Salywa

The Duchy of Salywa Grevedömet Salywa Shariwa no Koukoku シャリワーの公国
Flag of Salywa Flag Coat of arms of Salywa Coat of arms
Motto: "Far khönungen vi gifer itt tusende ar!" "thousand years for the king"
topographical map topographical map
Capital	Nako
Official languages	Imerian, Salywanese
Religion	Synkretism 76 % The holy chronicles 10% Fierce unconquerable Sun 8% Faith of Ishiri 6%
Demonym(s)	Salyaner
Government	Absolute Monarchy
• Hakushaku	Tsune-Hakushaku 垂仁伯爵
annexation by the absolute royal federation
Area
• Total

The Salywanese islands were absorbed into the absolute royal federation in 1743 but have due to the lack of natural resources never played a large important part of the federation and instead mostly contributed by raising regiments of warriors for the king. However the realm went through a massive industrialisation and even today is the island a massive industrial center and one of the richer realms in the federation as a result. Besides the large industrial economy so is also fishing, whaling and rice farming an important part of the island realms economy. However due to the notoriously bad quality of Salwanese iron and steel so are they still forced to really heavily on imports from the rest of the federation to keep their industrial base going.

Geography

Salywa is island chain consisting of a few minor islands and the larger main island in the center of the island chain Consisting of Yamato no Kuni, Shinshū, Iyo-shima, Ezo, Okinawa Ryukyu as the larger island as well as several minor islands. The islands are sadly located not very far from a area where two tectonic plates meets which means that the islands often experiences earthquakes or tidal waves.

The islands themselves are covered in slopping hills and forests with a large mountain chain rising in the middle of the central island from coast to coast which effectively splits the island in two different regions. It is in this mountain chain that one can find the highest point in the entire islandchain, the mujani mountain, which reached heights of 3 214 meters.

Climate

The islands enjoys a temperate climate even if the climate varies greatly from the most northern islands and the most southern ones that enjoys a Subtropical climate instead of the temperate one that most of the islands experiences with temperatures varying between 5 degrees Celsius in the vintner and 25 degrees in the summer. Being islands means that Salywa also experiences heavy downpours and at the coastal regions experiences a downpour of 100 mm each months even if the central pars of the main island only experiences 25 mm.

Flora and fauna

Salywanese wildlife is as most island life very small in nature and out of the 600 mammals so are the two native species of bear the largest ones. The realm is also the home of various kinds of foxes, macaques, deers, boars, serows, the dugong and various kinds of whales in the waters.

The islands is also the home of various birds and reptiles and 600 different kinds of birds as woodpeckers, pheasants both in the copper and green variety and finally Rails make their home there alongside the 73 species of reptiles that includes snakes even if only four poisonous species exists out of which three are native and the last one is the common Scanderan viper. Other than the snakes so is the islands also home to various kinds of Salamanders that makes up the majority of the reptilians living on the islands.

The deadliest species in the realm however is the Salywenese hornet that is one of the biggest hornet species in the world and can reach lengths to up to 10 centimetres.

However the island is also the home to over 6000 species of plants and inlands on most of the island does large bambo forests spread out as far as the eye can see. However the bambo forests are not the only forests on the island chain and large forests consisting out of pine, beech, oaks, cedar and Cherry trees stretches out over the main island.

Culture

Culturally so is the islands very divided between still very native regions in the mountains, the central main island and the minor outlying islands while the coastline of the main island is often very mixed culturally with inspirations from the native culture but still with very noticeable hints of Scanderan culture and with the entirely native Scanderan-Salywenese architecture covering most of the central island's coast. However the further inlands you get the more noticeable is the wooden and paper houses of Salywenese classical architecture while you can find Imerian gothic buildings, longhouses and korsvirkes hus at the larger islands.

Salywa is also the home of what is known as Synkretism or the Syncretist religion that mixes ideals of the three large religions of the federation where the gods of the chronicles are worshipped besides the two faced goddess and the fierce unconquerable sun. Rituals of all religions are practised besides one another and for marriages are the two faced goddess called upon in her aspects as lifegiver amongst Imerian fertility goddesses. In war does the faithful do he rites for Bel, the fierce sun, and Ishiri as the death bringer.

History

The history of Salywa is long and filled with internal conflicts between various warlords that commanded large amounts of warriors and a very weak emperor that only ruled the land in theory. These warlords even went as far as to launch massed invasions out from their islands upon the faithful of not only the two faced goddess but also the sun as well as the faithful of the holy chronicles when the faith and the Scanderans brought their full might to bare upon the eastern lands. However this changed in the middle of the 18th century when the Salywan emperor started to demand more and more power from his shoguns and tried to force through a more centralised state by force. The second thing that changed the stabilisation was the contact made by the absolute royal federation and it is theorised that the emperor got the idea of an absolute monarchy from the federation itself.

However the plotting came to naught and a uprising by the shoguns resulted in the Imerian ships of the line and marines that had been stationed in the capital had to intervene just to save the Imperial family from a certain death at the hands of the rebels. However were they only partially successful and the emperor himself were killed and the crown prince and family were evacuated while the Imerian captain Sigulf auf Jarnnafe took control of the Imperial forces in the city and were just able to drive the rebels back and started a long and drawn out war between royalists and conservatives.

As the young prince were educated in the federation so did a royalists supported by the federation fight a horrible outmanned war on the homefront which they were able to hold the enemy of and gain ground thanks to federal rifles and cannons that slowly started to spread in the rebels ranks despite the best attempts of their leaders to stop it.

However when the young crown prince came of age back in Scandera did he swore a oath of allegiance to the Imerian high king and took the title of Hakushaku instead of the traditional emperor to show his position as a vassal to the high king and married a auf stjärnkhrone lady. With a new force at his command did he set sail back home leading a large amount of Scanderan soldiers and ships of the line that were able to crush the rebel force in the battle of varshema which marked the end of the civil war and the beginning of greater contact with the rest of the world as federal ships arrived and trade flowered.

When the federation was shook to it's very core in the two civil wars in the late 19th century and early 20th century so were Salywa one of the more well known neutral realms in Queen Erica's war and later on during the Imerian civil war so were the realm a hotspot of syndicalist revolutionary that managed to secede with the northern parts of the main island even if they were forced down in a trench war like the one in Scandera. What however sat the Salywanese revolt apart from the one in western Scandera was that when the rebels surrendered in 1926 so did the Syndicalists in Salywa secede from the commoner confederation and created the united Shariwa syndicalist union republic that were first defeated in 1927 and it took heavy work from federal authorities to reintegrate the northern parts of the main island back to federal subjects.

Today however so are the war long since abandoned even if northern nobility have very limited powers compared to other parts of the island and the civil war re-enactment, art, film and stories is still as popular in the north as in the south.