Zemay
Enlightened Zemayan Realm ⰀⰒⰔⰋⰞⰂⰉⰅⰕⰖⰔⰋ ⰆⰅⰏⰀⰋⰕⰉⰖ ⰂⰀⰎⰔⰕⰫⰁⰤ Apsišvietusi Žemaičiū Valstịbē | |
|---|---|
 Flag | |
| Motto: ⰕⰅⰃⰖ ⰏⰣⰔⰣ ⰓⰀⰐⰍⰑⰔ ⰂⰋⰔⰀⰄⰀ ⰔⰏⰑⰃⰋⰀ ⰍⰀⰉⰒ ⰂⰧⰐⰀ Tegu mūsū rankos visada smogia kaip viena "May our hands ever strike as one" | |
 Location of Zemay in Joriscia (including its Marshalates) | |
| Capital and largest city | Lesser Pestul |
| Official languages | Gergote |
| Ethnic groups | Gergotes, Rasintians, Argotes |
| Religion | Vaestism |
• Banner | Zemayan |
| Demonym | Zemayan |
| Government | Respublican monarchy |
• Emperor | Siluve IV |
| Legislature | Zemayan Debates |
| Establishment | |
| 1685 | |
| 1845 | |
| 1855 | |
| 1984 | |
| Area | |
• Total | 223,412 km2 (86,260 sq mi) |
| Population | |
• 2010 census | 58,310,532 |
• Density | 261/km2 (676.0/sq mi) |
| Currency | Stumbras |
Zemay (/zəˈmeɪ/; Gergote: ⰆⰅⰏⰀⰉⰕⰉⰀⰔ, Žemaitiaj, [ʒɛ'mɐɪtɪjɐɪ]), officially known as the Enlightened Zemayan Realm (ⰀⰒⰔⰋⰞⰂⰉⰅⰕⰖⰔⰋ ⰆⰅⰏⰀⰋⰕⰫⰖ ⰂⰀⰎⰔⰕⰊⰁⰤ Apsišvietusi Žemaičiū Valstịbē), is a sovereign banner-state in northern Outer Joriscia. From the northeast to the south, Zemay borders Sebagy and Doyotia around the exclave of Užjūris on the northern shore of the Gulf of Joriscia, then Rasintia, Domradovid Joriscia, Azophin, Lause, Argah and the Prysostaic School in the country's main territory. It also shares a maritime border with Aushria.
Geography
The Zemayan Realm encompasses an area of approximatively 220,000 km², of which 190,000 is the "metropole" or mainland, as opposed to the territories of the Solniai Islands and the province of Užjūris. By area, it is the 4th largest country in Outer Joriscia. Zemay sits firmly in the subtropics, extending over latitudes from 26° to 18°N. The country is broadly contained within the northern littoral plain of Outer Joriscia around the Gulf of Joriscia and the Bay of Gergotea. The region of Gergotea is largely synonymous with metropolitan Zemay in both geographical and historical terms; only the country's extreme south is considered to be part of Argotea. The coastal lowlands transition fairly sharply into the Areef mountains about 200 km inland, which underpins all of Zemay's western border.
There are five major river systems in the country, from south to north: the Aram, the Seruva, the Lauk, the Rasna, and the Tunarthi. Zemay north of the Rasna river when combined with the marshalate of Rasintia forms the area called Greater Rasintia. The Aram river forms the boundary with the Prysostaic School and Argah, the historically important city of Aramzol is located on it; 90 km from its mouth it is joined by the Seruva, and Lesser Pestul's traditional core is built near this confluence.
Broad coastal plains are associated with each of Zemay's major rivers, with the Aram-Seruva plain being part of a larger Argotean expanse. These areas are today heavily cultivated and densely settled. Towards the Areefs, the elevation rises, and there is a hilly terrain. Patches of temperate rainforests are mostly found in the central parts of the country, with conifers covering the rarely-developed Areefs at the western border. The climate is humid-subtropical, with heavy precipitation occurring in all seasons, and a temperature between 0°C and 30°C in most places.
History
Chotarian period (1500 BCE – 1052 CE)
Central Gergotea represented the furthest northern extent of Second Chotarian Empire, but after extended infiltration during the Gergote migrations, the region broke from Chotar during the City and Kingdom era that followed the fall of the Second Empire in 359 BCE. For the next eight centuries the region fell under partial and intermittent Chotarian control; some notable native Gergote polities include Old Rasintia that straddled the turn of the Cairan Era, and the Tri-Kingdom Alliance which was contemporaneous with the Equinox era. After around the 2nd century CE, Chotarian influence made itself felt most directly through the establishment of Lacrean colonies on the coast of the Gulf of Joriscia, which grew into prosperous centres of trade.
The Fifth Chotarian Empire (586–1052 CE) conquered the whole of Gergotea and pushed further north, as far as the modern Lutoborsk. Gergotea now became an intermittent site of unrest, expressing itself above all during the Schism in the North of 728–60 and then, after the rise of the Gergote Princes in the interior of the region, the Revolt of the Gergote Courts from 950 to 966. The war of attrition provoked by the Revolt proved particularly destructive to Gergotea, as Chotarian armies pillaged many of the Lacrean cities and ransacked the Gergote countryside. The devastation of the Revolt caused a long-term social transformation, as autonomous fortified settlements (Gyvenvietės) began to develop across the region, initially based around small walled hill-forts.
Medieval Zemay (1052–1400 CE)
Gergotea had not even begun to recover from the suppression of the Revolt of the Gergote Courts when the Secote invasion brought the history of Chotar to an abrupt and violent end. The region itself largely escaped both the worst aspects of the conquest and the subsequent arrival of huge numbers of marauding Secote bands that characterised the medieval period in other parts of Outer Joriscia, although this was only because it was so politically inhospitable and generally impoverished that there was little interest in moving inland. After Chotar fell, a series of self-appointed Fejedelems of the Chotarian Hadzarid dynasty claimed rights of fealty from their seat at Mertēḍ, and a handful of small Lacreanised port cities retained some connections to their counterparts to the south. For the most part, however, the politics of the 11th and 12th centuries were dominated instead by a constantly shifting map of loose alliances and small-scale territorial wars between Gyvenvietės, which became the normative mode of Gergote settlement perhaps as early as the early 11th century but certainly during the medieval period. The only serious exceptions to this pattern were the occasional larger coalitions formed in the face of attempts by the Yaromirovids and then the Mstivoyevid Emperors of the Eastrons to force the Gergotes into submission (the Gergote leagues of 1103-1104, 1114-1119 and 1190-1198), attempts which ceased entirely after the 12th century.
If Zemay had been spared the worst effects of the Secote conquest, however, the same could not be said of the general Joriscian recovery of the 13th century. From the 1270s onwards, those Secotes who had stubbornly refused to abandon their nomadic lifestyle were steadily driven out of the Lacrean heartland, with many making their way into southern Gergotea. At the same time, a broad resurgence of Lacrean self-confidence closely linked to the neo-Ishtinist Second Dawn - whose itinerant holy men also made their way to Gergotea from the early 14th century - meant that new threats began to consolidate to the south. The effect of all this was to galvanise a series of political innovations within the Gyvenvietės, spreading gradually from the south to the far northern areas. There was a general tendency everywhere towards greater power being focused in the hands of the Castellans, towards longer and sometimes indefinite captaincies, and in some areas towards fully-fledged dynasticism. In the south in particular, this tendency also led to the formation of more permanent associations between some collections of settlements, with particularly large and potent communes like Laukuna and Andarzad establishing themselves as the patrons and protectors of smaller polities. The particularly successful career of Mindaug of Laukuna (in office 1320-1337), whose armies sacked a series of cities in Argotea and prompted the formal establishment of the Lacrean League, marked the high point of Zemayan ambition in this regard. The collapse of the complex web of vassals he had established shortly after his death, however, showed the limited ability of even the new political formations to consolidate themselves as larger territorial polities.
Rise of Vaestism (1400–1535 CE)
Although the Prophet himself never seems to have crossed the frontier into Gergotea proper and restricted his ministry to the frontier area in Argotea, Vesnite settlers led by the Marshal Sillis established small communities in southern Gergotea in the first years of the 15th century. These communities ultimately got caught up in a dispute with Vladivoy, the Secote war leader of Aramzol, and in the 1420s this dispute escalated into a fully-fledged punitive expedition against the Vesnite mother community in Argotea itself, an expedition which ended with a spectacular victory for the Vesnites at the Battle of the Holy Storm. Vladivoy's defeat spurred a string of communal recognitions of the Prophet as 'greatest teacher', and there is evidence of Vesnite preachers enjoying some success throughout the Gergote regions in the half-century following, pro-Vesnite parties being reported in various Gyvenvietės across the south. But for the most part the established elites of the Gyvenvietė system saw those with marked sympathies towards the emergent Vaestic polity to the south as a subversive influence, and this placed a check on the expansion of the explicitly Vesnite loyalties or organisational links that began to characterise the structure of Vaestdom under the Marshalate.
Under Cirran (r. 1447-1459), missionary efforts were given a focal point in the form of the Banner of the Gergote Frontier and its Standard-Bearer Gediminas, whose determined political efforts led to the foundation of the League of Savants centred on Arandar and the largely inconclusive War of Knowledge in the final years of the Marshalate period. During the Wars of Heresy, the League of Savants backed Kazama of Narrad, and after the victory of Siluve II broke entirely with the Prysostaia and declared the Sacred Prophecy to be in abeyance, and a force sent under Nerits's younger brother Dragodar to force them to accept Siluve in 1485 was defeated at the Battle of the Arand. They maintained their position on the Prophecy even after the election of Sobiebor II as Universal Prophet in 1516 during the controversy over the Lacrean pseudoprophet Fēṇe. In 1525, however, a Neritsovid army under Ostrodar Malenky defeated the forces of the League and its non-Vesnite allies, and southern Gergotea was incorporated into Neritsia as a province centred on his new foundation of Lesser Pestul. A second campaign launched in 1531 brought most of northern Gergotea under Neritsovid control, and by 1535 a Prince had been installed in Laukuna, a city which was to serve as the northernmost bastion of Neritsovid authority for the next two hundred years.
Neritsovid Zemay (1535–1769 CE)
The Neritsovid conquest ushered in far-reaching social and political change in Zemay. The first great change was the return of the region's Vesnites to orthodoxy and the obeisance given by the heads of every community – including those which had not been expressly Vesnite before 1535 – to the Prophet-Emperor. The second, perhaps of even greater moment for the social history of Zemay itself, was the steady destruction of the Gyvenvietė system by a series of energetic Marshals of the North and Princes, a process that after the Great Gergote Emeute of the 1570s culminated with an Imperial Edict (the Edict of the Towers) ordering the slighting of all existing fortifications and banning the construction of new ones. Although many of those in the far north were in practice allowed to stay because of their contributions to the defence of the frontier with Rasintia, by the 1600s the majority of the Gyvenvietės had become small villages, and Zemayan society had been rebuilt around newly founded regional hubs modelled on the Lacrean Ring of Gold. Many of these hubs, as well as new villages founded around land reclamation projects along the coast, were settled by Rashimic or Lacrean-speaking Vesnites from elsewhere in the Empire. Alongside an extensive programme of School-building pursued by the generously endowed Great School of Lesser Pestul, generally staffed in the 16th century by Scholars from elsewhere, these changes brought the southern province – and to a lesser extent the northern province – gradually into line with other areas of southern Outer Joriscia.
During the 17th century the Gergote population themselves began to produce notable numbers of Scholars – including perhaps the most famous of them all, Toris Lorin – and a local elite of largely Lacrean-speaking urbanites had begun to emerge that cut across the entire country. Administratively, however, the northern and southern regions diverged even further. While the Province of Lesser Pestul remained fairly closely integrated with the core imperial territories in Argotea, the Principality of Laukuna – whose final Errancy Era Prince Dragodar Tarsevid had refused to abandon Borovest Neritsobor even after the latter's defeat by Lyudodar and had to be violently brought to heel – was granted to the Polcovode of Mirokrai in perpetuity for his services in putting Tarsevid down; in 1685 it was re-established as a Graviate under the Keumatid dynasty of local dignitaries. The two regions were reunited under the Graviate during the Crown Wars of the early 18th century, when the Keumatids' enthusiastic support of the Legitimist Party saw their privileges extended by Borovest II to 'all lands north of the Prysostaia'. Over the course of the next eighty years, they established the basic foundations of an independent Zemayan state. But jurisdictional conflicts with the Protologue of Lesser Pestul and with the Scholarchate in general, as well as a disastrous war with Rasintia in the 1730s (the Keumatid war), ultimately dragged the Keumatids into a violent civil conflict that only ended when the Scholars asked Oktar Matolchy of the Graviate of Lacre to depose his Laukunan counterpart. Matolchy's army landed in Lesser Pestul in 1769, and the last Keumatid, Siluve II, fled to Axopol. The emperor in Terophan Spytihnev III soon responded to this, among other Lacrean provocations, by declaring the so-called Imperial War.
Lacrean Zemay (1769–1845 CE)
When the Imperial War ended with a dramatic Lacrean victory in 1774, Lacre seemed to have successfully annexed yet another region of Outer Joriscia by inciting rebellion against the legitimate rulers, a pattern that had been established with the Fejedelem's Coup in the Principality of Lopocka five years earlier. And indeed, for the seventy years between 1778 and 1845 Zemay was to style itself a Circuit of the Sixth Chotarian Empire, and the Zemayan elite abroad would express themselves in the bombastic new Lacrean of the neo-Chotarian era (a language which was in any case most comfortable for many of those raised in the coastal cities). But beyond these fairly superficial aspects, Lacrean control in Zemay was limited from the very beginning. Initially, the Oktarids had little interest in contesting this, but the position began to change from the reign of Katapan (r. 1790-1849). The Zemayan elite, however, had no interest in exchanging an overbearing Grave for an equally overbearing Emperor, and put up fierce resistance to Lacrean attempts to bring about closer integration. Although Zemay did contribute heavily to the Lacrean military and to Lacrean colonisation in Serania, for the most part it played the part of recalcitrant junior partner in a Messenian-style personal union rather than obedient province. And when Katapan fled his Lacrean domains during the Great Peninsular War (1837-1845), bringing the wrath of the Terophatic-Lutoborian alliance down on the Zemayans that gave him shelter, the experience of the war was sufficient to convince his erstwhile subjects to seek autonomous status at the Treaty of Tharamann in 1845.
The Lacrean period has generally been viewed unfavourably by modern historians of Zemay. In part this is because the general post-war position on Neo-Chotarianism as a whole has been hostile, particularly among those inclined towards Cathedralism, and the Zemayans' decision to request Lacrean intervention is thus seen as abetting the scourge of 'Pluralism' that corroded the essential political unity of Vaestdom. Equally, it is often argued that the absence of a strong leader within Zemay itself and the failure of the Lacrean Emperors to properly integrate the northern polity into their territory forestalled the centralising and rationalising reform and industrialisation that might have made Zemay into a Great Power. The broader merits of these arguments aside, however, the Lacrean period did see political and economic development. Like its southern counterpart Lefdim, it provided a great deal of the coal that fed the furnaces of Outer Joriscia's industrial revolution; coal production quadrupled between 1800 and 1845, and Zemay's access to well-developed coal deposits was to prove decisive in its own later industrialisation process. Agriculture also expanded, benefiting from techniques already tried and tested in Lacre. Perhaps most importantly, the creation of a professional Zemayan army and the appropriation of scholarly appointments to the government under Katapan, although he was not to benefit from them personally, cleared away two major obstacles to the consolidation of the modern Zemayan state.
Modern Zemay (1845 CE – modern day)
Under the order set up at the Treaty of Tharamann, Zemay remained notionally a Marshalate of Lacre. This decision was relatively quickly repudiated by the newly elected Siluve I (r. 1845–1858), who was to spend most of his tenure agitating for full imperial status, duly granted at the Purity Council ten years later along with the Zemayan Banner after Zemayan intervention in the Circuit War. But with imperial status came new and heady expectations. Under Zaikonis I (r. 1858–1892), Zemay's industrialisation and foreign policy were closely tied with Lacre, provoking anti-Lacrean sentiments known as Risabianism amid a wider nostalgist movement of Gergotism. Along with a rather zealous prosecution of the Tempering of the Prophecy at the turn of the 20th century, these conflicts and anxieties drove popular support for asserting Zemay as an independent power. This was finally consummated with Zemay's performance in the Long War, during which, after a reform programme under Miervaldis Vytautas, it carried out a series of spectacular and largely successful military ventures in the Lutoborian Civil War and the Littorean War, joining the Three Power Bloc as an equal partner in 1943, and ultimately playing the heroic role of saviour to the Prysostaia and Littorea in 1958, by ending the Thrall and crushing the Robulite Insurrection in the Zemayan Intervention.
At the Congress of Kethpor, Zemay was rewarded handsomely for its victories in the Long War. True, it suffered like the rest of the world from the years without summers, but it also acquired a string of marshalates along its border with Azophin and in the Joriscian Lowlands; although naturally playing second fiddle to the victorious Vsevolod I, Emperor Zaikonis III became one of the four founding members of the Panarchate, and was generally included on contemporary lists of the Great Powers. Zaikonis himself focused on consolidating these gains, recognising perhaps that to demand more was to risk losing it all. But his successor Tyrumas (r. 1969–1982) had no such compunctions, and began to agitate for territorial revisions in Zemay's favour. In the process, however, Tyrumas made a series of acute strategic mistakes, first in an abortive putsch attempt in Lefdim in the 1981 Crisis at Chiklar, then in attempting to remilitarise the southern Marshalate of Argah the following year, which triggered an Azophine military response and a decisive Zemayan defeat in the Three Week War. Having alienated virtually all the other Vaestic Powers, at the 1983 Congress of Molot Zemay was forced to accept the loss of not only its southern Marshalates but also its seat on the Panarchate, triggering a period of widespread domestic unrest that culminated in the Change Uprising of 1984.
The ensuing Zemayan Reconstruction dismantled the power of the Soteriocracy, an elite circle of Vytautian officers and bureaucrats who were blamed for the corruption that led to the country's diplomatic failures, and the obstruction of the Scholarly visions for social engineering that were brought to life such as in the Shaknuyura. Although a quiet counter-reform under emperor Felix and more recently Nadravery of the 2010s have limited or rolled back changes to everyday life and the Socialist establishment pushing for them, Zemay firmly became Vaestdom's poster child for electronic and information-based governance. Diplomatically, Lesser Pestul returned to its former alignment with Axopol, though from the Ranian crisis of 2010 it has attempted to present an image as a less particular 'gendarme of Vaestdom', by leading the Kish sanctions and other interventions against Agamar.
Government and authority
Zemay is a Vaestic Banner-State, with Siluve IV as the current Emperor (ⰂⰡⰎⰄⰣⰐⰡⰔ valdūvas). Since the establishment of independent Zemay in 1845 the throne has been rotated from different families among the Zemayan nobility each election. Although the Emperor is in principle the supreme autocrat of Zemay, in practice since the Change Uprising a great deal of autonomy is maintained by the Elector Scholars, Protologues with the dual purpose of serving as the imperial Debates and heading each of the seventeen provincial governments. The Emperor may be deposed by the Electors, and conventionally makes much use of pragmatic circular to consult his subjects. He is assisted in government by the Zemayan Council of Ministers.
On the local level Mokyklos form the heart of (traditionally fortified) settlements referred to as Gyvenvietės, which are the basic unit of social and political organisation. Scholars are the highest authority in the School, and smaller Schools are typically subject to larger Schools, with the Elector Schools as the highest administrative division. This hierarchy, which is now indistinguishable from elsewhere in Vaestdom, solidified in something similar to its modern form in southern Zemay by the beginning of the Neritsovid period, when it was adopted as the model for Neritsovid provincial government in the west as well as the east. Schools delegate or share administrative authority to a subordinate Board of Secrets, which provides a conduit for local feedback and consultation on policymaking, and also conveniently underwrites economic activities in each jurisdiction through their expertise and connections. A number of migrating, fluid supervisory bodies constituted as Nominal Schools allow the imperial centre to directly intervene in various matters when needed, such as the Janitors.
The political climate of Zemay was until recently dominated by the Pragmata Floor, a Socialist milieu that designed the Zemayan Reconstruction. After the Nadravery, from 2017 the government has admitted great numbers of Homilists, Internalists who have generally been critical of the Pragmatists and the Reconstruction. Behind these parties, Zemayan politics may be divided between those of a national elite associated with the secret agreements and intrigues of nobility and the elite technocrats they choose to induct into this circle, and local-level affairs where traditionally respected Castellan-Scholars mobilise popular concerns about policy and ideology. Divides, conflicts, and other interactions within and between the two layers dictate the direction of government.
Foreign policy
The Zemayan Banner has the marshalates of Partia, Rasintia, and Lause. A halting programme of demediatisation, but falling short of actual annexation, has taken place in these marshalates since Molot. Zemay's main rivals are Azophin and the Lutoborsk, competing over Argotea and Doyotia-Rasintia respectively. Repeated strategic failures against Reconstruction Azophin such as the Three Week War and the Argote Emeute have been continual sources of resentment against Azophines among Zemayans, although this has abated recently. With the Lutoborsk, the Tripartite Contract has secured cooperation for the time being in Greater Doyotia. The main ally and partner of Zemay is Terophan, with whom it shares interest in moderating the power of Azophin. Aushria, though a minor state, is a firm regional friend, and bonds are reinforced by cultural and linguistic affinities between the two countries. Despite historical perceptions of Lacre as constantly conspiring to turn Zemay into a vassal as in Risabianism, nowadays the tables have turned as reassertion of Lacre in the Starroz Krai is becoming more contingent on Zemayan goodwill instead. Agamar, always a contender in the Gulf of Joriscia, has emerged as the foremost opponent in the wake of the Ranian crisis; Zemay leads the anti-Agamari coalition and the Kish sanctions, with which it has conveniently repaired relations with Azophin and Lutoborsk.
Outside of Outer Joriscia, Zemay has cultivated colonial estate interests in Domradovid Joriscia, the Lestrian Neutral Zone, and parts of Ascesia. In Serania, Zemayan possessions consist of Sarshen off Azophine Desh Starum, the New Shalovar Pentapolis on the coast of Azophine New Arzad (previously Lacrean Serania), and Vienuma near Agamari Järvenranta. Zemay also has economic access to Terophatic Serania. There is also a great deal of cooperation with the Tondaku, with Zemayan commercial and even political presence in Ultratondaku, Chikkay, and many Tondakan subjects themselves growing in recent years. Zemayan search of overseas prestige, particularly in the holes of the systems other Great Powers have built up, has brought it into partnerships with the Messenian revisionist powers of Odann and the wider Pact of Clachán; Zemay has engaged in technological and industrial transfers to these allies and their vassals in exchange for increased access to their spheres of influence.
Military
The Army of Zemay, as with other modern Vaestic militaries, is constituted as a complex of specialised Nominal Schools led by generals and commanders as Scholars. Military training is compulsory for all Zemayans upon becoming of age, and territorial defence units are routinely rotated from local residents to maintain general readiness. Combined with its historical ascent in military successes during the Long War, Zemay has somewhat acquired a reputation of militarism in other countries. The Zemayan army currently has about 300,000 active regular personnel, and a larger number are on irregular militia duty. Zemay's regional military position is made somewhat awkward by its lack of nuclear weapons (which both Azophin and Lutoborsk possess), and this has done much to moderate its pursuit of regional ambitions by military means.
Economy
Zemay is an industrialised and developed country like most of Outer Joriscia. Since the Zemayan Reconstruction, the government exercises strong and close control of estates through a combination of indicative planning, strong disciplinary and political control over estate management, and lower-level surveillance and pressure groups; these policies have been touted as safeguards against the return of corrupt and sclerotic conglomerates associated with the Soteriocracy, although the Vytautian system's philosophy runs strong through them. The Shaknuyura, a complex of information systems and computerised governing setups, was first introduced to assist economic policymaking, but now directly dictates and structures the particulars of many elements of everyday life. The country's rabtat population was always relatively small and limited to estate managers, who have been effectively abolished during the Reconstruction. The significance of Zemayan estates as important entities of political economy in their own right has been often called into question by more radical theorists, in light of such restructuring.
Other features of the Zemayan economy include a generous welfare state guided by Socialist and Postradiant ideas, constant state efforts at revitalising the rural economy to stem internal migration, and a rise in the phenomenon of temporary work thanks to Shaknuyura allocation and ephemeralisation of firms. The population at large is surveiled by a subsystem of the Shaknuyura known as the Third Foot, known to most as a general-purpose smart card with uses such as personal identification, movement tracking, and everyday payment, backed by a complex of ratings of political and economic credibility. Zemayan innovations in these fields have been copied in other Vesnite states, and they have been extended to Zemay's various marshalates as well.
Agriculturally, as with the rest of Outer Joriscia, rice is the traditional staple crop of Zemay, while some winter wheat is grown in the north, and the large-scale production of maize and potatoes is a relatively modern introduction. There is a large alcoholic beverage industry built on Gergotea's famed rice and grape wines. Pigs and goats are the main livestock reared for meat, while fishing provides a great deal of the Zemayan diet as well: Zemayan boats frequent the fisheries of the Gulf of Joriscia, and Zemay is also one of the world's major practitioners of aquaculture. Food production has generally been directed to employ ecological and sustainable methods, which the country is famous for.
The Areef mountains provide Zemay with considerable mineral wealth: uranium and gold are major resources in Zemay, with other minerals like iron, coal and gas being moderately abundant. Zemay also takes a lead in the exploitation of oil and natural gas deposits in the Gulf of Joriscia, a key part of its strategy of energy security, and along with the Gulf's fisheries, they are the main objective that the country has entered territorial and economic disputes over in recent years.
Ethnology
The predominant ethnolinguistic group in Zemay are the Gergotes, speakers of Gergote languages, whose home territory is more or less coextensive with the borders of modern Zemay plus Rasintia to the north (the region of Gergotea). Although historically the Gergote language had a great deal of dialect variation, much of this has been levelled over the course of the 20th century, and today most Gergotes speak a locally-accented variant of the dialect of Laukuna, which served as the basis for the Zemayan literary language that developed in the 18th century. Rashimic and Lacrean language speakers once had a strong presence in the country, and there are reports that small communities continue to exist in rural towns as well as Lacrean districts in the southern cities, but in many of the one-time strongholds of Neritsovid-era settlement the settler populations have long assimilated to the Gergotes both linguistically and culturally; no counterpart to the Lacrean Rasheem exists in Zemay. In the far south of the country the dominant language gradually transitions to Argote, continuing over the border into the northern Prysostaia. Other Gergotic peoples include the Lozotes of Lause and the Rasintians. In Užjūris, the population is mainly a mixture of Pitenet-speaking Doyotians, and Gulf Moujiques. The region around the Areef mountains also has communities of Mentusians and other groups found in greater numbers in Domradia. Historically the western fringe of Zemay also included many Bershimic-speaking villages, but these languages are now moribund or entirely dead.
Religion
The official religion of Zemay is Vaestism, specifically of the Zemayan Banner, headed by the Emperor as Standard-Bearer and and Vocation Scholar of its Banner-Shrine, the Mokykla of Joint Harmonies in Lesser Pestul. Zemay is most famous in Vaestdom for its exploration of Socialism and championing of the Post-Radiance, thanks to the Pragmata Floor's influence in government and intellectual society, and the unreserved implementation of Shaknuyura-related social experiments. Felix Pietis, Vadominas Dagys, and emperor Vydunas are only some of the notable Socialists Zemay has contributed to Vaestism. At an everyday level, though, it is Internalism as taught by the revered Castellan-Scholars that holds more sway over the laity and provincial clergy.
Culture
Modern Zemayan culture was heavily shaped by a wave of nostalgism known as Gergotism in the 19th century, which emphasised not just historical but cultural connections to the pre-Neritsovid Gergotes, who for Gergotists represented a paragon of many virtues such as self-reliance, martial mastery, and steadfastness. Zemayans have also been known for an attitude known as prostatism, in which they regard their country and its antecedents as historical and current protectors of the Prysostaia, from the defence of the Neritsovid northern border from Great Doyotia to the smashing of Zamor the False's army in the Thrall, and which has ostensibly informed and justified many diplomatic and military actions of Zemay in recent history. This sentiment is reinforced further by cultural and linguistic affinities for Argotea.
Literature
The first samples of Gergote literature date to the medieval period, and are written in a mixture of the Chotarian and Messenian alphabets. With the exception of Sirian hathran collection known as the Laukuna Testimonies, the earliest texts are without exception bilingual in Lacrean. Considerably more vernacular literature was produced during the early years of Vaestism, but this was primarily religious material dealing with the new faith. It was only during the Neritsovid period, as literacy in the Vladykast script spread among locals, that something resembling modern Zemayan Gergote began to be used as a written language of vernacular culture. For elite culture and legal and government purposes, however, Zemayans preferred first a resurgent High Secote and then Agar and Lacrean throughout the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Torīs Lorin, perhaps the most prominent Zemayan intellectual, wrote most of his works in High Secote. Although Lorin himself may have rarely used Gergote, however, in the Graviate and Fejedelemate periods, translations into Gergote increased in numbers, while tentative experiments with writing High Plays in the early 18th century snowballed in the late 18th and early 19th into a period of unprecedented productivity. It was during this period that many of the classic works of Zemayan literature were produced, including the writings of the scholar and poet Omoi Laz. Gergote was standardised starting in the 1860s after the consolidation of the Zemayan state, based on the dialect of Laukuna; the Gergotist period also saw the rise of Gergote as a truly mature literary language, with a great volume of modern works written.
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