Aeldrum Colonies

The **Aeldrum Colonies** are Pocket Dimensions controlled by the Serene Duchy of Aeldrum outside of the Aeldrum Core Worlds and Aeldrum itself.

## History

Aeldrum’s political history up until the First Coalition War was a contest between Aeldrum itself and the Aeldman “core worlds,” its most highly developed colonies, which enjoyed extensive legal rights but did not have proportional representation in the Aeldman parliament (for instance, each of the seven Spires of Aeldrum enjoyed not only semi-autonomous legal status as quasi-city states but also a constitutionally guaranteed bloc of votes in Parliament in addition to their popular votes). This issue was brought to a head, and nearly to civil war, by the events of the Coalition War, which Doge Bareth and his reformed conservative party concluded by significantly extending the rights of the Core.

Despite these enormous strides, Aeldrum remains fraught with tension among elves of different stripes, humans, orcs and various smaller populations that have been absorbed into the uneasy pluralism of the nation. These complaints are nothing new to Aeldrum’s politicians. More novel is the growing unrest in the Aeldman colonies: after the Aeldrum core worlds received political status almost equal to Aeldrum itself under his writ, Doge Bareth began an aggressive and largely successful campaign of administrative, educational and technological modernization. This massive effort has largely neglected the colonies, which despite the abolition of the Aeldrum Trade Company continue to serve as Aeldrum’s “pressure release valve” – a destination for the desperate and disaffected. Unsurprising then that the Aeldman colonies are hotbeds of resentment and wild theories about how government should look. The general efforts by Aeldrum to modernize its economy and its bureaucracy under Doge Bareth have focused strongly on the core. The contest for political power has thus shifted from Aeldrum against the core to the “new core” (including Aeldrum as first-among-equals) against colonial agitation. Where the Aeldrum-core conflict was mediated largely through Parliamentary squabbles and administrative paralysis, the vastly inferior political position of the Aeldman colonies shifts the channels of conflict to more local means of disruption: worker strikes, arson against colonial buildings, and the ever-present specter of open rebellion. Movements such as the “Representation Party” exist in a tenuous legal balance, permitted to act in the open as an appeasement and counterintelligence measure but swiftly shut down and repressed if they gain too much momentum or stray into threatening state interests (as the radical “Free Colonials” have been for a decade). Though countless diffuse and often factious colonial insurgent groups have materialized, the most persistent and obsessively covered by the Aeldman media is the “Free Colonial Army,” a militant wing of the illegal Free Colonial Party led heavily by veterans of the largely defunct and disabled Aeldman Militia (the Militia lost a great deal of their raison-d’etre with Bareth’s reforms, and the next generation of radicals looked to the colonies for fertile ground).

### Colonial Governance

Historically, control of a planet was either handed to a military official or a governor appointed by the Aeldrum Trade Company, depending on the manner in which the planet was conquered. Military government generally leads to the enforcement of a more privileged version of the laws on Aeldrum itself. Slavery, long term indenture, debtor's prison, and similar practices frowned upon by the more enlightened gentry on Aeldrum itself are practiced widely in the military colonies. ATC colonies were at once more and less exploitative than their military counterparts. While their slave populations were vastly larger, in order to support the mineral extraction and plantation farming, the upper classes in the colonies were far less stratified. The newly wealthy and powerful among the lesser Elves and Humans often move to the colonies and purchase shares in the local government, giving them a far greater say in policy than they could accomplish in the home country.

### Mercantilism and Etheric Power Projection

*See also: Ley Lines#Implications for Conquest and Trade*
The Aeldman colonial enterprise depends on the control of ley lines and the monopoly of the Aeldrum Trade Company or, later, the Aeldman State, on the etheric gates of a colonial world. Whatever happens in the interior of a planet, Aeldman doctrine demands the Gate(s) must hold, for if these are lost then both the lines of supply to the interior are compromised and (perhaps worse) reestablishing control of the planet will most likely require a costly etheric invasion. The next tier of Aeldrum’s “Gate Doctrine” generally prevents the rebellious colony from readily accessing rival trade powers, however: Aeldman control of key strategic worlds allows a similar stranglehold over entire regions of space, either because no navigable route exists except by passing through a world-junction under Aeldman control or because alternative routes are so long or so perilous as to prohibit rival trade powers from profitably engaging with a world. In this respect, the power of Aeldrum is not its navies, but in its careful construction of a multilayered prison of fortified etheric gates. As direct Aeldman control over the colonies recedes (around the mid-5th century A.U.), the heaviest fighting will not be over the vast stretches of worlds that lie within Aeldrum’s “Regions of Transfer Monopoly” but over the critical junctions that prevent foreign powers from accessing the rebellious worlds. In short, a monopoly over transfer between the ley lines is nearly as powerful as a total monopoly over navigation within a single ley line. The exception to this strategy is when an encircled region begins to develop self-sufficiency and no longer depends on Aeldrum for its imports.

## Notable Colony Worlds

### Current Colonies

*This section is incomplete. You can help The Aeldrum Wiki by expanding it*.

* Chelonia
* Semal
* Sivella
* Telrion
* Villenta
* The Forgotten World

### Former Colonies

*This section is incomplete. You can help The Aeldrum Wiki by expanding it*.

* Ireland
* Singe
* Zemlya

#### Ireland

*Main article: Irish War of Independence*
The most noteworthy and troublesome of the direct colonies was Ireland, which until achieving independence in 357 A.U. was known for its periodic revolts and history of independence movements. Despite this, Ireland produced some of the most famed soldiers in the Aeldman service (when the Irish populace were not fighting for independence or greater civil liberties).

## Notes

1. ↑ Indigenous colonial subjects are often as much at odds with agitating colonists as they are with the Aeldman state, and the proliferation of utopian successor candidates to Aeldman colonial rule has bred an environment of acrid disagreement even among independence-minded colonists.