Badina

Preceptor of the Vigilant Dance ꦧꦢꦶꦤ​ꦗꦺꦴꦒꦺꦠ꧀​ꦠꦺꦂꦗꦒ Badina Joget Terjaga
Flag Emblem
Motto: ꦲꦠꦱ꧀​ꦕꦶꦠꦚ​ꦲꦗꦺꦏ꧀ Atas citanya ajek "From her eternal perception"
Location of Badina in Ascesia in green.
Capital	Istana Gandharwa
Largest city	Atthajaya
Official languages	Badungese
Recognised regional languages	Lurahite
Ethnic groups	Porbrish
Religion	Bhramavada (Jogetcara)
• Philosophies	Tuhanan Kahyangan
Demonym	Badinan
Government	Rescapitan hierocratic monarchy
• Empress	Saktinaya
• Pengerti Terhemah	Wirahjo Madyaputra
Legislature	Elder Chorus
Consonance
• of the Peninsula	1783
• of the Pattern	1868
• of the Perception	1959
Area
• Total	900,135 km2 (347,544 sq mi) (16th)
Population
• Estimate	102 million
• Density	113.3/km2 (293.4/sq mi)
Currency	Badinan osay
Time zone	IAT-J -8

Badina (Badungese: ꦧꦢꦶꦤ), officially the Preceptor of the Vigilant Dance (ꦧꦢꦶꦤ​ꦗꦺꦴꦒꦺꦠ꧀​ꦠꦺꦂꦗꦒ Badina Joget Terjaga) is a Bhramavadic hierocracy in southern Ascesia encompassing much of the Daan Peninsula. Extending into the Prothenian Ocean, it borders Adorac to its north, and the Ascesian Banner-states of Nusileh and Posako in its south and northeast respectively. Its capital is the vast palace complex of the Istana Gandharwa, the surrounding city of Atthajaya being the country's largest.

Badina traces its national mythology to the despotist rule of Imadara (181–544) and later Masekan (571–959), which eventually fell to the depredations of the Noro Invasions, establishing several feudal pedigrees which intermittently headed the various incorporations coming to rule the peninsula. The greatest of these – the Nus Bata Empire (1338–1581) – would fall during the Wars of Dissection, its vassals reconsolidating under the incipient Wind Ministry of the Combination of Dreams. With the gradual disintegration of the Combination markedly following the Great Flood of 1664 however, the Dissonance of the Peninsula would end central control over Daan for much of the next two centuries, several upstart polities laying claim to a Ministry falling to increasing destitution. Rahgana, one such polity, would rise to consolidate much of northern Daan by 1744; the Badungese south would unite under what is now known as Classical Badina in reaction to encroachment by a largely Lurahite north.

Peninsular politics for the mid-1700s would be defined by the interactions between these two factions, characterized by competitions of aroha and the limited conflicts of the Harmony Wars, though Great Power involvement would see greater escalations, culminating in the Consonance of the Peninsula of 1783 as Badina united Daan with Agamari support. The arrival of Vesnite traders and missionaries en masse would contribute to a blossoming of commerce and rational learning, though brought controversies in equal measure, as Vesnite conversions incited religious contention – a fact which would be exploited by Joriscian powers furthering their interests in the region. Several humiliations, notably the strongarmed cession of territories like Posako, would sink the peninsula into turmoil again, only ending with the overthrowing of the contemporary royalty by a cadet branch with Savant backing in 1868. Vaestophile and rationalist thinking became the order of the day, and even as the Savants would eventually be succeeded by a native-educated intelligentsia, continued reform and modernization along Vaestic lines would persist even till the present day.

The modern political order was largely established with the Consonance of the Perception in 1959, which saw the insurgence of a nativist and fundamentalist movement seeking to establish Badina as a regional power which while looked to the Joriscians as a model for modernization, sought to strike out from a domineering which hitherto defined its relationship with the Great Powers. It has been arguably successful in this regard: in the era after the Badinan Confrontation since the 1980s, it has established something of a partnership with Azophin as an agent for its interests in Ascesia, and with its aid has built an economy which bears comparison with rationalized counterparts on the continent. Badinan society is noted for its fanatical practice and enforcement of its state religion, a fringe school of Bhramavada associated with Rouser belief, at times transmitted beyond its strict borders. From this, it is ironically a regular antagonist against other Bhramavadic states on the continent, its abetting of various insurgencies – Bhramavadic and Vaestic – earning it much infamy in the rest of the hierosphere.

Etymology

The name Badina (Badungese: ꦧꦢꦶꦤ) is a truncation of the country's full name Badina Joget Terjaga (ꦧꦢꦶꦤ​ꦗꦺꦴꦒꦺꦠ꧀​ꦠꦺꦂꦗꦒ; "Preceptor of the Vigilant Dance"). The Badungese word badina comes from the Serovitic word vaadin (वादिन्), which generally refers to the act of leading or speaking for others. Badina, the country, is thus considered as the leader of the Jogetcara (ꦗꦺꦴꦒꦺꦠ꧀ꦕꦫ), the indigenous Bhramavadic creed (symbolized as a dance, a common motif in Badinan doctrine) which is to guide the chosen through the doomsday of the "dream world" initiated by the eschatological awakening of the Sleeping God, to realize the paradisiacal truth which lies beyond the empirical illusions of our world.

History

Classical empires (181–959)

Main articles: Imadara and Masekan

Badina insurgent (1959–)

Badina's turn towards independence would correspond to the falling fortunes of its Lacrean overseer in the Long War. While Lacrean presence in the region was essentially withdrawn by the late 1950s given the deteriorating atmosphere of the home front, its spectacular fall from grace during the Thrall effectively left Badina without subjugation in perhaps the first time in centuries. Coasting along the sweeping tide of millenarian agitation from the climatic horrors of the Sea of Flames, a palace coup in Animare 1959 would overthrow Mitrasvara and the Lacrean regency tied to her reign, installing Sakyachanda, her sister, onto the throne and proclaiming the Consonance of the Perception. Untethered, the obliteration of foreign influence from the Badinan body politic became the order of the day: Joriscian estates and assets were expropriated, all obligations to foreign powers were rescinded, and any foreigners left in the country would be expelled. By and large, Lacre – as Badina's suzerain then – took the brunt of this upheaval, though the more on-paper privileges of other Vaestic powers (on account of historical most favored nation clauses) would be caught in the crossfire, with greater consequences down the line.

Most immediately, this proved to coincide against Zemayan aspirations in the region. Zemayan agents had secured tentative vows from Guran Naḍ of a defection in light of the abortive Thrall, and while the regent would not survive to elaborate on this, Zemay would be nominally conferred the regency over Badina as part of Lacre's dismemberment during the Congress of Kethpor. Unable to actually ratify this itself, however, Zemay could only rely on appeals to powers more present in the region to intervene. Beyond an abortive Agamari intervention in Dominy that same year, which was prematurely halted just two months later, there would be sparse attempts at supposedly prosecuting the rulings of Kethpor; low-level conflict and brinkmanship would characterize the proceeding Badinan Confrontation (1959–1981). In the meantime, Sakyachanda continued to consolidate power under herself in the name of nativist modernization and religious reassertion, purging any remaining internal challengers to her reign and rationalizing her hierocratic government in a manner resembling Vaestic Hierarchy – that is to say under her absolute control.

[...]

Government and politics

Waterfront of the Istana Gandharwa palace complex. It is Badina's administrative heart, housing all major apparatuses of government and the imperial residence.

Badina, by the diktat of the Consonance of the Perception, is a rescapitan hierocratic monarchy founded on the principles of the Jogetcara – a native school of Bhramavada considered heterodox from the rest of the hierosphere. Divergent from the respopular norms of Bhramavadic polities, universal authority is centralized upon its Empress, a god-monarch tracing ancestry to a distant line of the Imadaran Namut dynasty, but claiming exclusive lineage from the likes of Jaimini and even the primordial revelator responsible for the birth of the entire faith. The Jogetcara holds the Empress to be in possession of the only valid perspective in the whole world by virtue of her lineage, casting all other perceptions as a diminutive emanation of this central source, if not completely irrelevant; this doctrine informs the rescapitan ideal of Badinan statecraft. The line is matrilineal, traditionally selected from the sequestered imperial harem, the [[]].

The deputy of the imperial core is the Elder Chorus, the arganic institution responsible for day-to-day administration and legislation as Badina's hierocratic civil service. The Chorus, solely legitimized as an extension of the imperial perspective, theoretically only holds power in its capacities as the enlightened body responsible for realizing the executive visions of the Empress and transmitting her spiritual wisdom to the masses. Its ranks are filled by the clergy of the Jogetcara, effectively the ordained members of the various temples and monastic orders located within Badinan borders (with some outliers), structured along the lines of Vaestic Hierarchy. While a majority of them are novitiates with little political say, senior members are regularly summoned to the Istana Gandharwa to provide commentary and deliberate on various matters of state, exemplified with periodic sessions which see its mandatory congregation and essentially act as legislative assemblies. Supposedly a purely advisory body, choral deliberations and elaborations on imperial policy still provide substance to the Empress' promulgations, and select members of its seniormost ranks are co-opted into the Empress' privy court – the Pengertian – as an indication of imperial priorities.

Saktinaya is the current Empress, since 1997.

Political theory and practice

Aside from the characteristically Bhramavadic concepts of perceptionism and primordial transmission, various indigenous ideas have shaped the modern Badinan political structure, most apparently with the equation of the Badinan body politic with a family: the imperial household is the 'mother', the clerical bureaucracy is the 'father', and the wider populace are the 'children'. Reflective of the matriarchal norms of Badina (or perhaps the other way around, given the pre-eminence of the imperial perspective in all things), the maternal monarchy is considered the leader of the "household", whose guidance and commands are carried out faithfully by the paternal clergy for the national family's betterment. In this framework, the lay populace is infantilized, expected to dutifully submit to every decision of its parental superiors and in exchange has its spiritual and physical wellbeing cared for – this is no social contract, as the sovereign's exact responsibilities are ill-defined, and the populace have no formal recourse if they deemed their provisions insufficient. Furthermore, the 'care' provided is framed as an act of charity, as is the inclusion of the lay (and thus unenlightened) people in the family of Badina – it is by the sovereign's generosity that it shares its perspective, the only path towards surviving impending doomsday, to the masses, and the unquestioning submission of the masses in service of this perspective's perpetuation is therefore only natural.

From this logic, the despotism of the clerisy must not only be accepted, but outright embraced, as the uninformed laity would do well to acquiesce to the whims of the sovereign, lacking in oneiromantic knowledge and power as they were. Blind faith, the ability to dismiss all trauma to oneself as fleeting occurrences in the Great Dream and find solace in what good comes one's way and the betterment of the greater family (and by some accounts celebrate the 'volatility' of life as stimulating change), is the Badinan ideal. Spectacular, debatably arbitrary, manifestations of charity and ruthlessness become the tools through which the overwhelming and unabated power of the state – unable to be resisted or even predicted – is displayed, demonstrating the total obedience of the people in spite of the fact, proving the clarity of the Badinan perspective even through upheavals in the dream world.

Beyond this, Badinan politics takes on various familial and even amorous overtones: the people are directly bound to their sovereigns in intimate terms, statecraft symbolically becoming the means through which the national family's capabilities are refined and the betterment of its constituents collectively enhanced. Badinan political language depicts official policies to be displays of doting love from parents to children, as opposed the impersonal processes of a monolithic government. Functionaries are viewed intimately as the kinsfolk of the populace, and act with the express objective of earning such recognition and adoration; the charisma they wield and exercise will sometimes even surpass that of one's birth parents. More scandalously, the carnal interplay within the walls of the Istana Gandharwa – between the maternal and paternal halves of state – is something of an open secret, even an object of popular fantasy. Ascesiologists theorize these to be demonstrations and a bolstering of the supposedly intimacy which holds together the Badinan body politic.

Foreign policy

As a whole, Badinan foreign policy can be characterized as Joriscian-aligned, reflective of a Vaestophile history in which it rationalized according to Vaestic models and assumed the position of a springboard for Vaestic interests in the wider Ascesian sphere. While the incessant meddling of foreign powers resultant of colonial conflicts has been much maligned in the historiography of a modern, ostensibly independent Badina, it nonetheless remains that the country maintains its comparatively privileged position in the world order – not subjugated under colonial authority – through co-option, cooperation and interplay within the broader framework of Great Power intrigue in Vaestdom. Badinan policy largely aims to maintain its independence and where possible, its geopolitical ambitions, against domination by any single (Joriscian) power by playing into the polycentric nature of present Vaestdom: it seeks to avoid hegemony by any single power locally or (however it may affect) in Outer Joriscia, apparent in its latest iteration as its alignment with the revisionist powers, especially Azophin, during the tail-end of the Terophatic Ascendancy.

In modern times, Badina is generally recognized to be a continental partner of Azophin in Ascesia, beginning in the 1980s with the signing of the Half-Arc Deference, which guaranteed Azophin's role as the mediator of various Joriscian grievances leftover from Badinan expropriations some decades prior and thereby the normalization of Badina's interordinate relationship with the Orient; this was nonetheless preceded by various under-the-table agreements which brought Badina to the Azophine camp amicably. While the main Joriscian powers theoretically share many privileges on account of most favored nation clauses inherited from earlier dealings in the region, Azophin has enjoyed an outstanding position: its estates' share of the Badinan economy outsizes those of any other power (Azophine entities are preferential partners in most relevant commercial endeavors), Badina has standardized itself according to Azophine norms (with the adoption of Azophine Rashimic as an interordinate working language), and most apparently, Azophin has several military bases in Badina (largest of which being [[]]). It is the primary outpost of Azophine influence in Ascesia, earning it the dubious honor of being among the only indigenous powers acting as agents of Vaestic influence on the continent.

Perhaps due to its Vaestophile bent, Badinan relations with other Ascesian states (especially those insurgent-inclined and Messenized) have been generally antagonistic: its hosting of Joriscian militaries have facilitated the projection of Vaestic force in much of the continental southwest, leading to a contemporary perception of Badina as something of an accomplice in several Vesnite-relevant conflicts, most infamously with the Dusk War. Beyond this, its exceptionalist and millenarian interpretation of Bhramavada has done little to ingratiate it with the wider Bhramavadic hierosphere, intermittent flareups of evangelist sentiment in Badina and a general policy for inciting instability in its continental rivals informing its covert support of rouser movements and insurgencies.

Despite this disrepute in mainstream Bhramavada, its actual relationship with Vaestdom is nevertheless fairly dubious. As a Bhramavadic power, it deems the encroachment of Vesnite missionaries and converts as at best, sources of scientific knowledge with attached strings; the erosion of Bhramavadic authority and coherence associated with Vesnite evangelism earns them little favor from the Istana Gandharwa. Pragmatism on the part of the Joriscian Great Powers has limited national backing of missionary movements in Badina, the occasionally popular ones mostly restrained to the closely scrutinized settlements of the Badinan littoral. Lacking the pragmatic considerations of the Joriscians however, general sentiment in Ascesian Vesnite communities is one of disdain: Badinan appropriation of Knowledge is primitive, if not borderline corruptive. Badinan Vesnites, where sporadically converted, are usually deported to the Ascesian Banner as a matter of interordinate courtesy, though this has not stemmed rumors of active persecution of supposedly hidden Vesnite "havens" in the Badinan interior, where interordinate scrutiny is minimal.

Military

The national military of Badina is the Kakitangan (ꦏꦏꦶꦠꦔꦤ꧀), literally the "hands and feet" with which the imperial perspective is enforced; this being the official mission of the military. Doctrinally, it is concerned with the maintenance of the state security apparatus against local insurrection alongside the deterrence of continental rivals, though operates irregular elements with which it supports the various armed insurgencies in its remit for agitation abroad.

Economy

The Badinan economy is relatively centralized, with large parts of it dominated by and often even organized around conglomerates known as materai, which are chartered and patronized by the hierocratic establishment. Since Badina's interordinate normalization in the late 1980s with the Half-Arc Deference, its economy – effectively stagnant since the outbreak of the Badinan Confrontation – has seen a revitalization under the leadership of these materai, which are patronized by stately financiers and allowed to concentrate oligopolistic economic power under themselves, to in turn realize the state's economic visions as its agents in the markets. This is the foundation of the Badinan economic model of export-led industrialization: the limited number of materai are vertically integrated and mobilize the economy towards efficient mass manufacturing, and their leaders form an economic elite which readily answer and might even contribute to the broader policies and planning of the Istana.

Demographics

Exact metrics are hard to come by on account of its isolationist policy, especially in regard to Messenian powers, but general estimates place the population of Badina at around 102 million, the majority of which are spread between its southwestern and northeastern coasts; these are concentrated around the cities of Atthajaya (which also surrounds the palatial capital of Istana Gandharwa) and Lorelo respectively. Consistent with the southwest Ascesian region, Badina's population are virtually entirely of Porbrish stock. The main demographic divisions of Badina instead follow linguistic lines: the peninsula can be broadly split into a Badungese-speaking south and a Lurahite-speaking north, though the eminency of Badungese as the language of state and religion, alongside associated demographic migrations, has meant southerners stand out as a majority of the population. Small communities of Talagan speakers can be found in the farther north, descended from what is now Adorac.

Religion

Main article: Jogetcara

Badina zealously follows the Jogetcara as its state religion and claims all its citizens as loyal adherents. It is a relatively unorthodox interpretation of Bhramavada, characterized by a millenarian belief in an impending "Awakening" (Kebangkitan) of the Great Dream which is to obliterate the empirical world and restore it anew as a paradise reserved for the chosen few. In this, the perspective of the Badinan Empress – theoretically equated with the clerical-bureaucratic framework of Badinan government as a whole – is the only valid truth which will allow one to withstand this temporal upheaval. The empirical world is effectively a vestibule before paradise, the opening of the gates towards spiritual salvation only initiated by an inevitable doomsday foretold by various prophecies and foreshadowed by the numerous natural and political upheavals of the world.

While finding its philosophical roots in the theistic and occasionally millenarian irin hierology of the post-Combination era, its modern organization was fully consolidated by the Consonance of the Perception in 1959, serving as the social fabric upon which the concept of the Badinan nation and its rationalization was enacted. The faith legitimizes the imperial perspective and all actions theoretically carried out in service of it, to the dismissal of all other perspectives, whether they be sectarian dissidents, other Bhramavadic philosophies, foreign religions, ideologiesor otherwise): this solipsism is the dominant native interpretation of Bhramavada, even to the point where it denies the agency of unbelievers as illusory fixtures of the dream world, with no true conscious perception and will be inevitably obliterated upon Kebangkitan. Students of Badinan hieropolitics may note the resemblance of its creed to that of Somnism, though with a distinctly Vaestic tinge on account of inspirations surrounding the idea of Knowledge and unassailable authority from it. This does make its religious stance a fringe one in the wider Bhramavadic hierosphere. The Jogetcara by its very nature assigns little credence to these opinions, however, informing its dismissive, almost apathetic, view of all faiths not of itself.

Beyond the principal tenets of the faith, the exact interpretations of its finer details are usually left to popular tradition or the sophistry of hierologians. Tuhanan, the theistic belief in a Sleeping God responsible for conceiving the dream world, is the de facto state interpretation as taught in public education; this interpretation is dominant in the Badinan south. Nevertheless, there remain various folk interpretations tolerated by the state, particulalry the animist Kahyangan more prevalent in Lurahite folk belief; these mostly persist through folk transmission and clerical traditions more distant from the imperial core, "tolerated" in that they receive no formal censure and are thus, theoretically of the imperial perspective.

While Badina is a Bhramavadic state, its historical interactions with colonial Vaestdom has fostered a not-insignificant Vesnite presence in the region, at its height existing as professed Vesnite communities particularly concentrated in the more cosmopolitan coastline. Since the hierological consolidation of Badina and various conflicts with Vaestdom (one of which would see the cession of Posako after its conversion to Vaestism) however, official toleration and protection of Vesnites only truly extends to expatriate communities, the majority hailing from Outer Joriscia; any native converts, where they appear and are found, are regularly deported, usually to the Ascesian Banner.