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by Chrinthanium » Fri Jan 27, 2017 10:27 pm
by Walmington on Sea » Fri Jan 27, 2017 10:34 pm
by Chrinthanium » Fri Jan 27, 2017 11:15 pm
Walmington on Sea wrote: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.
by Iansisle » Sat Jan 28, 2017 9:58 am
by Chrinthanium » Sat Jan 28, 2017 11:13 am
Iansisle wrote: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!
by AMW Applications » Sun Jan 29, 2017 12:30 pm
by Europe - Prussia » Sun Jan 29, 2017 12:50 pm
AMW Applications wrote:The Claims Map is updated, the list of claims is also updated. Please review to ensure there are no discrepancies.
by AMW Applications » Sun Jan 29, 2017 2:11 pm
by AMW Applications » Mon Feb 20, 2017 11:42 pm
by AMW Applications » Tue Mar 07, 2017 3:00 pm
by Marimaia » Sat May 13, 2017 2:51 pm
by Chrinthanium » Sat May 13, 2017 6:18 pm
by Chrinthanium » Thu May 18, 2017 10:35 am
by AMW Applications » Sun Jul 09, 2017 10:14 am
by Zentrus » Thu Jul 20, 2017 2:51 am
by Chrinthanium » Thu Jul 20, 2017 6:06 pm
Zentrus wrote: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
by Zentrus » Thu Jul 20, 2017 7:16 pm
Chrinthanium wrote:Zentrus wrote: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.
by Chrinthanium » Fri Jul 21, 2017 6:04 pm
Zentrus wrote: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.
by Marimaia » Sat Jul 22, 2017 2:56 pm
Zentrus wrote: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.
by Zentrus » Sun Jul 23, 2017 12:56 am
by Chrinthanium » Sun Jul 23, 2017 9:31 am
Zentrus wrote: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.
by Zentrus » Sun Jul 23, 2017 12:15 pm
Chrinthanium wrote: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.
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