Kalshana
| Expert | FlamingDeth | ||
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| Capital | Felthria | ||
| Largest city | -- | ||
| Government King, Queen (??)
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Republic -- | ||
| Settlement |
-- BT | ||
| Official Language(s) | Common; (formerly High Elvin) | ||
| Official Religion | none; official deity is Falis, whilst worship of Lolth is outlawed (see background) | ||
| Currency | tael | ||
| Original creator is Folx, currently managed by FlamingDeth. | |||
Contents
Government
Kalshana is currently a republic, almost identical to that of ancient Rome. There is a thirty-person Senate, with three members elected from ten different districts of the country every fifteen years. Laws are introduced by them, and require a two-thirds majority to pass. There is also the Triumvirate, a group of three who are elected one every ten years, each for a thirty year term. After a law goes through the Senate, the Triumvirate must unanimously approve of it for it to become an official law. The Triumvirate has the added duty of jointly negotiating treaties and agreements with other nations. The Senate must also approve of any attempts to go to war, and if they do, then the Triumvirate gains dictatorship for the duration of said war. There are also district governors who manage the ten districts according to the laws set by the Senate and Triumvirate, and are elected every twenty years. Any citizen can run for office, including the rare non-elvin citizen, though the latter are extremely rare, as a minimum age of 100 years is required to declare candidacy.
Kalshana has a relatively small army, used mainly for defense. Due to the dense forests and mountains surrounding the country, it is remarkably easy to defend. Law enforcement is also provided by the military, and ends up most of the time being their main purpose. Minor offenses are tried by a judge, major ones by a tribunal. Rather than have a jury, the task of finding a verdict is trusted to the judges and triumvirates.
Culture
The residents of Kalshana, who are mainly elves of the various races in Gaera, tend to be racist/prejudiced to a degree. While not as extreme as, say, Riva, they look down greatly upon drow, as they are viewed as a corruption of true elves. The high elvin population also tends to look at non-elvin races as children who never have enough time to mature.
There isn't a caste or class system in Kalshana, per se, though about half of the government and clergy positions are held by High Elves. The other half, however, is composed of a fairly even spread of the other elvin races.
The high elvin language (represented OOCly as Hebrew), formerly the official language of the country, is at this point used almost exclusively by the Church of Falis, though it is still taught to most high elvin children. The common language of the country is now Common, a switch that was made gradually over the last few centuries for ease of international relations. This change, however, has yet to reach a few of the more anachronistic towns in Kalshana.
A common pastime in Kalshana is, of course, hunting. There are many privately run institutions that aid in preserving nature while still allowing for hunting to be as common as it is, through means such as breeding the animals, or sectioning off the best feeding grounds from hunters to allow for healthier animals.
Religion
The official deity of Kalshana is Falis, though churches of Falis make up less than half of the churches in the nation. There is no enforcement of this religion, and is just a relic of a time when high elves held complete control of the country, and for the most part, the Kalshanese acknowledge the necessity of the broad range of deities in Gaera, and practically encourage worship of more than one. However, the worship of Lolth is strictly forbidden, and enforced under penalty of death, as an attempt to keep all drow influence out of Kalshana.
Economy
The unit of currency for Kalshana is the tael, a round bronze coin with a hole in it. Denominations of the Tael are noted by high elvin markings on the coin which say how much they re worth, and by their size, and come in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 50, and 100 Taels. One Tael = .75 Doman Gil. However, barter is nearly as common as purchasing things with money.
Farmers in Kalshana tend to grow a lot of grains, mainly for survival. However, the primary cash crop for trading to other nations is by far cotton, which is exported to other nations in the form of textiles, in exchange for products not readily available in the country, such as saltwater fish, many types of liquor, sugar, and various metals. While there are mountains to the western side of the country, they tend to be poorer than the rest of the Shumans, and it is a common attitude among Kalshanese that such filthy work is better left to the dwarves. Silk is also an often exported item.
International Relations
Most relations between Kalshana are purely economic in nature. Most citizens are content with where they are and will rarely leave Kalshana for any reason, thus, most trade is a result from foreign merchants/caravans entering the country to exchange their wares for Kalshanan goods.
Currently, Kalshana holds non-aggression pacts and a few trade treaties with nearby nations, though it has no alliances, nor are there any in its foreseeable future.
Notable Locations
Due to the magical abilities inherent to most elvin races, Kalshana has a multitude of minor magical schools scattered about the countryside, and a major school, the Greater Kalshanese Academy of Majicks, located in the capital. This school specializes in illusion magic, conjuration, and divination, with very little focus towards necromancy and dark magic, though they are taught there. Located in Britiana is the High Temple of Falis, which turns out the majority of the wandering clerics that come out of Kalshana, though there is very little worship of Falis outside of Kalshana. Britania houses the Three Hundred Year War Memorial, at the center of which is the Queen's Grave. Many grain farming towns are located to the north and northwest sections of the country, with the cotton coming mostly from the south and silk from the east.
History
Thousands of years ago, the land of Kalshana was a prosperous and exquisite hotbed of culture, sophistication, and higher learning. It was a golden age equitable to the high points of the Greek, Roman, and Chinese cultures of Earth. In this time, there was a fair mix of both humans and elves whose cultures were inseparable. At this time, the government consisted of a limited monarchy, in which there were two extended families of royalty, one human and one elvin. Whenever either the king or queen died, a male would be chosen from the human family and a female from the elvin to take up the positions, and each shared equal responsibility for the well-being of Kalshana. This continued successfully for hundreds of years.
However, it all came crashing down in a singular catastrophic series of events. One day, as the king and queen were inspecting the condition of the city of Branwithe, an arrow came from an unidentified location and pierced straight through the heart of the queen. Traditionally, since one of the monarchs had died, a new set should have been chosen. However, the king refused to abdicate the throne. Instead, he sent the guard sweeping through the city, in an enraged attempt to discover the assassin. The city was devastated and the killers were not found, his goal was unfulfilled.
His actions caused a grief felt throughout the nation, as the population for the first time feared their own leader. Some reacted by turtling in, attempting to stay as secluded as possible; others attempted to continue their lives normally, just without doing anything that may be frowned upon by the king. There were a few, however, who reacted with anger. They decided that the king's outburst showed a failure in the system, and that said system had to be removed at any cost. Secretly, an army was gathered and trained, to depose the king, and thus began the Three Hundred Year War.
The war started with a failed siege on the capital, in which the rebels had greatly underestimated the security that the king had imposed on Felthria. A counterattack on the king's part also failed, as the fleeing rebels were more efficient in their escape than the king s forces were in their attack. For the next three hundred years, there was constant battling throughout the countryside. The leaders of each side changed several times during the war, and near the end, only the historians could remember what the war was even about.
After hundreds of years of war, a plan devised by the Church of Falis was created for the purpose of ending the war. Through teaching the children various fictional tenants of the faith and preaching the same to the adults, the elves of Kalshana were united in a common goal: expelling from their nation the infidel humans who had started the conflict. The humans, who had become more and more of a minority over the course of time, fled the country for less hostile locations. Thus began the Kalshanese Dark Age, during which the Church governed.
Not much is known of the Dark Age, except that it was obnoxiously hard for accurate records to be kept and that it was a struggle merely to survive. Over time, however, the racist notions that had become associated with the Church faded into the mists of obscurity. Around of the grave of the queen whose death instigated the war, a memorial was established in honor of those who fought and died in the war. Eventually, the some of the more revolutionary members of the Church pressed a motion to put the government in the hands of the people, and a constitution was written, rewritten, and amended half to death, till eventually it was in its current form.
Several hundred years later, we are in modern Kalshana. There are still a very small handful of very old high elves who still remember the days even before the War, though you would be hard pressed to find them. The current constitution is the law of the land, and slowly but surely, the nation is opening back up to foreigners...
