Keyrit, Iathoya Takalarkyi: Daskalarch Order of Keyrit

Structure

Keyrit foreign affair duties are dictated by a singular hereditary monarch and dispersed through nobles and generals, while Keyrit internal affair duties are dictated by a bicameral legislature and managed by a set of daskalarchs. Local settlements are largely autonomous and have disproportionately larger representation in one side of the legislature. Because the other side of the legislature is popular, the one or two urban centers in Keyrit have control of the other side.

Culture

In Keyrit, you have as clear a path as you can in Wouraiya to reach your fullest potential, but you will be discarded if you refuse to or cannot reach that potential. Keyrit has modeled its society such that neither geography nor ethnicity nor income nor species prevents you from achieving that potential, or protects you from falling flat on your face.

The dominant currency that determines Keyrit status is prestige. If you've done something noteworthy with your life (created something, developed something, built a business, fought valiantly in a war), you might get recognition from the king, a Daskalarch, or a number of similar authoritative figures. That alone would be prestige enough to stand alongside nobility. Outside of the government, one can still accumulate power and prestige too important to ignore. If you represent a village, or if you employ ten percent of Eryai Retwerai, or if you just have a slew of popular support, you can be counted among the nobility. Because Keyrit is a small nation, the class divides between nobility, gentry, and peasantry are smaller than those in other nations, such as in Wlitowa or ancient Yukur.

However, privilege and prestige that is misused or wasted is taken away almost instantaneously, and any help provided to you by the government can be taken away nearly as fast. There are no barriers to how far you can fall from grace, or how much you would have to do to recover from such a blunder. Those who commit mistakes rarely return to the public's good graces. If the discarded people complain, well, "Yetoi tar t'kroh-kou;" Justice is a lie.

If there is a tradition that neither hurts nor helps society, it is preserved. Keyrit doesn't enjoy destruction for destruction's sake; rather, it collects bits and pieces of the past for posterity to enjoy, so long as the bits and pieces don't actively weigh Keyrit down. The hereditary monarchy is one example of a net neutral policy.

Public Agenda

With one half of Keyrit full of barren mountains, Keyrit could never match the population of its neighbors. Keyrit instead tries to rival and outclass her neighbors in other categories: technology, production, and military. While private enterprise and initiative is preferred, the Keyrit government often solicits donations and acquires sponsors to work on public projects, such as roads, manufacturing, and construction.

Assets

Eastern Keyrityi is mostly large mountains, which is great for ore but small for city building. Only one region on the coastline has a meadow large enough and flat enough to support a city center, so that place by default became the nation's capital. Keyrit's western half has a small but relatively massive plot of farmland. Keyrit's geography allows it to harvest large quantities of ores and minerals while still maintaining its small population.

History

The Keyrit Daskalarchy claims ancestry from the Bronze Age nation of Irewa. The combination of a great volcanic cataclysm and a massive flood wiped out a large portion of its infrastructure and its population. The two migrant waves of refugees, the T'kakou and the Keywelok settled on the present-day continents of Yatkaugo and Keyrit, respectively. While the T'kakou began a centuries-long scuffle with the local tribes of Yatkaugo, the Keywelok, having been the first (to their knowledge) to arrive on the new continent, lived in a period of relative peace. This was perhaps for the best, since they had to build their own civilization from scratch. Their first scuffle came when those who colonized western Keyrit, the Welokyi, and those who expanded to eastern Keyrit, the Keyrityi, engaged in civil war, tearing the once-unified tribe apart. Keyrityi’s singular city, Eryai Retwerai, and singular fort, Vort Yiki, were put under immense pressure from the more prosperous west. The Keyrityi royalty were captured during the war. However, the Welokyi went into a period of immense political turmoil, during which time an unnamed guard released the royalty from captivity and helped them escape. Its neighbor severely weakened, Keyrit returned to unite the continent. The unnamed guard is honored in Keyrit literature. It became immensely clear in the eyes of the Keyrityi that their life of peace and complacency could not work long-term. Keyrit embarked on massive projects of industrialization, innovation, and militarization. Having restarted their country, Keyrit attempted to build a presence on a global stage. They were hesitant to explore the wide world, but they would not be caught defenseless on their island again. They built a navy. It was hardly impressive, but it still caught the attention of the current naval power, the Wlitowa Authority. They became fierce rivals on the seas. Catapult shots were fired across the bows, and Wlitowa would even send small incursions to harass Keyrit holdings. Desperate for relief, especially during their rapid development, Keyrit sent its crown prince on a diplomatic mission to seek Tuhra's aid. His ship was intercepted and sunk en route by the Wlitowan Navy, and the prince washed up on the Wlitowan shore. He faded into the crowded streets of Ak'tawo, where he fell violently ill from pneumonia. The Kauaru princess Ekateriya chanced upon him and nursed him to health. Isolated from the outside world for months, the two fell in love. Oblivious to the sheer scale of the rivalry with Keyrit, the king agreed to a wedding once the prince revealed his identity. The Keyrit king was invited. Not oblivious of the rivalry and suspicious at best, Keyrit mustered a small army to meet the Wlitowans head on. The act that sealed the alliance, though, was the Tuhran attempt to exploit the rivalry. On the day that the prince and princess were married, the Tuhrans had coincidentally sent a large invasion force, the vast majority of their entire military. Their hope was that the Wlitowans were too preoccupied with Keyrit to notice. With Wlitowan and Keyrit forces occupied elsewhere, Tuhra reasoned, the Tuhran army would have a perfect window to topple the weak Wlitowan army and conquer the tender hinterlands of the island. However, because of the additional Keyrit reinforcements and the home advantage, the Ak'tawo garrison took losses but ultimately crushed the Tuhran invasion force; not a ship returned. Tuhra was ripe for the taking. As much as the Tuhran draft recruited every man, woman and child, the result was inevitable. Keyrit and Wlitowa took a moment to recollect their strength and plunged into Tuhran territory. They only lost once in the campaign, and even then they were afterwards reinforced by an additional spare Wlitowan army. Keyrit formalized its alliance with Wlitowa over the corpse of Tuhra with the Doyog Pact. In that pact, Wlitowa ceded claim of all territory above the Strait of Uketya to Keyrit, and Keyrit ceded claim of all Tuhran territory to Wlitowa. Keyrit now played a prominent role on the world stage, and it capitalized on this by sending excursions into Unterritory. While these excursions were successful, Tuhran nationalism dragged Keyrit back into war with its dissident colonies. Keyrit crushed the Eastern Uprising, as it was called, and cemented its authority over the area, for the small price of Welkwu’s autonomy. Welkwu's Industrial Revolution had many different effects across Wouraiya, but Keyrit was the one best poised to take advantage of it. Keyrit already had a longstanding tradition of elevating concepts and people that work, while discarding concepts and people that don’t. When Welkwu started pumping out more products than any other factions in Wouraiya, Keyrit sympathized with the upstart nation while borrowing a lot of its systems and technology. The economy of the Empire changed practically overnight, doubling if not tripling Keyrit productivity. Those not cunning enough to make their mark industrially and those not physically strong enough to make their mark militarily soon developed a third faction entirely. These groups tried to overthrow the nobility and the meritocracy together. Unlike their brother movements in Wlitowa, however, the resistances met stern, often armed resistance from conservatives and industrialists, often led by the bosses themselves. It certainly didn't help that Wlitowa's resistance movements threw the country into pandemonium overnight. The resistance lost steam, and the country returned to relative normalcy.

Demography and Population

Keyrit was originally strictly Irewan, having migrated from the western continent of Irewa. While there is no difference in culture or ethnicity between Keyrityi and Welokyi, there are still mild tensions between the two halves of the continent. During their period of rapid economic expansion, Keyrit gained an influx of migrants from different species and ethnicities. Because Keyrityi culture doesn't place value on previous culture, ethnicity, or species, the migrants integrated rapidly into the new society.

Kauaru exist all along the western seaboards of the western continents. However, Kauaru societies have mingled so well with the population of Keyrit that they're nearly indistinguishable from the human population, in contrast to the Wlitowa Kauaru that are visibly distinct. A millennium later, it will be discovered that Kauaru genes can be reactivated in the Keyrit population, turning seeminly ordinary humans into six-meter-tall behemoths.

Territories

The Order's primary territory is the eastern half of the Keyrit island-continent, an impossibly mountainous terrain with only a single meadow as a haven large enough to support a city. For all the geographical homogeny of eastern Keyrit, the Keyrit continent as a whole has the widest range of biomes, though not the most biodiversity. Farmland, clay pits, ash lands, sand dunes, and temperate forests can all be found on Keyrit.

After the Doyog Pact, Keyrit was given control of Unterritory (Raweto), as recognized by Wlitowa. While Keyrit technically claims control of Unterritory in its entirety, it de facto rules the settlements along the southern coastline of the continent, a few days' journey inland, and small islands thereabout. In addition to acquiring the Tuhran colonies, Keyrit also sent several colonial expeditions of its own, founding a few successful colonies.

Military

While economically and technologically far healthier than its friends and enemies, Keyrit does not expect to win a prolonged war with its small population. As a result, Keyrit is far more open to... dishonorable tactics than its neighbors. Everything that works is on the table. Hey, we need units that can distract and entangle the enemy before the main charge. Boom. We have Nettites. Hey, legend says that this one creepy lady spooked an entire army away from her village? Boom. Now we have a battalion of women with the express goal to unnerve the enemy. Et cetera. Regular units are used more, but results are results. As the specializations became more and more obscure, the skills required to hone and practice them became more and more necessarily numerous. Battalions like the T'kra Kayi developed orders and chapters, earning a level of prestige and becoming significantly more insular. In some cases, such as the Harmony Hunters, the chapter would declare itself independent of the Keyrit Order and strike out as an independent faction. While most nations would declare this an outrage and enact swift retribution, the Keyrit Empire was too busy building and disbanding special units and finding out which worked to deal with a small petty secession movement. The Harmony Hunters may have been one of their more powerful units, but the concept of an autonomous, self-sufficient battalion was a very nice thought, even if they did help only once in a while. In fact, the Harmony Hunters returned to infiltrate the Keyrit Order in an open secret, and the Keyrit Order welcomed them back as equals rather than subordinates. With regards to things that work, though, there's a reason why the age-old doctrines of Wlitowa and Tuhra worked.

Religion

The Truth of Keyrit is "Yetoi tar' t'krah-tou," or "Justice is a lie." The truth was revealed to one of the Keyrit citizens shortly after the tribe migrated onto the island. They took this revelation as a sign from the Yet-Unknown that this island was chosen for them, and for them alone. Because they were the first to visit that island to their knowledge, this truth was reinforced in their eyes. They implemented their truth much more deeply into their culture than any other nation. The Keyrit Truth is the precise reason why the judicial branch is so lackluster; as a tenet of the religion, it is forbidden from using justice as a reason for punishment. Rather, it uses strict reasoning based upon public safety optimization. It's also underfunded and so must find inventive measures to keep the population from committing crimes. The Truth is also means the difference between the successes of the multiple revolutionary fronts in Wlitowa and Keyrit. In Wlitowa, whose Truth is "The lonely will be reunited," had no religious adversity to redistribution political movements. As a result, the populace was much more partial to the revolutionaries. The royalty was quickly overthrown. However, in Keyrit, calls for free housing were met with the ethical argument that the protesters were trying to enact justice, which cut against the very social fabric that was Keyrit. The silent majority spoke out against this, and the coups that tried to overtake the government had to resort to more unconventional, more subversive measures. As a result, while both movements started, developed, and peaked around the same general schedule, Keyrit's movement failed, while Wlitowa's did not.

Foreign Relations

Throughout its multiple millennia of history, the Order had been at war with every major living faction. The difference between allies and enemies, then, depended on the length of the war and the length of the peace. The Welokyi were considered rebels with no right to sovereignty, but even after their conquest they were given reasonable levels of autonomy. Even without a difference in culture, the Welokyi were often treated as having one. Wlitowa once looked down upon Keyrit as bothersome upstarts, and Keyrit looked up to Wlitowa as a powerful nuisance. When Keyrit's crown prince and Wlitowa's princess married, it still took the end of the Tuhran War for the ranks-and-files of both nations to stop eyeing each other with suspicion. However, as Keyrityi smugglers moved into Wlitowa and Wlitowan diplomats established ties with Keyrit, the two nations became inseparable on the world stage, even with their starkly contradictory national philosophies. Keyrit was one of the few islands that was never colonized by Tuhrans, and Tuhra was often considered very distant with regards to Keyrit foreign relations. However, Keyrit was dragged into Tuhran politics via its friendship and alliance with Wlitowa. Keyrit's first impressions of Tuhra displayed the image of backstabbing, militant nationalists. As much as Keyrit might have aligned more with Tuhra's national philosophy, Keyrit's first impressions all but guaranteed adversity for the rest of history. Even when conquered Tuhra remained an enemy nation in the eyes of Keyrit. Unterritory was, for all practical purposes, unpopulated in the areas where Keyrit established colonies. It was coincidentally the most successful overseas territory of the Order: before, during, and after its insurrection, both in terms of colonist population and in terms of production. Ugo-yt and Keyrit share similar ancestral bonds. Both nations, even though they grew apart, became wildly successful in their own independent operations. Ugo-yt spread across the north, while Keyrit spread across the south. At first, they collaborated as sisters. Then, they competed against each other in amicable tussles. They rubbed each other's competitive spirit just a little bit the wrong way, in bits and pieces over a couple millennia, until the two factions became fierce, bitter archenemies.

Agriculture & Industry

Keyrit had only one large territory for agriculture, in a plain near the center. While there are no active volcanoes in the area, traces of volcanic ash are scattered throughout the plain. The field is otherwise fertile, and Keyrit uses every last portion of it to develop its own crops. Even buildings are a rarity in the area, save for a single fort left over from the Keyrit-Welokyi War. Keyrit by mandate demanded that all pieces of land be optimized. If a building could be destroyed to provide for new farmland, the owner was compensated and the destruction was enacted. Through this measure, and only through this measure, was Keyrit kept self-sufficient in terms of food. The Empire could only barely keep up with their population growth through innovations in crop rotation and soil enrichment. Keys to changing the environment were kept under lock and key, lest a foreign agent spread salt over a field and starve an entire city out. Keyrit had a much stronger and more reliable manufacturing industry. The hilly lands to the side allotted for small amounts of tiered planting but were more so covered by forests of large healthy trees. Some mountains became minerals, and some woods became lumber. Eryai Retwerai's drive to keep parity with Wlitowa and Tuhra, and later its adoption of the industrial revolution, led to the drive of dozens of separate industries for which ore and lumber would flow down from the hilltops. In manufacturing resources too Keyrit is self-sufficient, though it could always use more. Thankfully for the nation, Unterritory has limitless, and self-sustaining, supplies of wood and ore to harvest for manufactory.

Trade & Transport

Keyrit's large mountains are difficult if not impossible to traverse, so Keyrit uses floating barges attached to called urailu to transport large goods and services over land. With regards to international trade, Keyrit uses standard sea barges. At the dawn of large-scale economic trade, Wlitowan ships would harass the Keyrit supply lines, going so far as to choke Eryai Retwerai from its farming sectors. However, by the time Tuhra was conquered and Keyrit became a world power, Keyrit had a large enough navy to fend off raiders and pirates.

Keyrit was self-sufficient with regards to all resources. Not all Keyrit products had the finest quality, though, and Keyrit denizens were often interested in exotic new fads. For this, Keyrit consumed a large quantity of imported goods. Low-quality, low-price manufactured weapons were always in high demand among factions that couldn't produce their own, so Keyrit developed many trade links with minor factions.

Education

Keyrit provides just enough education for an individual to become a productive citizen. For the vast majority of the populace, this means fast and loose apprenticeship and certification programs. When an industrial sector had excess workers, especially during the time of Welkwu's Industrial Revolution, private schools and universities were developed to establish more advanced jobs. While this might reflect a benevolent society on paper, subjects that didn't lead to productivity were never supported, and only a select few students would be given opportunities for higher education, exclusively based on merit and intelligence. Poor performance would revoke education privileges.

Yetoi tar' t'kroh-kou: Justice is a lie; Takaka tar' turayi: War is glorious

Founding Date

1359

Type

Geopolitical, Empire

Alternative Names

Keyrit Empire, Keyrit'kra

Demonym

Keyrityi

Leader Title

Takalak: Daskalarch

Head of State

Ikata Ewira: Giantess General

Government System

Monarchy, Constitutional

Power Structure

Unitary state

Economic System

Market economy

Currency

Wyitlingka, with a different royal seal than that of Wlitowa. Currency was later switched to small nickel pieces called "Aungka."

Legislative Body

Each law follows the Wyau-tak, literally Five-Point, System. Each body of government, less the judicial branch plus the population, depending on its unanimity, obtains a point count: Populace: (1-x)-1, where x is the fraction of the House in favor of a bill. Maximum of three points, minimum of two. House of Majorities: (1-x)^-1, where x is the fraction of the House in favor of a bill. Maximum of five points, minimum of two. House of Minorities: Three points for a nine-tenths vote, two points for a majority vote. Monarchy: One point for favor Daskalarchy: One point for a majority vote. In order for a standard law to be passed, the law must obtain five points' worth of support. That same law can be repealed with the same five points. Constitutional Amendments and similarly more drastic bills follow a Byzantine chart of point counts, mostly more than five. In extremely rare instances, bills pass the House of Majorities and never reach the other houses. Usually, bills are passed or rejected as they move through the branches of government. A third of the House of Majorities must agree to pass the bill on to the people, and many accept defeat willingly. A few fiery politicians were all it took, though. In the early years of the legislature, hundreds of bills flooded the ballot boxes for a popular vote. The popular vote used to have a five point maximum, but, once saner minds regained control of the government, that maximum was reduced to three. For a law to be passed, it would at least have to go through the government, to the chagrin of loud, unpopular activists.

Judicial Body

The goal of the judicial branch is not to enact justice upon those who commit crimes. Rather, it weighs the fate of criminals by, if they were set free, the likelihood of another crime being committed. A man could kill his wife and family and still be set free under the right judge. If the crimes would be committed but could not be committed after certain conditions were imposed, the judiciary would enact those impositions. For the previous example, the man would be prevented from marrying ever again, or perhaps kept far away from kids on pain of death. Rapists would be castrated, and drunk drivers would lose their licenses. The judiciary was given free reign on the method of their prosecution by the rest of the government, first because no one had thought to regulate them and then out of a sense of tradition. As a result, for the more unique crimes, many cruel and unusual punishments fell upon the heads of unlucky criminals. An unprofessional band of teenagers was found guilty of disturbing the piece. The ears of each of the members were cut off, under the rationale that they would never enjoy and so could never make loud music again. This was a rarity, though; the stories were dramatized and overhyped in order to act as deterrents for other would-be criminals. There were a few instances where criminals were too dangerous to be allowed to roam free. The mentally ill, the impeccably sleazy, and, if the monarchy was feeling too cruel, the political dissident were all thrown into federal prisons. There, volunteer doctors and psychiatrists were allowed to look after their ills. Curing the political dissidents of their dissension was a particularly unnerving process, but the Keyrit Empire did not do so often. The death penalty was reserved only for the most despicable, or for those who resisted the training too much. Criminal rights groups were kept to the far back of politics. Because the horror stories were so rare, popular political movements worked towards helping a larger amount of people, such as free housing movements.

Official State Religion

Togkou: Seven Truths

Parent Organization

Doyog Ouar: Doyog Pact

Subsidiary Organizations

Official Languages