Baikal (Town, Nova)

The town of Baikal was founded by **Rootbeer\_356** on the 29th of October 2019, it was the first capital of the **Eastern Federation (EFed)** and an important trade town during Nova's lifespan. By February 2021 the town held the number one spot on the /baltop list with the town bank having over 1.1 million $.

Early history

Baikal was founded as an outpost for the **Australian Empire** where the owner Rootbeer\_356 began his time on the server. The first structures were built near the real life town of **Ust-Barguzin (Усть-Баргузин)** and the first direction of the towns expansion was towards the town of **Barguzin (Баргузин)** due to the challenging terrain of the surrounding area, with a few narrow valleys surrounded by steep and high mountain ranges.
The difficult terrain would continue to hinder expansions, as every large structure would require either "terracing" or outright removing massive mountains.

Capital of EFed and the beginning of the shop town era

In a period of time on Nova's history sometimes referred to as *"The Great Decay"*, players that originally played the server during its launch began to leave and for a period of time, player numbers dwindled down to record low levels. Through a series of fortunate events and good relations the town mayor, Rootbeer\_356, inherited the nation of **Zhao** which once controlled most of the towns in mainland China. Due to almost all towns in that area becoming inactive by the time of the new leadership, a new name was chosen in an effort to separate from the old, thus the **Eastern Federation** was born.

During the great decay many towns fell to inactivity, leaving them open for plundering. Without many players to contest the spoils, Rootbeer\_356 would raid these towns and takeover their stockpiles which would prove an enormous boost. With a large excess of resources from farming and plundering he began selling it in his town, without other towns to compete at the time, Baikal held a monopoly on the sale of many items.
As the player base began to slowly recover and the server was once again becoming active, the first shopping center was opened near the town square, containing a total of 5 player shops.

Over the course of many months the town would slowly grow, accepting new citizens into it's ranks and expanding the town borders. The town expanded primarily North across lake Baikal and south pass the mountain ranges, where large amounts of land had to be terraformed to make room for more citizens.

The Baikal Trade District

With the old town square becoming to small for the needs of the town and many requests from players to open their own embassy shops within Baikal, the Trade District was born. The town spawn was moved to more central location to accommodate the needs of its citizens, while the nation spawn was moved to the New Market Square. One other key factor for the creation of the shopping center was growing competition from towns like **NeuBerlin** as well as **Northpass** which already had large marketplaces of their own.

Peaceful Baikal

Due to personal matters, Rootbeer\_356 stepped down as King of EFed and passed the torch first to **iShockYou** (mayor of Northpass) and later to **TheBetterHerring** (mayor of Murmansk) and set the town status to peaceful (meaning it can't take part in wars or be sieged). The trade district slowly began to decline and after some time the /n spawn was moved to Northpass, as it became the nation's largest shopping center.
Although the town remained an important trade site, it was centered around Rootbeer's own shops.
Free of the threat of being attacked, the town continued to generate large profits and several smaller construction projects took place, mostly improving the quality of life for its citizens. With less free time on his hands, Rootbeer was unable to complete larger projects that had been planned before the reset of Nova was announced on February 20th 2021.

Notable town members

**Rootbeer\_356**, founder/mayor and King of EFed

**AdamTheApple**, town assistant and recruiter

**Uneevee**, town helper and zookeeper

Gallery