Kingdom Of Tellus

It is a strange thing to think that one of the Empire's most stalwart defenders would leave it in its time of need, but the dice had already been rolled for the ancient state. It was simply a matter of time. What was not, however, was that Tellus would lose one-third of its land to a cursed alliance of heretic, degenerate invaders. As refugees, or perhaps more fittingly, deportees, from the Transaurelia streamed in, Tellus threatened to cannibalize itself as various groups vied for dominance in the new state, and it was frankly lucky that its Civil War was as small as it was. However, outside of the thousands dead, the Civil War would have even greater effects on Tellusian politics. At its end, the General Staff, anxious about the absolute monarchy enshrined in the now deceased King Nikolaso's Constitution and seeking to strike his name from the new administration, would launch a soft coup and force King Lucius IV, who was only just 20 years old at this point to radically reform the government.   The Kingdom of Tellus lacks any singular codified constitution, for the hyper-reactionary military government that rules the nation sees such things as liberal nonsense, with the government instead operating on laws both ancient and modern as well as other government procedures and principles established during and after the Deluge. In its current state, the Kingdom is legally an absolute monarchy but functionally a military dictatorship. After the coup d'etat of the royal-civilian government, the Royal Army would place itself in the seat of power, where it remains to this day. Due to these circumstances and the care the Army takes to carry themselves as the protectors of the King's rule, one must be sure to mind that there is a great deal of difference between the de jure and de facto powers of Tellus' various governmental arms.   Legally speaking, the King of Tellus is the absolute and inviolable ruler of Tellus, combining executive, legislative and judicial powers within himself. All legislation in the Kingdom comes in the form of Royal Decrees (though most are not actually from the King himself, but rather the bureaucracy), the King is recognized as the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Armed Forces, and it is his prerogative alone to appoint individuals into judicial positions or into the Royal Council. In the Kingdom, lèse-majesté is punishable by death and all households and public buildings must display a portrait of the King.   As of current, the King of Tellus is Lucius IV, son of Nikolaso the Failure. Though there was a wave of anti-monarchy sentiment following the Deluge he presided over and his abdication thereafter, the prestige of House Milonius has not only stabilized but tripled. The King is the unifying symbol of all Men everywhere, their great custodian and sovereign who they will follow to the ends of Ecumene, he who shall rectify their shames and bring them into a new Golden Age just like his vaunted ancestor did. It is tradition that Men be led by a King, it has been this way since the birth of Holy Trinitism, and Mankind has been made to learn that tradition is all.   The Royal Council, as just mentioned, is said to be no more than the King's cabinet made up of various ministers of state, but in truth, it holds all of the state power. Of course, His Highness is the one to formally head and control the Council, but this job more realistically falls to the Pontifex. There are no concrete laws that lay out the powers and prerogatives of the Pontifex, it simply being said that he is the vice-chair of the Royal Council (the chair himself being the King). However, for all intents and purposes, the Pontifex is the true and absolute ruler of Tellus. Since the coup in which the King was forced to surrender his power, governance has been held in the hands of the Royal Army and the revanchist ethnonationalists that make up its General Staff. He who bears the title of Pontifex is simply the leader of this military junta and therefore the leader of the nation. All the powers legally enshrined with the King actually lay in the Pontifex's hands, and though the junta is more than happy to propagate a royal personality cult and make it known that they are nothing more than His humble servants, this is simply play-acting. All power lays in the hands of the Pontifex, and the King is more than aware of this fact.   The position of Pontifex was established by Duke Mamercus Verinus, the nation's first Legate (or General). He would not only mastermind the destruction of the Cisaurelian Republic, he would mastermind the Royal Army's takeover of government and be given the keys to the castle (so to speak). However, Verinus would die not long after his term began, and would be succeeded by another Legate, Marcellus Pictor, who would be succeeded in 1288 by Faustus Caelius, the grandson of Theopropides Caelius, the infamous perpetrator of an Anti-Centaur hate crime in the Imperial Age. Where Verinus and Pictor were reserved and more than happy to sit back and let the King be the face of the regime, Caelius has made an independent name and personality cult for himself as the "Glavo de Venĝo": the Sword of Revenge. In his fiery speeches (which he always ends with the phrase "Qadjik devas esti detruita!"), Caelius rails against "inferior races", Commonalists, pacifists, race mixers, Republicans, and all other opponents of the state. His youth and electrifying speeches have made him beloved nationwide, and have more than stoked the flames of revanchism into an inferno, although he has gone to great lengths to preserve the King's superiority over him in the minds of the people. After all, the King and Tellus are one, and woe to those who wish harm on either!   Unlike other ultranationalist military dictatorships (both de jure and de facto), the Kingdom of Tellus makes no use of political parties or organizations. The government, being deeply traditionalist, refuses to see such things as anything more than modernist gangs. Humanity should not be loyal to any badge or party banner when the flag of Primus the Martyr flies above them and the sons of Lucius Milonius sit on the throne. While Tellus is undoubtedly more of an army with a state than it is a state with an army, the Legates and Tribunes that have come to dominate the Royal Council cannot rule alone and have subsumed the royal bureaucracy of the Pre-Deluge era into their own ranks. Some Ministeries, such as Defense, Foreign Policy, and the Interior have been completely swallowed by the Royal Armed Forces, with their scribes and diplomats bearing official military rank and being inducted into official military service, while others still are almost entirely civilian (though still bent to the whims of the General Staff and its militarist aims).

Much to Humanity's constant chagrin, the Kingdom has been relegated to the land West of the River Aurelia, commonly referred to as the Cisaurelia. While it is an excellent land, sunny, warm, and green, it is not enough. It has never been enough. Tellus' economy is one of healthy variety, having a near equal rural and urban population. However, that rural population is still the larger of the two. During the Kingdom's earliest days, when the military government was still young, the old system of sharecropping was in full force. The nobility ruled over local government while the Armed Forces ruled the country, and all as well. However, the soldiers saw the nobles as weak-willed at best and direct threats to their power at worse, so when Duke Verinus died in 1256 and Marcellus Pictor took over, the commoner who was much more of a juntist than Verinus ever was swept their legs out from under them. With a single decree, the Pontifex declared that the land of the nobles must be redistributed, and their powers over local government were now to be delegated to administrators appointed from Reginca (most of them military officers). As a symbolic measure, the nobles would be permitted to keep a few acres around their estate, as well as their titles (which remain hereditary), but for all intents and purposes, they had lost most of their economic power. The nation's farmland would then be bestowed onto the central government, specifically in the name of the King, but the people own it in all but name. In return for the farmer's choice of monetary rent payments or a share of the crop, the state provides them with tools and housing, and also allows them to grow whatever they want on the land or terminate their contract whenever they see fit. While still technically sharecroppers, the average farmer of Tellus lives a better life than his father did by a fair margin. The primary crops of the state are wheat and olives, but such things as white rice, soybeans, grapes, and carob (an expensive luxury good), as well as animals such as unicorns and ostriches also make up sizeable portions of the agricultural sector.   The other half of the nation lives within the various cities that Tellus is so proud of. The major cities form almost a semi-circle around the capital due to the railroads and other factors. The city of Besontio, nestled between the main Aurelian flow and a large tributary, Padus, located near a highland region in the country's North, Nepte, the country's main seaport, and Canatha in the South build the backbone of Tellusian industry, synthesizing materials from the Arys Mountains and the country's farms. The biggest cities, though, are Histria and Reginca. Histria is the beating heart of the Trinitist world, located on the Eastern bank of the River Aurelia's widest point (of about 2 miles), and serves as the seat of the Cult's ecclessiarchy (and Ecumene's premier tourist/pilgrim spot). However, aside from this lofty role, it is as any other city, factories churning out smoke and military officers governing matters of temporality, though it has far more churches than most. Reginca, on the other hand, is a solely earthly capital. It is here, in the country's largest urban and industrial center where the Palace Of The Confidant, the King's abode, and the other government offices lay and from which their power projects outward.   While the Kingdom has allowed its industrial workers some rights, they are not the best. An only just decent minimum wage is in place, working hours are not cruel, workers are guaranteed a weekend, and both the elderly and disabled are given state pensions, but child labor is still legal and strikes are brutally crushed. The merchant class of Tellus has, since the military government came to power, carried on a symbiotic relationship with it. In return for the government maintaining high tariffs and bestowing them with generous funding, the businessmen of Tellus have set aside entire factories of theirs for state-run military production. Indeed, quite a few industries within Tellus are state-owned, including the aforementioned defense industry, but also agricultural mechanization, electrification, and telegraph line industries.

As stated before, the Royal Armed Forces and the Tellusian government are one and the same. But, let us now cover their military obligations. As per the Treaty of Histria, the Royal Army was limited to 450,000 men in perpetuity. However, the Tellusian government, which itself is dominated by the Royal Army, has found ways to circumvent this. When they turn 18, all able-bodied men are conscripted either into the Royal Army, the Royal Navy, or one of many programs that serve as unofficial auxiliaries to the Armed Forces (and which are also trained in combat). Some of these auxiliaries include the Labor Battalions, which help maintain the infrastructure of the nation (including the Aurelian Bastion, a nigh unbreakable line of forts and trenches on the River Aurelia, a testament to Human power, especially when compared to the much more fluid trenches across the border) and give logistical support to the Royal Army, and the Royal Gendarmerie. This policy of conscription is also intended to make a "total war" with the Spring Coalition much easier, as the logistics to conscript large amounts of the population are already in place.   The Royal Navy is nothing to scoff at either, though, especially since it is not limited by the Treaty of Histria. In the latter days of the Verinus Pontificate, the Navy received a funding boost, choosing to use this cash in the construction of a core of massive gunships that can blow most anything Tellus' enemies can throw at it out of the water. Of course, as is necessary, a large contingent of smaller ships orbits these big ones, but the Tellusian metal sea snakes make up the core of the country's naval doctrine.

The Kingdom is, in all respects, a modern nation. Railroads radiate outward from Reginca into the other major cities of Tellus, and then out into the countryside, connecting the nation. However, as of late, its ports on the River Aurelia and on the World Ocean have become far more important, as Tellus only borders two nations, one of which has cut off all land contact with it. Every Tellusian village also has an electrical telegraph system, but despite this, only the cities are truly electrified (as well as their immediate surrounding areas). Through a program of state-run traction engine production, 67% of Human farmers now own a traction engine, putting Tellus near the top when it comes to agricultural mechanization.    However, it should be noted that the development of Tellus has slowed some. While it only rises and rises along the River and around the capital, most other places are finding more and more that the infrastructure of the county is not being cared for as well as it should, as this money is "much better" spent funding the military that has unceasingly prepared for an Aurelian Crusade since the Civil War ended.

The government's religious policy of "Humanocentric Trinitism" is an interesting one indeed. As both Primus the Martyr and Lucius I were Humans who ruled from Human lands, modern Tellusians have come to believe that their race has been specially chosen by the Gods to bring the light of Trinitism to the whole of Ecumene, and they have a divinely ordained mandate to totally destroy any who stand against them in this mission. This idea does bend the bounds of the Cult's theology a good bit, but it is not technically heretical, with most clergymen in the Kingdom even going so far as to support the government's program of faith and fire. Of course, as Histria, the seat of the Cult's ecclesiarchy, is in Tellus, the two have close relations. Thus far, the Cult has not condemned the attempted genocide of the Centaurs, and for it, their city receives very generous funding from the Kingdom's government. Tellus follows Trinitist religious law to the letter, going so far as to enforce headdress codes on women. Accusations of heresy have also been found to serve as an easy way for the government to rid itself of opposing political movements.

Ever since the military seized power, the Kingdom of Tellus has pursued a foreign policy of violent revanchism. Be this as it may, though, most nations of the world consider Tellus to be a dog that barks plenty, but when it does, it barks through a muzzle. As most nations of the world do not imagine that Tellus will ever do anything again, they are content to trade with it. The Kingdom carries on cordial relationships with almost every nation of Ecumene (though still focusing on autarkic economic policies), and though the whole attempted genocide thing makes a few relationships icier than not, most Trinitist nations are entirely happy to trade with the land of the faith. Sylvania, while more apprehensive than some, does much the same. Even Dyffryu and Meridie trade with the Kingdom, much to the chagrin of their Qadjiki allies, although they will just as readily rattle sticks at Humanity when it gets uppity.   Some, however, cannot forget the deep sin that founded the nation. The Khanate of Qadjik remembers, and until Humanity pays for its crimes, it shall make sure Tellus remembers just as vividly. Humanity is busy remembering a "tragedy" of their own, though: their loss of land, and more importantly, their loss of pride. Were the cession of the Transaurelia and the deportation of its folk not enough, the Spring Coalition also forced the Kingdom to limit its military size drastically. A near death blow was dealt to the Human spirit, but instead of accepting defeat, they embraced their perceived superiority, pledging to reclaim the lost lands and their lost prestige. As such, the Kingdom and the Khanate do not carry on any relations, political or economic. The bridges that forded the River Aurelia are now rubble and its pristine banks are now scarred by lines of trenches, pillboxes, and fortresses, filled with soldiers whose every dream is one in which the Kingdom's flag is carried over the river at long last.