Salaan

Salaan is a small kingdom in the west of Qabassan, in the region of Rokken. It has a long history of getting converted to several religions, but now the majority of the inhabitants is agnostic, believing that there's something, but unable to say what or who it is. Salaan shares a lot of history with Land of Waze and Rook and has a lot of similarities with their culture, but as soon as Salaan got it's independency it got culturally "invaded" by Ashgaram.

History
In 1132PI the kingdom of Rook was established. The current Salaan was then still a province of that kingdom called Vaar. Vaar had as main religion Rookism.

In 733PI Was Vaar seized by the kingdom of Salan as an answer to the kingdom of Rook that was becoming way too powerfull, spreading from the Coast of the Alrittic sea to the coast of the Southsea. After that Rook never managed to win back it's former territory. As soon as the province was seized, Salan converted Vaar to Salinism.

In 12 PI the kingdom of Salan converted it's main religion from Salinism to Wazeism. Vaar had to convert too, but this didn't go easy. It lasted untill 22AE untill finally more then half of the population was converted.

in 14AE Salan, Pal, Kloas, Mirra and Gillias united into one big nation. A lot of provinces (mainly in the south and north) didn't agree with the government type and protested against this.

In 41AE (immediately after the independency of Gillea) the province of Vaar got it's independency from Salan and called itself New-Salan. Only three days later they decided they weren't prepared to become independent, so they joined the kingdom of Rook, although they had no more shared borders.

The following decennia New-Salan got more and more isolated from Rook, and they recieved a lot of immigrants out of Waze and West-Rook (finding safety from the attacks of the dragonkind on Rook villages). In 290AE the country almost doubled it's population and lost almost all it's ties with Rook and Waze. They decided to declare their independency once again. Rook didn't accept this (for economical reasons, New-Salan was one of the richest and highest educated provinces they had) and declared war. New-Salan Decided to just put up it's defences in the mountains on the borders with their army. The army existed out of 50 000 soldiers and 10 000 - 110 000 vigilante were awaiting the Rook attacks in the mountains. Rooks realised the risk it would take to attack them and accepted the independence.

The instream of Dwarfs from the rest of Qabassan had it's top in 430AE. At that time 52% of the people immigrated from the east. Of them 76% came from Ashgaram. This changed a lot in the culture of the country. The Waze priests called it "the cultural invasion". In 444AE New-Salan changed it's main religion again to [insert religion in Ashgaram].

In 490AE more then half of the nation spoke [insert language in Ashgaram] and the country finally changed it's name to Salaan.

In the meantime all different cultures collided. There was a lot of doubt about a lot of topics. This was the reason why the Vaaren Philosophical School was commenced. All different cultures started discussing a lot of topics, mainly religion, and tried to find a way to unite the country under one culture. The longer the school existed, the more people said they just didn't know who to believe in anymore and thought it was better like that. This was why the school started teaching "The Art of Not Knowing".

In 535AE Salaan scrapped it's national religion. With this they gave everyone the chance to feel at home in this country. The result was that the amount of people who had an actual religion dropped and more people became agnostic.

Politics
Salaan became an almost absolute democracy. Every month (except winter a national election is organised about several political subjects. To make sure this is a fair vote, local governments need to regulary organise village discussions, where everyone can say what he thinks about a certain subject and people can discuss about it.

The subjects are still chosen by a local chosen government that decides over things normal civilians can't vote about (like taxes, sensitive subjects, etc.) and about what exactly the civilians can choose. This government is chosen by the people too.

Military
Salaan has a very big military. Almost 28% of the 20+ aged civillians (276.981 people) is part of the Salaani National Defence Program. This program defends the country against possible attacks of the dragonkind of the Wadr Jab. Soldiers have training for two months a year and need to guard the defence lines of Beigst for 20 days a year. When their is an actual attack on the country all soldiers have to man the lines to defend the country. This has happened only 4 times in the last 100 years.

Salaan has access to some long ranged weapons (like harpooncannons, firerockets, experimental cannons) but is still researching guns like a lot of other Dwarf kingdoms have already.