NATION APPLICATION

Shortform name: Sora
Long/native name: Soran Federated Republic (Res Publica Federata Soranense)
Real life culture influence: Mix of India/Ethiopia/Indonesia with Western Europe
Real life culture of former colonizer: Jeongmi (Korean)
Population: 317,064,727
GDP (PPP) per capita: $11,112
GDP (nominal) per capita: $2,698
Military manpower (active/reserve): 214,000 / 87,000
Language(s)🇦
Quite a few, it’s a big place. I want to play with the linguistic variety derived from no national consolidation in the 19th century and have some parallel to Modern Standard Arabic as a koiné on top of non-mutually-intelligible dialects. In Sora, there would be a “Modern Latin” (actual name context-dependent) as a prestige variant superimposed on a plethora of dialects (IRL languages d’oïl, langues d’oc, Gallo-Italian dialects, Italian dialects, Iberian languages/dialects, maybe a BART-inspired dialect, etc.)

The idea would be to have this kind of breakdown as L1 speakers:

65% different Romance dialects (incl. native speakers of “Modern Latin”)
15% Celtic (Gwaelic)
12% Nordic/Finnish (in the north of the country - I’m picturing some Ruci migration from modern-day Ninukun)
3% Greek (coastal areas in the south-east)
3% Jeongmian (among the Ijok communities who either did not flee or returned after the country’s stabilisation in the post-Emergency period)
2% Others (Etruscan, Albanian, Ossetian, etc.)

[Happy to adjust to add more diversity to make it fit the canon, like in terms of Albanian communities in the far-east or add Osetians/Alans, etc.]

Nation description🇦

The Soran Federated Republic is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious federal state in Western Yoju. The country is a parliamentary republic under a dominant party system, as the Democratic Centre (CD/KD/DS, 민주주의 센터) has governed the country since the end of the National Renovation military junta in 1990.

Although elections are free and relatively fair (especially by West Yoju standards), the country is a “flawed democracy” owing to continued political violence, the existence of violent paramilitary forces (e.g. the Gwaelic Boko Haram), as well as significant pressure on independent media due, in particular, to the country’s stringent legislation on hate speech (which has been criticised as enabling the harassment of political opponents). Widespread corruption continues to be a problem in the country.

Over the last 20 years, the country has experienced unprecedented economic growth, graduating from low-income to lower-middle-income in 2022. This export-driven growth model is helping Sora overcome its historical backwardness, particularly the long-running period of anaemic economic development and political crisis that essentially marked the decades following the Soran Emergency. However, this economic growth is not without consequences: Economic dislocation, rural exodus, growing inequalities and pollution - not for nothing smog has become a big problem - are all issues that have arisen in the last decades as a result of the quick industrialisation and modernisation of society and the economy.

History

History-wise, the territories of what constitutes modern-day Sora have been inhabited since the first Homo sapiens arrived over 25 thousand years ago. However, the more direct ancestors of modern-day Sorans (and West Yojuans), the groups of hunter-gatherers who spoke the first Itihasic dialects, can be traced back to the 10-11th century BCE as this population displaced or eradicated the previous farming communities in West Yoju and took over their sedentary, agrarian lifestyle.

The fluvial valleys of [name] river saw the emergence of the first proto-state urban centres, which prospered thanks to agricultural surpluses and the first rudimentary trade links with the Bolythni peoples and down the Ioccueighean peninsula, in particular. During the 6th century BC, the southern areas of modern-day Sora and Ioccueighe saw the emergence of powerful tribal alliances and city-states vying for control of rich lands and trade routes.

Consolidating these first state-like entities in Ioccueighe and southern Sora eventually led to larger geographical entities. By the 4th century BCE, the most powerful of these groups were the Falerii, the Sisolenses, the Rutuli and the Capenates. These groups all spoke Soranic languages and worshipped the same version of the broader Itihasic pantheon. Further north and west, Gwaelic tribal confederations, like the Salasii, abounded, as did some !Iberian speakers (who may have been related to Iparmatsetans).

Among these various groups, the ultimate victors were the Capenates (or Capnians, after the main settlement-turned-city of the Capenates), which, through a combination of diplomacy and military conquest (aided by a network of alliances and the freedom with which Capnians granted defeated enemies and allies citizenship-like status, a factor that set them apart from other city-states and gave them a sizeable demographic advantage). By the 2nd century BCE, Capnia, the city-state, had become a powerful entity encompassing modern-day Ioccueighea, Pacheol, south and central Sora, southern Burgandie, Jeyangdo, Kiri, and parts of Barthia.

Capnian Empire (150 BCE-1123 CE)

Although not a monarchical entity from the get-go, but rather a republican, oligarchic regime, the entity that consolidated power in most of central You is now known as the Capnian Empire. This empire lasted - in various forms - for over a thousand years, and still plays a central, defining role in the identity of the country (not for nothing Soran ultra-nationalist groups defend Capnianism as an ideological tenet).

[some roman empire-style stuff, idk yet]

First empire-less period

The 1120 great invasion of Digor [alt-Ossetian] warlord Ashkhadar put an end even to the legal fiction of an Empire still existing. Modern historians consider the sacking of Capnia by his forces in 1123 to mark the end of the classical period of Soran history. The violence of the conquest and the destruction of cities that opposed him unleashed a period of de-urbanisation, epidemics and violence with the rise and fall of small entities now that the different duces of the late Empire became sovereigns in their own territories.

Ashkhadar would die in an ambush in 1125 in northern Sora against the recalcitrant Gwaleic tribes. After his death, the continental empire he built - based on bonds of personal loyalty and kinship - quickly unravelled. The brutality of the invasion, which destroyed pre-existing entities, together with the double impact of famine and various rolling epidemics, meant that in the two decades after 1123, about 1/4 to 1/3 of the population of modern-day Sora had perished.

Sora would see the atomisation of power as various members of nobility - whether Soran, Gwaelic or Digor - and the few surviving cities struggled to retain control and establish new forms of social hierarchy and legitimacy, separate from the now-defunct Imperial Cult and the Empire. At the same time, the first folksflytt (approx. 1150-1270) in northern Sora took place - as Rocian and other !Nordic peoples migrated in large numbers across the Northern Ocean to settle, fleeing devastation back home and taking advantage of the emptied lands.

By the 1250s, southern Sora saw the establishment of a more or less stable state system, albeit marked still by a substantial decentralisation of power and more-or-less constant low-level warfare. These new polities were the kingdoms of Valeria, Senonia, Valentia, Savia, and Tarbellia, which controlled much of the hinterland of the country, in particular, the rich agricultural lands in the south and extended northwards until reaching the dense forests of northern Sora, where less structured forms of governance - the Gwaelic and West Rocian chieftains - controlled the territories and managed to stop them. Along the coastline, old and new settlements became powerful city-states that grew rich and powerful from trade with the Napsal and Mennefer.

The first Empire-less period [really need a better name] saw the arrival of the Napsali merchants and missionaries to the cities and kingdoms on the southern coast, treading the centuries-old seaborne routes. Beginning in the 1190s, these traders came accompanied by Sabbatarian holy men and mystics. Although the different strands of Sabbatarianism had been present in the empire, the association of Soran polytheism with the imperial state and cult meant that it had only been another one of many more-or-less tolerated cults. The disappearance of the state and the general state of chaos in the post-imperial world opened new opportunities for conversion.

Black Cap Sabbatarianism would quickly spread among the merchant elites of the city-states and would soon be adopted by the aristocracy of the Soran [and Barthian] kingdoms, who saw in the new religion a new form of legitimacy for the rule separate from the transactional relationship that characterised the monarch-to-divinity exchanges under traditional Soran polytheism.

During the early 14th century, as the power of the different monarchs recovered and economic and demographic growth rebounded after the imperial collapse era, the old pentarchy of states saw the rise of three main rival kingdoms, Valeria and Savia (founded by Soran elites) and Ochulia [from Georgian ‘utskhoeli’ meaning foreigner, a kingdom founded by Ossetian nobles who remained in Sora], above all other entities of the pentarchy as well as of the powerful Salacian League of coastal cities.

The monarchs of Valeria and Savia, having adopted - superficially, if nothing else - the style and legitimacy of Sabbatarianism without abandoning the traditional religion, waged war on the smaller kingdoms and, in particular, against the Ochulians. In this context, an epidemic wrought havoc in Sora in the mid-1300s, giving birth to a period of instability and constant Barthian raids that would continue until the rise of what historians call the ´First Soran Empire’.

First Soran Empire (1383-1577)

The elopement and marriage of the future Valerian and Senonian monarchs Livia and Lissander in 1376 in the context of the Valerian dynastic conflict following the death of Mark III would see the dynastic union of the two kingdoms. After defeating the League-backed armies of the other pretender to the Valerian civil war, Clodio, in the battle of [name] in 1379. From that moment on, the two monarchs embarked on a consolidation of power through marriages and military conquests that meant that, by the reign of their grandson, Lissander IV (1454-1470), most of the !Romance-speaking parts of Sora were united under the same crown.

This dynastic conglomerate quickly became known as Sora, drawing back to the imperial tradition from which the new Soran Empire heavily drew. In particular, beginning with Livia and Lissander´s patronage, the Soran emperors sponsored the rebirth of the traditional Soran religion against Sabbatarianism through the construction of temples and academies and the sponsorship of the priesthood and philosophers. The old imperial cult from the Capnian era was revived, too, as Livia and Lissander became ‘diva’ and ‘divus’ posthumously.

Trade with Napsali merchants across the ocean brought, in this period, the first handheld guns. While Sorans had used basic artillery pieces since the era of Ashkhadar, it was only in this period that guns became far more widespread, changing West Yojuan warfare and helping the expansion of the Soran emperors northwards.

Although the reign of Lissander V (1524-1568) saw the maximum territorial expansion of the Soran Empire and is often considered the zenith of imperial power, the combination of his anti-Sabbatarian zealotry and continued campaigns in [northern Sora region] against the Gwaelic kingdom of Perfeddwlad eroded the kingdom’s coherence, by ignoring domestic issues enraging the cities and the nobility of Sora while weakening its military capacity. With his death in 1568, while most areas of Perfeddwlad had been conquered and the perennial rebellions that Lissander V fought to put down, the cost to the empire was significant.

Lissander V’s untimely death, without an apparent heir and with two of his sons claiming the throne, saw the first major internecine conflict in the empire since its founding. With the military, the nobility and cities split between contendents, power fractured as both claimants to the throne essentially lost control of their partisans, and the country, by the 1580s, was united in name only. The chaotic situation saw the resurgence of the Gwaelic chiefdoms and kingdoms in the north and invasions of Gottisch and Barthian people, pushed west by the expansion of Nuki power. The death in battle of [claimant1] and the assassination of [claimant2] ended the civil strife as the empire’s last remaining institutions devolved locally.

The colonisation of Sora was a prolonged process that depended on tactical breaks by Jeongmian colonisers rather than a precise goal, given the country's lack of interesting (for a coloniser) natural resources. The long-drawn process began in the late 16th century with the establishment of Jeongmian—and other colonial powers (see nearby XX)—fortified trading posts along the coast, in particular in today’s Gramsho Bay area.

In the context of the alliance between the Soran Emperors of the Oscian dynasty first and Jeongmian trading companies and as a result of the dynasty’s weak grip on power in the face of the growing threat of the Nukigurun Empire, the ability of Jeongmian traders first, and later Jeongmian officials, to support Sora gave them growing leverage, which would have brutal consequences during the 18th century.

Second Soran Empire [1704-1780, -1889*]

The successive power vacuum would be shorter. In the southern region in the delta of the [river], King Adrian I of Oscia [from Auscia] (r. 1685-1709) took advantage of the close trading relationship with Jeongmian traders. Combined with the marriage alliance with the Senonian kings and the hiring of Barthian mercenaries, Adrian managed to conquer during his reign most lands of the First Soran Empire and by 1701, he was crowned as the new leader of a reborn Soran Empire.

Under Adrian II (1709-1743), the Empire had to contend with new Nuni incursions and those of !Germanic peoples were pushed westwards by its expansion and a major rebellion in Tarbellian lands driven by a local mystic. The Empire’s growing commercial ties and military dependence on Jeongmian support saw Adrian open the country to the first Jeongmian settlers and military advisors, as well as the granting of lands around the port cities, in particular after Sora was forced to refinance its debt in 1738.

Adrian II’s death without a clear successor prompted a new dynastic crisis that would not be resolved until 1756 and with the independence of several provincial governors and rebellions of Faeddhist chieftains that had been subjected by Adrian I. By 1756, however, following the battle of [name], the fate of the Empire was essentially done for, as up until 1780, the successive Emperors increasingly relied on Jeongmians and granted them greater privileges.

When Emperor Cornelius I passed away in 1779, he was succeeded by his son, who became Emperor Emil I. Unlike his father and his ancestors, Emil I sought to distance himself from the Jeongmian party in court, which had unsuccessfully backed his younger brother, Quintus. He began a campaign to weaken the influence of Jeongmian proprietors and merchants. This campaign's high point would be revoking Jeongmian licenses to export wine, Soran horses, and bison furs and informally supporting attacks against the estates of Jeongmian-owned plantations.

The attack on the estates of [Korean guy] would be self-defeating. Already, tensions with the Jeongmian court were high, and the (accidental, supposedly) killing of [Korean guy], whose family had significant clout at court, turned a diplomatic incident into an open war. In late 1780, the War of National Humiliation (the Jeongmian-Soran War) began.

Colonial Sora

Given the technological discrepancies, the 1780-1 Jeongmian-Soran War would be short. Although originally started as a way to punish Emil I for his anti-Jeongmian attitude, Jeongmian naval bombardments of the coastal cities were soon followed by the amassing of troops, a mix of Jeongmian troops, bannermen of the partisans of pretender Quintus and those of well-established Jeongmian factors (large plantation owners). In April 1781, the armies of Emperor Emil would be defeated at [battle name]. Although Emil was captured alive - and did not practice the traditional suicidium - he was forced to abdicate and was imprisoned in Ingyeong for the rest of his life.

Instead, the pro-Jeongmian party at court reigned supreme as Quintus was crowned Emperor (r. 1781-1800), and he surrounded himself (or was forced to surround himself) with Jeongmian advisors and landowners. Quintus rewarded his supporters and the Jeongmians with great estates from defeated enemies and opened the country to Jeongmian traders without needing licenses.

Although Sora would remain nominally independent, if closely tied to the commands of Ingyeong, during the reign of Quintus I, his heirless death in 1800 following an outbreak of tuberculosis (or Jeongmian poison, if one believes Soran nationalist historians) saw a new wave of upheaval and rebellions. In response, Jeongmian troops would be once more deployed, and in 1801, with their support, Emperor Praxedes was crowned. His first act would be to sign the Treaty of [name], which turned Sora into a Jeongmian dependency.

During the first couple of decades in the 19th century, Jeongmian rule did not differ very significantly from the old imperial regime: While new commercial and agricultural practices were introduced, it would not be until the 1860s with the introduction of railways and the first settlement campaigns in Gramshi Bay that colonial rule can be considered to become genuinely colonial. During this period, the power of the Emperors was increasingly limited, as a new administrative apparatus, with Jeongmian administrators for districts, was set up.

The arrival of Jeongmian capitalists aiming to exploit the fur trade in the north and the fertile agricultural lands saw the first uprising among troops and peasants. Of these, the most serious uprising would occur in 1889 when rebels came to control most of the country´s interior in the name of the Emperor before being defeated. The result was the formal abolition of the Imperial title. Nevertheless, occasional peasant uprisings would occur well into the 1940s. Likewise, colonial authorities would face the same issues that Soran monarchs had faced in confronting the Gwaelic chieftains and kingdoms in the north. However, through a mix of bribery, conquest and the settlement of Sorans in the area, the area was pacified by the 1910s.

[more colonial shenangigans]

By the 1920s, the growth of an urban (and urbane) educated middle classes in colonial Sora’s urban centres, some educated in Sora and others in Jeongmi, would see the birth of Soran nationalist parties, whether they defended a broad Soran identity or narrower ones based on the vernacular dialects of Soran. Likewise, the large-scale agricultural estates and the wood-cutting and copper mining in the country's northern areas saw the first signs of socialist agitation and organisation.

Nationalist politicians and the more moderate socialist elements would form the first modern political party in Sora, the United Front for National Independence, the ‘United Front’ for short. The different socialist movements would slowly coalesce around the All-Soran Workers' and Peasants' League (ASWPL), founded in 1932.

Although these political movements were largely peaceful, with their demands mainly focused on greater autonomy and political participation, the violent response from Soran colonial authorities would see the creation of the first armed paramilitaries, which consisted of armed men to protect UF and ASWPL rallies and open-air meetings, or occasional attacks on colonial infrastructure, in particular, railroads.

The rapid advance and occupation of Sora by Nonun troops during the Great Eulhae War (1935-43) upended the colonial administration, driving away the Jeongmian troops. It established a new administrative apparatus and supported and armed the UF and ASWPL’s paramilitaries. The goal of the occupying forces was to bring an independent Sora into its orbit in the post-war period by sponsoring the creation of loyal administrators and military officers, taking advantage of the long-term exclusion of educated middle classes from the colonial administrative apparatus. This occupation fomented long-standing nationalist movements that initially emerged in the 19th century. Indeed, as Nonun troops began their retreat as other fronts demanded greater attention during the final phases of the conflict due to overstretched logistics, Nonun weapons made their way - with official sanction or otherwise - to the different nationalist paramilitaries.

Soran Emergency

Emancipatory and traumatic at the same time, the experiences of the war years combined with the attempted return of the Jengmian colonial apparatus to the status quo ante in 1942, despite the much more mobilised nationalist and socialist movements, as well as its weakness and isolation from the metropolis, degenerated into a guerrilla conflict that quickly pushed colonial administrators from much of the country. Only coastal areas and the larger urban settlements remained under Jeongmi’s control.

By early 1943, the United Front, the broad - and fractious - coalition of different nationalist and socialist forces, controlled much of the country. However, it faced difficulties in the southwestern areas inhabited by Ijoks and an upper caste of Jeongmian administrators. Indeed, in this rump colonial area, the colonial police force, the Gyeongmucheong, would impose a police state marked by ethnic violence leading up to the 1945 Bay Genocide.

[etc - to be discussed, I see it’s a joint effort]

Post-Emergency

After the signature of the Feurbach Armistice with the Communist authorities in control of north-eastern Sora (now Burgandy), the United Front launched an internal campaign, waged politically and through paramilitary groups, to destroy secessionist and socialist elements. During this period, the nationalist authorities killed an estimated 600,000-1,000,000 people accused of socialist or secessionist leanings. The period of violence lasted from 1957 until 1959, when the government decreed the end of martial law.

The period of republican history between 1959 and 1965 was marked by political instability, as the United Front’s competing nationalist personalities - and their militias - often fought in the streets of the capital and in Parliament. The period was marked by limited economic growth and corruption, as the authorities’ prosecution of Ijoks, in particular, sapped economic potential and its nationalistic, heavy-handed protectionistic policies wasted public money on prestige programmes with limited benefits or in the military, which became more significant political player during the period. In early 1965, Julian Escolar, became Prime Minister after a palace coup that forced Victor Tarquin out following the failure to put down a rebellion in northern Sora. Escolar, who came from the more moderate wing of the Front, put together a reformist programme to open up the country and improve relations with Jeongmi. As a result, he would be forced from power and executed by a group of military officers led by Colonel Lucien Melz.

After the 1965 coup d’état, a military junta, led by now Dictator (an ancient Capnian term referring to a leader temporarily appointed with absolute powers to deal with an emergency), Lucien Melz was established. After the removal of the UF and its cadres from power amidst several days of bloody fights, the new military government would put down a revolt of Ijoks and Soro-Jeongmians in the Gramshi Bay Area (1965-1967).

After 1967, the military junta became a mixed government, giving way to civilian leadership, the Front for National Renovation, which espoused a radical nationalist and Soran socialist ideology [guiding principles: nationalism, autarky, modernisation, secularism, decolonisation and classlessness]. The FNR was led by Melz and it engaged in a widespread programme of cultural, social and economic reforms while the regime introduced an oppressive police state (at least in the cities). The new military regime, thinly veiled as a civilian one, would take over the lands of the great Jeongmian and Ijok landowners and redistribute them to Soran farmers while the state engaged in discriminatory policies meant to build up national cohesion by enforcing Modern Standard Soran in schools and banning foreign names.

The late 1970s and 1980s were a period of limited economic growth and creeping authoritarianism. The FNR regime was confronted with tensions with Burgandy and ethnic flare-ups that the military would continue to put down. The state would engage in education campaigns, which raised the country’s literacy rate but otherwise failed to bring about social progress.

Indeed, by the late 1980s, the social and economic malaise of the Melz years, which also oversaw systemic corruption, created cracks within the FNR regime, between the hardliners around Melz - the so-called bunker - and younger reformists. These tensions would rise until 1990 when a group of liberally-minded army officers managed to redirect a bomber aimed to target a rebellion in Perfeddwlad to bomb the presidential palace instead, killing Melz and senior political and army officials.

The shock of the bombing and the assassination of President Lucien Melz, which was meant to open the way for a more liberal regime, would soon be overtaken by events. With a decapitated state and heightened tensions between the regime’s reformists and hardliners, opposition parties organised mass protests and mutinies in friendly army units, leading up to the assault of the National Convention’s building in December 1990, as the opposition came to control most of the capital. There, opposition leaders would declare a new Republic and the demise of the old regime. For weeks, opposition leaders rebuked assaults as opposition forces spread around the country.

In May 1991, reformist elements within the remains of the FNR regime managed to take control of the rump state, agreed to a ceasefire and began negotiations with the opposition. A new interim government was formed, led by Adalbert Hyun, until a constituent assembly was elected in May 1992. The new assembly was dominated by the Democratic Centre coalition, a broad alliance of moderate opposition forces together with the most liberal elements of the former regime. This was reflected in the 1992 Constitution: Sora became a federal, bicameral, parliamentary republic where the centre still retains significant powers, with strong guarantees for ethnic minorities and other social rights, but falling short of radical social revolution or lustration.

Since 1992, the Democratic Centre has governed the country, following a policy of export-led industrialisation by promoting and attracting foreign investment, which has seen Sora first recover from decades of economic mismanagement and has seen explosive growth driven by the arrival of foreign capital, first in the agricultural sector and now in manufacturing.

Despite this, the country still faced serious upheaval in the 1990s, including the anti-Ijok riots and inter-ethnic violence in 1993 and 1995 or the presence of Fiadhist religious fundamentalists in the far north.

Are you willing to drastically alter your nation in order to fit with Tiandi canon?: Yes
Main/puppet/NPC: Main
User (Wiki profile, Discord username, or NS nation): Rosen
Link to map claim (optional): https://imgur.com/a/siDTHnM
How did you find out about Tiandi?: Memory, I guess.