Kaviska

Kaviska Kígraskjön (Sedhan)
Flag
Country	Kiravian Federacy
Theme	Federation
Capital	Canova
Largest City	Valēka
Population	52,376,000
Chief Executive (Acting)	Marcus Árelius Irastonen (EXP)
Chancellor	Tarcisius A.D.V. Akriśenton (JDP)
Legislature	Trilateral Congress Council of State Legislative Congress Congress of Delegates
Stanora seats	5
Official languages	Kiravic, Kilikas-Valēkas
Other Languages	Paisonic Coscivian
Time Zone	Valēka Standard Time
Postal Abbreviation	KAV

Kaviska is the most populous state of the Kiravian Federacy, located in the northeastern region of Great Kirav. Home to Valēka, the Federacy's largest city and economic and cultural capital, Kaviska has long been at the centre of Kiravian history, with its economic, political, and cultural influence stretching far through time and space. Kaviska rose to great prominence during the Viceregal period of Kiravian history, became a major node of the Kilikas Enlightenment, and played a pivotal role in the Republican Revolution. It was the first area of Kirav to industrialise, and its merchants and mariners led the rise of Kiravia as a maritime and mercantile power.

History

Iaspara Peninsula

Imperial Era

Emperor Iavorius II separated the office of Grand Admiral of Ixnay from that of Viceroy of Kiravia, and reorganised the Coscivian colonies in Great Kirav into several smaller viceroyalties. The reduced Viceroyalty of the Kaviska originally extended from the northeast border of Hanoram to the southeast border of Harma, with undefined boundaries to the north and west. The Viceroy was relieved of responsibility for relations with the Gaelic polities of the Far Northeast, while remaining responsible for the ground defence of the northern and western frontiers. In 20324, all lands south of the Bay of New Hope were assigned to the Viceroyalty of Middle Kiravia. Now more closely resembling its modern shape, Kaviska now included the Dominion of Iaspara (centred on Valēka), the Dominion of Kanda (centred on Evira), the Dominon of Róvidrea, the Realm of Sedhedan, the Intendancy of the Upper Kaviska, and 2-5 shifting military districts covering outlying highland and northern areas, with their sparse populations of Gaels, Urom, and a few Sedhem Coscivian homesteaders.

Viceregal Period and the United Provinces

During the Viceregal Period, the Viceroyalty of the Kyigrava and Dominion of Ventarya were the two most powerful Coscivian polities in Great Kirav, more or less evenly matched in terms of population, wealth, and clout. However, the Viceroys of the Kiyrgava struggled to assert their authority against the various subregional assemblies outside of the Kyigrava Valley, and to defend their disputed territorial claims in the Iravokan region, Serikorda, Íarthakelva, and elsewhere against breakaway frontier republics and settlers from neighbouring Coscivian and Gaelic states.

From [decade] until the Republican Revolution, Kaviska and Niyaska were in a state of personal union. In the [decade], the Viceroyalties of the Kyigrava, Niyaska, and New Korsa (modern-day Etivéra and Váuadra), formed a military alliance and loose political union called the United Provinces to counter the influence of Ventarya and expand past the Aterandic Mountains into modern-day Hiterna and Kastera.

Valēka-based intellectuals took part in the Kilikas Enlightenment. This movement, which began in Kaviska, spread among the educated classes of the eastern Kiravian port cities, and brought renewed interest in the humanist arts and sciences, and new developments in political philosophy. Notable among these was the work of Kálastuv Vindarin, whose writings revisited the Shaftonist concept of kéarita (usually translated as "republic", though not entirely congruent in meaning with the Western term), which provided much of the ideological foundation for the Republican Revolution.

Confederal Period

West Valēka gradually came to the fore as the de facto administrative capital of the Confederate Republics. Although the Confederal Stanora in its early form convened for its biannual sessions on the Hanoram riverbank that would later become Kartika, that area's lack of infrastructure led to most government agencies being located in West Valēka. The Stanora itself moved to West Valēka after becoming a permanent body.

During the mid-confederal period, proto-industrialising Kaviska came to surpass Ventarya in population and economic output. Along with Etivéra and Kastera, it became the main desination for Coscivian immigrants, who saw little opportunity in Ventarya and the other states of South Kirav and Míhanska Bay, which offered few opportunities for land ownership and relied heavily on indentured labour. Although Eriadun was the largest city in the Confederate Republics of Kiravia for much of its existence, Valēka remained unchallenged as its commercial and cultural capital.

Socialist Period

Under the unitary state framework of the Kiravian Union, Kaviska became the Kaviska Region. The Svéaran Peninsula was detached from the Kaviska Region and merged with the former state of Bissáv to form the Kohokas Region, and the Ispahar Peninsula was detached to form the Kiygrava Region. Valēka was further separated from Kiygrava Region, becoming a directly-administered Union Municipality.

Post-Reunification

The Articles of Reunification agreed to by the Kiravian Remnant, Kiravian Union, and state governments (both free and exiled) affirmed that pre-Sunderance provincial boundaries would be restored, but required the restored federal and provincial governments to "enact such affirmative measures as necessary to preserve the special status of autonomous territorial units." The Reunification Council held that this clause did not apply to the areas partitioned from Kaviska, and that reïntegration of Svéara, Ispahar, and Valēka into Kaviska State would be automatic. Nonetheless, in the democratic spirit of the time, the restored Kaviska legislature presented the two peninsular regions with a referendum with two options: 1. Begin a process to seek admission to the Federacy as a separate state with the consent of the Kaviskan legislature and Federal Stanora; and 2. Remain part of Kaviska and commence a process to [the other thing]. The results were 78% Remain to 20% Leave in Ispahar and 63% Remain to 34% Leave in Svéara. There number of invalid ballots was unusually high. In Valēka, where the Kaviskan administration was not confident in a clear result for Remain, a different referendum was presented, with three options: Leave, Remain, and Neither.

Geography

Valēka, the largest city in Kaviska and all of Kiravia

Kaviska occupies a roughly wedge-shaped territory in the Kiravian Northeast. It borders the states of Livella and Eredlina to the east, the Íravokan Sea (a margin of the Kilikas Sea) to the north, the Aquaric Ocean to the southeast (sharing maritime boundaries with Niyaska and Etivéra) , and Arkvera to the west. The Kaviska River, for which the state is named, is fed by mountain springs just north of the state's geographic centre, and flows toward the southeast through the Kyigrava River Valley, ultimately bisecting the Iyaspala Peninsula before emptying into the Aquaric Ocean at Valëka.

Temperate mixed forests cover most of Kaviska

The state is quasi-officially divided into five geographic and economic regions: the Estuary-Insular region or Lower Kaviska (Yanxékiygrava) (comprising the Valēka metropolitan area), Upper Kaviska (Ixtékiygrava) (the northern Iyaspala peninsula and the heavily-populated Kaviska River Valley), Northern Kaviska (TuśkaKaviska) (encompassing the area between the source of the Kyigrava River and the Íravokan coast), and (NáriKaviska) Aterandic Kaviska (the mountainous regions on either side of the River Valley). Lower Kaviska is heavily urbanised and highly developed, owing to the concentric rings of sattelite cities and suburbs radiating outward from Valēka, though areas of the northern shore of the Iyaspala peninsula and the outer islands are more exurban. Though less extensively developed than Lower Kaviska, Upper Kaviska is characterised by exurban and rural areas of smallholds, poultry farms, and dairies, punctuated by medium-sized industrial cities such as Traur, Xéuleva, and Evira. Moving northward along the Kyigrava River, the cities give way to large towns and finally to smaller towns of 1-5,000 people, with the state capital of Alëdmar (population 212,000) being by far the largest city in the region.

Mt. Karáuna, Upper Kaviska

While Lower Kaviska and the southern portions of Upper Kaviska are ethnically diverse, Northern Kaviska and the northern reaches of Upper Kaviska have remained predominantly Sedhem since colonisation. Though there is some industry in Northern Kaviska, concentrated along the Íravokan coast, the hilly uplands are more agrarian and markedly less populated than either the estuary or river valley. Still, the region is more densely populated than the Aterandic mountain areas, which are home to small, scattered hamlets and isolated dwellings inhabited by Sedhem and Kiravite Urom.

Most of Kaviska has a supratemperate, humid continental climate, moderated by the influence of the East Sea. The more northerly cantons, such as Kanda, Duniver-Kinnírēdan, and Svéara, have a hemiboreal climate, and some mountainous areas in the northern and western parts of the state experience an orotemperate climate. Winters are harsh, but less so than in inland states of comparable latitude, and the Aterandic Mountains help to shield most of Kaviska from the lake-effect snow fomented by the Fresh Seas to its west.

Temperate mixed forests are the predominant pattern of native vegetation in Kaviska and covered most of the state's area until the late mediæval period, appropriate to its Laurentine climate. Moving northward and upward (altitudinally), the coniferous component of the species mix progressively increases as bioclimatic conditions shift toward the hemiboreal and orotemperate. Before the early modern era, the landscape of the Kaviskan lowlands was mostly a field-forest-wetland mosaic similar to that of the Kirish Plain (North Kiravian Plain) and Sēora, albeit punctuated by fewer glacial lakes. Beginning in the 17th century AD and peaking in the late 19th, Kaviska underwent major deforestation and wetland loss as industrialisation and urbanisation drove up demand for wood and peat, and the introduction of guano fertilisers enabled the agrarian sector to pursue extensive growth by bringing previously inarable land under cultivation, clearing woodland and draining wetland in the process. By 1912 AD only a few discontinuous pockets of the traditional landscape remained (mostly in Duniver-Kinnírēdan), with most of the lowlands converted to arable cropland and open wool and dairy pasture, interspersed with much smaller zones of new-growth forest. Since reunification, there have been moderately successful initiatives to restore and conserve the state's terrestrial ecology as part of broader national land rehabilitation/reclamation policies intended to mitigate the environmental impact of Kirosocialism on Great Kirav. Incentive programmes encouraging reforestation, silvopastoralism, and agroforestry have significantly increased the state's forest cover, as has the passive rewilding of former smallholds due to agrarian contraction. Over the same period, however, the landscape of Kaviska has also been transformed by extensive suburban development radiating outward from its major cities into previously agricultural tracts, inviting a new suite of conservation concerns.

Government

Cabinet Secretariat building in Aldēmar

The Commonwealth of Kaviska is a crowned republic with a tripartite legislative process and an independent executive led by an elected Governor.

Federal Politics

Federal Stanora Delegation

Member		Party	First Elected
	Fíodur Ivrameĥtin	Excelsior Party (FRA)	21185
	Deridan Vóstigarvan	Republican Moderate Party (FRA)	21196
	Alastur Tellūrid	Excelsior Party (FRA)	21196

As the Federacy's leading economic engine, international port of entry, and financial centre, Kaviska is a stronghold for the pro-business, ordoliberal Federalist Republican Alliance. The leading parties in the Republican Assembly are affiliated with the Shaftonist-Republicans on the Federal level, reflecting Kaviskan political culture's strong affinity towards free enterprise, public institutions, and political moderation capable of accommodating people of diverse views and backgrounds.

As the most populous state, Kaviska holds the largest number of electoral votes, and has often been a critical battleground in elections to the Prime Executure. In the 21200 Prime Executive election, Kaviska native and former Governor Andrus Candrin won Kaviska with 67% of the vote.

Local Government

As with most northeastern states, the majority (88%) of Kaviskans live in an incorporated municipality of some sort. Five classes of municipalities exist in the state: Grand City, City, Town, Township, and Hamlet. While hamlets and (to a lesser degree) townships are less autonomous vis-à-vis countyships than cities or towns, the classes are differentiated primarily by the internal structure of their governments. Countyships have less legislative power in Kaviska than in most states and are primarily responsible for providing public services, such as utilities, libraries, vocational schools, prisons, and tertiary roads. Education, land-use regulation, and community services (e.g. parks) are largely the domain of municipalities, and municipalities wield comparatively strong legislative and revenue powers.

Local elections are nonpartisan in all Kaviskan municipalities except for the Grand City of Valēka, which operates under a two-party system.

Law

Kaviskan law is derived from the law of the Coscivian Empire, and has been influenced by Sedhan customary law (especially in property law) and by Burgundine commercial law.

Four appellate courts, the Xéuleva High Court, the Evira High Court, the Ruastron High Court, and the Aldēmar High Court. Capital Court of the Republic (state supreme court). Kaviska's judiciary is the busiest and most expensive in the entire federation, and is known for its experienced judges and extremely competitive legal profession. More attorneys are licensed to practice law in Kaviska than in any other province, but the state's bar examinations and professional regulations are notoriously difficult.

[Insert outline of some actual laws here]

Kaviska has an actively enforced seatbelt law. It requires vehicle registration plates on both the fore and aft of four-wheeled motor vehicles, and on the aft of two-wheeled motor vehicles.

Economy

Reserve Bank of Kirav, West Valēka

Kaviska has the largest economy of any Kiravian Federal subject, and contributes over 15% of the Federacy's total GDP. The Kaviskan economy is extremely advanced and highly diversified, with major sectors including finance, manufacturing, biotechnology, information technology, international trade, insurance, publishing and media, consulting, land development, retail, agriculture, and tourism. Many of the nation's key economic and financial institutions ate based in the state, including the Federal Reserve Bank (the Kiravian central bank), Valēka Stock Exchange, and all five Kiravian credit rating bureaux.

Major business concerns operating out of Kaviska include

• Alterion Group (investment banking, Valēka)
• Imperial Bank of Kaviska (banking, Valēka)
• Konterra ÁLO (investment banking, Valēka)
• ÁLO Dókáreum (oil, gas, and petrochemicals; Valēka)
• Overlin Engineering (electronic equipment, Valēka and Xéuleva)
• SAK Þermidor-Āra (steel, Valēka)
• Stesixorea United (shipbuilding, Valēka)
• CPK Kōlixon Holdings (diversified investments, Valēka)
• Ansulatus-Ruon Corporation (network infrastructure, Tháspelan)
• SAK Ovestatarlum (Valēka)
• Ecuniversa International (insurance, Valēka)
• Crepuscula MT (insurance, Valēka)
• Kiravian Broadcast Systems ÁLO (television and radio, Valēka)
• ÁLO Mediarán (multimedia, Valēka)
• Targevran Corporation (manufacturing, Valēka)
• Iribisun Industries (manufacturing conglomerates)
• Archer-Garaí PLR (marketing)
• Seaborne Corporation (shipping)
• Eastern Semiconductors ÁLO (Computer hardware, Evira)
• ÁLO Vertex Atomcraft (atomic energy, Trár)
• Federated Financial (banking, Xéuleva)
• Macrhéa-Marín Computing (information technology, Esdrasar)

Economic History

[Imperial Era]
[The Canal]
[Age of the Sail]
[Industrial Revolution]

Market Transition

Kaviska was uniquely well-positioned to prosper from the end of Kirosocialism and consequent transition toward a market economy. The legal groundwork for Kaviska's market-driven economic reconstruction was already being laid before Kiravian Unification by the exiled state legislature, which enacted the Securities Exchange Act and related statutes to ensure that Kaviska had a well-crafted, modern regulatory framework in place to enable Valēka to retake its place at the head of the Mainland financial industry.

Other events also happened during this period that are worth describing.

Agriculture

Despite the urban and semiurban character of much of the state, Kaviska has a fairly vibrant and productive agricultural sector. The main crops are potato, rye, Coscivian cuckwheat, rapeseed, and cruciferous vegetables.

Society & Culture

Due to its large, extremely diverse population and central economic position in the federation, Kaviska has come to be regarded as a fountainhead of Kiravian and Coscivian culture. The southern and eastern portions of the state are the heartland of the Northeastern cultural region of great Kirav, which extends into neighbouring Niyaska and Etivéra. Centred on the Valēka Metropolitan Area, this region is home to its own distinctive Kiravic dialect, customs, cuisine, and cultural ethos influenced by the numerous Coscivian ethnic cultures that have settled there over the centuries. This region often acts as the cultural "face" of Kiravia abroad, from which foreign perceptions of Kiravia and Kiravians tend to be generalised.

More inland and upland regions of the state preserve a more traditional, rural culture dominated by the Sedhan Coscivian ethnic group, while some communities in the Aterandic Mountains are better placed in the Eastern Highlands cultural region.

Ethnic Groups

Paisonic Coscivians are the largest single ethnic group in Kaviska, followed by Kir people, Sedhan Coscivians, Æran Coscivians, Eshavian Coscivians, and Gaels, but the state is home to members of virtually every Coscivian ethnic group, as well as many non-Coscivian peoples, ranging from Gaels to Azikorians to the indigenous Tapkek.

Traditionally a Kir-majority state, large-scale migration from elsewhere in Kiravia and abroad since industrialisation has given modern Kaviska a highly multiethnic character. Many Kaviskans today are described (or describe themselves) as Úramdikir (roughly "hyphenated Kir") who speak Kiravic as their mother tongue and live in a primarily Kirish cultural context but also owe ancestry and affinity to other (mostly Coscivian) ethnic groups. Numerous (mostly perjorative) terms exist for the converse phenomenon of upwardly-mobile people who identify affirmatively as non-Kir but use Kiravic as their main language and do not live in a compact ethnic community.

There are two socially distinct populations of Eshavian Coscivians in Kaviska: The Green Eshavians, who have deeper roots in Kaviska, usually pre-Kirosocialist, and the Blue Eshavians, who are the product of more recent waves of migration from the Northeastern states and elsewhere. The two groups are so named for their alignment in Valēka's intracity sporting rivalry: older Eshavian families in Valēka mostly support the Valēka Metropolitans (who wear green uniforms), while newer arrivals mostly support the Valēka Emperors or the Bérasar Blues (both of whom wear blue uniforms).

Cosco-Ciattomi, Cosco-Yetruenes, Castics

Immigration

Because it contains the Federacy's economic capital and primary port, Kaviska has long been a gateway for immigration to Great Kirav.

The main cities where immigrants have settled in post-Kirosocialist times have been Valēka, [B], [C], and [D]. The largest post-Kirosocialist immigrant groups have been Azikorians, Thrakoscivians, Kulukusi refugees from Varshan, St. Kenneran and Pribraltarian Coscivians during their islands' independence struggle, Echoese, Beryllians, and {probably Cartadanians n' Kommenorenes n' stuff}.

Language

The primary and first official language of Kaviska is Kiravic Coscivian. There are several traditional areal variants and dialects of Kiravic native to Kaviska, including Róvidrean Kiravic (spoken in Róvidrea), Estuary Kiravic (spoken on the lower Iaspara Peninsula and the South Bank), Kandan Kiravic (in the environs of Evira), and Svéaran Kiravic (spoken on the Svéa Peninsula and influenced heavily by Eshavian Coscivian). In addition to these areal dialects, newer local dialects have developed in the state's larger cities since industrialisation, often quite distinct from the dialect of the surrounding countryside. Due to the eclectic mix of ethno-linguistic groups in the largest cities and strong neighbourhood effects, the population of Valēka and [other city] exhibit a diverse array of speech patterns, including many accents and sociolects identifiable with a certain part of the city or a particular social group.

Kilikas-Valēkas Coscivian, which is spoken by the Sedhans, Kerēgulans, and a few smaller Coscivian ethnic groups, also has official status in the state. In localities where its speakers predominate, Kilikas-Valēkas Coscivian is the primary language of public administration, and other communities where Kilikas-Valēkas speakers are a substantial minority (≥25% of the enumerated population) are obliged by state law to provide bilingual services and facilities.

According to the Census Bureau, all Cosco-Adratic and Elutic languages with at least 10,000 speakers in the Federacy had at least one speaker recorded as living in Kaviska on the AD 2010 census, reflecting the scale of internal migration to Kaviska (mainly the Valēka metroplex) from the rest of Kirav. Excluding Kiravic and Kilikas-Valēkas, the languages with the most speakers in Kaviska are Paisonic Coscivian, Ensciryan Coscivian, Gaelic, Antaric Coscivian, Erasan Coscivian, Eshavian Coscivian, Ibarran Coscivian, Lusonic, Síkutran Coscivian, Siderean Coscivian, Eskean Coscivian, Austral Coscivian, and Melotic Istroyan.

Language policy frequently surfaces as an issue in Kaviskan local politics, typically in connexion with the communitarian political mobilisation of Coscivian "ethnics" and non-native "regional Coscivian" diasporas, minorities, and immigrant groups where such people form concentrated populations. Kaviska's general approach to language policy since Reunification has been characterised by accomodation and subsidiarity, with lower levels of administration such as Valēka Metropolis, countyships, municipalities, election boards, and school boards given significant latitude to adopt language policies and services according to the needs and demands of their constituencies. For example, all election boards in Kaviska must provide ballot papers and other voter materials in both of the state's official languages, but the vast majority of them also provide such documents in additional languages. In the working-class, immigrant-heavy Aspihar canton of Valēka, the standard-issue election ballot is quadrilingual (Kiravic, Kilikas-Valēkas, Paisonic, Gaelic) and alternative ballots are routinely printed in 24 other languages for registered voters indicating a preference for that language, utilising 7 different scripts (Coscivian, Kyrillic, Latin, Istroyan, Odunaïc, Daxian, and Metzgul). At the statewide level, there have been numerous campaigns to obtain official status for other major languages - most frequently Paisonic, Ensciryan, Gaelic, and Eshavian - and to secure special recognition for the divergent Svéaran Kiravic dialect. These campaigns have been unsuccessful due to lack of support from outside any particular language's speech community, opposition from ethnic Kir and Sedhans, and the widely-shared concern that conferring official status on any one ethnic vernacular would necessitate extending the same status to many others and result in an expensive and cumbersome policy of hyper-multilingualism.

Religion

The Catholic Church is the largest single religious body in Kaviska. Jesuit, Franciscan, and Dominican missionaries established their earliest beachheads among Kiravia's Coscivian population in Valēka, and urban Kaviska would go on to become the main base of the Coscivian Catholic Church in northern and eastern Kirav.

[Patriarchate of Valēka/Othercity and All Kir']

The city of Xanten is the seat of the Coscivian Orthodox Church. Coscivian Orthodoxy is the traditional faith of Kaviska's largest ethnic group, the Paisonic Coscivians, as well as of other ethnic groups with large populations in Kaviska, such as the Kālatans, Ardónians, {etc.}

Over three quarters of Kiravians who profess the Jewish faith live in Kaviska, with most belonging to the Avramem Coscivian ethnic group and practicing Orthodox Judaism. The Avramem population is concentrated in Canova, West Valēka, County Ālkūdan, County Tapanin, and County Séarlas.

Architecture

Colonial star-forts are found in many older settlements in the Kaviska River Valley

A tower house in rural County Lirannon, built in the Coscivian colonial style

The cities of Kaviska bear witness to over eight-hundred years of architecture, reflecting such diverse stylistic influences as Coscivian classicism, the vernacular architectures of northern and western Éorsa, the building traditions of the Celts, and more recent imports from Levantia and further afield, as well as centuries of changing functional demands as the state has developed and urbanised. Coscivian Modernist architecture, known for its geometrically variegated high-rises and "semi-open" approach to interior space, was born in response to the high population densities that accompanied economic modernisation in Valēka. Kiravia's first skyscrapers were built in Kaviska, as were its first suburban housing estates, office parks, and shopping malls.

[The bridges of Trár should be in here]

Film, Television, and Radio

The Kiravian domestic motion picture industry was born in Southeast Kaviska and North Niyaska, and remained centred on this general area until the Kirosocialist Era, when the state-approved film studios and government investment in new lighting and imaging technology were directed toward Escarda, while a new market-driven film industry grew up in Sirana under the Federalist rump republic. and The contemporary hub of Kiravic-language mainstream film production is now Pontevedra, Argévia. However, in the new capitalist era, Valēka has reëmerged as a major centre for the production of vernacular language films (particularly Paisonic Coscivian, Æran Coscivian, Kaśuvan Coscivian, and Gaelic), independent films, and - most importantly - television. [Elabourate more on TV]

[Radio - Big radio and audio industry]

Cities

	Rank		Countyship	Pop.
Valēka Evira	1	Valēka	Imperial	17,308,201	Trár Xéuleva
	2	Evira	Léithram	4,451,040
	3	Trár	Trár	14,205,000
	4	Xéuleva	Kalmastra	870,000
	5	Aldēmar	Ekenuv	850,000
	6	Caridosar	Branigan	782,892
	7	Dannemóra	Tapanin	764,137
	8	Duniver	Vann-Múir	420,492
	9	Thūrathorn	Astorin	242,305
	10	Karvidan	Lánhîluv	160,711