Ardmore

Ardmori Cooperative Republic Ardmóri Comarchun Poblach (Garán Gaelic)
Flag Coat of arms
Motto: Aonaichte ann an Obair, Aonaichte tro Eachdraidh ("United in work, united through history")
Anthem: Syndic's March
Capital and largest city	Dunvál
Official languages	Garán Gaelic
Demonym(s)	Ardmori
Government	Unitary dominant-party syndicalist parliamentary republic
• President	Duncan Hamill
• Board of Labor Chair	Kellen Melns
• General Assembly President	Aloysius Rooney
Legislature	Cooperative Legislative Assembly
• Upper house	Board of Labor
• Lower house	General Assembly
Establishment
• Cooperative declared	March 1927
Population
• Estimate	18,276,501
GDP (nominal)	estimate
• Total	$552,352,413,222
• Per capita	$30,222
Currency	Ardmori Syndic (ARS)

Ardmore (Garán Gaelic: Ardmór), officially the Ardmori Cooperative Republic (Garán Gaelic: Ardmóri Comarchun Poblach), is a country consisting of several islands off the western shore of Levantia in the Odoneru Ocean.

The people of Ardmore, known as Ardmoris, are considered members of the Garán people, sharing this identity with the people of Carolina. Much of their heritage results from the blending of Gaelic and Gothic cultural traditions that occurred in Carolina and adjoining areas in the years leading up to the collapse of Great Levantia. Garáns are thought to have invaded Ardmore and settled it in the mid-6th century, though no unified Garán polity emerged on the main island of Great Ardmore; loose alliances of mainland cities and tribes were formed with the newly established Garán cities and tribes on the island, soon becoming various feudal polities before the 10th Century. These new polities frequently battled and raided against one another, often with grave consequences on its agriculture before resulting in an economic collapse in the 1140s after the end of a major power struggle between two of its major duchies.

The new kingdom was established in 1277 after the conclusion of the Council of Moear, but it would not be until 1365 and after the wide-ranging Duke's War when it would emerge as a relatively centralized power. The royal consolidation and centralization of power allowed for Ardmore to become a major colonial power during the age of exploration, with one of its largest colonies being what is now modern-day Arcerion, itself having been a self-governing colony of Ardmore from 1890 until becoming independent after the end of the Ardmori monarchy in 1927. Largely unaffected by the sectarian disputes that caused the Great Confessional War, Ardmore became prosperous in the 16th and 17th centuries, with its colonial holdings greatly expanding due to the increased number of Protestant settlers looking to go abroad.

The uneven prosperity of Ardmore, combined with a greatly uneven period of industrial development in the 18th and 19th centuries, lead to considerable class resentment and domestic problems. The growing rifts between the parts of society lead to the Ardmori Civil War, which resulted in the establishment of a syndicalist republic in Ardmore. The Civil War resulted in the partition of the country into Ardmore and New Ardmore, which existed briefly as a constitutional republic under the personal leadership of the last Prince-Regent of the Kingdom of Ardmore, and subsequently as a protectorate of Kiravia. Ardmore today is a relatively developed nation which is adjacent to, but not part of, the Levantine Union's political and economic sphere. Although an outspoken critic of Urcea and Levantine foreign policy in general, and despite its revolutionary form of government, Ardmore has been making an effort to more closely align with Levantia in recent decades.

Etymology

"Ardmore" likely derives from ancient Paleo-Levantine people who inhabited the islands probably known as the Ardmen, and originates in Adonerii sources.

Geography

Ardmore is comprised primarily of five islands, the largest of which - Great Ardmore - comprises the vast majority of the nation's land mass and contains nearly all of its population. It sits entirely in the Odoneru Ocean, and to its east it shelters the Mirana Sound.

History

Pre-Kingdom history

Prior to the arrival of the Garán people to Great Ardmore, a wide variety of people are thought to have lived on the island and the adjoining parts of the archipelago. Adonerii cities were established on the island by 600 BC, representing the furthest northern outposts of that civilization. The Adonerii cities were relatively sparsely populated compared to the rest of the Latinic world, and few historical records survive from them. From what records do exist, historians believe the islands were mostly populated by a Paleo-Levantine people likely known as the Ardmen, from which the islands get their name. Very little is known about the Ardmen, though they continued to inhabit the interior of the island when it became a tributary of Great Levantia in ca. 50 BC. Great Levantine influence on the island was limited, with the few urban centers largely sending tribute to Urceopolis with little to no Levantine military influence on the island. Like much of the area, the earliest peoples of Great Ardmore - both Latinic and Ardmen - relied on fishing. The islands were not especially prosperous and were not along the main, Crotona-based trade route between Sarpedon and Levantia, and were considered a backwater during antiquity.

As Great Levantia entered terminal decline, the region of what is today Carolina became a pourous frontier which saw the emergence of the Garán people as a blend of invading Gothic people and local Gaels and Istroyans who had been resettled from Tromarine centuries before. Continued invasions of Goths led to many borderlanders seeking new lands elsewhere, and the first Garán warbands are thought to have arrived in Great Ardmore in the late 400s in small numbers, serving as mercenaries by the coastal cities against the Ardmen tribes in the interior. A major invasion of the island by Garáns occurred at some point in the mid-6th century, with the lightly populated island easily overcome by the numerous mainland invaders. The Ardmen and Latins, long thought by historians to have been slaughtered, were likely incorporated into the new social system, and many Ardmoris today are thought to have some descent from Ardmen.

Medieval period

Early medieval era

Main article: Medieval Ardmore

The early medieval era in what is now Ardmore began with the Age of Raiders when the various clans of the Ardmori Isles began to transform into feudal dynasties. These clans were under a loose cooperative organization that consisted of the chief's extended family, with each having a common set of shared values of honor and a strict code of discipline within a social hierarchy. Indeed, this organization would eventually transform into the basis for a formal feudal structure alongside the development of feudal dynasties. Due to many of these feudal dynasties not having much in terms of means to produce a sizeable amount of wealth due to the largely non-arable geography of the Ardmori Isles, the heads of these dynasties soon resorted to conducting land raids against both Calinthia and, to a much lesser extent due to its ability to effectively fight back, Urcea. Indeed, one of Ardmore's earliest greatest heroes, Pádraig MacDowell of the House of Kilkken, was killed in 877 while conducting a raid on the Urcean coast.

The practice of raiding would soon disappear before 910 with the advent of border skirmishes, the rise of a landed gentry, and the introduction to the practice of knighthoods into the Ardmori Isles. The first major outbreak to have occurred on the Ardmori Isles was the North Island War, which started when Conn Rose, Duke of Rosmore and head of the House of Rose, began to attack the settlements of the County of Kilinmuir to capture the eastern port town of Granway and to subjugate the ruling Clan O'Coffey in 933. In response, Kilinmuir launched raids against Rosmore settlements the year after. The conflict would not escalate until the Battle of Ballyhill in 939. The Duchy of Rosmore would emerge victorious in 981, and the borders between it and Kilinmuir were delineated for the first line; Kilinmuir, however, was able to maintain its independence and would not have to swear an oath of fealty to Rosmore. The next major conflict on the isles was the South Island War which began in 944 when the Duchy of Dunval attempted to conquer the Duchy of Kilkken and fought alongside its ally the Lord Mayorship of Craignaisaig against Kilkken's ally the County of Balnaessie; the conflict ended in failure for Dunval in 962.

In 1061, Kilinmuir had formed an alliance through marriage with Rosmore, leading to the former to finally swear fealty to the latter. At the same time, Dunval had finally managed to conquer Craignaisaig as well as its ally Balnaessie. This soon led to the two growing duchies bordering each other, which due to a lack of a clear definition became a source of a major power struggle between the two duchies. This power struggle lasted for 88 years, with the Duchy of Kilkken siding with Rosmore due to its historical animosity against Dunval thanks to the South Island War. Through the use of raids and battles, the two duchies were able to maintain an equal footing until a decisive victory allowed for Rosmore to emerge victorious. This victory, however, was not to last as the constant wars and raids had impacted the economy so severely that it collapsed just months after the end of the ducal power struggle; it would not be until the 1270s when the economy of the Ardmori Isles began to significantly recover.

Formation of the kingdom

In 1277, the various heads of the many noble clans of the Ardmori Isles formed the Council of Moear to unite the many holdings under one universally-acknowledged leader, a King of Ardmore, to prevent any future power struggles from ever happening again. For a span of two months, the council had allowed for Rosmore, Kilkken, and Dunval to argue for why they should be the paramount leader of the isles. During these two months, the three factions were more often than not at odds with one another, but the council had ended with Rosmore being selected to become the paramount leader of the Ardmori Isles, a decision that was seen as highly controversial in part due to rumors that Rosmore may have bribed most of the council members in order to secure their support and because of Rosmore's plans to centralize the new kingdom. In response to these rumors, Dunval, Kilkken and its vassal Wissel declared a separate crowned republic in rebellion against the new Ardmori monarchy.

The resulting rebellion, known as the Duke's War, was a wide-ranging civil war that encompassed the entirety of the Ardmori Isles. Although the rebelling duchies held a numerical advantage, Rosmore held a tactical and strategic advantage thanks to its high centralization. Major battles during this war that were decisive Rosmore victories were the Siege of Craignaisaig in 1298 and the Sack of Balnaessie in 1364, the latter leading to the Treaty of Great Ardmore in 1365, formally establishing Rosmore as the paramount leader of the Ardmori Isles and as the royal family of the new kingdom. To ensure that there would never be another civil war to the scale of the Duke's War, one of the first edicts passed was the Clan Laws which was the first of many laws designed to repress the ancient clan system, which was a major aspect of Garán culture for many centuries and was a facet of the feudal system which had preceded the formation of the Kingdom of Ardmore.

Ardmori colonial golden age

Main article: Aster's expedition

Flag of the Kingdom of Ardmore from 1743 until its dissolution.

The Ardmori kingdom during its early centuries was a highly ambitious realm. As returning to raiding and attacking mainland Levantia was not only an impossibility but also a highly suicidal task now that many of the Levantine realms were more than capable to repelling these raids, Ardmore instead sought to explore outward to amass new wealth by finding the source of all gold; said to be a land to the far east beyond Audonia. This obsession with gold was the result of the traumas accrued with the advent of the economic collapse of the 12th Century. In 1387, Ardmore become the patron of the Ænglish mariner Paul Aster, whose hypothesis about the source of all gold greatly appealed to the Ardmori elite. The resulting expedition, despite not finding the source of all gold, led to the first time someone from the Occident had visited the continent of Crona, and by the time Aster had returned to Ardmore in 1389, he became the most celebrated person throughout the Occident; arguably even the world's first celebrity.

Ardmore was among the first Occidental nations to have entered into various trading relationships with the indigenous peoples of Crona, or rather the indigenous realms that were not hostile to the Occident. These trading relationships led to the emergence of some of the earliest Occidental settlements in Crona in the 16th Century, it being helped by the kingdom's relative stability even during the sectarian violence of the Great Confessional War. This in turn made these early Ardmori colonies expand as Protestant refugees fled the mainland in great numbers thanks to their expulsion from the Holy Levantine Empire, with a great many of these refugees being of Ænglish ancestry, some of whom have opted to even stay in Ardmore proper due to its relative religious toleration and independence from the Holy Levantine Empire. The lands in Crona that would become Arcerion and Malentina are home to the descendants of the Ænglish Protestants who have stayed in Ardmore; they migrated to Crona in the late 18th Century during the gold rush.

It was during the early years of the Ardmori settlements in Crona that conflicts would arise between the settlers and the indigenous peoples, escalating into the First of the Arcer Bush Wars in 1794 after an expedition of Ardmori settlers were massacred by native tribes. The Ardmori settlers retaliated by killing several small bands of indigenous peoples, who in turn retaliated by destroying the settlement of Bradford. To avenge Bradford, the Crown-Governor of the colony, John Hughes, issued a decree permitting militia captains Simon Thompson and Reginald Cole to mount an expedition to the interior for the purpose of finding and destroying indigenous settlements; the expedition was a resounding success and a tremendous shock to the indigenous leaders. Since that attack, the next several years were a series of further skirmishes and raids between the Ardmori and the indigenous tribes, ending in a resounding victory for the colonists in 1801 and allowing for the colony to expand further inland.

Civil war

Main article: Ardmori Civil War

Government

The government of Ardmore, officially known as the Ardmori Cooperative, functions as a left-wing Marxist syndicalist republic. Ardmore's political system is structured around the principles of cooperative ownership, direct democracy, and worker control of the means of production. At the core of Ardmore's governance is the principle of syndicalism, wherein economic and political power is decentralized and vested in autonomous worker-owned cooperatives. These cooperatives, organized by industry or locality, serve as the foundational units of Ardmore's political and economic structure.

Executive

The executive branch of Ardmore is composed of the Board of Labor, which acts as the highest administrative authority. This Board is comprised of representatives elected from various syndicates across the nation. The Board of Labor is responsible for overseeing the implementation of policies, coordinating among different sectors of the economy, and representing Ardmore in international affairs. The Chair of the Board of Labor, though nominally a mere presiding and administrative officer of the Board, serves as the de facto chief executive of Ardmore and directs the policy decisions of both the Board while serving as President of the Syndicalist Party.

Legislative

Ardmore's legislative branch consists of the General Assembly, an assembly of delegates elected by popular vote from local syndicates and communities. The General Assembly is tasked with drafting and approving legislation, as well as ensuring that the policies enacted align with the principles of Marxism and syndicalism. Decision-making within the General Assembly emphasizes consensus-building and participatory democracy, with deliberation and debate playing a central role in the legislative process.

Judiciary

The judicial system in Ardmore operates on the basis of popular justice, with an emphasis on community involvement and conflict resolution. Disputes are typically resolved through local assemblies or specialized tribunals composed of elected representatives from the affected communities. The judiciary's role is to interpret laws, mediate disputes, and ensure that justice is administered fairly and in accordance with Ardmore's principles of equality and solidarity.

Political Parties

While Ardmore is officially a single-party state (under the auspices of the Syndicalist Party), political pluralism is encouraged within the framework of syndicalist principles. Various political factions and movements exist within Ardmore, advocating for different approaches to achieving the goals of socialism and worker empowerment. These factions participate in open debate and dialogue within the General Assembly, contributing to the ongoing evolution of Ardmore's political landscape.

International Relations

Ardmore adopts a policy of international solidarity, actively supporting movements for social and economic justice worldwide. It seeks to establish cooperative relations with other nations based on mutual respect, non-interference, and the promotion of socialist principles. Ardmore is a member of several international organizations and alliances dedicated to advancing the cause of global socialism and challenging the dominance of capitalist imperialism.

Culture and demography

Main article: Garán people

With a population of 69,542,000 in the 2035 census, an increase of 6% over the last five years since the 2025 census, Ardmore's birth rates far outstrips its immigration from other countries with 5.72 births per woman. In 2035, 756,696 live births occurred compared to 556,696 deaths, while immigration in the country only accounted for 0.4% growth. Historically this population growth has existed since the 1970s. The average life expectancy for men in Ardmore is 80.2 years, while for women the life expectancy is 84.5 years. Median age for the population in 2035 was 25.5 years, a decrease since 2025 when the median age was 28.2 years. Economically stable with a strong, easily available healthcare system enables the high growth of the nation from native sources, though detractors have observed the low immigration due to harsh border controls.

Ardmore is an extremely homogenous country throughout its history, though most of the population can be considered Garán people.

Cooperatives

Cooperatives play a defining role in the daily life and cultural fabric of Ardmore. Rooted in the principles of solidarity, equality, and community empowerment, cooperatives shape various aspects of Ardmori society, including economics, social relations, and cultural practices.

Cooperatives are not merely economic entities in Ardmore but are deeply integrated into the daily lives of its citizens. Through active participation in cooperatives, individuals have a direct stake in the means of production and distribution, empowering them to shape their economic destinies. Workers find fulfillment and purpose in their work, as they are not merely employees but co-owners and decision-makers within their respective cooperatives. This sense of ownership and agency fosters a culture of innovation, collaboration, and collective responsibility, driving economic growth and prosperity across Ardmore. Cooperatives serve as vital hubs of community life in Ardmore, bringing people together across diverse backgrounds and interests. Within cooperatives, individuals forge bonds of solidarity and mutual support, transcending traditional hierarchies and divisions. Shared ownership and decision-making foster a sense of belonging and interconnectedness, creating strong social ties that extend beyond the workplace. Whether through cooperative farming, artisanal production, or service-oriented enterprises, cooperatives provide opportunities for community members to collaborate, share resources, and collectively address common challenges. Cooperatives serve as incubators of cultural expression and creativity in Ardmore, nurturing diverse artistic endeavors and cultural practices. From community-based arts and crafts cooperatives to worker-owned cultural centers, cooperatives provide platforms for individuals to showcase their talents, preserve cultural heritage, and celebrate shared identities. Cultural events, festivals, and performances organized by cooperatives serve as focal points for community engagement and cultural exchange, enriching the cultural landscape of Ardmore and fostering a sense of pride in local traditions and artistic expression.

Cooperatives play a vital role in promoting education and lifelong learning in Ardmore, empowering individuals with the knowledge and skills needed to participate fully in economic and social life. Cooperative schools, training programs, and educational initiatives provide accessible and inclusive learning opportunities for people of all ages and backgrounds. Through cooperative education, individuals acquire not only technical skills but also critical thinking abilities, leadership qualities, and a deep understanding of democratic principles and social justice. Education within cooperatives is not limited to formal instruction but encompasses experiential learning, peer mentorship, and hands-on participation in cooperative activities, fostering a culture of lifelong learning and personal growth.

Economy

The economy of Ardmore is structured around the principles of cooperative ownership, worker control, and collective decision-making. Rooted in the ideology of Marxism and syndicalism, Ardmore's economic system is designed to prioritize the needs and interests of its citizens while fostering social and economic equality. Ardmore generally has very high levels of income equality and quality of living, though its median income falls far behind that of most of its Levantine neighbors.

At the heart of Ardmore's economy are worker-owned cooperatives, which serve as the primary units of production and distribution. These cooperatives are organized across various industries, including agriculture, manufacturing, services, and technology. Each cooperative is democratically managed and operated by its members, who collectively make decisions regarding production, investment, wages, and distribution of profits. In Ardmore, workers have direct control over the means of production through their participation in cooperative decision-making processes. This democratic approach to management ensures that the interests of workers are prioritized, and decisions are made in the collective interest of the community. Workers are empowered to elect their representatives, establish workplace policies, and participate in strategic planning to enhance productivity and efficiency. Decisions within Ardmore's economy are made through a process of participatory democracy, wherein all members of the cooperative have an equal voice in shaping economic policies and priorities. Key decisions, such as investment strategies, production targets, and resource allocation, are made through consensus-building and open debate within the cooperative assembly. This inclusive decision-making process fosters a sense of ownership, responsibility, and solidarity among workers, leading to greater efficiency and innovation.

Resource allocation in Ardmore is based on the principles of equitable distribution and social justice. Cooperatives collaborate with each other and with local communities to ensure that resources are allocated efficiently and fairly, taking into account the needs of both present and future generations. Economic planning is guided by the principles of sustainability, self-sufficiency, and environmental stewardship, with a focus on promoting economic development that benefits the entire society. Ardmore places a high priority on social welfare and the well-being of its citizens. Basic necessities such as healthcare, education, housing, and food are considered fundamental rights and are provided to all residents free of charge. Social safety nets, including unemployment benefits, pensions, and disability support, are established to ensure that every member of society has access to a decent standard of living, regardless of their economic status.

International Trade

Ardmore engages in international trade based on principles of mutual benefit, solidarity, and fair exchange. It seeks to establish cooperative relations with other nations that share similar values and principles, prioritizing partnerships that promote social and economic justice on a global scale. Trade agreements are negotiated transparently and democratically, with an emphasis on protecting the interests of workers and safeguarding Ardmore's sovereignty and autonomy.