart branch that connects Reading Terminal to 30th Street Station, however it has fallen into disrepair.
City Government
Philadelphia started as an oligarchy where all power was controlled by a triumvirate (Mattbob153, thickman, __naagy). Over time, the city transitioned to a directorate system where the city council acts as the chief legislative and executive body, holding collective voting power over all major city policies and developments. Rather than public elections, new councillors are admitted to the ruling body via a direct vote by current sitting council members. Philadelphia is actively looking for new city council members in order to transition the councillors into role-specific jobs, such as treasurer, lead recruiter, lead builder, and more.
| Username | Entered Office | Left Office |
|---|---|---|
| __naagy | April 17th, 2026 | July 1st, 2026 |
| Mattbob153 | July 1st, 2026 | Incumbent |
| Username | Appointed | Resigned/Left Office |
|---|---|---|
| __naagy | April 17th, 2026 | Incumbent |
| Mattbob153 | May 1st, 2026 | Incumbent |
| thickman | May 2nd, 2026 | Incumbent |
| Drewbob_28_ | May 9th, 2026 | July 1st, 2026 |
| VreikOG | July 10th, 2026 | July 29th, 2026 |
| alktat | July 29th, 2026 | Incumbent |
| yergmite | August 2nd, 2026 | Incumbent |