Guide to Calinitia
A CLBC television report from the world of Calinitia Dreaming.
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Welcome to the beautiful Calinitian Provision! Just a few years ago, you would have needed to take an ocean liner across the Cerulean Sea to get here, but now you can join us from your very own home in Borea—through the magic of television. The Central Loratian Broadcasting Company is proud to give you this visual tour of one of the oldest continuously-inhabited settlements in the world, Calinitia City.
We are quite literally at the center of human civilization. To the northwest is the continent of Borea, with her vast forests and mountains, home to the Loratians, Veliks, Belardics, and Padurics. To the east is the continent of Zaj and its formidable Zaj Autarkic State. To the south are the Lower Lands, separated from Calinitia by a great wall that peers down on the tenements of the Liminal Zone.
Calinitia herself, of course, is a strip of coastline on the western edge of the area known as The Malaan. The Malaan, with its great deserts, was once the domain of the so-called Magnificent Dagi Empire, before the Bipartite War one hundred years ago. Before that, she was ruled by the marauding Suatu kings, and still today you can see and hear Suatu all over the provision. Before the Suatu, there were the Dimatians, now all but lost to time, with their great sandstone temple and animal-headed gods. Before them, some five thousand years ago or more, the archaeological record shows a rich legacy of seafaring and trade back when we Boreans were still living as hunter-gatherers.
There are tales from antiquity of us Loratians occupying Calinitia, then called Dimatia. We spread infrastructural practices, law, and even built an ancient version of today’s southern wall. Who knew that two thousand years later we would be back? That's exactly what happened a century ago, when the Dagi-Paduric Bipartite Alliance was defeated by the sea powers of Loratia, Belardia, and the then-republic of Velika. After the war, the International Assembly broke the Dagi imperial holdings into independent states, creating Esotoia to our north, Nataia to our east, and the Kingdom of Marukhe beyond. Calinitia, on account of its unique cosmopolitan population, was ‘provisionally’ given to the Loratian Union for military administration and protection. With that, Provisional Calinitia was born.
As a military provision, Calinitia does not technically have a civil government, but you would never know it as you stand on the streets of its bustling downtown. There are streetcars, elevated trains, and public services good enough to rival anywhere in the world. It may be snowing where you live, but any time of year around here the weather is just about perfect.
The diversity of the provision, too, is remarkable. Right behind me, you see a group of Boreans, pale and brown-haired. Many may well be second-generation or third-generation Calinitians. After them are others, blond, perhaps High Borean, who look from their robes like Arborist priestesses. Arborism may be Borean in origin, but here in Calinitia the Arborist cathedral takes its mission extremely seriously. There has been tension, over the years, between the Arborist-aligned military administration and the large Suatu population. The Suatu have been here for hundreds of years, and even in our modern age they still largely adhere to the Celestialist faith.
Celestials are easy to spot in Calinitia, not just from their darker complexion and black, wavy hair. They almost always wear something teal, a sash or a wrist tie, with teal being the holy color of their religion. The women cover up from neck to toe, with the exception of the hands, although some of the Suatu women you see in East CC wear very sheer fabrics by our standards. Every four hours, during daylight, they are supposed to pray to the celestial bodies. They use a mechanical device called a steloscope to identify the position of the planet needed for the prayer.
There was some effort in decades past by the Arborist government to reform and limit Celestialist use of the steloscope. The Neocelestialist church, which many see as simply an extension of the Arborist church, does not use it. Recently, however, there has been a governmental move toward tolerance, with some talk of Celestialist statues going up in place of the Arborist twin bears, Turis and Netra.
The olive-uniformed men and women you see behind me are MIs, Military Investigators. Here in Calinitia they serve as everyday law enforcement. The ground-level investigators are known as quartiates, with tertiates being the rank above. At the very top of the MIs is the ultiate, who answers to the military governor.
One unusual sight on the streets of CC is the presence of Azalites, always earless, always together. The Azalites were driven from their kingdom in Central Borea during the Bipartite War, and tens of thousands have settled here in Calinitia in the decades since. The removal of the ears, they say, is a sign of devotion to their single god.
The geopolitical situation in The Malaan remains tense, although here in the city the mood is generally jovial. Despite being nominally a republic, Calinitia’s eastern neighbor of Nataia is in fact a Velik-aligned autarkic dictatorship with a powerful army. There have been no diplomatic relations between Nataia and Calinitia since the Nataian leader, Generalissimo Tuvaka, nationalized Loratian oil fields in his country fifty years ago.
Esotoia, the former Belardic colony serving as Calinitia’s northern neighbor, remains politically dysfunctional and economically insolvent. In the south, meanwhile, the population of the Liminal Zone is continuing to expand, all while Calinitia provides its water and electricity at the expense of the Loratian taxpayer. The arrangement dissatisfies many, including the hardline Celestialist soothsayers of the Zone, but it seems doubtful that the situation can be cleanly resolved anytime soon.
Still, for all the trouble afoot, Calinitia is a place of beauty. One can't help but feel a connection to the story of humankind, past and future, as she gazes out on the sparkling sea that has carried our ships for over five thousand years. In this age of progress, with technology like the telephone and refrigerator arriving in every home, it seems clear we have a bright and shining future ahead.
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