Hurmu/Scratchpad
Hum, Stormark, Toketi
"Figuratively speaking, what happened was that the land that you now called the Heartland mostly formed different provinces or districts of greater Hurmu. The lands were known as "Lyrica" after the songs made from the men and women who there dwelt. Then came the Crandish and the Slobovians and the Arminians and began fighting Hurmu tribes, believing them to be of the same stock as the people known as "Hum".
"The Hum belonged to Hurmu tribes who refused the peace as Cashma Island in Hurmu's foundation. Like their Hurmudan cousins, they were nomads, but these fought their way through to Northworthy and what is now Toketi. The Arminian league of Crandishmen and Slobovians wished to erradicate the problem by going to the "root", so to say Hurmu proper.
"This failed; it only brought the Hurmu people closer to each other. They grouped together in the north of Lyrica in the Lake District and Crandishmen and Slobovians began colonizing the continent south of the Lakes.
"When the Stormarkers came, I don't know, but I believe the Vikings were cousins to the Hurmudans who neither were at the peace of Cashma, nor refused it, but who always lived in Lyrica or the Heartland. These small nations, or tribes, were only united by Harald Thorstein to form a great empire that you now call Stormark."
Marriage poem
A life together is like a year,
starting in a rushing buzzing spring,
reaching the joy and music of the warm bright summers,
going down in the melancholic autumn,
where things slow down and there is time for reflection
and for warming, caressing each other,
until the winter comes, and all slows down
more and more until we are joined
in the Hurmu of Hurmus,
whence our Lakes were made.
Old history
Crandish Takeover
The Crandish and the Hurmudans had for some time now been in negotiated for the Crandish take-over of the former Menelmacari treaty obligations. This was done because Hurmu sensed that Menelmacar would soon collapse, and Hurmu did not want to be part of that collapse. They saw how Ashintully and Haradwaith had already collapsed, how the Yellow Territory was being used as a nuclear test place for the OAM, how Jaiha had been collapsing since the first Menelmacari revolution. They wanted to avoid being part of the collapse.
The Governate of Hurmu and the government of Cranda agreed to a treaty, the Treaty of Hichanberg (= Crandish for Huyenkula), and this was announced and ratified by both Cranda and Hurmu. Although the people of Hurmu knew that they now were Crandish they decided to keep the Menelmacari flag hoisted at the Governate.
And when the fall was announced in the Goodnight Menelmacar speech, the Menelmacari flag was lowered to half mast in memory of all those dead in the cold conflict between the two Menelmacars, and those who died from the Menelmacari crises.
Six days the Menelmacari flag was at half mast, and on the seventh day up and flying once more, for the very last time in Micras ever. One day more the flag was flying, but then at midnight lowered for the last time, and replaced by the Crandish flag.
The former Crandish consulate in Huyenkula was made the Crandish High Commission and the former Menelmacari Embassy in Johansessbuurg was turned into the Hurmu High Commission, to represent Hurmudan interests and businesses in Cranda.
The following weeks a ship came ashore from Cranda. It carried all administrative works and dealings that would be necessary in Hurmu. What interested the population was the new currency to be used and the new passports made by the Crandish government in advance for the Hurmudans!
Hurmu u-Krant
The Crandish were not as imperialistic as the Menelmacaris. The Crandish refrained from changing the roadsigns to Crandish, for example. During the Menelmacari period, all roadsigns were in Elven, none were in the Hurmu native language. Instead of changing the roadsigns to Crandish, they removed the Elven ones and replaced them with Hurmu Nordic (which was more or less what people spoke in Hurmu).
This started the Hurmudanization of life in Hurmu. The Hurmu literature flourished and plays and works of music, films and art were done in large scale Hurmu mode.
Hurmu art and culture was free. The Crandish were abit uncertain with any sort of Crandishization of Hurmu, but when Hurmudans petitioned the Crandish government to get Crandish analogue TV, because the only ones they could get at the moment were the poor B-type Viking movies and soaps of Stormark.
There was a large Micran conference on languages in Johansessbuurg, and Hurmu was proud to be such a small nation and yet represent the four daily spoken languages of Hurmu: Hurmudan traditional, Nordic Hurmu, Elven and Crandish.
Hurmu was now a tourist hotspot for the people of Micras. People went to the beautiful big salt lakes, camped. They went to the discos and nightclubs of Huyenkula. And Hurmudan cuisine was exported. The whole world danced Hurmu, ate Hurmu and relaxed Hurmu.
Arminian discussions
It now was that Slobovia and Cranda were discussing to merge (they were last united by a common government a thousand years ago under “Arminy”, on which the epic of Arminy was based). Hurmu was a bit distanced in these discussions but were initially worried that this would make Hurmu a part of Cranda, and not this semi-independent status it had had.
Thankfully, many Hurmudans thought, the discussions failed. But a few years later the discussions were resumed. Should Cranda, Northworthy and Slobovia rejoin into the union they once were in under Arminy?
Yes! screamed Cranda, OK! Northworthy said, and Slobovia went “uhm, you sure about this?”
Anyway, the Hurmudans were refused participation at the discussions. This upset many people in Hurmu, who now boycotted Crandish, Northworthy and Slobovian goods. The Hurmudans soon realized that they had to buy extremely expensive goods, food especially, if they were to boycott, so they stopped nagging about the discussions and said that so long they were still semiindependent and in a protectorate, they’d be fine with the union.
But they refused to pay any taxes to the union, arguing that the treaty of Hichanberg was still applicable and that those few taxes they paid to Cranda for defence, foreign affairs and citizenship were enough.
Arminy reborn
Arminy was thus declared. And the Arminian Community now consisted of Slobovia, Cranda and Northworthy, with Hurmu as some sort of protectorate. This time the population was less enthusiastic with getting new money, passports, but when the Arminian government called for having all roadsigns in Arminian as well as in the local language, Hurmu refused and started ignoring the government in Fonresbur3, just as they had done with the Menelmacari government.
For a few decades Hurmu ignored Arminy, and during this time Slobovia achieved independence. In defiance of the Arminian government, they set up the Embassy of Hurmu in Slobovia, the first Hurmudan embassy for a few hundred years. Now a fraction of Hurmu wanted independence from Arminy, led by Thoenen Helios, but the Arminian government realized that that would be bad PR, so the King himself went to Huyenkula and promised Hurmu full membership in the union, and Helios agreed. Hurmu became a member in Hurmu.
Hurmu Arminel
Now that Hurmu was a state within Arminy, and no longer sovereign or having its semi-independent status, most affairs concerning Hurmu were made in Arminsburgh, several hundred kilometres away. De jure, the Hurmudans could control most things themselves as they had always done, but de facto was another matter. The Arminian government let regulations fall on the member states through the back door, and laws were passed in contradiction of treaties and constitutions.
This again, upset the Hurmudans, especially the rural ones. For example, the Arminsburgh regulations stated that cucumbers had to be straight, but Hurmudans actually liked their bent ones. The bent ones, however, became illegal.
Boohoo, the Hurmudans thought and they initiated a new era of ignorance. They ignored Arminsburgh (but followed Arminian soaps slavishly) and enacted their own laws which at times heavily contradicted the Arminian constitution.
The Arminians got fed up with the Hurmudan tradition of ignoring higher laws when the laws don’t suit them. So in response the Arminian legislature dissolved Hurmu as a state (together with Lorelei) and placed Hurmu under direct control under the Kingdom of Northworthy. The Hurmu Republik was officially dead.
Hurmu under Northworthy
The government of Northworthy was largely uninterested in the whiny people to the south and let them run things mostly on their own. But on one point the government in Deorby was clear: There would be no “ignorance”, and Hurmudans started ignoring politics and started marketing Hurmu abroad once more, especially in Northworthy. The rural farmers of Northworthy went for spa weekends to the isle of Cashma House.
Soon, Arminy became more centralized and even the Kingdom of Northworthy was dissolved, and the different areas of Arminy were drastically reorganized. Now, Hurmu became a barony.
The baronial government of Hurmu was rather different from baronial and feudal governments elsewhere in Arminy. In Hurmu, the baron was a nominal head of state who represented Hurmu abroad and in the Ricchesdey, but the internal government of Hurmu was conducted mostly through referenda.
The Alexandrine War
The Baron of Hurmu supported an annexation of the instable state to the west of Arminy, Alexandria. Without any support in Hurmu, the people of Hurmu now ignored their baron, and started doing things their own way. A new period of Hurmudan ignorance started. The Baron, however, ignored the Hurmudan ignorance and said that, despite contradicting the Brida, Arminy should forcefully annex Alexandria.
The then King of Arminy agreed to this a note was given to the “Emperor” of Alexandria who did not respond. The government in Arminy took his silence as acceptance, (a Hurmu saying goes “To not re-act is to accept”) and legally incorporated the Alexandrine lands to one fiefdom in Arminy. (The annexation did get some international support, Lemuria for example saw the annexation as being legal under international law) The Emperor was killed during this, but his successor was declared Baron of Alexandria, but in Hurmudan style ignored Arminy. The newspapers in Huyenkula loved this.
But the politicians in Arminsburgh did not. They started invading Alexandria but met heavy resistance. Sadly, the Alexandrine forces came further inland and were it not for a coup d’état in Alexandria Arminy might had to surrender vast pieces of land to Alexandria.
The Alexandrine coup dissolved the nation and the nation swept into chaos and anarchy. Alexandria was placed under Arminian occupation from now on.
Merger talks
For a long time (some say a century) Arminian delegates had been meeting in the ice palace of Entésren in Lemuria in what came to be the first seed to the Grand Commonwealth. Much of the new Constitution, or Charter, of the merging states was based on a text from the Arminian king Johanns.
