Mery

Engraving of the Mery sun diety Tshola and their horse Kimehtarhtawiritig, as seen on Vintage Civ

The Mery (or mehri in the mehrileh conlang) are a semi-nomadic religious peoples present within the Civ meta community. Originally developing as a culture within The Workers' Party in late 2021, the Mery have since formed their own independent tribe and plan to continue their lineage on CivMC. The Mery are anarchistic in their political nature, not dissimilar to the quasi-cossack militaristic Makhnovia anarchist society. They are united by their common religious beliefs they call rhayatshola, which defines their mutually beneficial relationship between them and their sun god Tshola. On CivMC, they plan to exist not only as their own sovereign entity but also as semi-autonomous sub-entities within other sovereign states in what they've described as Kurdistan-esque.

History

Prehistory

The origins of the Mery culture date all the way back to Civcraft 3.0 in the Volans. There, the Dhingdom of Endeavour was in a state of utter political turmoil after, after ruling omnipotently during the first month of the city's development, the King Dhingus was pearled on August 19, 2016. His government was usurped and replaced with the democratic White Cross Council which was tasked with deciding on a new permanent government. Newly converted from a minarchist to a left-libertarian, council member and Dhingus pearler Pythius_ (at the time known as Darkflame) proposed the codification of Endeavour's de facto factionalism of the time, a government known as the Endeavor Sasparana. The proposal was the culmination of Pythius's dream of a fluid, RP-heavy, anarchistic way of life, and he hoped to make it a reality through the Sasparana. While a vote was held and the Sasparana eventually won out, discontent with the government remained among the factions and a civil war ensued, with the Baltic Bambinos (Pythius's faction) on the left, dhingus's royalists on the right, and many others in between with little cooperation between any of them. This division was taken advantage of by Aegis, a war-like neighbouring state, who took control of a secessionist faction in Endeavour's south. Any real focus was taken away from internal developments after this until the end of 3.0, which came to a sudden end on October 1, 2016.

After some months of casual discussions and playing games outside of civ, the Threepers regrouped and founded Provincia on CivClassic 2.0 on July 6, 2017. In the beginning, the same basic power struggled occurred between the leftist factions and the royalist factions (the latter this time headed by Ninjajackh12) over control of the city. Sadly, disputes over roads and factories caused deep divisions among the group and led to the departure of many, letting Pythius declare somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory and establish Provincia as a socialist community. While Pythius was able to establish a mostly anarchistic form of governance, the reality of Provincia's precarious place in the world post-exodus forced the Threepers to adopt a more traditional approach to international politics, with borders, de facto leaders, and the formation of the SESU alliance with neighbouring Pripyat, among others.

Meanwhile, the roots of leftism and anarchism were also being planted elsewhere across the server. The Worker's Party set up shop in south Mount Augusta in early 2018 and began establishing a number of communes in the city. When SandFalls and Renrits1, caught wind of this development, they set up their own communes in the same area and united them under one banner - the Union of Socialist Augusta, or USA. They carried on for a while, with SandFalls re-establishing the LSIF in the meantime, before eventually writing a charter which codified a united communal government ruled by TWP. After the MtA communited voted to move to CivRealms in early 2020, the USA stayed and declared its independence on April 13, 2020. A new chapter was started, with a fully independent leftist, well-established community. The USA went through periods of decline and activity before being permanently revived in March 2021 and reformed into the Confederation of Socialist Augusta. This new development excited and attracted many leftists around the server who had come of age since the original declaration of independence, including ChocChips, smal, and the people of Lumiere.

Jumping back to Provincia a bit, the city was never the same after the Nazi Bombing of Threepton in July 2018. While SESU was formed in an attempt to keep safe,

CivRev

Main Article: Mery Horde

Established by a convening council that consisted of Pythius_, Ninjajackh12, and ChocChips, the Mery culture came into existence on December 18, 2021 after the adoption of the First Law of the Mery Horde by the post-CCCP commune of Merthyr on CivRev. The law enshrined their religious rites into TWP political culture and law, specifically requiring a ceremony to take place upon one's ascension to citizenship. The ad hoc position of Ataman was established for conflict resolution, but mostly the law ensured that the Mery people would always work together through consensus and mutual aid. During their brief time on CivRev, the Mery claimed the plains around Merthyr to use for horse riding and taming and set up a number of outposts used to secure their place in the world. The Mery would not be long for this world, however, as on January 1, 2022, the majority of CivRev players abandoned the server, leaving the Mery to follow suit.

Vintage Civ

Main Article: Hwillotati

After the abandonment of CivRev, the Mery migrated to Vintage Civ on January 5th, mostly because it was the only active Civ server at the time but also because they thought Vintage Story's focus on primitive technology would be appropriate for a steppe people. In line with their culture, the Mery migrated often on Vintage Civ until settling down in their village they named Hwillota. Hwillota roughly translates to "in between two bodies of water" in the Mehrileh conlang, which they greatly developed during their time on Vintage Civ thanks in large part to AmandaCC. Mery Horde language became their second primary language alongside English and is used in all official documents, though not necessarily as the vernacular. Hwillotata lasted the entire week of the Vintage Civ beta before going mostly inactive after an incident in which racism was tolerated and perpetuated by the Vintage Civ owner on their discord. Some Mery would continue playing casually until yet another racist incident occurred in mid March 2022.

CivMC

Djani Wirehtshig Mehriteht
Holy Realm of the Mery
Flag of the Mery realm
Alternative flag used during times of emergency
General
Demonym	mehri, Mery
Alliance	Forum of the Medi Sea
Government
Government	None
Formation
Preceded by	Hwillotati
Culture
Language	mehrileh, English
Religion	rhayatshola
Ideology	Anarchist
National anthem	"Young, Strong, and Healthy" by Big Otto Wanz

Following the abandonment of their Vintage Civ settlement, the Mery began to draw out their plans for their next iteration on CivMC. They established the Djani Wirehtshig Mehriteht, Holy Realm of the Mery, also called Djanimehri for short, or Realm of the Mery. They anticipate for this to be the ultimate form of the Mery, now with their politics, language, and culture much more developed. The Mery maintain close relations with The State and the Free Danzilonan Republic, with many Mery planning to become citizens of both and establish their religious presence in each

Culture and society

Politics

The framework of Mery society is defined by their concept of rhayara, which is mehrileh for "mutual aid." According to the yet-to-be-released Covenant, all of the land and industry of the Mery is held in common, and all decisions relating to the Mery are made through democratic discussions and consensus.

Religion

The religion of the Mery is called rhayatshola, which translates to Sun-Help. It revolves around the mutually beneficial relationship between them and their sun god Tshola, who is constantly fighting the forces of evil, originating from both the center of the Earth and the sky, to protect Humanity.

In the canon, Tshola was originally an unwitting servant of the Lords in the Sky, or Lords in the Void, themself before realizing their three successive masters' duplicity and stealing the Seed of Life from their last one, who planned to use it to grow an army and become the master of the Lords. Tshola grew the seed in the sky with their spit, tears and blood, having no water, and created Humans and Horses, but took pity upon the creatures and spared them, pulling land from under the Primordial Sea to create a home for them.

The Sun then fashioned land animals from earth and their spit, tears and blood, and aquatic animals in the same manner but replacing earth with mud.

Tshola is continuously able to hold the forces of evil off with ritual sacrifices from the people of the world, which gives the Sun strength, defining the mutual aid relationship between themself and Humanity. The Mery actively have sacrificial rituals, praise the sun, and fight the monsters of the night.

Language

mehrileh is the language unique to the Mery people. Though not used in everyday conversing in favor of English, official positions, titles, Mery mythical heroes, and discord roles are all in the conlang.

The language makes ample use of inflected grammatical cases to mark, among other things, the subject, direct or indirect object, general location, movement from or to something, and duration of time.

Phonology

Consonant phonemes in mehrileh

-	Labial		Dental		Alveolar			Post-Alveolar		Velar		Uvular		Glottal
					Central		Lateral
	voiceless	voiced	voiceless	voiced	voiceless	voiced	voiced	voiceless	voiced	voiceless	voiced	voiceless	voiced	voiceless
Stop	p	b			t	d				k	g
Fricative	f	v	θ (/th/)	ð (/vh/)	s	z		ʃ (/sh/)	ʒ (/j/)			χ (/ch/)	ʁ (/rh/)	h
Affricate								tʃ (/tsh/)	dʒ (/dj/)
Nasal		m				n					ŋ (/ng/)
Liquid						r	l		j (/y/)	ʍ (/hw/)	w

mehrileh contains 27 consonant phonemes, most of which are relatively easy to naturally pronounce for anglophones, except for [χ], [ʁ] and [ŋ]. To type the conlang more easily, phonemes represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) by a character not in the English alphabet are written by a letter or group of letters that are in it, corresponding to the letter(s) in the parentheses besides the IPA symbol in the above chart. For example, the sound [ʍ] is usually written, in mehrileh, as "hw".

Vowel phonemes in mehrileh

-	Front		Central	Back
Close (High)	ɪ (/ih/)	i		u
Mid	ɛ (/eh/)		ə (/eu/)	ɔ (/o/)
Open (Low)			a

mehrileh contains 7 vowel phonemes, most if not all of which are relatively easy to naturally pronounce for anglophones. To type the conlang more easily, phonemes represented in the IPA by a character not in the English alphabet are written by a letter or group of letters that are in it, corresponding to the letter(s) in the parentheses besides the IPA symbol in the above chart. For example, the sound [ə] is usually written, in mehrileh, as "eu".

In theory, syllables in mehrileh allow for a maximum of three consonants in the onset and four in the coda, with the onset being optional and the coda being mandatory. The sound [ʍ] may not appear in the coda of a syllable and may not cluster with other consonants. The nucleas of a syllable is always a vowel, and is mandatory. Additionally, when the sounds [ʁ] and [r] are present within one syllable of each other, [ʁ] becomes [r].