Brylon

The Democratic Republic of Brylon is an island country roughly 100 kilometers off the coast of the Eastern Continent. The island is mostly mountainous, but the majority of its 4.1 million citizens live in the rural areas or in the capital city of Brylon.

Brylon was first settled by the Erde tribes sometime between 1400 and 1600, when the First Dynasty founded the Duchy. The First Dynasty was overthrown rather quickly in the Palzu Rebellion in 1791, and since then, the Duchy had three other dynasties. The last one, the Colith Dynasty, was overthrown in the Brylon Revolution, and the republic was declared.

Brylon was the first socialist state to be created and is a founding member of the International Revolutionary Union (Amatye). It has the highest standard of living in the IRU and the fourth highest in the world after Kanat, Mekrot, and Wendel.

Early History
The first inhabitants of Brylon were the Erde tribes, which most likely originated from Wendel. The Erde tribes settled in what is now Edda, one of the districts of the modern city of Brylon. They then expanded to the districts of Hjan and Dahik, followed by Tsujin. Eventually, Brylon grew to cover the entire modern city, and established the First Dynasty.

First Dynasty
The First Dynasty ruled Brylon from the 1500's until 1791, when the Palzu Rebellion overthrew it and established the Khruvag Dynasty. Very little is known about the First Dynasty because of the scarcity of records. What is known is that, under Khruvag reign, the Duchy expanded into Brylon's mountains and established many mountain outposts such as Ttjamo, Lerok, and Verelith, which grew into important towns in the following centuries. Although it was initially prosperous, the economy of Brylon began to stagnate near the end of the dynasty. In 1791, there was a short and relatively bloodless rebellion that destroyed the First Dynasty and put the Khruvag dukes in power.

Khruvag Dynasty
The Khruvag Dynasty was the longest lasting government of Brylon, surviving from 1791 until 2651. The early Khruvag dukes began a massive campaign to restructure Brylon's economy. They focused on modernizing farms, which were previously unable to support the population, increasing the quality of goods produced in Brylon so that the country could become more competitive, and fighting against corrupt officials. These measures were successful, and Brylon's standard of living rose to be the highest in the world. Brylon enjoyed several centuries of peace under this dynasty, and became renowned for its contributions to art and culture. Unfortunately, this prosperity ended when Brylon's navy sank a ship owned by Kanat. The specific details of the incident are lost, but it is believed that Brylon's ship Lerok (ship) fired on the Eagle, a merchant ship of Kanat and quickly sank it. Kanat retaliated with a declaration of war and quickly gained naval supremacy. Kanat's army then landed on Brylon, sacked many of its towns, and killed much of the nobility. With its infrastructure destroyed, famines once again overtook the island and the government could not afford to rebuild, since Kanat had taken much of the government's gold reserves. The nobility deposed the Khruvag duke and elected Kladosh Vrene, the head of one of the island's most powerful families, to be the country's next leader.

Lost Centuries
The Vrene Dynasty temporarily appeased the peasantry, but Kladosh Vrene proved to be a very incapable ruler. Rather than attempting to rebuild the country, he chose to focus on increasing his own land holdings at the expense of the nobility and the peasantry. Riots began to break out throughout the Duchy and local authority began to replace the central government. Some of the more remote areas broke down into complete anarchy. Farmers began hording their harvests, while the weakened police were unable to force them to comply with taxes. Individual noble families stepped in to fill the power vacuum and ordered taxes to be paid directly to them, and eventually they managed to stabilize the country. Many poor laborers moved out of the city and onto the rural estates, where they could better feed themselves. The third Vrene duke, Sepris Vrene, abdicated the throne and moved to Wendel to live the rest of his life, and the central government ceased to exist completely.

Fonisk Dynasty
In 2811, one family of nobles, the House of Fonisk, raised an army and formed alliances with other nobles to reestablish the Duchy and crown themselves Duke. After years of war, they managed to establish control of the entire island. The Fonisk Dynasty began a campaign to further break the power of the local feudal lords by encouraging people to move to the city and raising taxes. Most historians agree that feudalism was finally defeated in 2971, when the Duke Tsakokj the Great introduced a constitution that officially stripped the nobles of their estates and passed control of them to the local townspeople, as well as introducing a legislative body, the Royal Council. After Tsakokj's death, though, conditions in the country deteriorated rapidly. The famines that had plagued the country for its entire existence began to return, and unrest grew. The last Fonisk king died without a heir in 3173, and the nobles chose to elect Leso Colith of Basac Duke, creating the Colith Dynasty.

Colith Dynasty
The Colith Dynasty created an alliance with Basac, causing Basac to invest in the country and give it subsidized food. Although Brylon was never able to become self-sufficient, it managed to end the worst of the famines. Over time, Brylon's interests began to conflict with Basac's, especially over control of the Lyuwi Islands. Brylon officially severed its ties with Basac in 3395, and began to seek an alliance with Wendel, another small country that could not achieve its imperial desires alone. Wendel replaced Basac as Brylon's main source for food, but was not able to supply as much, causing the famines to begin to return. The Duke began to make efforts to improve farming technology, but was too late. In 3452, a wave of protests broke out across the Duchy. A group of workers in a factory in Ppala went on strike, and the Royal Guard stormed the building, resulting in twenty-seven dead strikers and nineteen dead soldiers. The next day, a general strike was called by Shesal Khanik, the leader of the Workers Party. Open fighting began between royalists and republicans, starting the Brylon Civil War.

Crisis Government
A few months into the stalemate, the nobility illegally voted to remove the Duke and suspend the constitution. The Duke fled to Wendel, and the Crisis Government was instituted. A paramilitary group known as the Silver Guard was given free reign over government-controlled areas and began a terror campaign to defeat the Democratic Republic of Brylon, and martial law was declared over the entire island. This move turned even more people against the government, and the republicans began to win, while the royal government had only managed to hold a few key areas.

Two weeks after the Crisis government was declared, the Brylon People's Army initiated the Shem Offensive, named after the month where it took place. The Offensive sparked a general uprising throughout the entire city of Brylon, and within hours, the entire city was controlled by the republic. Loyalists began a panicked evacuation of the island, and the imprisoned Duke used the chaos to escape under a disguise. The loyalists who escaped before the royalist defenses completely collapsed fled to Wendel, where they establish the Duchy of Brylon in exile.

Republic
In the first election in 3453, Shesal Khanik ran unopposed for the position of Premier, while United Front, a coalition of the radical Workers Party, the conservative Erde Resistance, and the capitalist Unity, won all three hundred seats. Tirith Vles, the leader of the Erde Resistance, was unanimously elected President. Shortly after the election, the communes held the informal Congress of Communes, where thousands of delegates met to coordinate policy. The United Front initially attempted to suppress the Congress, fearing that it would weaken the authority of the National Assembly. In response to this, members of the Workers Party split away to form the Workers Party-Revolutionary Faction. The WP-RF began campaigning to have the Congress of Communes recognized as an official governing body through an amendment to the Constitution, and after protests by both sides and vitriolic arguments between the two groups, the National Assembly reluctantly voted to formalize the Congress.

In the election of 3456, the United Front split up, with each party campaigning independently for seats. The Workers Party won a majority, with the Erde Resistance in second place and Unity and the WP-RF in a distant third and fourth. The Workers Party began a program known as the New World Initiative, an attempt to change the island's culture to bring it more in line with the new socialist values. Private housing was abolished and people were moved into dormitory-like communal apartments, the Revolutionary Law Program was implemented, which drastically decreased police presence and replaced it with neighborhood watch organizations, so that the police almost solely dealt with violent crime, and business was collectivized.

When the Lyuwi Republic and Inakrul gained independence at the end of the Great War and adopted socialist systems similar to Brylon's, the three countries formed a confederation known as the International Revolutionary Union. When the National Union government was created in Kanat in 3474, the IRU began rearming for the inevitable conflict. Even so, Kanat overran Inakrul in a matter of days, beginning the Kanat War. Brylon was never directly attacked in the war, and it served as the manufacturing center for IRU forces throughout the war. The first nuclear test by the IRU also took place in Brylon's mountains, and Brylon manufactured all four of the bombs used throughout the war. By the time Kanat collapsed in 3483, Brylon's economy was focused entirely on heavy industry and military equipment, and the subsequent demilitarization was difficult for the country. Over the next ten years, many large factories were closed and people gradually moved into service jobs and light industry, away from the industrial economy from the prewar and wartime periods.

Because of the advances in computer technology caused by the war, Brylon began transitioning its economy to a computerized system soon after the end of the conflict. Physical currency was abolished, and a network was established across the IRU storing people's money, in the form of digital [IRU Lasi|IRU Lasis]]. The computer system was built to track people's earnings and purchases in real time to give planners data to work with, and was extremely effective in improving planning efficiency. The computer revolution, combined with the move from industry to consumer goods, made the postwar economy of Brylon boom, and the country's standard of living rose rapidly, beginning to rival the standard of living in the northern capitalist countries and making Brylon one of the most prosperous countries in the world.

Government and Politics

 * Main article: Politics of Brylon

Brylon is a parliamentary republic with the Premier elected by popular vote as a symbolic figurehead and the President, elected by the National Assembly, responsible for running the government. The National Assembly is composed of three hundred delegates elected through a two round system.

Communes

 * Main article: Communes of Brylon

Brylon is divided into roughly 7000 communes. Each commune is centered around a specific industry where most of the residents work. A farming commune, for example, might contain include an entire rural village, while a manufacturing commune would probably include a factory and the surrounding area. Communes also provide a number of services to residents, such as daycare and education for children, housing and food, and a community center. Some larger communes might even include a movie theater or a medical clinic for injuries that aren't serious enough to warrant a hospital visit.

Communes are run through a combination of direct democracy and demarchy. All decisions for the commune are made at monthly assemblies of the commune's entire population, and day to day administration is performed by a manager chosen by lottery to serve for a week. While critics say that this system is inefficient and prone to inexperienced leaders, proponents say that it encourages political participation and gives people a stake in their workplace, making them more motivated to work.

Congress of Communes

 * Main article: Congress of Communes of Brylon

The Congress of Communes is a yearly meeting to coordinate economic planning and policy between the communes. Each commune sends a delegate to a two week conference at the beginning of the year where they vote on economic policy and attempt to coordinate actions between different communes. The Congress originated as an informal meeting between representatives from the communes, until it was formalized as an amendment to the Constitution.