A Modern World (AMW) Applications Center

[Chrinthanium]

http://i.imgur.com/KQIfqPA.png

That's the pending map as I am told. It includes McMulland, Chrinthania, and Walmington in their accepted forms and a proposed Soviet India and a potential new Gull Flag Republic enlargement. It's gonna be yuge, folks. Bigly expanded.

[Walmington on Sea]

Wait, should I keep Sarawak as a Protected State? WoS probably can't really protect it any longer, but I think I'd like to, anyway. Another 2.6 million people, and a further complication to the Imperial Federation's constitution. Also it might annoy Valendians.

[Chrinthanium]

Wait, should I keep Sarawak as a Protected State? WoS probably can't really protect it any longer, but I think I'd like to, anyway. Another 2.6 million people, and a further complication to the Imperial Federation's constitution. Also it might annoy Valendians.

http://i.imgur.com/XEAUc6O.png

With that, plus a correction regarding what you actually claimed in Denmark (since they use Danish, not English, names where I get my info).

[Iansisle]

I had thought that, in the discussion with LRR, most of Belarus (all except Vitebsk) and the Russian oblast of Bryansk went to the Shield. I might be misremembering, or or he might have changed his mind -- either of which is fine with me!

[Chrinthanium]

I had thought that, in the discussion with LRR, most of Belarus (all except Vitebsk) and the Russian oblast of Bryansk went to the Shield. I might be misremembering, or or he might have changed his mind -- either of which is fine with me!

I haven't been given a full read out of what is and isn't part of Gandvik anymore. I will amend based on your comments for I know you're correct.

http://i.imgur.com/eybCsZw.png

And now, does everyone see where they're going to be located? Is everything correct?

[AMW Applications]

The Claims Map is updated, the list of claims is also updated. Please review to ensure there are no discrepancies.

[Europe - Prussia]

The Claims Map is updated, the list of claims is also updated. Please review to ensure there are no discrepancies.

Could you please add to Valendia's claim list Luxembourg and Austria? Thank you.

[AMW Applications]

The Claims Map is updated, the list of claims is also updated. Please review to ensure there are no discrepancies.

Could you please add to Valendia's claim list Luxembourg and Austria? Thank you.

Done

[AMW Applications]

Chrinthania switches to Oceania. Romnika now spelled correctly.

New map is up.

http://i.imgur.com/a7SVXLi.png

[AMW Applications]

Minor Update:

The link list at the top of the OP of this thread now contains a link by which you can find any thread tagged in any forum on this website with the letters AMW (be they in parenthesis or brackets or otherwise). The previous link only pulled those topics located in the NationStates IC RP forum.

[Marimaia]

Okay here we go:

The Kingdom of Marimaia

Claimed Territory: The Philippines, Sabah

Population: 104,524,937
Demonym: Marimaian, Marimo (considered disrespectful)
Capital: Margravia City (RL Manila)
Government: Absolute Monarchy
- King: Lysander I of the House of Margrave, King of Marimaia, Duke of Margravia and Protector of the Realm

GDP per capita: US$8,300
Currency: Marimaian Crown


History:

The history of the Kingdom of Marimaia is inextricably interwined with the history of one family. In the late 18th century, the Margrave family were ethnic Walmingtonians with profitable holdings in Pessaminia, with their portfolio consisting of several plantations, four slaving ships (with attendant crews), and of course the slaves required to work the plantations and care for the family. In the year 1797, the family's neighbours and business partners were surprised by the news that Thomas Margrave, then patriarch of the family, was raising capital for an expedition as the Margraves had never struck anyone as 'adventurer types'. In truth, Thomas had just concluded a potentially life-changing deal which had swallowed up a considerable portion of the family fortune. Through carefully cultivated friends in diplomatic circles, Thomas heard about a failing colony in Southeast Asia which had been founded by the Chrinthani Emperor Alexander III during his reign of tyranny; the current Emperor, Nicholas IV, was looking to divest Chrinthanium of the tyrant's legacy, so Thomas had petitioned for a meeting with the nation's representatives and purchased the colony's charter for the Margrave family. Many of his peers thought that Thomas had lost his mind to gamble so much on this 'opportunity', but he received support from a handful of other families who were intrigued by his ambition but had no desire to risk their own lives travelling across the Pacific. Eventually the Margrave 'expedition' set sail for the family's newest acquisition, consisting of the four slaving ships owned by the family as well as a newly acquired clipper for the comfort of those Margraves who were transplanting to the family's 'new destiny'. The slaving ships were brought along due to their hold space, as the Margraves were transporting fresh (and loyal) colonists in addition to a contingent of well-trained mercenaries.

Upon arriving in the extensive archipelago which hosted their new acquisition, the expedition was met by a small group of indigenous galleys which attempted to engage them but were repelled by superior firepower, unknowingly setting a precedent for the future of the Margrave settlement of the islands. The arrival of the Margrave vessels at the colony of Alexandis was met with some degree of appreciation; the colonists were not particularly enthralled by the idea of no longer bring Chrinthani citizens, but given the trials and tribulations of the colonists to that point they thought it might prove useful to have their 'owners' present in person to see what they were up against. Aside from raids by indigenous pirates and uncooperative neighbouring indigenous fiefdoms, the colony had recently been hit by a tropical cyclone; while they had been taking measures against the weather in the region, the colonists had been unprepared for the severity of the recent cyclone and were only now finishing their rebuilding. Thomas Margrave's first official act was to rename the colony after his wife Maria, who had accompanied him and supported his ambition at every turn; thus the land received the name Marimaia.

After taking stock of their new possession and the 'assets' included with it, the Margraves wasted little time in striking out to stamp their authority on the territory. The indigenous Kingdom of Maynila bordered the nascent Marimaia as the colony had actually established itself within the kingdom's territory, but the Maynilese had proven unsuccessful in dislodging the encroaching settlers so the two 'powers' existed in what could best be described as a state of cold war. The arrival of the Margraves ended the relative parity of the two as the family had brought a small force of highly trained and experienced mercenaries as part of their expedition. Armed with the latest muskets and other firearms, the mercenaries began a brief campaign of raids against the Maynilese until the kingdom responded by launching an all-out assault on the colony. This proved to be suicidal as the colony was not just garrisoned by the mercenaries; Thomas Margrave had transferred several cannons from his ships to the settlement's defences, and chained cannonballs were used to carve through the advancing Maynilese (as well as surrounding vegetation) like a knife through butter. The kingdom lost the majority of their fighting men that day and were easy pickings for the now-emboldened Marimaians, who took the kingdom's primary settlement only a week later. To prove Marimaian superiority over the now-conquered Maynilese, Thomas executed King Salamat before his subjects and the colonists claimed the settlement as their own, renaming it 'Margravia'. Due to its desirable location Margravia became the capital of the colony, and to this day it remains the capital of Marimaia as Margravia City. As a final insult to the Maynilese, Thomas Margrave declared himself their king as he had been the one to kill Salamat, an act which provided the Margrave family with justification to call themselves a new royal dynasty of the archipelago.

The fall of Maynila sent a shockwave through the various minor kingdoms in the archipelago and thus began well over a century of the Marimaians allying with and double-crossing their less advanced neighbours, assisted by a steady stream of immigration from the Gulf as the Margraves sent word back to their friends about their brave new world. As Marimaia continued to expand, the Margraves used their new indigenous subjects as slave labour for the construction of their glorious kingdom, turning a blind eye to (or often assisting) any excesses committed by other families who had moved to Marimaia to become the new nobility of the archipelago. As the roughly one million indigenous inhabitants of Marimaia died of disease, overwork, or were sold into the slave trade, their place was taken by fresh immigration and a Marimaian baby boom. It is safe to say that the Marimaia of today bears little resemblance to the archipelago which faced the Margraves when they first arrived.


Government:

The Kingdom of Marimaia is a monarchy which has always had a member of the House of Margrave on the throne since Thomas Margrave first declared himself as a king. The role of monarch combines executive, legislative and judicial functions, with royal decrees forming the basis of Marimaian legislation. While on paper the monarch can effectively do whatever they desire and pass any law they wish, no matter what it may be, in practise the monarch consults with the Royal Council before issuing decrees. Comprised of various ministers of state, the Royal Council is charged with "drafting and overseeing the implementation of the internal, external, financial, economic, educational and defense policies, and general affairs of the state", fulfilling much the same role that a Cabinet fulfills in other nations. The Margraves thoroughly control the Royal Council as all ministers are either family members or particularly competent favourites, and thankfully they can (and will) use these family ties to influence and moderate particularly reckless or careless monarchs. Outside of the Royal Council, the Kingdom of Marimaia is divided into eighteen Duchies, each of which is then further divided into a varying number of Counties. These titles (as well as their attendant incomes) are given and taken by decree of the reigning monarch, meaning that the other noble families of Marimaia do their best to curry favour with the King at all times. When it comes to tax collection, the National Levy Administration (NLA) are responsible for the entire nation including the lesser nobility, who are punished more harshly than regular citizens for tax offences because 'they should know better'.

The current King of Marimaia is Lysander I, a particularly egocentric and self-indulgent 24 year old who revels in his position. He adores all the pomp and ceremony of being King, and loves meeting his subjects for the simple fact that they are always so respectful towards him. Behind closed doors however, Lysander can be spiteful and petulant if he does not get things exactly his way. Any time there is a suggestion of him getting married, Lysander simply replies with a dismissive grunt as he prefers the company of his male favourites; nicknamed "The Myrmidons", Andrew Pinkerton, Marcus Winterbourne and Warwick Leighton have been granted Count-level titles by Lysander from his own Dukedom of Margravia and indulge the King at every turn. The situation is not helped by the attitude of Queen Mother Cleantha Margrave who simply states that "Lysander will do what Lysander will do". Referred to as "Mumsy" by the King, Cleantha will happily allow her son to enjoy his royal prerogatives while using her shrewd political expertise to act as the true power behind the throne when necessary.


Economy:

The Marimaian economy is primarily capitalist in nature, a reflection of the fact that the nation was founded by a family of merchants and slaveowners, although there are a few exceptions. Industries described as being of 'strategic national significance' operate as monopolies under the watchful stewardship of the more business-minded members of the modern Margrave extended family. These industries include the major utilities such as energy supply, water supply, and communications.

Agriculture is an important sector of the Marimaian economy. Thanks to the archipelago's abundance of arable land, Marimaia is an effective producer of crops such as rice, coconuts, sugar, abaca, bananas, pineapples, corn, and rubber, while the kingdom is also increasing its production in coffee, ostrich farming and crocodile farming. As a result of the discontinuous nature of the kingdom's coastline, the Marimaian economy also features a considerable fishing (both seawater and freshwater) and aquaculture industry which includes farmed seaweeds.

The mining and extraction sector draws upon a veritable wealth of mineral and non-mineral deposits throughout the archipelago, including gold, nickel, copper, chromite, silver, coal, gypsum, clay, limestone, marble, silica, phosphates, and sulphur. The Kingdom of Marimaia also possesses offshore natural gas reserves which were bolstered by the Marimaian invasion of Sabah in 1998, control of which has also provided the Marimaians with access to new oil reserves although exploitation of the new reserves has been slow due to the ongoing process of Sabah's integration. The kingdom's energy sector is dominated by renewable sources, with geothermal energy leading the sector due to the volcanic nature of the islands while supplemented with hydropower, wind power and biomass power.

Marimaian industry is home to a major shipbuilding sector with four fully operational shipyards and two more undergoing expansion, while the Duchy of Margravia (which surrounds the capital) hosts a ship repair complex which can accommodate up to 96 vessels. Other major sectors of Marimaian industry include construction, textiles, and chemical products.

The Kingdom of Marimaia do their best to encourage tourism by playing up the natural beauty and unique culture of their nation, but in truth their main source of tourists is the United Gulf States who find it interesting to visit a nation with such historical ties to their own. Revisions of various laws over the past decade have been partly driven by a desire to attract more tourists as the Margraves recognise just how profitable that particular industry can be; there is also the fact that the more tourists that visit, the more people get to see the family's 'masterpiece' first-hand.


Culture:

Marimaian culture bears various degrees of influence from Chrinthani, Gulf, and Walmingtonian sources due to the origin of the Margraves and the early colonists, although it has evolved over time to take on its own unique flavour. The prevailing religion is a form of Protestantism derived from the Anglican tradition of the Margraves, while other religions are free to practise within the Kingdom. However, all religions must register with the Royal Security Commission (RSC), the secret police and intelligence bureau which dutifully works for the good of the kingdom. Any religion foolish enough to start preaching anti-Margrave rhetoric would quickly be subjected to a crackdown, but thus far no faith has attempted to do so. The mainstream Church of Marimaia is pro-monarchy and fairly liberal in its outlook, supporting contraception and same-sex civil unions while women and openly gay individuals can be ordained with no upper limit on which post they can rise to. The option to have civil unions exists for those who desire some form of official commitment outside of marriage, regardless of sexuality, but full-blown same-sex marriage has yet to be legalised.

Ordinary Marimaians have several joys in life. They love the pomp and pageantry that accompanies the House of Margrave, pointing to the family as a beacon of stability and civilisation for the nation. Marimaians enjoy their tea, although they prefer locally sourced varieties of herbal infusions. If Marimaians want caffeine then they drink coffee. Favoured sports in the nation include competitive ballroom dancing, billiards, football/soccer, horseracing, and cockfighting, with the latter two being pillars of the Marimaian gambling industry. There are of course sports which are primarily enjoyed by the nobility, such as archery, badminton, and sailing, but regular Marimaians will often tune in if events involving these sports are being broadcast.


Military:

The Royal Marimaian Defence Forces (RMDF) number some 300,000 active personnel and 500,000 reserve personnel divided between three major services: the Royal Marimaian Army (RMA), the Royal Marimaian Air Force (RMAF), and the Royal Marimaian Navy (RMN). Despite being part of the RMN, the Royal Marimaian Marine Corps (RMMC, affectionately known as the "Mari-Maris" in common vernacular) are highly regarded in Marimaian culture due to their skill and the fact that the RMMC was born from the mercenaries that accompanied Thomas Margrave to Alexandis. At present the RMDF's primary deployment is in the Sabah territory, ensuring that the integration process proceeds as smoothly as possible.

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So the GDP per capita is definitely up for discussion. The RL GDP of the Philippines is $3,280 but they've had quite a few issues that Marimaia hasn't experienced. I've gone for $8,300 as it's roughly what RL Malaysia has but I'd be interested to see what everyone else thinks about it (whether I've been too optimistic, too pessimistic, whatever). The military can be filled out a bit more once I've got a supplier or two for equipment.

So any thoughts/constructive criticism?

[Chrinthanium]

I would shoot for a bit higher GDP per capita. Outside of that, I am all for this idea.

[Chrinthanium]

So, without objection, when I get home from work tonight, Marimaia will be added to the map and claims list. Welcome back to AMW, Marimaia!

[Marimaia]

So, without objection, when I get home from work tonight, Marimaia will be added to the map and claims list. Welcome back to AMW, Marimaia!

Woot

[AMW Applications]

Look, Ma: new map!

[AMW Applications]

The map has been redone. I noticed it was pixelized. Now, there should be no more pixelization. http://i.imgur.com/3Wka0XL.png

[Zentrus]

Saw your discussion thread, read a little bit on the offsite forum (under the account Zentrus, natch), and decided to try it out. My application is not exactly finished, but I'm pretty exhausted (it's nigh 5 in the morning here) so I'm heading to bed. Lemme know. I'll explain Muentzerism more fully in the Culture section, and discuss cybernetic socialism and the actual structure of Zentrusian government in, well, "Government".

The Democratic Federation of Zentrus

Claimed Territory: France, Andorra, Spain, Portugal

Population: 123,854,145
Demonym: Zentrusian, Zennie, commie (pejorative)
Capital: Naissance (RL Nantes)
Government: Socialist Parliamentary Democracy
- Chancellor: Aubin Ducharme (NUP/Saint-Hélène)

GDP: 3,881,465,050,155
GDP per capita: US$31,339
Currency: Bit (the world's first wholly digital currency)


History:

Before the rise of the Roman Empire, the area now known as Zentrus was populated by small tribal confederations, mostly composed of Celtic peoples, with some pre-Indo-European groups still remaining in the western peninsula (today known as Iragon). While archaeological investigations into these and earlier peoples have yielded fascinating finds as to their lifestyle and culture, there is very little trace of the once powerful Celtic culture remaining in today's Zentrus. The conquest of what the Romans called Gaul (today eastern Francia, the heartland of Zentrus) by Julius Caesar and the much longer and more difficult conquest of what the Romans called Hispania (Iragon) over nearly two hundred years would eventually lead to the Romanization of the cultures therein, and something of a homogenization due to Rome's pervasive cultural influence.

This too, unfortunately, would change with the onset of the Second Germanic Migration into the Valendii's tribal confederacy in the 5th century. Though the Valendii would absorb much of the blow from these new Germanic tribes, a powerful confederation led by an offshoot of the Franks and consisting of Saxons and Bavarii as well as the Franks, migrated into Roman Gaul, where they clashed with the remnants of Roman authority. With the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, numerous short-lived successor states sprung up in Gaul, only to be extinguished in quick succession as the Frankish Coalition moved west. As the Germans moved further into post-Roman Zentrus, however, those who settled quickly found themselves adapting Roman cultural ideas to their own lifestyle, and formed a powerful, Romanized German elite in the majority of Gaul. In 736, the Kingdom of Gallia was established in Naissance, which, though somewhat isolated, proved a highly defensible and lucrative port.

Hispania, ruled by squabbling post-Roman states, soon found itself at the mercy of the predatory Gallians, who found themselves stymied in the east by the Merovingians and later Carolingians. Though Gallia would never fully conquer Iragon, it did make significant inroads in the east, even as the mighty spectre of Islam arose in the south and west of the Peninsula. By the year 900, the now-Christianized and feudal Gallians found themselves to be one of the most powerful kingdoms in Christendom, and the first line of defense against Muslim Hispania. However, this would not last long. Gallian intervention in the Fifty Year's War between the divided Valendian states proved ill-thought-out, and the bankrupt Gallian state would collapse to its powerful dukes in 1132, none of whom were powerful enough to reunify the state. The Muslim Umayyads, who ruled what they called Al-Andalus at the time, were able to make significant inroads into Christian Iragon, capturing the city of Nosima (RL Barcelona) in 1167. However, Muslim invasion proved to be one of the few things that would unite the feuding duchies, and by 1200, a novel political entity had formed: the Ducal Federation of Ilonia (a newer name for Gallia). Ruled by a council formed of the joining dukes, who were all theoretically equal, this is regarded by many Zentrusian scholars as the first incarnation of a Zentrusian state.

The Ducal Federation was able to push back the Umayyads with hard-fought battles in 1213, 1229, and 1246, the last of which saw the triumphant Ilonians recapture Nosima. By the year 1300, the Reconquista, as many Ilonians termed it, was well underway, with the entire northern coast of Iragon under Ilonian control, and the ancient city of Cetia (RL Cordoba) under siege. The Umayyad Sultanate collapsed in 1354 under continuing military pressure by Ilonia and a divisive succession crisis. By the end of the century, the last of the divided remnants of the Sultanate in Leria (RL Lisbon area) would be defeated by Ilonian arms. Throughout the 1400s, however, political arguments and struggles threatened to break apart the Ducal Federation, which proved inefficient at managing its resources and was afflicted with widespread corruption.

The Protestant Reformation in the 1500s only exacerbated these problems; in the 1510s, several of the northern and eastern dukes were converted to Muentzerism, a radical, mystical and ascetic brand of Protestantism, and took steps to secede from the "godless Federation", seeking Valendian protection. The other dukes, led by Juan de Nosima, a powerful Iragonese duke, formed the Catholic League, an alliance aimed at reintegrating the Muentzerist dukes. In response, the Muentzerists proclaimed Guillaume Durfort, the Duke of Naissance, King of Zentrusia (a newer term used to refer to what had been northern and northwestern Gallia) and swore allegiance to him as the Defender of Muentzerist Christianity. Guillaume I went on to shock Christian Europe by defeating the vastly more numerous League army at the Battle of Rosia (RL Toulouse) in 1517, forcing them onto the defensive. Though the war would drag on into the late 1520s, Nosima, the last bastion of Catholic resistance, was captured in 1528, leading to a united Muentzerist monarchy.

The Zentrusian kingdom proved to be not just focused on the region it was named for, but also harsh and oppressive towards non-Muentzerists; even fellow Protestants suffered torture and execution if found out. Significant Catholic uprisings occurred in the 1540s and 1550s and led to increasingly brutal reprisals by Guillaume's successor Roger I "The Savage", who is estimated by modern scholars to have ordered the deaths of nearly three hundred thousand Catholics. Zentrusia grew increasingly isolated diplomatically over this period, and was popularly known as the "Hermit Kingdom" from 1560 onwards. By 1600s, however, most dissent had been rooted about the efficient and terrifying state inquisition, while the threat of violence caused thousands of Catholics and Protestants to convert. The extinction of feudal authority by these brutal purges, which left the old power structure in shambles, led to the so-called "Age of Absolutism", when the Durfort kings ruled as absolute monarchs within Zentrusia. In many ways, they were the inspiration for the enlightened absolutism of the 1700s.

Unfortunately, many of the Durforts simply frittered this money away. While there was always funding to be had for a large and powerful army, the national infrastructure was allowed to degrade while the kings spent money on lavish and ostentatious building projects, as well as several failed colonial ventures around the world, where Walmington-On-Sea proved to be far more experienced and canny. This led to a large and growing state debt in the 1700s and increasing poverty throughout Zentrusia, which finally led to the Golden Revolution in 1781. The revolutionaries, inspired by Enlightenment ideals, quickly pushed royalist forces out of Zentrusia proper, and southwards into the plains of Gallia, where they were able to entrench and fight back. The revolution, which featured strings of brutal and bloody executions and mass social upheaval, would last on and off until 1800, when the Royalist stronghold at Nosima surrendered to the National Republic. Now dawned the era of Republican Zentrus, which would last nearly two hundred years.

The revolutionaries which formed the Republic, besides being staunchly irreligious, also felt that "democracy" was just another word for "mob rule", and believed that a hierarchical society was the best hope for Zentrus (a neologism invented by the rebels to distinguish themselves from the past). Moreover, the revolutionary movement was dominated by men of "good breeding" from Zentrusia, who quickly established fiefdoms in all but name throughout the rest of the country. Suffrage was limited to men of a certain class, while the lower classes were kept in increasingly terrible conditions while the nation industrialized. Several revolts were had, especially in Iragon, throughout the 1830s and '40s, and left a lasting resentment in the peninsula towards northern rule.

The terrible conditions enabled by New Capitalism, the economic ideology followed by most of the parties within the republican government, and which entailed nearly no regulations on business owners, led to a radicalization of opposition to the National Republic. After the emergence of Marxism in the late 19th Century, Marxist movements dominated the underground, though they were fragmented and found themselves hunted down by state police. At the same time, growing tensions with Valendia led to several Zentrusian interventions on the side of Valendia's enemies and massive military spending, which left the army increasingly powerful. It was after the world war, when Zentrus lay greatly shattered and burdened by reparations (I'm assuming we were on the losing side), that the military, led by Colonel Emanuele Corriene, made their move. A clique of colonels, dissatisfied by what they saw as a betrayal of the nation by the government, led a coup in Naissance which devastated the National Republic. The subsequent Zentrusian Civil War (1948-1955) was divisive and brutal, with several independent Marxist governments arising in Zentrusian territory and subsequently being squashed by the Popular Front (the military's "front organization") as it marched across the country. The long-running insurgency, which would only end with the fall of the Front, began in 1955 as Marxist militias dispersed into the countryside.

In 1955, with victory over the Republicans, Colonel Corriene declared himself President of the State of Zentrus, which, despite having a constitution mandating a Senate and popular elections, was perpetually in a state of emergency granting the president absolute executive power throughout its entire existence. His one good legacy, however, was the crash industrialization undertaken from 1956 to 1967, which saw the Zentrusian economy briefly skyrocket, then plummet as foreign corporations plundered Zentrus. The ailing Corriene would die in 1972 from liver cancer, causing a struggle for succession between his colonels. At the same time, a new idea was percolating in the underground: that of cybernetic socialism.

Computers, while hardly commonplace due to their vast size (at the time), were well-known in Zentrus from the early 1950s onwards, while socialist ideals had remained a mainstay of the political resistance since the 19th century. It was the socialist theorist Jerome Saint-Saens who would mix these two into his ideology, adding a dash of universal basic income for flavor. Saint-Saens wrote that it was only through extensive computer networks and technological advancement, as well as mostly-autonomous workers' collectives, that a socialist economy could work and survive under the mandate of the state. As well, he believed that a semi-market economy (in which the only sellers were state-owned companies run democratically) still featuring currency and supported by a universal basic income was the best way for socialism to work in what he saw as the coming post-industrial economy. Finally, he argued that the dictatorship of the proletariat was not only pointless, but actively deleterious to the development of socialism, and that a socialist state must be absolutely democratic in order properly function.

Saint-Saens's ideas spread rapidly throughout the underground, and by 1976, when an uneasy coalition had formed between the survivors of the succession crisis, had become the dominant revolutionary ideology within Zentrus. In 1978, as the economy continued to fall, the revolution began, again in Naissance, which was the focal point of the cybernetic socialist network (although Itellure (RL Pamplona) was also the site of an early socialist revolt). The army, though large, had become increasingly corrupt and divided in its loyalties between different factions in the junta, and dissolved into warring factions by early 1979. The Socialist Liberation Network, Saint-Saens's organization, made significant gains in that year as a result, forming workers' collectives and municipal councils as parallel economic and political autonomous structures as it went. When the Red Revolution ended in 1981, these two governing structures became the backbone of the state.

The Constitution of 1981, which formed today's Democratic Federation of Zentrus, explictly banned public property and organized the political structure of the state underneath a unicameral Federal Senate, made up of one senator each from the 200 municipal councils that had joined the revolutionary movement (later amendments would create a mechanism to allow the creation of new municipalities, leading to today's 326 senators). Meanwhile, the workers' collectives were to assume autonomous control of the economy under the purview of the senate, which retained the right to issue economic directives and guide economic policy. The rapid development of the ECONET (Economic Network), a vast network of telex machines which allowed real-time economic simulation and the quick interpretation of and reaction to statistics from around the nation, in the 1980s under the purview of the Technology and Progress Party (the successor party to the SLN) allowed the semi-command model much greater efficiency than traditional socialist states, and enabled the so-called Zentrusian Economic Miracle.

During the late 1980s and 1990s, the revolutionary state's economy boomed, and relations were tenatively patched up with its neighbors in Valendia and Italy. Though it was difficult under the new economic model, the state made great pains to support artists, musicians, and filmmakers, and the '90s became a golden era for Zentrusian culture. However, the instability caused by the mass update to ECONET in the late '90s led to a short depression, which caused the TPP to lose public confidence and fall from power in 2000. The socially conservative and economically authoritarian (believing in centralizing economic policy further) National Unity Party, leader of the opposition, came to power at the head of a disparate coalition of Muentzerists, radical economic authoritarians, and wildcards known as the Freedom Front. Unfortunately, due precisely to its diverse nature, the Freedom Front was paralyzed by infighting and proved unable to pass much of its legislation. The one important creation of the Freedom Front government was the Bureau of Economic Management, which combined the previous Federal Statistics Administration and Interior Ministry into one, more efficient body capable of rapidly responding to economic changes and equipped with the finest statisticians the country had to offer.

In 2007, Chancellor Gerard Depardieu called for a snap election, leading, to his surprise, to the fall of his government and its replacement with the United Technocratic Union under Marie Moreau, a devolutionist (believing in more autonomy for the workers' collectives) party that also advocated a significant budget for technological research. The greatest achievement of this short-lived government (2007-2012) was the creation of the Zentrusian Outer Space Research Administration (ZOSRA), which successfully began launching satellites in 2009, and was able to send a man into space in 2011. Moreau's sex scandal in early 2012 led to the fall of her government and the second rise of the National Unity Party, this time in an unlikely coalition with Technology and Progress, their only point of agreement being economic authoritarianism. Though the Senate has often been stalemated during this period, it has achieved some notable success in trade deals with Valendia, and a strongly recovering economy. Nevertheless, there remain problems in Zentrus; the largest of which is the growing unrest in southern Iragon, the municipalities of which the Federal Senate has repeated blocked in their efforts to multiply. Iragonese activists claim that this is an attempt to silence their voices and weaken their position in government, with some even openly advocating secession from Zentrus.




Government:

The Constitution of 1981 is the legal basis for all Zentrusian government and economic policy. The constitution protects the right to vote, the right to self-determination through local municipal councils and the offices of the Senate, the right to economic stability, the right to free speech (outside of certain specific issues such as hate speech), and explicitly dismisses the concept of private property. There are two basic units of the state; the municipal council, and the worker's collective. The municipal council is the constitutionally-mandated local political body throughout Zentrus, and though each council is as different from one another as are different cities, they do have certain features in common. Firstly, each municipality must contain at least 50,000 people, and these people retain the right to appeal to the Federal Senate if they feel their local council is ignoring their needs or violating their constitutional rights. Secondly, each municipality has total autonomy, except in economic matters (the purview of the worker's collectives) and foreign relations--municipalities are explicitly banned from engaging diplomatically with foreign powers. Thirdly, each municipality has the right to elect a senator to the Federal Senate, and each time a new municipality is created, a new Senate seat follows. Currently, there are 326 municipalities within Zentrus, with the majority concentrated in the Zentrusia and Gallia regions in the northeast of the country (broadly, RL France).

Worker's collectives are a parallel governing structure with autonomy over economic matters. They are self-governing, democratically-run communes of workers that have the right to merge and separate as they see fit, and are the primary mode of economic organization. While the collectives are generally autonomous when it comes to day-to-day decision making, they are constitutionally bound to follow any economic directives passed down from the Senate via ECONET, which every collective is required to have a connection to. There are more than a hundred thousand collectives within Zentrus, and their number fluctuates constantly; however, increases in efficiency due to ECONET, as well as a certain popular technophilia and the efforts of the Bureau of Economic Management keep the economy going at a mostly good pace.

Both of these bodies are subject to the dictates of the unicameral Senate. While the political and economic sovereignty of both bodies are strongly protected under the constitution, the Senate, as the representative body of the people, combines both executive and legislative power, which can and has been delegated to the various bureaus which support the state, and also reserves the right to appoint judges and inform the judicial system. At least, theoretically. Practically, with the immense difficulty of having to make day-to-day federal decisions by referendum, the Senate has delegated authority in these matters to the various bureaus (run by Secretaries without term who serve at the pleasure of the Senate) and to the person of the Chancellor, usually the leader of the currently ruling party or head party in a coalition government, who serves de facto as the head of state and government. Aubin Ducharme is the current Chancellor.

All political parties, municipalities, collectives, and organs of government are constitutionally required to abide by the principles of cybernetic socialism, first formulated by Jerome Saint-Saens in the late 1960s and early '70s; firstly, that no citizen of the nation unless convicted of a federal crime may be prevented from freely participating in fair elections for their government; secondly, that the right to collective property and a fully socialized economy must be upheld and defended by all governing bodies; thirdly, that technology is the facilitator of a socialist economy, and must be integrated into economic management, government, and society wherever possible; fourthly and most importantly, the socialist nation must not seek to expand its system by violence or illiberal political integration--only through diplomacy and free referendums in the affected territories (the famous "Socialism In One Country" tenet).

Culture:

Zentrus has been settled by human civilizations for millenia, and boasts a long and rich cultural history going all the way back to the Celts themselves. Its cities are a blend of modern and ancient, with century-old palaces sitting side-by-side with bullet train stations and nuclear power plants. These selfsame cities are also strongly cosmopolitan; people from around the world speaking a variety of languages can be encountered in Naissance at any given time. However, historical and cultural factors have led to the general consensus that there are four major ethnocultural groups underneath the aegis of Zentrus, corresponding largely to several traditionally-recognized regions (although there is of course significant overlap). These groups, though they bear other distinguishing quirks, differ mostly on religious and linguistic grounds.

Zentrusians are the leading ethnic group in the historical Zentrusia region (Brittany-northern and northeastern France-Alsace-Lorraine), and generally dominate politics within the nation as a whole. Historically, Zentrusians have been the most active revolutionary group within the country, having had a major hand in the creations of the National Republic, the State of Zentrus, and the current Democratic Federation. Culturally and linguistically, they are the most "Germanic" of the nation's people, with their language (the official language of the state)
sharing many characteristics with Valendian dialects. Zentrusian culture prides itself on its avant-garde nature, and the Zentrusia region has produced a strong plurality of famous artists, filmmakers, and musicians (including the famed Gerard Ipolyte, who refused to paint in colors other than red, "to commemorate the revolutionary martyrs."). Despite this, Zentrusia is highly religious, featuring the highest population of Muentzerites in the country.

Muentzerism, named after Thomas Muentzer, a Valendian theologian and radical Protestant who established the Five Principles, that which differentiates Muentzerite Christianity from Catholicism. In order, they are; The Spirit, Not The Letter--that the Bible is not an absolute authority, but merely a helpful beginning, having been corrupted through the lens of human writers and chroniclers, and thus Christians must seek spiritual experiences themselves for guidance; Dreams and Revelations--the Holy Spirit communicates through dreams and revelations, which may occur through glossolalia or automatic writing, and so dream interpretation must form a major part of a Christian's spiritual life; The Doctrine of Suffering--all people must endure real suffering, whether physical or spiritual, in order to come to true Christian belief; Fear of God, No Fear of Man--essentially, true Christians must not acknowledge any authority other than God, and those who follow his divine laws;
All Things Held in Common--all things on the earth are God's property, and thus held in common for good Christian people (a sort of early communism). Muentzerite churches are radically egalitarian, and feature "Revelation Meetings", in which the entire congregation may participate in the use of hallucinogens and a sort of "ritual frenzy" in order to achieve communion with God.

To the south of Zentrusia lies Gallia (roughly, the old kingdom of Aquitaine, as well as all other parts of France not covered by Zentrusia).
Here, historically, was the greatest holdout of Romano-Gaulish culture, only lightly ruled by the Germanic kings, and unaffected by Islamization, as the south suffered. Gallia is also the great breadbasket of Zentrus, producing the majority of its food, and is a hub of tourism as well with its wealth of Roman ruins. Gallians speak a Romance language that, despite having a plethora of loanwords from Zentrusian,
has been affected surprisingly little by more than a millenium of Germanic rule. Gallian culture is quite conservative and rural-based, and is the region that has most strongly preserved the institution of Catholicism, largely in secret until the rise of the National Republic. Gallian life largely revolves around the harvest and the many Catholic holy days each year, which provide welcome respite from a life of toil. Since the foundation of the Democratic Federation and the rise of workers' collectives, Gallian culture has become even more tightly-knit and family-based. Politically, the Gallia region tends to follow Zentrusia in its voting patterns, although this is hardly set in stone.

The second-largest cultural group, known as the Andalusi, occupy the southern and eastern swath of the Iragonese peninsula (Catalonia-Andalusia-Southern Portugal), known today as Andalusia, and is perhaps the most politically restive of any group within Zentrus. This was the cultural heartland of the Umayyad Sultanate, and the most-Islamisized and Berberized part of the peninsula. Though Islam was mostly stamped under the Durfort kings, today most Andalusi follow an interestingly syncretic brand of Christianity, known simply as Andalusian Christanity, which while acknowledging Jesus as the messiah, also acknowledges Mohammed as the Last Prophet, and uses both the Koran and the Bible. Though they do believe in the idea of the Pope, they do not acknowledge the current Catholic Pope, and instead honor a spiritual leader based in Nosima by the name of Pope Ibrahim IV. The Andalusi language is a Romance language with heavy Arabic influence, and is not mutually intelligible with any other language in the country. Andalusia also features the lowest amount of municipalities in the country, despite having the second-highest population of any cultural region (second only to Zentrusia itself), due to the Zentrusian-led Senate repeatedly blocking applications for new municipalities. A popular secessionist movement calling itself the Sons of Al-Andalus has committed a string of terrorist attacks in recent years, and the Zentrusian military is currently essentially occupying large parts of Andalusia under martial law.

Last but not least, the Lusitani occupy the rest of the Peninsula (known as Lusitania), and, though perhaps the least homogenous of the ethnocultural groups, remain largely bound by a clan-based social system which dominates the politics of the local municipalities, and a culture that values personal, "macho" honor very highly. Though originally largely Muentzerite, a semi-reactionary neopaganist movement known as Endovelicanism, after its major god, spread throughout the region under the National Republic, and has become over the last century the largest religion in Lusitania. Endovelicanism claims to be a modern interpretation of the ancient faith of the Lusitani tribe (no relation to the Romanized and Arabized Celts today's Lusitani descend from) and worships a pantheon of five gods led by the god of healing and prophecy, Endovelicus. His consort is the hermaphroditic Nabia, the deity of the earth and of the sacred rivers of Lusitania, while his son Bandua is the god of community and protection and his daughters Epona and Trebaruna are the goddesses of fertility/agriculture and love/war respectively. Lusitania is generally a violent area, with honor killings fairly common, although the state has attempted several initiatives to quash them. However, a majority of Lusitani are loyal to the Democratic Federation, largely due to its official recognition and protection of Endovelicanism.

[Chrinthanium]

Saw your discussion thread, read a little bit on the offsite forum (under the account Zentrus, natch), and decided to try it out. My application is not exactly finished, but I'm pretty exhausted (it's nigh 5 in the morning here) so I'm heading to bed. Lemme know. I'll explain Muentzerism more fully in the Culture section, and discuss cybernetic socialism and the actual structure of Zentrusian government in, well, "Government".

(Image)

The Democratic Federation of Zentrus

Claimed Territory: France, Andorra, Spain, Portugal

Population: 123,854,145
Demonym: Zentrusian, Zennie, commie (pejorative)
Capital: Naissance (RL Nantes)
Government: Socialist Parliamentary Democracy
- Chancellor: Aubin Ducharme (NUP/Saint-Hélène)

GDP: 3,881,465,050,155
GDP per capita: US$31,339
Currency: Bit (the world's first wholly digital currency)


History:

Before the rise of the Roman Empire, the area now known as Zentrus was populated by small tribal confederations, mostly composed of Celtic peoples, with some pre-Indo-European groups still remaining in the western peninsula (today known as Iragon). While archaeological investigations into these and earlier peoples have yielded fascinating finds as to their lifestyle and culture, there is very little trace of the once powerful Celtic culture remaining in today's Zentrus. The conquest of what the Romans called Gaul (today eastern Francia, the heartland of Zentrus) by Julius Caesar and the much longer and more difficult conquest of what the Romans called Hispania (Iragon) over nearly two hundred years would eventually lead to the Romanization of the cultures therein, and something of a homogenization due to Rome's pervasive cultural influence.

This too, unfortunately, would change with the onset of the Second Germanic Migration into the Valendii's tribal confederacy in the 5th century. Though the Valendii would absorb much of the blow from these new Germanic tribes, a powerful confederation led by an offshoot of the Franks and consisting of Saxons and Bavarii as well as the Franks, migrated into Roman Gaul, where they clashed with the remnants of Roman authority. With the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, numerous short-lived successor states sprung up in Gaul, only to be extinguished in quick succession as the Frankish Coalition moved west. As the Germans moved further into post-Roman Zentrus, however, those who settled quickly found themselves adapting Roman cultural ideas to their own lifestyle, and formed a powerful, Romanized German elite in the majority of Gaul. In 736, the Kingdom of Gallia was established in Naissance, which, though somewhat isolated, proved a highly defensible and lucrative port.

Hispania, ruled by squabbling post-Roman states, soon found itself at the mercy of the predatory Gallians, who found themselves stymied in the east by the Merovingians and later Carolingians. Though Gallia would never fully conquer Iragon, it did make significant inroads in the east, even as the mighty spectre of Islam arose in the south and west of the Peninsula. By the year 900, the now-Christianized and feudal Gallians found themselves to be one of the most powerful kingdoms in Christendom, and the first line of defense against Muslim Hispania. However, this would not last long. Gallian intervention in the Fifty Year's War between the divided Valendian states proved ill-thought-out, and the bankrupt Gallian state would collapse to its powerful dukes in 1132, none of whom were powerful enough to reunify the state. The Muslim Umayyads, who ruled what they called Al-Andalus at the time, were able to make significant inroads into Christian Iragon, capturing the city of Nosima (RL Barcelona) in 1167. However, Muslim invasion proved to be one of the few things that would unite the feuding duchies, and by 1200, a novel political entity had formed: the Ducal Federation of Ilonia (a newer name for Gallia). Ruled by a council formed of the joining dukes, who were all theoretically equal, this is regarded by many Zentrusian scholars as the first incarnation of a Zentrusian state.

The Ducal Federation was able to push back the Umayyads with hard-fought battles in 1213, 1229, and 1246, the last of which saw the triumphant Ilonians recapture Nosima. By the year 1300, the Reconquista, as many Ilonians termed it, was well underway, with the entire northern coast of Iragon under Ilonian control, and the ancient city of Cetia (RL Cordoba) under siege. The Umayyad Sultanate collapsed in 1354 under continuing military pressure by Ilonia and a divisive succession crisis. By the end of the century, the last of the divided remnants of the Sultanate in Leria (RL Lisbon area) would be defeated by Ilonian arms. Throughout the 1400s, however, political arguments and struggles threatened to break apart the Ducal Federation, which proved inefficient at managing its resources and was afflicted with widespread corruption.

The Protestant Reformation in the 1500s only exacerbated these problems; in the 1510s, several of the northern and eastern dukes were converted to Muentzerism, a radical, mystical and ascetic brand of Protestantism, and took steps to secede from the "godless Federation", seeking Valendian protection. The other dukes, led by Juan de Nosima, a powerful Iragonese duke, formed the Catholic League, an alliance aimed at reintegrating the Muentzerist dukes. In response, the Muentzerists proclaimed Guillaume Durfort, the Duke of Naissance, King of Zentrusia (a newer term used to refer to what had been northern and northwestern Gallia) and swore allegiance to him as the Defender of Muentzerist Christianity. Guillaume I went on to shock Christian Europe by defeating the vastly more numerous League army at the Battle of Rosia (RL Toulouse) in 1517, forcing them onto the defensive. Though the war would drag on into the late 1520s, Nosima, the last bastion of Catholic resistance, was captured in 1528, leading to a united Muentzerist monarchy.

The Zentrusian kingdom proved to be not just focused on the region it was named for, but also harsh and oppressive towards non-Muentzerists; even fellow Protestants suffered torture and execution if found out. Significant Catholic uprisings occurred in the 1540s and 1550s and led to increasingly brutal reprisals by Guillaume's successor Roger I "The Savage", who is estimated by modern scholars to have ordered the deaths of nearly three hundred thousand Catholics. Zentrusia grew increasingly isolated diplomatically over this period, and was popularly known as the "Hermit Kingdom" from 1560 onwards. By 1600s, however, most dissent had been rooted about the efficient and terrifying state inquisition, while the threat of violence caused thousands of Catholics and Protestants to convert. The extinction of feudal authority by these brutal purges, which left the old power structure in shambles, led to the so-called "Age of Absolutism", when the Durfort kings ruled as absolute monarchs within Zentrusia. In many ways, they were the inspiration for the enlightened absolutism of the 1700s.

Unfortunately, many of the Durforts simply frittered this money away. While there was always funding to be had for a large and powerful army, the national infrastructure was allowed to degrade while the kings spent money on lavish and ostentatious building projects, as well as several failed colonial ventures around the world, where Walmington-On-Sea proved to be far more experienced and canny. This led to a large and growing state debt in the 1700s and increasing poverty throughout Zentrusia, which finally led to the Golden Revolution in 1781. The revolutionaries, inspired by Enlightenment ideals, quickly pushed royalist forces out of Zentrusia proper, and southwards into the plains of Gallia, where they were able to entrench and fight back. The revolution, which featured strings of brutal and bloody executions and mass social upheaval, would last on and off until 1800, when the Royalist stronghold at Nosima surrendered to the National Republic. Now dawned the era of Republican Zentrus, which would last nearly two hundred years.

The revolutionaries which formed the Republic, besides being staunchly irreligious, also felt that "democracy" was just another word for "mob rule", and believed that a hierarchical society was the best hope for Zentrus (a neologism invented by the rebels to distinguish themselves from the past). Moreover, the revolutionary movement was dominated by men of "good breeding" from Zentrusia, who quickly established fiefdoms in all but name throughout the rest of the country. Suffrage was limited to men of a certain class, while the lower classes were kept in increasingly terrible conditions while the nation industrialized. Several revolts were had, especially in Iragon, throughout the 1830s and '40s, and left a lasting resentment in the peninsula towards northern rule.

The terrible conditions enabled by New Capitalism, the economic ideology followed by most of the parties within the republican government, and which entailed nearly no regulations on business owners, led to a radicalization of opposition to the National Republic. After the emergence of Marxism in the late 19th Century, Marxist movements dominated the underground, though they were fragmented and found themselves hunted down by state police. At the same time, growing tensions with Valendia led to several Zentrusian interventions on the side of Valendia's enemies and massive military spending, which left the army increasingly powerful. It was after the world war, when Zentrus lay greatly shattered and burdened by reparations (I'm assuming we were on the losing side), that the military, led by Colonel Emanuele Corriene, made their move. A clique of colonels, dissatisfied by what they saw as a betrayal of the nation by the government, led a coup in Naissance which devastated the National Republic. The subsequent Zentrusian Civil War (1948-1955) was divisive and brutal, with several independent Marxist governments arising in Zentrusian territory and subsequently being squashed by the Popular Front (the military's "front organization") as it marched across the country. The long-running insurgency, which would only end with the fall of the Front, began in 1955 as Marxist militias dispersed into the countryside.

In 1955, with victory over the Republicans, Colonel Corriene declared himself President of the State of Zentrus, which, despite having a constitution mandating a Senate and popular elections, was perpetually in a state of emergency granting the president absolute executive power throughout its entire existence. His one good legacy, however, was the crash industrialization undertaken from 1956 to 1967, which saw the Zentrusian economy briefly skyrocket, then plummet as foreign corporations plundered Zentrus. The ailing Corriene would die in 1972 from liver cancer, causing a struggle for succession between his colonels. At the same time, a new idea was percolating in the underground: that of cybernetic socialism.

Computers, while hardly commonplace due to their vast size (at the time), were well-known in Zentrus from the early 1950s onwards, while socialist ideals had remained a mainstay of the political resistance since the 19th century. It was the socialist theorist Jerome Saint-Saens who would mix these two into his ideology, adding a dash of universal basic income for flavor. Saint-Saens wrote that it was only through extensive computer networks and technological advancement, as well as mostly-autonomous workers' collectives, that a socialist economy could work and survive under the mandate of the state. As well, he believed that a semi-market economy (in which the only sellers were state-owned companies run democratically) still featuring currency and supported by a universal basic income was the best way for socialism to work in what he saw as the coming post-industrial economy. Finally, he argued that the dictatorship of the proletariat was not only pointless, but actively deleterious to the development of socialism, and that a socialist state must be absolutely democratic in order properly function.

Saint-Saens's ideas spread rapidly throughout the underground, and by 1976, when an uneasy coalition had formed between the survivors of the succession crisis, had become the dominant revolutionary ideology within Zentrus. In 1978, as the economy continued to fall, the revolution began, again in Naissance, which was the focal point of the cybernetic socialist network (although Itellure (RL Pamplona) was also the site of an early socialist revolt). The army, though large, had become increasingly corrupt and divided in its loyalties between different factions in the junta, and dissolved into warring factions by early 1979. The Socialist Liberation Network, Saint-Saens's organization, made significant gains in that year as a result, forming workers' collectives and municipal councils as parallel economic and political autonomous structures as it went. When the Red Revolution ended in 1981, these two governing structures became the backbone of the state.

The Constitution of 1981, which formed today's Democratic Federation of Zentrus, explictly banned public property and organized the political structure of the state underneath a unicameral Federal Senate, made up of one senator each from the 200 municipal councils that had joined the revolutionary movement (later amendments would create a mechanism to allow the creation of new municipalities, leading to today's 326 senators). Meanwhile, the workers' collectives were to assume autonomous control of the economy under the purview of the senate, which retained the right to issue economic directives and guide economic policy. The rapid development of the ECONET (Economic Network), a vast network of telex machines which allowed real-time economic simulation and the quick interpretation of and reaction to statistics from around the nation, in the 1980s under the purview of the Technology and Progress Party (the successor party to the SLN) allowed the semi-command model much greater efficiency than traditional socialist states, and enabled the so-called Zentrusian Economic Miracle.

During the late 1980s and 1990s, the revolutionary state's economy boomed, and relations were tenatively patched up with its neighbors in Valendia and Italy. Though it was difficult under the new economic model, the state made great pains to support artists, musicians, and filmmakers, and the '90s became a golden era for Zentrusian culture. However, the instability caused by the mass update to ECONET in the late '90s led to a short depression, which caused the TPP to lose public confidence and fall from power in 2000. The socially conservative and economically authoritarian (believing in centralizing economic policy further) National Unity Party, leader of the opposition, came to power at the head of a disparate coalition of Muentzerists, radical economic authoritarians, and wildcards known as the Freedom Front. Unfortunately, due precisely to its diverse nature, the Freedom Front was paralyzed by infighting and proved unable to pass much of its legislation. The one important creation of the Freedom Front government was the Bureau of Economic Management, which combined the previous Federal Statistics Administration and Interior Ministry into one, more efficient body capable of rapidly responding to economic changes and equipped with the finest statisticians the country had to offer.

In 2007, Chancellor Gerard Depardieu called for a snap election, leading, to his surprise, to the fall of his government and its replacement with the United Technocratic Union under Marie Moreau, a devolutionist (believing in more autonomy for the workers' collectives) party that also advocated a significant budget for technological research. The greatest achievement of this short-lived government (2007-2012) was the creation of the Zentrusian Outer Space Research Administration (ZOSRA), which successfully began launching satellites in 2009, and was able to send a man into space in 2011. Moreau's sex scandal in early 2012 led to the fall of her government and the second rise of the National Unity Party, this time in an unlikely coalition with Technology and Progress, their only point of agreement being economic authoritarianism. Though the Senate has often been stalemated during this period, it has achieved some notable success in trade deals with Valendia, and a strongly recovering economy. Nevertheless, there remain problems in Zentrus; the largest of which is the growing unrest in southern Iragon, the municipalities of which the Federal Senate has repeated blocked in their efforts to multiply. Iragonese activists claim that this is an attempt to silence their voices and weaken their position in government, with some even openly advocating secession from Zentrus.




Government:

WIP


Economy:

WIP

Culture:

WIP

Well, I would like to say hell there, potential new friend!

I am Chrinthanium. I currently play Chrinthania based in Australia/Oceania and am about to plonk a right-wing British Empire. Just wanted to sort of chime in on this developing application for a moment. It's probably a good bet to hit up the discussion thread and discuss potential history. I know that some of the Gauls went with Beddgelert to India in the 3rd Century CE, like most of the Celts did. Angles and Saxons didn't migrate to the British Isles. They're either in Denmark or Kaliningrad. I also really want to know what "cybernetic socialism" is. If it deals with actual cybernetics, that's outside of AMW's time frame. We're modern, usually almost up to the current technology. Still, pop over to the discussion thread and see what people can do to help with history. Also, it's promising to see the amount of energy you spent on your history. Bit of a long one. Looking forward to the reading the rest.

[Zentrus]

Saw your discussion thread, read a little bit on the offsite forum (under the account Zentrus, natch), and decided to try it out. My application is not exactly finished, but I'm pretty exhausted (it's nigh 5 in the morning here) so I'm heading to bed. Lemme know. I'll explain Muentzerism more fully in the Culture section, and discuss cybernetic socialism and the actual structure of Zentrusian government in, well, "Government".

(Image)

The Democratic Federation of Zentrus

Claimed Territory: France, Andorra, Spain, Portugal

Population: 123,854,145
Demonym: Zentrusian, Zennie, commie (pejorative)
Capital: Naissance (RL Nantes)
Government: Socialist Parliamentary Democracy
- Chancellor: Aubin Ducharme (NUP/Saint-Hélène)

GDP: 3,881,465,050,155
GDP per capita: US$31,339
Currency: Bit (the world's first wholly digital currency)


History:

Before the rise of the Roman Empire, the area now known as Zentrus was populated by small tribal confederations, mostly composed of Celtic peoples, with some pre-Indo-European groups still remaining in the western peninsula (today known as Iragon). While archaeological investigations into these and earlier peoples have yielded fascinating finds as to their lifestyle and culture, there is very little trace of the once powerful Celtic culture remaining in today's Zentrus. The conquest of what the Romans called Gaul (today eastern Francia, the heartland of Zentrus) by Julius Caesar and the much longer and more difficult conquest of what the Romans called Hispania (Iragon) over nearly two hundred years would eventually lead to the Romanization of the cultures therein, and something of a homogenization due to Rome's pervasive cultural influence.

This too, unfortunately, would change with the onset of the Second Germanic Migration into the Valendii's tribal confederacy in the 5th century. Though the Valendii would absorb much of the blow from these new Germanic tribes, a powerful confederation led by an offshoot of the Franks and consisting of Saxons and Bavarii as well as the Franks, migrated into Roman Gaul, where they clashed with the remnants of Roman authority. With the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, numerous short-lived successor states sprung up in Gaul, only to be extinguished in quick succession as the Frankish Coalition moved west. As the Germans moved further into post-Roman Zentrus, however, those who settled quickly found themselves adapting Roman cultural ideas to their own lifestyle, and formed a powerful, Romanized German elite in the majority of Gaul. In 736, the Kingdom of Gallia was established in Naissance, which, though somewhat isolated, proved a highly defensible and lucrative port.

Hispania, ruled by squabbling post-Roman states, soon found itself at the mercy of the predatory Gallians, who found themselves stymied in the east by the Merovingians and later Carolingians. Though Gallia would never fully conquer Iragon, it did make significant inroads in the east, even as the mighty spectre of Islam arose in the south and west of the Peninsula. By the year 900, the now-Christianized and feudal Gallians found themselves to be one of the most powerful kingdoms in Christendom, and the first line of defense against Muslim Hispania. However, this would not last long. Gallian intervention in the Fifty Year's War between the divided Valendian states proved ill-thought-out, and the bankrupt Gallian state would collapse to its powerful dukes in 1132, none of whom were powerful enough to reunify the state. The Muslim Umayyads, who ruled what they called Al-Andalus at the time, were able to make significant inroads into Christian Iragon, capturing the city of Nosima (RL Barcelona) in 1167. However, Muslim invasion proved to be one of the few things that would unite the feuding duchies, and by 1200, a novel political entity had formed: the Ducal Federation of Ilonia (a newer name for Gallia). Ruled by a council formed of the joining dukes, who were all theoretically equal, this is regarded by many Zentrusian scholars as the first incarnation of a Zentrusian state.

The Ducal Federation was able to push back the Umayyads with hard-fought battles in 1213, 1229, and 1246, the last of which saw the triumphant Ilonians recapture Nosima. By the year 1300, the Reconquista, as many Ilonians termed it, was well underway, with the entire northern coast of Iragon under Ilonian control, and the ancient city of Cetia (RL Cordoba) under siege. The Umayyad Sultanate collapsed in 1354 under continuing military pressure by Ilonia and a divisive succession crisis. By the end of the century, the last of the divided remnants of the Sultanate in Leria (RL Lisbon area) would be defeated by Ilonian arms. Throughout the 1400s, however, political arguments and struggles threatened to break apart the Ducal Federation, which proved inefficient at managing its resources and was afflicted with widespread corruption.

The Protestant Reformation in the 1500s only exacerbated these problems; in the 1510s, several of the northern and eastern dukes were converted to Muentzerism, a radical, mystical and ascetic brand of Protestantism, and took steps to secede from the "godless Federation", seeking Valendian protection. The other dukes, led by Juan de Nosima, a powerful Iragonese duke, formed the Catholic League, an alliance aimed at reintegrating the Muentzerist dukes. In response, the Muentzerists proclaimed Guillaume Durfort, the Duke of Naissance, King of Zentrusia (a newer term used to refer to what had been northern and northwestern Gallia) and swore allegiance to him as the Defender of Muentzerist Christianity. Guillaume I went on to shock Christian Europe by defeating the vastly more numerous League army at the Battle of Rosia (RL Toulouse) in 1517, forcing them onto the defensive. Though the war would drag on into the late 1520s, Nosima, the last bastion of Catholic resistance, was captured in 1528, leading to a united Muentzerist monarchy.

The Zentrusian kingdom proved to be not just focused on the region it was named for, but also harsh and oppressive towards non-Muentzerists; even fellow Protestants suffered torture and execution if found out. Significant Catholic uprisings occurred in the 1540s and 1550s and led to increasingly brutal reprisals by Guillaume's successor Roger I "The Savage", who is estimated by modern scholars to have ordered the deaths of nearly three hundred thousand Catholics. Zentrusia grew increasingly isolated diplomatically over this period, and was popularly known as the "Hermit Kingdom" from 1560 onwards. By 1600s, however, most dissent had been rooted about the efficient and terrifying state inquisition, while the threat of violence caused thousands of Catholics and Protestants to convert. The extinction of feudal authority by these brutal purges, which left the old power structure in shambles, led to the so-called "Age of Absolutism", when the Durfort kings ruled as absolute monarchs within Zentrusia. In many ways, they were the inspiration for the enlightened absolutism of the 1700s.

Unfortunately, many of the Durforts simply frittered this money away. While there was always funding to be had for a large and powerful army, the national infrastructure was allowed to degrade while the kings spent money on lavish and ostentatious building projects, as well as several failed colonial ventures around the world, where Walmington-On-Sea proved to be far more experienced and canny. This led to a large and growing state debt in the 1700s and increasing poverty throughout Zentrusia, which finally led to the Golden Revolution in 1781. The revolutionaries, inspired by Enlightenment ideals, quickly pushed royalist forces out of Zentrusia proper, and southwards into the plains of Gallia, where they were able to entrench and fight back. The revolution, which featured strings of brutal and bloody executions and mass social upheaval, would last on and off until 1800, when the Royalist stronghold at Nosima surrendered to the National Republic. Now dawned the era of Republican Zentrus, which would last nearly two hundred years.

The revolutionaries which formed the Republic, besides being staunchly irreligious, also felt that "democracy" was just another word for "mob rule", and believed that a hierarchical society was the best hope for Zentrus (a neologism invented by the rebels to distinguish themselves from the past). Moreover, the revolutionary movement was dominated by men of "good breeding" from Zentrusia, who quickly established fiefdoms in all but name throughout the rest of the country. Suffrage was limited to men of a certain class, while the lower classes were kept in increasingly terrible conditions while the nation industrialized. Several revolts were had, especially in Iragon, throughout the 1830s and '40s, and left a lasting resentment in the peninsula towards northern rule.

The terrible conditions enabled by New Capitalism, the economic ideology followed by most of the parties within the republican government, and which entailed nearly no regulations on business owners, led to a radicalization of opposition to the National Republic. After the emergence of Marxism in the late 19th Century, Marxist movements dominated the underground, though they were fragmented and found themselves hunted down by state police. At the same time, growing tensions with Valendia led to several Zentrusian interventions on the side of Valendia's enemies and massive military spending, which left the army increasingly powerful. It was after the world war, when Zentrus lay greatly shattered and burdened by reparations (I'm assuming we were on the losing side), that the military, led by Colonel Emanuele Corriene, made their move. A clique of colonels, dissatisfied by what they saw as a betrayal of the nation by the government, led a coup in Naissance which devastated the National Republic. The subsequent Zentrusian Civil War (1948-1955) was divisive and brutal, with several independent Marxist governments arising in Zentrusian territory and subsequently being squashed by the Popular Front (the military's "front organization") as it marched across the country. The long-running insurgency, which would only end with the fall of the Front, began in 1955 as Marxist militias dispersed into the countryside.

In 1955, with victory over the Republicans, Colonel Corriene declared himself President of the State of Zentrus, which, despite having a constitution mandating a Senate and popular elections, was perpetually in a state of emergency granting the president absolute executive power throughout its entire existence. His one good legacy, however, was the crash industrialization undertaken from 1956 to 1967, which saw the Zentrusian economy briefly skyrocket, then plummet as foreign corporations plundered Zentrus. The ailing Corriene would die in 1972 from liver cancer, causing a struggle for succession between his colonels. At the same time, a new idea was percolating in the underground: that of cybernetic socialism.

Computers, while hardly commonplace due to their vast size (at the time), were well-known in Zentrus from the early 1950s onwards, while socialist ideals had remained a mainstay of the political resistance since the 19th century. It was the socialist theorist Jerome Saint-Saens who would mix these two into his ideology, adding a dash of universal basic income for flavor. Saint-Saens wrote that it was only through extensive computer networks and technological advancement, as well as mostly-autonomous workers' collectives, that a socialist economy could work and survive under the mandate of the state. As well, he believed that a semi-market economy (in which the only sellers were state-owned companies run democratically) still featuring currency and supported by a universal basic income was the best way for socialism to work in what he saw as the coming post-industrial economy. Finally, he argued that the dictatorship of the proletariat was not only pointless, but actively deleterious to the development of socialism, and that a socialist state must be absolutely democratic in order properly function.

Saint-Saens's ideas spread rapidly throughout the underground, and by 1976, when an uneasy coalition had formed between the survivors of the succession crisis, had become the dominant revolutionary ideology within Zentrus. In 1978, as the economy continued to fall, the revolution began, again in Naissance, which was the focal point of the cybernetic socialist network (although Itellure (RL Pamplona) was also the site of an early socialist revolt). The army, though large, had become increasingly corrupt and divided in its loyalties between different factions in the junta, and dissolved into warring factions by early 1979. The Socialist Liberation Network, Saint-Saens's organization, made significant gains in that year as a result, forming workers' collectives and municipal councils as parallel economic and political autonomous structures as it went. When the Red Revolution ended in 1981, these two governing structures became the backbone of the state.

The Constitution of 1981, which formed today's Democratic Federation of Zentrus, explictly banned public property and organized the political structure of the state underneath a unicameral Federal Senate, made up of one senator each from the 200 municipal councils that had joined the revolutionary movement (later amendments would create a mechanism to allow the creation of new municipalities, leading to today's 326 senators). Meanwhile, the workers' collectives were to assume autonomous control of the economy under the purview of the senate, which retained the right to issue economic directives and guide economic policy. The rapid development of the ECONET (Economic Network), a vast network of telex machines which allowed real-time economic simulation and the quick interpretation of and reaction to statistics from around the nation, in the 1980s under the purview of the Technology and Progress Party (the successor party to the SLN) allowed the semi-command model much greater efficiency than traditional socialist states, and enabled the so-called Zentrusian Economic Miracle.

During the late 1980s and 1990s, the revolutionary state's economy boomed, and relations were tenatively patched up with its neighbors in Valendia and Italy. Though it was difficult under the new economic model, the state made great pains to support artists, musicians, and filmmakers, and the '90s became a golden era for Zentrusian culture. However, the instability caused by the mass update to ECONET in the late '90s led to a short depression, which caused the TPP to lose public confidence and fall from power in 2000. The socially conservative and economically authoritarian (believing in centralizing economic policy further) National Unity Party, leader of the opposition, came to power at the head of a disparate coalition of Muentzerists, radical economic authoritarians, and wildcards known as the Freedom Front. Unfortunately, due precisely to its diverse nature, the Freedom Front was paralyzed by infighting and proved unable to pass much of its legislation. The one important creation of the Freedom Front government was the Bureau of Economic Management, which combined the previous Federal Statistics Administration and Interior Ministry into one, more efficient body capable of rapidly responding to economic changes and equipped with the finest statisticians the country had to offer.

In 2007, Chancellor Gerard Depardieu called for a snap election, leading, to his surprise, to the fall of his government and its replacement with the United Technocratic Union under Marie Moreau, a devolutionist (believing in more autonomy for the workers' collectives) party that also advocated a significant budget for technological research. The greatest achievement of this short-lived government (2007-2012) was the creation of the Zentrusian Outer Space Research Administration (ZOSRA), which successfully began launching satellites in 2009, and was able to send a man into space in 2011. Moreau's sex scandal in early 2012 led to the fall of her government and the second rise of the National Unity Party, this time in an unlikely coalition with Technology and Progress, their only point of agreement being economic authoritarianism. Though the Senate has often been stalemated during this period, it has achieved some notable success in trade deals with Valendia, and a strongly recovering economy. Nevertheless, there remain problems in Zentrus; the largest of which is the growing unrest in southern Iragon, the municipalities of which the Federal Senate has repeated blocked in their efforts to multiply. Iragonese activists claim that this is an attempt to silence their voices and weaken their position in government, with some even openly advocating secession from Zentrus.




Government:

WIP


Economy:

WIP

Culture:

WIP

Well, I would like to say hell there, potential new friend!

I am Chrinthanium. I currently play Chrinthania based in Australia/Oceania and am about to plonk a right-wing British Empire. Just wanted to sort of chime in on this developing application for a moment. It's probably a good bet to hit up the discussion thread and discuss potential history. I know that some of the Gauls went with Beddgelert to India in the 3rd Century CE, like most of the Celts did. Angles and Saxons didn't migrate to the British Isles. They're either in Denmark or Kaliningrad. I also really want to know what "cybernetic socialism" is. If it deals with actual cybernetics, that's outside of AMW's time frame. We're modern, usually almost up to the current technology. Still, pop over to the discussion thread and see what people can do to help with history. Also, it's promising to see the amount of energy you spent on your history. Bit of a long one. Looking forward to the reading the rest.

Thank you! Essentially, the "cybernetic" bit is similar to this, just fully realized and implemented. ECONET is a country-wide intranet that allows economic statistics to be relayed to central management at the speed of the internet, which enables a much more efficient (though hardly perfect) centralized economy. Well within the range of MT, I think?

For the other sections on the application, I'll write them up tonight once I have a bit of time!

[Zentrus]

Hate to double post, but I finished the rest of the application!

[Chrinthanium]

Saw your discussion thread, read a little bit on the offsite forum (under the account Zentrus, natch), and decided to try it out. My application is not exactly finished, but I'm pretty exhausted (it's nigh 5 in the morning here) so I'm heading to bed. Lemme know. I'll explain Muentzerism more fully in the Culture section, and discuss cybernetic socialism and the actual structure of Zentrusian government in, well, "Government".

(Image)

The Democratic Federation of Zentrus

Claimed Territory: France, Andorra, Spain, Portugal

Population: 123,854,145
Demonym: Zentrusian, Zennie, commie (pejorative)
Capital: Naissance (RL Nantes)
Government: Socialist Parliamentary Democracy
- Chancellor: Aubin Ducharme (NUP/Saint-Hélène)

GDP: 3,881,465,050,155
GDP per capita: US$31,339
Currency: Bit (the world's first wholly digital currency)


History:

Before the rise of the Roman Empire, the area now known as Zentrus was populated by small tribal confederations, mostly composed of Celtic peoples, with some pre-Indo-European groups still remaining in the western peninsula (today known as Iragon). While archaeological investigations into these and earlier peoples have yielded fascinating finds as to their lifestyle and culture, there is very little trace of the once powerful Celtic culture remaining in today's Zentrus. The conquest of what the Romans called Gaul (today eastern Francia, the heartland of Zentrus) by Julius Caesar and the much longer and more difficult conquest of what the Romans called Hispania (Iragon) over nearly two hundred years would eventually lead to the Romanization of the cultures therein, and something of a homogenization due to Rome's pervasive cultural influence.

This too, unfortunately, would change with the onset of the Second Germanic Migration into the Valendii's tribal confederacy in the 5th century. Though the Valendii would absorb much of the blow from these new Germanic tribes, a powerful confederation led by an offshoot of the Franks and consisting of Saxons and Bavarii as well as the Franks, migrated into Roman Gaul, where they clashed with the remnants of Roman authority. With the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, numerous short-lived successor states sprung up in Gaul, only to be extinguished in quick succession as the Frankish Coalition moved west. As the Germans moved further into post-Roman Zentrus, however, those who settled quickly found themselves adapting Roman cultural ideas to their own lifestyle, and formed a powerful, Romanized German elite in the majority of Gaul. In 736, the Kingdom of Gallia was established in Naissance, which, though somewhat isolated, proved a highly defensible and lucrative port.

Hispania, ruled by squabbling post-Roman states, soon found itself at the mercy of the predatory Gallians, who found themselves stymied in the east by the Merovingians and later Carolingians. Though Gallia would never fully conquer Iragon, it did make significant inroads in the east, even as the mighty spectre of Islam arose in the south and west of the Peninsula. By the year 900, the now-Christianized and feudal Gallians found themselves to be one of the most powerful kingdoms in Christendom, and the first line of defense against Muslim Hispania. However, this would not last long. Gallian intervention in the Fifty Year's War between the divided Valendian states proved ill-thought-out, and the bankrupt Gallian state would collapse to its powerful dukes in 1132, none of whom were powerful enough to reunify the state. The Muslim Umayyads, who ruled what they called Al-Andalus at the time, were able to make significant inroads into Christian Iragon, capturing the city of Nosima (RL Barcelona) in 1167. However, Muslim invasion proved to be one of the few things that would unite the feuding duchies, and by 1200, a novel political entity had formed: the Ducal Federation of Ilonia (a newer name for Gallia). Ruled by a council formed of the joining dukes, who were all theoretically equal, this is regarded by many Zentrusian scholars as the first incarnation of a Zentrusian state.

The Ducal Federation was able to push back the Umayyads with hard-fought battles in 1213, 1229, and 1246, the last of which saw the triumphant Ilonians recapture Nosima. By the year 1300, the Reconquista, as many Ilonians termed it, was well underway, with the entire northern coast of Iragon under Ilonian control, and the ancient city of Cetia (RL Cordoba) under siege. The Umayyad Sultanate collapsed in 1354 under continuing military pressure by Ilonia and a divisive succession crisis. By the end of the century, the last of the divided remnants of the Sultanate in Leria (RL Lisbon area) would be defeated by Ilonian arms. Throughout the 1400s, however, political arguments and struggles threatened to break apart the Ducal Federation, which proved inefficient at managing its resources and was afflicted with widespread corruption.

The Protestant Reformation in the 1500s only exacerbated these problems; in the 1510s, several of the northern and eastern dukes were converted to Muentzerism, a radical, mystical and ascetic brand of Protestantism, and took steps to secede from the "godless Federation", seeking Valendian protection. The other dukes, led by Juan de Nosima, a powerful Iragonese duke, formed the Catholic League, an alliance aimed at reintegrating the Muentzerist dukes. In response, the Muentzerists proclaimed Guillaume Durfort, the Duke of Naissance, King of Zentrusia (a newer term used to refer to what had been northern and northwestern Gallia) and swore allegiance to him as the Defender of Muentzerist Christianity. Guillaume I went on to shock Christian Europe by defeating the vastly more numerous League army at the Battle of Rosia (RL Toulouse) in 1517, forcing them onto the defensive. Though the war would drag on into the late 1520s, Nosima, the last bastion of Catholic resistance, was captured in 1528, leading to a united Muentzerist monarchy.

The Zentrusian kingdom proved to be not just focused on the region it was named for, but also harsh and oppressive towards non-Muentzerists; even fellow Protestants suffered torture and execution if found out. Significant Catholic uprisings occurred in the 1540s and 1550s and led to increasingly brutal reprisals by Guillaume's successor Roger I "The Savage", who is estimated by modern scholars to have ordered the deaths of nearly three hundred thousand Catholics. Zentrusia grew increasingly isolated diplomatically over this period, and was popularly known as the "Hermit Kingdom" from 1560 onwards. By 1600s, however, most dissent had been rooted about the efficient and terrifying state inquisition, while the threat of violence caused thousands of Catholics and Protestants to convert. The extinction of feudal authority by these brutal purges, which left the old power structure in shambles, led to the so-called "Age of Absolutism", when the Durfort kings ruled as absolute monarchs within Zentrusia. In many ways, they were the inspiration for the enlightened absolutism of the 1700s.

Unfortunately, many of the Durforts simply frittered this money away. While there was always funding to be had for a large and powerful army, the national infrastructure was allowed to degrade while the kings spent money on lavish and ostentatious building projects, as well as several failed colonial ventures around the world, where Walmington-On-Sea proved to be far more experienced and canny. This led to a large and growing state debt in the 1700s and increasing poverty throughout Zentrusia, which finally led to the Golden Revolution in 1781. The revolutionaries, inspired by Enlightenment ideals, quickly pushed royalist forces out of Zentrusia proper, and southwards into the plains of Gallia, where they were able to entrench and fight back. The revolution, which featured strings of brutal and bloody executions and mass social upheaval, would last on and off until 1800, when the Royalist stronghold at Nosima surrendered to the National Republic. Now dawned the era of Republican Zentrus, which would last nearly two hundred years.

The revolutionaries which formed the Republic, besides being staunchly irreligious, also felt that "democracy" was just another word for "mob rule", and believed that a hierarchical society was the best hope for Zentrus (a neologism invented by the rebels to distinguish themselves from the past). Moreover, the revolutionary movement was dominated by men of "good breeding" from Zentrusia, who quickly established fiefdoms in all but name throughout the rest of the country. Suffrage was limited to men of a certain class, while the lower classes were kept in increasingly terrible conditions while the nation industrialized. Several revolts were had, especially in Iragon, throughout the 1830s and '40s, and left a lasting resentment in the peninsula towards northern rule.

The terrible conditions enabled by New Capitalism, the economic ideology followed by most of the parties within the republican government, and which entailed nearly no regulations on business owners, led to a radicalization of opposition to the National Republic. After the emergence of Marxism in the late 19th Century, Marxist movements dominated the underground, though they were fragmented and found themselves hunted down by state police. At the same time, growing tensions with Valendia led to several Zentrusian interventions on the side of Valendia's enemies and massive military spending, which left the army increasingly powerful. It was after the world war, when Zentrus lay greatly shattered and burdened by reparations (I'm assuming we were on the losing side), that the military, led by Colonel Emanuele Corriene, made their move. A clique of colonels, dissatisfied by what they saw as a betrayal of the nation by the government, led a coup in Naissance which devastated the National Republic. The subsequent Zentrusian Civil War (1948-1955) was divisive and brutal, with several independent Marxist governments arising in Zentrusian territory and subsequently being squashed by the Popular Front (the military's "front organization") as it marched across the country. The long-running insurgency, which would only end with the fall of the Front, began in 1955 as Marxist militias dispersed into the countryside.

In 1955, with victory over the Republicans, Colonel Corriene declared himself President of the State of Zentrus, which, despite having a constitution mandating a Senate and popular elections, was perpetually in a state of emergency granting the president absolute executive power throughout its entire existence. His one good legacy, however, was the crash industrialization undertaken from 1956 to 1967, which saw the Zentrusian economy briefly skyrocket, then plummet as foreign corporations plundered Zentrus. The ailing Corriene would die in 1972 from liver cancer, causing a struggle for succession between his colonels. At the same time, a new idea was percolating in the underground: that of cybernetic socialism.

Computers, while hardly commonplace due to their vast size (at the time), were well-known in Zentrus from the early 1950s onwards, while socialist ideals had remained a mainstay of the political resistance since the 19th century. It was the socialist theorist Jerome Saint-Saens who would mix these two into his ideology, adding a dash of universal basic income for flavor. Saint-Saens wrote that it was only through extensive computer networks and technological advancement, as well as mostly-autonomous workers' collectives, that a socialist economy could work and survive under the mandate of the state. As well, he believed that a semi-market economy (in which the only sellers were state-owned companies run democratically) still featuring currency and supported by a universal basic income was the best way for socialism to work in what he saw as the coming post-industrial economy. Finally, he argued that the dictatorship of the proletariat was not only pointless, but actively deleterious to the development of socialism, and that a socialist state must be absolutely democratic in order properly function.

Saint-Saens's ideas spread rapidly throughout the underground, and by 1976, when an uneasy coalition had formed between the survivors of the succession crisis, had become the dominant revolutionary ideology within Zentrus. In 1978, as the economy continued to fall, the revolution began, again in Naissance, which was the focal point of the cybernetic socialist network (although Itellure (RL Pamplona) was also the site of an early socialist revolt). The army, though large, had become increasingly corrupt and divided in its loyalties between different factions in the junta, and dissolved into warring factions by early 1979. The Socialist Liberation Network, Saint-Saens's organization, made significant gains in that year as a result, forming workers' collectives and municipal councils as parallel economic and political autonomous structures as it went. When the Red Revolution ended in 1981, these two governing structures became the backbone of the state.

The Constitution of 1981, which formed today's Democratic Federation of Zentrus, explictly banned public property and organized the political structure of the state underneath a unicameral Federal Senate, made up of one senator each from the 200 municipal councils that had joined the revolutionary movement (later amendments would create a mechanism to allow the creation of new municipalities, leading to today's 326 senators). Meanwhile, the workers' collectives were to assume autonomous control of the economy under the purview of the senate, which retained the right to issue economic directives and guide economic policy. The rapid development of the ECONET (Economic Network), a vast network of telex machines which allowed real-time economic simulation and the quick interpretation of and reaction to statistics from around the nation, in the 1980s under the purview of the Technology and Progress Party (the successor party to the SLN) allowed the semi-command model much greater efficiency than traditional socialist states, and enabled the so-called Zentrusian Economic Miracle.

During the late 1980s and 1990s, the revolutionary state's economy boomed, and relations were tenatively patched up with its neighbors in Valendia and Italy. Though it was difficult under the new economic model, the state made great pains to support artists, musicians, and filmmakers, and the '90s became a golden era for Zentrusian culture. However, the instability caused by the mass update to ECONET in the late '90s led to a short depression, which caused the TPP to lose public confidence and fall from power in 2000. The socially conservative and economically authoritarian (believing in centralizing economic policy further) National Unity Party, leader of the opposition, came to power at the head of a disparate coalition of Muentzerists, radical economic authoritarians, and wildcards known as the Freedom Front. Unfortunately, due precisely to its diverse nature, the Freedom Front was paralyzed by infighting and proved unable to pass much of its legislation. The one important creation of the Freedom Front government was the Bureau of Economic Management, which combined the previous Federal Statistics Administration and Interior Ministry into one, more efficient body capable of rapidly responding to economic changes and equipped with the finest statisticians the country had to offer.

In 2007, Chancellor Gerard Depardieu called for a snap election, leading, to his surprise, to the fall of his government and its replacement with the United Technocratic Union under Marie Moreau, a devolutionist (believing in more autonomy for the workers' collectives) party that also advocated a significant budget for technological research. The greatest achievement of this short-lived government (2007-2012) was the creation of the Zentrusian Outer Space Research Administration (ZOSRA), which successfully began launching satellites in 2009, and was able to send a man into space in 2011. Moreau's sex scandal in early 2012 led to the fall of her government and the second rise of the National Unity Party, this time in an unlikely coalition with Technology and Progress, their only point of agreement being economic authoritarianism. Though the Senate has often been stalemated during this period, it has achieved some notable success in trade deals with Valendia, and a strongly recovering economy. Nevertheless, there remain problems in Zentrus; the largest of which is the growing unrest in southern Iragon, the municipalities of which the Federal Senate has repeated blocked in their efforts to multiply. Iragonese activists claim that this is an attempt to silence their voices and weaken their position in government, with some even openly advocating secession from Zentrus.




Government:

The Constitution of 1981 is the legal basis for all Zentrusian government and economic policy. The constitution protects the right to vote, the right to self-determination through local municipal councils and the offices of the Senate, the right to economic stability, the right to free speech (outside of certain specific issues such as hate speech), and explicitly dismisses the concept of private property. There are two basic units of the state; the municipal council, and the worker's collective. The municipal council is the constitutionally-mandated local political body throughout Zentrus, and though each council is as different from one another as are different cities, they do have certain features in common. Firstly, each municipality must contain at least 50,000 people, and these people retain the right to appeal to the Federal Senate if they feel their local council is ignoring their needs or violating their constitutional rights. Secondly, each municipality has total autonomy, except in economic matters (the purview of the worker's collectives) and foreign relations--municipalities are explicitly banned from engaging diplomatically with foreign powers. Thirdly, each municipality has the right to elect a senator to the Federal Senate, and each time a new municipality is created, a new Senate seat follows. Currently, there are 326 municipalities within Zentrus, with the majority concentrated in the Zentrusia and Gallia regions in the northeast of the country (broadly, RL France).

Worker's collectives are a parallel governing structure with autonomy over economic matters. They are self-governing, democratically-run communes of workers that have the right to merge and separate as they see fit, and are the primary mode of economic organization. While the collectives are generally autonomous when it comes to day-to-day decision making, they are constitutionally bound to follow any economic directives passed down from the Senate via ECONET, which every collective is required to have a connection to. There are more than a hundred thousand collectives within Zentrus, and their number fluctuates constantly; however, increases in efficiency due to ECONET, as well as a certain popular technophilia and the efforts of the Bureau of Economic Management keep the economy going at a mostly good pace.

Both of these bodies are subject to the dictates of the unicameral Senate. While the political and economic sovereignty of both bodies are strongly protected under the constitution, the Senate, as the representative body of the people, combines both executive and legislative power, which can and has been delegated to the various bureaus which support the state, and also reserves the right to appoint judges and inform the judicial system. At least, theoretically. Practically, with the immense difficulty of having to make day-to-day federal decisions by referendum, the Senate has delegated authority in these matters to the various bureaus (run by Secretaries without term who serve at the pleasure of the Senate) and to the person of the Chancellor, usually the leader of the currently ruling party or head party in a coalition government, who serves de facto as the head of state and government. Aubin Ducharme is the current Chancellor.

All political parties, municipalities, collectives, and organs of government are constitutionally required to abide by the principles of cybernetic socialism, first formulated by Jerome Saint-Saens in the late 1960s and early '70s; firstly, that no citizen of the nation unless convicted of a federal crime may be prevented from freely participating in fair elections for their government; secondly, that the right to collective property and a fully socialized economy must be upheld and defended by all governing bodies; thirdly, that technology is the facilitator of a socialist economy, and must be integrated into economic management, government, and society wherever possible; fourthly and most importantly, the socialist nation must not seek to expand its system by violence or illiberal political integration--only through diplomacy and free referendums in the affected territories (the famous "Socialism In One Country" tenet).

Culture:

Zentrus has been settled by human civilizations for millenia, and boasts a long and rich cultural history going all the way back to the Celts themselves. Its cities are a blend of modern and ancient, with century-old palaces sitting side-by-side with bullet train stations and nuclear power plants. These selfsame cities are also strongly cosmopolitan; people from around the world speaking a variety of languages can be encountered in Naissance at any given time. However, historical and cultural factors have led to the general consensus that there are four major ethnocultural groups underneath the aegis of Zentrus, corresponding largely to several traditionally-recognized regions (although there is of course significant overlap). These groups, though they bear other distinguishing quirks, differ mostly on religious and linguistic grounds.

Zentrusians are the leading ethnic group in the historical Zentrusia region (Brittany-northern and northeastern France-Alsace-Lorraine), and generally dominate politics within the nation as a whole. Historically, Zentrusians have been the most active revolutionary group within the country, having had a major hand in the creations of the National Republic, the State of Zentrus, and the current Democratic Federation. Culturally and linguistically, they are the most "Germanic" of the nation's people, with their language (the official language of the state)
sharing many characteristics with Valendian dialects. Zentrusian culture prides itself on its avant-garde nature, and the Zentrusia region has produced a strong plurality of famous artists, filmmakers, and musicians (including the famed Gerard Ipolyte, who refused to paint in colors other than red, "to commemorate the revolutionary martyrs."). Despite this, Zentrusia is highly religious, featuring the highest population of Muentzerites in the country.

Muentzerism, named after Thomas Muentzer, a Valendian theologian and radical Protestant who established the Five Principles, that which differentiates Muentzerite Christianity from Catholicism. In order, they are; The Spirit, Not The Letter--that the Bible is not an absolute authority, but merely a helpful beginning, having been corrupted through the lens of human writers and chroniclers, and thus Christians must seek spiritual experiences themselves for guidance; Dreams and Revelations--the Holy Spirit communicates through dreams and revelations, which may occur through glossolalia or automatic writing, and so dream interpretation must form a major part of a Christian's spiritual life; The Doctrine of Suffering--all people must endure real suffering, whether physical or spiritual, in order to come to true Christian belief; Fear of God, No Fear of Man--essentially, true Christians must not acknowledge any authority other than God, and those who follow his divine laws;
All Things Held in Common--all things on the earth are God's property, and thus held in common for good Christian people (a sort of early communism). Muentzerite churches are radically egalitarian, and feature "Revelation Meetings", in which the entire congregation may participate in the use of hallucinogens and a sort of "ritual frenzy" in order to achieve communion with God.

To the south of Zentrusia lies Gallia (roughly, the old kingdom of Aquitaine, as well as all other parts of France not covered by Zentrusia).
Here, historically, was the greatest holdout of Romano-Gaulish culture, only lightly ruled by the Germanic kings, and unaffected by Islamization, as the south suffered. Gallia is also the great breadbasket of Zentrus, producing the majority of its food, and is a hub of tourism as well with its wealth of Roman ruins. Gallians speak a Romance language that, despite having a plethora of loanwords from Zentrusian,
has been affected surprisingly little by more than a millenium of Germanic rule. Gallian culture is quite conservative and rural-based, and is the region that has most strongly preserved the institution of Catholicism, largely in secret until the rise of the National Republic. Gallian life largely revolves around the harvest and the many Catholic holy days each year, which provide welcome respite from a life of toil. Since the foundation of the Democratic Federation and the rise of workers' collectives, Gallian culture has become even more tightly-knit and family-based. Politically, the Gallia region tends to follow Zentrusia in its voting patterns, although this is hardly set in stone.

The second-largest cultural group, known as the Andalusi, occupy the southern and eastern swath of the Iragonese peninsula (Catalonia-Andalusia-Southern Portugal), known today as Andalusia, and is perhaps the most politically restive of any group within Zentrus. This was the cultural heartland of the Umayyad Sultanate, and the most-Islamisized and Berberized part of the peninsula. Though Islam was mostly stamped under the Durfort kings, today most Andalusi follow an interestingly syncretic brand of Christianity, known simply as Andalusian Christanity, which while acknowledging Jesus as the messiah, also acknowledges Mohammed as the Last Prophet, and uses both the Koran and the Bible. Though they do believe in the idea of the Pope, they do not acknowledge the current Catholic Pope, and instead honor a spiritual leader based in Nosima by the name of Pope Ibrahim IV. The Andalusi language is a Romance language with heavy Arabic influence, and is not mutually intelligible with any other language in the country. Andalusia also features the lowest amount of municipalities in the country, despite having the second-highest population of any cultural region (second only to Zentrusia itself), due to the Zentrusian-led Senate repeatedly blocking applications for new municipalities. A popular secessionist movement calling itself the Sons of Al-Andalus has committed a string of terrorist attacks in recent years, and the Zentrusian military is currently essentially occupying large parts of Andalusia under martial law.

Last but not least, the Lusitani occupy the rest of the Peninsula (known as Lusitania), and, though perhaps the least homogenous of the ethnocultural groups, remain largely bound by a clan-based social system which dominates the politics of the local municipalities, and a culture that values personal, "macho" honor very highly. Though originally largely Muentzerite, a semi-reactionary neopaganist movement known as Endovelicanism, after its major god, spread throughout the region under the National Republic, and has become over the last century the largest religion in Lusitania. Endovelicanism claims to be a modern interpretation of the ancient faith of the Lusitani tribe (no relation to the Romanized and Arabized Celts today's Lusitani descend from) and worships a pantheon of five gods led by the god of healing and prophecy, Endovelicus. His consort is the hermaphroditic Nabia, the deity of the earth and of the sacred rivers of Lusitania, while his son Bandua is the god of community and protection and his daughters Epona and Trebaruna are the goddesses of fertility/agriculture and love/war respectively. Lusitania is generally a violent area, with honor killings fairly common, although the state has attempted several initiatives to quash them. However, a majority of Lusitani are loyal to the Democratic Federation, largely due to its official recognition and protection of Endovelicanism.

That's a lot to read and it will take me some time to digest all of it.

Perhaps what I see first of all without getting too involved is the use of a digital currency. That technology hasn't really worked out well IRL. Probably a good idea to use paper money. AMW does tend to be a few years behind the curve with RL technology. I'd also like to see a specific economy section in the application which explains why your GDP should be as high as it is. Also, could your idea work if you had only France and Andorra OR Spain and Portugal. Just curious.

I'll have more once I have the time to read all of your application. However, I did scan through it and it seems to be fairly original and the reality of AMW is what you do internally is more up to you than anything else. AMW tends to collaborate with its members to assist them in working the idea into AMW and working AMW into the idea. So, I'm fairly positive on this application so far. I'm certain other AMW members will chime in with their opinions.

This is probably the most promising application in a while.

[Marimaia]

Saw your discussion thread, read a little bit on the offsite forum (under the account Zentrus, natch), and decided to try it out. My application is not exactly finished, but I'm pretty exhausted (it's nigh 5 in the morning here) so I'm heading to bed. Lemme know. I'll explain Muentzerism more fully in the Culture section, and discuss cybernetic socialism and the actual structure of Zentrusian government in, well, "Government".

(Image)

The Democratic Federation of Zentrus

Claimed Territory: France, Andorra, Spain, Portugal

Population: 123,854,145
Demonym: Zentrusian, Zennie, commie (pejorative)
Capital: Naissance (RL Nantes)
Government: Socialist Parliamentary Democracy
- Chancellor: Aubin Ducharme (NUP/Saint-Hélène)

GDP: 3,881,465,050,155
GDP per capita: US$31,339
Currency: Bit (the world's first wholly digital currency)


History:

Before the rise of the Roman Empire, the area now known as Zentrus was populated by small tribal confederations, mostly composed of Celtic peoples, with some pre-Indo-European groups still remaining in the western peninsula (today known as Iragon). While archaeological investigations into these and earlier peoples have yielded fascinating finds as to their lifestyle and culture, there is very little trace of the once powerful Celtic culture remaining in today's Zentrus. The conquest of what the Romans called Gaul (today eastern Francia, the heartland of Zentrus) by Julius Caesar and the much longer and more difficult conquest of what the Romans called Hispania (Iragon) over nearly two hundred years would eventually lead to the Romanization of the cultures therein, and something of a homogenization due to Rome's pervasive cultural influence.

This too, unfortunately, would change with the onset of the Second Germanic Migration into the Valendii's tribal confederacy in the 5th century. Though the Valendii would absorb much of the blow from these new Germanic tribes, a powerful confederation led by an offshoot of the Franks and consisting of Saxons and Bavarii as well as the Franks, migrated into Roman Gaul, where they clashed with the remnants of Roman authority. With the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, numerous short-lived successor states sprung up in Gaul, only to be extinguished in quick succession as the Frankish Coalition moved west. As the Germans moved further into post-Roman Zentrus, however, those who settled quickly found themselves adapting Roman cultural ideas to their own lifestyle, and formed a powerful, Romanized German elite in the majority of Gaul. In 736, the Kingdom of Gallia was established in Naissance, which, though somewhat isolated, proved a highly defensible and lucrative port.

Hispania, ruled by squabbling post-Roman states, soon found itself at the mercy of the predatory Gallians, who found themselves stymied in the east by the Merovingians and later Carolingians. Though Gallia would never fully conquer Iragon, it did make significant inroads in the east, even as the mighty spectre of Islam arose in the south and west of the Peninsula. By the year 900, the now-Christianized and feudal Gallians found themselves to be one of the most powerful kingdoms in Christendom, and the first line of defense against Muslim Hispania. However, this would not last long. Gallian intervention in the Fifty Year's War between the divided Valendian states proved ill-thought-out, and the bankrupt Gallian state would collapse to its powerful dukes in 1132, none of whom were powerful enough to reunify the state. The Muslim Umayyads, who ruled what they called Al-Andalus at the time, were able to make significant inroads into Christian Iragon, capturing the city of Nosima (RL Barcelona) in 1167. However, Muslim invasion proved to be one of the few things that would unite the feuding duchies, and by 1200, a novel political entity had formed: the Ducal Federation of Ilonia (a newer name for Gallia). Ruled by a council formed of the joining dukes, who were all theoretically equal, this is regarded by many Zentrusian scholars as the first incarnation of a Zentrusian state.

The Ducal Federation was able to push back the Umayyads with hard-fought battles in 1213, 1229, and 1246, the last of which saw the triumphant Ilonians recapture Nosima. By the year 1300, the Reconquista, as many Ilonians termed it, was well underway, with the entire northern coast of Iragon under Ilonian control, and the ancient city of Cetia (RL Cordoba) under siege. The Umayyad Sultanate collapsed in 1354 under continuing military pressure by Ilonia and a divisive succession crisis. By the end of the century, the last of the divided remnants of the Sultanate in Leria (RL Lisbon area) would be defeated by Ilonian arms. Throughout the 1400s, however, political arguments and struggles threatened to break apart the Ducal Federation, which proved inefficient at managing its resources and was afflicted with widespread corruption.

The Protestant Reformation in the 1500s only exacerbated these problems; in the 1510s, several of the northern and eastern dukes were converted to Muentzerism, a radical, mystical and ascetic brand of Protestantism, and took steps to secede from the "godless Federation", seeking Valendian protection. The other dukes, led by Juan de Nosima, a powerful Iragonese duke, formed the Catholic League, an alliance aimed at reintegrating the Muentzerist dukes. In response, the Muentzerists proclaimed Guillaume Durfort, the Duke of Naissance, King of Zentrusia (a newer term used to refer to what had been northern and northwestern Gallia) and swore allegiance to him as the Defender of Muentzerist Christianity. Guillaume I went on to shock Christian Europe by defeating the vastly more numerous League army at the Battle of Rosia (RL Toulouse) in 1517, forcing them onto the defensive. Though the war would drag on into the late 1520s, Nosima, the last bastion of Catholic resistance, was captured in 1528, leading to a united Muentzerist monarchy.

The Zentrusian kingdom proved to be not just focused on the region it was named for, but also harsh and oppressive towards non-Muentzerists; even fellow Protestants suffered torture and execution if found out. Significant Catholic uprisings occurred in the 1540s and 1550s and led to increasingly brutal reprisals by Guillaume's successor Roger I "The Savage", who is estimated by modern scholars to have ordered the deaths of nearly three hundred thousand Catholics. Zentrusia grew increasingly isolated diplomatically over this period, and was popularly known as the "Hermit Kingdom" from 1560 onwards. By 1600s, however, most dissent had been rooted about the efficient and terrifying state inquisition, while the threat of violence caused thousands of Catholics and Protestants to convert. The extinction of feudal authority by these brutal purges, which left the old power structure in shambles, led to the so-called "Age of Absolutism", when the Durfort kings ruled as absolute monarchs within Zentrusia. In many ways, they were the inspiration for the enlightened absolutism of the 1700s.

Unfortunately, many of the Durforts simply frittered this money away. While there was always funding to be had for a large and powerful army, the national infrastructure was allowed to degrade while the kings spent money on lavish and ostentatious building projects, as well as several failed colonial ventures around the world, where Walmington-On-Sea proved to be far more experienced and canny. This led to a large and growing state debt in the 1700s and increasing poverty throughout Zentrusia, which finally led to the Golden Revolution in 1781. The revolutionaries, inspired by Enlightenment ideals, quickly pushed royalist forces out of Zentrusia proper, and southwards into the plains of Gallia, where they were able to entrench and fight back. The revolution, which featured strings of brutal and bloody executions and mass social upheaval, would last on and off until 1800, when the Royalist stronghold at Nosima surrendered to the National Republic. Now dawned the era of Republican Zentrus, which would last nearly two hundred years.

The revolutionaries which formed the Republic, besides being staunchly irreligious, also felt that "democracy" was just another word for "mob rule", and believed that a hierarchical society was the best hope for Zentrus (a neologism invented by the rebels to distinguish themselves from the past). Moreover, the revolutionary movement was dominated by men of "good breeding" from Zentrusia, who quickly established fiefdoms in all but name throughout the rest of the country. Suffrage was limited to men of a certain class, while the lower classes were kept in increasingly terrible conditions while the nation industrialized. Several revolts were had, especially in Iragon, throughout the 1830s and '40s, and left a lasting resentment in the peninsula towards northern rule.

The terrible conditions enabled by New Capitalism, the economic ideology followed by most of the parties within the republican government, and which entailed nearly no regulations on business owners, led to a radicalization of opposition to the National Republic. After the emergence of Marxism in the late 19th Century, Marxist movements dominated the underground, though they were fragmented and found themselves hunted down by state police. At the same time, growing tensions with Valendia led to several Zentrusian interventions on the side of Valendia's enemies and massive military spending, which left the army increasingly powerful. It was after the world war, when Zentrus lay greatly shattered and burdened by reparations (I'm assuming we were on the losing side), that the military, led by Colonel Emanuele Corriene, made their move. A clique of colonels, dissatisfied by what they saw as a betrayal of the nation by the government, led a coup in Naissance which devastated the National Republic. The subsequent Zentrusian Civil War (1948-1955) was divisive and brutal, with several independent Marxist governments arising in Zentrusian territory and subsequently being squashed by the Popular Front (the military's "front organization") as it marched across the country. The long-running insurgency, which would only end with the fall of the Front, began in 1955 as Marxist militias dispersed into the countryside.

In 1955, with victory over the Republicans, Colonel Corriene declared himself President of the State of Zentrus, which, despite having a constitution mandating a Senate and popular elections, was perpetually in a state of emergency granting the president absolute executive power throughout its entire existence. His one good legacy, however, was the crash industrialization undertaken from 1956 to 1967, which saw the Zentrusian economy briefly skyrocket, then plummet as foreign corporations plundered Zentrus. The ailing Corriene would die in 1972 from liver cancer, causing a struggle for succession between his colonels. At the same time, a new idea was percolating in the underground: that of cybernetic socialism.

Computers, while hardly commonplace due to their vast size (at the time), were well-known in Zentrus from the early 1950s onwards, while socialist ideals had remained a mainstay of the political resistance since the 19th century. It was the socialist theorist Jerome Saint-Saens who would mix these two into his ideology, adding a dash of universal basic income for flavor. Saint-Saens wrote that it was only through extensive computer networks and technological advancement, as well as mostly-autonomous workers' collectives, that a socialist economy could work and survive under the mandate of the state. As well, he believed that a semi-market economy (in which the only sellers were state-owned companies run democratically) still featuring currency and supported by a universal basic income was the best way for socialism to work in what he saw as the coming post-industrial economy. Finally, he argued that the dictatorship of the proletariat was not only pointless, but actively deleterious to the development of socialism, and that a socialist state must be absolutely democratic in order properly function.

Saint-Saens's ideas spread rapidly throughout the underground, and by 1976, when an uneasy coalition had formed between the survivors of the succession crisis, had become the dominant revolutionary ideology within Zentrus. In 1978, as the economy continued to fall, the revolution began, again in Naissance, which was the focal point of the cybernetic socialist network (although Itellure (RL Pamplona) was also the site of an early socialist revolt). The army, though large, had become increasingly corrupt and divided in its loyalties between different factions in the junta, and dissolved into warring factions by early 1979. The Socialist Liberation Network, Saint-Saens's organization, made significant gains in that year as a result, forming workers' collectives and municipal councils as parallel economic and political autonomous structures as it went. When the Red Revolution ended in 1981, these two governing structures became the backbone of the state.

The Constitution of 1981, which formed today's Democratic Federation of Zentrus, explictly banned public property and organized the political structure of the state underneath a unicameral Federal Senate, made up of one senator each from the 200 municipal councils that had joined the revolutionary movement (later amendments would create a mechanism to allow the creation of new municipalities, leading to today's 326 senators). Meanwhile, the workers' collectives were to assume autonomous control of the economy under the purview of the senate, which retained the right to issue economic directives and guide economic policy. The rapid development of the ECONET (Economic Network), a vast network of telex machines which allowed real-time economic simulation and the quick interpretation of and reaction to statistics from around the nation, in the 1980s under the purview of the Technology and Progress Party (the successor party to the SLN) allowed the semi-command model much greater efficiency than traditional socialist states, and enabled the so-called Zentrusian Economic Miracle.

During the late 1980s and 1990s, the revolutionary state's economy boomed, and relations were tenatively patched up with its neighbors in Valendia and Italy. Though it was difficult under the new economic model, the state made great pains to support artists, musicians, and filmmakers, and the '90s became a golden era for Zentrusian culture. However, the instability caused by the mass update to ECONET in the late '90s led to a short depression, which caused the TPP to lose public confidence and fall from power in 2000. The socially conservative and economically authoritarian (believing in centralizing economic policy further) National Unity Party, leader of the opposition, came to power at the head of a disparate coalition of Muentzerists, radical economic authoritarians, and wildcards known as the Freedom Front. Unfortunately, due precisely to its diverse nature, the Freedom Front was paralyzed by infighting and proved unable to pass much of its legislation. The one important creation of the Freedom Front government was the Bureau of Economic Management, which combined the previous Federal Statistics Administration and Interior Ministry into one, more efficient body capable of rapidly responding to economic changes and equipped with the finest statisticians the country had to offer.

In 2007, Chancellor Gerard Depardieu called for a snap election, leading, to his surprise, to the fall of his government and its replacement with the United Technocratic Union under Marie Moreau, a devolutionist (believing in more autonomy for the workers' collectives) party that also advocated a significant budget for technological research. The greatest achievement of this short-lived government (2007-2012) was the creation of the Zentrusian Outer Space Research Administration (ZOSRA), which successfully began launching satellites in 2009, and was able to send a man into space in 2011. Moreau's sex scandal in early 2012 led to the fall of her government and the second rise of the National Unity Party, this time in an unlikely coalition with Technology and Progress, their only point of agreement being economic authoritarianism. Though the Senate has often been stalemated during this period, it has achieved some notable success in trade deals with Valendia, and a strongly recovering economy. Nevertheless, there remain problems in Zentrus; the largest of which is the growing unrest in southern Iragon, the municipalities of which the Federal Senate has repeated blocked in their efforts to multiply. Iragonese activists claim that this is an attempt to silence their voices and weaken their position in government, with some even openly advocating secession from Zentrus.




Government:

The Constitution of 1981 is the legal basis for all Zentrusian government and economic policy. The constitution protects the right to vote, the right to self-determination through local municipal councils and the offices of the Senate, the right to economic stability, the right to free speech (outside of certain specific issues such as hate speech), and explicitly dismisses the concept of private property. There are two basic units of the state; the municipal council, and the worker's collective. The municipal council is the constitutionally-mandated local political body throughout Zentrus, and though each council is as different from one another as are different cities, they do have certain features in common. Firstly, each municipality must contain at least 50,000 people, and these people retain the right to appeal to the Federal Senate if they feel their local council is ignoring their needs or violating their constitutional rights. Secondly, each municipality has total autonomy, except in economic matters (the purview of the worker's collectives) and foreign relations--municipalities are explicitly banned from engaging diplomatically with foreign powers. Thirdly, each municipality has the right to elect a senator to the Federal Senate, and each time a new municipality is created, a new Senate seat follows. Currently, there are 326 municipalities within Zentrus, with the majority concentrated in the Zentrusia and Gallia regions in the northeast of the country (broadly, RL France).

Worker's collectives are a parallel governing structure with autonomy over economic matters. They are self-governing, democratically-run communes of workers that have the right to merge and separate as they see fit, and are the primary mode of economic organization. While the collectives are generally autonomous when it comes to day-to-day decision making, they are constitutionally bound to follow any economic directives passed down from the Senate via ECONET, which every collective is required to have a connection to. There are more than a hundred thousand collectives within Zentrus, and their number fluctuates constantly; however, increases in efficiency due to ECONET, as well as a certain popular technophilia and the efforts of the Bureau of Economic Management keep the economy going at a mostly good pace.

Both of these bodies are subject to the dictates of the unicameral Senate. While the political and economic sovereignty of both bodies are strongly protected under the constitution, the Senate, as the representative body of the people, combines both executive and legislative power, which can and has been delegated to the various bureaus which support the state, and also reserves the right to appoint judges and inform the judicial system. At least, theoretically. Practically, with the immense difficulty of having to make day-to-day federal decisions by referendum, the Senate has delegated authority in these matters to the various bureaus (run by Secretaries without term who serve at the pleasure of the Senate) and to the person of the Chancellor, usually the leader of the currently ruling party or head party in a coalition government, who serves de facto as the head of state and government. Aubin Ducharme is the current Chancellor.

All political parties, municipalities, collectives, and organs of government are constitutionally required to abide by the principles of cybernetic socialism, first formulated by Jerome Saint-Saens in the late 1960s and early '70s; firstly, that no citizen of the nation unless convicted of a federal crime may be prevented from freely participating in fair elections for their government; secondly, that the right to collective property and a fully socialized economy must be upheld and defended by all governing bodies; thirdly, that technology is the facilitator of a socialist economy, and must be integrated into economic management, government, and society wherever possible; fourthly and most importantly, the socialist nation must not seek to expand its system by violence or illiberal political integration--only through diplomacy and free referendums in the affected territories (the famous "Socialism In One Country" tenet).

Culture:

Zentrus has been settled by human civilizations for millenia, and boasts a long and rich cultural history going all the way back to the Celts themselves. Its cities are a blend of modern and ancient, with century-old palaces sitting side-by-side with bullet train stations and nuclear power plants. These selfsame cities are also strongly cosmopolitan; people from around the world speaking a variety of languages can be encountered in Naissance at any given time. However, historical and cultural factors have led to the general consensus that there are four major ethnocultural groups underneath the aegis of Zentrus, corresponding largely to several traditionally-recognized regions (although there is of course significant overlap). These groups, though they bear other distinguishing quirks, differ mostly on religious and linguistic grounds.

Zentrusians are the leading ethnic group in the historical Zentrusia region (Brittany-northern and northeastern France-Alsace-Lorraine), and generally dominate politics within the nation as a whole. Historically, Zentrusians have been the most active revolutionary group within the country, having had a major hand in the creations of the National Republic, the State of Zentrus, and the current Democratic Federation. Culturally and linguistically, they are the most "Germanic" of the nation's people, with their language (the official language of the state)
sharing many characteristics with Valendian dialects. Zentrusian culture prides itself on its avant-garde nature, and the Zentrusia region has produced a strong plurality of famous artists, filmmakers, and musicians (including the famed Gerard Ipolyte, who refused to paint in colors other than red, "to commemorate the revolutionary martyrs."). Despite this, Zentrusia is highly religious, featuring the highest population of Muentzerites in the country.

Muentzerism, named after Thomas Muentzer, a Valendian theologian and radical Protestant who established the Five Principles, that which differentiates Muentzerite Christianity from Catholicism. In order, they are; The Spirit, Not The Letter--that the Bible is not an absolute authority, but merely a helpful beginning, having been corrupted through the lens of human writers and chroniclers, and thus Christians must seek spiritual experiences themselves for guidance; Dreams and Revelations--the Holy Spirit communicates through dreams and revelations, which may occur through glossolalia or automatic writing, and so dream interpretation must form a major part of a Christian's spiritual life; The Doctrine of Suffering--all people must endure real suffering, whether physical or spiritual, in order to come to true Christian belief; Fear of God, No Fear of Man--essentially, true Christians must not acknowledge any authority other than God, and those who follow his divine laws;
All Things Held in Common--all things on the earth are God's property, and thus held in common for good Christian people (a sort of early communism). Muentzerite churches are radically egalitarian, and feature "Revelation Meetings", in which the entire congregation may participate in the use of hallucinogens and a sort of "ritual frenzy" in order to achieve communion with God.

To the south of Zentrusia lies Gallia (roughly, the old kingdom of Aquitaine, as well as all other parts of France not covered by Zentrusia).
Here, historically, was the greatest holdout of Romano-Gaulish culture, only lightly ruled by the Germanic kings, and unaffected by Islamization, as the south suffered. Gallia is also the great breadbasket of Zentrus, producing the majority of its food, and is a hub of tourism as well with its wealth of Roman ruins. Gallians speak a Romance language that, despite having a plethora of loanwords from Zentrusian,
has been affected surprisingly little by more than a millenium of Germanic rule. Gallian culture is quite conservative and rural-based, and is the region that has most strongly preserved the institution of Catholicism, largely in secret until the rise of the National Republic. Gallian life largely revolves around the harvest and the many Catholic holy days each year, which provide welcome respite from a life of toil. Since the foundation of the Democratic Federation and the rise of workers' collectives, Gallian culture has become even more tightly-knit and family-based. Politically, the Gallia region tends to follow Zentrusia in its voting patterns, although this is hardly set in stone.

The second-largest cultural group, known as the Andalusi, occupy the southern and eastern swath of the Iragonese peninsula (Catalonia-Andalusia-Southern Portugal), known today as Andalusia, and is perhaps the most politically restive of any group within Zentrus. This was the cultural heartland of the Umayyad Sultanate, and the most-Islamisized and Berberized part of the peninsula. Though Islam was mostly stamped under the Durfort kings, today most Andalusi follow an interestingly syncretic brand of Christianity, known simply as Andalusian Christanity, which while acknowledging Jesus as the messiah, also acknowledges Mohammed as the Last Prophet, and uses both the Koran and the Bible. Though they do believe in the idea of the Pope, they do not acknowledge the current Catholic Pope, and instead honor a spiritual leader based in Nosima by the name of Pope Ibrahim IV. The Andalusi language is a Romance language with heavy Arabic influence, and is not mutually intelligible with any other language in the country. Andalusia also features the lowest amount of municipalities in the country, despite having the second-highest population of any cultural region (second only to Zentrusia itself), due to the Zentrusian-led Senate repeatedly blocking applications for new municipalities. A popular secessionist movement calling itself the Sons of Al-Andalus has committed a string of terrorist attacks in recent years, and the Zentrusian military is currently essentially occupying large parts of Andalusia under martial law.

Last but not least, the Lusitani occupy the rest of the Peninsula (known as Lusitania), and, though perhaps the least homogenous of the ethnocultural groups, remain largely bound by a clan-based social system which dominates the politics of the local municipalities, and a culture that values personal, "macho" honor very highly. Though originally largely Muentzerite, a semi-reactionary neopaganist movement known as Endovelicanism, after its major god, spread throughout the region under the National Republic, and has become over the last century the largest religion in Lusitania. Endovelicanism claims to be a modern interpretation of the ancient faith of the Lusitani tribe (no relation to the Romanized and Arabized Celts today's Lusitani descend from) and worships a pantheon of five gods led by the god of healing and prophecy, Endovelicus. His consort is the hermaphroditic Nabia, the deity of the earth and of the sacred rivers of Lusitania, while his son Bandua is the god of community and protection and his daughters Epona and Trebaruna are the goddesses of fertility/agriculture and love/war respectively. Lusitania is generally a violent area, with honor killings fairly common, although the state has attempted several initiatives to quash them. However, a majority of Lusitani are loyal to the Democratic Federation, largely due to its official recognition and protection of Endovelicanism.

Initially, all I have to say is....wow. That really is one of the most comprehensive applications I think AMW's seen for ages. You obviously love the idea that you're proposing and that's always a great thing to see

I've taken part in a couple of different RP groups on NationStates and I think that this is the first time I've ever seen anyone using a version of Project Cybersyn so kudos to you for that (I've probably now offended someone somewhere by saying that, but there we go ). As Chrinthanium pointed out, AMW is a little behind on things like BitCoin and the like so physical currency would probably be a better starting point (but as time goes on the opportunity may well arise to convert to digital).

I'd suggest some discussion with other AMW members about your GDP and the total territory of your proposed nation, but the rest of your application gets two thumbs up from me.

[Zentrus]

Thank you guys! I am a really big fan of this idea, which might be why the GDP's a little large. As for the territory, it's just there was so much empty space, y'know? I was originally going to go for just France and maybe the Baleares, but then there was that big open space...

Anyway, I don't mind reducing it if you guys would like that. I also don't mind switching away from the digital currency thing, it was basically a throwaway idea I had.

[Chrinthanium]

Thank you guys! I am a really big fan of this idea, which might be why the GDP's a little large. As for the territory, it's just there was so much empty space, y'know? I was originally going to go for just France and maybe the Baleares, but then there was that big open space...

Anyway, I don't mind reducing it if you guys would like that. I also don't mind switching away from the digital currency thing, it was basically a throwaway idea I had.

I like you answer. It shows you're at least willing to discuss things with us. We do very much tend to discuss things between us before we do them sometimes. This collaboration is probably the most important part of AMW. It's a group of give and take, of benefit and handicap, of pure idea versus its practical internal application. Most of how we came about our ideas were just like you came about yours: we were passionate about something and we wanted to see it come to fruition. Then we got involved in AMW and moderated things to fit the group a bit better.

I think part of my interest in knowing why you claimed what you claimed has less to do with the size of the claim (because 123 million may be larger than average, but it isn't anywhere close to being too big or unreasonable) and more about potential new members in future needing France or Spain or Portugal for their history. You may be asked by future claimants if at any point one of those three colonial powers did venture out and colonize things. In particular, our AMW nation of California needs to have Catholic priests from Spain for his history. He uses a lot of Spanish-language place names to say the least. As for me, I'm going to request a Norman invasion of some sort in 1066 for historical purposes. If that's not too much to ask.

I will refrain from venturing opinions on your overall economy. Not because I don't have them, but because I am about to put a pretty powerful and rich British Empire just across the English Channel from you and I do not want to be seen trying to get any undue advantage from that discussion. I would say that you don't have to ditch the digital currency idea overall. You may well be trying to get it operation while still using paper money.

I would love to know how your nation operates as it pertains to civil rights. Are LGBTQ+ allowed to marry? Do you in anyway restrict what people can see on the internet (like China or in a Chinese way)? That sort of thing. That will tell me whether semi-Fascist Britain dislikes you or hates you and whether hippie-surfer Chrinthania likes you or loves you.

Overall, I'm for the idea behind the claim. I am definitely thrilled you saw fit to come to us with the idea. I'm chomping at the bit to see it in action.

[Zentrus]

I like you answer. It shows you're at least willing to discuss things with us. We do very much tend to discuss things between us before we do them sometimes. This collaboration is probably the most important part of AMW. It's a group of give and take, of benefit and handicap, of pure idea versus its practical internal application. Most of how we came about our ideas were just like you came about yours: we were passionate about something and we wanted to see it come to fruition. Then we got involved in AMW and moderated things to fit the group a bit better.

I think part of my interest in knowing why you claimed what you claimed has less to do with the size of the claim (because 123 million may be larger than average, but it isn't anywhere close to being too big or unreasonable) and more about potential new members in future needing France or Spain or Portugal for their history. You may be asked by future claimants if at any point one of those three colonial powers did venture out and colonize things. In particular, our AMW nation of California needs to have Catholic priests from Spain for his history. He uses a lot of Spanish-language place names to say the least. As for me, I'm going to request a Norman invasion of some sort in 1066 for historical purposes. If that's not too much to ask.

I will refrain from venturing opinions on your overall economy. Not because I don't have them, but because I am about to put a pretty powerful and rich British Empire just across the English Channel from you and I do not want to be seen trying to get any undue advantage from that discussion. I would say that you don't have to ditch the digital currency idea overall. You may well be trying to get it operation while still using paper money.

I would love to know how your nation operates as it pertains to civil rights. Are LGBTQ+ allowed to marry? Do you in anyway restrict what people can see on the internet (like China or in a Chinese way)? That sort of thing. That will tell me whether semi-Fascist Britain dislikes you or hates you and whether hippie-surfer Chrinthania likes you or loves you.

Overall, I'm for the idea behind the claim. I am definitely thrilled you saw fit to come to us with the idea. I'm chomping at the bit to see it in action.

A Norman invasion is perfectly fine, of course. They would be coming from Zentrus's most populated and historically aggressive area, so it makes sense anyway, plus that'd be near when Gallia a powerful and aggressive kingdom, so y'know. Given France and Britain's RL long-standing rivalry and relationship, I imagine there's a lot of other things going on in there too; perhaps a long-lasting Duchy of Normandy under British control that's eventually taken down by the Ilonians or the Zentrusians? I don't know your Britain's history so I can't be certain yet. As for other colonizing ventures in the past, I don't see why not. I only kept them out of the application (or at least, kept them failed) because I wasn't sure whether non-European nations would go along with having been colonized by the Lusitanians or the Andalusians, or Zentrus-Gallia itself. I definitely don't mind working with other applicants on that stuff, plus with enough ex-Zentrusian colonies, there might be enough for a sort of Francophonie.

Okay, I can do that with the digital currency. That's likely most realistic anyway. As for civil rights, the intention when the Democratic Federation was founded was for it to be fairly hands-off on civil rights. However, the currently ruling National Unity Party (in coalition, as I mentioned) is quite socially conservative, and relies heavily on religion and religious rhetoric. That being said, Zentrus does allow federally-recognized civil unions for LGBTQ+, and there's a large and growing movement for federal marriage equality, while a plurality of municipal councils have already achieved local marriage equality. Abortions are legal, but are heavily restricted once one reaches the second trimester, at least federally-speaking. Several municipalities have challenged this. The internet is somewhat interesting. The federal government, run as it is by moralistic conservatives, has made several efforts in recent years to block extreme pornography and to a certain extent online marketplaces too. But these actions have been repeated challenged and successfully so by municipal councils on constitutional grounds, which means effectively that while Zentrusians cannot participate in a capitalist economy at home, they can participate in the international capitalist economy, given that they're still being paid wages by the state.

In essence, civil rights are at a sort of pre-marriage equality US level, without the US's long-running mass incarceration and racial issues, and without the right to bear arms. Does that explain it fairly well?