Dominion of Septentria

Containing the world’s largest rainforest to the east, and impassable mountain ranges to the west, during the Age of Exploration the continent of South Antichthon was shrouded in myth, with wondrous tales of it containing a kingdom with unimaginable amounts of gold and treasure. The myth inspired several unsuccessful expeditions by explorers from the Southern Europan kingdoms of Rosserlare and Erinden, until finally, they were able to penetrate the jungles.
There, the explores discovered that South Antichthon was already dominated by two ancient civilizations: The mountainous empire of Tawantin and the jungle dwelling Tenochca empire. Both civilizations ruled over vast territories, with large, complex cities containing impressive stone structures rivaling anything from the old world. However, later historians will discover that the natives did not in fact built the cities themselves. But instead, they were left over by a previous, now vanished civilization, not that dissimilar from the ruins left behind by the Valkyrur though out Europa. With the native peoples maintaining the infrastructure though a series of rituals and ceremonies passed on generation to generation within their class of priests and clerics via rote memorization, with rumors of them being the mixed race descendants of the precursors that built the great cities. Making the Tawantin and the Tenochca the first examples of peoples making widespread use of archeotech.
The Tawantin and the Tenochca had been at a state of perpetual conflict for generations, with the people of Tawantin being on the losing end of the war when the Europan explorers arrived. Desperate for survival and sensing an opportunity, the Tawantin king allied with the strange people from across the sea, and together, they were able to utterly crush the Tenochca empire.
The explorers celebrated with their new allies and helped themselves to a large share of the loot of gold and silver before returning to their homeland. However, unknowing to anyone at the time, in addition to superior tactics and weaponry, the Europan explorers also left something else behind: Previously unknown disease. Eventually the Tawantin people became immune to the disease, but only after a 60% of the population had been wiped out. The priests and clerics searched though all their records, but were simply unable to find anything in their holy text that addresses this crisis. Desperate, they turned to human sacrifices and even cannibalistic rituals, but still, they could not stop the plague which led to a series of protests, and in the end, a massacre of all priests by the enraged population. This doomed the native civilizations in South Antichthon once and for all.
When the second wave of Europan explorers returned, they found the native peoples utterly decimated by epidemics, famine and their once great cities falling apart with no one left who knew how to maintain them. This made it much easier for the Southern Europa kingdoms of Rosserlare and Erinden to subjugate and conquer what little was left of the Tawantin people.
Waves of Europa colonists soon arrived, settling on the now deserted lands, building new towns, and clearing the jungle to create farmlands. Among the settlers contained a significant number of lesser nobles from throughout Europa, realizing that they will never be able to rise to prominence in the court politics in their own homeland, they instead decided to take their chances in the untamed lands of opportunity in the New World. The highborn colonists quickly purchased the relatively cheap land to create plantation complexes, producing cash crops such as cotton, cocoa, coffee, etc for exportation back to Europa, where exotic products were seen as a sign of wealth by the nobility, and highly demanded.
Free from the petty palace politics and power struggles of the old world, these former lesser nobles soon grew rich and powerful, merging their holdings though political marriages (regardless of their homeland of origins), forming massive landed estates, famous worldwide for the grand, luxurious mansions that the great families built in their estates, to emulate the royalty back in their homeland. However, no matter how much wealth the landowners were able to accumulate, in their ancestor homelands they were still always not only regarded as lesser nobles, but that since they were born outside of the homeland, it made them mere colonials as well, lowering their social status even more. This disparity and resentment slowly grow overtime, with the landowner class creating their own separate national identity as Septentrians, a mixing pot of various Euorpan aristocratic culture independent of any one of the mother countries.
When the republican revolutions at the turn of the 18th Century broke out throughout West Europa, it included the Kingdoms of Rosserlare and Erinden. Taking advantage of the situation, the Septentrian landowners declared their independence. However, while officially, the new Septentrian nation is a liberal republic, in truth, it is an aristocratic republic at best, and a dictatorship at worst, with the landowners became the ruling oligarchy. When the exiled Europan royalty (now landless and often penniless) made their way to the New World, they suddenly discovered that THEY are now the lesser nobles, having to use their children’s hand in marriage to barter their way in the door of the established families. Further cementing the prestige and legitimacy of the Septentrian oligarchs.
While the West Europan republican revolutions disrupted the transatlantic trade network for a time, the demand for exotic luxury goods from South Antichthon had not. If anything, the newly empowered middle and upper classes in West Europa had an even greater appetite for cotton, cocoa and coffee thanks to the massive growth of the now liberalized economic system, and business was booming for the Septentrians.
By the mid-20th century, just like the UCA to the north, the Dominion of Septentria managed to stay out of EWI & II, selling and trading with all sides. More than 90 percent of all arable land are owned by just a dozen of great families, and despite representing almost everything the Federation profess to hate, the two countries have a cordial, if uncomfortable diplomatic relationship by virtue of both being the one of the other side’s best trading partner. The Federation being the Septentrian’s biggest customer for the cash crops the country produced, while Federation companies use South Antichthon as a dumping ground for their finished products (Meaning that with the exception of export oriented factories at the coastal cities, industrialization is very limited in the country, as native industries had no hope of competing against the flood of cheap goods, which serve the needs of the oligarchy just fine).
In the north of the country, there is a sizable community of Gallian expatriates due to the discovery of ragnite in the region, making it a land of economic opportunity. While originally mostly consisting of regular economic migrants and occasional draft dodgers, after the Gallian Civil War of 1936-1937, many supporters of the defeated GRA rebels fled across the Atlantic Ocean, setting up their own exile communities. In the various ‘Little Randgrizs’, it is not uncommon to see the House Gassenarl’s ‘Double Lion’ flag displayed publicly.
Septentria has also unintentionally created a niche market for ‘atrocity tourism’, with many communists and leftists, sometime sponsored by the UEESR government, travelling to South Antichthon so that they may see the ‘true face of unfettered capitalism’ with their own eyes, and eventually going back home to publish essays on "The Red Truth" passionately denouncing what they saw… over a cup of coffee brewed with beans imported from the same plantations that they visited.
However, in this age of political turmoil and unrest, how long will the Septentrian oligarchs be able to maintain their power? Behind closed doors and in hidden basements, groups with interest in resisting the status quo silently wait for an opportunity to put their plans in action…
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