I'd make this just about Belasi, but as Belasi and Sankar were originally the same country, it's not possible to talk about them seperately.
CULTURE NOTES
Sankar
-Asian aesthetic, think Vietnam or Burma rather than Japan
-They like immigrants, as long as they have great work ethic
-religious/racial Tolerance Through Indifference, byproduct humanism
-The Mother is nice, pretty okay
-The government is stiff but functional
-No mages allowed (except in secret circles, wink wink)
Belasi
-Middle Eastern aesthetic, think Ottoman, or Pre-Islamic Turkey
-They don’t like immigrants as much
-They love the Mother, a lot
-Bureaucracy cancer atrophying the government leads to civil wars and rebellions
-No mages allowed
There are some traits that date back pre-split that they still share to this day, for example, in both countries women can be soldiers, but just police, they don’t go to war. Men go to war, women protect the home.
They did develop in seperate cultural aesthetic directions, but there's naturally a bit of ancient and modern crossover between the two.
ANCIENT HISTORY
Spoiler
They were the same country, and it was pretty fine.
Mages used to be liked, in fact a staple of the community, until the Blood Wars.
Nobody remembers or agrees what they were, or what the inciting event was, but it was so monumentally disgusting that it turned most people off of mages overnight.
Sankar did not mobilise, but rather made efforts at peace and diplomacy. Belasi mobilised immediately and cracked down on mage insurrection, hard.
Sankar was ravaged, and Belasi, though not unscathed, was ravaged a lot less.
Sankar in its ruin banded with Belasi, and together they slaughtered the old mages almost entirely. The few who escaped were not heard from again.
Both countries recovered well, but Sankar still had PTSD, which led to some reactionist McCarthyist red scare mage paranoia, and they spied on both halves of the country, and kept accusing people left and right of being secret mages or sympathisers, some lynchings happened.
Belasi became so sick of Sankar that they split the country in half and isolated themselves for a century or so, allowing both countries to calm down and deal with themselves, and culturally develop in different directions.
Eventually they calmed down enough that Belasi un-isolated itself, but it is still passive-aggressively waiting on that apology. (They are never getting that apology.) The mood between the two is ‘uncomfortable small talk.’
Mages used to be liked, in fact a staple of the community, until the Blood Wars.
Nobody remembers or agrees what they were, or what the inciting event was, but it was so monumentally disgusting that it turned most people off of mages overnight.
Sankar did not mobilise, but rather made efforts at peace and diplomacy. Belasi mobilised immediately and cracked down on mage insurrection, hard.
Sankar was ravaged, and Belasi, though not unscathed, was ravaged a lot less.
Sankar in its ruin banded with Belasi, and together they slaughtered the old mages almost entirely. The few who escaped were not heard from again.
Both countries recovered well, but Sankar still had PTSD, which led to some reactionist McCarthyist red scare mage paranoia, and they spied on both halves of the country, and kept accusing people left and right of being secret mages or sympathisers, some lynchings happened.
Belasi became so sick of Sankar that they split the country in half and isolated themselves for a century or so, allowing both countries to calm down and deal with themselves, and culturally develop in different directions.
Eventually they calmed down enough that Belasi un-isolated itself, but it is still passive-aggressively waiting on that apology. (They are never getting that apology.) The mood between the two is ‘uncomfortable small talk.’
MORE RECENT HISTORY-
Spoiler
They did pretty good for most of those centuries apart. Culture developed and thrived, and riots? What riots? 30 years ago the border reopened. Skip forward to 15 years ago.
The Sultan Idyrid was pretty great in his day, but he was getting old, and usually high on painkiller meds for various health conditions, painkiller meds and lots of wine just to be safe.
Embezzlement and nepotism ran amok in the royalty, the aristocracy, and the military, senior-ocracy was a problem, audits didn’t exist, and asses were sat upon.
So naturally, the revolutionary movement was gaining some traction.
The Sultan pulled himself together and made some appeals to the liberals to calm them down, but the reactionaries in his cabinet ruined it for him and murdered a journalist, and riots started happening.
He needed something to distract and unite his people so when Unnamed Nation
to the south-east caused drama, he jumped on their bait and declared war. (This can be one of the existing YWU countries if we want. Or not.)
Because of his horrifically atrophied change-allergic government swimming in mountains of red tape, where any sensible politician trying to update the system is vetoed at every turn, Belasi was unable to properly prepare for war. The war lasted two years. They lost, and they lost hard.
It ended in more revolutionary riots, followed by a siege on Belasi’s capital by Unnamed Nation. Chaos within the walls went so out of hand that Belasi had to rely on the invaders to reinstate their government.
The captured Sultan surrendered, signed a peace treaty, negotiated with the foreign government to have a new mutually supported Belasi candidate coronated, and abdicated from his position.
That was thirteen years ago.
Belasi of the present is begrudgingly yet gratefully peaceful, and trading with other countries like crazy to pay off the war debt.
The Sultan Idyrid was pretty great in his day, but he was getting old, and usually high on painkiller meds for various health conditions, painkiller meds and lots of wine just to be safe.
Embezzlement and nepotism ran amok in the royalty, the aristocracy, and the military, senior-ocracy was a problem, audits didn’t exist, and asses were sat upon.
So naturally, the revolutionary movement was gaining some traction.
The Sultan pulled himself together and made some appeals to the liberals to calm them down, but the reactionaries in his cabinet ruined it for him and murdered a journalist, and riots started happening.
He needed something to distract and unite his people so when Unnamed Nation
to the south-east caused drama, he jumped on their bait and declared war. (This can be one of the existing YWU countries if we want. Or not.)
Because of his horrifically atrophied change-allergic government swimming in mountains of red tape, where any sensible politician trying to update the system is vetoed at every turn, Belasi was unable to properly prepare for war. The war lasted two years. They lost, and they lost hard.
It ended in more revolutionary riots, followed by a siege on Belasi’s capital by Unnamed Nation. Chaos within the walls went so out of hand that Belasi had to rely on the invaders to reinstate their government.
The captured Sultan surrendered, signed a peace treaty, negotiated with the foreign government to have a new mutually supported Belasi candidate coronated, and abdicated from his position.
That was thirteen years ago.
Belasi of the present is begrudgingly yet gratefully peaceful, and trading with other countries like crazy to pay off the war debt.
)