Xolia

Xolia (pronounced /ˈʒoʊliə/) is an onirarchy located in the southern part of the continent of Eordi on Dadauar. Xolia is sometimes known as the "Land of the Young", because all the inhabitants appear to be adolescents or younger. For the onirarchs, this youth is only apparent; they magically keep themselves indefinitely in their prime. For the common citizens, however, the youth is quite real. There are no adults in Xolia, because on reaching adulthood citizens are promptly killed—though their ghosts remain to provide power to the land's dreamlords.

Geography

Xolia occupies a semitropical semicircle of land just northwest of the Green Isthmus, stretching from the Restless Sea to the Veiled Mountains. The eastern edge of the country, in fact, lies within Dadauar's tropical zone. Xolia is penetrated by natural sounds and bays, which have been extended by numerous canals and artificial inlets, giving it possibly the largest ratio of coastline to area of any nation on Dadauar (though Zayatis has it beat if one counts the coastlines of interior lakes as well).

Though Xolia has been quite thoroughly developed, it still retains a lot of greenspace, where forests grow and marshes stretch much like those that existed before the rise of its onirarchy. This has been done, however, not primarily by leaving it uncovered by cities, but by placing the greenspace over or under the cities. Some buildings float above the marshes by the shoreline, while others have forests growing on their roofs. Still, the demand for space has been large enough that Xolia's buildings extend into and under the seas.

People

The citizens of Xolia are diverse in their racial makeup and physical characteristics, and even in their species—gnulus of various sorts live among the humans there. There are very few dreambuilt in Xolia, however, and those that are there are immigrants; the onirarchs of Xolia see no need to so modify their people.

While diverse in other aspects, the people of Xolia are more uniform in age, with none of them being older than nineteen. As soon as a Xolian reaches twenty, he is brought to a special building and slain. These buildings are commonly called "ghost towers", for the reason that they somehow trap the souls of those who die there, keeping them in an ever-dreaming state. The Xolian people don't fear this fate, but in fact eagerly anticipate it, believing that those who enter the ghost towers pass on to a blissful existence perpetually dreaming of paradise.

Economy

There is no system of currency used within Xolia. The Xolian people are allowed—and even encouraged—to live lives of unbridled hedonism. Their wants and needs are freely provided for them, and they have no purpose for money. Most of them, in fact, see little need even more personal possessions, as anything they desire they can get whenever they want it, and get another if they lose it. The warm climate of Xolia renders even clothing unnecessary, and many Xolians happily go without it—though it's provided if they want it.

It's more meaningful to speak of Xolia's economy on an international scale, however; the Xolian government does carry out a trade with other countries. After all, its people aren't producing anything of value, so it must get its food and other goods from somewhere. Xolia has two main exports. The first is magical goods; the surplus of dream energy provided by the ghost towers means that Xolia has plenty to spare to create goods for export, and special batirines work them into wares to trade to other nations. The second is people—the Xolian birthrate is high enough that it can afford to trade its excess populace to other onirarchies who want more citizens of their own.

Government

The government of Xolia takes very much a laissez-faire approach, leaving its citizens almost entirely to their own devices. Indeed, its citizens are provided with so much luxury and left to live with such freedom of action that the nation's onirarchs can scarcely provide themselves with better, and live among their populace. The dreamlords maintain their physical youth by magical processes, and they tend to behave much like children as well, delegating most of the work of running the country to underlings recruited from their favorites among the populace—indeed, the main factors distinguishing the lives of the dreamlords from those of the general citizenry are the fact that the former have magical powers the latter lack, and that they aren't fed to the ghost towers at twenty. Most of the citizens of Xolia are in awe of the onirarchs' powers, but don't really understand the reasons for them, and see the onirarchs as just more playmates and friends who happen to have unusual abilities, not aware that these playmates are the ones who are really in charge.

While there's little interference with the lives of Xolians, however, the nation is not entirely lawless. There are a few things that are forbidden, and those few prohibitions are strictly enforced, and deal mostly with things that would result in depriving the onirarchs of people and power. Forbidden acts include killing or seriously injuring Xolian people, leaving the country, and damaging the ghost towers.

Resistance

As in nearly all the onirarchies, there are some rebels who oppose the dreamlords' rule. Xolia's unusual demography prevents most rebels in Xolia from lasting long, however. Any adult rebels who managed to avoid the ghost towers, or who entered Xolia from other nations, would be given away by their age. Rebellion has found a foothold in the nation nonetheless, however. Despite their youth, some of Xolia's teenage citizens have formed effective rebel groups; when they reach twenty, they either try to find a way to leave the country, or submit to the ghost towers hoping that the resistance will later find a way to overthrow the dreamlords and free the trapped spirits. There are even a few rare Xolian rebels who have managed to master ways of maintaining their youth like the onirarchs. The resistance is relatively weak in Xolia compared to many other nations, but it is there.