Almadaria

Almadaria, officially the Democratic Republic of Almadaria, is a country in Vallos, a subcontinent of Sarpedon. It is neighbored by Arona and Vespera to the north and Takatta Loa to the south. Its shoreline extends against primarily the Polynesian Sea, though its eastern border includes a shared freshwater body of water with its western neighbor. The Democratic Republic is a megadiverse nation, with one of the highest biodiversity per square kilometer across its rainforest, highland, grassland, and desert zones. The economy of Almadaria has significant government intervention, with most public services resources (water, electricity, transport, telecommunications, healthcare, etc.) being controlled or funded by the government. Nevertheless, private industries, including foreign ones, flourish in established free trade zones which benefit all involved from tax incentives and domestic investment. Almadaria has a high rate of literacy, and an equally high level of higher education attendance; this has contributed to both the growth of the economy as well as the standard of living. The tourism, financial sectors are the two major contributors to Almadaria’s GDP. The government of Almadaria is a presidential, representative democratic republic with a multi-party system. Based on Cartadanian practice, it is broken into three branches (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial), though the legislative exercises significantly more power over the executive, primarily by having no ability to be vetoed by the President and being able to set the government budget.

Almadaria underwent intense political instability in the later twentieth century, its primary cause being decades of political repression under President Sergio Arbelaez. Despite Arbelaez leaving office in 1996 and sweeping political reform thereafter, a low-intensity conflict against fringe guerilla and criminal groups exists to this day.

Almadaria is a member of the League of Nations. Though nominally non-interventionalist, the government does willingly lend its armed forces to the peacekeeping efforts of the organization.

Etymology
Almadaria originates from a loan word from ninth-century Caphirian observers to describe the region of Vallos that had a ‘soul of its own’, possibly referring to its incongruity to the rest of the Undecimvirate’s territories and increased combativeness of the Kings with one another. Other speculation suggests that the divided nature of the land, with indigenous groups and Taineans split on either side of the Undecimvirate’s southern borders, created a interminable friction with the Caphirian-placed Kings. ‘Almadaria’ went on to describe primarily the northern half of the modern-day nation, though centuries of cultural diffusion and political interdependence– though no particular demographic diffusion took place– had roped the southern part under the Almadarian umbrella.

Ancient Era
The first accounts of the native inhabitants of Almadaria, the Vallosi, came from southerly-migrating Taineans after 500 BCE which later reported the complete disappearance of those very same Vallosi. It is suspected that the the Cronan-Vallosi hybrid peoples, originating from the north, and the later limited Polynesian advances northward, displaced or assimilated the Vallosi. Little remains of the Vallosi save for genetics and relics of their material culture-- notably shark pottery, which had been particularly advanced in the Gulf of Natosolea, utilizing high-fired ceramics and earthenware with ash glazes as early as 1700 BCE. Particular to Vallosi living in the Marcete Bay area were beads with a unique green glazing made presumably from tree sap.

The primary makeup of political life was small communities, often agricultural, harvesting rice and raíva, a starchy root vegetable. Most evidence of the Vallosi, and later Tainean peoples that merged shows that they were sophisticated fishermen, using nets and large canoes to bring in even deep-sea fish.

As Adonerii Latins swept across the continent from 650 BCE to 100 BCE in their concentrated and infrequent settlements, larger political formations began to emerge. These typically were no larger than the city-states they emulated, but the increased concentration of population was paired with the consolidation and exportation of culture and trade. Routes through the jungles and over the tropical grasslands enabled a flourish of Tainean and Latinized indigenous written languages, and commodities such as rice and textiles flowed in bulk, as well as a burgeoning spice trade.

By the end of the 2nd Century BCE the Cakai Kingdom, heavily inspired by Latin tradition and practice, had organized efficient and ubiquitous trade, becoming an economic heart of antiquity Almadaria. Its reach became so wide that Cakai ships travelled along the eastern coast of Vallos seeking new trade routes and partners.

With the coming millenium, increased instability in other parts of Vallos paired with resentful Tainean-majority polities led to a collapse of the community around the Cakai Kingdom, as its trade dwindled and influence waned.

First Vallosian Warring Period and Tainean Predominance
In the power vacuum left the Cakai Kingdom in 18 BCE, widespread conflict ensued between numerous city-states over the duration of centuries. Though the fighting was typically omnidirectional, there were many instances recorded by the historian Pendongeng of conflicts being fought along clear Tainean-Latin lines, such as the Pont Wars (130-154 CE). A consequence of this period of turmoil was the loss of earlier periods' artistic faculty, with most creative works-- beyond cheaper reproductions of the bona fide-- diminished to funerary works, such as unglazed earthenware pots.

However as the period of intense disorder grew to a close, many of the coastal societies that dwelled on what was once the seat of the Cakai Kingdom were shattered and reeling from the destruction to their lands; droves immigrated to the north and south, looking for stability and prosperity. The former lands of the Cakai Kingdom would never know the same level of prosperity and would remain in obscure villages for the following centuries.

As the region stabilized, it became clear that there was a new power to answer to; that of the Tainean Empire. The Tainean Empire grew from the conflict, at which it fortunately was stationed at the periphery, by having warfighting experience at navigating the dense inland jungles. While this staved off most adversaries, what truly caused the Empire's rise to power was its connections over Lake Remenau, which facilitated trade between other Vallosian polities. A strategy of piggybacking the newborn Lake Remenau slave trade and cunning pragmatism with their neighbors allowed the Tainean Empire to flourish. Traded frequently through the Empire was gold and spices, bringing the Empire into prominence. Even word of the Tainean Empire's prosperity reached the annals of the Caphirian Imperium, from which delegations were later cordially dispatched.

The Tainean Empire also saw social upheaval; the Taineans, traditionally found in subservient roles, found themselves elevated to merchant and administrators. Surprisingly, even with a Tainean-majority government, most records point towards the Tainean Kings having an even hand with its denizens of Latin, and even Polynesian, descent. This attitude, at the end of a bloody period in history, is claimed by many to have shaped the modern world by not splitting Vallos down racial lines.

Caphiric Undecimvirate
Soon, the calls of lesser kingdoms in Vallos became too much to ignore for the Caphirian First Imperium. Despite the relative calm of the region at that point in time, Caphirian Legions overwhelmed the recovering landscape of Vallos. In a series of decisive engagements, even the Tainean Empire was in full retreat, its crown and remainder of its forces fleeing south of the Gulf of Natsolea.

The Undecimvirate was not entirely Caphirian; though tributaries of the Imperium, the eleven kings that ruled over their respective fiefs all over Vallos were given a great degree of latitude over their agendas, so long as the tributes were on time (and as it often was, overloaded). Nevertheless, the Undecimvirate implemented a social order distinct and entirely exclusive to the former powers that reeled in the south, licking their wounds from the Caphirian invasion. While the Caphirian policies and organization revolutionized society in the north just as the Adonerii Latins had, indigenous and Tainean powers were left sidelined or left behind entirely.

Significant infighting, to a degree, became the status quo of the Undecimvirate. Each King, with their own armies and own agenda, fought petty wars to plunder one another. Among the most successful was the Portana Undecimvirate, whose pragmaticism and strategic decision-making helped to keep them always at the top of the tributaries.

Second Warring Period
With the waning of the Second Imperium came increased uncertainty among the Caphiric kings. As the threat of Caphirian intervention to enforce the terms of their agreement subsided, so did the unwritten rule of self-conquest among the Undecimvirate. When the Second Imperium finally collapsed in 1172 CE, Caphirian Vallos was already in a quagmire of internal conflicts, and the death knell of their administrators was the final straw.

With no divinely-inspired armada and legions behind their back, the Kings of the Undecimvirate quickly lost legitimacy, falling into a desperate civil war that mimicked the one happening on mainland Sarpedon. Adding to this was the rump Tainean Empire, in conjunction with other marginalized groups in face of the Undecimvirate, taking advantage of the instability and annihilating any hope of such a united Vallos, taking up around half the land area of the subcontinent, forming ever again.

The Neo-Tainean Empire, formed out of the altered territories and renewed by plundering the classical marble-and-limestone cities of a greater empire than them, quickly took back much of its former territory. With the pressure of Caphirian influence gone, many of the more southerly Polynesian states began to organize, forming prominent Kingdoms to oppose their Tainean-majority neighbor. Tainean kingdoms emerged in the north, too, taking inspiration from indigenous cultures, becoming the Manaqids and Lipipiqs, which persisted for hundreds of years until the end of the 2nd Warring States Period.

Many new kingdoms formed in the ashes of the Undecimvirate, made up of a completely new cultural force than what had existed in their place in 700 CE: the Cuasilatinos, their societies heavily imprinted on their Caphirian forebears.

Those that remained in the image of what had been were exiled and rapidly receding. The Kingdom of the Ossanids (1172-1530), and short-lived Latinic Kingdom attempted to hold onto the Caphirian stability they had once known, but found themselves embroiled on all sides with hostile native Vallsian kingdoms, trained in the same style of warfare as they, and eager to conquer those who had once represented power.

In the meantime, the power imbalance would soon stabilize; in the north, the Kingdom of Septemontes, the east, the Neo-Tainean Empire, and in the south, the increasingly organized and Polynesian kingdoms.

Free Kingdom Era
During this time, it became increasingly apparent that through a series of alliance-building, selective conquest, and upward progress recaptured from the Caphirian Undecimvirate, the Kingdom of Septemontes became a power in what would be northern Almadaria. The Kingdom, made up of Cuasilatinos, largely adopted the structure not of the Undecimvirate but of the Imperium ; an absolute power resting in the monarch while the Christian faith was enshrined as part and parcel of government. With its streamlined hierarchy, efficient government, and ambitious leaders, the Kingdom of Septemontes fostered a period of western Almadarian prosperity with its rebuilding and maintenance of durable limestone aggregate roads and beneficial relations and profitable trade agreements with its neighbors, such as the Principality of Auctodoria of which it was suzerain, or the city-state of Mareterra.

While the Neo-Taineans and the Cuasilatinos maintained an uneasy truce with a buffer zone between them, the Kingdom of Septemontes picked off its adversaries one by one. Beginning with the Manaqid Wars (1353), the Kingdom methodically conquered the Manaqids, culminating in the Battle of La Cancha (1354). The Treaty of Avevalles (1361) further reduced resistance to the gathering power of the Kingdom of Septemontes by promising non-interference to the closed Ossanid Kingdom. The expansionist Latinic Wars (1410-82 CE) reduced the holdover Latinic Kingdom to broken, shattered tribes. By 1400, the Latinic Kingdoms had become further weakend and divided than they were at the start of the century.

In the court of Septemontes, amidst Manaqid insurrections and other trivial matters of state, the King, or Rei, Fernando Olmedo III, inheriting the Kingdom from the nearly-150 year-long line of the Olmedian dynasty, set his eyes across the waters of the Gulf of Natosolea. The former Undecimvirate had already been well-plundered and its rulers established, but those that had escaped the clutches of the Caphirians were considerably weaker, less developed than the Cuasilatino societies that had formed. Rei Olmedo III sent the first surveyors across Vallos to document the south that the north had seemingly left untouched since the days of the Cakai Kingdom. However, his reign was devoted primarily to managing its subjects and muddling through the messy remains of first the Lipipiqs, then the Latinic Kingdoms.

Across Vallos, the absence of the Undecimvirate and its strict, necessarily vicious infighting became internalized. In time, policy and inter-Vallosian violence cultivated by incessant tributary conflict and two Warring Periods was directed both outwards for the first time and further inwards. The formation of Piratocracies essentially represented the first native Vallosian expression of foreign policy; the interception and self-enrichment off of another nation's trade. Meanwhile, as pirate kingdoms formed in the north and south of Vallos up to 1600 at their peak, it had a stifling effect on coastal civilizations across the board. For those left out of the pirate trade, it produced an opposite effect; inter-Vallosian trade through land routes were established, to circumvent the threat of pirate attacks as well as build up inland economies and urban centers, producing more pirate-resilient societies.

During this time, however hostile the interchange was between Vallos, Sarpedon, Levantia, then Crona, Catholicism spread south and became in some places the primary religion overnight. In 1566, Asunción Duque II (Or Asunción the Catholic) baptized themselves a Catholic and pressured subject and ally alike, although Christian, to convert. When the Kingdom of Oustec was founded in 1566 and quickly established itself as one of the foremost northern Vallosian powers, Catholicism found itself as having paved the way for close relations between Oustec and the Kingdom of Septemontes. The two were strange bedfellows, considering the thoroughly illegitimate basis of the Oustec crown, but the maritime power of Oustec I and the manpower and minerals of Septemontes made the two prosper together. The Congress of Lacusentia (1570) formalized relations between the two Kingdoms, and from then on their fates would be roughly linked.

Early Modern
The turn of the 14th century established the Kingdom of Septemontes as a major component of western Almadaria; the turn of the 16th century established it as a major power of Vallos.

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Government and Politics
The Democratic Republic is a presidential representative democracy, sourcing its constitutional principles and and general framework from the venerable legacy of participatory government of Cartadania. The nation's first constitution, fully ratified in 1847, outlined three branches of government in accordance with the principle of separation of powers, dividing it into executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Following the 1995 Constitutional Plebiscite, reform lessened the power of the executive in its authority to manage clandestine or secretive operations, as well as setting up measures for increased government accountability, including several extragovernmental oversight institutions such as the Office Inspectorate of Almadaria (Oficina Inspectorado de Almadaría).

The government of Almadaria, sometimes styled as 'GRDA' in informal internal documents, is touted as a successful indigenous Vallosian democracy, with a strong democratic traditions that persevered in face of international conflict and internal crises. Its multi-party legislature, well-established judicial, and kept-in-check executive branch are at the heart of Almadaria's democratic institutions.

Almadaria is known for its distinct constitutionally-enshrined election process, known as 'rat cage elections' among the population, which pits all candidates against one another in a primary election, regardless of party affiliation, and generally the highest four candidates in votes go on to a secondary election. This nonpartisan election process has kept any one party from gaining superiority over one another, diversifying and increasing representation of otherwise marginalized groups. This practice extends from the national government to local governments, though with some variation.

Though the Democratic Republic currently notionally stands as a stable democracy, the reality is far from utopic. Since the Constitutional Plebiscite of 1995 in which inter-branch relations were altered and new checks on executive power were introduced, the government of Almadaria has suffered a personnel crisis involving persistent low-level corruption and unwillingness on most wings of government to accede to the new watchdog measures. Despite many of the checks and balances now levied against the President, the bureaucratic complexity of their branch of government hinders comprehensive oversight, particularly areas of off-the-book interactions or especially 'grey campaigns'. Grey Campaigns are particularly topical in Almadarian constitutional thought, mainly due to the analysis between their moral or ethical shortcomings (or violations) and their necessity for national security.

Executive
The 1995 Constitution of Almadaria re-establishes the Executive Branch as headed by a popularly elected President, who selects their Vice President and cabinet. As a balance to the judicial branch, the Ministry of Justice (clearly delineated under the executive branch), responsible for areas of national law enforcement and administration of law, is headed by the Attorney General, answers to and represents the First Court of Almadaria in Presidential affairs.

The President of Almadaria, serving as head of state and head of government, is elected by popular vote in a nonpartisan 'rat-cage' election to serve a single five-term term, a precedent established in the so-called 'stripping down' of the executive. At the regional level, executive power is vested in Provincial Governors (Almadarian: prefecto), then municipal alcaldes (mayors).

The Cabinet of Almadaria is made up of nine ministries, whose heads are selected, without Legislative veto, by the President. The Ministries and their senior official serve not only as administrators of their respective national focuses, but in an advisory role to the President and Vice President in implementing policy. Subject to frequent government restructuring, the members of the Cabinet as of 2032 are: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Environmental and Resource Concerns, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of the Interior.

Legislative
The National Legislative Council is the sole national legislative body of Almadaria. As a unicameral entity, the National Legislative Council (CLN) consists of a frequently-held, XXX-seat convocation. The seats on the CLN are elected democratically from municipal districts every two years.

The National Legislative Council is presided over by the Council President, voted into power by the unicameral body, in order to oversee the institution and the management of its numerous parasite agencies. In order to be eligible for Council President, one must have already been elected into the CLN. There are no term lengths.

The large body of the National Legislative Council is only summoned in its entirety for major policy proposals; otherwise, it is not uncommon for handfuls of councilmen/women to meet in committees, smaller semi-permanent organizations to research and develop policy. Most of these committees are impermanent, although there are committees, named Popular Agencies, which are long-standing; many of these exist as oversight bodies and liaisons to their executive Ministry counterpart, though other concern standing issues, including ones such as anticorruption, intelligence oversight, and constitutional debate.

Judicial
The Judicial branch is made up of institutions present at every level of government-- at the national level, it is represented by the First Court of Almadaria. The First Court is headed by four high courts: consisting of the Civil High Court, for penal and civil matters; the Constitutional High Court, which weighs policy produced by the CLN against the principles of the Almadarian Constitution and established precedent thereof; the State High Court, which in turn manages the executive branch by establishing administrative law; and finally, the Auditor's Court, which is a self-regulating agency of the First Court.

Members of the the First Court of Almadaria are selected by the National Legislative Council and approved by the President. These judges serve terms no longer than twenty years.

Federal subdivisions
At the national level, Almadaria is divided into XXX Departments and one capital district, separate from the municipality it forms. The departments are divided into provinces, ran by prefects (Almadarian: prefectos). These are further divided into subnational entities of municipal districts, or municipalities.

Each of the levels has a local government with a governor (in provinces, prefects; municipalities, alcaldes), though deprived of legislative bodies. At sub-national levels, most positions are directly elected, unlike the President's Cabinet.

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