Ilarís
Ilarís | |
|---|---|
Mandate | |
 Flag | |
 The Mandate of Ilarís (green) within the UFC. | |
| Crown Mandate | 1715 |
| Government | |
| • Lord Patron | Otan Nuvo Šolosar |
| • Chief Administrator | Hõmora Medoca |
| Area | |
| • Mandate | 11,560 km2 (4,460 sq mi) |
| Population (2023) | |
| • Mandate | 1,804,201 |
| • Metro | 1.1 million |
Greater Ilarís (Tavari: Ilarís Avend), officially constituted under the name “Mandate of Ilarís Within The Union of Free and Autonomous Cities Under the Mandate of the Council of Utopiya” is a mandate within the Union of Free Cities that has a constitutional relationship with the monarchy of Tavaris but which is largely self-governing as part of the UFC, a loose confederation of various settlements established by overseas powers in the region. Its oldest and largest settlement is the eponymous city of Ilarís, which was established in 1709 by a sect of radical Akronists known as Ilarists, whose beliefs state that the use of lethal force can not only be permitted but is mandatory in instances where it is necessary to save another life, or the “life” of the Church itself. This sect, known as the Sisters of the Twelfth Niche, named their settlement for the founder of their religious philosophy, the highly controversial 12th Matron of the Church of Akrona Ilara Nevran Lendreaž (1589-1670), who ordered the death of the High Chief of Rodoka in 1632 and launched a two-year war between the Rodokans and Tavari settlers.
In 1715, the Sisters sold the rights to a substantial swath of land—ostensibly purchased from natives, but modern historians consider it questionable that the natives ever intended to grant the Sisters ownership of the land, only the right to live on it—to the Central Arcturia Company, a Tavari corporation based in Elatana. The Central Arcturia Company, in turn, surveyed, parceled, and either sold or leased most of the land to other business interests, most of whom came from countries other than Tavaris. There was relatively limited Tavari interest at first, as Central Arcturia was the most distant frontier of Tavari settlement, the most unknown, and the least infrastructurally and administratively developed. In contrast, businesspeople from places such as Alksearia—already well acquainted with the Tavari after their joint settlement of Elatana—and Valerijk, for whom the costs of travel and transporting supplies to and from central Arcturia were far less, leapt at the opportunity. As a result, the population of Tavari Central Arcturia became highly diverse, more than anywhere else in the Tavari colonial empire. In the modern day, nearly 30% of the population descend from either Alkari or Valrijkian settlers.
In contrast to neighboring Ellesborg, in which the Cryrian government theoretically maintains a (seldom exercised) degree of political power and control over the mandate, the Kingdom of Tavaris has never claimed any authority over Greater Ilarís, instead recognizing the Tavari monarch’s position of “Lord Patron” of the mandate to be one held by them in a personal capacity—in essence, an independent entity in personal union with Tavaris, but entirely administratively separate. While Greater Ilarís’ law accords the Tavari monarch the position of Lord Patron and affords the Lord Patron a small degree of ceremonial constitutional authority, no Lord Patron has ever visited the territory or exercised their authority in person. Greater Ilarís is the only non-voting member of the Tavari Union; its non-voting status relates to the fact that it is considered to be a first-level subdivision of a sovereign state (the UFC) rather than sovereign itself, and therefore that its capacity to participate in aspects of the Tavari Union such as the currency union and harmonized laws regarding airspace, territorial waters, and others are limited.
History
Religious Settlement
The history of Greater Ilarís, known prior to 1928 as Tavari Central Arcturia, differs from that of all other Tavari colonies in that, unlike in the other Tavari colonies that were initially settled by private organizations (usually Church of Akrona-affiliated groups, if not the Church itself) such as Rodoka, Metradan, and the Avtovati Isles, Tavari Central Arcturia was never formally incorporated into the Tavari state by an order of the monarch, a legal formality under Tavari law known as “placing under public law.” As such, it enjoyed and continues to enjoy a reputation in the Tavari-speaking world for lax regulations, economic freedom, and a financial sector with a significant presence in industries considered illegal in Tavaris, such as cannabis, gambling, and prostitution. Other Tavari colonies initially had this same status, but were later placed under the public law—only Emerald Coast, which Tavaris settled in north Ni-Rao from the 1670s until 1804, was similarly never placed under the public law.
Prior to the adoption of the Instruments of Governance in 1793, the rights and obligations of Tavari citizens were “codified” in an unwritten set of traditions known as “the public law.” This public law, which was decided and ultimately enforced by the state, was distinct from the “private law” enforced by the Chiefs of each Tavari line, or clan. Private law issued by individual Chiefs affected only their own lands, while all Chiefs everywhere were expected to enforce the public law. Areas outside the public law were exempt from the King’s taxes and, if unsettled, considered free and open for anyone to claim by building upon it and working it. Those living on land outside the public law were not subject to impressment into the armed forces and could not be arrested for non-payment of a debt. In theory, any settlements of Tavari people anywhere on Urth were still subject to the private law decided and enforced by the Chief of their Line, but by the 18th century, the power of the Chiefs had been substantially limited in favor of the King, and all but the very wealthiest few were incapable of even presuming to know what was going on in another hemisphere. In Tavari Central Arcturia, law and order was the responsibility of the settlers themselves.
When the Sisters of the Twelfth Niche arrived in 1702, a tribe of Symphs known as the Yachi inhabited the area. The Yachi, who are estimated to have numbered between three and five thousand people at the time, were a semi-nomadic tribe who traveled primarily between two different settlements—a settlement directly on the coastline during the dry season, and one several kilometers inland during the wet season. The Yachi had a complex historical relationship with the Zapolese humans who were the majority in the region, existing at times as tributaries of Zapolerya, as outright subjects, and as an independent polity usually in conflict with the Zapolese. A war between the two occurred 1698 and 1701 that had resulted in the Zapolese taking over a significant stretch of territory inland, including the Yachi’s wet season settlement, and had reduced the Yachi population by more than half. Word of the Yachi plight had reached the Tavari through the Vistari, who were already in the process of settling in the region, and the Sisters of the Twelfth Niche believed the story represented the perfect opportunity to demonstrate the moral necessity of Ilarist doctrine.
The Sisters of the Twelfth Niche were, ostensibly, a small group mostly elderly lay Akronists who were not even a formal cloistered order within the Church but simply volunteers tasked with tending to the site of the remains of Matron Ilara—which, like the remains of all Matrons, were cremated ashes kept in an urn in a small, unadorned niche in the wall of a columbarium in Crystal Coast, the Mausoleum of the Elders. Akronism generally teaches its faithful not to overly emphasize the veneration of the remains of the dead, believing it to be a relic of the ancestor worship of the Tavat Avati faith Akronists were expected to have left behind. The Mausoleum of the Elders contains little decoration and is very small, with the viewing room designed to fit only three or four people at once, specifically to dissuade worship of the remains while still allowing the faithful to pay a degree of respect to past leaders of the Church. Because the Church itself had little desire to expend time or resources on the remains of the dead, the Mausoleum of the Elders was historically tended to not by nuns or monks but by lay worshipers who volunteered. Even this volunteering was strictly limited—people who spent “too much” time in the Mausoleum were often viewed as suspect by Church leaders, especially those who paid much attention to the niche for Matron Ilara, who came to be viewed by her successor, 13th Matron Latra Vonovi Entarel, as representing a political threat.
Matron Latra, whose exceptionally long reign of 41 years kept her in charge of the Church from 1670 until 1719, had come to resent her predecessor’s lingering popularity in some circles of the Church, especially those who favored the Church’s role as a global missionary force actively engaged in expanding the reach of Akronism. Latra was also strictly opposed to Ilara’s stance on the use of violence, believing that it was never appropriate for an Akronist to intentionally end a life. By the turn of the 18th century, thirty years after Ilara’s death, the number of volunteers tending specifically to Ilara’s niche in the Mausoleum had swelled into the hundreds. Carefully allotted shifts scheduled individual worshipers to tend to Ilara’s urn for one day each year, thus avoiding informal Church rules that designated repeat volunteers to the Mausoleum as being in poor standing with the Church. In 1694, the order had to switch to shifts of half a day, and it began to plan for having three shifts per day, in order to accommodate the number of people seeking shifts. This was concerning to Matron Latra, who in 1696 closed the Mausoleum to the public and canceled the volunteer program entirely, declaring that the Elders themselves were to be the only ones permitted to tend to or even see the columbarium.
This decision outraged supporters of Matron Ilara, who were not yet calling themselves “Ilarists” but who had already begun to identify themselves as a distinct constituency within the Church. A large number of priestesses protested, and the elder Nanshai resigned in public defiance of the Matron’s decision, an almost unprecedented break in protocol at the time that expected Elders to never publicly disagree with one another. In response, Matron Latra immediately excommunicated the former Nanshai—who returned to her birth name, Vedra Vantas Mettõba—and literally every person who had volunteered at the Mausoleum of the Elders in the preceding two years, numbering more than 600 people. While Latra had hoped this would present a powerful opening barrage that stamped out their political power before it began, her actions only inflamed Ilara’s supporters. For four years, Vedra Vantas Mettõba traveled across metropolitan Tavaris preaching a message in support of what she called “Matron Ilara’s doctrine” and in opposition to the current Matron’s strict opposition to the veneration of deceased Matrons. However, in 1700, Matron Latra was able to convince authorities in Anara to arrest Vantas Mettõba for breach of the peace—she had been preaching outside after sunset, ostensibly a minor offense, but one almost never enforced—and, as was done with most Tavari criminals at the time, send her to the newly established Tavari penal colony: Elatana. Vantas Mettõba did not reach Elatana until early 1701, after months at sea on a ship alongside rapists, murderers, thieves, debtors, and a handful of other fellow members of the Sisters of the Twelfth Niche who had been arrested along with her. By the end of the journey, the entire ship—even the crew—had converted to Akronism. Once ashore, the owner of the ship—a private vessel called Heart of Lansai chartered by the Tavari state to ferry prisoners—pledged the ship and himself to Vantas Mettõba, and agreed to help get as many supporters of Vantas Mettõba to Elatana as he could. Initially, Vantas Mettõba planned to establish a settlement on Elatana itself, but because the public law was in force on Elatana, unsettled land had to be purchased from the crown, and all property was subject to tax, both presenting significant expenses to the fledgling order whose presence on island consisted almost wholly of prisoners. Vantas Mettõba and those arrested with her were sentenced to a year of hard labor, while others on the ship with more violent offenses earned sentences ranging from 10 years to life. The hard labor in question was invariably related to the construction of Aktorís and other Tavari settlements on the island.
In February of 1702, Vedra Vantas Mettõba’s period of hard labor ended. Already 60 at the time of her arrest, as an elderly prisoner her duties had been kept mostly light—her primary contribution to the construction of Arktorís was in planting flower beds. She had also been able to spend significant time writing and receiving correspondence from her supporters, and more than 300 of her fellow Ilarists were ferried to Elatana that year by the Heart of Lansai, many of whom had wealth and other resources they pledged to Vantas Mettõba’s cause. When the Heart of Lansai arrived, Vantas Mettõba had already decided to travel to the Yachi settlement and seek to convert them to the faith in exchange for assisting them in defeating the Zapolese. On March 8th, 1702, while en route, Vantas Mettõba wrote in her diary: “We will go to the symphibians to the south and teach them of that which is the only thing that can save them: the true word of Akrona. We will teach them and the world that they need not roll over and let these evil humans slaughter them. We will teach them that life is a gift that can and should be protected.”
The Heart of Lansai, with 324 people aboard, reached the Yachi settlement in April 1702. There were at least ten times as many Yachi in the settlement, but lingering skirmishes from Zapolese raiders had ravaged the population of working age people in particular, meaning the overwhelming majority of the Yachi population was either young or elderly, most of them women in a culture where only men typically fought or labored outside the home. The Akronists, reasonably well supplied and with several dozen working-age orcs, immediately set upon building an infirmary and city walls. Through one interpreter—a Valrijkian man who knew some Zapolese who Vantas Mettõba had found in Arktorís—the Yachi enthusiastically permitted the Akronists to stay and granted them permission to build on the land. In exchange, Vantas Mettõba pledged not only to assist the Yachi tribe in rebuilding their society but to arm them and join with them to reconquer their lost territory.
The Yachi were led by an official whose name was recorded by the Akronists as “King Otan,” though this was almost certainly neither his name nor his title. (Otan is a common Tavari name often used as a stand-in to mean “any generic person.”) Indeed, the Akronists recorded almost no information about the Yachi at all—not even the name they called their own settlements is known, as Vantas Mettõba began calling the city “Ilarís” immediately upon arriving. The Order of the Twelfth Niche appears to have taken the Yachi grant of permission to build as having given them outright ownership of the land, as letters from Vantas Mettõba and others almost immediately begin speaking of plans to sell tracts of land to interested developers to raise money for their order. None of the Akronists appear to have attempted to learn the Yachi language, which was described by several as being difficult to understand, communicating first in Zapolese and then, after the Yachi began to learn it, in Tavari. (The Yachi language remains spoken today but is considered highly endangered.) Akronist records also show a general presumption that the Yachi were primitive and that their losses to the Zapolese were the result of the Yachi being technologically outmatched. This, it would seem, was based entirely on the fact that Akronists saw young Yachi men hunting with bows and arrows when they first arrived, and because they did not use metal or much stone in constructing their buildings.
In reality, these things were the result of either the Yachi having lost the recent war or the Yachi’s semi-nomadic lifestyle which happened to have been interrupted when the Akronists arrived. The Yachi had been familiar with firearms for almost a century at that point, as they were able to purchase them from foreign traders and trappers who occasionally came to their lands, and even from some Zapolese traders in earlier times of peace. They had regularly used firearms for years prior to Akronist arrival, but had simply lost their stock of working weapons in the war. And while the Yachi could no longer make their semi-annual trek to their inland settlement because it had been taken by the Zapolese, they continued to use and build temporary structures that could be deconstructed and moved, on the presumption that they would soon retake control of their former settlement and resume their regular migrations. Zapolese records, in contrast to Akronist ones, rarely characterized the Yachi Tribe as being any more or less “advanced” than they, with their advantage being only in their numbers vastly exceeding the population of the Yachi. Indeed, if the Yachi had been as woefully outmatched by Zapolese technology as the Akronists seemed to believe, it is hardly likely the Yachi Tribe would have been able to hold onto relatively valuable coastal land for the centuries that they did.
For a few years, the Order of the Twelfth Niche continued to reach out to supporters across Tavaris to encourage believers in Matron Ilara’s doctrine to move to central Arcturia, and the Heart of Lansai continued to ferry supporters to the settlement. Within five years, there were more than two thousand Tavari settlers. Initially, the Yachi continued to be very happy with the Akronists, especially as their city expanded and the labor shortage eased. However, the growth soon became too much for the small city to handle, especially after especially wet weather across 1707 and 1708 caused repeated flooding and, with the stagnant water, cycles of malaria and cholera outbreaks. The rapidly expanding population also outraged the Zapolese, who sought the land for themselves. In 1708, believing herself to be approaching the end of her life, 68-year old Vedra Vantas Mettõba decided to engage in her plan to launch a war against the Zapolese to reclaim the lost Yachi lands. She also decided to lead the war personally as “Commander-in-Chief of the Forces of Akrona and Matron Ilara,” believing that the Goddess would imbue her with the power needed to defeat the Zapolese and “prove to the world that our Goddess does not shy away from the sword, but embraces it as the tool to destroy the wicked and, thus, to perpetuate and protect the lives of the good and pure.”
On November 9th, 1708, Vedra Vantas Mettõba and some 2,000 soldiers—about two thirds Yachi and one third Tavari—commenced a march down a narrow jungle footpath that led, about thirty to forty kilometers inland, to the Yachi wet season settlement, which by that point had been occupied by the Zapolese for almost ten years. The effort was entirely the idea of the Akronists, and even Akronists records show a reticence on the part of Yachi Tribe leadership to commit to the plan. In convincing the tribe, Vantas Mettõba remarked that “her reconnaissance” showed the Zapolese had built no fortifications in the Yachi settlement and that their numbers were small and dominated heavily by women and children. No records of any Tavari reconnaissance agents at the time exist, and it is generally believed by modern scholars that Vantas Mettõba was either entirely guessing or simply lying to encourage the Yachi to join her plan.
In reality, the Zapolese had spent the entire preceding decade pouring vast resources into the city they named Chekanka, constructing a stone wall more than three meters thick, several towers, and a steel gate. The Zapolese also had artillery, and maintained a well-trained, well-supplied city guard to protect the settlement, at which they had constructed a mint and an entire goldsmithing industry that had, even in a short time, become quite lucrative for the Zapolese as they expanded trade with the increasing number of foreign powers in the region. Chekanka had become strategically important to the Zapolese, who had been expecting and preparing for a Yachi invasion for some time and who had no intention of surrendering the city.
In contrast, Vedra Vantas Mettõba’s troops—while equipped with modern rifles and plenty of ammunition—were wholly and entirely unprepared for artillery fire, the possibility of which seems not to have occurred to Vantas Mettõba or to any of her “lieutenants.” Neither Vantas Mettõba nor any of her close circle of leaders, all elderly women like her, had ever led troops in battle or coordinated war strategy before. While many of the Tavari had fought in the Fourth War with Bana, which had ended 25 years prior, very few of them had served in command positions, and for many of them the Fourth War had been the last time they picked up a weapon at all. Vantas Mettõba appeared to have been expecting combat to take the form of the two sides lining up to fire rifles at each other, without any consideration of other kinds of weapons or formation strategies. Vantas Mettõba, her entire general staff, and hundreds more were killed in the opening moments of the battle when the Tavari, upon approaching Chekanka’s most fortified gate by walking down the main pedestrian road, proceeded to form into a line parallel to the city wall and load their rifles in the direct line of fire of the city’s already loaded and readied cannons, which fired upon them before Vantas Mettõba could even give an order to fire. The remaining Tavari-Yachi contingent immediately disintegrated and dispersed, though a significant number of those fleeing were flanked by waiting Zapolese soldiers and were also killed. Of the 2,000 or so troops who marched to Chekanka, fewer than 400 returned.
A few weeks after the terrible Tavari defeat at Chekanka, the Zapolese launched a major raid against Ilarís. While the Tavari and Yachi were able to hold off the Zapolese for three days, eventually the Zapolese breached the walls and overran the city, burning most of it to the ground. More than a thousand people in Ilarís were killed, representing at least a fifth of the city’s population, and in the months afterward, hundreds more left the city. In August, the remaining leaders of the Order of the Twelfth Niche declared the city of Ilarís lost and abandoned any hope of rebuilding, instead moving to a new site several dozen kilometers to the southwest and establishing a town they called New Ilarís, which in 1710 they renamed to simply “Ilarís.” It is this Ilarís that continues to exist today.
The Yachi were particularly devastated by the loss of their settlement, and for a time declared the Akronists to be their enemies and refused to trade or communicate with them. However, even more so than in the previous conflict with the Zapolese, their male, working-age population had been almost entirely killed off and they suffered from a massive shortage of labor. Additionally, many of the Yachi had converted to Akronism, and especially younger Yachi people sought to return to fellowship with Akronists. Many Yachi people began to defy the orders of their tribal leadership to settle with the Akronists in New Ilarís. However, raids from the Zapolese did not stop, as Zapolerya declared its intent to remove all Tavari and Yachi people from their lands. Only in 1715, after wars with Bana (the 1711-1714 Fifth War) and Milofia (in 1713) were over, did the Tavari government agree to send ships and soldiers to defend the Tavari settlers. A brief Tavari-Zapolese War occurred in 1715, in which the regular Royal Tavari Armed Forces overwhelmingly defeated the Zapolese. The peace treaty, known as the Treaty of Chekanka, established the borders of “the Ilarís Plantation” that are still used today to define the Mandate of Ilarís and established that “Tavari, Yachi, and Zapolese peoples shall have the right to reside and make a living” there, and explicitly stated that “the Tavari state shall hold no authority over nor any responsibility for” the Plantation, referring to it as “an entirely private enterprise outside the domain of the King and outside the public law.” The treaty entirely avoided the question of who was to govern the territory, leaving it to the residents of the area to decide.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, Ilarís—consisting mostly of the monastery complex for the Sisters of the Twelfth Niche, though it also featured a "harbour village" in which most of the Yachi lived—was the sole remaining urban settlement in the Ilarís Plantation. Chekanka had been plundered and partially razed by the Tavari, and with its looted wealth, the Sisters were capable of paying private companies of mercenaries to patrol the region and maintain order. Some Yachi returned to a semi-nomadic lifestyle, migrating between Chekanka and Ilarís with the seasons, but most remained in Ilarís full-time because lingering Zapolese settlers in the Chekanka area were hostile to Yachi people. Gradually, an uneasy peace settled across the region as the parties began to trade with each other and with others in the surrounding region. In 1715, not long after the end of the war, the Sisters sold their entire tract of land outside the city of Ilarís to the Central Arcturia Company, an enterprise formed by a handful of Tavari chiefs who were involved in settling Elatana and wished to expand their operations—foremost among them the Chief of Nuvo, i.e. the King, along with the Chiefs of Nacandar, Kantõši, Šonai, and Tivris, all Chiefs who had missed out on the earlier wave of Tavari chiefs establishing business enterprises in Elatana. The proceeds of the land sale were substantial and allowed the Sisters to focus on developing the city while the Central Arcturia Company focused on areas outside the city.
Tavari Central Arcturia
It became quickly apparent to the Central Arcturia Company that the region of Ilarís offered few resources that were not already elsewhere available in the Tavari Empire, and without the supply of prison labor that kept Elatana in active development, it was difficult to get enough labor to develop Ilarís as the Company wished. There were two mines, one for gold and one for silver, near Chekanka, which also housed a mint, but beyond this the primary resources were lumber and seafood, both of which were available in excess in Elatana. The Central Arcturia Company struggled to realize profits, an issue it never managed to fully resolve, and it quickly resorted to illegality—or rather, activities that would have been illegal in Tavaris, but which were not technically illegal in Ilarís, which had no legislature to speak of—in order to increase their cash flow. Cocaine and cannabis, both illegal in Tavaris at the time, quickly became cash crops in Ilarís, especially after the purchase of Racatrazi in 1742 opened a new Tavari port in the eastern hemisphere that, unlike prison colony Elatana, was not overloaded with Tavari law enforcement. A trade of drugs from Ilarís to Racatrazi began shortly after the port’s establishment and continues to some degree even into the modern day.
Ilarís is also infamous for slavery in its early years. Slavery was strictly illegal under the public law, but this rule did not technically exist in Ilarís, and it was not long after the Central Arcturia Company’s establishment that agents began to round up Yachi, Zapolese, and even Tavari settlers and force them into chain gangs similar to those in use by Tavari authorities in Elatana but without juries in courts of law declaring the laborers guilty of a crime beforehand. Slavery was repugnant to Akronist philosophy, but the Sisters of the Twelfth Niche had almost no sway outside the city after their land sale, and in any case depended on goods secured by the Company and could not afford to cease trading with them. The Sisters made a major show of outlawing slavery in the city, posting notices everywhere and declaring that any slave whose feet touched the soil of the city would be forever free—but the Company responded by simply disallowing its slaves from entering the city and, if it needed to bring them into the city anyway, putting them in carts or on animals so their feet did not touch the ground. The Central Arcturia Company regularly used slave labor to construct roads and buildings, to clear forests, and as farm laborers.
Usage of slaves abetted somewhat after the purchase of Racatrazi—in which the Tavari government actively intervened on plantations of tiefling laborers to force their employers to pay them or face arrest, because the Tavari government sought to secure the approval of the tieflings to secure more permanent control over the territory. In 1742, Line Nuvo ceased investing in the Central Arcturia Company and pressured the other chiefs to withdraw as well, citing the public embarrassment they would receive if it became known they were profiting from slavery. The Company nominally banned slavery in 1743 and made public promises of paying their laborers competitive salaries. The King resumed investing in the Company, and for a few years, the Company did indeed pay the salaries as promised. However, after investments again began to dwindle, the Company quietly began to simply cease to actually pay their workers, or, after a series of riots saw Company agents violently murdered, to pay a drastically reduced salary or pay laborers in tokens that could only be redeemed in Company-owned stores. By the turn of the 19th century, this latter practice—in which, on paper, the laborers were still being paid highly competitive “wages”—had become the default everywhere in Ilarís, and did not cease until the territory joined the UFC in 1928.
As a result of this practice of scrip money, the Central Arcturia Company established a relatively regular income stream as essentially the only retailer of goods in the territory, and the tokens—called mošdat, from motavi (meaning central) and našdat (the Tavari currency)—became the de facto official currency. Technically, the City of Ilarís was supposed to be under the sole authority of the Sisters of the Twelfth Niche, with the Central Arcturia Company’s holdings considered to be an entirely separate colony, in reality the Company was the dominating authority over the entire area, and the Sisters kept themselves concerned only with the affairs of their monastery itself and the religious affairs of the people of the city. Thus, the Company’s labor practices became standard everywhere. The Company’s Board of Directors acted as the legislative and executive authority in Ilarís, with the Sisters acting as the judicial authority only in the City of Ilarís and the Board doing so elsewhere. In exchange for continuing to pay most of the mercenaries who acted as the police and fugitive slave patrol in the entire territory, the Company permitted the Sisters to trade without paying the de facto tax they charged private citizens to conduct business outside company stores. Unlike actual Church of Akrona-sanctioned cloistered orders, the Sisters of the Twelfth Niche were overwhelmingly right-leaning in their politics and did not impress upon their faithful to uphold traditional Akronist values such as charity and standing up for the oppressed. Altogether, the two entities governing Ilarís had very similar values and shared in their desire to resist democratic governance and fair labor practices.
The Great War
By the turn of the 20th century, Ilarís had grown into a decently sized port city, though the surrounding environs were still mostly composed of scattered farms and lumber mills without many settlements except for camps of laborers. Only Chekanka was a permanent settlement of any relevance in the interior, and it had fallen into decline as productivity in the mines had decreased. When Tavaris entered the Great War in 1908, its Navy was devastated by an unexpected Asendavian-Banian attack on Metrati Anar and, as a result, it was rendered immediately unavailable to send any assistance whatsoever to just about any of its colonies. The Tavari Council of State summarily granted independence to Racatrazi by quite literally expelling it from Tavaris with only two days’ notice, summarily abandoning it to its fate, and notified Ilarís that, because it was not part of Tavaris and never had been, the settlers would never be assisted by the Tavari military no matter the circumstance. The Tavari settlers in Ilarís were surrounded by settlers from countries with whom they were at war, including Asendavia, Cryria, and Volscina. While Elatana made preparations for, and received, a wave of people fleeing Ilarís, the Tavari government undertook no other efforts to protect the settlement.
The Tavari government’s outright abandonment of the people in Ilarís was an outrage to the people of Ilarís but generated little controversy among Tavari people elsewhere, nearly all of whom were more preoccupied with the Asendavian and Banian occupations of Tavari territory, including in mainland Tavaris itself. Ultimately, however, Tavari holdings in the eastern hemisphere saw much, much less combat, and there was never a land invasion of Ilarís. In this respect, Ilarís actually fared better than elsewhere in the Tavari speaking world. Toward the end of the war, contrary to their prior pledge, the Tavari government did begin to send semi-regular patrols from Elatana to Ilarís, though this did little to assuage public outrage toward the Tavari government.
During the war, people in Ilarís began to question what, exactly, the nature of the territory they lived in was—was Ilarís a dependency of some other entity, or was it a state? Among the Central Acturia Company’s Board of Directors, some advocated for an explicit declaration of statehood, but others noted that regardless of the status of Ilarís, the Company was technically a Tavari corporation lawfully incorporated in the city of Arktorís, Elatana. In 1915, two centuries after it purchased its land from the Sisters of the Twelfth Niche, the Central Arcturia Company issued a “City Charter” to the City of Ilarís and then formally moved its place of legal incorporation to that city. However, because of fierce disagreement on the Board of how to organize a government, it stopped short of officially declaring sovereignty as a state and instead resolved to proceed under the status quo.
The 1915 city charter declared that Ilarís “shall establish an elected representative body to consult in the governance of the city,” but did not mandate what form that would take, nor did it spend much time in determining who would conduct elections or how. The Sisters of the Twelfth Niche took it upon themselves to conduct elections for a seven-member City Council in 1916, in which only members of the Church of Akrona in good standing were permitted to vote. Terms were to be for seven years, and the council was given “absolute authority over all matters of governance” in the city. In 1918, after two years of no action by the Central Arcturia Company to establish corresponding democratic bodies in the rest of the territory, the Council voted to assume authority for “all areas under the jurisdiction of the Treaty of Chekanka of 1715,” and held an election for seven more representatives. The fourteen-member “City Council” (that covered the entire area of more than eleven thousand square kilometers) continued to govern the territory for another ten years until the formation of the UFC.
Union of Free Cities
When the first Congress of Utopiya was called in March of 1928, it was still unclear whether “Ilarís” was an entity with any actual legal personhood, and if it was, whether it was one exceptionally large city, two adjacent colonies, or one sovereign state. It was also unclear whether the Central Arcturia Company, the Sisters of the Twelfth Niche, both, or neither of them could act on the behalf of Ilarís. Not even every other settlement in the area of Zapolerya had agreed to attend the Congress. However, one thing that all the stakeholders in Ilarís had come to feel was that the status quo was untenable and that Ilarís had to resolve its ambiguity somehow, and most of them agreed that alignment with a larger group would be advantageous. Ultimately, it was decided that the only extant, explicitly “governmental” body in the territory, the City Council of Ilarís, would represent the territory at the Congress, but that the Council would send the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Central Arcturia Company as its delegate.
In the margins of the Congress, in order to ensure a firmer legal foundation for any agreement the delegates might make at the Congress in right of Ilarís, the Chairman and a group of city council members who had traveled with him drafted and adopted a “Constitution of Ilarís.” This document explicitly cited the Treaty of Chekanka of 1715 as its source of authority, defining Ilarís as all those areas in which the treaty was in force and explicitly repeating its pledge that the “plantation” (as it had been called in 1715 and which the Constitution used to ensure continuity) would be open for all Tavari, Yachi, and Zapolese peoples to settle within. While not explicitly using the terminology “sovereign state” or “country,” the Constitution defined Ilarís, which it named without any descriptor whatsoever, as “an entirely independent entity of government without overarching hegemon or sovereign” and established that Ilarís’ government would have the authority to conduct foreign relations, wage war and peace, and “do all other things to which independent governments are entitled to do.” While this Constitution established that there was to be a “legislature for the whole of Ilarís” elected by popular vote and a Supreme Court, it did not establish a singular executive and instead foresaw an “executive committee” to serve in this role and left the details of this to be determined at a later date.
This entity named just “Ilarís,” existed independently for less than 24 hours, as the Ilarašta delegation readily acceded to the Congress’ declaration of the creation of the Union of Free Cities on March 4th, 1928. Other delegations at the Congress insisted that there be a singular person who could be identified as responsible for, or at least as a point of contact for, each government in the Union, but the Ilarašta delegation could not agree on whether to grant the distinction to the Sisters or the Company. Other delegations readily offered their own monarchs as this point of contact, and while the Tavari monarchs had not been personally involved in Ilarís in years, the Ilarašta delegation viewed the Tavari monarch as a suitable “neutral” alternative. Since 1883, the Tavari monarch had been entirely unable to legally own any money whatsoever and so had ceased to invest in the Company. Without even securing the prior approval of the Tavari monarch, at the time Queen Kanor VII, the Ilarašta delegation declared that she would be Lady-Patron of Ilarís. The delegation made quick amendments to the day-old constitution naming the Lady or Lord-Patron as the head of state and declaring the name of the entity to be “the Mandate of Ilarís Within The Union of Free and Autonomous Cities Under the Mandate of the Council of Utopiya,” a legal name it continues to hold to this day.
When news of this reached the Queen, she immediately granted her approval to the decision without consulting the Tavari cabinet. This, as well as the grant of the title itself, were both enormous scandals, as it was believed that the monarch could use this authority to circumvent the strict legal limits on the monarch’s ability to own money—which is to say, that they could use this authority to own money at all. The Silver Court has never publicly admitted to it, but it is considered something of an open secret that the Tavari monarchs did, and do, illegally hold money and other assets in Ilarís outside the reach of the Tavari treasury. A brief scandal roiled the halls of Tavari government, but ultimately the Tavari Supreme Constitutional Court ruled that the Tavari Diet had no lawful authority to revoke the title of Lady-Patron from the Queen, nor could it lawfully revoke any title issued by a foreign state at all. However, by the end of 1928 the Diet had passed a law requiring the monarch to attain the permission of the Cabinet to travel outside the country, and a de facto ban on ever permitting the monarch to travel to Ilarís meant that the Lady-Patron could never personally exercise her duties or personally access her wealth in the territory.
The government of Tavaris has not, to date, intervened in the affairs of Ilarís outside of its reticence to permit the King or Queen to travel there. However, the population of the territory has remained majority Tavari and even the non-Tavari in Ilarís tend to be Akronist; as a result, there continues to be a strong cultural connection between Ilarís and Tavaris. In 2022, Ilarís was permitted to join the Tavari Union as a non-voting member, in recognition of its long history as a de facto dependency of Tavaris but never a part of Tavaris proper. Its non-voting status also relates to its nature as a subdivision of the UFC, which is a sovereign state that controls some aspects of Ilarís’ affairs including such things as the currency and the territorial waters that Tavari Union members are supposed to hand over to the Union but which Ilarís cannot. It is the Union’s only non-voting member, though proposals to grant such a status to New Tavaris within Vakani Dalar have been raised.
Government
In general since 1928, Ilarís has reformed from a de facto corporate state to one with robust democratic governance. While the “Constitution of Ilarís,” the 1928 document written and ratified quickly at the Congress of Utopiya, remains lawfully valid—as does the Treaty of Chekanka, which is still the document that defines the borders of Ilarís and which is considered to have “created” Ilarís—most of the Constitution has been superseded by a document known as the Basic Law of Ilarís. The Basic Law establishes a parliamentary system in which an elected body known as the Council of Ilarís serves as the legislature. This Council has 34 members who are legally required to be nonpartisan. Of these 34, 14 are elected “at-large,” while 20 are elected from single-member districts. Elections are fixed at different terms for the two classes of seats: the 14 at-large members are elected for 7 year terms, while the other 20 are elected for terms of three-and-a-half years. The Council of Ilarís elects the Chief Administrator of Ilarís, who leads the executive branch of government. The Chief Administrator is not legally required to be a member of the Council, but each one since 1928 has been. The Chief Administrator leads a cabinet of ministers who are called Administrators; these officials, too, are not required to be but almost always are members of the Council. The Chief Administrator makes these appointments subject to confirmation from the Council and, once appointed, they cannot be removed except by the Council.
Somewhat infamously, the Constitution of Ilarís and the Basic Law of Ilarís disagree on what the territory's name is. The Constitution uses only the name "Ilarís" without any descriptor whatsoever except in a single clause appended to the end which states that the "official name of Ilarís shall be 'the Mandate of Ilarís Within The Union of Free and Autonomous Cities Under the Mandate of the Council of Utopiya.'" Documentation produced by the Congress of Utopiya uses this name; however, it consistently spells it as "Ilaris" without the diacritic mark used in Tavari. The Basic Law of Ilarís consistently uses the term "Greater Ilarís" without further descriptor, which was intended to effect a name change but which is not technically official because the name of the territory is defined elsewhere by UFC constitutional law that Ilarís does not itself have the authority to amend. The term "Greater Ilarís" is most commonly used in the modern day except in official contexts.
The Lord-Patron of Ilarís has very few even nominal powers; they do not sign bills into law, do not appoint the Chief Administrator or any Administrators, and hold no power to overrule any government decision. The primary role of the Lord-Patron is to “ensure the compliance of Ilarís with all requirements under the Utopiya Mandate and to be the guarantor of Ilarís,” which is not further defined in law. In theory, the Lord-Patron holds the power to declare that the territory is “out of compliance,” but the consequences of such a declaration are also undefined. Each year, the Lord-Patron signs and seals a document, entirely written and prepared by the elected government of Ilarís, which certifies that Ilarís is “compliant with all dictates of the First Congress of Utopiya of 1928,” which represents the entire summation of the Lord-Patron’s constitutional role in all but the most exceptional of circumstances. However, the Silver Court has historically taken great care to visibly demonstrate this process being completed entirely outside the control of the Tavari state—the Chief Administrator of Ilarís flies to Tavaris to deliver the document at an unreported time and date on a commercial flight so that Tavari authorities do not know when they are due to arrive, the document is delivered to the Lord-Patron in a briefcase that is handcuffed to the arm of the Chief Administrator in two places, and the signing always takes place in the Lord-Patron’s bedroom, which long standing convention holds to be a place which no Prime Minister nor other Tavari government official can ever enter without the personal permission of the monarch. In general, the Silver Court holds itself to be “the royal court in right of Ilarís” in the same way it is of Tavaris and, since 2022, Rodoka and the Isles. A secondary role of the Lord-Patron, defined in statute but not the Basic Law or Constitution, is to “represent the people, culture, and interests of Ilarís abroad.” Few Lords-Patron have ever undertaken such duties, though Zaram IV was personally involved in establishing the “Ilarís Institute in Nuvrenon,” considered analogous to an “embassy of Ilarís” (unrelated to the embassies exchanged between Tavaris and the Union of Free Cities itself.)
Economy
The economy of Ilarís is overwhelmingly dominated by the service sector, though lumber, paper products, and cannabis do continue to remain significant industries. Similarly to neighboring Ellesborg, Ilarís is considered to have significantly low regulation of the financial sector, and has served as something of a tax haven for Tavari businesses, especially those that deal primarily in Elatana or Racatrazi. Cannabis is legal in Ilarís and all other narcotics are decriminalized. Prostitution and gambling are also legal, though highly regulated, and it remains illegal to purchase the services of a prostitute even if it is legal for them to offer services. Ilarís depends on these lax regulations to entice businesses and their patrons, and the political debates surrounding them have largely been considered settled since the 1970s. The Brothel Employees Union is one of the most powerful in the territory, especially remarkable considering the relative weakness of the labour movement otherwise, and several of its members and leaders have been elected to the Council of Ilarís.
Ilarís has very lax requirements on financial auditing and public disclosures; famously, companies do not even have to disclose who their owners are if the owners are unpaid, and there is little done to verify if anonymous owners are in fact unpaid. The Universal Wrestling League has at least one anonymous owner whose identity has been the subject of much speculation, and a common rumor states that it is Emperor Otan IV who owns all or part of the company. There are also significantly fewer restrictions on the transfer of funds, which has led to complaints that Ilarís is a haven for money laundering—the drug cartels of Racatrazi are in particular said to take advantage of this.
In recent years, especially since the 2022 legalization of cannabis in Tavaris, Ilarís has begun to attempt to position itself as a leader in industries associated with cannabis such as cannabis testing, cannabis strain research and production, and in offering banking and other financial services to cannabis dispensaries and businesses around the world, especially in countries that do not permit banks to offer these services because cannabis is illegal. Firms from Ilarís have begun to expand into Tavaris to take advantage of the nascent, still forming market there; very few cannabis testing facilities yet exist in the country.