Lavagate

The damages to the B4B Monument.

**Lavagate** was a large-scale crisis that occurred on April 28 - April 30, 2019. The crisis was centered around the defacing of the brain4breakfast memorial and the subsequent investigation into who committed the crime, which ended with the discovery and banning of the perpetrator, who will be referred to as Anonymous as to honor an oath of secrecy taken with the mods and to not give the perpetrator any more attention.

## Background

On April 27, 2019, r/polandball moderators announced the passing of beloved moderator, comic artist, and YouTuber brain4breakfast. Syberiacraft's response was swift, with the impromptu creation of a memorial site near Mount Teebadee where players could leave their condolences. A day of mourning passed before the server began to move on, though as it would come to pass, this would not be the case.

## The Crimes

At 8:45 am EST on April 28, user Anonymous arrived at the memorial and lavacasted the structure, this being the pouring of lava and then water on a structure to cover it in cobblestone. The first report of the act came from user HueyLong at 9:02, prompting immediate outrage from the community and a promise of a permanent ban from the administration.

The CoreProtect plugin's logs were filled to capacity at the time, so they appeared to have not recorded the crime. As such, many players offered their services in finding the criminal, beginning a two-day-long investigation.

Sickeningly, Anonymous himself was one of the players who offered his services, soon becoming a head figure in the investigation against himself. Why he did this remains unclear, though it is suspected this was the reasoning behind the grief in that he intended to give himself a good reputation through the investigation.

On April 30, a sign reading "ayy lmao" was discovered on the grave in a mausoleum built near the site, inciting further outrage from the already riled-up community.

## Investigation

Burrito, having access to the server logs, shared the ones from that day, and a separate Discord server was created to try to pinpoint who had done it. Investigators in this server included Jandro, HueyLong, Iron\_and\_Blood and his alt, Burrito, EE89, Dark, Pan, and Spaghetti\_Os. The investigation consisted of scouring the server logs, interviewing potential suspects, and troubleshooting CoreProtect.

The investigation made little progress until April 30, when the team was able to clear the CoreProtect logs up. Burrito promptly checked the two crime scenes, discovering that Anonymous, who at that point had become a valued member of the community from the crisis, had done the lavacasting. The sign had not been placed by him, though, as another user who will be referred to as Anon 2 had done it.

After a last bit of investigation, during which Anonymous confessed to the crime, an announcement was made and Anonymous was permanently banned from Syberiacraft. Anon 2 was only given seven days in Yakutia, though they left the server upon their sentencing.

> "Let this be a lesson to you all: shitposts are fun, but there is a point where they go too far. If you pass this point, we will intervene. Thank you for your participation in this investigation."
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> —Burrito in the announcement of Anonymous's banning
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## Aftermath

After the initial shock of such a trusted community member being found responsible, Syberia moved on. User Jackson, being a PBC community manager, advised the server to not recount the identity of Anonymous to any other servers, a demand that Syberia respects to this day.

CoreProtect is now periodically cleared of its logs as to prevent any difficulty as during Lavagate, though this has occasionally faltered, as was seen during the Yuletide raids.