History of Kalgachia/The 220s: Difference between revisions

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Reliance upon such a solitary point of failure, although something of a heresy against the Kalgachi philosophy of state which was noted from the outset, had nonetheless been tolerated by the DLEP and its fixers in the [[Octavian Import-Export Corporation]] due to the immense economic benefits obtained while geopolitical risks were judged to be low. Now that the future integrity of the Iron Company's shipping operations came into question, so too did the complacency and hubris of certain DLEP officials and OIEC executives amid the circumstances of their own personal enrichment; after a series of briefings from the [[Kalgachia#The Church of Kalgachia|Church of Kalgachia]] and the [[Kalgachia#The Troglodyti|Troglodyti]] on the behavioural fingerprints of the ''Pecuniary Archon'', the [[Kalgachia#The Prefects|Prefects]] assessed that certain members of the Kalgachi business community had wilfully allowed the economic resilience of the [[Ketherism|Garden]] to slide toward the periphery of their priorities in exchange for personal riches beyond the comprehension of the ordinary Kalgachi who would be the first to suffer if imports of Liberadosan rum and recreational motor fuel from [[Eura]] were compromised by disregard for geopolitical events.
Reliance upon such a solitary point of failure, although something of a heresy against the Kalgachi philosophy of state which was noted from the outset, had nonetheless been tolerated by the DLEP and its fixers in the [[Octavian Import-Export Corporation]] due to the immense economic benefits obtained while geopolitical risks were judged to be low. Now that the future integrity of the Iron Company's shipping operations came into question, so too did the complacency and hubris of certain DLEP officials and OIEC executives amid the circumstances of their own personal enrichment; after a series of briefings from the [[Kalgachia#The Church of Kalgachia|Church of Kalgachia]] and the [[Kalgachia#The Troglodyti|Troglodyti]] on the behavioural fingerprints of the ''Pecuniary Archon'', the [[Kalgachia#The Prefects|Prefects]] assessed that certain members of the Kalgachi business community had wilfully allowed the economic resilience of the [[Ketherism|Garden]] to slide toward the periphery of their priorities in exchange for personal riches beyond the comprehension of the ordinary Kalgachi who would be the first to suffer if imports of Liberadosan rum and recreational motor fuel from [[Eura]] were compromised by disregard for geopolitical events.


The Prefects duly rounded up scores of DLEP officials and summoned certain [[Puerto Arcadio]]-based executives of the OIEC back to Kalgachia to account for their conduct; the majority of the latter, correctly surmising that they would be inducted into mandatory Church re-education programmes the moment they landed at [[Gravelbottom Airport|Gravelbottom]], instead chose to liberate such funds from the OIEC Expenses & Sundries account as they were able and fled into hiding<ref><small>the subsequent appearance of such individuals on the ESB payroll under assumed identities was denied by the latter and largely obscured by the periodic reassignment of suspect individuals around the Honourable Company's worldwide operating locations. The formation of a  ''Pursuit and Liquidation Cell'' by the DTW Field Research Office to bring these individuals to final account before the Garden was neither confirmed nor denied.</small></ref>. Although relations with the Iron Company were eventually stabilised by the [[Treaty of Lune Villa]] and assurances of maritime security given by the [[Raspur Pact]], the DLEP was instructed by Kalgachia's ruling Council of Perfecti to commence an immediate diversification of its foreign logistics operation. To this end, discreet enquiries began to arrive at the offices of [[Kerularios & Company|Kerularios & Co]] in [[Aqaba]] regarding the routing of non-perishable, recyclable and geopolitically-inert commodities to Kalgachia via the UGB in exchange for direct access to Kalgachi exports. The  
The Prefects duly rounded up scores of DLEP officials and summoned certain [[Puerto Arcadio]]-based executives of the OIEC back to Kalgachia to account for their conduct; the majority of the latter, correctly surmising that they would be inducted into mandatory Church re-education programmes the moment they landed at [[Gravelbottom Airport|Gravelbottom]], instead chose to liberate such funds from the OIEC Expenses & Sundries account as they were able and fled into hiding<ref><small>the subsequent appearance of such individuals on the ESB payroll under assumed identities was denied by the latter and largely obscured by the periodic reassignment of suspect individuals around the Honourable Company's worldwide operating locations. The formation of a  ''Pursuit and Liquidation Cell'' by the DTW Field Research Office to bring these individuals to final account before the Garden was neither confirmed nor denied.</small></ref>. Although relations with the Iron Company were eventually stabilised by the [[Treaty of Lune Villa]] and assurances of maritime security given by the [[Raspur Pact]], the DLEP was instructed by Kalgachia's ruling Council of Perfecti to commence an immediate diversification of its foreign logistics operation. To this end, discreet enquiries began to arrive at the offices of [[Kerularios & Company|Kerularios & Co]] in [[Aqaba]] regarding the routing of non-perishable, recyclable and geopolitically-inert commodities to Kalgachia via the UGB in exchange for direct access to Kalgachi exports. The Iron Company wished the Kalgachi government "the best of luck" in their efforts of diversing their trading partners, but informed that the Batavian and Kasterburger trade routes, operated by the Company since the 1660's, could only be used for those goods that would be shipped through the Iron Company network. The Board of Governance "regrettably" could not allow any goods meant for export through competing companies to be passed through security checks.  
 
Iron Company wished the Kalgachi government "the best of luck" in their efforts of diversing their trading partners, but informed that the Batavian and Kasterburger trade routes, operated by the Company since the 1660's, could only be used for those goods that would be shipped through the Iron Company network. The Board of Governance "regrettably" could not allow any goods meant for export through competing companies to be passed through security checks.  


The purge of the DLEP in Oktavyan was undertaken in parallel with another, directed mainly at [[Sovereign Confederation|Norestrian]] emigré bullion specialists within the Reserve Bank of Kalgachia who had been instrumental in establishing the metallurgical quality of the [[Economy of Kalgachia#Currency|Kalgarrand]]. Whilst the loyalties of these diligent numismators had always been suspect, their record of service spared them the regime of ritualised penance imposed on the DLEP's foreign trade officials and generally took the form of early retirements with glowing references for onward employment among other Norestrians in [[Republic of Inner Benacia|emerging Benacian markets]]. Both house-cleaning efforts within the Directorate were coordinated on the Prefects' behalf by one [[House of Yastreb#Caustifer Yastreb|Caustifer Yastreb]]: son of the Lady Lieutenant of Oktavyan and the Chairman of the Reserve Bank of Kalgachia, alleged nephew of the chairman of the Council of Perfecti and a noted currency speculator whose financial acumen had won him a private minority stake in the OIEC and now earned him an appointment to the Board of Governors of the Reserve Bank. Here he began to assist his aging father whose diminishing faculties and authority had necessitated the purge of the numismators in the first place, and whose senile deference to the incisive counsel of his red-haired ''wunderkind'' quickly marked the young man as the Reserve Bank's heir apparent.
The purge of the DLEP in Oktavyan was undertaken in parallel with another, directed mainly at [[Sovereign Confederation|Norestrian]] emigré bullion specialists within the Reserve Bank of Kalgachia who had been instrumental in establishing the metallurgical quality of the [[Economy of Kalgachia#Currency|Kalgarrand]]. Whilst the loyalties of these diligent numismators had always been suspect, their record of service spared them the regime of ritualised penance imposed on the DLEP's foreign trade officials and generally took the form of early retirements with glowing references for onward employment among other Norestrians in [[Republic of Inner Benacia|emerging Benacian markets]]. Both house-cleaning efforts within the Directorate were coordinated on the Prefects' behalf by one [[House of Yastreb#Caustifer Yastreb|Caustifer Yastreb]]: son of the Lady Lieutenant of Oktavyan and the Chairman of the Reserve Bank of Kalgachia, alleged nephew of the chairman of the Council of Perfecti and a noted currency speculator whose financial acumen had won him a private minority stake in the OIEC and now earned him an appointment to the Board of Governors of the Reserve Bank. Here he began to assist his aging father whose diminishing faculties and authority had necessitated the purge of the numismators in the first place, and whose senile deference to the incisive counsel of his red-haired ''wunderkind'' quickly marked the young man as the Reserve Bank's heir apparent.

Revision as of 16:40, 13 August 2019

The 220s began with a phased drawdown of Kalgachi military forces in the Upland Confederation following the Slavegate Convention, only for part of them to be redeployed for border security duties in Northbloom and Northern Schlepogora as the King of Batavia and Amokolia began displaying an indulgent attitude toward civilisational pathogens in the latter realm. The delicacy of the situation with regard to Kalgachia's trade routes through Batavia was not helped by a simultaneous purge of Norestrian emigré specialists in the Directorate of Labour and Economic Planning, displaced as they were by the heir of Kalgachia's most powerful family seeking to follow the example of his relatives and cultivate a critical organ of the national bureaucracy as a power base.

The Northern Pivot (220-221 AL)

For some years suspicions had existed that the King of Batavia and Amokolia, Arkadius IV, was being drawn into the orbit of the Storish élite; a group long shunned by most Micran powers on the consensus that they were little more than a manipulative sex cult operating under the pretence of a royal court. The means by which King Arkadius might have fallen under the spell of Harald Thorstein were unknown, although the relative youth and inattention of the former during the events leading up to the Auspicious Occasion had made him, from a Storish perspective, an exploitable weak point among the other eminent figures of Benacia whose shared disenfranchisement in the shadow of an uncaring Froyalanish hegemony had provoked them to systematically eject persons of Storish descent from the civil life of most of the continent.

In 220 AL elements within the Elwynnese intelligence community leaked the Pact of Reykjavík, a draft covenant between the royal houses of Amokolia and Stormark whereby the Storish colonial territory of Gascony, in Benacia's boreal northwest, would be merged with the Kingdom of Amokolia to form a revivicated Froyalanish state. Reaction among the other states of Benacia was instant and unanimously negative; the Guttuli Protectorate, Ransenar, Sanama, Sathrati, the rump regency of Shireroth, the Sovereign Confederation, the Unified Governorates and indeed Kalgachia took immediate measures to seal off Amokolia's eastern borders and suspend diplomatic relations. A number of parliamentarians in King Arkadius' other realm of Batavia voiced opposition to their sovereign's actions. Further afield, Natopia redoubled its post-Vanic reform efforts in Uppland whilst Talenore and Constancia sent armed volunteers to help the Konkordskaya Bratva and other formations of the Raspur Pact in securing Mishalan against Amokolian frontier provocations.

In the face of opposition from a dozen nations, the Chancellor of Amokolia assumed an attitude so unyielding that in the former's perspective, it all but confirmed his government and sovereign as compromised and fully controlled agents of the Storish ruling house with whom negotiation and reasoning would be futile. In a speech to the Amokolian legislature, the Chancellor committed Amokolia to a policy of unconditional rehabilitation for the Froyalanish people and explicitly identified Amokolia as their homeland. The declaration was followed by an appeal to Kalgachia in particular to repatriate to Amokolia those bonded Froyalanish labourers it had imported from Shireroth between 155 and 164 AL.

By this time Kalgachia's Froyalanish population, having been sterilised as a condition of entry, were all of elderly age and few remained in the workforce. The Lord Lieutenants' Council, the state organ responsible for settling questions of nationality in Kalgachia, recommended a programme of voluntary repatriation which was duly authorised by the Council of Perfecti in 221 AL. Uptake for the programme was, however, minimal - especially for those who arrived in Kalgachia after the abolition of Froyalanish bondage 161 AL, for whom the move across the frontier from Shireroth had improved their status from enyoked community servant to wage-earning citizen.

The Council of Perfecti had accompanied its ruling on repatriations with a rare direct appeal to King Arkadius to avoid ignoring the underlying causes behind the suppression of the Froyalanish, lest his own Amokolian subjects succumb to the same. This was dismissed by the king in a following speech where he implied the behaviour of the Froyalanish before Auspicious Occasion to be to be "natural right" against which the only available countermeasures of the time were eternally illegitimate, "regardless of the history or background". His assertion in the same speech that "different population groups, different customs and traditions illustrate the cultural diversity" was heavily quoted in the Kalgachi media and intercut with the archived works of Froyalanish bards advocating the expansion of their "ancient ways" to all corners of the globe along with footage of refugees fleeing King Noah's purges and forced land clearances in Mishalan.

The effect of King Arkadius' defiance upon Kalgachia's relations with other powers was profound. The perennial state of military tension with the Unified Governorates, already reduced by the Slavegate Convention, now seemed to evaporate almost entirely; efforts were made by the authorities of each side to reduce ideological invective against the other while Kalgachi troops on the Ҳazedinov Line met in no man's land with Black Legionaries from the opposing Abatis Line to play soccer. In Shirekeep, the Regent Li Naomiai - a figure reviled in Kalgachia for her emotive outbursts against the Garden - announced her resignation for the express purpose of improving Sxiro-Kalgachi relations and establishing a unified Benacian front against the new civilisational threat in the north.

Within Kalgachia, a scattered handful of maverick Deep Singer and Nezeni microbiologists who had been the subjects of varying levels of scrutiny and/or detention by the Prefects for expressing Doronist sentiments, suddenly found themselves with restored security clearances and new job oppurtunities within deniable unitary enterprises of the Directorate of Health and Public Welfare. The object of their new work was a large sample set of I-M253 genotypes, collected from the wilds of northeast Apollonia by Unit 666 and obtained in exchange for three pairs of newborn Tee-als at a military airbase in Wuqi.

The Merchants' Purge (222 AL)

in 222 AL the apparently steady trajectory of Benacian affairs set in motion from Amokolia was abruptly reversed by the Treaty of Concord and the simultaneous occupation of parts of Shirekeep by forces of the Verionist Republic, events which returned the focus of post-Shirerithian states to the east overnight and reaffirmed the perpetually capricious and unreliable character of Kalgachia's neighbours in the eyes of DTW officials who had been flirting with notions of a lasting continental consensus.

Although the events did negligible damage to Kalgachia's emergent détente with the UGB, the Directorate of Labour and Economic Planning was alarmed by other results - namely a coordinated round of sanctions against the Verionist Republic by multiple Benacian states and the following emergence of tensions from the USSO and Alduria against Los Liberados which inspired Operation Hugo Grotius. All of these developments had a common point of collateral damage in the form of the Iron Company, on whom Kalgachia was almost entirely dependent for connections to the global marketplace.

Reliance upon such a solitary point of failure, although something of a heresy against the Kalgachi philosophy of state which was noted from the outset, had nonetheless been tolerated by the DLEP and its fixers in the Octavian Import-Export Corporation due to the immense economic benefits obtained while geopolitical risks were judged to be low. Now that the future integrity of the Iron Company's shipping operations came into question, so too did the complacency and hubris of certain DLEP officials and OIEC executives amid the circumstances of their own personal enrichment; after a series of briefings from the Church of Kalgachia and the Troglodyti on the behavioural fingerprints of the Pecuniary Archon, the Prefects assessed that certain members of the Kalgachi business community had wilfully allowed the economic resilience of the Garden to slide toward the periphery of their priorities in exchange for personal riches beyond the comprehension of the ordinary Kalgachi who would be the first to suffer if imports of Liberadosan rum and recreational motor fuel from Eura were compromised by disregard for geopolitical events.

The Prefects duly rounded up scores of DLEP officials and summoned certain Puerto Arcadio-based executives of the OIEC back to Kalgachia to account for their conduct; the majority of the latter, correctly surmising that they would be inducted into mandatory Church re-education programmes the moment they landed at Gravelbottom, instead chose to liberate such funds from the OIEC Expenses & Sundries account as they were able and fled into hiding[1]. Although relations with the Iron Company were eventually stabilised by the Treaty of Lune Villa and assurances of maritime security given by the Raspur Pact, the DLEP was instructed by Kalgachia's ruling Council of Perfecti to commence an immediate diversification of its foreign logistics operation. To this end, discreet enquiries began to arrive at the offices of Kerularios & Co in Aqaba regarding the routing of non-perishable, recyclable and geopolitically-inert commodities to Kalgachia via the UGB in exchange for direct access to Kalgachi exports. The Iron Company wished the Kalgachi government "the best of luck" in their efforts of diversing their trading partners, but informed that the Batavian and Kasterburger trade routes, operated by the Company since the 1660's, could only be used for those goods that would be shipped through the Iron Company network. The Board of Governance "regrettably" could not allow any goods meant for export through competing companies to be passed through security checks.

The purge of the DLEP in Oktavyan was undertaken in parallel with another, directed mainly at Norestrian emigré bullion specialists within the Reserve Bank of Kalgachia who had been instrumental in establishing the metallurgical quality of the Kalgarrand. Whilst the loyalties of these diligent numismators had always been suspect, their record of service spared them the regime of ritualised penance imposed on the DLEP's foreign trade officials and generally took the form of early retirements with glowing references for onward employment among other Norestrians in emerging Benacian markets. Both house-cleaning efforts within the Directorate were coordinated on the Prefects' behalf by one Caustifer Yastreb: son of the Lady Lieutenant of Oktavyan and the Chairman of the Reserve Bank of Kalgachia, alleged nephew of the chairman of the Council of Perfecti and a noted currency speculator whose financial acumen had won him a private minority stake in the OIEC and now earned him an appointment to the Board of Governors of the Reserve Bank. Here he began to assist his aging father whose diminishing faculties and authority had necessitated the purge of the numismators in the first place, and whose senile deference to the incisive counsel of his red-haired wunderkind quickly marked the young man as the Reserve Bank's heir apparent.

Resources

References

  1. ^ the subsequent appearance of such individuals on the ESB payroll under assumed identities was denied by the latter and largely obscured by the periodic reassignment of suspect individuals around the Honourable Company's worldwide operating locations. The formation of a Pursuit and Liquidation Cell by the DTW Field Research Office to bring these individuals to final account before the Garden was neither confirmed nor denied.