SpawnMasons

SpawnMasons
"The Spawnmasons own 2b2t!"
The logo of the SpawnMasons
Status	Active
Founded	Mid January, 2017
Members	~30
Bases	Spacejam, Vulcatavio, Australia, COVID-2147, The Spawn Train, Smibville, Photosynthesis, Chunk Haven, Sky Masons, and over 300 lodges.
Events
v t e

The SpawnMasons are a group founded by HermeticLock in February 2017. It lasted until August 6th of 2017, then was brought back and has been active since early September 2017 to the present day. It is one of the more secretive groups on 2b2t, and does not often interact with the majority of the server's community.

As the name suggests, the SpawnMasons often build close to spawn and embrace the risk of being found by travellers. The group takes turns to build temporary lodges for weekly meetings, participates in long-term group bases and oversees other spawn projects. The group makes efforts to accumulates older, capable, or influential players while staying small enough to be a close brotherhood.^[1]

History[edit | edit source]

Creation[edit | edit source]

The SpawnMasons were created by HermeticLock and a friend, and the group imitates its real-life counterpart, the Freemasons. The SpawnMasons conduct an initiation ritual and, like the Freemasons, hold meetings to discuss group business.

First degree[edit | edit source]

In May 2017, the group was at its highest member count. In a single night, it had initiated players Sato86, jared2013, and Fit, solidifying its position as the most elite group on 2b2t. At its height, a weekly meeting could have more than thirty-five SpawnMasons in a voice chat at once. The SpawnMasons cemented their reputation as builders and often stayed out of conflicts between other groups. During this time, the SpawnMasons constructed a series of bases that include Spacejam, Vulcatavio and a fortified skybase during July's temporary map. The quality of lodges also improved after Negative Entropy decided to create something a bit more unique, leading to the abolition of the SpawnMasons' tendency to destroy every lodge after hosting a meeting there. Some memorable lodges are the first lodge, the Tropical Island and Ain's Airship.

After Fit released his video of the destruction of Summermelon, the SpawnMasons were faced with the issue of whether to allow Fit and AlphaComputer to remain within the group. AlphaComputer and Fit had broken the SpawnMasons' code by destroying a base that housed other SpawnMasons and killing Krobar01, who was a fellow member. AlphaComputer was voted to be kicked from the group, and Fit barely got enough votes to stay in. Shortly after this controversy, HermeticLock decided to take a break from 2b2t and resigned as leader of the SpawnMasons. An official SpawnMason disbandment reddit post was made, and a brief intermission ensued where the SpawnMasons were nonexistent.

Second degree[edit | edit source]

In August 2017, Henry and Vel re-established the SpawnMasons, giving previously Worshipful-ranked players their ranks back, and reconstructing the group similarly as HermeticLock had previously established. Henry came to act as the unofficial leader of the SpawnMasons in HermeticLock's absence. The group continued its course and bases were founded, like Boghdad and the skybase of April's temporary map. Lodges included dr_frankfurt's Flashback, Negative_Entropy's Western Air Temple, Krobar01's Kang and Kodos and l_amp's Greek Temple. Overall there was decreasing interest in 2b2t and lodges started happening only monthly.

Third degree[edit | edit source]

In the beginning of 2019, HermeticLock wanted to revive the groups activity and suggested some changes. As a result, Ain and Henry implemented a degree system, in order to promote player activity. Since this moment, the group has been consistently active and not a single weekly lodge has been missed. Around this time, the SpawnMasons became the first group to grab the discord.gg/2b2t URL. They were able to do this because they were one of the first servers in the community that had boost capabilities. The Masons capitalized on this and made the discord public for a few weeks in order to grab over 50 boosts. This experiment ended when more servers started getting boost capabilities.^[2]

Concluded bases during this era are Club-33, Autistralia, Smibville, Photosynthesis and COVID-2147. The most significant among these was Smibville, which was founded by ufocrossing and had nearly all active members building there.^[3] Spawn projects included Cloud Club, The Masonic Eclipse, led by leijurv and HermeticLock in late 2019, and the Transmutation Circle, led by Negative_Entropy in early 2020. The SpawnMasons are also intertwined with the 2b2t Party Committee and helped out for construction of Halloween and Christmas villages. Memorable lodges are BoomerangVillage's Loo Lodge, Negative_Entropy's Northern Air Temple, Scribblefox's Courthouse, BottleCapBrony's Cloudsdale PVP arena, and Jordanl666's Initiative Testing.

Fourth degree[edit | edit source]

In August 2020, a collaborative event called The Spawn Train was put into motion by Negative_Entropy as a ceremonial start of the next degree of SpawnMasonry. The fourth degree was home to two major bases. The first was Chunk Haven, which was started from a replica of the pack.png terrain. The second was Sky Masons, a huge terraformed hole that housed many floating islands and allowed guest builders to join through a proxy, oblivious to the real location of the base. These projects were made possible by the extensive stash stealing operations towards the end of the Nocom exploit. Some special lodges from this period are Leijurv's build at The Autumn Drain, The Christmas Party base of 2020, Smibby Land by Todarac, Rathause's Rat House, Breithan's Cat Flushed Angler Fish, and countless lodges at Sky Masons.

The fourth degree was planned to end at the fall of Sky Masons, dubbed ‘Skyfall’ ^[4][5]. The base fell on October 6th at the hands of the Fifth Column. In the weeks before the grief, the Fifth Column and other community members had launched a campaign against the SpawnMasons, criticizing its members and leadership for allowing a meetup to occur two years prior between three members, one of which being a minor. Afterward, the Fifth Column released a video containing recordings of conversations about the incident with members of the SpawnMasons and footage of the grief. The group also claimed the incident had resulted in the base getting leaked.^[6][7] In response, kinorana and Negative_Entropy released their own commentaries. ^[8]

Fifth degree[edit | edit source]

In November 2022, a community spawnbase called Spawn Migration (also called Migration Base), was founded by Joey_Coconut, and would be the starting point for the Fifth degree. During the Fifth degree, the group would home a spawnbase started by The Ancients, called The Isles. This would home the group until its fall at the start of 2b2t's update to 1.19. A few events would take place during this time, such as the powerful coordinate exploit Randar and the server update to 1.19. Randar is an exploit that used LLL lattice reduction to crack the internal state of an incorrectly reused java.util.Random in the Minecraft Server.^[9] This would work backwards from that to locate other players currently loaded in the world. The Randar exploit would be used by the group to enlarge their quantity of items on the server, and also reduce the amount of shops that was on the server. The server updated to 1.19 on the 14th August 2023, and this would spark more activity to the group. The fifth degree ended with the groups 300th lodge, and was a collaborate lodge made by all the members of the group. The fifth degree ended 9th of September 2023.

Sixth degree[edit | edit source]

The sixth degree started in September 2023 and is ongoing.

Meetings[edit | edit source]

The SpawnMasons gather weekly on Saturday to conduct a meeting. Most meetings are held in-game in a lodge — a space created to host a meeting — but some are held in well-known locations. These lodges are often destroyed after use. The destruction of lodges is symbolic and honours the Builder's Dilemma.

Relations[edit | edit source]

The SpawnMasons have no official stance on any group; they largely operate independently of other groups.

Sources[edit | edit source]