Free Republic of Avelax

The Free Republic of Avelax is the largest and most populous nation on the rew of Dadauar, and arguably the most powerful. It is commonly referred to as the FRA, as the Republic, or simply as Avelax, the last despite the ambiguity with the continent of the same name. Though nominally a democracy, the Free Republic is in practice as partialistic and peremptory as any other onirarchy. The dreamlords of the Republic may contrive to give their citizens the illusion of self-rule, but they do so only in order to keep them complacent and maintain their control.

The most common demonym to refer to citizens of the FRA is "Freeman", plural "Freemen". The same word is also employed as an adjective to refer to anything related to the Republic. This is done regardless of the word's literal meaning, which may lead to apparent oxymorons when one speaks, for instance, of "Freeman prisoners".

Geography

The Free Republic of Avelax occupies most of the mainland of the eponymous continent. The Xien Peninsula to the south is held by other onirarchies, and the southern part of the Talacho Peninsula to the west pertains to the nation of Mapland, left alone by the FRA—for now—mostly because the steamy swamp and jungle covering the area make it not worth the trouble to occupy and develop. Aside from that, only a few relatively small areas of the continent are not claimed by the Republic: the nation of Onraa and the Ivinian colony of Kasie on the northern coast; the nation of Ekerben in the Aoala Mountains to the east; and the Godhill, a small but troublesome area that the Republic leaders grudging agreed to cede as international territory so that other nations would help deal with it.

Between the two peninsulas, the two capes on the north coast claimed by other nations, and the Isthmus of Calacca that connects Avelax to Burcady, the Free Republic has five discrete sections of coastline, and borders three seas—the Golden Sea to the southwest, the Sea of Firiti to the southeast, and the Akararal Sea to the north—plus the Camilout Ocean at the far west. Some parts of the coast have common names they are called by: the stretch of coastline between Onraa and Burcady is the New Coast, that between Ivinii and Onraa the Lobster Coast; the southern part of the southwestern shore is the Hidden Coast; the part of the southeastern shore south of the mouth of the Thesephe River is the Lonely Coast.

The Free Republic of Avelax extends into all three major climate zones. Most of the nation is temperate, but the western third of the Republic's territory is in the tropics, and the eastern edge of the continent near the Aoala Mountains is pageric. The majority of the population lives in the heartland, the part of Avelax lying north of the Ngo Mountains excluding the Talacho Peninsula. While much of this area was once forested, it is now heavily urbanized, the only parts of the heartland not covered in cities, farmland, or infrastructure, aside from some small and scattered parks and reserves, being the heights of the Verecan Mountains where the land is too steep and rugged to be worth building on. The fringes of the country, however, are less developed. While the Free Republic has built cities and other structures in its portion of the Talacho Peninsula, much of the area remains virgin jungle, and likewise the Red Forest west of the Ngo Mountains and the Atahajji Desert to its east remain similarly underdeveloped compared to the heartland. Even in the heartland, the felled forests may not be entirely gone; sometimes people traveling through a city unexpectedly find themselves confronted with a spectral vision of woodland, a phenomenon known as the Phantom Forest.

Government

In principle, the Free Republic is ruled by a premier and a National Assembly, the latter comprising one member from each of the Republic's forty-five "autonomous provinces". Both the premier and the assembly are elected by the people, in keeping with the façade of democracy the Freeman onirarchs are careful to maintain. However, they are elected from candidates chosen by the onirarchs. It is a body called the People's Council, comprising the fifty or so most powerful onirarchs in the nation, that holds the real power. The candidates for premier are chosen by the People's Council, invariably from their own membership, and even after being elected the premiere consults frequently with the rest of the People's Council and usually follows their wishes. The existence of the People's Council is not exactly a secret, but it is heavily downplayed. The average citizen of the FRA, if they have heard of the People's Council at all, knows of it only as an obscure advisory body of little apparent importance. The membership of the People's Council is not public, but most of the members are well known to the populace, not directly because of their membership in the People's Council but because they hold other important government positions, often as ministers or governors. The selection process for the premierial candidates is sufficiently obfuscated that it's far from obvious that the People's Council has anything to do with it, and if a civic-minded citizen did try to look into the matter they would be likely to falsely infer that the candidates in some way arise organically from the populace. A particularly determined investigation might discover the involvement of the People Council, but such an investigation would be likely to attract the attention of the onirarchs—much to the investigator's detriment.

While the Free Republic's purported democratic principles are mostly a pretense, though, this isn't to say that the election is entirely meaningless. All candidates are drawn from the People's Council and will pursue the interests of the onirarchs, but they are not identical, and may have some genuine differences in opinion or philosophy that may be reflected in their policies. In fact, the previous premier, Derome Crale, furnishes a marked example of this. Like many premierial candidates, Crale campaigned on promises of equality and making things better for the common people; unlike most premieral candidates, he turned out to actually mean it. While he could not entirely defy the will of the People's Council, he used what leeway he could wrangle to ease some of the burden of the common people and grant them more rights and assurances. Unfortunately, his successor, the current premier Eulaige Hahorbath, is much more typical and much less sympathetic to the nation's populace. While she affects a benign, grandmaternal manner, Hahorbath has little interest in the people's welfare, and has walked back many of Crale's reforms.

While the premier and the National Assembly make the highest-level decisions (surreptitiously subject to the People's Council), most of the actual administrative business of the nation is carried out by the ministries, each headed by a minister appointed by the premier—and also almost always chosen from the membership of the People's Council. While the premier does have the authority to dissolve or rename ministries or create new ones, this power is exercised infrequently. Currently the Free Republic has twelve ministries: the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Development, the Ministry of Faith, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of the Homeland, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Memory, the Ministry of Peace, the Ministry of Provision, the Ministry of the Seas, and the Ministry of Service. Not all the ministries deal with matters obvious from their names; the Ministry of Memory, for instance, concerns itself primarily with recordkeeping, and the primary purview of the Ministry of Peace is propaganda.

At the regional level, each province is headed by a governor. Similarly to the premier, the governor is elected by the people of the province—but similarly to the premier, they are elected from a list of candidates provided by the onirarchs. Specifically, each province has a Satellite Council that plays much the same rôle in the provincial government as the People's Council does in the national; members of the Satellite Councils, like those of the People's Council, are powerful mages, although generally less powerful than those on the People's Council. The Satellite Councils select the candidates for governor for their respective provinces, as well as the candidates for the province's seat on the National Assembly. All these candidates are drawn either from the Satellite Council or from the People's Council.

While the provinces are called autonomous, in practice the governors do of course answer to the premier and, more importantly, to the People's Council. Nevertheless, they are afforded a certain amount of independence, and governors are allowed to pursue policies that differ from the national norms, as long as they don't push things too far. Although the provinces vary widely in size—from Cadarei, the largest province, with an area of about 2.15 million square kilometers, down to Creitcrafel, the smallest, with an area of about 2,500—they are all in principle equal, with an equal representation on the National Assembly and receiving equal treatment from the national government. In practice, of course, the richer provinces and those with especially useful resources or just cannier governors do have more sway and can often finagle special treatment. Potentially the most influential province is Casselat, which lies near the center of the nation and the continent, but its influence is unofficial and unknown to most of the populace. While the nation's nominal capital is Morgadara, located in the province of Fergerren at the mouth of the Varanuin River, it is in Casselat that most of the real governing takes place. Although the Premierial Palace is in Morgadara, and the National Assembly meets there, those meetings are mostly for show. For the most part these officials' business in Morgadara is only to carry out policies already decided on by the People's Council—and it is in Casselat that the People's Council most commonly convenes, particularly in the twin cities of Herebar and Intbar. Shrewd governors of Casselat can leverage this position to win their province extra concessions or benefits.

Law Enforcement

Like most onirarchies, the Free Republic of Avelax relies entirely on batirines for law enforcement, as well as to fill in for a military when necessary. Enforcer batirines patrol the cities; eye batirines watch for trouble; guardian batirines are stationed at important sites. The Freeman government arms its batirines with various weapons, particularly favoring executive rods, of which the Free Republic has created a few novel varieties, named unmouthably after semimythical antipestile rulers: the Aageldrach rod, the Gaerliet rod, the Uathnion rod.

The onirarchs of the FRA have also created some bespoke batirines unique to the nation. Detainer batirines resemble enforcers but have a lighter build and longer legs; they are quicker and more agile than enforcers, at the cost of a somewhat decreased durability. Sometimes accompanying squads of enforcers and sometimes forming units of their own, detainers are often able to capture malcontents who would be able to evade or outrun the slower enforcers. The government claims the lacertine hunter batirines are designed to find and neutralize the most dangerous criminals; they're actually mostly used against the resistance. Similar in shape to hunter batirines but very different in function, awaiter batirines are effectively mobile bombs that the Republic uses to extort other nations—mostly undeveloped nations, since such a blatant threat against another onirarchy would likely lead to a war that the Republic doesn't want just now.

The most common punishment in the Republic, as in many other onirarchies, is dream redirection, although imprisonment is available as an option for those who don't respond to this. Officially, execution is not a legal option as a criminal penalty in the Free Republic—but the Freeman government is certainly not above covertly arranging the disappearance of those it finds particularly troublesome.

Economy

The Free Republic of Avelax is the world's largest importer of food. While there is some farmland in the FRA, it isn't nearly enough for the Republic's alimentary needs, especially since almost none of it is devoted to staple crops; the onirarchs prefer to use the land's limited farmland to produce luxury goods they can sell elsewhere. Among the Free Republic's most significant agricultural exports are artichokes, asparagus, cashews, cinnamon, fennel, ginger, grapes, jasmine, jawandle, lavender, lemongrass, loquats, macadamia nuts, ninarn, pepper vines, persimmons, pollfruit, pomegranates, salsify, vanilla, walanger loaves, and various berries and exotic flowers. Next to Seseal, the FRA is also one of the nations that has most embraced aquaculture, which adds to its exports fish, seaweeds, crabs, sea cucumbers, and of course the lobsters that give the Lobster Coast its name. To facilitate subaquean labor, Freeman onirarchs have invented a device called an airhelm that allows air-breathing people to breathe underwater, though of course much such labor is also done by undines who need no such aids.

The Republic's main export is magical telesmata, the sheer size of the nation and the amount of dream energy available to its onirarchs making it able to produce many magical goods much more efficiently than most nations can manage. Streampaths were invented in the Free Republic, and the FRA remains its largest manufacturer, selling them to other nations in prefab pieces that join together when put in position. The FRA is also the main manufacturer of sustenance tanks and one of the major suppliers of tabulator batirines, flittercars, and enforcer wagons. As in most onirarchies, the use of magic is banned in the Republic without a special license, and those licenses are issued almost exclusively to the onirarchs themselves. The onirarchs may grant magic licenses to someone who shows promise of exceptional skill in indution and put them to work making telesmata, but most of these items are created either in automated factories or by specialized batirines called incanters.

Not all the FRA's exports are agricultural or magical. The Republic has valuable mineral reserves in its mountains, and mines barbasy, copper, iron, lead, marble, silnibar, sourstone, and other metals and rocks that it sells abroad—mostly to undeveloped nations, since the onirarchies with their access to metallic dreamstuff have less need of such materials.

Internal economy

The Free Republic provides its people with free (if spartan) housing, but unlike some other onirarchies, it does not provide food or other necessities. This means that every citizen of the Republic must have a source of income in order to eat, but the Freeman government makes sure there are enough jobs available to keep all its citizens employed—in fact, if the government finds out about a Freeman who is sustaining themselves by scavenging through trash or relying on the generosity of others, their agents will find a job for them. Those who seem particularly suited for the positions may be placed where they play a part in the system themselves, as inspectors or employment placement personnel. Some Freemen are actually employed doing useful tasks, although tasks that could in principle be done by batirines, such as farming, cleaning, and manufacture. Others are given meaningless makework jobs that serve little practical purpose, keeping unnecessary records or maintaining useless gadgets. The point is less to make sure Freeman citizens are productive than to keep them busy so they don't have the leisure to reflect too much about their circumstances—as well as to give the illusion of self-sufficiency so they are motivated to maintain the status quo. It is not technically illegal to be unemployed in the Free Republic, but it is very strongly discouraged, and anyone who continually refuses to work is likely to end up arrested on trumped-up unrelated charges. The exceptions are people who are unable to work due to disability, or who are over sixty years old, at which age they are permitted to retire. The government does give a small allowance to the disabled and the retired; after all, the onirarchs still benefit from their dreams, so it vails them to keep them alive.

The official currency of the FRA is the tule; the median annual wage of a Freeman worker is about five thousand tules. The Republic has done away with coinage or any other form of tangible money; a citizen's net worth is instead tracked by a network of tabulator batirines, and tules exist now only as an abstract unit of monetary value with no physical representation. Trade terminals are common in the cities where people can interface with this network to make transactions, transferring money between individuals or from an individual to the government. Payment for employment is automatically credited to a worker's account on a weekly basis. When this system was first implemented, people interfaced with trade terminals through implants in their left index fingers, but advancements in design of trade terminals have made these implants unnecessary, and modern terminals are able to recognize individuals by their souls without the necessity for any such addition. Though the retirement of physical currency was nominally done for the sake of convenience, in practice it means that the Freeman government has knowledge and record of every transaction made within the nation, and that Freeman citizens have no purchase power outside the Republic where this system isn't used. This has motivated the black market and the resistance to develop their own system of currency, with which they can trade without the onirarchy's oversight. This shadow currency, known as pall money in apparent allusion to the mysterious Avelachian Pall that once mantled the continent, is made of dreamstuff stolen by Resistance wizards from the onirarchs' creations.

The cities of the Republic have many stores at which the residents can spend their earnings. These stores are typically highly specialized; rather than just selling food, a particular store will sell only fruit, or only a particular kind of cuisine, and rather than just selling clothing, a particular store will sell only shirts, or only shoes. There are stores that sell luxury items such as candies, perfumes, and decorative objets d'art, but they are not regularly frequented by the typical Freeman citizen, who may treat themself to the occasional extravagance if they find themself with a little money left over after fulfilling their basic needs, but is content to spend most of their small income on food, clothing, toiletries, and simple furniture, devoting most of their free time to dreaming and so feeling little need to voluptuate their waking environment. There are those less complacent Freemen, however, who either by taking on extra work or by leveraging their skills and talents into higher-paying jobs, are able to earn enough to regularly afford to buy such nonessentials and live less frugal lifestyles, possibly even renting more spacious accommodations than the small apartments provided by the government. An especially industrious Freeman may even be able to afford to own their own store—while most stores in the Republic are owned by the government, citizens can apply to rent their own storefronts and run their own establishments, which despite the high fees involved can be a very lucrative endeavor. Of course, while citizens of the Republic may have the opportunity to improve their means and raise their stations, doing so inevitably invites the attention of the onirarchs. Such ambition may imply a potentially disruptive dissatisfaction with existing conditions, and those Freemen who run their own businesses will be carefully monitored—and very possibly eventually either recruited as agents of the onirarchs if they seem sufficiently useful, or quietly eliminated if they show signs of sympathy for the resistance.

People

The people of the Republic are of mixed ethnicity and species, but predominant are the Balians, a light-skinned human people originally from the continent of Burcady, who crossed the isthmus into Avelax just under two thousand years ago, driving out most of the indigenous Kenever people. But Avelax has had immigrants—voluntary and otherwise—from many other places, and is home to a considerable mix of people; the Balians form a slim majority, but there are many significant minorities. This is especially true in the outskirts of the nation; in the heartland of the Republic the Balians' majority is stronger, while in some of the outlying provinces they may actually be outnumbered by other peoples.

Nor are all of the Freeman citizens human. Gnulus make up a little under four percent of the Freeman populace, particularly the half-slug b'rac, the half-weasel hhuzen, and the half-moose davines indigenous to the continent. Less common nonhuman folks found in the Republic include wunderkinder, bardarics, chitches, velts, and whisplings, the last apparently the descendants of people magically altered by the Pall. The Verecan and Ngo Mountains are also home to strange monocular humanoid creatures called thyvars that seem to be ellogous but that the Freeman government generally prefers to ignore, at least for the moment. (The also alpestral zjalaks have likewise been suggested to be possibly ellogous, but their case is much more dubious.)

There are also many Freeman citizens who were born human, but have been altered by the onirarchs into dreambuilt. Many undines carry out the Republic's aquaculture, while ogres and spiderlings work in fields suited to their capacities. Unlike in some onirarchies, the Freeman government does not routinely rig children, but only makes these modifications to adults who are supposedly able to give informed consent. However, this consent is typically obtained through coaxing or coercion; it is still largely the case that the government decides which of its citizens are to become dreambuilt to achieve its purposes.

As with batirines, the Freeman onirarchs have created some types of dreambuilt unique to the nation, perhaps the best known of which is the dreamsucker, which looks fully human but has a magical implant that draws the dream energy of those sleeping nearby and channels it to a wizard linked to the dreambuilt. While of limited utility inside the Republic, since the onirarchs already siphon off the dream energy of its citizens anyway, dreamsuckers are often placed in the surrounding undeveloped nations to harvest dream energy from there.

Language

The official language of the Free Republic of Avelax is Orlian, the language of the Balian people who founded the Republic. All government documents and signs are in Orlian, and those who do not speak the language are disadvantaged even more so than most of the oppressed populace. Next to Orlian, the most widely spoken languages in the Republic are Kenever, Maplander, Gcole, Chuen, U', Qeqe, and Loua.

Culture

Although people of many different origins and ethnicities have settled in the Free Republic, the government strives to impose on them a unified culture and set of values. Nevertheless, ethnic enclaves do exist, especially in the outskirts of the Republic outside the heartland; the government may disapprove of them but has not completely eradicated them. For the most part, Freemen, perduced by their leaders, place a high value on structure and conformity, while at the same time at least paying lip service to freedom and individuality. While few if any Freemen would put it this way, the overall idea is perhaps that people of the Free Republic have the rights and liberty to choose to live however they want, but given that liberty they will naturally want to choose to live as everyone else does and as their leaders encourage them to live.

Architecture and urban design

Like those in many onirarchies, the cities of the Free Republic of Avelax are characterized by tall, cylindrical buildings made of dreamstuff, mostly in various shades of red. The tops of the buildings of the Republic are usually domed, and balconies are common but windows are rare. There is seldom any enclosed connection between buildings; even travel between neighboring buildings is usually done through streampaths, or perhaps if there is a lot of traffic between the buildings in question through travel circles. Many buildings do have doors on the ground floor leading outside, but they are seldom used; many Freeman never set foot outdoors. The city's buildings are seldom laid out in any orderly arrangement, but scattered apparently randomly, but since almost all travel between buildings is done through streampath or travel circle most of their inhabitants have little reason to care about their physical arrangement or relative positions. Sometimes, of course, in cities that predate the rise of the onirarchs, the modern city plans still show some traces of the cities' original layouts.

The cities of the heartland flow into each other with little way to tell where one city ends and another begins without consulting a map. There are parts of the heartland given over to farmland or to infrastructure such as batirine mills, but no one enters those areas except those assigned to work there, and most people may be only vaguely aware of their existence. Outside the heartland, urbanization is less complete and the cities are less sprawling, but streampaths connect these cities too to each other and to the heartland, and people still commonly get by without ever leaving the buildings.

To facilitate the specification of addresses within a city, each city of the Free Republic of Avelax is divided into two overlapping sets of blocks. These blocks are rarely compact in shape, but usually long, narrow, and often tortuously curving, the better to ensure that each block of one set overlaps with as many blocks of the other set as possible. The blocks are given names, generally following patterns or protocols that may differ between cities; it is common, though far from universal, that the names of blocks of the primary partition—the one stated first in an address—are adjectives, and those of the secondary partition nouns; another frequently used scheme is for the names of primary partition to be nouns and the second to be numbers.

Cuisine

As controlled and uniform as Freeman culture is in many ways, its cuisine is one aspect in which it can rightly boast of variety. As in most onirarchies, highly processed foods such as durways, flavor sticks, and foamcakes are common, but more traditional food is available for those who want it. Shops and restaurants in the Republic sell food ingredients and prepared dishes from all over the world, from Alfenaner podge pies to Rrongan seafire stew. While the recipes are not completely authentic, and Freeman culinarians may make their own changes and take some liberties, still the food in the Republic is more diverse than in most other onirarchies.

For all its eagerness to adopt foods from other nations, however, the Republic has never developed much of a characteristic cuisine of its own. Certainly the Kenever who once inhabited the area had their own magiristic traditions, as did the Balian settlers from Chrate who founded what would become the modern nation, but foods from these kitchens, while obtainable at some rare specialty stores, are today neither widely available nor popular in the Republic. If there is anything distinctive about Freeman cuisine, it is its fondness for fusions. As much as there are establishments that sell staples and delicacies from all over the world, there are also those that combine two farflung dishes into something new, and it is perhaps this that the Republic can best claim as its major contribution to cookery.

Art

While the Freeman government does not patronize or otherwise encourage the creation of art, nevertheless there are of course those who are sufficiently driven by artistic impuluses to engage in artistic pursuits on their own time, and some notable artistic movements and individual works of art have appeared in the Republic despite its leaders' disinterest. Notable sculptors have arisen in the vicinity of the Verecan Mountains, many following the Carathian School that emphasizes using the natural patterns and grain of the rock the sculpture is carved from. Freeman music, not unlike its cuisine, often combines instruments from many different nations; some musicians have also revived use of Kenever instruments such as the eolar and the honeycomb. A genre of fiction that arose in the Republic is the godtale, a story usually set in the historical past and describing the details of gods—though given the Republic's typically onirarchal disdain of the gods, godtales are almost invariably either tragedies or farces.

Education

General education of young children in the Free Republic is neither compulsory nor subsidized by the state. Tutors and private schools do exist for those who want their children to have a broad base of learning, but there is little demand for them and they are in correspondingly small supply. What the government does both provide and require is education in trade schools, to prepare its young citizens for their future lives as productive workers.

The government does not mandate which trade school a child will go to; that is a decision of the child and/or their parents. Local government functionaries called proponents may work with the families to settle on a suitable trade, but this varies widely by province; in some provinces the proponent's "suggestions" have almost the force of law, while in others the provincial leaders think it not worth the bother to meddle with their citizens' career choices, and there are no proponents at all.

Different trade schools admit students at different ages; students who aspire to careers that require more extensive education enroll earlier than those that require a more modest training program. Those going into careers as laborers or farmers may enter the trade schools in their mid teens, while those who hope to attain positions as agents of the onirarchs may have to begin their training as young as seven. The more education a job requires the better it tends to pay, however, so those children who commit early on to a position that requires them to enter trade school young are rewarded for their foresight—assuming they are able to stick with their studies.

Clothing

Clothing in the Free Republic of Avelax tends toward the practical and unostentations. Men and women alike usually wear blouses and loose trousers in earth tones and neutral colors, or sleeveless shirts and short trousers in hot weather. Hats are uncommon, except for broad-brimmed field hats called monders that Freeman farmers and others who work outdoors wear on particularly sunny days.

In cold weather, especially in the mountains and in the eastern, pageric part of the nation, Freemen venturing outdoors wear heavy outerwear over their other clothing to keep warm. This most commonly takes the form of long, shaggy coats called valats and heavily insulated jackets called brelgens. While the physical designs of valats and brelgens are fairly standardized and exhibit little variation, they do vary considerably more in color and patterns than most Freeman clothing, meaning the colder regions of the country are the most colorful, at least as far as their people's garb.

Footwear is where Freeman attire varies the most. It is said, and is to a large degree true, that you can tell a Freeman's profession by what's on their feet, from the heavy boots of farmers to the polished, pointed red slip-ons worn by clerks and the buckled shoes of shopkeepers. When not at work, Freeman may of course change into different shoes, but generally even then they wear shoes that are similar to their work shoes but perhaps more comfortable.

Technically, there are no laws in most provinces of the Free Republic against public nudity, and Freemen are not legally prohibited from going around topless or even fully naked. However, while not illegal, public nudity is generally considered socially unacceptable and scandalous. Furthermore, as with any deviation from the norm, someone who appears naked in public may invite the scrutiny of the onirarchs, who mistrust any sort of noncomformity. Oddly, there is perhaps an even stronger cultural taboo against appearing barefoot in public than against being otherwise naked, unless one is swimming—and even then, many Freemen prefer to wear bathing slippers.

Family

Marriage in the Republic is quick and easy, requiring little more than registration at a municipal clerk's office. There is no restriction on the genders of the nuptialities, and polygamous marriages, while unusual, are permitted. Divorce is also common and routine but discouraged if the couple has any young children. Unlike in many onirarchies, in the Republic children stay with and are brought up by their parents, rather than being taken and raised by the state. This fact is often brought up in the government's propaganda to compare the Republic favorably to other developed nations; here parents are given the freedom to raise their children as they will. In fact, to motivate parents to raise more citizens for the state, the government subsidizes childcare, giving parents a stipend to pay for food and other expenses for their children.

After the children grow up and move out, however, family ties in the Republic are weak. Very rarely do adults live with their parents or with any other family members aside from their own children and spouse; siblings may keep in touch with their parents and/or each other and perhaps occasionally visit, but it is not uncommon for a Freeman to have never met and to know nothing about any relatives other than their parents, siblings, spouse, and children. Freemen feel no obligation to care for elderly parents, since they are already provided for by the government, which gives them an apartment like all citizens, and finds work for them to do to support themselves if they are able to do so and have not yet retired.

Religion

The Freeman government does not outlaw religion; citizens are free to worship any gods they want to. However, very few Freemen actually do worship any gods, because the government has done a very thorough job of suppressing religion not through laws but through propaganda and social pressure. The onirarchs take pains to ensure that the gods are portrayed as impotent, outmoded, and somewhat ridiculous, and this has been effective enough that even though they are legally allowed to do so most human Freemen in the heartland would no sooner openly worship a god than they would wear shoes on their ears. There are, of course, exceptions, but they face not only general opprobrium but also the suspicion of the onirarchs.

This is less true in the outskirts of the nation, and among its nonBalian and nonhuman population. Many of the people of the Talacho Peninsula still worship the same gods they honored before the advent of the Republic, which are by and large the same gods worshipped in Mapland. The people of the Atahali Desert, too, still largely honor their old gods. Even in the heartland, while most Kenever have assimilated to Freeman culture, there are some who defiantly keep to some of their ancestors' ways, which includes worshipping their ancestors' gods. As for the nonhumans, many gnulus have gods of their own, and the davines in particular still hold religious ceremonies at their mountain temples.

Dreaming

As typical for onirarchies, the citizens of the Republic most look forward to the time they spend dreaming. The onirarchs of the Republic have created a dreamworld for their subjects called the Eight Realms. As the name implies, the Eight Realms comprise eight separate planes; five of them are publicly accessible to everyone, while the other three require some payment or service to the onirarchs—another way the Republic encourages its people to play by its rules.

Those sentenced to dream redirection, of course, do not go to the Eight Realms in their dreams. Different onirarchs have different preferences as to where to send their enemies in their dreams, with the Bleakness, the Forest of Teeth, the Hungry Slough, and the Spiders' Playground being among the preferred nightmare worlds.

Resistance

Despite the best efforts of the onirarchs, the Free Republic is bedeviled by a resistance element that fights against their rule. Many Freeman rebels have established lairs in Avelax's extensive underfold, but others manage to live among the other citizens and keep a low enough profile to avoid being caught. While their goal may seem unreachable set against the overwhelming might of the powerful dreamlords, the resistance does what they can to chip away at their power, sabotaging key infrastructure and trying to counter the government's propaganda.

While they may be far from achieving their ultimate aim of bringing down the onirarchs, the rebels of the Republic have managed the occasional minor victory. One of their more unusual and lasting feats was the creation of a sleepless rat, a type of magical rodent that eats dreamstuff. Sleepless rats have now spread over much of the continent, gnawing away at the onirarchs' works and withstanding attempts to exterminate them. They may be little more than a nuisance to the dreamlords, but they are a nuisance the onirarchs would prefer to be without, and a constant reminder of the presence and activity of the resistance.

As in most onirarchies, the resistance in the Free Republic is anything but unified, with innumerable discrete resistance groups acting independently and often at cross purposes. Some of the largest and best-known resistance groups of the Republic include the Dreambreakers, all of whose members take up the Vandals' Geis (and often other geasa besides); the Mother's Men, a group made up mostly of Kenever (though with some nonKenever sympathizers); the Troglodytes, who are rumored to have established or be in the process of establishing a whole civilization in the underfold beneath the Republic; the Underground College, who promote knowledge and education; and the White Cult, known for their extreme methods and unconcern with collateral damage.

Relations

The Free Republic of Avelax has no close allies, but its size and power mean it also has no enemies that pose a real threat to it. For the most part, it has a policy of neutrality toward its fellow onirarchies, trading with them and co&oumlperating when it is mutually beneficial, but not openly intervening in any conflicts between other nations. (Covert intervention, on the other hand, is not off the table if it serves the Republic's interests.) The Republic has cultivated fairly good relationships with Ren Gao, whose aid it occasionally enlists in trying to root out rebels in the underfold; with Ikiki, with which it entrusts much of its trade; and with Risinien, one of its largest trading partners. (In Ikiki's case, however, this otherwise good relationship is tempered by concerns that the Republic's objectives may include someday moving to annex the smaller onirarchy.)

On the other hand, there has long been a measure of antipathy between the Republic and the nation of Ovla Ba. This seems to have started more due to personality clashes between the two nations' respective past leaders than due to any geopolitical causes, although it may be that the Republic covets Ovla Ba's bountiful food supply. The Free Republic also has strained relationships with Ivinii, which it resents for occupying the colony of Kasie on land the Republic wants for its own, and with Drithidiach, in dealings with which the Republic's leaders affect an air of amiability but which they privately dislike because they are epprehensive that the Drithidian Amnesty and succeeding events in that nation may set a precedent they don't want followed.

Freeman relationships with the undeveloped nations are less fraught, if perhaps more paternalistic. The Republic happily trades with these nations, usually sending them useful magic in return for food, and frequently offers aid dealing with disasters or challenges these nations face. Of course, this apparent generosity is mostly granted with the goal of increasing the Republic's influence over these nations and inducing them to act in the Republic's interest, but the effort has been successful enough that many people in the undeveloped nations regard the Free Republic as a benevolent patron. The Republic's immediate neighbors are exceptions; the fear of an invasion by the Republic is seldom far from the minds of the people of Ekerben, Mapland, and Onraa.

History

With the exception of the Talacho Peninsula, most of the area now controlled by the Free Republic of Avelax was covered for thousands of years by the Avelachian Pall, and its history before the Pall is murky at best. After the Pall, however, the dominant inhabitants of the area were Kenever, a fair-skinned people of uncertain origin. Though other peoples spread into the center of the continent from areas that had been spared from the Pall, the Kenever were the most widespread and numerous ethnicity. They were, however, apparently an open-minded people, and for the most part got on well with the other folks they encountered.

The genesis of the Free Republic came in 427 D.C. when a large expedition of Balians arrived in what is now the province of Oradallen, led by a woman named Eridar Drazgen. Fleeing persecution by the incipient onirarchy in Chrate, they had sailed around the south end of the Aoala range in search of a new home, and found it here, declaring their newfounded nation the Free Republic of Avelax, after the continent where it was located and their liberation from those who had just taken power in their land of origin. They quickly built cities and established a foothold in this new country, but they were not long satisfied to remain in this cold area, and began to spread west.

As the newcomers encountered the Kenever and the other existing inhabitants, sometimes they integrated with them, but more often they drove them out and took their territory by force. These Chratish settlers had not represented the poor and downtrodden of their old nation, but rather had included the former rulers and patriciates, whom the new onirarchs had overthrown but who had brought much of their wealth and their magical resources with them in their flight. The indigines, sparsely populating a land that had only relatively recently recovered from the Pall, were no match for the magic and weapons that the settlers had brought from their homeland, and within a few hundred years the Free Republic claimed almost all the territory south of the Verecan Mountains and north of the Ngo. By this time word of the new nation had spread and many immigrants began to pour in from other troubled lands, further increasing the Republic's burgeoning population.

While the Free Republic had been founded with the intent of escaping the onirarchy in Chathe, however, and nominally championed freedom and equality (its unequal treatment of the Avelachian natives notwithstanding), not all of its citizens were so idealistic. Coalescing about a ringleader named Imidir Cach, a confederacy of wizards plotted to take power in the Republic just as the usurpers had in Chathe. After years of planning and laying groundwork, Cach and his confederates finally struck in 752, empowering themselves with dream energy stolen from their fellow citizens and using it to seize power. They were careful to do so in such a way, however, as to preserve the pretense of democracy, and their successors have managed to keep up this deception since.

The expansion of the Republic had largely stalled at the Verecan Mountains to the north at the Rananuin River to the west, as the natives had fallen back and fortified the surrounding areas, improving their defenses. But once the onirarchs were in power, their powerful magic let the Republic press further, first taking a large swathe of territory west of the Upper Rananuin and then crossing the Darwell Waste and beginning to spread into the land north of the Verecans. The Republic soon reached the New Coast and then spread west from there; some of the battles were hard, but they took almost all the land between the Verecans and the Akararal Sea, saving only Onraa, which proved too hard a nut for them to crack at the moment, and Kasie, an attack on which would mean a war with a fellow onirarchy which the Republic was not prepared for. Meanwhile, the Republic also sent forces further west from the Rananuin, eventually reaching the Golden Sea. So much of an impression did the tropical beach on the sea's northeastern shore make on the head of the expeditionary force, General Ractam Calloram, that he called the area Paradise.

Now in control of all of what is today consider the heartland of the Free Republic, the onirarchs paused to consolidate their gains for only a few decades before continuing their conquests. Hungry for more land and power, they sent armies not only west and south into the Talacho Peninsula and to the sides of the Ngo Mountains, but also overseas, taking much of the Stone Coast and southern Burcady as well as part of western Jahanna and the northern coast of the White Main. From a relatively small group of settlers fleeing their homeland, the Free Republic had now expanded into a true empire, with significant holdings on four of the world's five continents.

The Avelachian Empire would, however, be short-lived. The onirarchs might have been powerful, but they had spread their power too thin and claimed more than they could hold. This was especially true in face of the opposition of the other onirarchies, who bristled at the Republic's ambition. Between border skirmishes with neighboring nations and uprisings from within, the leaders of the Republic were eventually forced to withdraw from all their transoceanic territories, and after some two hundred years of embattled existence, the Avelachian Empire was no more. (At least by name; while it is not called such, the modern Free Republic is arguably still an empire, albeit no longer a transcontinental one.) The Free Republic did keep all the new territory it had gained in Avelax itself, but it reluctantly relinquished all its claims on other continents.

Since then, the onirarchs of the Free Republic have mostly focused on building up their nation's wealth and infrastructure and cementing their control over their people. That does not, however, mean that their imperial aspirations have entirely abated. Having no other adjacent territory it can easily claim on the land, the Free Republic has recently started expanding into the water. Officially established only twenty years ago, the Republic's newest province, Ontrehen, is entirely underwater, at the mouth of the Akararal Sea; it is inhabited largely by undines and by aquatic folks such as bulurangs and dantilis, though there are also some enclosed underwater cities where terrestrial folks can dwell. Apparently the Republic does not intend to end its expansion with Ontrehen; there are three other marine areas where it is clearly laying the groundwork for similar development, though they have not been officially designated provinces of the Republic yet: northeast of Ontrehen, off the Lobster Coast, and off the New Coast. Although the leaders of the FRA have not publicly stated the reasons for their marine expansion, certainly others have guessed at motives beyond simply growing its footprint. If the Republic claims the entire mouth of the Akararal, it could establish a lucrative control of passage in and out of the sea. If it claims all the sea around Onraa, that could make it easier for it to finally annex the recalcitrant nation. And controlling the east end of the Akararal Sea could give the Republic a clear path to some of the undeveloped nations on western Burcady that it might hope to conquer—and by spreading across the mouth of the Akararal it could conceivably threaten Ovla Ba as well, though any attempt to seize its territory would of course mean a war between the onirarchies.