General information (Pre-Great war):
Demonym: Ventres
Capital: Valdorme
Key cities: Aubegarde, Clairvaux-le-Vieux and Vernac-les-Mers
Official language: Vellicien
Total population: 79,532,382
Total land area: 953,837 km² (368 278.525 sq mi)
Currency: Revan
Government: Confederated Oneiric System of Civil Autonomy
The Presidential Relic (PARTIALLY LOST):
At the onset of Ventrois's inquiry into the nature of consciousness, the project lead, [MYTH], reportedly encountered ⍰⍰⍰ at ● under undocumented conditions. The encounter yielded an exhaustive model of a fully developed adult brain, rendered with anomalous precision and structural completeness. Archival notes suggest the model was intended for future biological duplication. Subsequent verification attempts return ███████
Ontological status (Post-Great war): There is a lack of reliable evidence to ascertain whether the entity continues to exist
Addendum 1: A large subterranean chamber has been discovered beneath the territory of the entity, containing thousands of survivors preserved in sleeping pods. The decision of whether to awaken these dormant individuals remains a subject of intense debate
Overview:
Ventrois, officially known as the Ventrois Grand United Provinces, located in Oruwali region. Borders Morthen to the south. Gordionos, Brigalisc, and Cathair Ghormfhain to the southeast. Keldar and Velbor farther south. Draviskas to the west and Raginheim to the northwest.
Ventrois spends far more time living in her dreams than in reality. A somnophile and a quixotic dreamer, she believes her dreams offer endless possibilities, while reality provides nothing but harsh truths and quiet disappointment. She often loses herself in impossible fantasies, finding more happiness in what could never be than in what truly is.
She dislikes being awake. The world feels dull and lifeless, every movement leaves her tired, and only the comfort of her bed makes her feel safe. Her wish is simple - to sleep forever, embrace her dreams, and never wake up again.
About Ventrois:
𝜗ৎ Ventrois is a pioneer in understanding the mind, having developed a synthetic brain that closely replicates the organic human brain.
𝜗ৎ Ventres are allowed to remain in a permanent dream state, choosing to live in a world they control rather than reality.
𝜗ৎ The entire nation is surrounded by a soft purple mist that looks bluish in light. It brings fresh air - but also a gentle, constant sleepiness.
𝜗ৎ Ventrois is home to over 40,000 rivers, all drinkable, with water that has a naturally sweet taste.
𝜗ৎ The average person sleeps up to 16 hours a day. But they aren't idle - they practice lucid dreaming, fully controlling their dreams.
𝜗ৎ The nation had a special public structures called sleep chambers are scattered across the country, allowing people to rest anytime without going home.
𝜗ৎ The Tour de l'Illusion Voilée are four monumental towers standing at the cardinal edges of Ventrois. Each represents layers of the dreaming mind, and at the top, they open into a space covered by a thin, mirror-like layer of water.
𝜗ৎ In Ventrois, waking someone up without a good reason isn't just rude - it's illegal in some provinces.
Brief modern history:
I. LE DESGREEZ DES TERRES AND LE TENS TROUBLE (1208–1215)
From 1208 to 1212, Ventrois endured a moribund interregnum characterized by chronic political volatility, rampant insurgency, escalating secessionism, and perpetual rebellions. In a mere four-year span, the state suffered twenty ephemeral successions of executive leadership, precipitating the virtual dissolution of the national security apparatus. Amaury de Mire, the incumbent sovereign, failed in his imperative of ethno-political amalgamation; his draconian stratagems proved counterproductive, catalyzing profound sectarian antipathy.
On 20 November 1212, repudiating central hegemony, the Mont-Espier province orchestrated an armed insurrection and formally seceded from Haute-Ventrois, precipitating the catastrophic balkanization known as Le Desgreez des Terres. Within a month, Ventrois splintered into thirteen autonomous polities. Certain militarists pursued localized autonomy, whereas rival factions harbored irredentist ambitions to subjugate the entire nation and usurp absolute legitimate sovereignty.
On 10 January 1213, the Bancorois Clique, commanded by northern autocrat Raoul le Preux, executed a preemptive offensive against the Font-Ebrard and Roquefortais factions, inaugurating Le Tens Trouble. This epoch was characterized by systemic anarchy, pervasive lawlessness, and internecine warfare - marking the most sanguinary juncture in Ventrois history. The demographic life expectancy of the average citizen plummeted to a mere 35–38 years.
From 1213 until 1215, a protracted sequence of sieges by disparate militarists endeavored to wrest the capital from the Ventrois Nation Reorganization Government (the vestigial apparatus of the former state). Hegemony over the capital oscillated continuously until it was definitively subjugated by the Ardenne Clique on 2 July 1215, following a resolute defense against the Roquefortais faction. The vestigial regime disintegrated and was systematically assimilated into the Ardenne dominion.
II. THE NORTHERN COALITION AND THE CAMPAIGN OF NATIONAL REUNIFICATION (1215–1217)
In August 1215, the Roquefortais and Bancorois Cliques suspended their entrenched animosities to forge the Northern Coalition, endeavoring to counterbalance the ascendant hegemony of the Ardenne Clique and the Marnay Clique (which had consolidated the occidental territories). The Belval and Malroche factions subsequently acceded to this martial alliance.
On 9 June 1216, the Northern Coalition successfully besieged Castelnaud - the capital of the Marnay Clique. This decisive victory precipitated the complete capitulation of the Marnay Clique, securing the Coalition undisputed dominion over the resource-abundant Western theater. Exploiting this strategic momentum, the Coalition turned its forces eastward toward the Ardenne Clique. By 18 August 1216, the Ardenne defense crumbled; incapable of holding their capital, its surviving battalions executed a desperate retreat south. They sought refuge among the Southern factions, patronized by the powerful realms of Keldar and Cathair Ghormfhain. There, the Southern polities absorbed the blow and successfully blunted the Coalition's forward momentum, grinding the Northern advance to a halt and plunging the entire theater into a protracted operational stalemate.
From 29 March to 22 November 1217, having synthesized the eastern domains, Gautier de Montfort mobilized his Roquefortais Clique to launch the Campaign of National Reunification. Nevertheless, this mobilization encountered formidable opposition from a united phalanx of rival autocrats. Compounded by escalating strategic schisms between Gautier de Montfort and Guiot le Febvre, the offensive foundered, plunging the Roquefortais Clique into a fratricidal civil war. This aborted campaign critically eroded the Northern Coalition's martial efficacy. Exploiting this acute vulnerability, populist insurrections proliferated across coalition jurisdictions, catalyzed by pervasive outrage over despotic governance and institutional venality. Consequently, the coalition disintegrated into disparate fragments by early 1218.
III. THE RISE OF THE LBC AND THE REUNIFICATION WAR (1218–1221)
In May 1218, the La Ligue du Bien-Commun (LBC) faction catapulted to sudden political preeminence. Its doctrinal ideology, Oneironautism, established the philosophical bedrock for Somnolism - an esoteric imperative to attain universal lucid dreaming and penetrate the oneiric dimension. The civilian populace, profoundly enervated by perpetual attrition and harboring deep-seated cynicism toward the cliques, mobilized overwhelming popular patronage for this emergent philosophy .
On 3 July 1218, the LBC orchestrated a subitaneous coup d'état within the Brimont dominion, instantaneously precipitating a belligerent expansionist offensive against contiguous autocratic fiefdoms. By 8 December, the LBC had successfully subsumed the preponderance of the central territories and the absolute entirety of the occidental theater. On 10 December, the LBC initiated its climactic crusade against the residual septentrional and oriental despots - inaugurating the Great Reunification War.
Battle of Pont-Soreit (4 February – 11 May 1219): The LBC successfully besieged the citadel and traversed the Torcuz Bridge - a strategic chokepoint historically deemed impregnable without ruinous casualties - thereby securing vital operational ingress into the Serazois and Espierois provinces of the deep North.
Battle of Fontaine-Blanche (3 June – 10 August 1220): The Roquefortais faction (commanded by Gautier de Montfort) capitulated, subsequently followed by the absolute subjugation of Guiot le Febvre a mere three days later. Galvanized by surging martial fervor, the LBC immediately spearheaded a relentless vanguard progression deeper into the northern expanses.
Battle of Sauvetat-les-Tombes (22 November 1220 – 19 February 1221): The final recalcitrant militarist, the Marchesche Clique, formally surrendered.
The battle thereafter definitively culminated the Great Reunification War and shuttered the sanguinary epoch of Le Tens Trouble. (The southern territories, however, remained entrenched as autonomous suzerainties under the geopolitical aegis of Keldar and Cathair Ghormfhain.)
IV. POST-WAR CONSOLIDATION AND THE CLOTILDE-YSORE SCHISM (1221–1226)
From 1221 to 1222, Ventrois promulgated the Civic Alignment directive, compelling the populace to undergo protracted ideological indoctrination. This re-education apparatus suffered from profound bureaucratic maladministration. The state simultaneously executed Le Degast, enforcing a systematic lustration of all personnel affiliated with antecedent militarists to forestall resurgent factionalism. In January 1222, Civic Harmony was instituted: adversarial demographics were subjected to forced resettlement via a stochastic geographic algorithm, coercing historic antagonists into involuntary spatial juxtaposition.
From 1222 to 1223, the regime instituted corvée labor conscription for post-bellum destitutes; practically, this degenerated into carceral subjugation. War orphans were expropriated as sovereign chattel, systematically abrogating extant consanguineous prerogatives. Pervasive malcontent, institutional venality, administrative ineptitude, and systemic exploitation catalyzed endemic civil unrest. Furthermore, the doctrinal teleology of Oneironautism remained esoterically opaque and dialectically vacuous.
On 6 June 1225, Clotilde Amandine - a dissident LBC apparatchik - orchestrated a coup d'état but foundered while attempting to circumvallate La Rozicre (the paramount administrative citadel of Ventrois) in the capital. Notwithstanding this tactical miscarriage, the nation plummeted into La Guerre Sang-de-Prun, a fratricidal civil war bifurcating the state, with Clotilde establishing hegemony over the Occident and LBC autocrat Ysore Marceau commanding the Orient.
Battle of Ostrac (18 October – 11 November 1225): A celeritous tactical victory for Clotilde laid bare Ysore's operational fragility and precipitously amplified populist patronage for her insurgent mandate.
On 11–29 January 1226, paralyzed by paranoia regarding nascent ethno-separatism, Ysore perpetrated the Fontenelles Massacre within a province populated by two paramount demographic cohorts: the Ventres-Grises and Vestres-Ters. This atrocity catalyzed an insuperable wave of anti-regime animus across LBC jurisdictions, precipitating localized insurrections that swiftly defected to Clotilde's vanguard.
Battle of Clair-Marais (8 May – 9 July 1226): Ysore's definitive final stand. Following this calamitous rout, the LBC's offensive logistics were irrevocably neutralized. Cognizant of his impending subjugation, Ysore orchestrated the Sanguelac Massacre, indiscriminately liquidating noncombatants within his residual territories as scapegoats for the regime's implosion. An estimated 200,000 civilians perished in this nihilistic democide.
Battle of Champ-de-l'Ance (24 July – 7 August 1226): Confronted by total strategic capitulation, Ysore committed suicide within his executive redoubt, culminating in the unconditional surrender of the LBC.
V. RECONSTRUCTION, INSURGENCIES, AND THE CEC PROJECT (1226–1245)
Under Clotilde's aegis, Ventrois experienced a gradual socio-economic convalescence following decades of protracted attrition. Nevertheless, centrifugal secessionism remained profoundly entrenched, particularly across the oriental and oreal peripheries. In October 1232, the Mesnie-Noire Insurgency detonated, spearheaded by the Ventres-Espon demographic in the North, enduring for three months prior to its absolute pacification. In May 1237, the Bans-Faits Insurgency - driven by a pan-ethnic northern coalition - raged for eight months, inflicting catastrophic degradation upon national cohesion and internal security. The operational magnitude was so expansive that contemporary historiography fervently debates its taxonomic classification as a definitive internecine conflict.
In 1240, the regime inaugurated the La Chambre des Etudes Curieuses (CEC) initiative, an scientific endeavor engineered to methodically decode and subjugate human cognitive faculties. In July 1241, the state successfully synthesized artificial oneiric phenomena capable of being seamlessly transmitted into a subject's subconscious during somatic dormancy. In August 1245, the hypnographic transmitter achieved operational culmination, empowering subjects to exert autocratic volition over their neurological dreamscapes while sleeping.
In 1248, the domestic population of opalescent whorled snails experienced an exponential surge, resulting in widespread household infestations across the realm. This ecological proliferation was brought under control only following direct government intervention to regulate and restrict the commercial cultivation processes of the species.
VI. THE WAR AGAINST THE CONSTITUTIONAL UNION (1253-1270)
In August 1253, Ventrois engaged in an acute geopolitical border skirmish with Keldar, localized predominantly at the Rochefortel demarcation line. In November 1256, the Esgargil - a protracted meteorological anomaly characterized by cyclonic gales of sufficient velocity to physically displace adult humans - persisted for three months, constituting the most cataclysmic aeolian event in recorded antiquity. On 10 April 1257, Ventrois apprehended a substantial clandestine network of Cathair Ghormfhain intelligence operatives; this unprecedented espionage scandal catalyzed a draconian expansion of the domestic surveillance apparatus.
On 30 January 1260, following allegations that the Constitutional Union of Ventrois (the vestigial permutation of the Southern Cliques) orchestrated an asymmetrical terrorist atrocity against noncombatants, Ventrois formally promulgated a declaration of war, culminating years of covert mobilization.
Battle of Tormenteborc (18 June – 5 August 1260): Demarcated the overt geopolitical intervention of Keldar and Cathair Ghormfhain (collectively operating as the Circular Wheel hegemony) into the theater of conflict.
Battle of Esbair-Mont (9 December 1260 – 8 February 1261): Represented the inaugural deployment of Ventrois's nascent psychotronic armaments, engineered to neurologically incapacitate a subject's cognitive faculties via weaponized acoustic frequencies.
From March to May 1261, a proliferation of coordinated asymmetrical incursions by Constitutional Union insurgents afflicted the Ventrois metropole. The butchery at Aigremont High School constituted the most egregious atrocity, liquidating upwards of 300 civilians and generating an insuperable wave of jingoistic fervor to sustain the martial campaign.
Battle of Orageval (13 July – 5 August 1261): An expeditious tactical engagement culminating in the apprehension of two paramount Union autocrats - Thibault de Corvaine and Renaud Noirciel - effectively severing the insurgency's organizational cohesion. The Circular Wheel subsequently assumed direct operational command of the proxy forces from this juncture.
On 4 April 1263, the Union perpetrated a heinous democide at Bel Savoir Elementary School, indiscriminately liquidating over 200 individuals. This atrocity catalyzed profound societal indignation and galvanized the regime to systematically accelerate the total conquest of the Union. In the wake of this pogrom, the Circular Wheel rescinded its geopolitical patronage of the Union. Ventrois instantaneously executed Operation Granz Degastement, projecting unmitigated military force deep into sovereign Union territory.
Battle of Ville-Frede (12 November 1263 – 13 February 1264): The paramount administrative capital of the Union unconditionally capitulated. Nevertheless, the conflict protracted into an exhaustive war of attrition until 1270, as vestigial Union cadres pivoted toward clandestine asymmetrical guerrilla warfare.
VII. THE WAR WITH THE CIRCULAR WHEEL AND THE FIRST GREAT WAR (1265–1273)
From 1265 to 1268, hegemonic brinkmanship between Ventrois and the Circular Wheel exacerbated exponentially, catalyzed by reciprocal paranoia, kinetic border skirmishes, and relentless martial proliferation. On 14 June 1268, following an infrastructural blackout across three southern provinces, Ventrois ascribed the subterranean sabotage to the Circular Wheel and officially invoked a formal war declaration.
Battle of Belampar (Ventrois), 8 August – 13 October 1268: Ventrois engineered a successful defensive bulwark, although the metropolitan epicenter sustained apocalyptic degradation from siege bombardment and cavalry vanguard incursions. This catastrophic infrastructural decimation compelled the Ventrois stratocracy to repudiate defensive paradigms in favor of an aggressively expansionist offensive doctrine.
Battle of Hnafnaborg (Keldar), 19 March – 24 May 1269: Ventrois introduced the Cognitive Entrainment Device (CED), a psychotronic apparatus capable of usurping an adversary's sovereign cognitive volition for three minutes (though fluctuating efficacy frequently precipitated aberrant neurological blowback). The ontological terror induced by this weapon profoundly enervated opposing enemy cadres.
Battle of Blodgaror (Keldar), 30 September – 10 November 1269: The state fielded the Instant Somnolence Wave Generator (ISWG), engineered to precipitate involuntary catalepsy via weaponized neural resonance frequencies. However, a calamitous cybernetic malfunction triggered an uncalibrated ambient pulse, incapacitating the entire combat theater in an indiscriminate, paralyzed catatonia.
In December 1269, diagnosing the theater as an insurmountable quagmire of attritional stasis, both belligerents ratified the Sphura Achvil Utiku bilateral armistice in Morthen on 20 December. The status quo ante bellum was rigidly preserved without territorial annexations. Post-bellum, Ventrois instituted the Clarte de Sens directive, drastically proliferating and augmenting its psychotronic armaments after empirically validating the CED and ISWG prototypes.
During the First Great War of Eldervale, Ventrois enforced absolute non-belligerent isolationism, metamorphosing into the paramount sanctuary nexus for displaced expatriates fleeing Morthen, Raginheim, Draviskas, and Velbor. From 1273 to 1276, the autocracy commissioned the Tor des Songes - monolithic megaliths surpassing 800 meters (2,624 feet) in altitude, calibrated to propagate continuous neural frequencies capable of artificially modulating the mass cognitive paradigm.
VIII. NEURO-ENGINEERING, ASSIMILATION, AND THE SECOND GREAT WAR (1280–1294)
In May 1280, aided by the Toutanglom intelligentsia, Ventrois engineered a synthetic neurological replica operating at 99% cognitive parity with a biological human cerebrum. In May 1282, the inaugural bicameral encephalic augmentation was successfully executed, exponentially amplifying the fidelity of oneiric manifestation. Despite the profound cognitive potential, tri-cerebral implantation protocols were explicitly proscribed due to fatal physiological sensory overload in the same year. By 1285, the Dream Orchestrator achieved operational culmination, granting subjects absolute sovereign volition over oneiric simulacra with negligible somatic peril.
Exploiting the geopolitical turbulence of the escalating Second Great War, Ventrois invoked a formal provocation against the Circular Wheel on 8 June 1291, strategically weaponizing revanchist jingoism to synthetically galvanize the fractured populace against an external adversary.
Battle of Solfall and Isafjall (Keldar), 14 October 1291 – 4 February 1292: The most colossal engagement of the theater, decisively arresting the state advancement. Unprecedented psychotronic somnolence waves were deployed; however, catastrophic acoustic dysregulation precipitated fatal auditory hemorrhaging across bilateral martial cadres.
The Sleep Walking (Cathair Ghormfhain), 9–28 July 1292: Unfolding upon the peripheral thresholds of Eboron, this engagement remains historically infamous for belligerents executing kinetic combat maneuvers while entrenched in deep somnambulistic trances. This operation demarcated Ventrois's final strategic territorial acquisition before sustaining a relentless attritional repulsion.
Battle of Chastel (Ventrois), 5 October – 1 December 1292: The Circular Wheel successfully penetrated into the Ventrois sovereign mainlain, compelling the maximal activation of the Tor des Songes megaliths to project an omnipresent cognitive subjugation matrix against hostile consciousnesses within demarcated territorial confines.
Battle of Virefleur (Ventrois), 11 April – 8 May 1293: The state successfully repulsed the siege and fortified its defensive bulwark, discharging the most voluminous concentration of cataleptic psychotronic frequencies ever recorded in a singular theater of combat.
Defense of Veldorme (Ventrois), 27 August – 13 November 1293: Ventrois mounted a resolute defense of its administrative epicenter, definitively neutralizing Cathair Ghormfhain's strategic offensive and degenerating the broader geopolitical conflict into a grinding, static war of attrition.
Battle of Fauconbrie (Ventrois), 16 March – 7 May 1294: Ventrois engineered a counter-offensive to reclaim this paramount cultural enclave, deploying the Arousal Amplifier to biologically unyoke its infantry from the physiological necessity of sleep. The engagement degenerated into a profoundly savage, relentless bloodbath; upon its culmination, Ventrois's offensive logistical capacity was irrevocably liquidated.
Following the universal promulgation of the Pax Seraphic, the exhausted Ventrois autocracy formally ratified the bilateral armistice on 5 July 1294.
IX. POST-WAR CRISIS AND THE SEPARATIST REGIMES (1294–1304)
The protracted conflict plunged Ventrois into a profound socio-economic and political nadir, exacerbated by systemic infrastructural devastation and abysmal combative efficacy. In June 1297, virulent separatist insurgencies resurged across the South and East peripheries. Concurrently, the state apparatus imploded into a chaotic power vacuum following total institutional disintegration. In November 1297, bureaucratic functionary Hugues de Payens orchestrated an autocratic usurpation, promulgating draconian mandates to artificially synthesize internal stability.
In March 1298, operating under the assumption of sufficient socio-economic convalescence, Hugues formally issued a declaration of war against the breakaway secessionist polities.
Battle of Lyone (11 June – 4 July 1298): A decisive tactical triumph that shattered the entrenched secessionist defensive bulwark in the Orient. This engagement marked the inaugural tactical command of Hugues's anointed autocratic successor, Ermengarde Narbonne.
Battle of Rouen (2–28 August 1298): The definitive theater of combat culminating in the absolute subjugation of the East separatist dominions.
Ermengarde was subsequently delegated supreme command over the Austral campaigns. The Battle of Nantes (14 February – 6 March 1298) enabled Ventrois forces to decisively penetrate this historically impregnable geographical chokepoint, exponentially amplifying Ermengarde's sociopolitical cachet. Following this victory, the stratocracy inaugurated Operation Rupture, executing a relentless hundred-day campaign of systemic bombardment against fortified insurgent redoubts.
On 22 May 1298, Ermengarde survived a clandestine assassination overture during a prominent populist address. Despite sustaining severe somatic trauma, she resolutely concluded the political manifesto prior to physiological collapse, a stoic spectacle that precipitously hypertrophied her demagogic cult of personality.
Battle of Dijon (28 June – 8 August 1298): Precipitated the capitulation of the ultimate Southern separatist citadel and the mass apprehension of dissident autocrats. Nevertheless, sustained by covert logistical patronage from the Circular Wheel, vestigial secessionist cadres protracted an asymmetrical guerrilla insurgency until their definitive eradication in 1304.
X. THE ERMENGARDE ERA AND THE SOMNOLISM DOCTRINE (1300–1322)
Following Hugues's demission in 1300, Ermengarde ascended as sovereign autocrat, officially enshrining Somnolism - an ontological dogma positing the oneiric realm as the paramount substratum of objective reality. In July 1301, Ventrois promulgated L'Acort Comun, a legislative edict engineered to amalgamate heterogeneous demographic strata via a univocal jurisprudential and ethical architecture, thereby precipitating indissoluble inter-ethnic assimilation and societal cohesion. This mandate successfully extirpated epochs of inveterate sectarian tribalism. During a 1304 national plebiscite regarding L'Acort Comun, an incontrovertible populist plurality ratified the directive; for the primordial instance in decades, pluralistic ethno-cultural factions achieved unparalleled socio-political equilibrium. In 1310, the state successfully actualized a neural-nexus apparatus, a psychotronic conduit facilitating the frictionless telemetric transmission of cognitive data directly between organic cerebra.
In 1313, the autocracy ingeniously fabricated the Sommeil-Dur - a cryogenic stasis receptacle capable of plunging subjects into protracted somatic diapause for centuries. In June 1316, A transformative artistic era began to take shape, codified as L'Endormisme, which prioritized the esoteric contextualization of somnolence within anomalous spatial milieus. In September 1320, the imperium successfully consummated the Oneiroforge, a paradigm-shifting psychotronic matrix capable of synthesizing a subject's neural dreamscapes into corporeal holographic apparitions - undeniably one of the most illustrious techno-cognitive apexes in Ventrois antiquity.
On 15 June 1322, coinciding with the statutory national jubilee, Ermengarde Narbonne succumbed to a fulminating bronchial pathogenesis. She remains immortalized in contemporary historiography as one of the most preeminent visionary within Ventrois's history.
XI. LEGISLATIVE REFORMS, ANOMALIES, AND PSYCHOTRONIC SUBVERSION (1324–1340)
On 20 January 1324, Ventrois ratified the Right to Sleep (a comprehensive jurisprudential augmentation of antecedent statutes), instituting an unprecedented mandate dictating that inescapable biological imperatives for sleep must be universally accommodated without socio-economic impediment.
In September 1329, the entire metropole endured a grid failure precipitated by energetic mismanagement - dubbed La Nuit Obscure - plunging the state into a week-long electrical deprivation, with peripheral sectors suffering a ten-day systemic blackout.
From 1330 to 1331, ubiquitous reports of a chimerical entity inducing paralytic night terrors among slumbering populaces were documented nationwide, precipitating acute waking hallucinations of the metaphysical fiend. To neutralize this cognitive contagion, Ventrois engineered the Lucid Pulse, a prophylactic neural-dampener designed to selectively occlude visual perception of the apparition.
Between 22 and 27 April 1336, a clandestine psychotronic apparatus designated the Rotational-Somnifier, optically camouflaged as atmospheric cumulus, infiltrated the sovereign airspaces of Cathair Ghormfhain and Keldar, propagating weaponized neural frequencies. These psychoactive emanations precipitated acute mass psychosis; afflicted civilians systematically divested their vestments and careened through urban thoroughfares executing grossly aberrant, uninhibited behaviors. The neurological hijack persisted for thirty minutes, culminating in absolute retrograde amnesia for the affected cohort. This unprecedented psychotronic violation triggered a profound geopolitical crisis, prompting immediate bilateral martial escalations along demarcated frontiers.
Incensed by its prophylactic neutralization, the chimerical anomaly - newly classified as Dreamburst - mutated into a metaphysical parasite. It methodically siphoned oneiric manifestations from slumbering subjects, supplanting their subconscious narratives with a catatonic cognitive void. This predatory entity was eradicated via the deployment of the Dream Weaver Engine, an advanced neuro-restorative matrix that reconstituted the expropriated dreamscapes.
XII. THE PANGAEA-FLOURISH STATE AND THE ROAD TO THE THIRD GREAT WAR (1343–1378)
In October 1343, the nation attained the Pangaea-Flourish, a zenith of absolute infrastructural and socio-economic maximization. From 1345 to 1356, the imperium excavated vast subterranean complexes to house Sommeil-Dur stasis receptacles for the entire demographic, an initiative designated as the Cocon de Morphee. In 1350, a catastrophic detonation obliterated a Ventrois installation; although ultimately attributed to mechanical failure, the disaster nearly provoked a geopolitical miscalculation, as authorities initially suspected covert sabotage by the Circular Wheel.
On 23 October 1352, Foucaud Ventadorn - an infamous recidivist culpable of protracted sedition, high treason, and systemic subversion - was executed via banishment into an inescapable, perpetual neuro-simulated nightmare. This draconian sentence definitively concluded a relentless two-decade manhunt.
In 1356, the Dreamburst anomaly resurfaced, adopting a novel sadistic pathology by inflicting chronic, excruciating insomnia upon its victims for consecutive days. Anticipating the parasite's cyclical recurrence, Ventrois neuro-engineers orchestrated a psychological snare, permanently incarcerating the metaphysical fiend. Subsequently, the state synthesized the Lullaby Mind, a benevolent artificial consciousness designed to induce restorative slumber and immunize the populace against analogous cognitive predators.
In January 1360, an unidentified aerial phenomenon penetrated sovereign airspace. Fearing imminent foreign aggression, Ventrois instantaneously mobilized its martial echelons. The anomaly was ultimately demystified as a stray meteorological aerostat that had inadvertently drifted from Brigalisc following a botched tethering experiment.
On 26 June 1366, commemorating the bicentennial National Jubilee, the government incentivized citizens to don nocturnal sleepwear in public; this idiosyncratic sartorial edict rapidly metastasized into a pervasive cultural aesthetic. On 1 August 1370, Matin du Bois was inaugurated as the sovereign premier. From 1371 to 1378, the regime massively escalated its munitions proliferation during a fraught brinkmanship rivalry with the Circular Wheel. Both global powers conducted provocative tactical drills along the demarcated frontier, sustaining this militarized trajectory until the catastrophic eruption of the Third Great War.
Ideology: Somnolism
Somnolism is a political ideology that elevates the mastery and communal curation of the dream state as the highest human good, viewing waking reality as a necessary but inferior substrate - a mere launchpad for the boundless realm of sleep-consciousness. Every citizen possesses an inalienable right to at least ten hours of deep, curated sleep per night, and waking hours are considered a collective maintenance shift rather than the purpose of existence. Engaging with immersive dreams is framed as a political act against "wake tyranny" - the oppressive demand for constant alertness, labor, and rational discourse. The greatest heroes of this society are lucid dreamers and oneirographers (dream architects), while work is limited to four to six waking hours, with the remainder dedicated to sleep, dream-recall study, and rest rituals; any activity that shortens or fragments sleep is heavily penalized. Dream quality is treated not as a luxury but as a public good, with the state providing dream subsidies to ensure even the poorest citizen can access vivid, restorative dreams, and "dream deserts" - noise-polluted, high-stress zones - are illegal. Citizens are encouraged and trained from childhood to achieve lucid dreaming, as lucidity is seen as the highest form of political consciousness, allowing one to rewrite oppressive dream-elements such as nightmares of authority, scarcity, or failure and thereby unlearn waking submission. Nightmares are understood not as natural but as psychological pollution caused by unresolved waking trauma, economic anxiety, or authoritarian propaganda, so Somnolism mandates universal dream-hygiene education and public oneiric clinics where recurring nightmares can be excised through guided re-dreaming therapy. Staying awake longer than necessary is considered hostile to the social dream-body, and the state may forcibly sedate chronic vigilantes in extreme cases for their own oneiric health. The long-term goal of Somnolism is to gradually extend the human sleep cycle from eight to twelve, and eventually to sixteen hours per night, by redesigning cities as silent, dark, temperature-regulated dormitories, making waking a brief, functional interlude for eating, hygiene, and essential maintenance rather than a full society. The ultimate endpoint is a perpetual, shared, waking-proof dream civilization.