Karelia

## Societal information

### Language(s)

**Official language:** Cournagormian **Other languages:** Mullic, Dwyrani, Severni, Blue Ghurrkan

## Historical information

### Establishment

* Pact of Swords (1400RT)
* Rige Acts (1720RT)
* Lansdowne Proclamation (1813RT)

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Karelia, also known as the Karelian Empire, is a nation that spans the northern reaches of Western Propastra. Evolving out of the Queensrealm of Karelia, the Empire spans from the Northern Ocean in the West to the Sea of Silver in the east. The fourth most populous country on Unus Solum, its major cities include Korinta, Aviemore, and Lansdowne. The country’s economy is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, having industrialized over the last century.

## Early History

The area the modern Karelian empire occupies is vast. The region occupied by Cournagorms was a mixing place of cultures, with proto-Rostefian communities to the south and sea fairing Allerodians to the north. Evidence of contact with the settled peoples of the Jeevan River civilization dates to the 5th century PRT, suggesting even then, the region was connected to a larger regional trade network.

The Cournagormic people, however, were indigenous to the far east. One of the many pastoral groups who lived throughout the southern plains of Nordvest and in the Senchen peninsula. At some point, around 250 PRT, people from the Silver Sea began to arrive. Theorized to be the indigenous inhabitants of modern Hokuriko, it is not known exactly how they were received initially. Either way, hostilities seem to have broken out, causing mass migration from the region. While some groups headed south into modern Koven, others headed to the northwest. The Cournagormic people were a part of the latter.

### Arrival of the First Empire

The Cournagormic people arrived in modern Cournagorms sometime around 200 PRT. By the time the First Arcean Empire first arrived in the region, alongside the written word, the Cournagormic people had become one of the dominant peoples in the area, albeit having adopted many of the cultural stylings of the area. Their town, Aghaidh (modern-day Aviemore), was built in the Rostefian hill fort style common at the time.

As the First Empire built trade cities along the coast of Cournagorms, they often had to turn to local populations for their defence, being so isolated from the Empire, and with icebergs in the spring and fall leaving the cities cut off from reinforcement, much of the year. This provided an immense opportunity. Shieldmaiden mercenaries from Aghaidh fought across the First Empire and returned with treasure, technologies and ideas that saw the city boom. When the First Empire ultimately collapsed, the city-states turned to their Aghaidh allies. Aghaidh and the Syerdawnic trade cities of Thyra, and Heruli, would form the basis of the Queensrealm of Cournagorms, with Queen Kentigerna Lysthjerte unifying the region in 710 RT.

### Three Queens Period

Three generations of peace and stability marked the Three Queens Period as one of the golden ages of Karelia. The Queensrealm of Cournagorms would exert cultural and economic control throughout much of what the people came to call Karelia, the land between the Western sea and the wild lands of the Dwyrain. Colonies spread throughout modern-day Argyll and Stornoway. The Lysthjerte Dynasty maintained stability through the Queen’s Council, to which Karelian noble families such as the Hillevys, Birgirs, and Rasks, among others, can trace their lineage. The Council and the Lysthjerte Queens became increasingly powerful and, at times, rivalled the Syerdawnic and Rostefian successor states to the south.

The period would come to a violent end under Queen Aife, Kentigerna’s granddaughter, when another wave of migration saw the eastern colonies overrun but a new wave of mass migrations. With the never-before-seen invaders reaching deeper and deeper into Karelia, eliminating client states and allies one by one, Aife turned to the rival Kingdom of Syerdawn-Rostef, an otherwise rival. King McSennan would oblige the Cournagormians, sending his armies north. The aide came at a cost. Once the migrating peoples had been beaten back, the armies of McSennan sacked and destroyed Aghaidh. Aife was captured and killed alongside her children. The house heads on the Queen Council were killed as well. A puppet king was chosen to lead the lands of the Kingdom of Cournagorm, while its eastern tributary states were formed into Argyll and Stornoway. The regions would soon be incorporated into the Second Arcean Empire.

## Middle Karelia

The Second Empire’s northern provinces would span from Cournagorms in the West to Magnusa in the East. Many cities, such as Concourse-Most, South Line, and North Point, would be built during this era as the Empire attempted to tie the enormous region together. This would come first in the form of the Northern Imperial Highway. In the later period of the Second Empire, trains would become the arteries through which armies quickly moved across the region, suppressing rebellions and fighting off foreign incursions. Arcean Empire categorized the people of the north along linguistic lines. The Karelians of the West, the Dwyraini of the Mid-North, Nordvestians and Kovenians in the East. While this common identity suppressed many regional differences between the people of Cournagorms, Argyll, and Stornoway, as they were now considered Karelia, it also created a common identity. Favoured by the Arceans because of their familiarity, the Cournagormic form of Karelian and their flavour of the Fonwich religion became dominant in the Karelian province, in much the same way Norintan culture came to dominant Nordvest in the East.

A young Nordvestian farmhand named Elis from Norinta claimed to be a long-forgotten member of the Lysthjerte Dynasty in 1491. While not taken particularly seriously at first, a string of small victories against the local imperial garrison caused Elis to be taken seriously. In 1499, the Queen’s Council, an organization that had become semi-mythical, re-emerged and recognized the legitimacy of Elis’s claim to the throne. With thousands now swelling Elis’s ranks, an alliance was formed to finally liberate the north. Meeting in Assincia, nobles from across Karelia, Nordvest, Koven, and Ghurrka threw their swords at the feet of the rebel prince, swearing loyalty to him.

Turning from a guerrilla campaign to open war, Elis marched his forces West, defeating the increasingly beleaguered campaigners of the Second Empire in a string of battles across Mull and Stornoway. Finally reaching Cournagorms in 1408, the forces of the Second Empire attempted to stop Elis one final time near the port city of Forfar. However, now greatly outnumbered, and with the Second Empire itself now racked by Civil War, the campaigners of the Second Empire were defeated. Without so much as asking for the permission of the Emperor in Nikea, the commander of the Empires Northern Armies surrendered in exchange for being allowed to see a safe and orderly Arcean exit, something Elis obliged.

In 1410, at the ruins of Aghaidh, Elis would be crowned and adopted the title Prexy Elis Magnus the First, reigning over the Dual Monarchy of Karelia-North Ghurrka, which largely assumed the lands of the Second Arcean Empire’s northern provinces. He made a new capitol in northern Cournagorms, which he named Korinta, in honour of his hometown. There he would build the Emerald Palace, the home of Karelia’s monarchy ever since.

### Lykkennen Dynasty

Magnus would die without an heir, and the dual monarchy would come to an end, the United Kingdoms of North Ghurrka splitting away. The head of Magnus’s bodyguard and the Crown Protector, Jarka Lykkennen, would assume the throne as Jarka the First. Magnus had never invested a great deal of power in the title of Prexy; however, his prestige and popularity had given him a great deal of soft power that had allowed the Empire to operate as a unified machine. In contrast, Jarka was never a particularly powerful queen, and the title of Prexy became greatly diminished throughout her reign. The Queens Council came to dominate affairs. Magnus had expanded the council to include a representative from every major noble family from across Karelia and Nordvest. However, with most of the powerful houses situated in the West, the realm became increasingly dominated by the old Cournagormic houses. In Cournagorms, the wealthy and metropolitan heart of the north, the fractures forming within the realm could be ignored. However, in the East, where life did not change in the century following the departure of the Arceans, a rebellion was inevitable.

Peasant revolts were a common feature of the Lykkennen period in rural areas both east and West. In 1620 however, Franz Černá decided that instead of turning his house guard against the peasants, he would use their energy instead. Stating that the sources of their frustration were not him but the supposedly despotic Ulrica Lykkennen V in Korinta, he led the peasants across Nordvest, slowly building a force that might topple the realm.

#### Karelian Civil War

Initially, Černá's push west was ignored by the houses of the west more greatly concerned with their own rivalries and disputes. His unifying of the Eastern 'black' houses, by pen or bullet went unchallenged. However, when he crowned himself King of Nordvest in 1622, and impressed upon the crowd of supporters his intention to march on Korinta, a response became plainly needed. Ulrica managed to to assemble a force under her leadership and met Černá's outside of Cimburkstead. Despite having the advantage in manpower and gunpowder armed soldiers, Černá's clever usage of terrain allowed him to capture Ulrica's artillery and supply train. An attempt to organize a retreat into the city of Cimburkstead itself turned into a route. Ulrica was killed in the chaos.

Černá's would defeat the various remaining western Dukes and Duchesses in detail as he pushed towards Korinta. The Western houses struggled to replace Ulrica, split between her young son and the crown protector Henriette Hillevy. However, some respite would come in 1625 when Černá's advance was halted by rebellion back east in Talingrod. Led by Kujava Skola, a baroness, she unified the various trade towns along the southern coast and their powerful merchant class against Černá's unpopular newly appointed Duchess. Initially fighting a guerilla war, the fall of Talingrod marked a turning point in Černá's fortunates. Kujava Skola's campaign provided time for the western houses to unify around Henriette Hillevy, who retook the initiative.

Funding from Syerdawnic and Sudfellian banks began to dry up by 1630 as crown debts became untennable. Having pushed Černá and the black houses back to the swamps and bogs of the Dwyrain, a peace was signed between the two competing forces. Brokered by the King of Syerdawn Darius Cambyses, the Treaty of Valiant established the border between Karelia and Nordvest. Karelia and Nordvest would spend the next century struggling to pay back their war debts.

### Modern Karelia

#### Hillevy Dynasty

The Hillevy's have a long history in Cournagorms, tracing themselves back to the days before the arrival of the first Arcean Empire. They played a supporting role in Magun's victory over the Second Empire, and had inherited several castles and estates in the region upon his ascension to the throne. The first Hillevy monarch, Henriette Hillevy I would reign for little more than a decade, already in her 60s when becoming queen. She accomplished little in the aftermath of the Civil War and handed power over to her own daughter. Freydís Hillevy II's rise to power was contentious, as many felt power should return to the Lykkennen's. However, Freydís survived these early setbacks. Struggling to modernize the state, her most notable contribution would be the creation of a Royal Court which afforded legal rights and protections to peasants for the first time. While she failed in most other accounts, Freydís imparted upon the Hillevy's a reformer spirit that would carry on through the dynasty.

Best embodying Freydís spirit would be her great grand nephew Rowlind Hillevy VII. Ascending to the throne in 1765, he also struggled against other claimants. Strengthening his position by marrying Suzannah Lykkennen, Rowlind set out on an ambitious program of reform. He freed the peasantry and sought a program of limited land reform. He also imported new Hoffnung technologies, like the radio, and funded Karelia's first air fleets. Hendes Majestæt's Kejserlig Design Bureau (HMKDB) provided funding and workshops for inventors and entrepreneurs to create a new modern Karelian industrial economy, while Kejserlig Udsendelse's broadcasts began to impart upon Karelia's of all classes and ethnicities a sense of common identity. Rowlind's success at home made his continuation of his predecessors non-interventionist foreign policy his most hotly debated aspect.

Upon Rowlind's death in 1798, Karelia had gone from an impoverished feudal backwater to one of Unus Solum's foremost industrial powers. However, such a rise had brought about new issues. The Karelsk National Fagforening (KNF), a relatively small Korinta based organisation with only a few dozen members in 1765, had risen to national prominence. The victory of the ANLU in Arcea had turned them distinctly Aequalist, and fired them towards national prominence. Forming labour councils throughout Karelia, their strikes had grown increasingly well organized throughout the final years of Rowlind's reign. Sigurd Hillevy VIII might have been brought into a showdown with the KNF and their supporters within the ANLU if it were not for the Shirudan invasion of Nordvest.

#### The Great War

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