Ambara

Ambara is a continent lying between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It is a diverse region where religous and ethnic tensions have always run very high.

Geography

Plate tectonics recognizes the vast majority of Ambara as being the surface of the Ambaran Plate. Part of Adoki is known for being the edge of the Pacific Plate, with the two plates meeting along the Saetsumi Fault.

Ambara can be divided into four main regions: the fertile and green lands to the northwest, including Danaan Ambara, Marlund, and Pantocratorian Ambara; the beautiful but cold and rocky mountains of Adoki; the rugged mountainous area of Western Sahor; and the great plains of Eastern Sahor.

Kairis, Gandara is the geographical center of Ambara. The exact center is marked by a sixty foot tall stone monument erected by a past government.

History

Marlund was once the dominant power in Ambara. Until the Marlund War, the Marlund government brutally persecuted Jews, Catholics, dissenters, and homosexuals, as well as keeping non-whites in chattel slavery. This racist attitude, matched by strong xenophobic attitudes on the part of Adoki, led the great hostility between Ambara's two nations. Marlund remained the dominant of the two powers though she was never able to conquer Adoki. Because most Adoki involved in conflicts with Marlund preferred death to captivity, very few persons of Adoki descent are found among Marlundish freedmen.

In 2005, Marlund supported terrorists who launched a massive attack on the city of Armonvale in the Resurgent Dream. Related terrorists purchased Pantocratorian Princess Theodora from Veganan forces who had kidnapped her from her home. Her Imperial Highness was subjected to rape and severe torture.

These two terrorist actions prompted the invasion of Marlund by the Resurgent Dream, the liberation of the slaves, and the prompt establishment of a constitutional monarchy under Prince Hermann, the heir of the ancient kings before the fascist revolution. The constitutional government swiftly invited Pantocratorian and Adoki forces to join Danaan and local forces in suppressing terrorism and the remnants of the old regime.

The rise of agriculture and the domestication of animals

The earliest inhabitants of Ambara are believed to have been Vasconian Indians who travelled south into Ambara around 6125 BCE. There are very few living descendants of the first Ambarans. Most of them are believed to have been absorbed into the African-Ambaran population. The first evidence of agriculture in Ambara dates to 1254 BCE when natives domesticated pearl and finger millet, cowpea, groundnut, cotton, watermelon, bottle gourds, lintel, flax, coffee and teff. Natives also domesticated the elephant and the boar for both transportation and meat.

In addition to agriculture, many ancient Ambaran communities continued to rely upon hunting, gathering and fishing up until the time of European conquest and beyond.

Pre-colonial civilization

Almost nothing is known of human societies in Ambara prior to the settlement of Marlund and Adoki. Very few archaeological sites have been found, mostly in Sahor, Jagiella and Gandara. These include statues of the so-called Ambaran Amazons, aboriginal Ambaran women depicted in military endeavors. Largely on the basis of these remains, many anthropologists have theorized that the the aboriginal Ambarans had a radically different view of gender roles from many other aboriginal cultures. Others, however, have maintained that the statues likely represent non-normative figures, either goddesses or other semi-mythical figures comparable to the Amazons in ancient Greek mythology. Still others hold that the statues are not the work of aboriginal Ambarans at all but of now forgotten efforts at Hipolitan colonization of Sahor.

Japanese colonization

The Japanese colonization of Adoki began some five centuries ago when settlers left Japan to seek a new life. They were led by Prince Shoko(1498-1548), an unrecognized son of Emperor Go-Tsuchimikado who resented being denied a throne he considered rightfully his. The settlers founded their first colony in the city of Aaharo, which remains an important Adoki port city and the site of an important imperial palace to this day.

Over the next five centuries, the settlers expanded throughout present day Adoki. Prince Shoko and his immediate heirs styled themselves Emperors of Japan until 1806, when Emperor Ogimachi (reigned 1797-1808) began to style himself Emperor of Adoki. This change in title marked a recognition both that the line of Shoko would never sit on the throne of Japan and that Adoki had now become a viable nation in its own right.

Regional and political divisions

The eastern half of Ambara is sometimes referred to as Sahor, although this has fallen out of use as a general term for the eastern half of the continent ever since the Commonwealth member states of Sahor, taking up only about a fourth of this area, was founded.. From north to south, the eastern half of Ambara belongs to Abt and to the Commonwealth member states of Gandara, Sahor and Jagiella.

In the far North, where, despite the proximity to the equator, high altitudes keep most of the land colder than many southern locations, the Resurgent Dream lays claim to seven principalities: Selinia, Thorlund, Zutern, Alekthos, Amalad, Amory and Carasia.

Just south of Danaan Ambara, Marlund is one of Ambara's oldest nations. Now a constitutional monarchy, Marlund has a long history as an ultra-racist, Protestant fundamentalist dictatorship. The northern part of Marlund is occuppied primarily by the previously dominant European-Ambarans while southern Marlund is occuppied in large part by African-Ambarans. The government of Marlund, with substantial help from Pantocratoria, Excalbia and the Commonwealth of Peoples.

Pantocratorian Ambara, just to the south of Marlund, is an essentially independent nation populated by settlers from Pantocratoria, with Emperor Andreus of Pantocratoria as their head of state, but their own elected Premier as their head of government.

A large bay lies between Pantocratorian Ambara and Adoki, the southernmost of the Ambaran nations. Adoki is a culturally and ethnically Japanese nation which keeps a great cultural distance from other nations while maintaining alliances with some of her more powerful neighbors.