Kartika: Difference between revisions

|subdivision_name1        = [[File:CoīnvraFlag.png|25px]] [[District of Coīnvra|Coīnvra]]

|timezone1                = Valēka Standard Time

'''Kartika''' is the capital city of the [[Kiravian Federacy]] and of the [[District of Coīnvra]]. Established for the express purpose of housing the federal government in 210XX, Kartika is the seat of the [[Federal Stanora]] and the [[Federal Consistory|Consistorial Court]], and [[Executive College]], as well as the official residence of the [[Prime Executive of the Kiravian Federacy|Prime Executive]] and administrative headquarters of most Federal agencies. Its metropolitan area, referred to as the "Federal Capital Region" includes the remainder of the District of Coīnvra and extends far into southern [[Hanoram]] and northern [[Ventarya]]. The presence of the Federal government has turned the Federal Capital Region into a hub for the defence, aerospace, biomedical, consulting, information technology, legal, and governmental-relations industries. While the Kartika Metro Area is not Kiravia's largest, it is consistently ranked as its wealthiest and best-educated.

Prior to Coscivian colonisation, the lower Koīn River valley was inhabited by the Yàpi (Gàdamyàpi) tribe. The Gàdamyàpi were violently displaced from the area during the {{H:title|1070s AD|20250s}} by Coscivians, who established large manorial estates on either side of the river, which formed the boundary between the Imperial provinces of Venterya on the right bank and Hanoram on the left. [Main plantations and names]. As with the rest of the Míhanska Bay region during the colonial period, commerce was mainly conducted by merchant ships sailing to ports on the bay and up its many inlets, estuaries, and navigable rivers to trade directly with the manorial villages. Market towns were slow to appear, and were rather few and far between. The first reasonably urban settlement in the area, and indeed, the first incarnation of Kartika, was a fort established in {{H:title|1182 AD|20282}} to secure the river confluence and serve as a military and administrative base for control of the Ventarya-Hanoram backcountry. Dedicated to Emperor Kartik IV, the fort began as a series of wooden palisades and earthworks, which in {{H:title|1188 AD|20288}} began to be improved with masonry. However, the improvements were still unfinished in 20291 when catastrophic flooding destroyed most of Fort Kartik. The fort would proceed to be destroyed and rebuilt at least six times over the course of its history by flood, fire, and powder magazine mishaps.  

A small trading town called Éamonsar was founded on more stable ground just northwest of Fort Kartik in 20355 (1175 AD), and the fortified town of Arþodun was built on the Ventaryan right bank of the Koīn in [YEAR].

 

At the time of the establishment of the [[Confederal Republics of Kiravia]] Kartika was a mere {{wp|hamlet}} of 22 houses scattered among and around the half-ruined fortifications. The Founding Fathers of the Confederal Republics agreed that while [[Valēka#Cantons|West Valēka]] would be the seat of the Confederal Stanora (standing legislative body), Executive College, military command, and judiciary, the ''Ɣaramduv'', a legislative body assembled at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes chiefly for the purpose of passing a budget, would meet somewhere in the Míhanska Bay region. By agreement between Ventarya and Hanoram, one of the two sessions each year would be held in Arþodun and the other in Éamonsar. The ''Ɣaramduv'' began holding its Hanoram-side sessions in Kartika in [YEAR] after being run out of the much nicer nearby town of Éamonsar for bad behaviour. It budgeted itself funds for the construction of a proper meeting hall there, and Kartika would go on to accrete further government-related facilities and attendant shops and taverns over the course of the Confederal Period, though it remained an otherwise unremarkable Baylands small town.

Kartika is more or less a {{wp|planned city}}, having lain largely abandoned between 2XXXX and its selection as the federal capital in 2XXXX. Its original planners hoped to emulate the majesty and elegance of Era, the historic capital of Imperial Coscivia, while avoiding the sanitary problems, overcrowding, and periodic urban decay that came along with the ancient city's centuries of poorly-managed growth. In the words of  Ergastur Ænórvinden, who oversaw the construction of the Federal Quadrangle, "It was important that the physical form of this city embody and legitimise the government that would rule from it. Continuity with the Empire was a necessity, but so too was the idea that in Kiravia the Coscivian race could and would begin anew, applying and improving upon their inheritance on the shores of a virgin land."

From its refounding, Kartika has been an independent city within the District of Coīnvra, and is administratively separate from the surrounding Coīnvra Countyship and the adjacent City of Éamonsar. The municipal legislature is the City Council (Kiravic: ''Saarkovar''), which comprises six seats for each electoral ward and two at-large seats. The entire council is subject to bienniel reëlection. The city's chief executive is the Provost, elected triennially. Political parties are banned in the District of Coīnvra, and all candidates must stand as independents.

Affectionately referred to as "Kiravia's oldest, biggest company town", Kartika's economy revolves almost entirely around governance. The federal government is the largest employer in the city, with the District of Coīnvra government a distant second. Thousands of interest groups, think-tanks, public advocacy groups, media outlets, NGOs, public relations and political management groups, consulting firms, and law and accounting practices intimately involved with politics and policy are based in the Kartika, as are a large number of defence, engineering, insurance, general services, and other corporations that rely heavily on federal contracts.

Although the wider metropolitan area produces aerospace and defence equipment, scientific and medical instruments, and other products, there is very little manufacturing in Kartika proper. Brewing accounts for most of the city's meagre industrial output, with most of the remainder made up by the manufacture of high value-added specialty products, such as dental equipment, upmarket recreational telescopes, and jewellery.

[[File:Farragut square from southeast.jpg|thumb|Iyerpalan Square in late winter. Parkland covers a large part of the city.]]