History of Kalgachia/The 200s
As the third century of Shrubdom turned, Kalgachia was still frenziedly importing raw materials in preparation for the expected collapse of Kasterburg, the only territory preventing Kalgachia's complete enclavement by the Raspur Pact. But a sudden cluster of ailments among the Shirerithian nobility, exacerbated by outbreaks of a new fungal disease among their subjects, conspired to mollify Kalgachia's traditional geopolitical adversary at around the same time as a glut of gold exports from Helderbourgh hit world markets, causing a steady decline in the purchasing power of the gold-backed Kalgarrand and slowing imports accordingly. When the severance of the Kasterburg trade route finally occurred, it was in the form of a voluntary withdrawal by Kasterburg itself in support of a new colonial venture in Los Liberados. While Shireroth duly moved to occupy the vacated land and consolidate its de facto annexation of the Republic of Inner Benacia, the cession of its Western Benacian holdings to a resurgent Batavia put a new sovereign neighbour on Kalgachia's western border. The new territorial settlement coincided with a loss of commercial confidence in the Port of Vines due the Bassarid Empire's erratic baheviour after the collapse of Caputia, compelling a steady realignment of Kalgachia's foreign investments toward the Batavian Confederation.
Within Kalgachia the decade also saw a gradual increase in the influence of the Lord Lieutenants' Council - previously a largely ceremonial organ of the Kalgachi government whose membership had nonetheless begun to feature persons and artifacts of immense theological significance, allowing the Council a voice rivalling that of their nominal seniors in Kalgachia's supreme Council of Perfecti.
Repatriation of the Sword of Fire (201 AL)
In 201 AL came a surprise: the Prince of Modan, a southern Shirerithian noble of considerable standing, had announced his departure to Constancia on health grounds and disposed of his Benacian assets in the process. Among these assets was the enchanted Sword of Fire - one of the ancient Cedrist Great Swords whose scattered and shifting ownership had traditionally come to represent the balance of power in Micras' northwest quartersphere. Now - for the most inexplicable reasons given his Nationalist-Humanist affiliations - the Prince gifted the sword to the House of Yastreb, the ancient rulers of Goldshire who had long since joined the Minarborian migration and survived past the demise of that verdant empire to establish themselves at the deepest levels of the Kalgachi government. That the sword had previously been in Kalgachi possession was well-known, the artifact having been recovered from the imperial regalia of its previous owner, the Minarborian Empress Lyssansa. The coven of Kalgachi arcanists who obtained the sword had subsequently gifted it to a Shirerithian daemon queen by the name of Kizzy Drakland in order to strengthen her power in that country, only for her to be defeated by the armies of the Prince of Modan and surrender the sword to him in exchange for being allowed to flee to Goëtia. Now, out of the archonic blue, this national humiliation for the Kalgachi had been reversed by the Prince himself and the sword was safely back in Kalgachi territory.
Rubina Yastreb, the Lady Lieutenant of Oktavyan, asserted the prevailing claim to the sword by being the first of her family to arrive at the Kalgachi border post where it awaited collection. This coup went some way toward reversing the political downfall she had experienced in the early 180s after her marriage to a Shireithian noble, indeed her leadership of Kalgachia's Lord Lieutenants' Council - combined with the presence of Lord Toastypops within its membership - compelled Kalgachia's ruling Council of Perfecti to grant that organ increased powers in their legal reforms of 102 AL.
Kasterburg's Retreat (202 AL)
By 202 AL the long-ailing Republic of Kasterburg had found itself unable to effectively administer the full extent of its territory, particularly the barren steppe and scrub furthest from the coast whose only appreciable economic value was from tithes and duties upon the passage of Kalgachi goods through the area - a benefit heavily offset by the military burden of fending off ceaseless attacks by Laqi brigands from the Republic of Inner Benacia. Over time the mercantile class of Kasterburg, arguably the most powerful within the country, had come to be dominated by agents of the Iron Company which began to seek government backing for its overseas ventures. The initiative floated by the company in 202 AL - a colonial venture operating from the Raynor Isles of faraway Apollonia - was a demonstrably more lucrative prospect for the Kasterburg state budget than trying to break even with tithed Kalgachi goods on world commodity markets, or taking its cut from one-off Kalgachi infrastructure contracts such as the expansion of Gravelbottom Airport in 193 AL. Such was the stagnation of the Kasterburg economy that its government could not afford to back the Iron Company's Apollonian venture and keep the Kalgachi trade route open simultaneously, and the decision was ultimately taken to sacrifice the latter.
Kasterburgish forces duly began an evacuation from the eastern half of their Benacian territory, leaving an ungoverned gap of some six hundred kilometres between them and the Kalgachi border. The organised nature of the evacuation was proven by a subsequent KDF special forces raid upon the deserted Atoomkracht reprocessing plant at Litkov (Operation Hot Rod) for the ostensible purpose of securing any residual nuclear material before it could fall into the hands of criminal elements. It was discovered, however, that the Kasterburgers had long since dismantled and de-fuelled the site's reactor appatatus and the Kalgachi operation was repurposed into a more general effort, assisted by regular KDF cossack formations, to sweep the vacated lands for precious scrap metal - arguably as valuable to Kalgachi industry as refined plutonium, as the severance of a trade route by land through Kasterburg meant that metals could no longer be imported to Kalgachia in any great amount without making intolerable concessions to the Kaiser in Shirekeep.
The Directorate of Labour and Economic Planning, having wargamed and contingency-planned such a scenario for twenty years, immediately restricted civilian use of hydrocarbon fuels to natively produced wood gas and tightened the penalties for failing to recycle waste metal. Much as the Directorate of Health and Public Welfare had long enjoyed the power to enlist the Prefects in combatting agricultural mismanagement, the DLEP now brought the full might of the Kalgachi security organs to bear upon the metallurgically wasteful; many who left old motor vehicles or kitchen appliances to rust in cottage gardens, or were seen to toss old saucepans into their parish landfill truck, were visited by Prefect clearance squads who stripped their homes of every metallic object, from water piping to cutlery, to compensate for the shortfall. Those who wasted metal in the course of state or commercial business were committed to church penitentiaries on multi-decade sentences - the most egregious offenders were simply hauled away in the middle of the night and never seen again. The Directorate of Education and Outreach, in a concurrent public information campaign, made no secret of the 'metal terror' and equated the neglect of refined metals to wilful sabotage and high treason. This was combined with a commitment by Associated Crucibles, the unitary enterprise responsible for Kalgachia's metal processing, to purchase scrap metal from citizens for a modest fee. Somewhat inevitably this revenue oppurtunity was seized upon by an emergent breed of 'entrepreneurs', generally equipped with a wood-gas van and a Laqi heritage, who relieved private citizens of scrap metal on the pretext of 'free collection' or else acquired it by more dubious means, then hauled it to the nearest Associated Crucibles plant which paid a higher fee for direct deliveries and tended not to ask questions.
The withdrawal of Kasterburg from the Kalgachi frontier had implications for that frontier's immediate hinterland, the Lieutenancy of Lepidopterum, which had been annexed by Kalgachia in 174 AL for the express purpose of reaching Kasterburg. Although considered somewhat un-Kalgachi due to its lowland geography, Lepidopterum was sacred to the Ketherist faith as the destination of Celestine the Broodmother, progenitor of the Deep Singers, who had led the last of that race out of Shireroth after the Underkeep Massacre. Kalgachia's ruling Council of Perfecti now settled the land's status by declaring it an autonomous protectorate in the manner of Northbloom, a dependency of the Council outside the usual structures of the Kalgachi state.
Batavia's Advance (204 AL)
Since the restoration of a sovereign Batavian government in 's Koningenwaarde in 189 AL, it had been engaged in periodic negotiations with Shireroth for the return of its historical territories which had been occupied by the latter power during a period of expansionist Froyalanish rule in the 110s AL. By the 200s AL, the cumulative effect of a political system based upon cyclical civil war and the resulting two centuries of depopulation and brain drain had brought Shireroth into a state of imperial overstretch whereby it could no longer effectively administer or exploit the full extent of its territorial holdings, requiring an abandonment of its more superfluous territories and the reductive abolition of autonomous government structures in those which remained. The Shirerithian-occupied portion of Batavia, falling into the former category, was ceded to the government in 's Koningenwaarde in stages and by 204 AL all of historical Batavia - except for the northern territory of Gascony which remained under Storish colonial rule - was united under a single sovereign government. Such was the jollity of the Kalgachi government at these developments that it sent Rubina Yastreb, its most senior public official, to attend the coronation of King Arkadius IV rather than the usual diplomatic representative.
The price of Batavia's freedom was its inclusion in a Shirerithian-administered customs union which, combined with a similar implementation in the Republic of Inner Benacia, completely surrounded Kalgachia. Nonetheless, the decent relationship of Kalgachia's Directorate of Labour and Economic Planning to the government of Kasterburg and the Iron Company, among others, ensured that Batavia's incentive to enforce anything more than the statutory minumum of Shirerithian-imposed customs regulations in opposition to Kalgachi trade was safely absent and, in the case of trade with other states of the Batavian Confederation, dubiously applicable. This oppurtunity for a pivot in Kalgachi trade to Batavia came at a convenient time as the actions of the Bassarid Empire against the Humanitarian Mission in former Caputia, in particular its blockade of much-smaller Hoenn, drew a level of international criticism so fierce that it called into question the commercial functionality of the Port of Vines on which Kalgachia relied for most of its imports. Haunted by the same concerns of economic dependence upon a rapacious archonic entity that had caused it to shut down most of its trade with Shireroth, the Kalgachi government's resolution to realign its trade routes toward Batavia and its satellites was most notably signalled by the relocation of the Octavian Import-Export Corporation's main headquarters from Nova England to Los Liberados.
