Rentusca

**Rentusca** (Rentuscan: *Rentusca*), officially the **Kingdom of Rentusca** (Rentuscan: *Martelosano dan Rentusca*), is a country located in northeastern Asmatys.

It is bordered by Homea to the west, Illuminata Maxima to the southwest, and Adoriam to the south. As of a 2016 estimate, Rentusca has over 6.8 million inhabitants.

Rentusca is a constitutional monarchy, established under its current form in 1845. The capital city is Cavarda, and the official language is Rentuscan. Rentusca is a unitary state, comprised of twenty-six provinces, further subdivided into municipalities.

Indigenous people of Rentusca are known as Rentuscans. Rentuscan is a Carogenic language, and a member of the Homeo-Rentuscan language family. Along with Homean, it is the only Carogenic language spoken in the world.

Historically, Rentuscans belong to the Rentuscan Catholic Church, a branch of the Roman Catholic Church. Nearly 90% of Rentuscans identify as Rentuscan Catholic, but religion is not a major part of most Rentuscans' lives.

The Kingdom of Rentusca was founded on 9 September 1534. At the time, the territory of Rentusca was made up of twelve Rentuscan-speaking city-states. After peaceful discussions, the city-states unified into one large kingdom. Rentusca was a powerful rival of the Kingdom of Titova during this time.

Rentusca is a member of the Asmatic Union. It is ranked first in Asmatys on the Human Development Index, and has been classified as a high income economy. Its currency is the Rentuscan Rupa.

## Demographics

### Ethnic groups

For centuries, Rentuscan's population has been largely homogeneous. According to the 2014 census, 94% of the country identify as Rentuscan, 4% identify as Homean, and 2% identify as other races. The majority of the country's Homean population reside in the western provinces that border Homea, and have resided in Rentusca since these provinces were won by Rentusca from Homea in the Homeo-Rentuscan War.

Rentusca is also home to small communities of Adoriamians, who mainly reside in the southern provinces, and refugees from Pesa, who arrived following the 1969 coup d'état. Due to the high standard of living, Rentusca is often a destination for illegal immigration for Maximans, Sodraxians, and Naxnics. The Rentuscan government has put in strong effort to stop illegal immigration and strong punishments are in place for illegal immigrants.

### Language

The sole language of Rentusca is Rentuscan, distantly related to Homean. Rentuscan is a member of the Homeo-Rentuscan branch of Carogenic languages, and along with Homean is the only Carogenic that is still spoken. Rentuscan can be significantly broken down into varying distinct dialects. Each large city speaks their own notable dialect, while some provinces have their own dialect as well. Many Rentuscan dialects are unintelligible to each other, so standard Rentuscan is often used as a lingua franca. The dialect spoken in Cavarda is often deemed "standard Rentuscan".

Approximately 96% of Rentuscans speak Rentuscan as their first language, while 3% speak Homean, and 1% speak other languages. Over 90% of Rentuscans can speak a foreign language, while of those 90%, 30% can speak more than one foreign language. The most common foreign languages in Rentusca are English, Homean, Sodraxian, Lashardian, Naxnic, and Adoriamian.

### Religion

The largest religion in Rentusca is Christianity, with 94% of Rentuscans identifying themselves as Christian. The largest Christian denomination is Rentuscan Catholicism. About 91% of Rentuscan Christians identify as being Rentuscan Catholic. Over 99% of non-Rentuscan Catholic Christians in Rentusca identify as being Roman Catholic. After Christianity, 5% of Rentuscans identify as atheist or agnostic, while 1% identify as other religions.

While a large amount of Rentuscans are Christian, studies have shown that religion is not a major part of their lives. According to a 2014 survey, 54% of Rentuscans attend church weekly, while 39% haven't been to church in over a year. In the same survey, 76% of Rentuscans agreed with the sentence, "There is a God", while 20% agreed with the sentence, "There is some sort of spirit or life force, but not a God", and 4% agreed with the sentence, "There is no God, spirit, or life force".

Rentuscans have often showed themselves to be intolerant of other religions. According to the same 2014 survey, when asked the question, "Who would you not want as a next-door-neighbor?", the fourth-most popular answer (out of sixteen) was "a member of a different religion", above choices such as "someone with mental illness", "a polygamous household", and "illegal immigrants". When going into detail, over 90% of the Rentuscans who chose this answer specified Muslims.

### Education

Education is broken down into two halves; primary school and secondary school. Primary school lasts from ages 5 to 14, while secondary school lasts from ages 14 to 18. Both primary and secondary school is mandatory for all students. Students begin preschool at age 5. Preschools are commonly located in a separate wing of the local primary school, and typically are every-other-day for half-a-day.

In primary school, students receive very little academic freedom. Students are assigned to a different class with different classmates and a different teacher every year. That teacher teaches the class basic subjects such as mathematics, Rentuscan, history, religion, and geography. They go to separate teachers with their class to study physical education, art, music, science, computers, and English. At the end of primary school, when students are 13 or 14, they must pass the Rentuscan Excellence Exam (REE) (Rentuscan: *Esamo da esellantosano rentuscano*), in order to graduate. Approximately 99% of students pass the exam, and there are many loopholes for those who don't to still graduate.

Unlike primary schools, students can choose whichever secondary school they'd like to attend. In secondary school, students study four or five subjects of their choosing which they feel will benefit their career path. However, one of their classes must be a foreign language, and it's encouraged that they study a second as well. Most secondary schools have hundreds of possible courses to choose. Students are given much academic freedom in secondary school, with them being able to schedule their classes on whichever day they'd like and choosing their teacher. Prior to their third year of school, they can switch any courses they'd like. At the end of their final year, students take the Maturo Exam in all of their selected classes. Students do not need to pass all of their Maturo Exams to graduate, but universities are highly selective in Rentusca and take exam scores into close consideration.

After graduating secondary school, students may elect to attend university. As university is free in Rentusca, competition is fierce, and thus many students opt to attend polytechnic universities which are scattered around the country and offer open admission to everyone.

The largest university in Rentusca is Rentuscan International University, located in Cavarda. Each province has a central university located in their capital cities, as well.

### Health

The Rentuscan healthcare system is a universal program, funded through government taxation. Lashardia ranks very high against other Asmatys nations in terms of percent of their GDP spent on healthcare. There were 109 hospitals in Rentusca as of 2013.

In 2010, there were a reported 875 cases of HIV/AIDS in Lashardia (0.0128% of the population), 89,324 reported sufferers of alcoholism (1.31%), and 101,629 reported cases of clinical depression (1.49%).