Conjunction of the Spheres

The Conjunction of the Spheres, commonly known as the Conjunction, was a process that began between Seasons 1 and 2 of Cumania, causing fundamental changes to the shape of the server's world. Notably, it consisted of apparent errors in chunk generation that caused the appearance of diverging terrain at the edges of the world, caused by a change in the world's original seed. This "second world" generating outside of Cumania was the same one that was used in Minecrosia.
While it is commonly dated to July 14th, 2019, serving as the starting point of the Cuman Calendar (0 ACS), it was not a single event, but rather a sequence of events during mid-2019 that culminated with the abrupt end of Cumania Season 2 and the beginning of Minecrosia. The effects of the Conjunction were first observed in August 2019, and it began to be studied as a process in March 2020, during Season 3. Ultimately, it would only be fully understood by late 2022, after Brazilian discovered that the seed involved was shared by multiple servers, including MCEarth 1, the likely genesis of the process.
== Background ==
=== Cumania Season 1 ===
Cumania was originally generated as a world in Minecraft version 1.14.2, with seed 7388246617543891835. This unaltered world was used throughout the entirety of Season 1. However, Danieer made a poll asking if the map should be changed to a world map. The vote was approved, effectively bringing Season 1 to its end, but due to objections from opponents of this sudden change, a compromise was made: since the host service was still the same, Cumania's world was to remain accessible together with the new server's through the Multiverse Core plugin. It should be noted that, despite this arrangement, Cumania's co-existence with MCEarth 1 was a mere formality, as the old world saw no activity.
=== MCEarth 1 ===
MCEarth 1's world map, along with other custom maps such as the ones later used in MCEarth 2 and MCEarth 3, was made with a program called WorldPainter, which assigns a default seed 27594263 to worlds made with it.https://hypixel.net/attachments/capture-png.2202298/ It is believed that Multiverse Core only assigns a single seed to the server,https://bukkit.org/threads/multiverse-seed-quetion.208433/https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/support/server-support-and/3033079-single-seed-with-worldedit-multiverse which likely caused Cumania's seed to be changed to the aforementioned one. However, this was not known to Danieer, Brazilian or anyone involved in the administration when the Season 1 world was downloaded.
=== Inter-Season hiatus ===
After MCEarth 1 ended and the subsequent hiatus, Brazilian decided to bring Cumania back. Due to Ekros' paid host having expired, Aternos had to be used again. However, due to extensive exploration by members of Three Stars during Season 1, the world's file size was double Aternos' limit of 200 MB. Brazilian's solution was to use a program, MCA Selector, to delete the explored but uninhabited chunks, believing they would be simply regenerated - which would have been the case, had the seed not been changed, as was unknown to him at the time. Thus, a reduced Cumania was used to start Season 2, but no changes were immediately noticeable.
== History ==
=== Cumania Season 2 ===
The players of Cumania were unaware of the Conjunction's existence or effects at the beginning of Season 2. The first player known to venture to lands affected by it was Kiel, who traveled far to the west in 17 ACS and founded Ardenia in a region belonging to the "alien" world, Minecrosia. Complex also took note of sudden chunk edges in northern Cumania around this time, but it was largely ignored and believed to be a simple chunk error.
In 33 ACS, Danieer decided to rename the world's file in the host from "Ameacana" to "Cumania". However, upon restarting the server, for unknown reasons, the world's chunks were reset. Cumania's chunks generated during Season 1 under the old seed were overwritten, causing the entire world to regenerate under the new seed, leaving only Minecrosia and leading to the end of Cumania Season 2 and the beginning of the homonymous server.
=== Cumania Season 3 ===
Brazilian and Americana only took significant note of this process during Cumania Season 3, with the latter giving it its name, after an event in The Witcher. During this time, it became clear that Cumania was effectively surrounded by Minecrosia's large ocean, so Americana built a massive, but incomplete, bedrock wall up to the world height limit to separate the worlds. Certain islands in the far north that belonged to Minecrosia but were colonized by Frisia were also included within the walls' theoretical limits.
While some players occasionally built structures outside of the walls, such as CuteAlpacas' pixel art of the Ulm flag and Danieer's volcanic island, none of those lands could be effectively settled by Cumanian nations, save for a floating island built by Murilolucas and which had been WorldEdited away from the vicinity of Novigrad.
=== Mediterranea ===
The term "Conjunction" was also used to refer to the expansion of Mediterranea's world between its Seasons 1 and 2, as despite having the same seed, the new lands would be generated under 1.18's new terrain generation. However, unlike Cumania's Conjunction, this was an intentional and controlled process, especially since the update caused the transition between different chunk generations to be smooth.
== Lore ==
In the lore, the Conjunction of the Spheres has a vastly different meaning. It refers to the destruction of the planet of Minecrosia by the Gwendeith Ordo in 0 ACS, the first such event. During the Conjunction, various of the Minecrosian peoples were able to escape through portals to Cumania, Mediterranea and the Earth, where their arrival caused conflicts with each of the world's natives. The last surviving Minecrosian descendants, the Earth's Temerians, were wiped out together with the planet in 1332 ACS.
== References ==