Zaizung

Republic of Zaizung
Population
-	estimate	24,742,129

Zaizung (Language: Country [IPA]), officially the Republic of Zaizung, is a country located south of Qonklaks and east of Quaxin Xun. Together with Xynderland, it forms the straits entering the Amaiant Sea, leading to its strategic trade and naval importance. It has a multiethnic population, and from various foreign occupations, has large influences from all over Sahar.

History

The area that makes up modern Zaizung, because of its strategic location on the Amiyant Sea, spent a lot of its history under foreign occupation or as a puppet to a foreign power. The most frequent occupier is Qonklaks, which frequently sees Zaizung as part of the Qonk heartland, especially because of its large Qonk minority.

Prehistory

Mañi-speaking peoples moved into what is now Zaizung by 300 BCE, when archaeology finds Mañi pottery styles along the coast and on the islands around Zaizung.

PLACEHOLDER Uprising

The first major event cementing a specific Zaizung identity, as opposed to a pan-Mañi identity or individual settlements, was the Uprising (which is not the Trung sisters of Vietnam, which doesn't exist in Sahar) against the Qonk PLACEHOLDER Dynasty in PLACEHOLDER YEARS.

Middle Ages

Various of the islands in the archipelago were owned by various powers.

Fordas

As the Qonk Hàin Dynasty fell in the 1660s, leading to the Fourth Warring States period, the Forian Kingdom started conquering most of the islands and large portions of southern Zaizung, and by the turn of the 18th C, all the way to the traditional northern capital. Part of Forian rule was to subvert the hold Kwang had over the political and cultural sphere, leading to them promoting the official use of the mesolect between Southern Zaizung Mañi and Zaizung Kwang that would become Standard Zaizung, as well as commissioning new plays containing the use of Standard Kwang. Unlike earlier rule, which either saw the Zaizung Kwang as the true heirs of the country or foreign invaders, it invited them in to a united identity with the Zaizung Mañi.

Modern Zaizung

After the GEW, Zaizung became a puppet state of the Helsonian Union. Part of this was playing off of Zaizung distrust after fascist Qonlaks. Helsonia negotiated the return of almost all islands, except the few held by their GEW ally of Lugida. Helsonia changed the capital from historic Northern Capital to a new Southern Capital (before one of the larger ports in the south), to lower Qonk influence.

Zaizung started to enter the orbit of new Fordas in the 1970s (not unlike Yugoslavia in this world slowly embracing the west?), leading to less chaos that in other Kúúlist states, when the Helsonian Union fell apart. To support an official start of a new era, Lugida returned its Zaizung islands to the country, unifying it once and for all.

Geography

Spine of mountains parallel to northern shore, making it distinct from the southern shore.

Economy

Historically, the economy of Zaizung was based off of trade along the coasts, cash crops in the highlands (think of what they are, tea is one of them, maybe a narcotic is another), lots of agriculture in the fertile coastal plain, and tourism on the islands.

Transport

The coast of Zaizung is important for its role in the harbor, and contains many important centers of trade. The intercity train system in most of the east coast goes into the Northern Capital, and then into Qonlaks, and some trains from the highlands went directly to Qonlaks, but were remade to snake into the Northern Capital during Helsonian times. Before the GEW, most intercity train systems were just leading to the nearest port city, and southern cities were not connected until Helsonian times.

Urban transport includes metro lines, light rail, funiculars, and aerial tramways, depending on the varied needs of the various geographies of the cities.

Fascist Qonklaks laid a few highways to make for easier troop transport and tanks, include some that razed parts of the Northern Capital. Post-war of the Coastal Highway did not go through any cities (but, if Helsonia wanted to show might, they would make wide boulevards).

Demographics

Ethnic groups

There are three main ethnic groups, and plenty of minor ones, frequently there by trade and its strategic location ...

Religion

The national state Iovist church ...

Culture

Music

Zaizung music usually works off of a scale made up of two parts - one fixed five note scale to produce drones, usually stopping at the 5th, and a pentatonic scale relative to the current drone...