History of Kalgachia/The 160s

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The 160s in Kalgachia began with a near-fatal breakdown in relations with Shireroth, which was in the advanced stages of planning an invasion of Nova England and reacted with barely-concealed rage to the revelation that Kalgachia was negotiating the supply of advanced Minarborian-era air defence and anti-tank systems to the Nova English. Although the deal was negotiated before the outbreak of physical hostilities and fell technically within Kalgachia's treaty commitment to desist from militarily assisting nations at war with Shireroth, the latter power threatened to bring the invasion forward to the detriment of the still-mobilising Nova English unless the deal was cancelled. Kalgachia responded by deferring the matter to the Nova English legislature and tensions cooled, although the singular will of Shireroth's executive branch to pursue a programme of naked global conquest would have lasting ramifications for Kalgachi state planning. The most salient effect was the committal of immense government resources to Project Newrad, an experiment in self-sufficient sub-surface civilisation intended to weather an annihilation of Kalgachia's surface population by the fantastically-bloated Shirerithian military.

The 160s also saw the importation of bonded Froyalanish labour ended and the partial rehabilitation of those Froyalaners already within Kalgachia, maintaining their mass strerilisation but providing them with a minimum living standard and certain civic freedoms for a more comfortable die-off than their Shirerithian counterparts.

Toward the end of the decade Kalgachia was met with a more agreeable neighbour in the form of the emergent Kasterburg Republic, founded by Batavian exiles trekking toward Kalgachia's western border. As Kalgachia's only route off the Benacian continent outside Shirerithian control, Kasterburg assumed an immediate level of importance and drew enthusiastic support from the Kalgachi government as it sought to secure its frontiers against the Laqi brigands and predation by gigantised rodents of engineered Minarborian origin.

The Nova English Missile Crisis (161 AL)

In Kalgachia, the ultimate failure of Shireroth's attempt to invade Nova England - particularly the sudden and inexplicable collapse of political will in Shirekeep which caused it - was ascribed to the indefatigable power of prayer.

In 159 AL, with the Brettish Isles suffering from the disastrous effects of a major volcanic eruption, the Steward of Shireroth - the notorious Waldemar Zinkgraven - had decided to exploit the resulting humanitarian disaster and goverment collapse by commissioning privateers to set upon and plunder the maritime aid shipments of various USSO nations attempting to assist the stricken Brettish - as well as enslaving individuals captured in the process, stripping Brettish waters of fish stocks and making a direct foray into the territorial waters of Nova England. This lunge at Eastern Keltia, culminating in the Cruise of the Medusa, marked an drastic shift in the perception of Shireroth by the Kalgachi government which had hitherto tolerated the antics of its bloated neighbour as a necessary moderator of Jingdaoese and Storish excesses on the global stage. Now, however, Shireroth appeared to dispense with any pretext of moral mission - beyond the contentious assertion that conflict with a single USSO state made all USSO assets a legitimate prize of war - and indulge in an orgy of rank savagery upon the high seas in the assured confidence that it was too powerful incur anything in the way of negative consequences from such behaviour.

In Kalgachia, this bold escalation in Shirerithian swagger was seen as a regression to the untrammeled rapacity of the previous Froyalanish administration; differing only in the fact that Shireroth's ruling Kalirion dynasty, unlike the Froyalanish whom they had overthrown, went about its business with an honest and unadorned thuggery without recourse to a duplicitous veil of dumb amiability that had characterised the high tide mark of Froyalanish dominion. Nonetheless in 161 AL Kalgachia's ruling Council of Perfecti, seeing in Nova England a nation of kindred spirit whose existence was greatly endangered, decided to intervene.

This intervention - an offer of anti-gravtank missiles and high-end air defence systems to the Nova English Armed Forces to counter an expected Shirerithian invasion - instantly drew the ire of the Shirerithian government which accused Kalgachia of using Nova England as an intermediary to provide the weapons to Jingdao, against its obligations under the Slavegate Treaty to refrain from militarily supporting nations at war with Shireroth. While Kalgachia was quick to contest this assertion and the diplomatic premise on which it was built, the fact that Shireroth's argument - regardless of its merits - was backed by a threat of war against Nova England if the Kalgachi weapons were delivered, compelled the latter two governments to reconfigure their budding mutual aid programme in terms of doctrinal training and civil defence, albeit kicked into a greatly accelerated pace by Shireroth's readiness to address the matter by military means (the postponed weapon delivery was later resumed and completed immediately prior to the War of the Casks, when a Shirerithian invasion of Nova England was evidently imminent regardless of Kalgachi restraint). These intial contacts eventually blossomed into a full trade relationship, underpinned by the mutual foundation of the Kalgachi and Nova English currencies upon the gold standard. This relationship was nonetheless a logistically challenging one, being entirely reliant upon Kalgachia's fleet of Jingdaoese-purchased transport aircraft operating at the limit of their range over an active war zone under the close scrutiny of Shirerithian warplanes, having to displace so much cargo in favour of fuel that most if not all Kalgachi imports by this route ran at a net financial loss. These losses were stoically absorbed by the Directorate of Labour and Economic Planning for the sake of maintaining commercial confidence in its Nova English intermediary body, the Octavian Import-Export Corporation, as well as fulfilling the political brief imposed directly from the Council of Perfecti to maintain a trade link independent of Shirerithian influence regardless of the cost.

The 'Emancipation' of the Froyalanish (161 AL)

As part of Kalgachia's scramble to distance itself from the Zinkgraven administration which appeared to be dragging Shireroth up an ever-steepening exponent of militaristic bloodlust, the Council of Perfecti returned once more to the Froyalanish Question. It resolved that Kalgachia's resident population of captive Froyalanish labourers were sufficiently integrated with Kalgachi society that they could be released from bondage and granted Kalgachi citizenship, such that the end of their status as a tradeable commodity would render moribund the majority of Kalgachia's trade links with Shireroth and perhaps be a first step in rehabilitating Kalgachia's name in the eyes of the Froyalaners' progenitors in Stormark. Some resistance to the plan was forthcoming from the Prefects, Kalgachia's internal security service, who pointed out that the memetic virulence of the Froyalaners' original Vanic religion and their tendency to outbreed and displace other races had not gone away and represented an existential hazard of the first order. The release of the Froyalanish was, therefore, accompanied by an absolute prohibition on the practice of the Vanic religion (for which one could be detained or even executed by any Kalgachi citizen) and a continuation of the programme whereby all Froyalaners within Kalgachi borders were sterilised upon arrival. Over time this would ironically render Kalgachia's Froyalanish population into a distinct subculture of freewheeling libertines, severed as they were from all obligation to revere ancestors or create descendants. A desire to live comfortably, make the most of one's time in the world and be at peace with one's fellows - similar to that found among the Bergburgers but further moderated by a deep sense of historical fatalism - prevailed among this newly-freed segment of society whose induction into the Kalgachi citizenry caused the country's official population to jump by two million, requiring the hurried minting of fresh Kalgarrand to pay their wages and avert a deflationary crash. Although Froyalaners remained ineligible to serve as church partisans, sufficient numbers of other ethnicities were freed up from menial, long-hours occupations by wage-earning Froyalanish replacements that the amount of people undergoing partisan training in their free time swelled by some 500,000.

Lapivril and Project Newrad (165 AL)

A recruiting poster for Project Newrad.

In the mid 160s AL Kalgachia's immense programme of military fortress construction was nearing its conclusion, ensuring that no part of the country was more than 75 kilometres away from a heavily equipped battery of assorted guns, hypersonic and surface-to-air missiles. Simultaneously the full weight of the Great Enterpise of Keltia was being brought to bear against Nova England among other escalations in that continent's polar region, offering the world yet another ripple in the interminable flexion of Shirerithian military muscle. In Kalgachia the events inspired renewed doubts in the ability of even its newly-fortified military to repel such an onslaught, given the seemingly psychotic determination of Shireroth's rogue steward to pursue his military ambitions without regard to the cost and the apparently helpless inability of moderates within Shireroth to restrain him. Such concerns were tempered only by a general relief that Shireroth's adventures in faraway Keltia had bought Kalgachia added time to enhance its own defences before the Shirerithian hordes were, inevitably as Kalgachi security organs felt, directed against them. After the much-delayed and over-budgeted completion of the KDF fortress network, however, there was little appetite within the Council of Perfecti to divert yet more of Kalgachia's assets into the front end of national defence, especially during the marginal stagnation in Kalgachia's standard of living caused by the war in Nova England and its effect on imports. Instead the Council looked to the Troglodyti, Kalgachia's hidden but well-connected esoteric order whose initiates within the country's academia had recently embarked upon a holistic initiative intended to have positive implications for national defence, socio-economic strength and ultimately spiritual salvation. Named Project Newrad, it envisaged the creation of a new national redoubt located deep underground to restore the safety of sovereign tenure which had previously been conferred by Kalgachia's mountain topography but was now almost completely vulnerable to the Shirerithian spectre of mass-produced gravimetric transport and full-spectrum aerial/space surveillance. On a spiritual level it was also hoped that the sub-surface lifestyle of the new territory's inhabitants would resonate with the spirits of their ancestors' chthonic Benefactors and bring Kalgachia as a whole into a deeper state of grace with the Garden Ketheric. Heavily reliant upon geothermal power and nuclear transmutation for its intended function as a closed system, the territory was codified into existence as the Lieutenancy of Lapivril and granted the full resources of the Kalgachi state - inspiring some irritation within the Directorate of Public Works, whose masses of overworked navvies and foremen had anticipated a period of rest in which they could finally spend the considerable pay and bonuses they had accrued during the preceding decade of fortress-building. Ultimately many of them were in fact able to so do, including the Directorate's entire contingent of ageing Froyalanish navvies, on account of the Troglodyti's strict conditions for entry into Lapivril which were restricted to mixed Kalgachi and Nezeni ethnicities alone.

The Emergence of Kasterburg (167-169 AL)

Meanwhile in 167 AL, to Kalgachia's southwest, a new sovereign state emerged in the old Minarborian territory previously known as Poroly. The Kasterburg Republic, founded by exiles from Shirerithian Batavia, was quick to assert its neutral credentials by denouncing both Shireroth and Kalgachia; the former for mistreating Kasterburg's emissaries and violating its territory, and the latter for harbouring a 'political inspired pseudo-religion' and being tardy in opening diplomatic channels, which were belatedly established through a formation of KDF cossacks who happened to be in the area. Ultimately, however, Kasterburg's attitude appeared refreshingly non-ideological and it began to engage cordially with both its neighbours, accepting a donation of Kalgachi anti-tank guns for the nominal purpose of resisting the marauding Tee-als which had beset its early development, although the utility of the weapons in deterring further uninvited territorial incursions by Shireroth was left conspicuously un-denied. Kalgachia in addition launched Operation Beefsteak, a military anti-bandit sweep along the ungoverned limitrophes of the Kasterburg border to assist in Tee-al rollback and disperse groups of itinerant raiders who had inevitably become attracted to the new republic's concentration of wealth.

Due in part to this assistance, Kasterburg was able to expand its territory in 168 AL - although this did have the effect of closing the ungoverned territory between the Lywall Protectorate and Shirerithian Batavia (known as the Poroly Gap after the area's Ashkenatzi-Minarborian name), which had been Kalgachia's only open trade route with nations outside the Benacian continent. Under pressure from the Oktavyan Import-Export Corporation, whose business had already been crippled by the war scare in Nova England, Kalgachi diplomats descended on Kasterburg to negotiate right of passage for Kalgachia's long-range cargo aircraft. In 169 AL The result of these negotiations, in the form of the Sterklucht Agreement on Airspace Security, succeeded in re-opening Kasterburg's airspace to Kalgachi flights in exchange for an annual fee and the delivery of a hundred Kalgachi surface-to-air missile systems to Kasterburg's nascent military, which had hitherto lacked any air defence capability.

The speed with which Kalgachia defied its own reputation as a paranoid hermit state and pumped military aid into a new, unknown and occasionally critical neighbour was surprising to casual observers who were taken aback by the negotiating skill required - the tendency of the Kalgachi diplomatic corps toward flippantly informal discourse had only recently caused a stir at a summit on geopolitical non-alignment in Caputia where the Kalgachi delegation had notoriously torpedoed the summit's central mission statement and cast the Raspurid representatives, among others, into a state of bewilderment. To the straight-talking Batavian elite of Kasterburg, however, Kalgachi directness was a refreshing break from the pomp, pageantry and nebulous affectations seen elsewhere on the Micran diplomatic stage. This allowed Kalgachia to secure vital understandings with Kasterburg while Shireroth's efforts to pre-empt them with its own more grandiose overtures became bogged down in logistical minutiae.

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