Kvask

The Communities of Kvask Kvask
Flag Seal
Capital	Noskv
Largest	Gvernek
Official languages	Kvaskm, Ypetm
Recognised national languages	Kvaskm, Ypetm, English
Recognised regional languages	Volhm
Ethnic groups	Kvask, Ypet, Volh
Demonym(s)	Kvaskm
Government	Devolved democratic communist collectives
Legislature	The Kvaskm
Establishment
• Proust Hegeomy conqeurs Ypet and Kvask regions	342 BCE
• Kroust Empire conquers Kvask region	525 CE
• Feher Feifdom dominates Kvask	757
• Sieghard Empire forms	856
• Kivasek gains independence as the Free Territories of Hespia	857
• The House of Kočí forms as Kivasek's monarchy after the War of the Pines	November 14th, 902
• Beginning of Kivasekian Wars of Self-Determination	March 25th, 1790
• The Social Contract of 1921 is ratified	February 14th, 1921
Area
• Total	997,986 km2 (385,325 sq mi)
• Water (%)	4.3
Population
• 2020 estimate	69,841,923
• 2015 census	67,783,859
• Density	67.9/km2 (175.9/sq mi)
GDP (nominal)	2017 estimate
• Total	1.36 trillion (USD)
• Per capita	49,850 (USD)
Gini (2017)	0 low
HDI (2017)	.922 very high
Currency	Hour of Work (HOW)
Time zone	UTC+2 (LST (Liberigo Standard Time))
Date format	dd/mm/yyyy, Common Era (CE)
Driving side	left
Calling code	+205
Internet TLD	.kv

Kivasek, officially the Commune of Kivasek, is a anarchist multi-collective in the Middle Continent bordered by Pine Bay to the northwest, opening up to the larger Alyeskan Sea. Kivasek is of average size, comparable to Lauchenoiria. There are four major rivers within Kivasek: the Pine River, the Mud River, the Wolfound River, and the Bear River, the last of which connects Kivasek and Bears Armed via waterway. Along the Southern border of Kivasek, the Yopas Hills roughly run from the mouth of the Mud River, following the southern border closely before curving northward and stopping halfway along the western border. According to the Kivaskian Office for Population, there are currently 27,344,829 people living within the collectives.

Declaring full independence from the Sieghard Empire in 857, Kivasek was under a domestic monarchy continuously until 1790. What follwed was nearly 130 years of civil and social strife before the Social Contract of 1921 (also called the Judge Contract) was written and ratified by an 87% vote in favour. Essentially an in-name only union of seven collectives, Kivasek is heavily decentralized with most power given to individual towns and cities. The collective has no form of substantive government, opting instead to have city councils that are elected trimonthly meet in the historical capital of Liberigo. While all collectives are, in theory, equal to one another, the collective with the highest populations, Kivas and Yopas, exert economic dominance over the other five: Vokas, Kazorek, Chemorek, Ultza, and Baszha.

Despite being a society heavily influenced by libertarian thought, there is also a culture of cooperation and societal advancement that make the collectives work together to make one another stronger. Following the most radical forms of leftist libertarian thought, Kivasek has abolished currency and operates on the motto "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need". As a result, Kivasek is known to have the most advanced public transportation system in the world with electric trains, buses, and river ferries being common means of transportation through the collectives with bicycles being free to borrow at stations. Public healthcare is also known to be among the world's most accessible, with people often getting immediate care for their ailments and injuries, though the waiting times in larger cities can go on for hours, despite the best efforts of the hospital staff.

Seeing themselves as the prime example of communism thriving in the modern era and believing others can follow their example, Kivasek is known to print out leaflets by the thousands and send them out to nearby countries, much to the annoyance of their respective leaders. As well as advocating for leftist thinking, Kivasek often gives material and personnel support to left-leaning secessionist movements with the hope that the ensuing freedom will encourage the population to embrace anarchist communism or, at the very least, left libertarianism. Although fueled by a great amount of political fervor, Kivasek's arms and volunteer army are often thought of as outdated and unfit for modern warfare in an open battlefield, often opting for guerilla operations.

Etymology

The name Kivasya is derived from the two words in the Kivasyan language Kivas and Ya meaning "pine" and "small", respecitively, thus making the literal name of Kivasya "Pines that are small". The people living in the central parts of Kivasya, the self-named Kivas, believed that people were a descendent of the pine trees that dominate the pine marshes of eastern Kivasya. This name was left the same until the Proust Hegemony took over Kivasya and it's surrounding areas, introducing their own language to the tribes, morphing Kivasya into Kivasek though generations of cultural melting. The original name of Kivasya was used only by the northeastern communities until the 1790s when there was a movement to return to the roots of the region. However, with being known as Kivasek for centuries, many natives accepted it as the second name to their homeland.

History

Pre-Proust Hegemony

Much of what is known about Kivasek before the time of the Proust Hegemony is directly from court scribes translating older texts in Proto-Kivasyan to Erodanian before being subsequently destroyed by their lords. It seems that the earliest story from the area is a Yopas legend detailing a man named Rodak leading a force of 2000 tribesman against a bloodthirsty tribe of 10000 to the south of the hills. Only through using the hills to their advantage and superior tactics do they defeat them. Rodak, becoming the great leader of the Yopas, leads the tribe to greatness, making them the uncontested rulers of the area, presumably being defeated by the Proust Hegemony later on.

A few years after, a story from the Kivas tribe appears, chronicling the life of a woman named Rake. Having lost her own tribe, the Ultza, to famine and war, Rake finds herself becoming a part of the Kivas after being cared for by healers of the tribe. Finding acceptance through suffering a similar loss to the Kivas themselves, she becomes the leader of the tribe through her wisdom and sharp tongue. With her nature of a caring but stern tribe mother, the Kivas become disciplined and find the strength to exact revenge on the tribe that had destroyed Rake's life.

By comparing similarities and contrasts between the different stories from different tribes, a few facts can be extrapolated. For example, there are three tribes that seemed to be the major powers in the region; the Yopas, the Kivas, and the Vokas. All of the tribes seem to have roots connected to the fork of the rivers Bear and Pine with multiple stories detailing great pilgrimages to the area. What the connection is, anthropologists do not know for sure, but it has been theorized that the fork was the site of a landing party that were the first Kivasekians coming northward, down the Bear river.

Proust Hegemony

The Proust Hegemony was a large, proto-feudal society ruled by the Proust family, a dynasty known to be ruthless, cold, and cunning. By the time the Proust Hegemony absorbed Kivasek into its territory, only the Yopas and Kivas remained as the dominating tribes with the Vokas supporting the Kivas. The Yopas, occupying the southern hills rich with iron, were favoured by the Prousts for their resources. The Kivas with their thick pine forests could not offer much to the new rulers, and the Vokas occupied the easternmost of the hills; although bare of iron, the hills held large quantities of silver, leading to the establishment of the Proust city of Varholm (Now Agnila)

With the Hegemony came the rise of infrastructure; roads were built to connect the cities with their large factories to the smaller villages with sawmills of great productivity, mines bursting with iron, and farms of bountiful harvest. Tribalism was essentially dead within Kivasek as the Proust Hegemony converted Kivasek into one of many states contributing to the Proust war effort. Lords ruled over other vassals that directed the peasantry. The gap between the upper and lower class was immense, with peasants unable to speak Proust often being barred entrance to the cities.

During this time, the Yopas were often placed into governing positions over the Kivas, making tensions between the two tribes heighten. It wasn't uncommon for Yopas mercenaries employed by the Prousts to collect taxes from the much poorer and much hungrier Kivas in the northern areas of Kivasek. There was no end to the Kivas-Yopas violence during the reign of the Hegemony, with the government often going in favour of the richer and more powerful Yopas.

However, in the early years of the 6th century , the Proust Hegemony began to falter as generations of incest began to make the rulers live weaker and die younger, making factions within the upper echelons of society stronger and confident. As the Yopas continued to support the ruling Prousts, the Kivas sought help from opposing factions, namely the Kroust family, another Erodanian dynasty that had been gaining influence since the 3rd century CE. In 525, the Kroust Empire declared sovereignty from the Prousts, encompassing the areas of the Kivas and the Vokas as well as other regions from other states, becoming much more powerful than the Proust Hegemony. From then until 534, war ensued, claiming thousands of lives across the Middle Continent with turning point taking place at the Battle of Red Hill. There, the Kroust Empire affirmed themselves as the successors to the Prousts within the region of Kivasek.

Kroust Empire, Feher Feifdom, and the Sieghard Empire

With the major defeat at Red Hill, the Proust Hegemony retreated out of Kivasek, never to return, leaving the Yopas at the mercy of the Kroust Empire and the Kivas. In order to show appreciation towards the Kivas people, the Kroust Empire swiftly removed any Yopas notion of nobility and installed lords of Kivas and Vokas descent. For the next 196 years, the Kivas and Vokas would rule over the Yopas in the same fashion as they had with the Prousts.

In 743, the Feher Fiefdom established itself as the true continuation of the Proust line, calling the Kroust Empire "illegitimate" and "bastardizing the idea of Empires". The Kroust Empire in 743 was large and powerful, but it was loosely organized and relied heavily on foreign soldiers to make up the bulk of the army. During the Battle of Golden Plain in 757, the Kroust Empire was taken by surprise when a large force of Huskite mercenaries under their employ turned their weapons on the crown, effectively joining the Feher Feifdom and accelerating the war to end by winter of that year. With the Feher Fiefdom in power, all Kivasekians were removed from power, Yopas included, as the Feher Fiefdom saw people of the north as "dirty peasants that shouldn't own the land they sow".

Ruling for 99 years, the Feher Feifdom was marked by a time of common repression of Kivasekian culture, language, and autonomy. During this near-century strangle on the people of Kivasek, the Yopas, Kivas, and Vokas people found themselves finding a newfound love for one another, all hating the Fehers that were killing them. With the Feher's aggressive ideology of xenophobia and elitism, it found its northern territories hard to control with states often breaking off with little resistance from the Fehers. Kivasek followed this path as well and joined the neighboring Sieghard Empire, using them as a means to an end to gain independence. In 856, the Kivasek broke away from the Feher Feifdom to join the Sieghard Empire, whom they also left the following year with much the same resistance.

Free Territory of Hespia

For the first time in a century and a half, the Kivasekian people were free from foreign influence on their lives. At the same time of their independence, a religious sect of Joanism called Egorism reached the ears of Kivasekians through trade with merchants from far away lands. Egorism advocated having all church members seen as equals with everyone being able to communicate with Joan equally. Along with this, Egorism promoted cooperation between people, all working towards a better future for their children. With Egorism taking root in Kivasekian culture by 857, many communities decided to take Egorism to heart and resist pressures from people to become part of something else. The Free Territories were able to defend themselves from bandits and brigands, but during it's 45 year experiment, it was always under constant threat of outside takeover.

The War of the Pines and The House of Kočí

With no ruler to monitor families and their power, Kivasek reverted to the old ways of having the three tribes at eachother's throats, only now having new names. From the Yopas region, the House of Biskup, holder of the Green Pine, amassed an arsenal with the iron mines working nonstop to make weapons. Kivas was represented by the House of Kočí, holder of the Red Pine, a merchant republic with storng connections across the oceans. Finaly, Vokas was the House of Zukhal, holder of the White Pine, a house known for its skilled fighters and even more skilled engineers, making castles fall in mere days.

In 894, the House of Kočí, prompted by the House of Biskup putting up military forts along the Kivas-Yopas border, declared war on the House of Biskup, not wanting them to have an upper hand in the fighting. For 3 years, the Reds and the Greens fought viciously along their borders, the war coming to a stalemate. The Whites, seeing the Reds and Greens weakened by war, decided to attack, making large advances across the land before being stopped by both houses whom were still at war with one another. From 897 to 901, the war ran cold as each house prodded the other to try and find weaknesses in the others, to no avail. Seeing no end in sight if a coalition was not formed, the House of Kočí offered to join forces with the House of Zukhal, guaranteeing their autonomy. The Whites, having reached the same conclusion as the Reds, accepted the offer and both armies marched on the Greens, outnumbering them 2-to-1, having more financial support, and having skilled fighters. On 23rd of February, 901, the House of Kočí Grand Army marched into the Greens capital city of Metrila, making the heads of the house bend the knee. With a newfound source of recruits and weapons from the Yopas regions, the Reds turned on the Whites and took their capital, Agnila, on the 14th of November, 902. Later that very day, the House of Kočí proclaimed their territory as Kivasek, beginning a reign of the house that would last 888 years.

In the beginning of the Kivasek Kingdom, there were still strong feelings of tribal rivalry between the Yopas, the Kivas, and the Vokas. To try and counter this, the ruling powers decided to formulate a new form of Joanism that was similar to Egorism in that there would be equal member within the church called Ivorism. Where it differed, however, is that it taught that the state was important in guiding the church to reach a higher state of being, trying to eliminate any political dissent from the populace. While there were still Egorist churches during the Kingdom's existence, they were in such remote areas that they were seen as non-threats by the rulers.

During the Kivask Kingdom's time, the nation saw many innovations and technology sprout out of many places, mostly dealing with transportation and firearms. Kivasek was one of few nations at the time to have regular road maintenance, cart repairmen, and steam engine-powered buggies, though they were reserved for the truly wealthy. Kivasek's firearm industry also flourished from a large supply of wood/charcoal from the pine marshes, the iron mines of the Yopas Hill, and sulfur from the Vokas Hills in the East, leaving the Kingdom to only acquire saltpeter in order to maufacture gunpowder. With an abundance of materials, Kivasekians were able to make many designs of firearms from the arquebus to the flintlock musket.

The Kivasekian Representatives and the Wars of Self-Determination

With the advent of the printing press in the 16th Century, information within Kivasek was no longer an affair handled mostly by the state, leading to an era within Kivasek called the Retrospection Period, where philosophers and scholars went through older texts written about tribal Kivasek and the Free Territories. Egorism began to rise in popularity as Kivasekians felt a connection with the religion being closer to the Free Territories than the state-sponsored Ivorism that dominated the mainstream since the 12th Century. Dissent against the House of Kočí grew as people called for reform inside the kingdom, bolstered by the writings of Havel and Czasek.

With the populace steadily becoming anti-monarchical, the House of Kočí tried to stave off it's end by alowing for small liberal governments to be formed, eventually leading to the creation of 5 proto-states that still answered to the crown. For a few decades, this calmed the flames of revolution, until 1790 when the Republican Party headed by Angelika Bellova called for the swift and total dismantling of the monarchy, to which was met with her being arrested and tried for treason. Being the largest party in all 5 governments, the Republican Party declared "a war for self-determination" against the monarchy on the 8th of October, throwing the country into deep civil war until the 2nd of August, 1794, when Republican forces captured the reigning monarch, Radovan IV, and hung him without trial.

With the monarchy displaced and the capital under Republican control, the Kivasekian Representatives was formed as a legislative body to govern the five regions of Kivasek with fairness based upon the population of the regions, with 500,000 people equaling one representative for the region. From this general system, the cities of Agnila, in Vokas, and Liberigo, in Kivas, gave their respective regions a large amount of power, each city with more than 2 million people, accounting for more than a tenth of Kivasek's entire population at the time. The disparity of power between rural regions and the more urban created tension, allowing the monarchy to build a following and return in force in 1802, only to again be displaced in 1816. This cycle would continue until 1852 when the representative houses became dominated by nationalist communists.

National communist reign

In September of 1852, the representatives were dominated by national communists, touting behind them rhetoric proclaiming to make Kivasek the envy of other nations in terms of economic development and military might. Led by Marek Sevczik, they established a strong central government and did away with the representatives, instead installing pseudo-elections for minor positions, most of which were over-ridden by people higher up in power. The reign of national communism is a dark time in Kivasekian history as the gap between party members and non-party members was wide. It was not uncommon to see a party-associated person be in impeccable clothing whilst the rest of the nation was in rags.

The nationals did fufill one promise; they made Kivasek one of the strongest military forces in the region but they did not go to war with anyone. Instead, the military was used as a police force to suppress political dissent and crack down on minor crimes. Political freedoms went down to a near zero, most discussions being reserved to back rooms of taverns. By 1912, the populace had enough of the regime taking and not giving back. On the 14th of Februrary a violent wave of political protests erupted across the nation, taking the government by surprise and crumbling against the mobs of angry people.

The Coalition and the Social Contract of 1921

Following the removal of the repressive regime of before, the Kivasekians implemented the final iteration of the Representatives, only for it to dissolve a few months after. The dissolution of the representatives was peaceful, with the firm belief among most of the members that the system they pursued had failed too many times before. Seeking assurance of equity, a coalition was formed out of hundreds of people, all from one settlement each in Kivasek. The Coalition assumed responsibility of domestic disputes and shut itself off from the world, opting for quiet isolationism. From the coalition emerged 7 judges, each from a region of Kivasek: Monika Peskova of Kivas, Kristyna Pyklova of Yopas, Ozskar Dvor of Vokas, Cyril Hodza of Kazorek, Anna Misura of Chemorek, Stefan Banik of Ultza, and Oldrich Koleno of Baszha. These seven judges drafted the Social Contact of 1921, the document that guides modern-day Kivasek. With all seven in agreement over the content, they opened up the voting to the coalition and the document was ratified on the 14th of Februrary, 1921 with a confirmation vote of 84% in favour, 9% against, 5% abstaining.