Delte Nation Maintenance Thread [DO NOT POST]

[Delte]

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WELCOME TO THE DELTE VALLEY OBSERVER
Aggregated information wire for The Stoic Community of the Delte Valley

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OSWARK-UPON-DELTE: The editors of the Oswark Parish Advertiser, Sullenden Morning Bugle, Ughmirren Broadsheets, Deltemouth Tide Times, Toddwardine Beastmarket Journal & News Of The World, Burye News and other reputable media organisations of the valley announce a collaborative aggregation project, the Observer, to provide a syndicated news and information feed to the worlds - based on the assumption that, surely, the worlds need to know what is occuring along the banks of our glorious River Delte. Or maybe also to encourage tourism. Money, you see.

Questions, comments, complaints or compliments? Please do not post in the thread - address your concerns to the editor via TG

QUICKFACTS: Delte is a narrow populated strip of fertile river valley approximately fifteen kilometres wide and ninety long, along the length of the course of the River Delte, located in a wild, largely empty and unnamed region and isolated from the nearest geopolitical entities and populous distant communities at the far corners of the cartographer’s charts, save for transportation routes - rail and road - which pass through the valley on the way from one significant populated centre to another, hardly without stopping. The valley sits in a largely north-west to south-east orientation from the river source in the marches to its issue in Smite Bay at Deltemouth, and the river itself is approximately 170 kilometres in length, of which around 75% is navigable by commercial craft with a series of controlled locks.

The main administrative and cultural centre of the Delte Valley is Oswark, or Oswark-upon-Delte to give it the correct and formal title. The population of the market and tourist town is approximately 12,000 and makes up around 25% of the total population of the river community, which is around 48,000 at the last census. The community is administered by the Delte River Trust, DRT, with the elected board representing a cabinet and the Managing Director the de facto ‘head of community’. Tessa Sack is the present MD for the Trust; she commutes to the DRT office at Oswark Lock from her home in a typical rural farmstead off the beaten track in the wilds of the valley.

YOUR ROADMAP FOR THE DELTE VALLEY

[Delte]

Contents will be organised into subject matter, where the thread is not necessarily so.

FACTBOOK: A General Summary of The Valley of The River Delte; just so you are up to speed
Quickfacts | History | Geography | Governance | Economics | Culture

[Delte]

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Part 1
Quickfacts

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The Delte River Trust (DRT), the oversight institution for the valley, has long disputed the statistics and information published by the World Assembly about the valley - in particular that bit about the basket-weaving and soda sales industries, the blatant propaganda concerning labourers building walls and making Wezeltonia pay for it, and especially population data. Several zeros have been added to the overall population by some fool of an accountant's assistant at the WA, and all requests for adjustment have fallen on deaf ears (or perhaps the junior clerk at the DRT forgot to post the letter). In any case, it is probably time for some long overdue corrections.

The Valley of The River DELTE



Flag: "The Trisalmon”
Motto: “Speed Limit 5kph On All Waterways”
Valley Anthem: Navigator, Navigator (Rise Up & Be Strong)



Location: The North Pacific

Population: 48,806
Density: 32/km²

Capital: Oswark-upon-Delte
- Triangulation: 16.72°Sn 53.04°Br 0.49°Oc
- Population: 12,911

Official Languages: Pacific Anglican
Regional Dialect: Deltic
Demonym: Deltic, Delt, Delts

Administration: Delte River Trust
- Managing Director: Tessa Sack
- Treasurer: Olddan Orme
Legislature: The Stoic Council
- Chief Stoic Officer: Taski Mangepole
- Assistant Vice Stoic: Quadra Orbel

Land Area: 1,523km²
- Water Area: 52km²
- Water %: 0.3
Coastline: 13km
Elevation:
- Highest Point: Honrad Hill 542m
- Lowest Point: Deltemouth Wash 0m

Currency: Delte Guinea (d₲)
GDP (nominal): d₲680 million
GDP (nominal) per capita: d₲13,940
Human Development Index: 0.929 (Very High)

Time Zone: Delte Valley Time [DVT] (UTC-0)
Drives on the: Left
Calling code: +5400
Internet TLD: .dte

[Delte]

The aggregated infowire for the Valley of the River Delte is published by the joint project of the Oswark Parish Advertiser, et al. by commission from the Delte River Trust, the oversight institution for the valley, with the express purpose of keeping the multinational community updated on the comings and goings of our 90km stretch of waterways and farmland. Tessa Sack, MD of the DRT, and the combined editors of the newspapers of the valleys agreed it might be helpful to first-time readers to have a quick summary of the place before we dive in to the daily grind. We continue our five-part factbook with an abridged history - more detailed information will surely be available soon from the Delte Library Service. In the meantime:

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Part 2
A General History of the Delte Valley

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Etymology

Theories pertaining to derivation from the ancient ‘delta’ with the river issuing into the flat marshy Deltemouth Wash at Smite Bay are widely regarded to be convenient but off the mark, overly simplified. ‘Delte’ is probably a derivative of ‘deal’ - first recorded before 900; Middle Anglican verb delen, dalen, dealen “to separate, divide, share, have dealings,” Old Angle dǣlan (cognate with Saxe teilen “to divide, share”), derivative of dǣl “part, portion” (cognate with Saxe Teil ); Middle Angle noun del, dæl, deal, Old Angle dǣl; in part derivative of the verb.

Deal is also the Old Anglic dael meaning 'valley', cognate with the modern Anglican 'dale’, an open valley, usually in an area of low hills, Old Angle dæl; related to Old Wittish del, Old Boreal dalr, Old High Saxe tal valley.

Early History

The people of the Delte Valley today hold generally to the theory of local inventor, historian and scientist Sir Elm Erelmard (1642-1727), inventor of Ring Theory. Erelmard proposed that the whole world of the Five Pacifics and beyond is not a ‘multiverse’ but a single enormous ringworld structure - in a single universe - constructed by an ancient and absent supercivilisation - The Sculptors (Erelmard called them the Statuarii, to make them sound more interesting) - who subsequently abandoned the structure to autonomous biological evolution, out of which developed the Yuman Bean.

Alternatively, the river valleys of this part of the North Pacific region were formed by glacial action during the last ice age as glacial movement carved out the series of deep valleys, fed by spring waters from the upland plains, we see today - with the Delte being one of the smaller and less dramatically landscaped, it has supported first hunter gatherers and then small agragrian communities since antiquity. The less habitable neighbouring valleys have made the whole region largely inaccessible, serving to isolate the Delte valley communities through early history.

The town of Oswark shows evidence of settlement dating back at least to the stone age with a local hillfort unearthed in the 18th century and a series of barrows and burial sites close to the river. Oest Werke - probably East Fort, is noted on the ancient census of Caeso Betilienus (5th century) close to the his Fl. Dæl which is likely shorthand for the Delte river, although several kilometres downstream of the present town.

At the time of the bureaucracy-obsessed reign of explorer-imperator Vertzingetorix of Ordoiza (9th century), the river fell under a general claim for all the valleys of the region and was settled by, parcelled up, developed and held for Vertzingetorix by a series of administrator commanders beginning with Lier de Argentein. This period saw a regularisation of settlements together with immigration of noble families from the Greater Ordoizan empire, though they found the area largely too parochial for their own tastes, and the locals unmanageable. Documents of the period, preserved in the Oswark Town Museum, contain a predeliction for whining about the intractable Dælts, the weather, the livestock and the poor quality food.

Medieval Period

With the decline and eventual collapse of the Holy Zimiamvian Empire (successor to the Greater Zimiamvian Empire) in the 11th century, Delte and the surrounding country became part of an ever-changing landscape of petty kingdoms, traded between or won in battle by a succession of rulers, valley states and distant tribute-taking countries, including Geonor, Gawne, and Screve. Minor skirmishes are recorded in the annals of the valley, which were sometimes celebrated as great historical battles in earlier times but which, with studious research, turn out to be little more than scraps with pitchforks and small dogs.

One such recorded skirmish, the Battle of Lye in 1403 was won by a local aristocrat Baron Aroth, the Duke of Oswark, who defeated the invading King Thorulf of Asgar and began a period of ascendency which led, briefly, to the Kingdom of Delte, as Aroth claimed Asgar - one of the neighbouring valleys - from the defeated Thorulf and then took other valleys in a twelve year campaign. Aroth died of the pox in the city of Smite, on his way home from battle to suppress resistance in the Grebe Valley. He was succeeded by his nephew Athad and his line of Dukes of Oswark (son Anggar, his son Ale and grandson Aroth II), who maintained the Kingdom of Delte a further twenty-eight years before the coming of the ‘Salt Queens’.

Twin sisters and reigning queens of The Salternland, Nyseld and Hatereld, House Quaine, were fearsome rulers of the northern country set on conquering and unifying the querellous valleys under one banner. In 1443, six years into what would be a fifty-year reign of the Salt Queens, their primary general Hagar Sillikorn came into the Delte valley from the north with an overwhelming force of arms, while the sea captain Lady Agny da Relm landed at Deltemouth Wash with a second force, intent on joining Hagar at siege around Oswark - but after a two day march, she found Duke Aroth II had surrendered without combat at Oswark; the Delte valley had quickly fallen without resistance to be absorbed within the grand state of The Salternland, and would remain under the crown of the queens of that country until the coming of the Uncivil Wars in the seventeenth century.

The Uncivil Wars

This has proven to be such a popular subject for amateur historians that there will one day be a whole separate article on the Uncivil Wars (1644-1661).

During the reign of Queen Limnoraea II (The Sharptail) of The Salternland, division arose between the royal household and the treasury over funding for the civilising of uncivil countries - that is to say, Limnoraea’s foreign campaigns to subjugate unruly populations of foreigners; it highlighted greater divisions still in the government Office of Deportment and the influential Royal Society of Lexicographers on matters of the constitution and bills of rights & responsibilities. With Limnoraea The Sharptail pressing her country close to bankruptcy, the Master of Manners Darach Nancollas summoned her to the Office of Deportment, against all precedents. When she did not appear, he immediately commanded parliament to confiscate her ‘Civilising Brigades’ - the standing army and navy of The Salternland - and to stand them down from all aggressions until she agreed to meet with the Office of Deportment and The Treasury to address budgetary and ideological issues. Chief Lexicographer Sir Bercan Rose-Vogue of the Royal Society, her chief advisor, declared the military under her sole command, and to continue about their business. Each commander, each brigade, each ship of war had their own interpretation of matters, and that division led to three periods of civil war across 17 years of discontent.

The Delte Valley, held by Lady Nyske Daldare, Duchess of Oswark, declared early for the Queen but the townsfolk of Oswark were not enamoured of the Duchess, described as ‘a monstrous userer and tyrant’. In one of the first actions of revolution in the valleys, the stoic Garo Tone contravened his order’s natural tranquility to deliver a series of rousing and emotional public speeches in Oswark and subsequently in other towns of the valley, lamenting the stewardship of the Dukes and Duchesses of Oswark, and in particular “that harridan Nyske Daldare”. Sensing the wind of change, Nyske fled to Deltemouth Wash in the spring of 1645 and there made her escape by sea, never to return. Astur Kelchaqua, the Mayor of Oswark and a distant cousin of the Daldare family, denounced the Duchy and with Garo Tone his chief advisor, assumed command of the valley in favour of the Master of Manners, Darach Nancollas, and his ‘grimcaps’ - the so called Grimly Fiendish parliamentarians on the side of reform (and eventually, revolution).

An out-of-the way backwater of The Salternland, the valley of the Delte neverthless saw action through three sieges at Oswark; the naval Battle of Smite Bay, off Deltemouth Sound in 1648; and the infamous assassination of Garo Tone by royalist sympathisers (nicknamed the sharptails for their queen) at the Winter Arms public house in Ughmirren in 1649. Oswark-upon-Delte, and the whole valley, remained steadfastly in support of Darach Nancollas through the whole period of unrest, including the defeat and death of Queen Limnoraea II in 1653, until The Polite Settlement of 1661 and the ushering in of a new constitutional monarchy under Meeda, niece of the late Sharptail, and first of the Penberthy queens of The Saltenland.

The Bél Epoque

The restoration of the crown in The Salternland, under more favourable terms for the Office of Deportment & The Treasury, was heralded by the coronation of Meeda Penberthy, nearest of favourable descendents of Limnoraea II, beginning a period of peace and quiet and flourishing culture of the Bél Epoque, under a succession of Penberthy Queens - and in particular the Queens for whom the period is named, the Béls: Bél I; II; III; and IV. While the whole of The Salternland enjoyed an extended period of growth and innovation, liberal philosophies and high education that would eventually usher in the great industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for the valleys of Delte and their surrounds, it was also a period in which the autonomous rule which we see today began to develop as an idea under the initial stewardship of Prince Tyrbert, the youngest of seventeen children of the fecund Queen Meeda. Tyrbert Penberthy was granted the valleys as his ward upon reaching adulthood, by his older sister Bél I who by that time had succeeded Meeda in 1677; the young prince came to live amongst the Delts as one of their own in the town of Oswark. In Delte they often refer to the Bél Epoque as Bert’s Epoch.

Key in this early period of the Bél Epoque, during Prince Tyrbert’s residency in Oswark from 1678-1714, was the establishment in the valley of the loose association of great minds who informally called themselves The Looking Glass; including the duke Tyrbert Penberthy himself, the ‘wild shepherdess’ botanist and agriculturalist Emra Kalsay, stoic artist philosopher Tonan Dellor, and polymath inventor, historian and scientist Sir Elm Erelmard (1642-1727), inventor of Ring Theory. Prince Tyrbert and Sir Elm in particular - known as the richest man and the cleverest man respectively ever to live in the valley (not verified) - were formidable in their thinking and building of an independent community in Oswark and all along the Delte, rich in culture and education, materially prosperous and well-organised, and passionate for the advancement of the cause of the Delts. Among the institutions founded during their time were the Statue Maker’s School and the Grammar School in Oswark, the Fiddler School in Deltemouth, the Honrad Hill Observatory, The Stoic Society, The Shepherd's Mutual and the Six Towns Association, which would become, in modern times, the Delte River Trust, the de facto administrative authority of the valley.

Prince Tyrbert himself, whose proper title was the Duke of Oswark, largely abandoned or ignored his ruling Penberthy family in the greater Salternland, barely returning home for the occasional state function, and was a beloved and flamboyant character in Oswark, patron of the arts and sciences, and a lovable but inveterate roué. His official epitaph, on the statue in the Old Market Square in Oswark, describes him as "Friend to all, Father of many." Though he left no official heir to the Duchy, there were many illegitimate candidates, and it is fair to say the standard claim by most of the citizens of the modern Delte valley to be part-descended from Prince Tyrbert probably has more truth to it than even the claimants themselves realise.

Industrial Era

In many ways the Industrial Era was as golden for the Delte Valley as it was dark for The Salternland. As has been proved in many an History or Economics PhD paper, for those at the forefront of the industrial revolution, marvellous. For those looking the other way at the time, oh dear me. (PhD papers are probably more technical than that). The Salternland was very much looking the other way at the time when The Honourable North Pacific Company first docked in it’s ports with the offer of trade and/or subjugation leading to trade. ‘The Company’ would not idly stand by if a nation was either not prepared or not capable of setting up trade agreements - it would simply force through land and infrastructure confiscation, using its not inconsiderable military or ‘security’ resources, infinite funding and highly skilled legal hawks to dismantle state systems in favour of its own. The Salternland, over a period of 50 years, was in suchwise broken up and distributed to shareholders of The Honourable North Pacific Company. Founded as separate entities in the imperial powers of Prudenlund and Marche Noire, with offices all over the North Pacific and registered as one of the oldest corporations in the world in the tax haven of Manamana, The Company was an agent of conquest and imperial ambition. The Salternland ceased to exist under its ravages.

Distant from the centre of The Salternland, the valleys escaped the militarised occupation of The Company but welcomed in the new money, technologies and opportunities of industrialisation, and as such, survived being dismantled by allowing themselves to be simultaneously purchased and paid for. In the Delte Valley, this lead to the industrialisation of the river way, and the commercial exploitation of the key resources in the valley - water and land. In particular, the production of beer for export: and no-one in the valley was going to prevent that, as long as they got their fare share of the product. The Company provided extensive development of the river including the creation of large locks, levelling ponds and canal systems to make the river navigable from Smite Bay all the way up to the high wetland springs, together with industrial manufacturing sites at Marshlock and Oswark. Later adoption of rail and road as the industrial era developed was also largely funded by The Company, and Oswark grew into a thriving industrial town of 80,000 people by 1850; with a large immigrant population to keep up with the demand for labour. Oswark itself became one of the largest and busiest inland ports in the region, while Oswark Ale was established as the fuel of The Company’s empire.

The Honourable North Pacific Company first arrived in the valley at the small fishing port of Deltemouth in 1698, commanded by Captain Sofus Kruse and his merchant ship, a 20-crew cog called The Totem. Captain Kruse rented offices at Deltemouth Port and settled in the town as The Company began a quiet trade with the river community. In 1708 Captain Kruse was elected mayor of the port town as his firm brought prosperity and development to the people of Deltemouth and local surrounds; by the time The Honourable North Pacific Company had imprisoned Queen Philisse in The Salternland for High Treason and inculcated a coup d’état of the government in 1743, they already held five of the Six Towns Association mayoral offices including local man Anhon Chiseller, Mayor of Oswark and Regional Manager of The Company; the construction of the Delte & Smite Canal was underway to allow major shipping onto the upper Delte by avoiding the unnavigable falls of Deltemouth Wash; and everywhere Company money was more than welcome as it paid for the industrial revolution of the valley and the material advancement of its citizens. No-one gave much thought to the fate of The Salternland, in much the way they had never given much thought to any distant rulers who had claimed the valley for themselves.

Modern History

The great strength of The Honourable North Pacific Company almost proved its downfall in the end; with the modernisation of its home country of Prudenlund, The Company found itself in direct competition with the governing classes and threatening to overpower the home nation in much the way it had overpowered countries all across the worlds. Interference in politics, military skirmishes, buying up of national resources - whilst it had always been acceptable for this to happen abroad, at home this could not be allowed. Over a period of two decades at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, politicians sought to limit the strength of the Company; in particular a standing army for a corporation seemed quite contrary to the modernising movements of the day. Both home and abroad, The Honourable North Pacific Company had to do business in a different way - respecting international boundaries; working with, rather than against, sovereign states; making a good honest profit rather than pillaging national coffers. For The Salternland, it was all too little too late - a country of 450 years history was gone for good, replaced by a satellite state, Outer Pruden, which to this day with glorious history almost forgotten exists as little more than a quiet backwater of a distant patron state - much the way Delte had been throughout the history of The Salternland.

For Delte, the instruments for governing the valley were given over by The Company to the successor to the Six Towns Association, the Delte River Trust, in the middle of the twentieth century. By then, 175 years of industrialisation on the river had seen a huge rise in the fortunes and infrastructure of the valley, a peak in the mid-nineteenth century and then first a decline in the use of the river followed by a decline generally in the economics of the valley, as the The Company, being forced into a transition away from colonial governance and into capital venture, discovered that the far-flung arms of its business were no longer such great value for money. They never really had been - but money had been no object. Once it was, the community of the Delte Valley began to feel the pinch as beer, wool, basket weaving and trout farming could not pay its way for the shareholders of the Honourable North Pacific Company. From a peak population of nearly 300,000 people in the valley in 1830, with a large population of migrants from all over The Company’s empire, numbers dropped back to a tenth of that a century later. Industrialisation left behind a contaminated river, a decimated Gargoyle Salmon population, and a small community of locals left to their own devices. In 1951, the governing Six Towns Association which had become the instrument of The Company in ruling over the valley, folded in bankruptcy. A group of its former employees, led by environmental scientist and gifted auto-didact politician Ange Hawser founded the Delte River Trust with the aim of saving the dying river and preserving the dwindling Deltic population.

The latter part of the twentieth and early twenty-first century are marked by two key moments. In 1976, a young bright clerk at The Corn Exchange, which was effectively the Bank of Delte, emigrated to the Isle of Taxhavn to join the Oroboros Cooperative, a shady global markets player. Her name was (and still is, of course) Taitin Deluntte. Today she is known as “the only trillionaire in the valley” - still largely resident in Taxhavn, she has wagered on global futures her whole working life with quite remarkable prescience. Hardly anyone has heard of her, apart from her colleagues in a small secret department at the Oroboros, a few deadly commercial rivals who have tried to hire her, and/or assassinate her on multiple occasions, and the whole of the Delte Valley where she is welcomed on her occasional trips home as the natural successor to Prince Tyrbert - patron of the valley, which she underpins with vast wealth always put at the disposal of the Delte River Trust to which she is appointed Lifetime Non-Executive President.

The second incident, in 1990, was The Honourable North Pacific Company’s final dubious gift to the valley: Great Big Smite Bay Contamination Scandal - which started as the Great Big Smite River Contamination Scandal, and just flowed out from there. A secret fluid time refinery in the next valley along, the Smite Valley, exploded after a mishap with a temporal wrench in the works, causing vast swathes of destruction from ‘retrological induction’. The city of Smite-on-Sea was decimated, and the whole valley remains empty and contaminated with time paradox swamps. The explosion followed years of cover-ups about the state of the refinery and the competance of its operators. It marked the end of The Honourable North Pacific Company, and the beginning of vast financial reparations to the neighbouring valleys - or that is, the one valley that survived almost intact thanks to the climatic and geological good fortunes of the day: it was blowing a gale over the eastern hills of the Delte Valley when the refinery went up; that combined with the natural ‘bauxite shield’ of the hills between the Delte and Smite rivers caused the destructive temporal induction wave to flow in the opposite direction, largely away from the Delte valley. Only the easterly village of Agenness felt any direct effect of the wave - but the resultant contamination of the bay was to close Deltemouth port to the world for eight years, and the fisherfolk of the coast continue to suffer the effects of mild to moderate temporal radiation poisoning from being out in the bay at the time of the disaster. International reparations from the disbursement of the collapsed assets of the Honourable North Pacific Company will provide a very comfortable income to the citizens of the Delte valley for many generations to come.

[Delte]

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Part 3
Geography, Population & Demography

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The River Delte

The Delte springs in the highlands of the Garga Marshes, close to the village of Garga Springs and issues at Deltemouth Wash, into Smite Bay; as the crow flies from Garga Springs to Deltemouth Wash in the south-east, the River Delte covers a distance of 72km, while the territorial claim distance of the Delte River Trust from the coast to the north of the marshes is around 90km. The river itself meanders to a distance of 174km from spring to issue.

The course of the Delte is fed by six small tributaries - the Lere and Garga streams and the rivers Ursam and Ough all join the Delte in the highlands, the River Mirren further south at the parish town of Ughmirren, and the River Nalga in Sullenden parish north of Duskard. The river features 18 bridge crossings in total, and connects three canals - the Brewer’s, the Northward and the Delte & Smite Canals; it is commercially navigable from Marshlock Spa to Askirk (using stretches of all three canals) and features five lock systems directly on the river, at Oswark, Duskard, Toddwardine, Sullenden and Askirk. As well as the six main towns, four villages and eleven hamlets are found directly on the riverside.

Artificial changes along the Delte, due to navigation, farming, industrialisation and drainage works, mean that much of the riparian landscape has been altered, reducing the amount of natural habitat. The river channel links the wetland areas and nature reserves, providing a refuge for native and migrant species. These include wildfowl and wading birds that use the Delte Valley as a migration corridor, with the river also being used as a wildlife route by mammals such as otters and non-native Mustard mink. Decades of repair to the waterway overseen by the Delte River Trust have re-established healthy Gargoyle Salmon and Two-Tone Trout species which thrived prior to industrialisation.

Settlements & Features

The main town of the Delte valley is Oswark, formally Oswark-upon-Delte, which is also recorded as the earliest known site of major population dwelling on the ancient census of Caeso Betilienus (5th century) noted as Oest Weke, likely East Fort for its location on the eastern bank of the river. At its largest during the middle of the nineteenth century when as the centre of the industrial age of the valley it had a population of over 80,000 people - close to double the entire population of the valley today. Modern Oswark has a population of just over 12,000, around 25% of the valley population.

Five parish towns have populations of over 1,200 people - Deltemouth, Sullenden, Askirk, Ughmirren and Marshlock Spa, each with its own market and historically forming, with Oswark, the Sexmarketter or Six Towns. From Deltmouth with a population of just over 8,300 to Marshlock Spa with 1,200 the Six Towns house just below 70% of the population. All six towns contain parish stoas, meeting places which form the democratic governing councils of the valley.

The valley is divided into six administrative areas, or parishes, each named for one of the market towns which form the administrative centre. Parishes each contain, in addition to one of the six towns, between one and five designated villages (populations 250 - 1,250 residents) and between five and twelve designated hamlets (populations between 10-250 residents); the eastern ‘village’ of Ageness in the parish of Askirk has dwindled to a population of 8 due to the ongoing effects of the Great Big Smite Bay Contamination Scandal, but retains the buildings and designation of a much larger settlement.

Climate

The Delte valley has a temperate oceanic climate. Average rainfall is highest at Garga Springs, where it is around 1,900 millimetres a year. At lower levels it can be around 800 millimetres a year. In drier spots, the valley averages 1,651 hours sun per year at the official Isray station. The highest recorded temperature was 31.9 °C in Isray in the summer of 1983. Due to the moderate surface temperatures of Smite Bay, the valley rarely receives outlier bursts of heat that sometimes can hit sheltered mainland valleys. The stable water temperature also means that air frost is rare, averaging just ten occasions per year.

Population & Demography

The population of the Delte Valley at the last census (2021) was 48,806 of which 69.3% live in the six towns of the valley. 61.7% of Delts are considered of working age (18-64) or above working age but still within the workforce - 18.9% of over 64s remain working. The total workforce of the valley is 20,837 people, removing stay-home parents. The population growth rate is 0.84%, with the birth rate per 1000 at 10.8 and death rate 9.99; the median age is 44. Net migration is 0.71%. Life expectancy is 91 - the Delts are notably long-lived, claiming it is the beer and the fish that keep them young. Human development index is very high at 0.929.

Ethnicity rates are 96.3% Deltic with small ethnic groupings of Navarinos, Taxhavnites, Portmuthians and Inkians amounting to around 2.3% of population and the remainder from Brancaland, Dàguó and Prudenlund. There is a family of refugees from Marche Noire residing in the port town of Deltemouth.

[Delte]

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Part 4
Governance & Politics

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The community of the River Delte consider themselves in modern times to be a self-governing autonomous zone, once claimed by both Prudenlund and independent Outer Pruden as the last in a long line of exterior sovereign rulers. That claim is no longer considered legitimate in international politics and has hardly been pressed by the Prudenites themselves. The Honourable North Pacific Company had been responsible for administration of the valley from 1743 through to 1951, ending with the bankruptcy of the Six Towns Association. The Company continued to trade in the valley until its controversial demise in 1990, but autonomy for Delts was unofficially but in all practical senses legitimately established with the formation of the Delte River Trust in 1951 under Ange Hawser. Today the trust acts as the administrative body for the valley, whilst The Stoic Council sits seperately as the oversight body in a bicameral legislature. Under this system the executive officers of the Trust are appointed by their own internal recruitment processes, whilst the Council are formed of elected members from each of the districts and parishes of the valley. The Council has the power to remove officers of the Trust and is required to ratify the appointment of the Managing Director of the Trust, who is in effect the ‘Head of Community’, and to conduct ‘biennial appraisals’ which will recommend continuation or removal from post. There is now an absolute limit of ten consecutive years in post before the MD must step down - although in the early days no such limit existed and the first MD, Ange Hawser, held office for 20 years and then returned later for another 4 years. A provision exists in the constitution that an individual may be appointed to a second and final term after a minimum of four years out of office.

Delte River Trust

Founded in 1951 to replace the bankrupt Six Towns Association (the administrative organisation that had worked on behalf of the governing Honourable North Pacific Company) by Ange Hawser and redundant employees of the association, the Delte River Trust is responsible for the day-to-day maintenance and business of the River Delte, the valley which surrounds it, the Garga Marshes as the river source and by extension, local governance. The DRT is based at Oswark Lock and the Managing Director is the de facto head of the valley community. The DRT has responsibility for the economy of the valley, industry and tourism, the environment, community services, valley infrastructure, transport and culture. It retains joint repsonsibility for legislation and law & order (with The Stoic Council) and finances (with The Corn Exchange).

Ange Hawser became first head of the Trust and informal leader of the valley from 1951 through to 1971, and again from 1979 to 1983, firmly entrenching the DRT as the main arm of governance in the self-administered autonomous zone - a term which she herself introduced to describe the valley.

Industrialisation left behind a contaminated river, a decimated Gargoyle Salmon population, and a small community of locals left to their own devices. The Delte River Trust was founded with the aim of saving the dying river and preserving the dwindling Deltic population and its culture; this remains the driving principle of the trust, under the motto “Speed Limit 5kph On All Waterways” - a term which reflects both the desire to uphold respect for the delicate environment of the river and the natural stoic practicality of the Deltic character.

Across eight departments the trust employs just over 2,000 people, around 10% of the total workforce of the valley, from the Managing Director and head of the Delte community to riverbank prefects, rat catchers and pelicaneers (school crossing attendants). It also retains administrative oversight of other valley institutions, such as the Railways & Highways Corporation, the School Board, and the River Patrol. The DRT has a Senior Management Board - effectively the cabinet of governance - made up of the eight senior managers of each department along with the three members of the Executive Board: the Managing Director, the Chief Stoic Officer (head of The Stoic Council) and the Valley Treasurer (head of The Corn Exchange).

The Stoic Council

Acting as the second house, The Stoic Council holds oversight over the Delte River Trust as well as taking joint responsibility for legislation and law & order. The council is made up of multiple ‘stoa’ - town and village councils with elected representatives who meet monthly as the Stoic Council, at Tone House, on Glibb Street, Oswark - this gathering is commonly called The Stoa and is also attended by the Managing Director of the DRT and the Valley Treasurer, who are the other parties of the three-person Exectuive Board. There are parish, town and village elections every three years to the stoas in each jurisdiction, though these are not held simultaneously so that the make-up of the House is continually under review. There are 81 seats at The Stoa, made up from representatives of communities from all over the valley; there are no political parties and blind partisanship in the House is frowned upon, with members expected to remain dedicated to the interests of their community and to the wider valley with voting integrity. Voting habits are always monitored and reviewed to ensure allegiances & rivalries are not permanent, personal or self-interested.

Local justice is dispensed by the Stoa’s appointed magistrates at Town Assizes - there are six such sittings, one in each of the towns of the valley.

The Council is the oldest surviving institution in the Delte valley. Founded in 1668 by Dinka Tone, the daughter of republican Uncivil Wars rebel Garo Tone, to honour her assassinated father’s memory, it was later supported by members of The Looking Glass intellectual group and eventually headed up by the group’s stoic philosopher and artist Ervan Qualye (1668-1743), who was ‘Grand Stoic’ from 1701 through to his death in 1743. Dinka Tone founded the institution as The Stoic Society, and under Qualye the institute formed its Stoic Council in 1712 as the leadership group; the term Stoic Society fell out of common usage during the nineteenth century and during the establishment of the DRT in 1951 the organisation was modernised under the leadership of Quacha Dume to assume the role as the elected arm of the bicameral government. At this time, the insitute dropped ‘society’ in favour of the more widely used ‘council’; at the same time, the former office of Grand Stoic became Chief Stoic Officer.

The Chief Stoic Officer is appointed by the Council from amonst the 81 members by way of nomination and private ballot; ballots are only held when either the Chief Stoic Officer loses their seat in a local election, stands down or retires from post, or is defeated in a vote of no confidence. The post also holds the casting vote in cabinet meetings of the Delte River Trust, as one of three members of the Executive Board.

International Relations

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The community of the Delte valley presently has no border disputes and does not engage internationally as a sovereign state. Outer Pruden maintains an historic claim on the valley as successor to former imperial masters The Salternland; however this is not a recognised claim in international law.

The Delte River Trust and by extension the community of Delte is allied closely to the Isle of Taxhavn, which provides much of the financial infrastructure for the valley, including clearing facilities for the Corn Exchange and more recently providing the Delte Mint, which no longer operates directly in the valley. Oswark is twinned with the island’s residential district of Romainring, and with all Deltic families owning second home apartments there, the district is colloquially known as Delthavn. There is a popular joke in the valley that the capital of the Delte community is St. Bernadine - the administrative capital of Taxhavn.

It is tradition that the outgoing Managing Director of the trust, on conclusion of their office, becomes the Ambassador to Taxhavn. The current amabassador is Orem Strothkin, who was MD in the valley 2008-2014. There is only one consulate in the valley, and that is Taxhavn House in Oswark which is notably located next to the Corn Exchange Building on Rivergate. The government of Taxhavn appoints a Chargé d'affaires to represent the state in the valley, and the position is presently held by Emanuele von Dach, who has been in post since 1998.

The Extra-Territorial Survey

In historic times when not under the yoke of imperial conquerors, the valleys often competed for dominance and dominion between themselves, and even included the Kingdom of Delte for a brief forty years in the fifteenth century under Aroth I and his descendents. In modern times all the valleys bar the Delte valley have been abandoned, both to the south-west and north-east of the Delte, for a variety of reasons - economic collapse, environmental disaster, or simply because - for example in the case of the Tryne and Areld valleys - their topography has proven too rugged and difficult for effective yuman settlement. Today these valleys are known as The Grey Areas, and they lie unclaimed by any community. The Delte River Trust takes an administrative role in monitoring activity within these valleys with a small department, the Extra-Territorial Survey, who are responsible for exploring, documenting and reporting any settlement or other activity. The valleys were, during the industrial era of The Honourable North Pacific Company, connected by railway; this line is now largely disused - to the north-east of Oswark it has been removed entirely and tunnels blocked to prevent access from the contaminated Smite Valley and beyond. To the south-west the railway is maintained all the way to its terminus at Greys, in the last of the valleys, the Oshin, but a train service to the wild backwater town of Greys runs only once a week, outward on a Monday and back on Wednesdays, with virtually no passengers and a highly suspicious conductor. Greys is a gateway to the wider North Pacific region, but is very much a frontier town that few self-respecting Delts are fond of visiting. Often the only passengers are Surveyors - staff of the Extra-Territorial Survey.

Secret Service

Of course there wouldn’t be a Secret Service if its details were shared in a national factbook, but since there is a Director of Security, and he doesn’t officially have anyone in his department, one can only assume there is a service which is being kept secret relating to the security of the valley. Allegedly the Director of Security has the callsign DoS; and unless they are doing all the security all on their own, his/her operatives have the call signs MM2 to n, to however many operatives - who don’t exist, you understand - and are known as the ‘double-Ms’. This is a reference to the only on-the-record secret agent for the Delte River Trust, and prior to that for The Six Towns Association, the near-mythical Merlin Mostoe (1912-2014; active approx 1936-1990), who claims to have saved the world on several occasions in his famously lurid memoirs; MM1, so the legend goes, is Merlin himself, and the callsign has been retired from service. According to lore and widely denied by DoS, each of the double-Ms has responsibility for a different sector of security services; for example, it is said, MM2 is responsible for intelligence-gathering in The North Pacific region, MM5 for domestic intelligence, MM6 for coastal surveillance, MM9 for escape and evasion operations, MM19 for administration and numbering, and the most recent addition, MM23, responsible for social media intelligence. It is alleged by theorists of the black arts of espionage that MM6 is the most prized role in the department as it mostly involves fishing.

Military

Though there is no standing army, no air force, and no equipped navy, the community of the Delte valley has not entirely ignored defensive arrangements in case of future conflicts or external threats - having privately agreed within the corridors of the Delte River Trust that fighting for autonomy might be preferable to giving it up in some imagined future. To that end, Commander Attita Quaggins has assembled a crack team of accountants, Python & Java hackers and tabletop wargamers to plan for strategic defensive manoeuvres in the case of hostile actions. Central Command is based at Oswark Barracks - which is out the back of The Brewery on Aughtshambles Lane and consists of three offices with appropriate toilet and kitchen facilities, a brewing room converted to a gymnasium converted to a games room, a mostly empty store ostentatiously triple-locked and labelled ‘magazine’, and an old barrel-yard which Commander Quaggins and her 10-person team occasionally use as a somewhat shambolic drill ground. Uniforms are not exactly optional - more preferred - and bought online from a discount military surplus store in the ZZZR. There are small, apparently unused military camps at Aldund Bar near the coast and up in the wetlands outside Quathskelough. Volunteers from the local villages have been enlisted to perform occasional security checks and get a free companion dog, of the gigantic webbed-footed Delte Otterhound variety, to look impressive when on inspection duty. What the facilities are for remains a closely guarded secret known only to Central Command and the executive management team of the Delte River Trust.

Law & Order

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Law and order in the valley is made up of three departments: the Town Assizes, overseen by the Chief Justice and responsible for trial and sentencing; the River Patrol, overseen by the Chief Inspector and responsible for policing; and the Auld Triangle, which is both a place - the valley’s prison - and the name of the prison service, overseen by the Head Gaoler. The Town Assizes are administered by the Stoic Council, who appoint local magistrates at each of the six Assizes, and the Chief Justice who is head of the magistrates group and sits in judgement on the most serious trials, which, when a custodial sentence is a possible outcome, will always be held at the Oswark Assizes. The magistrates and the Chief Justice help to shape the law and determine approaches to sentencing, and sit regularly in counsel with both the Stoic Council and the Delte River Trust.

The DRT abolished the death penalty for regular criminal acts in 1951, one of its first judicial acts after succeeding the Six Towns Association. It subsequently abolished the death penalty for high treason in war and war-crimes in 1980. Prior to that, there had been no practical application of capital punishment since 1866, and the death penalty had been seen as an outsider resort for more than two centuries before that, since the introduction of stoic reason into the valley. In a recent Worldwide Press Freedom Index, the Delte valley ranked first place out of the eight valleys. Admittedly, the others are deserted.

In general, the legal and institutional framework in the valley is characterised by a high degree of transparency, accountability and integrity, and the perception and the occurrence of corruption are very low, and its standards of implementation and enforcement of anti-corruption legislation are considered very high by many international anti-corruption working groups. However, there are some isolated cases showing that some municipalities have abused their position in public procurement processes.

River Patrol

The River Patrol is the enforcement arm of local law & order, which has responsibility for the whole of the valley, not just the river itself. The Patrol has manned stations in each of the six towns; there are two patrol boats - the Issacqua (registered as RB-1) and the Ingray (RB-2) - both based at Oswark Locks with rotating two-man crews, while each patrol station outside of Oswark has a staff of between six (Marshlock Spa) and ten (Deltemouth) uniformed officers of varying rank, and a Skyrmion SUV for each parish donated by the government of Taxhavn; Oswark station, known as Tasolde House and based on the lock where the patrol boats are moored, has a total staff of fourteen ‘uniforms’ with the two boats and two further Skyrmion vehicles. The river patrol also has six rapid response officers using Delte-built Oldyear motorcycles, based in two-unit teams in Ughmirren, Oswark and Askirk. A criminal investigation department for serious crimes, a team of five lead by a detective inspector, is also based at Tasolde House in Oswark; this department is officially titled the Tasolde Room 5 Group based on their quarters within the building, or TR-5. Tasolde also quarters a small administrative department of eight non-uniform ‘civilians’ while each of the town stations has between one and three administrators in a similar capacity; the Mechanics Group of four skilled engineers who maintain the service of the Patrol’s various vehicles brings the total service employ to around 90 people or 1.8 per thousand of population.

The Auld Triangle

Medium to long-term detention of convicted criminals is the purview of the valley prison system, the Auld Triangle which runs a single prison of the same name at Auld, close to Nalga Falls about 5km outside Oswark, as well as a youth detention farm in Shingarter, near Deltemouth. The prison population is 0.00018% of the population of Delte, or 9 prisoners in the adult system. Presently that is an all-male population; and though it is possible to house females at the Auld Triangle, the last time there was a female inmate, through to 1997, she was housed at a secure farmstead near Rothwarrodton village. In total there is capacity for 16 prisoners at Auld Triangle, which has not been reached during the modern era; the women's farmstead can hold three internees and the youth farm has a capacity for four young offenders - presently there are none in custody. The valley's prison system is determinedly humane, rather than tough, with emphasis on rehabilitation. At 17%, the valley's re-conviction rate is among the lowest in the known world.

Emergency Services

The valley maintains six emergency services - the River Patrol (police), Saint Tyrbert’s Ambulance, the Fire Service, the Mountain & Marches Rescue Corps, the Coastguard and the Civil Defence Corps. Each service is made up of a small amount of ‘regulars’ - paid employees, who are employed by the Delte River Trust Home Affairs Office; and the service ‘irregulars’ - part-time trained volunteers who have special dispensation to leave their paid employment to answer emergency calls through the DRT Emergency Paging System. The Civil Defence Corps is entirely made up of volunteers and is responsible for a wide range of supporting roles in the case of larger emergencies, including search and rescue, first aid, driving, communications, flood response, emergency catering, evacuation and evacuation centres, civil emergency equipment maintenance, and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear monitoring. The CDC is commanded by the Chief Inspector of the River Patrol in cooperation with the military Chief of Staff.

Education

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Education in the valley is administered by Oswark Grammar School on behalf of the Delte River Trust, including all levels of education up to and including adult and ‘third generation learning’ or 3GL for the over-60s; making the headmaster of the Grammar School the de facto minister for education. Twenty-seven primary schools, seven secondary schools and three tertiary colleges function under the department. The Grammar School also has a tertiary education programme. The education system consists of optional daycare programmes (for children under 7), a one-year "pre-school" (age seven), and an 10-year compulsory basic comprehensive school (age eight to age eighteen). Secondary general academic and vocational education are compulsory, whilst higher education and adult education are provided free for life.

Primary & Secondary Schools

Primary education is provided to children of age range eight-twelve; secondary from thirteen to eighteen. During the first seven years of common basic education, students are not selected, tracked, or streamed. There is also inclusive special education within the classroom and instructional efforts to minimize low achievement. After basic education, at fifteen students must choose to continue with secondary education in either an academic track or a vocational track, both of which usually take three years and award a ‘matureate’ - a qualification to continue to tertiary education. There are secondary schools in all of the six towns of the valley, with two in Oswark - the Grammar School and the Greencoat School, often called the Vocational High School. The school population at the last census was 2,132 in primary education, 3,198 in secondary with 916 in nursery and pre-school places and 961 in tertiary programmes.

Tertiary & Higher Education

Tertiary education is provided through four institutions - Oswark Grammar School Sixth Form, the tertiary department of The Fiddler School in Deltemouth, The Marches College in Marshlock Spa and Sullenden College; the 961 student population represents approximately 60% take-up by young people of their age group in free non-compulsory full-time education.

Tertiary institutions award ‘metriculate’ qualifications to continue onto higher education provided for free by the Delte River Trust, with approximately 35% take up from graduating metriculates. Of those, around 90% or just over 300 students are studying abroad, with places in the valley extremely limited. Most go to the University St. Bernadine or USB in Taxhavn. The valley itself offers two specialist higher education schools: The Statue-Maker School in Oswark and The Fiddler School in Deltemouth. The former offers a highly specialised four-year sculptural masters degree and has ten places per intake year; courses last four years. Usually there are 2-3 locals in each entry year with the majority being foreign students on the world-reknowned course. The Fiddler School is less narrow but still specialised, offering a variety of maritime studies from navigation to boat-building, marine logistics to marine biology and, of course, maritime history and folk art including fiddle-making and shanty-singing. The Fiddler School has a 200-student capacity in its HE campus and is approximately 60% subscribed by foreign students.