Bray

Official Name: Isle of Bray

Founded: 1601

Form of Government: Representative democracy

Head of State: Prime Minister Mick Gallagher

Population Level: Above average

Society Structure: Farms w/some important cities

Technological Level: Above average

Background: See United Bayronite Shires.

Founding: When the United Bayronite Shires were thrown into disarray by the death of King Norman the Fourteenth and his lack of a male heir, the Airdric and Brayan clans that had existed for almost five centuries as willing parts of the nation found themselves for the first time with influence during an internal power struggle. However, while Airdrie immediately removed themselves from the united nation upon failing to stop the rise of the first woman, Queen Suzanne, to power, Bray took a more nuanced approach.

Queen Suzanne wanted to launch an immediate attack to subjugate the Airdric people once and for all, but to do so successfully she needed the entirety of what remained of the UBS army, including Bray's contribution. Seeing an opportunity to improve business for its farms by selling to two customers rather than one, clan head Cullen Bray ordered his soldiers to return home and sit at the Bray/UBS border until his demands were met by the queen. Infuriated by Bray's power play, but needing to get them back on her side quickly before Airdrie could set up impenetrable defenses around their highland holds, Suzanne gave Cullen most of what he wanted: looser ties with the UBS hierarchy, a somewhat higher percentage of income from the trade of Brayan farm products, and guaranteed upgrades for his clan's soldiers at the same time as the Bayronites' (to that day, native UBS soldiers routinely received better weapons and armor first, with clan soldiers being outfitted only when extra supplies existed).

Once terms were agreed to, Cullen ordered his men back onto the field, but slowly; by the time they arrived ready to muster with the rest of the UBS force, Airdrie had rendered itself essentially impervious to attack. Queen Suzanne attempted to renege on her end of the bargain with Bray, but with contracts being signed and the honor of the first national queen at stake, she allowed Bray to keep its new power without a fight. Given that the UBS maintained enough wealth to make the loss of some Brayan farm profits manageable, and the Brayans tended to rule their own lands as it was, the new status quo proved not particularly disruptive and became an easily accepted norm.

In 1598, clan head Fitheal Bray withdrew his troops from the UBS army and submitted further demands to Suzanne's grandson, King William. Brayan elders almost unanimously spoke up against the plan, as Bray had no leverage with which to demand concessions and lands not nearly as suited to defense as Airdrie's. Furthermore, because Fitheal's demands were essentially for independence, the UBS had no reason to spare the lash, as it were, trying to keep Bray in line. And, as it happened, William chose to forgo his grandmother's example of negotiation and brought his troops to bear immediately.

Whether Fitheal was a shrewd leader who knew his opponent, or an over-ambitious young man who was simply lucky enough to have an even bigger fool across the field from him, has been a subject for debate from the turn of the 17th century on. What is known is that Fitheal's army commanders took the only defensible position they had, the Lisburn swamp just beyond the first line of Brayan border farms, and awaited the much larger UBS army with ambush in mind. William, convinced of victory and refusing to be dissuaded by his advisers, led the first charge directly into the ambush and found himself captured. Fitheal paraded the young king around for the better part of a day, until William pleaded mercy and agreed to all of Bray's demands in exchange for his release.

Fitheal, in a stroke arguing the case for lucky fool over genius tactician, wished to keep William hostage until Brayan independence was assured, then behead him. As his advisers almost unanimously pointed out, any other UBS leader would re-engage out of vengeance and not make the same mistake that led to their current defeat. However, allowing William to re-take the throne would guarantee a weak, disrespected leader in charge of the UBS while Bray determined its course as a nation. Eventually Fitheal relented, released William, and Bray became a fully independent nation in 1601.

Pre-Melt: Unlike Airdrie, Bray did not change its form of government from hereditary leadership until the early 17th century. Despite ill feelings between the UBS and Bray, especially for the rest of William's reign (until his relatively young death in 1616), Bray's farmland was too important to the Shirelands for diplomatic tensions to restrict trade, and unlike Airdrie, the Brayans saw little need to change their leadership method out of spite towards the UBS. In fact, Bray changed over to an Airdrie-style parliamentary system in the early 1700s only to avoid a prolonged conflict over clan leadership between Muirin and Desmond Bray, neither of whom was considered competent enough to care for the nation's interests.

During the rise of steam technology, where the UBS turned towards transportation and more utilitarian inventions, and Airdrie towards weaponry, Bray maintained their agricultural focus. All manner of steam-based mechanical animals were invented as beasts of burden, allowing Brayan farms to drastically shrink their animal stock to only what was necessary for food and breeding. Once wheeled vehicles became standard transport, Bray quickly became the first nation with steam tractors and other implements that drastically increased farming efficiency. In this way, although most of the nation's territory remained farmland, their few cities became major population centers with the most per capita steam tech factories in the Shirelands.

This manufacturing capability allowed Bray two advantages over its neighbors. First, its economy became less influenced by a single industry, giving it better flexibility as new technology made old inventions obsolete. More importantly, however, hosting so many factories allowed Bray to maintain a significant air force from the advent of steamplane technology onward, almost on par with the UBS and much stronger relative to the size of the country.

Unfortunately, most of the Brayan airfields were built on fully leeched farmland in the northwestern section of the country- the part of the Shirelands hardest hit by the Melt.

Melt: In some ways, Bray's position at the start of the rising tides was fortunate. Possessing most of the Shirelands' agricultural base, Bray retained access to more than sufficient food for its people even after losing a significant percentage of farmland to the early Melt. However, national coffers were built on the assumption of massive income from the sale of food; with much of the extraneous food production destroyed, Brayan leaders were forced to balance feeding their people with continuing to sell enough food to fund the functions of the government, while not overpricing their goods so much that it would destroy diplomatic relations with their neighbors at a time of potential calamity.

As the Melt continued, Bray's parliament became more and more dysfunctional. After eventually agreeing to a program of food aid with the UBS, Airdrie, and Nantes, Brayan leadership argued endlessly about every one of the dwindling coins in the national budget. Even King Edward's Humanitarian Covenant was debated ad infinitum until in 1875 Prime Minister Riordan Flynn became the first Brayan PM to declare unilateral action based on emergency power, declaring Bray willing and able to support the UBS' humanitarian ideals in whatever way possible. This move sealed Flynn's political fate, however- he was deposed as PM the following year- and his support of the Covenant remains the only use of emergency power in Bray's history.

After Flynn's departure from government, the parliament entered the darkest period in its history. Four different prime ministers took up the position and resigned during the most severe eight years of the Melt due to frustration at their ineffectualness. Despite the astonishing encroachment of the ocean onto Bray's shores, the people were left to devise their own evacuation strategies, and the military was forced to save its planes by piling as many of them into Bray's few high-elevation airfields as possible. Like most other nations, Bray lost its coastal shipyards and thus was unable to refit or add to its existing navy, but despite their inherent manufacturing advantage the Brayans were unable to devote funds to expanding their naval influence beyond the ability of all but the largest countries to match. Through the end of the Melt, the only significant action the parliament was able to take was fulfilling the legally binding promises of Riordan Flynn upon Queen Marjorie's official request for worldwide aid in 1884.

Great War: When Mick Gallagher became a deputy minister in 1887, he was a junior representative from one of the still-barely-existing rural districts mostly washed out in the Melt. Despite this absolute lack of clout, he earned a reputation for level-headed charisma that led to his being selected as a negotiator during the UBS-led attempts to defuse tensions between Messina and the Rhozanni Oligarchy in 1889. Like the Bayronite and Airdric negotiating teams that also made attempts at a resolution, Gallagher's team was ultimately unsuccessful. However, once reports started to leak that the current PM's chief lieutenant had nearly destroyed negotiations before they began in an overt attempt to control the proceedings, and Gallagher salvaged things to the point of reaching consensus between the sides on ninety percent of the contested details, his name quickly ascended the list of people potentially capable of bringing Bray's parliament to heel and forcing them to again serve the will of the people. In 1890, as war began to break out worldwide, he became the new prime minister of Bray.

Like the other Shireland nations, Bray officially remained outside any of the Great War's varied conflicts. However, unlike Airdrie and the UBS, Gallagher convinced the parliament that focusing the nation's manufacturing base on weapons production and sales would not only guarantee Bray's safety, but allow it to make up the agricultural profits lost to the Melt. Though no official law was passed in this regard, it became an open secret that less technologically advanced nations in the eastern hemisphere were able to even the odds in their own battles through the purchase of Brayan weaponry. Sales were not made to neighboring lands- Messina and the breakaway Rhozanni states were considered too unstable, the old UBS colonies too unknown, and Qom too much of a threat- though rumors persisted in the mid 1890s that Gallagher carried on an affair with Queen Parthia of Lamia during diplomatic visits and pressured suppliers to let certain shipments land on Lamian shores rather than their intended destinations.

Overall, though Gallagher was not able to prod the parliament members into more peaceful and respectful dealings with each other, he did manage to force a variety of legislative actions through the system. Most notably, given the increasing importance of the military, was his ability to secure double the existing land for airfield use. This allowed the air force to cease the severe overcrowding of current bases, making the admirals very happy and leading them to offer heavy support any time his leadership became a point of contention. Because the new airfields wound up on or very near current farms, rural citizens with sufficient interest were also trained as emergency mechanics, leading to some unfortunate leaks in plane design but allowing the air force to theoretically draft a veritable army of repairpeople into service in times of need (this, however, has not yet been necessary).

Post-War to Present: For twenty-five years Gallagher has remained Prime Minister of Bray, the second-longest tenure in national history. Since the beginning of the ARI races, Bray has turned its yearly entry into a contest of national pride, with most but not all of its competitors coming from the military ranks. With Roy Falco's thumb on the scale world affairs, Bray's consistent success in the ARI has extended to them worldwide influence that well outstrips their general size and strength.

To date, Gallagher has steadfastly refused to put that influence to much use. Pressure to do so increases with each Brayan victory, however, and questions linger whether the Prime Minister will eventually bend to that pressure- and if so, in what manner will he put his country's influence to use?