Nanling

The Rationalist Republic of Nanling (Official name: Rationalist Administration of the Nanling area) is a state in southern Kesh following the ideology of “Radical Rationalism” formed after the collapse of the former Kingdom of Nanling and the subsequent takeover by the Rationalist Movement. The nation claims to be a regional administration of a future world-spanning state and is organized with a nation-spanning bureaucracy as the sole governing body. The head of state is known simply as Director of State and is sometimes informally referred to as “Citizen 2”. The Director of State holds supreme executive power, but shares legislative power with an advisory body known as the council of state, which may submit laws and initiatives to the Director for approval. Judicial power is held by the State Protection Committee and works via an inquisitorial rather than adversarial system.

Human rights in the Republic vary greatly: discrimination based on Gender, race, religion or ethnicity is forbidden, but the state actively persecutes political opponents and punishes them severely without due process, with punishments ranging from extensive hard labour to execution. There is freedom of speech but not of assembly and the majority of protests are cracked down on harshly by authorities.

The nation is not currently at war with any other nation, but wages a low-intensity internal conflict against dissident political groups such as the Ingatovist Nanling Liberation Organization, the nationalist Provisional Government of Nanling and also the anti-rationalist movement known only as the Avant-Garde underground.

Early History
Evidence of human activity in the area of modern-day Nanling dates back to the stone age based on discoveries of tools in the Mauthohe river delta. Agricultural societies such as the Curved Pottery culture indicate that the area was settled by at least the early bronze age.

The first proper historical records of this time period come from the Medieval Scholar Hao Lei’s seminal “History of the three dynasties” which outlines three established dynasties as having ruled up until the late iron age. These were the Mau, Xi and Bei dynasties, the last of which would come to lend its name to the modern nation of Nanling, meaning “Southern Land” in the local Goyu dialects, referring to the fact that the Bei dynasty came to power through Kodeshian military support.

Imperial Era
The imperial era began with the rise of the Neo-Xi monarchy, ostensibly a long-forgotten cadet branch of the Xi which modern historians assume is an entirely separate family taking the name to establish their legitimacy. During this era the Xi created a vast empire encompassing most of modern-day Nanling, developed a complex bureaucracy and enforced the belief in the animist faith of Natural Harmony, which preaches that all existence is one harmonious living being, formalizing worship and creating a shamanistic clergy to enforce their doctrine.

The Xi dynasty would reign intermittently for the next three hundred years, only occasionally supplanted by puppet rulers or rival noble families until the late 1600’s and would fall only after the conclusion of the spirit war. During this period trade flourished, a comprehensive infrastructure network and grand monuments were constructed and the national epic “Song of the Jade Bird” was created by the poet Wei Bo. It is generally thought of as the historic “golden age” by the non-rationalists in Nanling and forms much of the basis for Nanling culture even to this day.

Early Modern Era
By the early 1700’s, the Xi Empire’s long era of peace would shatter in a sea of religious turmoil. With an increasingly educated populace, the firm grip on society that the Xi monarchy held on the populace thanks to the clergy and bureaucracy began to slip as more and more people questioned the established order. This culminated with the rise of the prophet-king Tan Song, who preached a radical message influenced by the ever-increasing presence of advanced technology in Nanling: the universe was not in fact organic in nature, but a single mechanical clockwork-like entity. According to Tan, it was not universal harmony but maintenance and progress that was to be at the centre of religion: the world must be examined to understand its structure and the slumbering people of Nanling must wake up once more to reveal the secrets of creating and to maintain the ethereal machine.

Proclaiming himself at the head of the new Tan dynasty, Tan Song led his followers to seize cities and convert them to the faith. He found many eager converts across the country, with most of his support coming from the urban population seeking to overthrow the stale status quo and eagerly embraced this new prophet. The two dynasties and by extension the two religions would remain locked in fierce warfare for the better part of the 1700s, with periods of what were effectively nationwide truces allowing for some periods of peace. The Tan dynasty would eventually emerge as the victor, instigating a vicious purge against its religious and political opponents that would become known as “the pulling of the weeds”.

It was during the height of this period that the seeds of what would later grow into rationalism came into being with the advent of the first revolution and the proclamating of the Yongheng Republic. Led by the revolutionary Liao Guying, the republican movement seized the capital in the spring of 1795 and put an immediate stop to all persecution along with scheduling elections and proclaiming a sovereign republic that would unseat the Tang dynasty. The founding document of the republic was the “Declaration of a reasonable world”, a document which gave all human beings equal standing before the law under the basis that “all humans are endowed with a sense of reason independent of any god or monarch, granting them rights and privileges by their own power and the capacity to enter into the fraternal bond of a government of equals”. Tang forces would crush the nascent republic in the ensuing eleven-month war, reinstating an absolutist government but finally ending the sweeping waves of purges that had for so long swept the nation.

Modern Era
Remaining neutral during the Grand Campaigns and Great Kesh War, the Tan-ruled Kingdom of Nanling was nevertheless affected heavily by the economic and social disruptions caused by the conflicts would fatally weaken the already fragile political order of the kingdom. Seeing that their armies were woefully behind the rest of the world after several hundred years of peace, the regime invested heavily in the military and attempted to forcibly industrialize the primarily agrarian economy. With income inequality already rampant and now rising, the revelation that most of the funds directed to armed forces modernization had instead been embezzled by a clique of corrupt generals proved enough of a spark to once more set the nation aflame.

Following large-scale riots, the government declared martial law across the country and prepared to enact a large-scale campaign of arrests and executions, but quickly encountered armed resistance from rural militias that mobilized to protect their communities from government forces. Seizing this moment of instability, the revolutionary leader Zhang Su and armed members of his Rationalist Movement seized the capital in an echo of the 1795 revolution and executed the royal family, sparking an all-out civil war.

During the subsequent Nanling civil war, the country descended into lawlessness as government forces dissolved, becoming bandits or joining one of the warring ideological factions. From his base at the capital Zhang would launch a massive campaign of total war against the other factions, abolishing the feudal system of bureaucracy completely and created a “rationalized” state and military from the ground up. With the resources of the heartland and fanatical soldiers at his command, Zhang's forces seized the vital Mauthohe river and soon held sway over the east, with the western part of the country being controlled by the United Front for the Liberation of Nanling, an alliance of left-wing and nationalist forces attempting to turn the tide against the new government. After a brutal ten-year war, the last of the UFLN forces were either destroyed or driven out of the country and Zhang turned his along with the nations gaze inward. Much of the rationalist program had been implemented in the regime’s core territories, but now the entire nation would bear witness to “The Great Rationalization”. The nation was forcibly industrialized and ideological deviants purged, slowly but surely transforming it into a radically new cultural and political entity.