Dhavashri

“They do say that money talks. Well, I’ve never known a currency more voluble than the Dhavashrin aata.”

— Khalil, exasperated diplomat

Orphan is a world at war—a war that has been cold for a millennium, but a war nonetheless. Its shadow hangs over every part of Orphan—every splinter, every country, every city and village. At the heart of the Aether’s northern hemisphere, the Holy Empire of Belhacint exerts its terrible pressure, always threatening to break its banks and bring the world to its knees.
Only one nation on Orphan is powerful enough that its mere presence keeps Belhacint in check: its southern counterweight, the Benevolent Republic of Dhavashri. From the strip-mined desolation of its home splinter of Fel Dhavash, Dhavashri plays the strands of the pharos network like a harp, and its song is the song of revenue.
Unlike its jingoistic adversary, Dhavashri favors a diplomatic touch. While it does have a standing army, as well as a frankly alarming array of weapons technology, at its disposal, its leaders much prefer to make friends—and investments. If Belhacint’s primary diplomatic tool is force, then Dhavashri’s is finance; if Belhacint looks at the world and sees a battlefield, then Dhavashri sees a market.

Heresy

The core of Dhavashrin culture is the apostatic rejection of God’s legacy. The country’s state doctrine, Heresy, is a joyful expression of this rejection—a philosophy of irreverence, whose central tenet is a sacred vow to hold nothing as sacred. This includes Heresy itself, and there are plenty of Dhavashrin people who subscribe to the doctrine while engaging in other worship on the side. This is not seen as contradictory behavior.
The symbol of Heresy, which appears on the Dhavashrin flag, is an upwards-facing crescent moon—a pair of stylized horns, perhaps, or a shit-eating grin?
This rejection of authority has fostered a very individualistic, cutthroat culture. In stark contrast with Belhacint’s bloated and overbearing hierarchies, Dhavashri is a libertarian, plutocratic wilderness, where power comes from material wealth rather than divine right. Knowing this, it becomes clear to the historian both why the Dhavashrin Revolution happened, and why it failed.

The Revolution, and Why It Failed

Once, Dhavashri was a monarchy, until rising tensions between the crown and the people reached a boiling point. During the bloody uprising that followed, the royalist forces were defeated and the king was publicly executed. The Dhavashrin monarchy was no more.
It was the aftermath of the revolution that proved tricky. The revolutionaries fell to infighting, and most of their more radical goals fell by the wayside. In the end, it was the country’s burgeoning merchant class that ended up dictating the terms of the new status quo. The old institutions of Dhavashri had been razed; the new ones were built from the ground up to benefit the owners of capital.
Although Dhavashri is nominally a republic, its government’s legislative arm is completely atrophied, while the judicial arm is hopelessly corrupt. The country lacks a state-sanctioned police force, and most of the policing is done by privately-owned security firms. The president themself is a puppet of the Merchant Princes—the cabal of demon CEOs that truly rules the country.

The Land of Propaganda

Dhavashri is one of the most technologically advanced nations on Orphan, with trains, motorcars, radios, telephones, and silent films numbering among its recent technological achievements. It is also one of the most unequal nations in terms of wealth disparity. Its utilities and amenities—its modes of public transport and public address—are all privately owned.
Consequently, the Dhavashrin propaganda apparatus is extremely well-developed. Even though the living and working conditions for the average person are inhumane, the country’s population at large is extremely patriotic. Many of its people seem to almost take a bizarre pride in being exploited.
Recently, however, there’s been an uptick in class consciousness, especially among younger demographics. The Dhavashrin status quo faces a threat from within: the looming specter of the Union, a militant organization that fights for workers’ rights. The Union has been gaining members of late, and the country’s conservative elements have reacted with a frenzy of fearmongering propaganda about the dangers of socialism.

Necromancy for Fun and Profit

Though the arcane discipline of glyptomancy originated in Ashaara, it was Dhavashri has adopted and modernized it. To the Ashaarin, glyptomancy is an art; in Dhavashri, it is an industry.
As a rule, using glyptomancy on living creatures is taboo in Dhavashrin society. Fortunately, there are no regulations that prevent the buying or selling of dead bodies, and the Dhavashrin workforce is full of mindless amalgamations of dead flesh, colloquially known as “plods.” While some plods are custom-built to perform some specific task, most are all-purpose drudges.
Plods come in many shapes, but they all have one unifying trait: they are faceless. Giving a plod a face is in poor taste, but many customers also find faceless plods unsettling. For this reason, many plods have blank metal faceplates to mark the place where a face might otherwise have been.
The Dhavashrin market cries out for cheap labor, and glyptomancy satisfies that demand. A plod does not need to eat or sleep; it has no use for wages. It will simply continue working until it breaks. This makes it even harder for a human to find a job, and unemployment and poverty are rampant throughout the country.

City and Countryside

A fundamental aspect of Dhavashri is the tension between diametric opposites: rich and poor, propaganda and reality, corporation and union. This tension is reflected in the country’s very terrain, in the contrast between its cities and its countryside.
The Dhavashrin cities are acts of violence against nature: filthy and industrialized, stone-paved and neon-lit, patrolled by private security firms. The capital city, Aatesh—also affectionately called Hellhole by its residents—is literally a gaping wound in the land: a strip-mined hole in the ground, at the bottom of which lies the gate to Hell.
The rugged, dusty highlands of Fel Dhavash, on the other hand, are as lawless as they are undeveloped. The only thing binding the country together despite these vast stretches of empty land is its well-developed rail system. Should you need to travel to a remote corner of Fel Dhavash, chances are you can just hop on a train and get where you need to go—as long as you can pay your way. People do regularly rail hop without a ticket, but then again, people are also regularly beaten within an inch of their lives by yard bulls.

THE BENEVOLENT REPUBLIC OF DHAVASHRI

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Capital city: Aatesh
Head of state: President Anan Hasadsuyyan
Languages: Dhavashrin
Currency: Dhavashrin aata

Dhavashrin is a lilting tongue with a seductive reputation.
Example names: Aata, Aras, Daanesh, Devi, Dhesra, Erastih, Mahavant, Miros, Nerendra, Neri, Raadha, Ravayyat, Rina, Sahaar, Sayyani, Serasaan, Sunra, Tamasin, Taron, Vilyani.