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|national_motto              = ''Progress, Prosperity and Peace''
|national_motto              = ''Progress, Prosperity and Peace''
|national_anthem            =  
|national_anthem            =  
|capital                    = Cuauhquemecan
|capital                    = Itzcoatl
|largest_city                = Itztlan
|largest_city                = Itzcoatl
|official_languages          = Tandan Standard
|official_languages          = Itztli
|demonym                    = Xiwa
|demonym                    = Xiwa, Tandan
|government_type            = Hegemonic Atlepetl Federation
|government_type            = Atlepetl Federation
|leader_title1              = Sovereign
|leader_title1              = Sovereign
|leader_name1                = Toloche Cancuzuma  
|leader_name1                = Toloche Cancuzuma  
|established_event1          = Great Reformation
|established_event1          = Great Reformation
|established_date1          = 14th of August, 1284 AM
|established_date1          = 14th of August, 1284 AM
|currency                    = Nera
|currency                    = Tulu
|currency_code              = Lb
|currency_code              = Tl
|date_format                = dd-mm--yyy
|date_format                = dd-mm--yyy
}}
}}


'''Xiwantandu''', the common name of the '''Itztlan-Tola Hegemony''', is a star state located in the Gamma quadrant that occupies the planet [[Tandire]] and parts of the surrounding [[The Gentian|Gentian solar system]] through a network of tributaries and client states. It is formally a hegemonic federation of Atlepetl city states, which the central union of the Itztlantec and Tolantec cities and their territories forming the imperial core, and various Atlepetls and other forms of client state being subjugated and paying tribute to this core in a vassal-suzerain relationship. The largest and most notable client of Xiwantandu are the [[Metztli]] occupying the Twin Moons of Tandire, and represent one of the only footholds of the Tandan regime in space as well as one of the most industrially advanced power within the hegemonic sphere of the Xiwa. Due to their decentralized power structure, Xiwantandu is notable for highly variable levels of technology and development depending on the region. Itztlan-Tola and their integrated lands of the imperial core are a sophisticated industrial society with sufficient technological advancement to launch craft into space and even develop primitive fast than light travel. In comparison, peripheral vassals on the continent of Acalhuacan exist in a medieval technological stage and operate as an undeveloped agrarian economy in stark contrast to the technical and productive capabilities of the integrated core. The basis of Xiwa economic progression is based on the gradual process of adoption of technology and new modes of production by vassal states, subsequently increasing the amount of resources and economic value that can be extracted as tribute by the imperial core.  
The '''Six Domains of Tandire''' (''Itztli: '''Xiwantandu''' ''), also known as the '''Tandan Hegemony''', is a star state located in the Gamma quadrant of the {{wp|Milky Way Galaxy}}. The eponymous Tandire, a primarily ocean-covered life bearing world in the [[Gentian system]], is the seat of Xiwantandu and the homeworld of its founding species, the [[Miri]]. The Gentian system is the only fully controlled star system claimed as core territory by Xiwantandu, and the overwhelming majority of the Tandan population as well as space constructs, infrastructure for extraction, production and transportation and the state's military and scientific centers are located within what is termed ''cislunar space'', or the space generally encompassed within the orbit of Tandire's smallest and outermost satellite Efira, generally considered to mark the outer edge of the planet Tandire's gravity well. Xiwantandu is a minor power within the Gamma quadrant and holds negligible influence over the wider galaxy, but has demonstrated its capability to operate in the local region and continues to focus on the furtherance of greater prosperity and development within its home system both through internal and external means.  


The Xiwa are made up of the three known sentient species native to Tandire which belong to the Archaeopterid family, a group of feathered diapsid sentient consisting of only three extant species. Miri are by far the most common of the three, making up the well adapted generalist species, while the long living but diminutive pygmy Kypra and the colossal Rorkar races are far less common, believed to have been undergoing the processes of natural extinction due to competition from the Miri before this process was effectively halted or in some cases merely slowed by the advent of civilization. The three species are organized into a caste system featuring clerical figures on top, followed by the warrior caste that in past centuries dominated before being deposed by the clerics, and beneath them the artisans, the merchants, the peasants and fisherman, and finally the untouchables which are people of other castes that have undergone ostracism and been cast out for significant transgressions against the social order. However, most occasions of ostracism are no longer practiced under the Xiwa, and the once only hypothetical superiority of the clerical caste has been reinforced establishing the supremacy of religious laws over the civil government of Xiwantandu.  
Tandan government is a {{wp|theocracy|theocratic}} {{wp|technocracy}} governed by the duly {{wp|elective monarchy|elected}} Sovereign and a caste of clerical administrators overseeing a vast temporal and secular civil service. The religious law which governs the operation of the Xiwa state lays out strict codes of conduct and absolute responsibilities, such as the requirement of state officials to guarantee the material needs of those under their stewardship without exception, and the duty of the citizenry to lend their labor to the state in exchange for and indeed often in furtherance of these services. As a result, Tandire and the broader sphere of the Xiwa is a highly ordered and moralistic society balancing a universal guarantee of physical and psychological needs to its citizens with a deeply engrained central organization and somewhat authoritarian {{wp|proselytization}} and imposition of rigid religious principles on the populace. Xiwantandu's internal structure takes the form of a coalition of major city states across the landmasses and island chains of Tandire in what is known as an Atlepetl, or City State, Federation. Formally, all the powers and authority of each individual city and its chief executive, or ''Tlatoani'' are ceded to the central government and the supreme Sovereign, however in practice the daily operation of the local region is usually conducted by the Tlatoani or the military equivalent Cuauhtlatoani in the Sovereign's name as a form of delegated authority.  


===Geography and Politics===
Xiwantandu possesses a {{wp|planned economy}} composed entirely of either state owned or community owned organizations and is devoid of what is traditionally termed private enterprise. Nevertheless, central planning is usually limited to large scale projects across the planet and in space, while the daily political and economic activities in a given region are usually overseen by the local community through a rule by committee system at the city and ward/township level. The Tandan economy currently find itself in a period of prolonged expansion through the technological augmentation of its capabilities, specifically the exploitation of oceanic and lunar resources, the former providing untold mineral and agricultural wealth to the terrestrial cities and the latter unlocking the resources necessary to further expand and colonize the Gentian system and project power to better secure Tandire and its populace.  
The basis of the Xiwa state is the {{wp|Mandala_(political_model)|Mandala}} system common to Tandan society, wherein a series of vassal relationships and peripheral tributaries make up the bulk of the empire and are arrayed around a center of power, a hegemonic Atlepetl city state, the cities of eponymous Itztlan and Tola in the case of the Itztlan-Tola Hegemony. However, Xiwantandu breaks from Tandan convention in its use of a bipartite metropolitan center splitting power between the two capitals under a state of union, with Itztlan as the senior partner and Tola as the junior partner. A third capital exists largely as a formality, located on a very small rocky island near Itztlan known as Cuauhquemecan, who's only function is to serve as the formal seat of the Sovereign of Xiwantandu and as a neutral third power center to mediate disputes between the opposite poles of the Xiwa core territory represented by the Itztlan and Tola city governments acting on behalf of the swathes of territory they directly administer. Itztlan, being found on Citlaltepec island in the Sondrilos archipelago, has integrated the island chain as well as numerous World Ocean islands and small enclaves on Tecualoyan as its part of the imperial core, while Tola has integrated a subcontinental region of Conitlan known as the Saddle of Conitlan. Together, these integrated territories of the imperial core largely surround the Sondriline Sea, one of the only partially enclosed maritime bodies on Tandire distinct from the World Ocean, the only other one of note being the Gulf of Mictlan. The imperial core comprises some 700 million inhabitants, overwhelmingly Miri Tandans, which inhabit not only the mega-cities that Itztlan and Tola have separately become, but a large number of significant urban centers, as the advanced and develop imperial core is where the majority of Tandire's major urban and industrial centers can be found.


====Political Divisions====
===Government and Politics===
(map is in the shop)
[[File:XiwaGovChart.png|425px|thumb|left]]
The structure of Xiwantandu is based on a long political tradition of precursor Tandan civilizations of the medieval and classical ages. At the highest level of organization, Xiwantandu is a federation of individual city-states or ''[[Atlepetl]]'', each of which is in turn governed by their own lord (''Tlatoani'') or an appointed viceroy usually acting as a military governor (''Cuauhtlatoani''). Many of these states, especially those located on the planet Tandire itself, are usually many hundreds or thousands of years old and may be ruled by ancient lineages that have survived numerous empires rising and falling. Each city state in turn is traditionally divided into ''calpolli'' districts, which describe both rural towns and wards within an urban center. As much as the Atlepetl is the principal unit of government at the large scale, the Calpolli is the center of day to day life for the average Xiwa citizen. Each Calpolli is made up of several kin-groups which collectively own and govern the lands and property of the Calpolli, which may include tracts of agricultural land, mines, forests or even factories, offices and storage depots. Consequently, most centers of economic activity in Xiwantandu are publically owned and operated by a dedicated community attached to that specific productive center. Since the modern day, many Atlepetl tier states have specialized their Calpolli to function as connected nodes of a supply chain, such that a single Atlepetl or a small group of Atlepetl working together can fully transform raw materials into any number of finished products through the use of the productive specializations of each of their Calpolli units.


The Itztlan-Tola Hegemony is a highly complex order of overlapping states of union, vassal-suzerain relationships, and alliances. The name Itztlan-Tola by itself officially only refers to the actual municipal areas of the Itztlan and Tola megacities, commonly referred to as the Iron Sisters as sister cities on opposite ends of the Sondriline Sea whose bond is like iron. The state of union between these two cities was established under the [[Writ of Foundation (Xiwantandu)|Writ of Foundation]] and is marked as the formal start point for the polity now known as Xiwantandu. These two cities, dominated by their two Temples of the Serpent and the Eagle respectively, established the office of the Sovereign to rule as a middle authority tied to neither pole of the partnership, and to this day in the strictest interpretation of the founding documents, the Sovereign is primarily and in some cases only referred to as the master of the two cities alone. At the time the Writ of Foundation was penned and ratified, these two cities were embroiled in the violent collapse of the former Itztlantec Empire and the full extent of the Sovereign's jurisdiction was only the immediate territories of the two cities.
This Calpolli system has functionally been the basis of every Tandan civilization since before the Bronze age. The principle factor setting Xiwantandu apart from its predecessor is the elimination, or in most cases simply the marginalization, of the hereditary nobility which traditionally held all the seats of power, being replaced by religious institutions. While many Tlatoani lineages remained in place in their specific Atlepetls, the events of the Great Reformation led to the clerical caste overthrowing the last Heuy Tlatoani (equivalent to an Emperor or King of Kings) and installing the first Sovereign of Xiwantandu, [[Irolen Itzcoatl]] to rule. The old Jaguar Knights (''Ocelomeh'') were reformed into the hereditary military caste of Xiwa Janissaries, while the new tensions between clerical and warrior castes led to the emergence of many Temple Guard organizations, which would later merge into the armed cleric Eagle warriors (''Cuauhtli''), which serve as a counterweight to the Janissaries and as the pretorian bodyguards of high ranking Xiwa officials.  


Although all territories added into the domains of the Sovereign were originally merely subjugated vassal states to either Itztlan or Tola and therefore under their union state, the passage of time and the expansion of the sphere of influence for the Iron Sisters has resulted in many of the territories nearby to the two cities becoming closely tied into them as satellite communities integral to the greater economic and political systems of the large metropolitan centers. Over time, these vassal city states and territories were fully integrated and their governments reorganized from largely self governing vassal states to directly ruled provinces under the Sovereign's civil government. These territories of annexed former vassal states are collectively known as the Central Integrated Territory, or C.I.T. of the Itztlan-Tola Hegemony. The Itztlan-Tola CIT, colloquially referred to as the Core, is economically vital for the industrial economies of the two mega cities to sustain themselves, allowing for many production centers to be spaced out and making ample room for complex supply chains. The high level of industrial development of the CIT has caused it to be a densely populated region, and the only region on the surface of Tandire to have a predominantly urban population, hosting all of the top 25 largest cities of the planet. Notably, many island territories in the Tandan world ocean are directly governed by the Sovereign and are not under a vassal-suzerain relationship, but are not part of the Central Integrated Territories, and are simply considered integrated territory within the Hegemony. An example of a non-CIT integrated territory is the large island of Zolla in the austral polar sea, which is directly ruled as an overseas possession of the Sovereign and serves as a strategic polar launch site for voyages into space.  
At the empire-wide level, the government is split into three distinct sections knowns as the "Columns of State", each of which holds the Sovereign at the top. The columns, which are the military, the administration and bureaucracy, and the political and legal system respectively, each contain more specialized organs to tackle more specific tasks and are represented on the scale of an individual Atlepetl and often an individual Calpolli, to some extent. Each column has its own chief officer who could be considered a high tier minister to the Sovereign, and who in turn oversees lower ministers. Each column exercises a significant amount of power over the component Atlepetl units of the federated Xiwantandu, demonstrating the centralized nature of the Xiwa political structure in defiance of its federal structure which is largely a vestige of its decentralized, medieval past.  


Lastly, the remaining territory of Tandire as well as its extensions into space are governed by vassal states that have not undergone the total integration of those now defunct states that have been absorbed into the CIT. This complex tributary web can be politically amorphous in some areas, and is referred to under the umbrella term of the Hegemonic Sphere of Itztlan-Tola, whereas the specific term of the Hegemony is used to describe this extended tributary network in addition to the CIT and Itztlan-Tola themselves. Although some of these states do have some level of economic and political integration, most are highly autonomous in their internal affairs and are essentially self governing states and nations, save for the cession of control over foreign affairs and trade to the authority of Itztlan-Tola as well as the payment of tribute. Tribute is usually paid in the form of raw materials and natural resources of a certain monetary value, but can sometimes take the form of military assistance or a technological contribution. By far the largest and most powerful vassal state of the Hegemony are the Metztli, controlling the Tandan moons and possessing an technological and industrial sophistication to rival that of the Itztlan-Tola CIT itself. Because of its nature as an advanced power unto itself and in part due to historical circumstances, the Metztli enjoy a special status as part vassal, part independent allied power to Itztlan-Tola that makes it unique within the Hegemonic Sphere. While many vassal states are highly autonomous, the status of the Metztli goes beyond autonomy as they even exert some degree of influence over Itztlan-Tola in their own right, although they are distinctly the junior partner in the relationship. This is best exemplified by the joint command and operation of the [[Xiwa Armada]] space-borne naval forces of Xiwantandu between Itztlan-Tola and their Metztli subjects.
The military column is unique in that its general membership is composed of a type of slave or bonded soldier raised within specialized military Calpolli from birth to serve the Sovereign in battle. Consequently, the members of the Xiwa standing military are technically the property of the office of the Sovereign (although mass mobilized troops drawn from the Calpolli during wartime are free volunteers), and their leaders are the only high level officers of the Xiwa government who are not of the cleric caste. The ''Calpixque'' in turn make up a vast class of steward-administrators who are governed by a ''Huecalpixque'' and oversee the bureaucracy and the vast majority of day to day government services such as postal/communications networks, transportation infrastructure, as well as education and medical services. Members of this administrative caste are all ordained priests of various Tandan temples, which is used as a mechanism to enforce ethical rules through the strict application of religious law as well as stringent entry requirements as initiation rituals double as civil service examinations. As the Xiwa government began to expand faster than this elite caste of administrative clergy could recruit new members, a secondary subservient class of secular bureaucrats known as the ''Pochteca'' was created to raise manpower for the aparatus of state without diluting or lessening the high standards to which the Calpixque are held. Similar standards are applied to the cleric arbitrators under the legal and political column of state, which is headed by the ''Cihuacoatl'' who is considered to be the vice-ruler and second in command to the Sovereign. While their central duty is to staff and oversee the Xiwa system of courts, their role as mediators definitively places the underlings of the Cihuacoatl at the center of political life in Xiwantandu, despite holding a smaller role in the day to day lives of the citizens than the administrative Calpixque. The Cihuacoatl and the court system, besides the day to day adjudication of common disputes and criminal cases, is also tasked with foreign affairs and diplomatic tasks as well as the balancing of internal factions.  


====Military====
===Military===
''Main Articles: [[Xiwa Army]], [[Xiwa Navy]], [[Xiwa Armada]]''
====Janissaries====
The Janissary corps is the backbone of the Tandan military and represent a martial institution over a millennium old with a legacy of service dating to the turbulent foundation of Xiwantandu. Upon the abolition of the warrior caste's rule over Tandire, many reforms were implemented to establish that caste's new role in the social order. The result of these reforms were the Janissaries, born into service just as the warrior caste ''Ocelomeh'' Knights had been prior, but stripped of nobility and instead termed as slaves of the Xiwa Sovereign, loyal only the high office and indoctrinated through childhood to attain unparalleled loyalty as well as a high degree of discipline and practical training. To make this lengthy process of mental and physical conditioning effective, Janissaries are raised from dedicated martial calpolli which are often encircled with barriers or otherwise physically isolated from the rest of an atlepetl, although they are often found near the city's seat of power as a means to enforce the Sovereign's dominion over the lower Tlatoani of each city. Young Tandans are formed into Janissaries in these calpolli, which also serve as general living quarters and military bases for adult Janissaries, the children of whom will often be trained as Janissaries within the same calpolli their parents inhabit.


The military organization of Xiwantandu is as much shaped by the turbulent formative years of the Itztlan-Tola Hegemony as its complex and decentralized political nature. Broadly, the main fighting force of Xiwantandu is made up of two main bodies; the Janissary corps and the Contract troops. The standing army is made up of Janissary soldiers born into the warrior caste of Tandan society and are typically regarded as well trained and well equipped troops, the elite of Xiwa forces. In the event of a major mobilization or the outbreak of war, a wartime force is amassed using regularized mercenary contracts, which are typically standardized and allow for the rapid enlistment of large numbers of troops. Soldiers mobilized in this way are simply known as Contractors. Some Contract forces are raised in peacetime to handle more routine military tasks that are considered outside of the Janissary purview.  
As a fighting force, the Janissaries represent the apex of the ground power Tandire is able to produce. Their extreme discipline and conditioning can make them extraordinarily effective soldiers under a competent commander. The size of the Janissary body has fluctuated through the centuries, becoming little more than a skeleton force in prolonged periods of peace. Lack of any notable conflicts for extended periods has also caused their equipment to become archaic compared to the level of technology applied in civilian fields. The Xiwa rearmament effort is focused primarily on resolving this technological gap, seeking to equip the formidable Janissaries with modernized weapons of war, and perhaps more importantly train their commanders in modernized doctrines. With the exception of space-based boarding actions and space-to-surface insertion operations, the Janissaries are slotted to fulfill every role of combat, including infantry and mechanized ground combat, atmospheric combat, and maritime naval warfare. The Janissary forces are commanded by the ''Tlacochcalcatl'', or "supreme general", who is the second in command of the entire military apparatus under the office of the Sovereign herself, although they are behind the civilian Cihuacoatl and Huecalpixque in terms of overall control of Xiwantandu, and are barred from becoming involved in non-military affairs or holding a civilian office due to their position in the warrior caste of the Tandan social hierarchy. Underneath this supreme general figure, there is a panel of High Generals known as the Circle of Generals, which serves as an advisory body to the Tlacochcalcatl and may form a collective martial authority to oversee military operations should the Tlacochcalcatl die or be incapacitated.  
=====Janissaries=====
====Militia====
The foundation of the Janissary corps as well as its nature as a military body is closely linked to Tandan history and an event known as the Great Reformation. This event, coinciding with the foundation of Itztlan-Tola, partially deconstructed the caste system of Tandan society, or more specifically reorganized it to remove the Warrior caste from power. Formerly highborn knights and feudal lords, the now dis-empowered Warrior caste was reorganized so as to redirect its members into the service of Itztlan-Tola. This was done by establishing the Janissary corps, a military organ that inducts pre-selected Warrior caste Tandans into its ranks for intensive training and indoctrination to become highly skilled and more importantly loyal soldiers of of the Sovereign. During the [[Grand Campaign (Xiwantandu)|Grand Campaign and Wars of Unification]], the Janissary corps served as the elite regiments of the Sovereign's armies of conquest as they subjugated the independent states of Tandire. In more peaceful times or merely during conflicts of lower intensity, the Janissaries are the primary operatives of the Xiwa military arm that carry out missions and further the plans of the Sovereign.  
The Tandan militia service exists in the modern era as a vestige of the ancient mass levy system used by Tandan city states to raise vast armies of peasant foot soldiers which would be led by a small body of elite Knights. This model was modified with the replacement of the Knights by the Janissaries during the foundation of Xiwantandu, and while levy units were used in great numbers early on, as Xiwantandu expanded and solidified its grip on its territories, Janissary numbers expanded and began to subsume the role of the levy in the military, until the Janissaries became the primary body of the Tandan ground forces. The lack of conflict brought about by the ''pax tandica'' has further pushed the wartime only levy mobilization system into obscurity as only the peacetime Janissaries remained in existence. Consequently, the Tandan militia system has atrophied and remains rooted in highly antiquated organizations and traditions. The immediate modernization of Xiwantandu's mass mobilization mechanisms has been deemed a high priority task as it may be of critical importance should Tandire come under alien attack. New mechanisms for voluntary service and conscription have been put in place by the Xiwa administration, however the implementation of these long overdue reforms and more importantly the preparation of material and  means of training for these militia forces has proved an arduous and monumental task, one even the notably efficient state apparatus of the Xiwa may take many years to complete. Militia forces fall under the Janissary command structure when mobilized and serve as auxiliary forces.  
=====Military Contractors=====
====Armada====
The origin of the Contract Soldier of Itztlan-Tola is that of the common mercenary, recruited in droves by the First Sovereign to fight in the Grand Campaign and hailing from diverse lands and peoples. The decentralized and feudal nature of the early political order of the Hegemony meant that to rely on levied troops from Itztlan and Tola as the rank and file of the army in their extensive military campaigns would be to lead the two cities to ruin, and the Hegemony would need to draw upon the peoples of its subjugated territories to fight in order to meet long term success. This was accomplished through the recruitment of mercenary regiments from the local region, often soldiers of the vassal lords themselves that were lent out under contract in exchange for simple monetary compensation. As the Itztlan-Tola Hegemony grew in size, and became better established and stabilized, this system was regularized into the Contract system, in which the Sovereign would directly raise large numbers of individual soldiers through a mercenary contract offered to citizens of any community, directly ruled or vassal ruled, which could then be organized and reorganized into regiments as the Sovereign's generals saw fit. Although a reserve of Contract Soldiers is usually kept on retainer by Itztlan-Tola in case of war, the nature of the Contractor system as a means of conditional wartime mobilization means that the bulk of those that would serve as Contract Soldiers under the Xiwa military are now employed as such during peacetime. Typically, these soldiers continue to work under mercenary contract as the military and security forces of vassal states or under the interest of other non-state parties, occasionally competing to fill the more lucrative Xiwa military reservist contracts until such time as wartime contracts open up. In this way, the old system by which the Sovereign would rent out the regiments of her vassals to fight her wars is perpetuated in a similar sense into the present day.  
Forces designed to fight exclusively in space have been a key focus of both the Xiwa remilitarization effort and of the civilian Open Wings colonization initiative. The space forces of the Xiwa are the newest and smallest of Tandire's armed forces by manpower, although it dwarfs most organizations and even eclipses the Janissaries in terms of the budget and investment of resources made towards the development and construction of a space navy to protect Tandire and the Gentian system. Although most of the naval staff are natural Tandan Miri, ships of the Armada are crewed by an artificial sub-species of Spacer Miri, physiologically modified to boast a near total immunity to the negative biological effects of prolonged exposure to low gravity and microgravity, as well as resistance to G forces and a suite of other alterations to make these Miri inherently adapted to life in service aboard spacecraft. These individuals, known as "Shaved Ones" for their tradition of shaving parts of their plumage, are taken as representative of the entire Armada and naval force as they crew and command the ships, even though a large proportion of the naval staff are not Shaved Ones. The Armada, military shipyards, naval staff and ship crews are based on the Tandan moon [[Selisera]] where the Xiwa ''Tlacatecco'' military district is located. This entire district including the shipyards and production facilities, as well as the Armada personnel deployed elsewhere, fall under the authority of the ''Tlacateccatl'', an office of supreme command of the naval forces reserved for a Shaved One officer hand picked by the Sovereign. In a similar vein to their Janissary counterparts, the Armada possesses a Circle of Admirals made up of High Admirals which advise the Tlacateccatl and may collectively replace her as a provisional commanding authority in the event of her death until the Sovereign can name a replacement.  
=====Xiwa Armada=====
====Cuauhtli====
The organization of the Xiwa Armada is unlike that of the regular Xiwa forces, although it is still partially subject to the organizational principles of its Janissary and Contractor components. This is due to the Armada's nature as a joint command organization, the only branch of the Xiwa military forces not wholly controlled by the Sovereign of Itztlan-Tola but instead cooperatively run between the Sovereign's military staff and the defense forces under the Tlatoani of the Metztli. Because of this, neither Sovereign of Itztlan-Tola nor Tlatoani of the Metztli serves as a paramount commander-in-chief for the Armada, although both the Armada and the Tlatoani of the Metztli are ultimately subordinate to the Sovereign. In order to represent the joint interests both contributing parties, the Armada is headed by a body known as the Circle of Admirals, made of the seven High Admirals. In the early stages of the Armada, the High Admirals were largely retired Janissaries or other military veterans occupying the position largely as an administrative role over the relatively small nascent Xiwa Armada. Later on in the force's development, however, the position of High Admiral would be closely tied to the accomplishments of an Armada officer, typically an Admiral, and entry into the Circle of Admirals would be heavily regulated by litmus tests of merit as a commanding officer fit to hold sway over the leadership of the entire Armada. This strict barrier of entry in the developed Armada's Circle of Admirals would mean that the nominally seven member executive committee of the force would sometimes have empty positions as not enough Admirals in active service would meet the requirements to sit in the Circle, and the appointment of veterans and retirees to simply fill out the role would be disrespectful to accomplished Admirals not yet able to claim a seat and devalue the rank of High Admiral, so this was no longer done.  
As the only armed force of the Xiwa belonging to the ruling clerical caste, the Cuauhtli warrior monks of the Eagle Temple play a special and unusual role for a branch of the military. They are entirely outside of the normal military chain of command and answer directly to the Sovereign, bypassing any warrior caste officers in the Janissary forces or the Armada. Their primary function is as an inward facing force which is designed to deter any attempt by the warrior caste, or any other party, to wrest control of the government away from its priestly stewards. Its members are recruited from among the abandoned and orphaned of the planet's cities, raised and trained within Eagle Temples to fight as well as undergoing preparations of the initiation rites necessary to become a Tandan priest. These Cuauhtli warriors were commonly used as a force of bodyguards for important priests and members of the religious government, a role they retained as a matter of tradition long after most credible threats to those individuals had subsided. Two elite units exist within the Cuautli today which stand out from the standing force of warrior monks. The first and most visible of these are the Crimson Cohort, which are clad in all red, considered a royal color on Tandire, and are the personal bodyguards of the Sovereign, although they may also guard the vice-leader Cihuacoatl. The second of these are the Huntress Triads, a sect of fanatical Cuauhtli used to track down deserters and eliminate traitors within the command structure, known to always operate in groups of three giving them their name. Huntress Triads are famous for intentionally seeking out powerful foes and picking difficult fights in order to hone their skills and demonstrate their prowess.


The Armada is largely staffed by soldiers and officers of the Sovereign's Janissary corps, with a roughly 2/3rds to 1/3rd ratio of homeworld Tandans to Metztli contributed officers across the whole of the Armada's manpower pool. Conversely, the majority of the naval supplies and especially the ships and hardware are supplied by Metztli manufactories, as it is far more efficient and cost effective to to manufacture these items in space rather than on Tandire due to the lack of atmosphere and lower gravity present on the Twin Moons controlled by the Metztli. A very small number of soldiers and officers are also recruited from the Spacer communities of the outer Gentian system, most notable of these being [[Shethefi Klioptera]], Admiral of the Special Assignments Fleet, and her Spacer commandos. The Armada also possess its own attached ground, maritime and aerial combat forces which are occasionally collectively termed 'Armada Marines', although this designation is unofficial. This group is small in overall numbers, generally made up of elite Janissary units, irregularly recruited Spacer fighters, and fighting robots and militarized cybernetic organisms contributed by the Metztli.
===Economy===
The economy of the planet Tandire and the surrounding regions which it controls is highly organized and almost entirely planned by state entities, with the conspicuous absence of private corporations or businesses which are common in other star states. Not all economic activities are centrally planned however, and a large portion of the productive processes of the economy are controlled at the local level by the authorities of the local Calpolli which often take the form of a special committee put in place by the consensus democracy of the Calpolli unit of Tandan society. In the ancient Tandan social structure, the Calpolli traditionally controls the means of production which originally meant that the community of several kin groups held rights to the land, although in modern times this more often means the community owns a factory or office complex which produces goods or generates other value, in addition to the housing and social complexes for the associated workforce of the Calpolli. In many of the modern megalopolis tier cities of Tandire, these Calpolli units or wards can sometimes be seen packed into single city blocks or even one on top of another in large towers, turning the downtown areas of many Tandan city states into major industrial centers capable of high levels of production and specialized output. Early on in the process of industrialization on Tandire, Calpolli became specialized as their communities centered on a factory fulfilling a specific role within the supply chain, which the factory cores of other Calpolli within the city state would compliment. The coordination of multiple Calpolli by a city's Tlatoani and their economic advisors created city level economies which contained entire supply chains for many finished products, able to take in materials from the rural Calpolli and export an array of manufactured products out to other cities. This would eventually develop into a global economy of specialized city-level economies which conduct mass trade across the world ocean at low cost, all treated as internal trade within the overarching authority of Xiwantandu, leading local economies to become highly specialized into relatively minor niches of the world economy being overseen by the Sovereign and her cadre of Calpixque administrators, as well as a swath of Tlatoani governing their respective cities all over the planet.
 
====Agriculture====
In the modern era, food production has been almost entirely relocated from the sparse landmasses into the ocean through the use of fusion power and genetics technology in the first phase of the [[Open Wings Initiative]]. This primarily involves the use of floating farms, which consist of vast rafts of marine vegetation modified to bear nutritious fruit and cereal type seed grains. These are usually maintained a few meters under the surface to avoid being damaged by storms or passing waves, however they must be fertilized artificially as the surface waters of the open world-ocean are desert-like and lack any degree of nutrients and fertility. Because of this, another type of oceanic farming was developed deep underwater along vertical cables anchored on the seabed and attached to buoys above. The abundant nutrients found in the abyssal waters are used to naturally nourish the marine flora, however as these farms are too deep to receive any appreciable sunlight they are artificially lit using fusion power plants, supplemented by cheap fission and geothermal power supplied from the ocean floor. Although resource intensive to maintain, these techniques of oceanic farming in the relatively sparse yet massive regions of the open ocean has eclipsed the maximum yield possible using the arable land area above water and has enabled the controlled growth of the port cities around Tandire into massive megalopolis tier cities of tens or hundreds of millions of inhabitants, fed not by the hinterlands but instead by fleets of harvester ships which bring in massive crops from the ocean year round.
 
Some of the principles of Xiwa oceanic agriculture has been further developed into a type of intensive hydroponic agriculture which not only utilizes high efficiency lighting but also tiered cultivation and a mix of multiple crops grown together to maximize caloric yield, an ancient practice among the Tandans. This development of agricultural techniques has been applied to great success on Xiwa space stations and particularly on their lunar bases, such as the large industrial settlements on the Tandan moon [[Selisera]]. Unlike the mass agriculture of the Tandan oceans, both light and nutrients must be artificially provided within these hydroponic bays, which double as air recyclers in the lunar settlements where they are found. Hydroponic bays of this type are more expensive in recourses to put in place and are often so manpower intensive to maintain that they require a dedicated army of robots to make them practical. In return for these costly investments, the bays offer a greater efficiency of caloric production compared to other methods of agriculture, and considered the only reliable means of food production in space or on lifeless rocks such as the Tandan moons or outer Gentian outposts, making them indispensable for maintaining permanent populations in these areas.
 
====Mining====
As many of the city states became industrialized across Tandire, their economies rapidly began to outpace the capacity of their respective territories to extract recources. Open trade and exchange within Xiwantandu cities mitigated this, as did new technologies and exploratory prospecting across the areas of the planet's larger landmasses. However these remain relatively small, and oceanic mining became one of the higher priority projects of the Open Wings Initiative. In modern times, large amounts of mineral resources are brought up from ocean floor mining and brought into cities to be used by the above water industry within Tandan urban centers. Due to the great expense of constructing and maintaining living areas at sea level pressure, robotics became key to the abyssal mining efforts and remain so to this day, with largely automated mining posts and mobile bases built on the surface and dropped down the water column, staffed and assisted by robotic extraction vehicles and autonomous prospector units. Materials are moved to the ocean surface via floats or hoisted by cables attached to surface buoys, where the cargo can be retrieved by ship and brought to port. Passage of living Miri staff is limited to maintenance teams servicing the automated systems in order to reduce the recourse investment necessary for these extraction programs. Mining operations are limited by directives not to interfere with delicate marine ecosystems, which are concentrated in shallow sun-lit waters and around hydrothermal vents. However this still leaves an vast majority of the largely desolate abyssal plain open for mining. Mining waste materials, radioactive waste materials used by archaic fission technology, as well as other types of non-recyclable waste, are often disposed of in oceanic trenches or in tectonic subduction zones where the water insulates any radioactive leakage and the waste may be buried or dragged into the planet's mantle and destroyed without damaging the world's biosphere. In total, the vast areas of the mineral rich oceanic crust which are exploited for resources provide more than sufficient material to satisfy the demands of the industrial ports and are projected to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. This has allowed the Xiwa economic authorities to shutter land-based mining operations, which were less costly overall but generate a far greater degree of ecological damage and lasting costs which the administration considers an unnecessary burden.
 
====Industry====
=====Robotics=====
The nature of Xiwantandu as a theocratic government deeply affects the role of robotics in its economy as well as the economic sector dedicated to the robots themselves. One of the tenets of Tandan religion is the imbuing of things with moral worth through the work of living hands required to craft the item or preform the task, making products finished by robots spiritually inert and worthless regardless of function. This has largely not affected the primary sector economy as robots are freely used to produce food, mine materials and haul cargo. Spiritually, minerals are already inert and are imbued with value in the work undertaken to shape them, the value of any cargo is not changed by the process of its transportation, and food is derived from living material and so is not lessened in worth by robotic tenders. Indeed, the application of robotics to mining, hauling and agriculture has dramatically increased productivity in these sectors and enabled great economic growth. However, the use of robots in manufacturing is more complicated and nuanced. Robotics have been introduced to many industrial processes of the secondary sector but the role of living workers remain critical as a religious matter regardless of how sophisticated the Xiwa capacity for automation becomes. This has created a controlled application of robotics and automation to the Tandan economy, as it has been broadly employed to increase productivity and brings significant benefit to every Calpolli that applies it regardless of their economic niche, yet the function of the worker communities themselves remains central and indispensable thus keeping living workers within the supply chain and manufacturing process.
 
====Taxation====
Due to the nature of the economy of Tandire, the Xiwa government does not have a necessity to levy conventional taxes. Economic activity is entirely contained within public sector bodies, so the collection of revenue for the purpose of funding the government is a simple matter of allocating a portion of the created value of economic activity towards sustaining state function on a local, atlepetl, and empire-wide level. A vast majority of economic activity is conducted at the local level using the Calpolli as the base unit of production. As a result, the structure of the Xiwa government treasury is pyramidal, with what could be termed as the net profit from a Calpolli's activities being divided between the Calpolli government and the city government, which in turn again divides the sum total of all the value provided by all of its Calpolli into a portion for its own operations and a second portion to be provided for the Xiwantandu treasury. In practical terms, agents of the central Xiwa government are present within all tiers of this pyramidal taxation structure, be they Calpixque or Pochtec type administrators. The Sovereign's treasury is thus able to control the stream of revenue from its headwaters at the local level to its outlet at the empire level budget and allocation offices, monitoring the usage and needs of the Calpolli and Atlepetl treasuries along the way. At times, {{wp|Corvée|tribute labor}} is employed as a substitute to taxation by a Tlatoani lord or by the Sovereign herself, which entails a selected group of individuals from one or multiple Calpolli being designated to provide unpaid labor for a certain period of time. The assigned monetary value for the hours or labor provided are taken as acceptable substitute to monetary value generated by material production, which makes this method of payment common among Calpolli that lack profitable or effective industrial capacities, as it may be more efficient to loan out the labor of a group of Calpolli workers to pay the required tribute to city and empire treasuries through the total value of their labor than to toil to produce goods from which a percentage of value generated will then be extracted as tax.
 
====Trade====
Both reciprocal and market trading are practiced widely on Tandire. Reciprocal exchange, in which goods are bartered directly for other goods or services, are very common within and between Calpolli units of Tandan society. Many of the small and mid-sized atlepetls operate on a concept of chained reciprocity, wherin the direct exchange does not occur between two Calpolli, but down a chain of Calpolli as the productive centers of each make up links in a supply chain and do not necessarily produce goods which the previous link in the chain has any use for. In this model, the value added at each stage in the supply chain is passed down the reciprocal chain until the finish product is shipped out and traded for goods which the city and its component Calpolli need, to which each Calpolli is entitled a portion according to their contribution to the final export product. If the final product of the supply chain is an item that is needed in the Calpolli, these items are likewise distributed as an act of reciprocity to the sub-units of the supply chain by the final link. For more complex and indirect exchanges, market trading is more commonly used. Unlike reciprocal exchange, market exchange generates value on top of the inherent value of the goods being exchanged, which incurs taxation. Similar to the regular taxation scheme of Xiwantandu, market trade between Calpolli is taxed by the Atlepetl unit, and trade between Atlepetls is taxed by the Sovereign. Inside the borders of Xiwantandu, tariffs are not applied and the value extracted in taxation is commensurate with the profit generated by the trade, and so is typically collected at sale rather than in transit. Tariffs are only applied to external trade with non-Tandan entities and civilizations through space, which is conducted on the market principles governing galactic trade.

Latest revision as of 17:48, 18 February 2021

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Six Domains of Tandire
Xiwantandu
Flag of Xiwantandu
Flag
Motto: Progress, Prosperity and Peace
Capital
and largest city
Itzcoatl
Official languagesItztli
Demonym(s)Xiwa, Tandan
GovernmentAtlepetl Federation
• Sovereign
Toloche Cancuzuma
Establishment
• Great Reformation
14th of August, 1284 AM
CurrencyTulu (Tl)
Date formatdd-mm--yyy

The Six Domains of Tandire (Itztli: Xiwantandu ), also known as the Tandan Hegemony, is a star state located in the Gamma quadrant of the Milky Way Galaxy. The eponymous Tandire, a primarily ocean-covered life bearing world in the Gentian system, is the seat of Xiwantandu and the homeworld of its founding species, the Miri. The Gentian system is the only fully controlled star system claimed as core territory by Xiwantandu, and the overwhelming majority of the Tandan population as well as space constructs, infrastructure for extraction, production and transportation and the state's military and scientific centers are located within what is termed cislunar space, or the space generally encompassed within the orbit of Tandire's smallest and outermost satellite Efira, generally considered to mark the outer edge of the planet Tandire's gravity well. Xiwantandu is a minor power within the Gamma quadrant and holds negligible influence over the wider galaxy, but has demonstrated its capability to operate in the local region and continues to focus on the furtherance of greater prosperity and development within its home system both through internal and external means.

Tandan government is a theocratic technocracy governed by the duly elected Sovereign and a caste of clerical administrators overseeing a vast temporal and secular civil service. The religious law which governs the operation of the Xiwa state lays out strict codes of conduct and absolute responsibilities, such as the requirement of state officials to guarantee the material needs of those under their stewardship without exception, and the duty of the citizenry to lend their labor to the state in exchange for and indeed often in furtherance of these services. As a result, Tandire and the broader sphere of the Xiwa is a highly ordered and moralistic society balancing a universal guarantee of physical and psychological needs to its citizens with a deeply engrained central organization and somewhat authoritarian proselytization and imposition of rigid religious principles on the populace. Xiwantandu's internal structure takes the form of a coalition of major city states across the landmasses and island chains of Tandire in what is known as an Atlepetl, or City State, Federation. Formally, all the powers and authority of each individual city and its chief executive, or Tlatoani are ceded to the central government and the supreme Sovereign, however in practice the daily operation of the local region is usually conducted by the Tlatoani or the military equivalent Cuauhtlatoani in the Sovereign's name as a form of delegated authority.

Xiwantandu possesses a planned economy composed entirely of either state owned or community owned organizations and is devoid of what is traditionally termed private enterprise. Nevertheless, central planning is usually limited to large scale projects across the planet and in space, while the daily political and economic activities in a given region are usually overseen by the local community through a rule by committee system at the city and ward/township level. The Tandan economy currently find itself in a period of prolonged expansion through the technological augmentation of its capabilities, specifically the exploitation of oceanic and lunar resources, the former providing untold mineral and agricultural wealth to the terrestrial cities and the latter unlocking the resources necessary to further expand and colonize the Gentian system and project power to better secure Tandire and its populace.

Government and Politics

XiwaGovChart.png

The structure of Xiwantandu is based on a long political tradition of precursor Tandan civilizations of the medieval and classical ages. At the highest level of organization, Xiwantandu is a federation of individual city-states or Atlepetl, each of which is in turn governed by their own lord (Tlatoani) or an appointed viceroy usually acting as a military governor (Cuauhtlatoani). Many of these states, especially those located on the planet Tandire itself, are usually many hundreds or thousands of years old and may be ruled by ancient lineages that have survived numerous empires rising and falling. Each city state in turn is traditionally divided into calpolli districts, which describe both rural towns and wards within an urban center. As much as the Atlepetl is the principal unit of government at the large scale, the Calpolli is the center of day to day life for the average Xiwa citizen. Each Calpolli is made up of several kin-groups which collectively own and govern the lands and property of the Calpolli, which may include tracts of agricultural land, mines, forests or even factories, offices and storage depots. Consequently, most centers of economic activity in Xiwantandu are publically owned and operated by a dedicated community attached to that specific productive center. Since the modern day, many Atlepetl tier states have specialized their Calpolli to function as connected nodes of a supply chain, such that a single Atlepetl or a small group of Atlepetl working together can fully transform raw materials into any number of finished products through the use of the productive specializations of each of their Calpolli units.

This Calpolli system has functionally been the basis of every Tandan civilization since before the Bronze age. The principle factor setting Xiwantandu apart from its predecessor is the elimination, or in most cases simply the marginalization, of the hereditary nobility which traditionally held all the seats of power, being replaced by religious institutions. While many Tlatoani lineages remained in place in their specific Atlepetls, the events of the Great Reformation led to the clerical caste overthrowing the last Heuy Tlatoani (equivalent to an Emperor or King of Kings) and installing the first Sovereign of Xiwantandu, Irolen Itzcoatl to rule. The old Jaguar Knights (Ocelomeh) were reformed into the hereditary military caste of Xiwa Janissaries, while the new tensions between clerical and warrior castes led to the emergence of many Temple Guard organizations, which would later merge into the armed cleric Eagle warriors (Cuauhtli), which serve as a counterweight to the Janissaries and as the pretorian bodyguards of high ranking Xiwa officials.

At the empire-wide level, the government is split into three distinct sections knowns as the "Columns of State", each of which holds the Sovereign at the top. The columns, which are the military, the administration and bureaucracy, and the political and legal system respectively, each contain more specialized organs to tackle more specific tasks and are represented on the scale of an individual Atlepetl and often an individual Calpolli, to some extent. Each column has its own chief officer who could be considered a high tier minister to the Sovereign, and who in turn oversees lower ministers. Each column exercises a significant amount of power over the component Atlepetl units of the federated Xiwantandu, demonstrating the centralized nature of the Xiwa political structure in defiance of its federal structure which is largely a vestige of its decentralized, medieval past.

The military column is unique in that its general membership is composed of a type of slave or bonded soldier raised within specialized military Calpolli from birth to serve the Sovereign in battle. Consequently, the members of the Xiwa standing military are technically the property of the office of the Sovereign (although mass mobilized troops drawn from the Calpolli during wartime are free volunteers), and their leaders are the only high level officers of the Xiwa government who are not of the cleric caste. The Calpixque in turn make up a vast class of steward-administrators who are governed by a Huecalpixque and oversee the bureaucracy and the vast majority of day to day government services such as postal/communications networks, transportation infrastructure, as well as education and medical services. Members of this administrative caste are all ordained priests of various Tandan temples, which is used as a mechanism to enforce ethical rules through the strict application of religious law as well as stringent entry requirements as initiation rituals double as civil service examinations. As the Xiwa government began to expand faster than this elite caste of administrative clergy could recruit new members, a secondary subservient class of secular bureaucrats known as the Pochteca was created to raise manpower for the aparatus of state without diluting or lessening the high standards to which the Calpixque are held. Similar standards are applied to the cleric arbitrators under the legal and political column of state, which is headed by the Cihuacoatl who is considered to be the vice-ruler and second in command to the Sovereign. While their central duty is to staff and oversee the Xiwa system of courts, their role as mediators definitively places the underlings of the Cihuacoatl at the center of political life in Xiwantandu, despite holding a smaller role in the day to day lives of the citizens than the administrative Calpixque. The Cihuacoatl and the court system, besides the day to day adjudication of common disputes and criminal cases, is also tasked with foreign affairs and diplomatic tasks as well as the balancing of internal factions.

Military

Janissaries

The Janissary corps is the backbone of the Tandan military and represent a martial institution over a millennium old with a legacy of service dating to the turbulent foundation of Xiwantandu. Upon the abolition of the warrior caste's rule over Tandire, many reforms were implemented to establish that caste's new role in the social order. The result of these reforms were the Janissaries, born into service just as the warrior caste Ocelomeh Knights had been prior, but stripped of nobility and instead termed as slaves of the Xiwa Sovereign, loyal only the high office and indoctrinated through childhood to attain unparalleled loyalty as well as a high degree of discipline and practical training. To make this lengthy process of mental and physical conditioning effective, Janissaries are raised from dedicated martial calpolli which are often encircled with barriers or otherwise physically isolated from the rest of an atlepetl, although they are often found near the city's seat of power as a means to enforce the Sovereign's dominion over the lower Tlatoani of each city. Young Tandans are formed into Janissaries in these calpolli, which also serve as general living quarters and military bases for adult Janissaries, the children of whom will often be trained as Janissaries within the same calpolli their parents inhabit.

As a fighting force, the Janissaries represent the apex of the ground power Tandire is able to produce. Their extreme discipline and conditioning can make them extraordinarily effective soldiers under a competent commander. The size of the Janissary body has fluctuated through the centuries, becoming little more than a skeleton force in prolonged periods of peace. Lack of any notable conflicts for extended periods has also caused their equipment to become archaic compared to the level of technology applied in civilian fields. The Xiwa rearmament effort is focused primarily on resolving this technological gap, seeking to equip the formidable Janissaries with modernized weapons of war, and perhaps more importantly train their commanders in modernized doctrines. With the exception of space-based boarding actions and space-to-surface insertion operations, the Janissaries are slotted to fulfill every role of combat, including infantry and mechanized ground combat, atmospheric combat, and maritime naval warfare. The Janissary forces are commanded by the Tlacochcalcatl, or "supreme general", who is the second in command of the entire military apparatus under the office of the Sovereign herself, although they are behind the civilian Cihuacoatl and Huecalpixque in terms of overall control of Xiwantandu, and are barred from becoming involved in non-military affairs or holding a civilian office due to their position in the warrior caste of the Tandan social hierarchy. Underneath this supreme general figure, there is a panel of High Generals known as the Circle of Generals, which serves as an advisory body to the Tlacochcalcatl and may form a collective martial authority to oversee military operations should the Tlacochcalcatl die or be incapacitated.

Militia

The Tandan militia service exists in the modern era as a vestige of the ancient mass levy system used by Tandan city states to raise vast armies of peasant foot soldiers which would be led by a small body of elite Knights. This model was modified with the replacement of the Knights by the Janissaries during the foundation of Xiwantandu, and while levy units were used in great numbers early on, as Xiwantandu expanded and solidified its grip on its territories, Janissary numbers expanded and began to subsume the role of the levy in the military, until the Janissaries became the primary body of the Tandan ground forces. The lack of conflict brought about by the pax tandica has further pushed the wartime only levy mobilization system into obscurity as only the peacetime Janissaries remained in existence. Consequently, the Tandan militia system has atrophied and remains rooted in highly antiquated organizations and traditions. The immediate modernization of Xiwantandu's mass mobilization mechanisms has been deemed a high priority task as it may be of critical importance should Tandire come under alien attack. New mechanisms for voluntary service and conscription have been put in place by the Xiwa administration, however the implementation of these long overdue reforms and more importantly the preparation of material and means of training for these militia forces has proved an arduous and monumental task, one even the notably efficient state apparatus of the Xiwa may take many years to complete. Militia forces fall under the Janissary command structure when mobilized and serve as auxiliary forces.

Armada

Forces designed to fight exclusively in space have been a key focus of both the Xiwa remilitarization effort and of the civilian Open Wings colonization initiative. The space forces of the Xiwa are the newest and smallest of Tandire's armed forces by manpower, although it dwarfs most organizations and even eclipses the Janissaries in terms of the budget and investment of resources made towards the development and construction of a space navy to protect Tandire and the Gentian system. Although most of the naval staff are natural Tandan Miri, ships of the Armada are crewed by an artificial sub-species of Spacer Miri, physiologically modified to boast a near total immunity to the negative biological effects of prolonged exposure to low gravity and microgravity, as well as resistance to G forces and a suite of other alterations to make these Miri inherently adapted to life in service aboard spacecraft. These individuals, known as "Shaved Ones" for their tradition of shaving parts of their plumage, are taken as representative of the entire Armada and naval force as they crew and command the ships, even though a large proportion of the naval staff are not Shaved Ones. The Armada, military shipyards, naval staff and ship crews are based on the Tandan moon Selisera where the Xiwa Tlacatecco military district is located. This entire district including the shipyards and production facilities, as well as the Armada personnel deployed elsewhere, fall under the authority of the Tlacateccatl, an office of supreme command of the naval forces reserved for a Shaved One officer hand picked by the Sovereign. In a similar vein to their Janissary counterparts, the Armada possesses a Circle of Admirals made up of High Admirals which advise the Tlacateccatl and may collectively replace her as a provisional commanding authority in the event of her death until the Sovereign can name a replacement.

Cuauhtli

As the only armed force of the Xiwa belonging to the ruling clerical caste, the Cuauhtli warrior monks of the Eagle Temple play a special and unusual role for a branch of the military. They are entirely outside of the normal military chain of command and answer directly to the Sovereign, bypassing any warrior caste officers in the Janissary forces or the Armada. Their primary function is as an inward facing force which is designed to deter any attempt by the warrior caste, or any other party, to wrest control of the government away from its priestly stewards. Its members are recruited from among the abandoned and orphaned of the planet's cities, raised and trained within Eagle Temples to fight as well as undergoing preparations of the initiation rites necessary to become a Tandan priest. These Cuauhtli warriors were commonly used as a force of bodyguards for important priests and members of the religious government, a role they retained as a matter of tradition long after most credible threats to those individuals had subsided. Two elite units exist within the Cuautli today which stand out from the standing force of warrior monks. The first and most visible of these are the Crimson Cohort, which are clad in all red, considered a royal color on Tandire, and are the personal bodyguards of the Sovereign, although they may also guard the vice-leader Cihuacoatl. The second of these are the Huntress Triads, a sect of fanatical Cuauhtli used to track down deserters and eliminate traitors within the command structure, known to always operate in groups of three giving them their name. Huntress Triads are famous for intentionally seeking out powerful foes and picking difficult fights in order to hone their skills and demonstrate their prowess.

Economy

The economy of the planet Tandire and the surrounding regions which it controls is highly organized and almost entirely planned by state entities, with the conspicuous absence of private corporations or businesses which are common in other star states. Not all economic activities are centrally planned however, and a large portion of the productive processes of the economy are controlled at the local level by the authorities of the local Calpolli which often take the form of a special committee put in place by the consensus democracy of the Calpolli unit of Tandan society. In the ancient Tandan social structure, the Calpolli traditionally controls the means of production which originally meant that the community of several kin groups held rights to the land, although in modern times this more often means the community owns a factory or office complex which produces goods or generates other value, in addition to the housing and social complexes for the associated workforce of the Calpolli. In many of the modern megalopolis tier cities of Tandire, these Calpolli units or wards can sometimes be seen packed into single city blocks or even one on top of another in large towers, turning the downtown areas of many Tandan city states into major industrial centers capable of high levels of production and specialized output. Early on in the process of industrialization on Tandire, Calpolli became specialized as their communities centered on a factory fulfilling a specific role within the supply chain, which the factory cores of other Calpolli within the city state would compliment. The coordination of multiple Calpolli by a city's Tlatoani and their economic advisors created city level economies which contained entire supply chains for many finished products, able to take in materials from the rural Calpolli and export an array of manufactured products out to other cities. This would eventually develop into a global economy of specialized city-level economies which conduct mass trade across the world ocean at low cost, all treated as internal trade within the overarching authority of Xiwantandu, leading local economies to become highly specialized into relatively minor niches of the world economy being overseen by the Sovereign and her cadre of Calpixque administrators, as well as a swath of Tlatoani governing their respective cities all over the planet.

Agriculture

In the modern era, food production has been almost entirely relocated from the sparse landmasses into the ocean through the use of fusion power and genetics technology in the first phase of the Open Wings Initiative. This primarily involves the use of floating farms, which consist of vast rafts of marine vegetation modified to bear nutritious fruit and cereal type seed grains. These are usually maintained a few meters under the surface to avoid being damaged by storms or passing waves, however they must be fertilized artificially as the surface waters of the open world-ocean are desert-like and lack any degree of nutrients and fertility. Because of this, another type of oceanic farming was developed deep underwater along vertical cables anchored on the seabed and attached to buoys above. The abundant nutrients found in the abyssal waters are used to naturally nourish the marine flora, however as these farms are too deep to receive any appreciable sunlight they are artificially lit using fusion power plants, supplemented by cheap fission and geothermal power supplied from the ocean floor. Although resource intensive to maintain, these techniques of oceanic farming in the relatively sparse yet massive regions of the open ocean has eclipsed the maximum yield possible using the arable land area above water and has enabled the controlled growth of the port cities around Tandire into massive megalopolis tier cities of tens or hundreds of millions of inhabitants, fed not by the hinterlands but instead by fleets of harvester ships which bring in massive crops from the ocean year round.

Some of the principles of Xiwa oceanic agriculture has been further developed into a type of intensive hydroponic agriculture which not only utilizes high efficiency lighting but also tiered cultivation and a mix of multiple crops grown together to maximize caloric yield, an ancient practice among the Tandans. This development of agricultural techniques has been applied to great success on Xiwa space stations and particularly on their lunar bases, such as the large industrial settlements on the Tandan moon Selisera. Unlike the mass agriculture of the Tandan oceans, both light and nutrients must be artificially provided within these hydroponic bays, which double as air recyclers in the lunar settlements where they are found. Hydroponic bays of this type are more expensive in recourses to put in place and are often so manpower intensive to maintain that they require a dedicated army of robots to make them practical. In return for these costly investments, the bays offer a greater efficiency of caloric production compared to other methods of agriculture, and considered the only reliable means of food production in space or on lifeless rocks such as the Tandan moons or outer Gentian outposts, making them indispensable for maintaining permanent populations in these areas.

Mining

As many of the city states became industrialized across Tandire, their economies rapidly began to outpace the capacity of their respective territories to extract recources. Open trade and exchange within Xiwantandu cities mitigated this, as did new technologies and exploratory prospecting across the areas of the planet's larger landmasses. However these remain relatively small, and oceanic mining became one of the higher priority projects of the Open Wings Initiative. In modern times, large amounts of mineral resources are brought up from ocean floor mining and brought into cities to be used by the above water industry within Tandan urban centers. Due to the great expense of constructing and maintaining living areas at sea level pressure, robotics became key to the abyssal mining efforts and remain so to this day, with largely automated mining posts and mobile bases built on the surface and dropped down the water column, staffed and assisted by robotic extraction vehicles and autonomous prospector units. Materials are moved to the ocean surface via floats or hoisted by cables attached to surface buoys, where the cargo can be retrieved by ship and brought to port. Passage of living Miri staff is limited to maintenance teams servicing the automated systems in order to reduce the recourse investment necessary for these extraction programs. Mining operations are limited by directives not to interfere with delicate marine ecosystems, which are concentrated in shallow sun-lit waters and around hydrothermal vents. However this still leaves an vast majority of the largely desolate abyssal plain open for mining. Mining waste materials, radioactive waste materials used by archaic fission technology, as well as other types of non-recyclable waste, are often disposed of in oceanic trenches or in tectonic subduction zones where the water insulates any radioactive leakage and the waste may be buried or dragged into the planet's mantle and destroyed without damaging the world's biosphere. In total, the vast areas of the mineral rich oceanic crust which are exploited for resources provide more than sufficient material to satisfy the demands of the industrial ports and are projected to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. This has allowed the Xiwa economic authorities to shutter land-based mining operations, which were less costly overall but generate a far greater degree of ecological damage and lasting costs which the administration considers an unnecessary burden.

Industry

Robotics

The nature of Xiwantandu as a theocratic government deeply affects the role of robotics in its economy as well as the economic sector dedicated to the robots themselves. One of the tenets of Tandan religion is the imbuing of things with moral worth through the work of living hands required to craft the item or preform the task, making products finished by robots spiritually inert and worthless regardless of function. This has largely not affected the primary sector economy as robots are freely used to produce food, mine materials and haul cargo. Spiritually, minerals are already inert and are imbued with value in the work undertaken to shape them, the value of any cargo is not changed by the process of its transportation, and food is derived from living material and so is not lessened in worth by robotic tenders. Indeed, the application of robotics to mining, hauling and agriculture has dramatically increased productivity in these sectors and enabled great economic growth. However, the use of robots in manufacturing is more complicated and nuanced. Robotics have been introduced to many industrial processes of the secondary sector but the role of living workers remain critical as a religious matter regardless of how sophisticated the Xiwa capacity for automation becomes. This has created a controlled application of robotics and automation to the Tandan economy, as it has been broadly employed to increase productivity and brings significant benefit to every Calpolli that applies it regardless of their economic niche, yet the function of the worker communities themselves remains central and indispensable thus keeping living workers within the supply chain and manufacturing process.

Taxation

Due to the nature of the economy of Tandire, the Xiwa government does not have a necessity to levy conventional taxes. Economic activity is entirely contained within public sector bodies, so the collection of revenue for the purpose of funding the government is a simple matter of allocating a portion of the created value of economic activity towards sustaining state function on a local, atlepetl, and empire-wide level. A vast majority of economic activity is conducted at the local level using the Calpolli as the base unit of production. As a result, the structure of the Xiwa government treasury is pyramidal, with what could be termed as the net profit from a Calpolli's activities being divided between the Calpolli government and the city government, which in turn again divides the sum total of all the value provided by all of its Calpolli into a portion for its own operations and a second portion to be provided for the Xiwantandu treasury. In practical terms, agents of the central Xiwa government are present within all tiers of this pyramidal taxation structure, be they Calpixque or Pochtec type administrators. The Sovereign's treasury is thus able to control the stream of revenue from its headwaters at the local level to its outlet at the empire level budget and allocation offices, monitoring the usage and needs of the Calpolli and Atlepetl treasuries along the way. At times, tribute labor is employed as a substitute to taxation by a Tlatoani lord or by the Sovereign herself, which entails a selected group of individuals from one or multiple Calpolli being designated to provide unpaid labor for a certain period of time. The assigned monetary value for the hours or labor provided are taken as acceptable substitute to monetary value generated by material production, which makes this method of payment common among Calpolli that lack profitable or effective industrial capacities, as it may be more efficient to loan out the labor of a group of Calpolli workers to pay the required tribute to city and empire treasuries through the total value of their labor than to toil to produce goods from which a percentage of value generated will then be extracted as tax.

Trade

Both reciprocal and market trading are practiced widely on Tandire. Reciprocal exchange, in which goods are bartered directly for other goods or services, are very common within and between Calpolli units of Tandan society. Many of the small and mid-sized atlepetls operate on a concept of chained reciprocity, wherin the direct exchange does not occur between two Calpolli, but down a chain of Calpolli as the productive centers of each make up links in a supply chain and do not necessarily produce goods which the previous link in the chain has any use for. In this model, the value added at each stage in the supply chain is passed down the reciprocal chain until the finish product is shipped out and traded for goods which the city and its component Calpolli need, to which each Calpolli is entitled a portion according to their contribution to the final export product. If the final product of the supply chain is an item that is needed in the Calpolli, these items are likewise distributed as an act of reciprocity to the sub-units of the supply chain by the final link. For more complex and indirect exchanges, market trading is more commonly used. Unlike reciprocal exchange, market exchange generates value on top of the inherent value of the goods being exchanged, which incurs taxation. Similar to the regular taxation scheme of Xiwantandu, market trade between Calpolli is taxed by the Atlepetl unit, and trade between Atlepetls is taxed by the Sovereign. Inside the borders of Xiwantandu, tariffs are not applied and the value extracted in taxation is commensurate with the profit generated by the trade, and so is typically collected at sale rather than in transit. Tariffs are only applied to external trade with non-Tandan entities and civilizations through space, which is conducted on the market principles governing galactic trade.