Gdańsk

The Free City of Gdańsk (Polish: Wolne Miasto Gdańsk) is an autonomous city and the main seaport of the Polish Soviet Socialist Republic. It was founded on WD1 by HexdePixel. The city's economy is based around crafts and trades, with the Gdańsk Trade Hall and neighbouring townhouses accommodating around 40 villagers. This trading economy is overseen by the Gdańsk Trading Cooperative (Polish: Gdańska Spółdzielnia Handlowa), as well as the city's many guilds and unions.
== History ==
Founded on WD1, Gdańsk began life as a small farming town. The residents were known to regularly clear the forest with slash-and-burn techniques to make way for their crops, drawing some international controversy. A system of trails and paths were built connecting Gdańsk to its neighbouring towns, Stralsund and Królewiec.
=== Company era ===
On WD9, the City chartered the Gdańsk Trading Company, placing it under the leadership of a wealthy stonemason named Wiluś Milewski. He imported two indentured villagers from Moscow and housed them in a wooden camp on Pomerania Beach, where they had many children. On WD10, Gotland delivered 2 Swedish villagers to Gdańsk, who were also taken in by the Company and housed in a stone camp. The company recorded that their assets had grown to 18 villagers. However, disaster struck when the Moscow camp caught fire, killing 10 of its residents. The Swedish villagers quickly replenished the population, though, and the first villagers were transferred into the Gdańsk Trade Hall.
Over the following days, the Trade Hall grew to accomodate 24 units. The Swedish camp on Pomerania Beach continued to act as a nursery, providing a steady stream of new employees for the company. Inside, the Trade Hall put its villagers through an intensive training course to get them to an acceptable skill level. As the wealth of the Company grew, façades for more waterfront townhouses were constructed, partly for future use for company operations but also partly to be sold as real estate. On WD12, Wiluś Milewski was appointed the new Mayor of Gdańsk.
On WD17, a new townhouse was completed, intended to temporarily act as the Company's nursery. The Swedish camp was dismantled, however the Swedish villagers inside were unfortunately ill and died of old age before being able to be transferred into the new building. Villagers from inside the Trade Hall were transferred in instead.
Also on WD17, a villager was sent to establish the Company outpost of New Gdańsk in the far north of Russia.
=== Gdańsk Rebellion ===
=== Cooperative Era ===
* Joining the Soviet Union
* Food shortage
* Terror attack
* Burning the forests campaign
* New Town expansions
== Politics ==
=== City Soviet ===
Gdańsk is nominally governed by its City Soviet, whose current president is Socialist politician and Gdańsk Rebellion veteran Henryk Rybakov. However, most members of the Soviet are also officials of the Gdańsk Trading Cooperative, and effectively serve to rubberstamp its internally-deliberated decisions. This system lends outsized power to the workers in the New Town, at the expense of the farmers and petty bourgeoisie within the city's large territory. Some within the Socialist Party have argued that the Cooperative and the civil government should be merged to remove this disadvantage, and their efforts have resulted in some first steps towards political reform.
=== Gdańsk Trading Cooperative ===
The Gdańsk Trading Cooperative inherited the assets of the defunct Gdańsk Trading Company, and thus its disproportionate role in the City's politics. It owns a majority of the land of the City, most notably the Trade Hall, and has effectively replaced the Free City's state apparatus as the civil government of Gdańsk. The board is made up of representatives from each of the four major guilds, and it is led by Secretary-General Janisław Wozniak of the Fletchers Guild.
==== Fletchers Guild ====
The bread and butter of the trade system, fletchers are the most numerous and most exploited of the Company's former labourers. Their strong class consciousness makes them the strongest supporters of the socialist cause.
==== Masons and Builders Guild ====
The masons of Gdańsk have been the engine of the city's physical growth ever since the foundation of the Company. They have strongly pushed for expanding the city so that the the working class can move into their own homes, creating some friction with those who want to maintain the economic efficiency of a higher population density.
==== United Smiths and Handymen ====
A coalition of the various armoursmiths, weaponsmiths, and other handymen employed by the Company, the United Smiths and Handymen are the most conservative of the four major guilds. They have pushed for the ability to open private businesses and transition to a more equitable capitalist economy.
==== Student Union ====
Ever since their month-long shut-in in the Gdańsk Nursery in support of the Livonian Revolution, the Student Union has been the most radical group in the city. Its members have proposed a myriad of societal restructurings to leapfrog Poland into higher commmunism, although the Cooperative has so far been slow to adopt these proposals.
=== Gdańsk People's Brigade ===
The Gdańsk People's Brigade (nicknamed the 'Black Cats') is a revolutionary socialist militia that operates many day-to-day services in the Free City of Gdańsk. Its forces are made up of volunteers from across the working class, with the largest contributions coming from the Fletchers Guild and the Student Union. At the height of its power, it ended the abuse of labourers in the Trade Hall, imprisoned most of the top-level officials of the Trading Company, and expropriated the assets of many of the city's wealthiest merchants. The Brigade's national-level political wing, the Polish Socialist Party, went on to outgrow the Brigade and become the dominant party in the Polish SSR.
The Brigade's nickname comes from local tales which superstitiously credited the victory of the Rebellion to the presence of cats around the labourers and the Trading Company's cruel mistreatment of cats. The Brigade's symbol is a black cat, and Brigadiers are often seen wearing ceremonial cat-eared helmets.
=== Counter-revolution ===
Despite crackdowns from the People's Brigade and the national government, many counter-revolutionary organisations continue to exist in the Free City. While they initially operated within the city centre, they have since been pushed out to the surrounding villages and forests.
==== Provisional Civil Council ====
Comprised of the remnants of the ancien régime, the Provisional Civil Council represents the merchants, businessmen, and free tradesmen who ruled the Free City from its inception. They have organised businesses and landowners to resist expropriation, and called for the release of the Trading Company officials who remain imprisoned by the People's Brigade. The Council is strongly affiliated with the national-level Conservative Party.
==== Polish Farmers Association ====
The farmers of Gdańsk's hinterland have been largely unimpressed by the socialist revolution, seeing it as a continuation of the exploitative trading economy of the city overshadowing their once critical role in the Polish economy. Suggestions from more radical Brigadiers that Polish farms should be collectivised or expropriated have certainly not helped matters. The Polish Farmers Association has formed a tenuous alliance with the Provisional Civil Council and the Conservative Party to resist urban socialism.
== Geography ==
* Situated at mouth of Vistula
* Big open field created by slash-and-burn
* Fields
* Old Town
* New Town
Category:Season Three