Melian Islands

The Melian Archipelago ({: Πολιτεία Μηλίου Αρχιπελᾰ́γους, : Mêlūssoé Hīrianžoé Yaššukotànaī, Coscivian: Meliax Èsoxorokéarita), officially the Protectorate of the Seven Churches and more commonly known as the Melian Islands, is a special theme and of the Kiravian Collectivity situated between the Sea of Canete and Sea of Istroya.

Ancient History
The geological foundations of the Melian Islands likely formed part of the complex of land bridges and shallow crossings from mainland Sarpedon that made it possible for humans to settle in Audonia around 25,000 BC due to short-lived climatic conditions that reduced the size and depth of what is known today as the Sea of Istroya, though the land area of the islands that remains above sea level today would have been high mountains at the time and almost certainly bypassed by these prehistoric voyageurs.

Population growth enabled by the proliferation of agriculture spurred the developmend of the first major urbanised civilisations along the eastern coast of Sarpedon around 3000 BC. The Melians found themselves squarely in the middle of a maritime network of commercial and cultural exchange between the proto-Istroyan city-states and Audonian civilisation, benefitting enormously from the bidirectional diffusion of good, technologies, and people between the two continents.

Early Christianity
The Melians were home to many early beachheads of Christianity. Major centres of growth of the new religion included Philadelphia, [City 2], [City 3] and [City 4], [City 5], [City 6], [City 7], and [City 8], of which the first seven are traditionally held to correspond to the Seven Churches of Revelation.

Mediæval Era and Crusades
The Melian Islands were taken by the Oduniyyad Caliphate in 728, kicking off a century of large-scale invasions into eastern Sarpedon, followed by subsequent campaigns by individual adventurers to establish their own Caliphate-tributary realms on Sarpedonian mainland. The collapsing authority of Caphiria during this period made the continent especially vulnerable. Due to the strategic location of the islands in the Sea of Istroya and prevailing winds, Caliphal campaigns were waged with relative logistic ease. By the middle of the 11th century, the entire ancient Istroyan world and eastern Sarpedon had been conquered by the Caliphate. The dynastic feuding and civil wars of the Caliphate beginning in the 11th century lead to the destruction of Christian holy sites in the Melian Islands, enraging the Christian world and leading to social and political calls for retaliation.

Crusaders managed to capture the archipelago during the Third Crusade, thanks in large part to the Coscivian shock troops of the Elamite Order.

Geography
The archipelago has a tropical climate with strong oceanic influences overall, with more varied and typically cooler climates created by functions of altitude and local wind patterns shaped by the islands' mountainous topography. The four major islands are: Melos (home to the capital, Thyatria), Kommenori (the largest island), Kazomalis (the smallest major island), and Chyros (known for other strengths).

Politics
The Melian Archipelagic Republic is operates under a in which executive power is exercised by a cabinet (the Ārkakirstuv, 'State Council') which is accountable to both a governor-president (the Vèurovektur, 'Prime Executive') and to the legislature. The legislature elects the prime minister (confusingly titled the Anosalur, 'President'). The Prime Executive may veto legislation,...defence/policing/emergency management, appoint judges, prerogative powers, signs State Council orders. The Prime Executive is elected every six years and may not serve two consecutive terms or more than three non-consecutive terms. The legislature, known as the Melian Congress, is elected every three years by. Each county is accorded a minimum of two seats in the legislature, one "open" (contestable by party nominees and independents) and one reserved for independent candidates. Additional open seats may be allocated to counties after each census based on their deviation from the mean county population. Candidates standing for the reserved-independent seats campaign using public funds according to the Báltagren System.

The main political parties in the Melian Isles are the Χ Party, Υ Party, and Ζ Party.

Ethnicity
The three main ethnic groups living in Istroya are the majority native Istroyan Melotes (78-81% of the population), Coscivians (9-12% of the population), and "Levantines", with the third term encompassing all Occidental Christians, not just those with roots on the Levantine continent. Smaller numbers of Audonian Christians and Alsharic people also live in the islands.

Some three percent (3%) of the population are Istro-Coscivians with ties to both the Istroyan and Coscivian communities. Istro-Coscivians are officially recognised as a distinct ethnic group and tuva in the Kiravian Federacy proper, but this recognition has not been extended to the Melian Isles themselves, where members of the community may be registered either as Istroyans or "Melian Coscivians" by the authorities.

The Jethrovians are a small ethnoreligious group that practices a derivative of Pythagorean monotheism. The Jethrovians originated from the Melian Isles, but today only a small community of three thousand remain, mostly in the Ephesian suburb of Midianos. Instead, the majority of Jethrovians today live in the Sydona Islands and Kaviska.

Religion
Before the arrival of Christianity, the predominant worldview on the islands was.

Language
The majority and first official language of the Melian Isles is. Each island is regarded as having its own subdialect of Melian Istroyan, which in general differs from other Istroyan dialects due to linguistic drift and the influence of other languages, particularly Audonian and Coscivian languages.

The Eteo-Melotic language spoken in the environs of Ephesus by the Jethrovians is, but has been influenced by Koiné Istroyan, Romance languages, Histan, and latterly by Coscivian. Despite its obscurity and numerically small speech community, Eteo-Melotic has a literary corpus of considerable size and age, though the Jethrovian clerical authorities do not allow most of their scriptures to be studied by outsiders due to a history of persecution.

General culture and demographics
The people of the Melians are predominantly apostolic Christians, with some of the earliest known Christian congregations having been planted there by the Apostles.

<!-- -Melotes have weird Pythagorean/Stoic/Neoplatonist religion. Developed from some indigenous tradition + Greek and Iranic influences from trade. -Melotes now consider themselves Coscivians -Ayyy lmao skeet-skeet mafakkahs

Melotes today consider themselves a part of Coscivian civilisation, the culmination of a trend that began centuries before the islands' annexation by the Kiravian Federacy. Pressures on the Melotes to conform to continental, that is, Ixnayan and Levantine, cultural hegemony and Christian orthodoxy led many Melote scholars, religious leaders, and rulers to look towards Kiravia and Sydona, with their history of religious pluralism and philosophical traditions that bore similarities to the Melian religion, as a counter-hegemonic alternative. The monastic scribe Ataxes of Harambé developed an orthography for the Melotic language based on the Coscivian script in [YEAR], which almost completely displaced the Greek alphabet by [Later YEAR]. The modern literary register of the Melotic language has adopted some morphological features from High Coscivian and a significant quantity of Coscivian loanwords, while the local dialect of Kiravic has, in turn, absorbed a great deal of vocabulary and some phonological features from Melotic.

In Melian society, ethnic background is thought of as correlating closely with altitude: Lower-altitude areas of the archipelago tend to be more heavily Melote, while higher altitudes with a more mild climate are more heavily populated by people of Éorsan Coscivian ancestry. This leads to certain expressions common to the islands such as álivāsdras ōvim ("doing it the up-slope way", referring to an upper-class and mainland Kiravian way of doing something), and the more idiomatic ēmribūvāsdras Kartikad ("just downslope of Kartika", referring to extremely high-altitude regions).

After conquering the archipelago, the Kiravian administration undertook the gradual deportation and scattering of ethnic Qyronians from the island. The 21200 Federal Census counted some 6,920 Qyronians, mostly living on the outskirts of Artisar-Íervisar and Mirśamur. Qyronians do not have Kiravian nationality and live as stateless persons. In 21207, the federal government announced that it would seek a deal to resettle the remaining Qyronian population in Chawaland, an overseas colony of Ganos Lao.

There are also a number of foreigners living on the island, primarily Hekuvians and Kommenorenes. The Melians became a popular destination for Kommenorene political émigrés after [Name of Conflict(s) HERE], many of whom live in stately villas on Ketrya and Dúconia islands. In addition, a significant number of Kommenorenes have come to the islands as guest workers. Hekuvians have long had a presence in the Melians in connexion with trading activities, but the number of Hekuvians swelled significantly during the 21120s construction booms on Ketyra and Astándra, arriving with Hekuvian building contractors and raising awareness of the island's natural beauty and affordable real estate in their homeland. -->

Economy
The Melians have long been an important trading centre, owing to their position between the Sea of Istroya and Sea of Canete. The Melians were involved in intercontinental commerce between Levantia and Sarpedon for many centuries, and later became an important entrepôt as trade opened up between the Occident and Audonia-Punth-Alshar. Commerce and transportation remain crucial sectors for the islands' economy today.

The agricultural sector accounts for a large percentage of the territory's GDP. Melian agriculture measures up to that of the breadbasket states of the Kiravian island continent in efficiency and productivity, aided by advanced mechanisation, biotechnology, and agronomic knowledge. Coffee production in the Melian Isles provides the territory with its most valuable agricultural export. Other tropical produce such as breadfruit, palm oil, pepper, cloves, cacao, mangoes, eddoes, bananas, and dragonfruit are grown as well.

Sub-orbital transportation is also important to the Melian economy. The islands are an important way station between Great Kirav and the Sydona Islands, and between the Sydonas and Kiravian Punth. Melian members of the Federal Stanora have pushed for closer trade relations between the Federacy and Pukhtunkhwa, from which their territory would be geographically well-poised to benefit from.

A tourist industry catering mostly to Levantine visitors and Kiravian hikers and scuba divers is a key source of growth for the service sector, underpinning the economy of numerous coastal communities located near well-maintained beaches and reefs.

Valuable nickel deposits on Ketrya Island are expected to enter production in 21209.

Notable Melians

 * Pharides of Zukharno - Ancient political philosopher known for his works on human nature, warfare, and the state. Citizen of the ancient Melian city-state of Zukharno, now the town of Súxarnon in County Thalen.
 * Daron Ladaxēva - Chess grandmaster and reigning national champion.
 * Alphegos Kassenin - Eminent mathematician and physicist, known for his role in the Kiravian Federacy's nuclear weapons program. Born and raised in Mirśamur.
 * Ansgar Therōsdur - Xth Governor of the Melian Isles, born in Intravia, but a resident of Thucydia for over a decade.
 * Biggus McDickus - Senior naval officer, born in Mirśamur.