Bvaltlund
[The Yellow in the East]
Nation Intro
The Bvalt have always been an insular people. Tribal, decentralized, with a love for freedom and creativity, the Bvalten tribes struggled and jostled for position but kept close ties throughout the centuries. Then, the Elves invaded. Carving a slice from their ancestral domains, including their largest city, the Elves cut a bloody swathe through the Bvalten armies, gun and bayonet meeting bow and pike. The Bvalt were obliterated, and with their defeat the ties which held the collection of tribes together seemed pathetic, quaint.
Ulf the Young, heralded first as a genius, then a devil, then a savior by both his own tribe and his adversaries, set about uniting the Bvalt. He crowned himself after six years of conquest and diplomacy, and even as the years pass and his beard grows grey, his ambition knows no bounds. The royal palace, set on a hill, is pointed towards the East, and the great Throne of Ulf stares off towards the horizon, past which the great shame of his people lies. He enjoys complete support from his people, a Hero among Heroes, and with millions of loyal dwarves behind him he has set upon the fastest modernization the world has ever seen. Every day, the knowledge, secrets and goods of foreign powers builds Bvaltlund towards shimmering modernity, and with that modernity towards revenge.
Geography
History
(Awaiting detail on the Elvish war and the treaty which ended the humiliation of the Bvalt)
Ulf cares little for the past, even in his own age. The tribal squabbles, trade deals and battles and marriages which mark its insular history quaint indeed when presented with the world stage of which they had for so long not been a part. His history starts at his unification, the pronouncement of a great Nation under singular leadership. He married the abnormal female heir of the second-greatest house, and led his faction in protracted campaigns with sufficient dexterity to bring those few holdouts entirely under his reign. A new capital was built, new laws were passed, and at his coronation the land of Bvalt rejoiced.
In the forty years of Ulf’s reign, the nation has transformed into a modern power. Factories replace fields of barley. Guilds disappear as a new capitalist class flourishes under lax regulations and strong nationalist support. The people languish under poor wages, high taxes and great social burdens, but this new generation, instilled with revanchism and undying dedication to Chief and Homeland, shoulder the burdens under the watchful eyes of the commissariat. Ulf begged, borrowed or stole from the great powers, hungry to hoard the knowledge of humans and elves and develop it themselves. His Empire, Nation, Chiefdom (all the same word, in the palsied language of Bvalt), is young and virile, and stretches its arms towards the promise of Great Power status, eager to prove itself on the field of history.
Society
The Bvalt Dwarves, almost entirely ethnically homogenous, are no strangers to class stratification. Within the tribes, chiefs would preside over the elders and promising youths, and once every generation or two a Hero would rise and take leadership of the spirituality of the peoples. This stratification is present in absolute form under Ulf. The great Chief sits at the top of a pyramid which reaches down through the capitalists and the army and the commissariat, all the way to the massive new order of landless laborers, shoveled into factories like the coal which lights the new burners of the giant factories.
This stratification is part of their religion. Those who are Good raise to the top, and what is Good is Good for Bvalt, and what is Good for Bvalt is Good. These maxims guide society and, while the Hero-King Ulf leads his people successfully towards their great goal of unification, freedom and riches, the masses are happy to serve their leaders. The landholders have lost numbers but gained power as mechanization creates monolithic owners as opposed to small chiefdom-lands. The capitalists, a new class born from the rich clan nobility now made redundant after Ulf took the throne, flourish as the treasury pours into the building of new factories, foundries and shipyards. The military has taken up the slack for the ambitious and tribal. It plays upon the old rivalries between tribes and presents an opportunity for the young and virile to advance and earn accolades that would have been earned in the tribal squabbles or skirmishes. Women, before holding the domains of farming and weaving and child-rearing, have come as a blessing to Ulf, who upholds the gender roles in the most demanding way to the fairer sex, liberating his ambitious men to fill factories and regiments. Discontent already grows within the society as the gender divide only widens to the detriment of both sexes, used like a scalpel by Ulf to optimize his nation that little bit more.
Ulf has taken the maxims of the Bvalt to the extreme, wielding them like careful tools to craft his vision of a Great Power. Merit is the only acceptable reason for promotion, and at least under Ulf merit is the real reason for most appointments and decisions. Graft and corruption, the inescapable problems of centralist society, are hunted vigilantly, but without ultimate victory, by the commissariat and by Ulf himself, who fears inefficiency and betrayal almost as much as the armies of Elves across the sea. Bvalten society is a precarious house of cards. A new empire held together entirely by circumstance, and the extreme exertion of its leadership. Every night Ulf tosses and turns with visions of the future, when his successor is not capable of managing the tensions of new industry, new society, new pains for the common man, and has the delicate structure come crumbling down. More and more, his focus turns to fixing these wrongs, unearthing this obvious landmines, but one eye is always fixed East.
Economy/Industry
Bvaltlund is somewhat unique in that it has not a single large vein of Aetherum. There are scraps, here and there, but Ulf still chafes at the lack of the precious substance. What the Bvalt do have, is iron. And coal. Nickel, bauxite, sulphur and all the other necessary metals in quantities that are still only guessed at. With these resources, the gold from what is left of the east and the great forests of the South, the Bvalt initially funded their modernization with primary industry, whole mountains reduced to nothing to pay for advisors, knowledge, machines. Now, they have developed a heavy industry. Their factories cast steel and cut timber to furniture and construction materials. Great cement factories, machine assembly lines, and ordinance producers fill Thronemount and the other new cities with belching smoke and flowing wealth. Mechanization has reduced the smallholding and tenant farmers to nothing, with great land magnates controlling huge swathes of the rich soil, forcing peasants into the choking, poor-paying factories made sweet only by the constant promise that the work they do is Good for Bvalt, and worthy of men of quality. Banking is a new phenomenon in Bvaltlund, and even after Ulf’s amazing modernization the nation still owes large sums to foreign lenders, the people lacking the liquid currency needed to form lending conglomerates, though Ulf has managed to keep his new, unified currency stable and valuable despite the failings of his monied subordinates. The most recent triumph of Ulf is his rail network, the product of 40 years of constant work, now shipping wealth and dwarves all over the large nation.
Military
Bvaltlund has no Aetherum. Even if it did, Ulf is not in the position to demand from his already-strained factories great machines of war. No, the Bvalt military is one of simplicity, efficiency and drill. A staff college has been formed along the lines set by foreigners. Ulf has picked and chosen the best of the foreigner’s offerings: breach-loading rifles, rifled breach-loading cannon, and great anti-mech guns. Ulf is a student of war, and he was carried to power by a general staff who has spent their entire lives tearing Bvalt historic doctrine to shreds and piecing together the features of modern war. Their army, at least on paper, marches large and modern, if not flamboyantly equipped. A help in this endeavor for modernity, the lands of Bvaltlund have never boasted ridable animals, and so Ulf has not had to contend with frustrated cavalry officers sad to hear that their method of fighting is useless. Ulf has begun breeding horses, for use in draft alongside the small pachyderms which bear the burdens of the Bvalt, but his scouts still are unused to the beasts, and progress is slow.
By contrast, Ulf has never invested in a navy. The Elves sit on his shores, there is no need currently to create one. Drafts and designs for cunning inventions to navigate around this absolute paucity in steel-hulled ships, but at the moment nothing has been produced. Ulf hopes that, with the massively burgeoning population, the great fields of his Chiefdom can remain self-sufficient.
