Velkya
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| Flag of Velkya | |
| Motto: "By Liberty's Light!" | |
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| Region | Haven |
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| Capital | Osea, F.D.O. |
| Official Language(s) | English, Russian, Italian, Spanish, others |
| Leader | President Thomas Caravel Rossland |
| Population | 2.95 billion |
| Currency | Velkyan Zonar |
| NS Sunset XML | |
The Allied Union of Velkya is a representative democracy located on a small subcontinent in the northeastern reaches of Haven. It shares a mountanious border to the east with the Imperial Democracy of Whyatica and is surrounded by the Omz Strait to the south, Fyre Sea to the north, and Barkozian island chain to the southeast, with several of the islands under the control of the Allied Union Defense Forces and used as naval bases and airfields.
The Allied Union has strong relations with other powers in the northeast of Haven, including a special relationship with Whyatica, with whom which it shares many free trade treaties and defense pacts. Outside of the northeast of the region, Velkya participates little in the affairs of the mainland, maintaining a few military installations in Allanean and Skinnian territory to safeguard Velkyan merchant traffic in the Hallad and Haven Straits.
Velkya enjoys particularly strong cultural, diplomatic, military, and economic ties with the Silver Sky, Czardas, Whyatica, the Space Union, Omz222, Praetonia, Willink, Aralonia, Questeria, and Skinny87, and others through the Sovereign League.
Origins
The origins of a unified Velkya can be traced to the Ice Ages, when much of the surrounding area was dry land, allowing myriad tribes of nomadic hunter gatherers to reach and eventually setttle the south of the country in what is what the modern day state of Palasisa. The temperate, balanced climate encouraged the growing of crops, and by 9,300 B.C., early native settlements stretched across the future territories of Palasia, Atlantia, Augusta, and Julios. The mountanious nature of the Velkyan subcontinent prevented widespread settling of the northern territories, and the populations of the south, boosted by seaborne migrants from southern and western Europe, slowly confederated into two identifiable nations by the first millenium B.C. . The first, centered around the port city that would eventually become Palais, named the Palasian Empire by later historians, controlled much of the water traffic off the western coast of the southern Velkyan pennisula with its large navy. It also controlled limited settlements on the Atlantian coast, although these would later be absorbed into the Julian Republic, the second of the factions.
The annexation of these cities sparked a series of wars between the two opposing powers, called the Blue Coast Wars, which lasted almost three hundred years and ended with the Treaty Of Lauraeis, signed between the Julian Grand Council and Emperor Lativium III of Palasia. The treaty was historic, ceding the north of the Palasian Penninsula, including the city of Auron, to the Julian Republic. In return, the Julian Navy was limited in size to four hundred warships, and trade with the outside world was limitied. While this force was still capable of suppressing the pirate activites around the northern Barkozian islands with which the two Velkyan powers traded, it could hardly stand against the might Palaisian Navy, which was the best trained and equipped in the region, forcing the rival Julians on the defensive for virtually the entire war. While on land, the opposite was true, the superiority over the Palasian Strait that the Palasian maintained prevented any large scale invasions by the massive Julian army on Palasian home territory.
For the next two hundred years, the two spheres coexisted with relatively few skirmishes, slowly expanding their respective domains. In a series of naval actions, Palasia gained control over the northern Barkozian islands, while colonists from Chronopolis landed on the future coast of Atlantia, founding the first cities and heading off Julian explorations into that area. By 340 B.C., the entire southern Velkya penninsula was under the Palasian flag. On the Julian side of the border, the vast armies of the Republic smashed the barbarian resistence in the north, crossing the mountains that had long blocked expansion to the north, eventually founding the city of Ellrem. The prosperity of the Julian nation soared, but, despite their great expansion, the Palasians began to suffer a decline. The ruling class had become decadent, growing more and more out of touch with the common man. Slowly but surely, the Palasian juggernaut would collapse.
In 321 A.D., a popular revolution, incited partly by Julian intelligence (who has sensed the weakness in the ruling class of Palasia), stormed the king's palace in Palais, killing both him and his court. The revolutionaries declared Palasia a republic, and the portions of the military that were sympathetic to the rebellion rallied to their cause. The remainder of the nobles banded together, electing a puppet king to represent them. The Palasian mainland soon fell under rebel control, forming the Republic de Palasium, while the nobles, retaining control of most of the navy, retreated to the colonies while blockading the mainland and Julios in the process. While Julian spies had incited the rebellion in part, the Julian Senate was slow to militarily support the insurrection, and the Republican mainland slowly went into economic decline under the pressure of the Palasian navy, until a new Julian Consul, Patrius Jurivium, was elected by the Julian populace.
He immediatly mobilized the Republican Grand Army, an event that had not occured in centuries, and, in May 356, Julian heavy cavalry swept aross the border. With a speed unknown to militaries at that time, they had overrun the Palaisian legions defending the colonies, and by the next year had taken Artisia, the seat of power for Royalist Palaisia, leaving only the major port city of Lauraeis in their hands. The combined navy of the two republics sailed into Lauraeis' harbor, and despite the Royalists' individual superiority, the sheer number of Republican ships quickly overran them. As the Royalist navy lay rotting at the bottom of the Palasian Straits, large ships carrying seige towers and catapults assualted the considerable anti-shipping defenses on the coast of Lauraeis while the Julian army, led by Consul Patrius himself, hammered away at the walls of the fortress city. The vast strategic reserves of the Royalists held out at first, and the seige lasted over three years. Unfourtunatly, no fortress is immpregnable, and it was the creeping terror of the black death, not the thunder of Julian catapults, which brought the great city its doom. Pestilence ran rampant through the city, killing as much as 60% of the inhabitants. In a well documented act of mercy and neccessity, Patrius ordered his lieutenates to load their seige weapons with flaming shot, setting the city ablaze in a massive inferno, which, while dooming the remaining deziens of the city to a fiery death, prevented the horrors inside from escaping to infect the rest of the region.
After his victory at Lauraeis, Patrius returned to Midian, capital of the Julian Republic, for victory celebrations. Hailed as a hero by both the Julians and Palasians, he strongly influenced the Julian Republic, pushing it into a golden age. One of first achievements of this period was the unification of the two southern nations into what is today called the Courtainian League, after the word Courtius, which means unity in the Palasian language. While keeping the same traditions, the two cultures, Palasian and Julian, slowly fused, producing a language known as Courtanian, a fusion of Latin, Palasian, and various Germanic languages.
