Nationalist & Humanist Party

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Nationalist & Humanist Party
Black Legion.png
Leader Sarah Dravot
Chairman Sarah Dravot
Founded Early 1600s
Headquarters Aqaba
Political ideology
Political position Centre right
Colours ‎Black-Grey

The Nationalist & Humanist Party (N&HP) is a family of political parties, originating in the former Elwynnese Union, with branches in Constancia, Elwynn, Floria (republic & free state), Natopia, Ransenar, the Raspur Khanate, and Shireroth.

Overview

Cosmology

The Nationalist and Humanist movement believes that the impact of a celestial body upon the surface of Micras two million years ago resulted in a planet wide extinction event which terminated the previous evolutionary path of life upon the world, leaving the way clear for the evolution of a new species of sentient upright apes that would evolve into Humankind, the dominant sentient species on this world.

The era after the extinction event ("Stratum Mortis") is known as "Nostra aetate" or Our Era - that of Humanity.

The existence of other planets inhabited by biologically and genetically indistinguishable hominids, Earth and Giess foremost, with which Micras has been in periodic contact, the commonality of cultures and languages between those worlds, which have evolved along similar lines in spite of prolonged periods in the absence of any semblance of contact, and the evidence of similar celestial interventions on other worlds that have come under the ascendancy of man, suggests to followers of the N&H that these three planets, as well as many more besides, may be the part of a wider Imperium of Man that will one day manifest itself and assert dominion across all of creation.


Ideology

Human supremacy

At its barest essential, the N&H movement holds that the celestial archons, the hypothetical guiding spirits variously considered as deities or oversouls, by imposing their will upon a planet hitherto following its own path of evolution, inflicted a trauma upon the world spirit of Micras which, even as all semblance of life was scoured from its surface and oceans by the fires poured from the bowls of wrath, proved more resilient than expected, resisting the countless millennia of terraforming and studious correction of patterns of life to suit the warp and weave of the new creation begotten by the archonite spirits, and resulting in a hostile planet form that actively resists human settlement.

The evidence, so the followers of the N&H movement maintain, can be observed in the fractured nature of reality, the persistence of temporal and spatial anomalies, the alacrity with which human settlements and nations fall into abject chaos and self-destruction, and finally the corruption of the human form, derived from the perfection mandated by the divine, to resemble the long overwritten patterns of extinct chthonic life.

It becomes therefore incumbent upon humans, as dutiful avatars of the overspirits of the highest divinity, to exterminate any and all manifestations of the chthonic corruption, whether it be gene-splicers, abominations - of which there are many - or divergent hominids, so as to maintain humanity in fidelity to its true and eternal form.

"I should not have to remind you that 'do not needlessly antagonise the multi-planet galactic empire' is, and remains, an integral part of ensuring the human supremacy on Micras."
Liv DravotComments at a banquet, Raynor's Keep (1658)

For a number of years a tension ostensibly existed between the official policy of toleration for liches, safir, and Deep Singers by the Imperial Republic on the one hand and the unbounded doctrine of the human supremacy advocated by the N&H cadres on the other. That the liches had mostly crumbled of their own accord and been exported as bone meal had resolved the problem they posed - the few that remained could be tolerated without fear of causing societal harm or upset to their fellow citizens and denizens. Relations with the safir were more complex, in as much as, after weathering two (three?) separate waves of safir migration to Micras, the diaspora that remained was comparatively small (if disproportionately wealthy on account of connections with past holders of the Golden Mango Throne) yet backed - reputedly - by an overwhelmingly powerful albeit mercifully pacific space-faring civilisation. The Imperial Republic and the Natopian Empire both have maintained discrete, albeit informal contact, with the safir, in consequence of which both governments have exerted a certain amount of pressure upon the N&H party to tone down its more strident rhetoric in regards to xenobiology - leaving the safir with the abiding impression that the main reservoirs of human prejudice towards them could be found in the loudly professed, but quite unlikely, culinary habits of the Jingdaoese. That the maintenance of this impression was quietly rewarded by the receipt of telemetry data from a source outside of the Atos system during the recent strife has been denied by the western alliance.

"Deep Singers, although bestowed with merciful toleration under Imperial Decree 853, were nonetheless the victims of generation after generation of genetic experimentation and forced mutations - that they are returning to some semblance of the human form is to be welcomed and celebrated."
Isabella Simrani-KalirionSpeech to the Board of Governance, Fort Nider, Arboria (1659)

Similarly, the distance between government and party policy regarding the Deep Singer population, largely vanished from the surface world everywhere except in Kalgachia, has been the source of a certain tension in relations between the Imperial Republic and the Garden, a tension which a times during the War of Lost Brother's appeared poised ready to tip over into open conflict. The responsibilities of government, particularly the burden of maintaining the stability of the Imperial Republic in the wake of the ouster of Burgrave Zinkgraven, has more and more influenced senior N&H leaders to moderate racial policy to accord with, or at least humour, the line emanating from Oktavyan that the propagation of the Nezeni represents a fundamental dilution of the Deep Singer genome. In this however the pragmatic wing of the party rubs up against the implacable opposition of the hard-line eugenicist factions leading to some dissension in the ranks about how far to go with a formal shift in policy.

Coordinated state

The Coordinated State portrayed itself as a progressive society that aimed towards a global human supremacy and off-world settlements, albeit considered to be unlikely to be realised in the lifetime of anyone alive at the time. The vision sold to the populace encapsulated rising living standards, a post-scarcity economy and further reductions in crime and lawlessness.

As long as order was maintained people declared themselves to be generally confident that the situation will continue to improve over the long term. Studies by the Panopticon Department into public morale however showed that this acquiescence was fundamentally fragile, as the eventual overthrow of the regime showed.

The Prince failed as a ruler if he failed to fulfil his mandate as described by the Charter of Coordination or if he was treacherous (Loki) or weak, incoherent and irresolute (Nathaniel). The Prince could be voted out of office at the elections, impeached by the Senate or overthrown by the UDF if he loses the backing of the military. In the event of a military coup the Prince would be replaced by a Condcuator who would have the responsibility of restoring an acceptable status quo.

Khanism in Elwynn drew strength from the perceived failures of Ayreonism, the predominant ideology of Elwynn during its era of independence, to defend the state against Shirerithian subversion, in the form of inward migration and electoral fraud, which culminated in the disputed election of the usurper Jacobus Loki as Prince of Elwynn and the subsequent reincorporation of the country into the Imperial Republic. Subsequently the Khanist parties in Elwynn forewent the pursuit of the dream of a renewed independence, in contrast to the Ayreonists, coming instead to consider the Byzantine political structures and machinations of the factions at work in the Imperial Republic to be the best guarantor of the continued survival of the Babkhi cultural identity. This held especially true as, in the years subsequent to 1623, Elwynn endured a severe and catastrophic period of uncontrolled Storrish migration as a consequence of the Elwynnese Principate falling into the hands of the House of Ettlingar Freyu, which distorted the political and social fabric of the Elwynnese Union out of all recognition.

Harmonious society

The Harmonious Society, visualised in the form of a Ziggurat as an architectural style as well as a symbol, saw the state and society organised as into tiered layers under unwavering observation from an all-powerful centre, as evidenced in this unrealised policy proposal made during the reign of Farzan Shahanshah.
"All humans are under an obligation to offer their labour and their obedience to the communities into which they are born."
Ardashir Moqtada al-Osman'Exhortations to the Elw' (1542)
"If civilisation can be likened to the coral reef in which all manner of life finds shelter and flourishes, the individual humans who raises those structures of calcium carbonate are scarcely of any more consequence than the individual polyp. It is the aggregation of these polyps into the colonies of corals that matter, and the structures they build that must endure."
—Ardashir Khan, circa 1540.

Khanism emerged from the right-wing and ultra-nationalist Rastakhiz Party (not to be confused with the later, completely separate, social-democratic party of the same name) when a politically ambitious junior officer who went by the moniker Sarhang Artaxerxes stirred up violent street protests against the Socialist administration of Grand Vizier Juan Pablo Var, ultimately leading to the collapse of the left-wing government and its replacement by a government formed from the Babkhan Liberal Centre Party. From this one instance of opportunistic political aggression would arise the force of Khanism that would ultimately transmogrify the Kingdom of Babkha from a begin liberal democracy into a militarised world power with hegemonic aspirations.

Although the Rastakhiz Party which emerged from the chaos of the socialist ouster did not become the new ruling party, it had established for itself a firm electoral base and under the auspices of its self-styled Grand Commander entered into government as a supporting prop to the BLCP led administration of Grand Vizier Tahmaseb. As his prize, the Grand Commander was able to take the Vizierate of Defence and turn it into his own well-nigh unaccountable personal fiefdom.

Throughout much of its early history Babkha was challenged by the serious threat posed by the Atteran Empire and the United Republic of Tymaria, which briefly dominated the greater portion of the surface of the planet of Micras. Feeling threatened by the very real and persistent threat of Atterano-Tymarian espionage and cyberwarfare during an era of intense cold-war paranoia the Rastakhiz Party responded by evermore aggressively and assertively advocating the twin nostrums of Shah-Loyalty and hypernationalism. The Vizierate of Defence, later the Vizierate of War, became an increasingly rogue actor, expanding ruthlessly into neutral states such as Treesia in an attempt to off-set the overwhelming numerical supremacy of the Kingdom's enemies.

As much by luck as by judgement the Kingdom survived this early era of confrontation, by the end of which the heir to Sarhang Artaxerxes, known as Ardashir Khan, was rewarded for his avowed hyperloyalty by succeeding to the Kapav Throne upon the abdication of Shahanshah Babak. The reign of Shahanshah Ardashir I would cement the foreign policy of all subsequent Khanist regimes as a pattern of strategic cooperation with other great powers interspersed with moments of opportunistic aggression.

The Rastakhiz Party faded away and was replaced by the more centrist Behsaz Party led by Bahram Khorramdin and Abbas Namvari.

The ideology of Nationalist-Humanism holds that a society that lacks the capacity for cruelty will soon lose all vigour and swiftly become subject to external forces out of an aversion to conflict and fear of privation. As such corporal punishment is considered a public good, even if it perpetuates across generations psychological pathologies that might otherwise be considered antisocial, as it ensures that there will always remain to hand a sufficient cadre of those who understand the utility and necessity of violence.

Human ascendance, Human transcendence

Under the leadership of Yakim Beg, Humanism in Alduria has taken a new direction, where adepts, termed as thought-leaders and notable for their flowing purple robes, exhort the initiates and acolytes of the Euran Destiny Party to transcend the limitations of crass flesh and blood and to instead instantiate through meditation and inward exploration the higher and exalted true form of the "Celestial Man", forged in the heat of nuclear fusion with souls suffused with elemental iron by the master craftsmen of the Highest Divinity to serve as his avatars upon the mortal plane. In so doing the Thought Leaders encourage the Party Cadres to emulate the example of the Most Holy, to be uncomplaining, unyielding, and uncorrupted in all matters pertaining to the Cosmos, of which Eura is merely a most wretched and shattered part. The mantra repeated by the slightly glassy-eyed and saffron-clad members of the Party Cadre is as follows:

  1. For Alduria to Flourish, Eura must be Whole.
  2. For Eura to be Whole, It must be Remade.
  3. For Eura to be Remade, It must be Disassembled.
  4. For Eura to be Disassembled, It must be Understood.
  5. Only by Understanding Eura can Alduria be Made to Flourish.

History

Symbol of the Party during its Elwynnese heyday.

Following the partition of Elwynn in 1665, where the Prince of Modan abstained on the Landsraad resolution implementing the break up of that Imperial State in return for the vacated seat of the Imperial Mother the Elwynnese and Shirerithian cadres of the party were racked by a wave of protests, resignations, and defections. By supporting the destruction of an ancient Imperial State in return for the largess of the Kalirion Supremacy the leadership of the N&H had badly misread the mood of their grassroots membership. The sense of betrayal was especially acute amongst the Babkhi, whose Southern League was now to be partitioned into three separate dominions (Alalehzamin, Araxion, Utasia), whilst their cultural kin in the northern county of Agnesia were to be abandoned to the tender mercies of a realm of blood fixated religious fanatics.

In consequence the N&H entered the 1665 electoral cycle at a disadvantage, attacked from the right by Behsaz-Eluin, from the centre by the Imperial Democratic Party, and from the left by the Elwynnese Resistance Organisation, Coalition 1660, and the Elwynnese Workers' Party. At a time when the N&H dominated government in Modan had suffered reverses in provincial elections, as well as the loss of territory to Laqi insurgents, it appeared that another correction to the hitherto upwards trajectory of the N&H movement was imminent.

(fnord) Everything proceeded according to plan between the years 1665 and 1670. There were no significant reverses and the Party emphatically did not disintegrate following a wave of defections, desertions, and suspiciously convenient plague deaths. That a major globe spanning political movement went, in the space of five years, from being a party to ruling coalitions in Shireroth and Natopia to being a regional party based out of the port city of Aqaba on the periphery of an irradiated continent is not to be considered a catastrophic blunder but rather a masterful piece of positioning. It is not necessary, nor beneficial, to ask any further questions about the fortunes of the party in this particular time period. (fnord)

Reformation & rise of the Black Legions

The years after the White Plague and the Modanese Migration had proved to be difficult ones for the N&H movement to navigate. The nadir of the party's fortunes could be said to have been reached with the death, reportedly by suicide, of the Party Leader Isabella Kalirion, and the rumoured incapacitation of her son, shire:Daniyal ibn Daniyal Simrani-Kalirion, on account of what was obliquely referred to as a "life altering condition". The surviving leadership cadres, dispersed and demoralised, would have to decide for themselves what course of action remained now open to them.

The events of the Kalirion Fracture, the unravelling of the decayed edifice of the Imperial Republic, provided a sudden and unexpected vector through which to facilitate their return. The failure of the Shirerithian neofeudal model obliged the N&H movement to undertake some deft sophistry for how, being haunted by the spectre of revolution such as had wracked Sanama and portions of Lower Goldshire, they no longer set much store in the serried tables of ranks and nobility which had once dominated ever aspect of Shirerithian life. There was much burbling about the "inherent nobility" of an "aristocracy of merit" open to all in proportion to their ability and service. The fact of the matter was that, with the House of Osman, the Simrani-Kalirions, and their respective coteries of depraved minions debauching themselves in more thematically appropriate locales, there was almost an audible sigh of relief amongst the technocratic cadres and the membership of the outer-party at the prospect of being able to finally slough off the outdated and inefficient crust of feudalism and privilege that had built up around the party structure. For the party's foremost patrons, the ESB Group and the Black Legions, moreover, there was no discernible inconvenience. The privileges accorded by rank and share options more than adequately compensated for the loss of titles and ceremonial baubles.

In 1679 the N&H would formalise an affiliation agreement with the Modani People's Union of Drak-Modan.