Arkvera

Arkvera is a state of the Kiravian Federacy located in northern Great Kirav

Geography
Arkvera borders Kiygrava to the east, Kastera to the west, Kiorgia and Veskembria to the south, and the Íravokan Sea (a marginal sea of the Coscivian Sea) to the north. Aside from the the northern fringe of the state, which forms part of the Coscivian Coastal Plain, most of Arkvera lies in the Eastern Highlands.The Glaslév Mountains (Gaelic: Sléibhe Glasa) and Holy Queen’s Mountains traverse the state, and its terrain is dominated by the foothills, valleys, and plateaux surrounding these two ranges. Arkvera has a climate and is heavily forested, primarily with various species of pine, spruce, and fir, but also with deciduous trees such as maple, hazel, beech, ash, oak, and hornbeam, especially at lower altitudes.

The Ispeln Gap, a comparatively flat located near the centre of the state, is home to the state’s largest city, Ivotren, and its capital, Xarxanden.

Politics & Government
Arkvera is a presidential republic within the Kiravian Federacy, governed in accordance with a written constitution, the Constitutive Charter of Arkvera. Its unicameral legislature, the Stanora, is elected biennially by a system that returns one member for each of the state’s 60 countyships (elected by ) and 50 additional members. These additional 50 seats are redistributed among the countyships every 10 years according to population. Countyships allocated two or more additional seats fill these seats by, while those allocated only one additional seat fill it by alternative vote.

The Chief Executive of Arkvera (also styled the Governor of Arkvera) is elected every six years by alternative vote. As in many other Kiravian states, the Chief Executive must resign their membership in any political party before taking office, and cannot officially campaign as a particular party’s candidate or coordinate campaign activities with any party, though parties may unilaterally endorse and campaign on behalf of a candidate they favour. Unlike in most states, the Governor does not have the power of line-item veto.

The Arkveran electoral system and permissive ballot-access laws have resulted in a large number of political parties (and a large number of independents) gaining representation in the State Stanora. No single party has commanded a majority in the legislature since 21169, and the Stanora is now generally divided among 15-20 small parties and 5-12 independents after any given election. While a few of these parties are primarily programmatic and ideological in nature, most represent different ethnosocial, economic, and local/regional interests. Examples include the Coastal People’s Party (representing coastal communities and the Arnóriem population), the Civic Justice Party (representing the Antaric Coscivian population), and the Subterranean Labour Party (representing miners’ interests). Although the post-Kirosocialist political process in Arkvera is differentiated from the “coalitional presidentialism” seen in Kastera, Iscavia, and the federal government by Arkveran governors’ more limited involvement in the legislative process, it is similar in that the many small parties active in the legislature must form broad coalitions in order to control the chamber’s procedural powers and pass major legislation.

Society & Culture
Arkvera lies at the intersection of the North Coast, Eastern Highland, and Mid-Continental cultural regions, all of which have influenced the culture of the state. The largest ethnic groups in Arkvera are Kiryanvi Coscivians (including the Kandem and X group), Gaels, Ĥeldican Coscivians, Highlanders, [Antaric group that gave the name], Sedhem, and Arnóriem, though many other Coscivian peoples have settled in the state over the centuries, especially in the larger cities and along the coast. Aboriginal Kiravites account for some 12% of the population.

The official languages of Arkvera are Kiravic Coscivian and Gaelic. According to some reports, a more Arkverans speak Gaelic than Kiravic if second-language speakers are included. Native Gaelic speakers are most highly concentrated in the upland western regions that abet the officially-designated Gaelteacht region of Kastera, though Gaelic-speaking villages and neighbourhoods can be found throughout the state. Gaelic primary and secondary education are widely available, and courses in Gaelic as a second language are offered in most Kiravic-medium public schools, where they are popular with Coscivian students.

Nohæric is the literary register of Kiravic used by the state government and in newspapers, and public schools students are taught to read and write Kiravic according to Nohæric conventions. [A-Kiryanvi/B-Kiryanvi] is the spoken dialect of Kiravic most common in the central lowlands and valleys, while Highland dialects predominante in the eastern and southern parts of the state. The speech patterns of the state’s significant Féinem population, as well as Gaels, Ĥeldican Coscivians, and many Highlanders when speaking Kiravic (whether as a first or second language) can be classified as part of the Fenian Kiravic dialect continuüm, reflecting considerable influence from Gaelic. Despite its relative poverty, Arkvera has nonetheless been a major contributor to Kiravian cultural and intellectual life. Many Insular Apostolic and Coscivian Orthodox monasteries were established in Arkvera as early as the 20550s, which fostered the production of much ecclesiastical music and art, as well as a prodigious literary output in both High Coscivian and Gaelic on topics as diverse as Christian theology, Shaftonist philosophy, linguistics, botany, brewing, and the cultures of local Aboriginal tribes.

The renowned Kiravian author Íoan Érolin, known for his travelogues which inspired the Kiravian romantic and neo-romantic literary movements, was born and raised in Xarxanden, where he began his journalistic career and composed some of his early works. Although he spent most of his career travelling and had been living in Kérvoak, Ilánova at the time of his death, Érolin’s works have been claimed as part of Arkveran literature, and his remains were transferred from a Kérvoak ossuary to the State Stanoral Cemetery in Xarxanden in 21192. County Érolin in far southern Arkvera is named in his honour (although biographers of Érolin believe that he may have never actually visited that part of the state).

The Nohær Academy of grammar, rhetoric, and philology, located in a town of the same name near Ivotren, played a major role in the development of Kiravic Coscivian from a frontier creole into a literary language, formulating the stylistic, grammatical, and derivational conventions that defined the Nohæric literary register of Kiravic. Although Nohæric is one of several different literary registers used in modern Kiravia, it is unquestionably the most influential, with most modern literature and journalistic writing being composed in Nohæric.

Economy
Although much less developed than neighbouring Kastera and Kiygrava, Arkvera has made much progress since the end of Kirosocialism, graduating to the status of an ‘upper-middle income state’ (Kiravix: hévdipārnax ārka). While it still lags behind the other Eastern and Northern coastal states, it has attained a standard of living and degree of economic diversification surpassing the Highland and inland states.

Mineral extraction has long been the state’s most important industry, owing to its significant deposits of coal, bauxite, chromite, zinc, lead, [etc.], and more recently natural gas. Arkvera is still in the process of recovering from the resource curse and Kirosocialist freight-equalisation policies that have hindered its economic growth, and the state and federal governments have implemented a number of programmes to repair the damage done to the Arkveran environment by centuries of intensive mining.

Alquifer Incorporated operates the Green Ranges Brewery in Ciduon, which produces the most widely consumed spruce ale in the Federacy.