Melinya Culture Focus: Western Alahbmah

Lay of the Land
A massive series of salt pans and shallow lakes rarely deeper than two feet. The ridges between the features and some pans are covered in thick and vibrant red moss and lichen. Other colours exist, and are visually striking when mixed. The mineral deposits in the frequently dry pans can conceal dangerous, acidic mud pockets, which the natives are familiar with enough to avoid. The eastern border consists of an abrupt and massive mountain ridge that cuts off access to the rest of Alahbmah, of which none live because of the cataclysmic conditions that continue unabated. The mouth of the one river that breaks through the ridge is struck nearly continuously by lightning.

Major Cities
At 300,000 sq km in size and a population of barely a quarter million, it can be literal days before one sees a settlement. Buildings are constructed of mud and mineral sheets, visible for miles because of the flat terrain, built to only accommodate an extended family. Most settlements are extended families herding several iccu and harvesting edible moss, and can go months between contact with others.

Alignah is the most urban settlement, where eight of its ten thousand residents live in the Palace of Alignah, a literal labyrinth. Formerly the home of the Mad King Nedoh, it was donated as a monastery after his conversion to Celmsim, serving as the home for the August Guru and center for the entire Celm faith.

Economics
Subsistence moss-farming and iccu herding are the dominant activities, resulting in a largely self-sustaining population with little need for trade or money. Greater than normal harvests can lead to excess iccu, traded with pilgrims and iccu traders.

Law & Order
As the dominant religion throughout the known world is Celmism, Western Alahbmah’s chief export is religion. Donations and converts divesting themselves of their material fetters from across the nations serve as the primary source of economic activity, including the construction of monasteries for a guru.

In families, the family member with the most monastic experience is generally the final arbiter for disputes except for situations of punishment, which require travel to the nearest to confer with a monk. As Celmism forbids killing, hindering or depriving a sense is the most common form of punishment, other punishments including a period of sensory deprivation for bogies to punish them.

Government
A full Cemlite theocracy, the August Guru nominally holds influence well beyond the borders of Alahbmah. Amongst the lay folk, temporary devotion to monastic study is performed in response to most significant life events; naming, childbirth, engagements, momentous financial events, etc.

Melinya Culture Focus: Tii

Lay of the Land
A massive peninsula, the continental border lined with perilous mountains. The mainland is predominantly lush, rolling hills and thick forests of idyllic weather conditions.

Much of the coastline near the continent is dangerous for ships because of the sharp, barren rocks and shallow islands. Farther out on the peninsula, the coast becomes calmer and friendlier to larger ships.

Major Cities
By far the most populous nation, with ten million people, Tii is a naval powerhouse and the breadbasket of the known world. Visitors usually first encounter Tii through Chalea, the trading hub at the Great Road where it passes through the mountains; an almost lawless city due to complex treaties with the barbarian kings of the mountains. These same barbarian kings also command influence over Shard Pirates that live in the dangerous waters near the peninsula.

Mirroring Chalea on the far side of the nation is the port & capital Linnea, where the multi-nested palace monastery dominates. Each of the Great Houses of Tii send their own for monastic study and at least nominally designated as monks for life; many swearing to the Solipsistic Precepts, a variant on the Chelm ethical code that permits killing.

Economics
With the rich and developed agricultural infrastructure, Tii’s premiere export is food. Their triceratops herds provide huge meat reserves. Tii-breed chocobos are renowned, and the Tii cavalry see yearly competitions with international acclaim. As part of the syncretic absorption, skulls are featured heavily in religious and cultural activities, and are in sufficient demand to sustain a strong market for import. When sufficiently used, the skulls are recycled at the bone mills to produce high explosives.

Law & Order
The Solipsistic Monks serve as the dominant demographic for military and civilian law enforcement. Individual villages are controlled by council of descending representation: monks, nobles, and commoners; each council answering to the House Lord for their territory. In disputes between nobles and commoners, the noble is obliged to compensate the commoner several fold the damages inflicted upon the commoner, while the commoner’s obligated only proportional compensation. Disputes between equals are generally resolved to favor equilibrium.

Religious law concerning bogies can get esoteric, such as no consumption of honey less than an hour before performing any business transaction, but they are only enforced on holidays. On such holidays, many stay indoors to nominally cleanse their minds of potential bogies.

Government
A Cemlite theocracy in all but name, the gurus of Linnea act as advisers with absolute veto power over the king and each of the House Lords.

Melinya Culture Focus: Gallina

Lay of the Land
The fjords are angled and crowded to the banks of the river with agricultural terraces. The sky is pregnant with smog from industry and have a glow even at night from the lights below. To the casual visitor not a single acre is untouched by civilization.

The noncasual visitor will find the snowy peaks of the land the closest thing to virgin territory, but they will not visit long, as the storms and snowfall is nearly continuous.

Major Cities
Kuyam is also known as the Nine Ways City, its megalithic roadways spiraling out like spokes in a wheel across the known world. This metropolis, spiraling upward as much as it sprawls outward, dominates everyone’s view of the nation. Even the aqueous miners of Ayinaa & bureaucratic distributors of Itanik, both sizable cities in their own right, consider themselves as Kuyamics living abroad. Of course, if they didn’t, their economic ventures take an inexplicable nose-dive and few wish to tally themselves before the Writ.

After millennium under the rule of the All-Father, the cumulative architectural accomplishments make the three metropoli of Gallina megalithic, and continue to grow to accommodate the influx. Even the ruins of Azdas have yet to be dented from the company using it as a quarry.

A fraction of the size of the three main cities is the military farm Azdawa, where the unique ironroot is grown for use in paper mill for printing money, as is the byproduct used in the classified recipe for high explosives.

Economics
Originally the capital of the All-Father, Gallina is first and foremost a trade economy. While its banking system isn’t as advanced as that found in Aikoh, it makes up for it in size, which gives it a particular resilience to economic shakeups.

Law & Order
To be a citizen is to be a civil servant, and vice versa. After the Long Holiday, the vast majority of government employees work in a manner not unlike the USA’s National Guard. To the common citizen, the budgetary control office (the Writ) is the most feared branch of the government. Criminal enterprise apes the general structure of the public sector, except for the Solar Bear Gang, which is a dangerous drug-trafficking gang that continues to follow the indigenous religion that claims to predate the arrival of the All-Father.

Government
A republic that is run as a corporation for its standard operations, the Board of Directors being the only elected positions. In the founding document that remains enforced, no elf of greater than 1/16 purity is permitted to hold position in the Board of Directors or as head of any department, and so heritage records going back four generations to prove this claim are required.

Melinya Culture Focus: Rotak

Lay of the Land
A plateau with 450 meter tall cliffs on every side and a 60,000 sq.km. footprint, this clouded nation is known for its distinctly violet ironwood trees, two meter mushrooms, baby pink lakes, and the single immense ramp of the Great Road leading up to it. The terrain is diverse, with swamps and ravines scattered about.
Game other than birds is scarce, but the flora is proactive, especially near the edges of the plateau and the cities.

Major Cities
About 80% of the two million Rotakans live in the three dozen cities along the Great Road, many agrarian. The other 20% live on scattered royal estates and isolated villages where serfs are simultaneously at their most independent and short-lived.
The architecture is best described as bygone & robust.

Economics 
More elves than any other nation, Rotak commands a large number of master artisans and the best apprenticeship programs of any trade or craft in the known world. Cobblers, mercenaries, smiths, and more come to learn their vocation with a contractual obligation to send a small portion of their future earnings for a time after their training.
Of note is the Blanket of Rotak, where the heavy taxation is redistributed to tenants and citizens as befits their need. This is a formalized form of the long-standing gift culture.

Law & Order
The Guard is the most public and iconic branch of the nation, the laws they enforce artistically displayed in gold filigree on statues in the Great Hall of Mandates. Custodians maintain the quality of public property, and strive to be unobtrusive. Few know that the Custodial Department is the largest employer of citizens in the country.
Of particular note is the frequent national holidays celebrating events related to Rotak’s independence and successful conquests (officially classified as civil war) of the lowlanders.

Government 
The oldest nation since the death of the All-Father (of which several elders are old enough to remember fleeing to Rotak as children), and considered the birthplace of democracy. Universal suffrage is granted at age 64, with mandatory participation. Even foreigners are granted citizenship with thirty years of residency. The government is run by a parliament proportionally elected by local councils that themselves are elected by their constituency.
There are functionally three castes; citizens, tenants, and serfs. Serfs make up the majority of the population, and are legally public property (slaves of the state). Tenants are residents that do not yet have citizenship, and so cannot participate in government nor exercise control over serfs, but otherwise have the same rights and protections as citizens.

Melinya Culture Focus: Axphain

Lay of the Land 

Aside from its signature Three Mountains of Ten Thousand Pillars, Axphain is dominated by innumerable wetlands. Mangrove forests, fens, mires, bogs, seasonal marshes, and more are scattered about and the local dialect has a disturbing number of different words for ‘mud’. Rivers both fresh and salt water twine through much of it, the tree cover making Axphain perilously easy to get lost in. The wildlife is incredibly diverse and none have fully catalogued what creatures can be found, the most well-known being stilt-beasts, crocodiles, & muck hounds.

Major Cities
The second most populous nation, with eight million citizens, there is a serious problem of overpopulation. The wetlands are very sparsely populated, predominantly family units eking out a subsistence living with the occasional wealthy manor estates. Much of the rest of the population stays in the sprawling, crowded, mountain cities. By far the largest congestion is in Kaivitu, home for the Empty University, the premiere institution for higher learning in the known world. There are two other auspicious academies elsewhere in the nation, the University of Desolation in Marakku, and the Seventh Academy of Nugae. Each of the cities are multi-story, congested, and beyond the walls of the institutions of higher learning, incredibly poor.

Economics 
The rural estates form a large backbone of the nation’s industry, harvesting medicinal plants & insects for refinement in the cities. Renowned hospitals and doctors scattered in the urban centers foster a vibrant source of income from wealthy foreigners seeking treatment, and the academic elite forged here is the forefront of culture and art throughout the known world.
The latter two have created an economic disparity that is truly stark. Of the lower class able to find work, it’s predominantly dirty and menial labour both harvesting and refining medicines, along with associated goods subject to a detailed division of labour. The academic elite (including medical doctors) live a privileged life sheltered from their economic lessers.

Law & Order
Guilds form the backbone of order for those traveling, regulations are strongly focused on protecting economic assets and fines being the preferred form of punishment. Prisons are discouraged, but those working off their fines in the rural estates will laugh at those who say this.
While many of the titles are derived from the Chelmite orders, students (even alumni) and faculty are not religiously backed. They do enjoy effectively diplomatic immunity, any crimes are resolved through their University’s internal chairs.

Government 
A dual-Parliament; the Council Elect, comprised solely of tenured professors from the Academy, and the elected of the Council Vulgar, whose members are publicly elected.

Melinya Culture Focus: Zuvendis

Lay of the Land
Deserts cover the majority of the nation, interspersed with fields of irrigated crops and strip mines. Empty riverbeds are scattered about, filled with silt and dangerous predators waiting in near hibernation for passing prey.

The Spectrum River and its tributaries, changing colors with the seasons, separates the deserts from the Aikoh rainforest. Hollow shoots grow from the broad branches of titanic trees, forming a nearly impenetrable canopy and thick forest.

Major Cities
Industrial capacity is ever running, and many of the larger cities are built around strip mines with the rail transport between them and the Great Road.

Much of the industry’s more advanced technology (especially cannons & firearms) is restricted from exportation, as Zuvendis is a young nation rebuilding after the unification of the three kingdoms; the Zuvendis desert nomads, the Spectrum river folk, and the Aikoh forest tribes. The numerous river tribes have integrated seamlessly with the much more populous Zuvendis, and are usually only publicly discernible by their accents. There remains social unrest with integration of those from Aikoh, stereotyped as grifters and sexual predators, and their numerological traditions are routinely vilified.

Many of Aikoh have moved to Paper Street, backed by Ipos Investments, which produces the most famous theatrical productions and dance troupes in the known world.


Economics
An industrial giant, whose steel and glass produces the Crystal Spire and the recent unification of the territory has permitted for the beginning of the Great Rail. Firearm and paper advancements are at the forefront in Zuvendis as well. All of this is directed by the national banks, directing the capital necessary to fuel the ventures in its most efficient form, and in fact currency is backed by the capital directed with the complicated banks and bureaucracy.

The majority of citizens work for one of the construction companies, where upward mobility is high in the face of ravenous need for industrial capacity, a number of whom are granted grants to earn technical educations from Rotak. Working alongside, though viewed with distrust despite their economic advantages, are the entertainers and dancers; many of which are of the people of Aikoh.


Law & Order
Complex at best, Kafka-esque at worst, the legal system is one of rigid codes created by the Theorem Politic. Law enforcement requires a trained computer to entirely rebuild the law book to determine what they can even do, let alone what laws they enforce.


Government
A technocracy, public office requires a formal education which has resulted in very positive foreign relations with Axphain and Rotak. Officially, there is no such thing as voting for people in public office, but instead a series of political surveys taken by the Statistical Census, the collation of such data is used to calculate which eligible citizen will be enlisted into public office.

The closest thing to a supreme ruling body is the Formulae Commission, where policy decisions are designed and incorporated into the Theorem Politic, the execution of which to determine actual political decisions is performed by the members of the Computer Commission.