Nation CS

Formal Name: The Aeolian Aerosocracy

Casual Name: Aeolians

Government: Clan-based Meritocracy (There are over a dozen individual clans, each with a Chief/Captain whom is elected for life by the rest of the clan. They also have a King/Queen, but they are elected more as representatives of the Aeolian people to the Foreign nations, or for leaders of all the clans in times of crisis. 

Constitution: Yes, though not specifically a written one. The Aeolian Constitution is merely a set of traditional laws, or social contract passed down by elders to children. It pertains to their meritocratic traditions of electing leaders, and allows them to remove or replace leaders if they prove to be inferior in terms of leading than others.

Population: 170,000 (Though only around 25,000-30,000 live around their actual capitol at any one time unless called. Which means the rest are dispersed throughout the world.)

Currency: Various. Due to their nomadic nature, the Aeolians do not have a specific currency of their own, they often carry many different types of currencies and use weights and measures to ensure that they can make decent trades. This practice often infuriates outsiders since the practice is prone to Aeolians cheating them out of money.

Geographic Location: The Aeolians can be found all over the world, as their fleets of airships travel around in circuits of annual "pilgrimages" which are made up anew each year by the captains of each clan with the help of the elders. These routes can change based on many factors, coal and helium prices, relations between the Aeolians and the national governments, weather patterns, and any number of other problems.

Capitol: Svalbard, which thanks to the increase in temperature globally has become inhabitable by larger groups of humans. The Aeolians chose it because of its remote location, far from established lands, where they could assemble in private if necessary.

Language: Various dialects of Norwegian, Swedish, Finish are the common languages. Samoyed and Icelandic are the minor ones as they come from those backgrounds, through some of the clans are fluent in the languages of the lands they travel. 

Major Religion: Neo-Norse Pagan. The Aeolians took the mythology of Norse Gods and Goddesses of their ancient ancestors and have re-invisioned them for their modern times. The focus is on the skies, with Gods and spirits of the air, clouds, and winds reigning supreme, and their sky ships, the longboats of the new age. By flying as close to the realm of their Gods as they can mortally reach, they believe that they can live more enlightened lives, with some who have historically gone to extreme heights and come down with revelations from Odin, Thor, Freya, or any of the other Gods(though whether some of these "enlightened" are just suffering from oxygen deprivation or altitude sickness to cause these hallucinogenic lapses is debated). Whether Radical or conventional, the Aeolians live their religion every time they take to the skies.

Culture: The Aeolian culture derives from its Scandinavian backgrounds, but it has given them a unique twist to compliment their love of the open skies and nomadic nature. Each airship is essentially its own microcosm of the Aeolian culture, carrying with them mementos and stories of all the places they have seen and peoples they have met, which serve to showcase their relations with those cultures. A Aeolian clan without an airship is one of very low standing in the nation, as they are seen to be inexperienced with the realities of the world, static, and anchored to the ground they were born on, as far away from the Sky Gods as they can get without dying or working underground. 

History: The Aeolian Aerosocracy's founding date essentially coincides at the same time which the first airship were built in Scandinavia, as it was at this time when some of the first pilots of these craft thought it would be a liberating idea to be able to fly anywhere in the world they wished without being tied to a military organization or a government which were the two main groups which owned the first airships. Many got nostalgic about the idea, constructing some of them as similar to the viking longships their early ancestors used to sail the seas. Thus, either through theft, purchase, or having been released from service, these airship captains along with their crews and their families broke off from their respective original owners and started flying around independently.

This was not an organized uprising or act of any sort though. It wasn't until these people realized that there were other ships and crews doing the same thing did they decide that it would be to their benefit to organize themselves as an actual group entity rather than individual ships. Thus the first fleets were formed, with the claiming of Svalbard and the official declaration to the world as Aeolians being the final step in becoming a "nation". Now though, the Aeolians mostly build their own ships rather than take someone else's, thereby attracting new flier families and expanding old ones, and although their government and flying patterns are much more organized than before, the Aeolians still roam the skies in search of new places to visit or to revisit old ones in their endless pilgrimages. Even though their arrivals in foreign lands may not be appreciated by the locals...

Strengths: They have some of the most experienced aeronauts in the world, and have debatably the largest airship fleet in the world if they are ever all assembled in one place. They also work very well as consultants on various cultures around the world, for as a people they have visited nearly all of them. Many of them also are sharp traders and money-lenders due to their necessity to working with hundreds, if not thousands of different currencies. 

Weaknesses: Airships are extremely varied in design and quality (as both are reflected by the wealth and access to resources a clan has). There is also not much uniformity among the Aeolian people aside from their love of the skies and the dues they pay to any leaders they have, but even then there is often rivalries and conflicts between the clans that complicate any organized events between multiple clans (for this reason, musterings of the fleets are called as few times as necessary). Due to their varied natures, external cultures more often than not will view Aeolians as interlopers, if not downright flying squatters for their proclivities to causing trouble the longer they stay in a particular place.

ECT: EST