Commonwealth of Ardun

(Ardun redirects here. For the ancient galtic tribe, see Ardunnon Tribe)
The Commonwealth of Ardun is a federal socialist republic in Northern Bruna. The first country in the world to establish a Syndicalist political system, Ardun is governed by the Ardunan Labour Congress, a federation of local councils and labour unions consisting of over fifty affiliated unions representing virtually every Ardunan worker, and which directly run their respective industries via a representative system. The Chairman of Congress serves as the Ardunan Head of Government, with the President serving as Head of State. The country's capital is the city of Caerun, within the Council Republic of Marseton, which is also its major industrial and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include the cities of Valken, Mulder and Abercrook. Ardun is the largest country in the world by surface area, and its territory includes most of the Brunan continent. It also holds a population of over 100 million, one of the largest of any country.
During the First and Second Ages, the territory of modern Ardun was mostly inhabited by galtic tribes to the southeast, and farlander clans to the northwest. The southernmost part of the region was annexed by the Meron Supremacy during the Galtic Wars, which eventually led to the creation of an unified alliance of tribes under King Fennar Falkrun at the end of the Second Age, to halt and reverse Meron expansion. The Great Northern Revolt led to the third and final Galtic War, and the unification of most participating tribes into the Kingdom of Ardunnon.
At the dawning of the Third Age, King Arwel I partitioned the kingdom between his five sons, which led to further fracturing and competition among feudal galtic lords. Eventually, the har-galt kingdom of Asgern would achieve supremacy over its neighbours, and form the Kingdom of Ardun. Over the next thousand years, this kingdom would expand into the sparsely populated forests of Bruna, unifying most of the continent under its banner.
During the Fourth Age, the Kingdom of Ardun would enter a state of decline due to a succession of wars, economic crises, and political inadequacy to solve extreme poverty. This would lead to the rise of the United Labour Front, a radical socialist alliance of labour unions led in part by Labour Party MP Jack Lennon. The ULF played a leading part in the Ardunan Revolution and subsequent civil war that would see the abolition of the monarchy and transition towards socialism.
A highly industrialized country, Ardun is one of the largest economies in the socialist sphere, and the first major syndicalist nation-state in the world, acting as the leading member of the International Revolutionary Alliance.

History

Prehistory

The earliest traces of sentient life in what is now Ardun date back to 1.5 million years before the First Era. Decorated caves were first found in the 850's of the Fourth Age, depicting the daily lives of nomadic peoples within the forests of Bruna. These included both tribes of human nomads from the South and elves from the East. There have also been multiple discoveries of mummified galts in the Galen Mountains which predate previous estimates of human settlement by over 5 thousand years.

Antiquity

Though there is much archaeological speculation about ancient civilizations in the north of the territory, the oldest known civilizations in modern day Ardun began in the southern regions surrounding the Amberag River, sometime around the first millennium of the Bronze Age. Small villages near the Galtica Coast united into the Amberwyn Tribe, and migrated to the mouth of the river to found Valken in 800-1a, making it the oldest known galtic settlement.
Galtic tribes and federations would develop for the next millennia mostly isolated from the Maurin civilizations to the south, with settlements built deep within the ancient forests becoming little more than legends to the peoples of the Heartland Sea, especially after the breakdown in trade which followed the Bronze Age Collapse. This would change in the Iron Age, as the rise of the Meron Supremacy would lead to increased contact between the two continents in both trade and war.

Galtic Wars

(Main article: The Galtic Wars)
Competition between the Meron frontier and galtic tribes, as well as conflict between the tribes themselves, led to the first Galtic War in 921-2a. Though at first the Meron legions faced a moderately coordinated and unified opposition, some galtic military leaders felt uneasy about some coastal tribes' neutrality, and delivered them an ultimatum to join the war on the galtic side or be seen as an enemy. A few tribes complied with these demands, but most, including the powerful Amberwyn Tribe, instead sought the Merons for protection, and ended joining the war against the tribes that had threatened them. This furthered division within the northern camp, and allowed for the legions to exploit logistical weaknesses in the fractured armies. After 4 years of intermittent fighting, the war ended in a Meron victory, with the Supremacy expanding as far north as the Bartan River.
The interbellum period saw an increase in economic integration between the Supremacy and the coastal tribes which had fought with them, many of which received control over the lands of the defeated clans. There was also a period of cultural integration for the galts living in the now Meron lands south of the Bartan, where the druidic faith was at times lightly discouraged, and at others brutally suppressed. During the first years of occupation, Meron legions put down over a dozen local revolts of varying sizes.
Though this peace would last for half a century, the Meron Supremacy would eventually begin a new wave of military expansion northwards. This time, galtic leaders had learned from the past generations, and rallied together in an united front against meron aggression. Despite standing with the merons in the previous war, the Amberwyn Tribe was quickly welcomed into this alliance, mostly because of the economic and strategic value of Valken. This war would last for over a decade, and although the galtic alliance would perform admirably on the battlefield, it would result in a conclusive Meron victory, and the annexation of the entire region into the Supremacy.
The Galtic Wars were a catastrophic event for galtic civilization. Southern Bruna, where the fighting was waged, was home to nearly 70% of the population of the entire continent. Of that 70%, nearly 24% were killed, either as soldiers in battle or as civilians caught in between the fighting. Of the surviving population, over a million galts were enslaved and shipped overseas to be sold, and modern historians estimate that nearly 40% of all the gold in the region was looted by meron forces. It would take nearly one thousand years for the galtic population to reach its pre-war levels.

Meron Occupation

For over 600 years, southern galtic tribes were suppressed by the Meron Supremacy. Most of this time was spent on the defensive against legionary incursions, though some sacking expeditions were carried out by coalitions throughout the centuries. Though some were successful in bringing a large number of gold north to the galtic tribes, they were never in a position to seriously consider retaking lost territory.
When not directly at war with the Supremacy, many tribesmen served Meros directly as mercenary companies. Some of these companies achieved worldwide renown, such as the Brothers of Makonos and the Wild Sons, both of which fought in the many Meron civil wars, with the latter fighting as far south as Aladesh and as far east as Kova.

Ardunnon

With the collapse of Meron hegemony following The Sundering in 1567-2a, rebellions broke all throughout the border lands. In the north, this manifested itself in the Great Northern Revolt, led by the warlord Fennar Falkrun, who united a coalition of free tribes under his banner, and went on to reconquer much of the galtic territory that had been lost since the Galtic Wars. With the Meron remnant armies driven back across the Amberag, Falkrun was crowned the first Alderking in over two thousand years, a deeply significant event to all who followed the Old Faith. As other tribes and confederations joined his cause, King Fennar established the Kingdom of Ardunnon.

Rust Age

The Kingdom of Ardunnon eventually grew to encompass most of southern Bruna, including the modern day regions of Asgern, Granvern, and Marseton. This made administration complicated, especially in the mountainous north, where the mountainous terrain made communication slow. The situation made the kingdom very hard to govern, to the point where King Arwel I decided to partition the kingdom between his five sons. Over time, this particioning led to the entrenchment of the feudal system, and by 600-3a the Kingdom of Ardunnon had been completely replaced with thousands of independent fiefdoms.

The Kingdom of Ardun

(Main article: Kingdom of Ardun)
By the end of the Rust Age, the Har-galt kingdom of Asgern went through an extended period of economic and military expansion, bringing much of the old Ardunnon lands into its rule. The year 12 of Fourth Age saw the Overland Union, where King Aethelric II of House Overland emerged as the clear heir to both the kingdoms of Asgern and Marseton. This resulted in a full political union between the two kingdoms which gave birth to the Kingdom of Ardun, which Aethelric hoped would be a true successor state to Old Ardunnon.
King Aethelric being a Manifist, it was decreed that the new Ardun would follow the laws of the Holy Manifest Chancel. Thus began a hundred-year long process of eliminating the Old Faith from Ardunan culture, a process which led to several wars, purges, and multiple generations of conflict, which the new kingdom would utilize to expand northward and westward.

The Concord Wars

With the invention of the printing press, efforts to mass produce copies of the manifist sacred book (The Livrion) for public consumption led to a great pushback from the Chancel, which held fast to official church dogma, where the sacred texts could only be read by Chancel priests in the original Ancient Common language. This, in turn, led to the spread of old reformist movements, as well as new ones. Concordianism was one such reformist movement which spread around the Heartland countries, and gained particular traction in the Kingdom of Ardun.
From the 600's through the early 800's, the kingdom fell into conflict between orthodox manifists and concordian manifists, the latter of which were mostly members of the merchant class, which was finding itself commanding real power for the first time since the Iron Age. The Concord Wars ended in a victory for the Concordian Manifists when King Madoc VII established the Northern Chancel, a religious institution independent from the Holy Manifest Chancel, as the state religion of the kingdom.

The Ardunan Reformation

The end of the milennium of the Steel Age saw the arrival of Liberalism into Ardunan society, as the new mercantilist economy struggled with the outdated, autocratic model of the ardunan monarchy. In 754, Liberal philosopher Ewan Boulter published his political treatise, "The Crowned Republic", which first envisioned a constitutional government within the monarchic system of Ardun. He was followed by other political writers, some of whom went much farther than Boulter himself, arguing that the monarchy itself should be abolished in favor of a republican system modelled after Ancient Meros.
The emergent middle class ran into increasing conflicts with the crown over taxes, tariffs, and their political rights. Throughout the country, members of the nobility enjoyed significant privilege over even a moderately wealthy burgher, who had to pay much higher taxes on their enterprises than an aristocrat paid on their estate. This situation escalated over the latter half of the 8th century, as the Ardunan economy buckled under the weight of successive wars against the other Heartland powers.
In 810, a movement called The Grand Reformers directed protest actions throughout the country, funded by wealthy business owners, as well as sympathizers within the nobility. Though King Tristan III cracked down on all activity by the Grand Reformers, his younger brother, Prince Alric, went against his family in support of democratic reforms. Alric was a charismatic speaker, popular with the Ardunan Armed Forces due to his successful military campaigns, and his support helped the reformation movement gain a considerable amount of traction throughout the country.
In the year 834, tensions came to a head when King Tristan III called for the imprisonment of Prince Alric, who fled to Edinover with a host of loyal lords. Tristan, having miscalculated the amount of support that his brother enjoyed, was now faced with an uprising in the capital. The Grand Reformers filled the streets of Valken and marched towards the royal palace, demanding parliamentary reform. When the royal guard fired their muskets at the crowd, the situation escalated completely out of control, and as King Tristan was escorted out of the capital, the palace was stormed by parlamentarians.
As Prince Alric returned to Valken, King Tristan fled to the city of Primrose, and called upon his bannermen, marking the beginning of the Ardunan Social War. Loyalist forces clashed against parliamentarian armies for nearly a decade. The war resulted in a complete victory for the Parliamentarians, and the execution of King Tristan.
With the crowning of King Alric I, the first General Election was called, and Connor Fenwick, a leading parliamentarian general and decorated war hero, was elected to the office of Prime Minister. This first Elected Parliament convened in 848-4a to write the Ardunan Constitution. This new political system codified into law many individual rights, such as freedom of speech and habeas corpus, though it left many of the old autocratic institutions in charge, with an unelected Upper House of Lords holding veto power over legislation drafted in the Commons.

Industrial Revolution

Wars of Reaction

Deluge of 1180

Gaeler Rising

Heartland War

Crisis of the 1220s

Ardunan Revolution

Government

The Commonwealth is governed by the Ardunan Parliament, of which there are two houses: The House of Commons, and the House of Labour (formerly the Trade Union Congress). The Ardunan Commons (640 seats) are elected deputies from the regional communes throughout the country, while the Ardunan Labour Congress (~820 seats) is composed of union delegates from the various industries in Ardun.
Though Ardun allows for open participation of other political parties, the Ardunan Labour Party still holds a considerable amount of power and institutional leverage due to its position as the commonwealth's founding party.

Political Parties

Government
Ardunan Labour Party: Left-wing. Orthodox Syndicalism, Marschism-Lennonism.
Communist Party of Ardun: Left-wing. Radcliffism, promotion of the Trade Union Congress, Anti-imperialism, Santana Socialism
Opposition
Democratic Socialist Alliance: Right-wing. Social-democracy, market socialism, promotion of worker co-operatives.
Autonomist Union: Left-wing. Anarchism, devolved regional government, gift economics, anarcho-syndicalism.
Northern Bloc: Center. Varlener Autonomy, Developmentalism, Land Stewardship, Luomism.
Socialist Patriots' Party: Right-wing. Social conservatism, veteran rights, market socialism.
Green Party: Center. Environmentalism, new urbanism.

"This Land is Your Land"

Anthem
"Arise, The Long Night Is Over"

Type

Geopolitical, Country

Capital

Caerun

Alternative Names

Ardun, The Communes

Demonym

Ardunan

Government System

Democracy, Representative

Power Structure

Federation

Economic System

Command/Planned economy

Parent Organization

Common Union

Subsidiary Organizations

• CRAW
• Revolutionary Armed Forces

Official Languages

• Fennish
• Varlen

Neighboring Nations

• Durwyn State

Notable Members

• Cullen Radcliff
• Eleanor Kelso
• Elizabeth Lennon
• Lara Kusi
• Maeve Sinclair

Related Historical Events

• 6880
  The Deluge of 1180