Maris

Maris, officially the Republic of Maris, is a nation that is part of the Maecenia Empire and located on the continent of Norvinia in Abexilas. The country is ruled by a parliamentary democracy with each city having a representative to take a seat in the council. The nation originates from the Great Cold, a region nearly inhospitable but provides great protection and defense from outsiders. However, it all changed when an epidemic occurred in the Great Cold causing mass deaths and famine.
The Republic of Maris is located on an arid savannah island, which is an unsuitable environment for growth. However, the mainland which the Republic controls is suitable for long-term crop growth and agriculture leading to the environments of the Republic being widespread and unique. The republic has also invested heavily in preventing the natural beauty of the ecosystem from being destroyed, which has led to a pristine yet developed island that is not seen anywhere else.
The population of the Republic is made up of the original Mare population that came to the island. However, it is also made up of the indigenous villager population and species of Genembio that appeared to have come to the Republic for safe refuge. Although the Mare population is the largest by all ethnicities, the government still provides equal social, job, and economic benefits that have led to them being largely tolerable of any religion or race.
== History ==
=== Age of dispersion (BVE 390-BVE 326) ===
==== Origins (BVE-410-BVE 390) ====
Note: BVE = Before Voyager Era as information on the Mare people's calander is either sparse or non-existent.
Long ago, in BVE 390, 4 tribes made up the Great Cold. They bickered and quarreled at one another over control of the Great Cold and its natural defenses. This would cause the rival tribes to spread out and gather resources outside the Great Cold to bolster their defenses and raid each other. The Age of Dispersion is seen as a tipping point in a decade-long tension between them. One of them, however, the Pora tribe, sought a peaceful way to stop the violence and mistrust as their people were mainly hunters and fishermen. But to mock the Mare tribe for their supposed ignorance, the other three tribes of Iltus, Neusa Kora, and Prima, would go on to harass the Pora settlements while at the same time preparing for war with each other.
==== Tribal Schism (BVE 390-BVE 368) ====
Following a failed attempt by the Pora tribe to settle things peacefully, the tribes of Iltus, Neusa Kora, and Prima would wage wars of conquest on one another. Prima would begin the war by attacking a settlement of Iltus to claim their advantageous defensive position. After 2 weeks of non-stop attack, the settlement fell unto the holdings of the Prime tribe. This in turn led the Neusa Kora tribe to strike Prima settlements with greater fury as they matched with the relentlessness of the Prima tribe. The back and forth cycle of the tribes attacking and increasing the severity of their attacks each raid would spiral out of control as entire legions would be mobilized to take even a small settlement for themselves. While this was going on, the Pora tribe was investing heavily in defense and the security of their settlements which led them to become the safest region in the Great Cold which greatly increase the number of refugees and escapees entering the Pura settlements. Over the course of 2 decades, the war would slowly lose it's momentum as the people of the 3 warring tribes would go hungry and tired of the endless bloodshed. 
By BVE 371, the 3 tribes could no longer sustain the war effort and entered an uneasy truce. The 3 tribes were planning to restart their war efforts before the Pura tribe intervened and threatened to wipe out the other 3 tribes if they continued the war. Thanks to the isolation of the Pora tribe from the war, they amassed a large sum of weapons and resources which they used as a bargaining tool to bring the other 3 tribes into negotiations. Pora acted as a mediator and a negotiator to the other three tribes which while humiliating the other 3, could not do anything as they were incredibly weak. After a heated month-long negotiation, the 4 tribes of the Great would unite and form a greater tribe to represent all of the people in the Great Cold, the Maris tribe and the people would then be called the Mare people. With the unity of the 4 tribes, the Great Cold finally entered a period of peace for its people had enough of the endless bloodshed.
==== The Grand Revitalization (BVE 368-BVE 349) ====
During this period, the Maris tribe focused on rebuilding the lost infrastructure they once had, many homes were burnt down, destroyed, or looted during the schism. To bring forth a golden age, the Maris tribe began the construction of a new city, "Neusa Mare". The city would be the largest settlement the people would have ever made in decades. The project would take nearly a decade to complete but in the meantime, the revitalization of the Great Cold began. People would start hunting for food in large groups like before the Schism, fishermen would organize fishing parties to head to the sea to bring back food to feed families. After a decade of rebuilding, the Great Cold returned to it's pre-Schism state if not better which improved the lives of the people drastically with improved quality of food, accessibility between the settlements, and improved technology which brought in a true golden age of the Mare people.
=== Age of reckoning (BVE 326-BVE 12) ===
For near as long as the Schism, the Mare people managed to live in peace in the Great Cold. But on a fateful night, everything changed. During a high moon when the Mare people were slumbering, a force of bandits disguised as a merchant caravan, charged the Great Cold which caught the guards unprepared. There was a loud clash outside the gates of the Great Cold which woke up the people. When they went to look, they saw a sea of men that were entering the Great Cold. By the time the main Mare force arrived, what they found instead were the bandits looting the treasures and belongings of the dead, infuriating the incoming troops and they began a slaughter not seen since the Age of Dispersion. Once the night had ended, what was left was nothing but a lake of blood and a newfound sense of distrust of the outside world. Thus the Mare people from that point onwards would fully isolate themselves from the outside world and never come out for another 3 centuries.
However, within the 3 centuries, the Mare people suffered tragedy after tragedy as crop yields would fail leading to poor harvest and an unknown disease would spread across the Great Cold. The multiple misfortunes occurring in the Great Cold were still tolerable until a blizzard would hit the Great Cold which wiped out half of the housing and people in it. This would lead people to go on the frozen streets as their homes were destroyed. Thus, the leader of Maris at that time, decided that his people could no longer suffer in the tragedy they put themselves in for the past 3 centuries. Thus, he began calls for a great migration to the south in BVE 15. While his calls to action were dismissed by some of his peers, it was well known the people of the Maris tribe could no longer survive in the Great Cold no more and began preparation for what would come to be known as the Grand Migration.
=== The Grand Migration (BVE 12-VE 0) ===
However before the trip began, there was protest against the action as many families would have to leave behind generational heirlooms such as skull trophies of prized catches, and many generational homes to which the people bonded. But soon, the realization of what would occur if the Mare people stayed loomed over them and, soon they packed their essentials and light heirlooms to bring along on the migration. The trip towards the harbor was arduous as the Great Cold was located far from the coast and thus took a long time before reaching. After reaching, the Mare people finally boarded their ships and set sail for the new land. Their troubles would not end, as the Mare people would face disastrous storms which would either damage, cripple, or force the ship's crew to abandon their vessels as the Mare colony ships were repurposed fishing boats. Even through the terrors of the sea, they found a hospitable area, but it wasn't a tropical jungle island or plains like they would have hoped for. Instead, the people of Mare got a location for their capital city in the Orovian Peninsula on an island forming the first settlement of Mare, the Island of Vindoria. The leader Poliano leads this town, with the help of Sturmjhart.
=== Settlement of new land ===
The people of Mare would come to learn and adapt to their new surroundings and their fishing skills from their past lives would prove useful. Shortly after the immigration, there was a communal meeting to decide their new identity. Shortly after, they decided they would be called the Republic of Maris, which means The Republic of the Sea. They then had another meeting to discuss a system to govern their people as raiders started to appear more often which led to the creation of a parliamentary council to govern the people of the Republic. During this early period of settlement, one of the influential people of the Mare people disliked the hot weather as he thought it was not any better than the frozen cold tundra they were already suffering in before. Because of this, Est Mes as he was called, went on an expedition around the bay and the peninsula surrounding Vindoria. His goal was to search for a more suitable place to set up a settlement. During his expedition at the bay south of Vindoria, he found a plains biome that suited colonization. He and a group of followers started building and creating the town of Mestef (named after Est Mes). After some time the name changed to the town of Metarf, in which the word meant rebirth. The native people started to call themselves the Mestef, which is a nod to the surname of the founder Est Mes. After settling into the new land, the Republic faced a new problem. Though the Marisi people found a more hospitable place, the environment was too arid to set up a farm for food production. To provide food to the Republic, a group of Marisi went Eastward of the capital to create a town in an area suitable for crop growth. It would later be called Terambistouil. The name is derived from the word Terambis which is the Marisi term for peninsula which means land between water. It was also fixed with the word touil, which means town in Marisi. The leader of this town would later be named Sakydias for his efforts in spearheading the effort to create the town. Soon, the people of Maris managed to prosper although still being relegated as a minor nation.
=== Invitation to the union ===
After a few weeks of setting up the foundations of the nation, the Orovians quickly discovered the people of the Republic that was situated close to their lands and with urgency, sent an envoy to invite the Republic into joining the Orovian Union, after a period of discussions and negotiations, the Marisi people finally joined the Union. All would be well for the early stages of their new union as both sides were benefitting from the mutual partnership. However, the first moments of distraught between the Orovians and the Marisi were the thoughts on the government. Both had a different style of government. The Orovians followed an authoritarian form of a democratic government whereas the Marisi followed a parliamentary democracy. This led to both sides agreeing to a presidential election to decide how the nation would be governed, the candidates of the election would be the leaders of each of the separate states.
=== First election ===
The candidates of the presidential elections would come to be Polish and Poliano. They would hold polls and votes across a week to decide the leader with each providing a manifesto of their ideals and dreams to improve the union. After the results came in, the news would arrive that Polish would be the new leader of the Union which while angering some was seen with a positive look by the overall population. As his first order as leader, he decided to integrate the Federated Vinedaus of Orovia into Maecenia, a nearby empire. While it is unclear why he did it, the people of Maris believed the action was caused by rising tensions between the Union and a neighboring nation.
=== Land reduction ===
Maris had its land reduced two times in its history, both to Eos Astral. The first land reduction was a small, dispute between Eos Astral and the state of Maris. Eos Astral sent a diplomat to talk with the Maris leader Poliano, after a long negotiation to remove tensions, the Marisi leader agreed. Having been paid for the land, this inadvertently forced an entire Maris town to be moved away to construct an Eos Astral Church. 
The 2nd land reduction was an absolute disaster for Maris, having almost all its mainland removed from its control. This started with Eos Astral asking for more land because of its "big city" from Metarf, with the town mayor Est Mes disagreeing completely as the person who asked for this insulted the Marisi people a lot. After some time Terambistouil got removed from an unknown power and because of it, Sakydias disappeared. Subsequently, the Maecenians allowed an unknown member of the Empire called Secret to rule the region which was now empty. Maris was deeply aggravated due to the continuation of Eos Astral's control over the area and the fact they had no control over their former lands. After they left Maecenia to become an independent nation, they tried to get the land promised by Maecenia, which was a big portion of Maris.
Due to this second land reduction, more problems were created for Maris. Eos Astral planned to completely cut Metarf from the connection between the west and the east by constructing a canal, and to achieve their goals, destroyed a wall Metarf made due to a dispute over the canal being filled up. After the tensions started to rise, they settled for a peaceful negotiation and talks to solve the problem both sides were having. This led to a peaceful understanding, allowing them to get the land they wanted and what Maris wanted.