Popular Republic of Malivia

The Most Serene Commonwealth of Maliva is located on the southern most tip of Artania. It shares a land border with the Republic of Hobrazia to the north east and the Republic of Lusitania to the north west. The country is a federal republic, and until recently the Head of State was an appointed position, with the religious leader of the Geraja religion assuming the role.

Geography
Malivia is a tropical nation, lying just north of the equator. Its central wilayah, Walkunia, is dominated by a wide central mountain range, with highlands stretching into the neighboring wilayahs. Rainforests stretch across the country, thanks to careful management by the federal and local governments, and many rare and endangered species make their home in Malivia's protected forest lands.

The Svrin Protectorates
The Svrin (SIV-rin) Protectorates was the first attempt made to unify the territories that make up modern Malivia. Beginning in the 8th century CE, Svrin became the center of a series of empires of conquest that, at their greatest reach, encompassed all of modern Malivia. Though Svrin would wane in influence starting in the 16th century CE, Svrin would later be renamed Syene, and become Malivia's capital.

The First Svrin Protectorate
Prior to the creation of the First Svrin Protectorate in 738 CE, the people of Malivia lived in largely independent city-states throughout the nation, and were comprised of two distinct cultural groups. The cities along the coast, which supported themselves through fishing and some agriculture, and the inland cities, which were the source of hardwoods for the boats of the coastal cities, and many of the crops that would not grow on the coast, shared much common heritage, and frequent contact helped keep the inhabitants of these cities culturally related. The villages of the mountainous region that now makes up Walkunia, on the other hand, were both culturally and ethnically distinct from the people in the lower lying areas. The mountain villages had a far more religious culture, a tradition that continues to this day, as well as traditions that can trace their origins to more northern cultures.

Prior to 738, there was little contact between the mountain villages and the cities in the low lands; trade routes along the continental coast were well established by the first century CE, making the more difficult trade route into the mountains unpalatable for traders. When the first Svrin Protectorate was created by the invasion and conquest of several small inland villages by Svrin, a large coastal trade city, the ambitions of the Protectorate’s leaders was strictly to take territory that would aid in the construction of a larger fleet, thus the inland villages that harvested the dense hardwood rainforests of south Malivia. However, when iron was discovered in 751 by a village in the mountains, the name of which is lost to time, the Svrin Protectorate turned its gaze north.

Before the discovery of iron, there was no interest in these remote mountain towns whose quaint customs belied explanation, and certainly had it not been for this discovery it is unlikely Walkunia would be part of Malivia today. However, with a key resource so close at hand, the Svrin leaders could not resist. The journey into the mountains may have been more arduous, but there were no pirates in the mountains, and the rivals of the Svrin Protectorate, whose fleets had to be contested with, could not so easily shut off an inland supply of iron.

The mountain villages put up barely a fight against the Svrin, many volunteering to join after the Svrin military put the torch to a village that poisoned the food provided to the invading soldiers. With the iron mines of western Walkunia under their control, the Svrin expanded quickly, conquering the western territories of Malivia and into southern Deltaria, now part of Hobrazia. As the Svrin moved west, however, their march was stopped by an alliance of western cities. The western cities, whose trade route with the northwest of the continent was not as exposed as that of the Svrin Protectorate, had secured a plentiful, if expensive, source of metals for themselves, and set about building a military capable of halting the Svrin advance.

This conflict came to a head in 793, when the combined armies of the allied cities met the main Svrin army in the Unpo Valley, where the Svrin found themselves outnumbered and outflanked as a contingent of light cavalry emerged from the forests to the north to attack the rear of the Svrin formation. Victorious, the allied cites pressed the attack, and in 795 sacked Svrin, executing the leaders of the Protectorate and bringing an end to the First Svrin Protectorate.