Daartlaw is a modern nation established sometime after the formation of Gosselevism, first as a defensive alliance between Gosselevist dukes attempting to secede from the Orthodox Empire of Arpenea. Many of these dukes had been rendered nearly landless or vassalized under Orthodox lieges. The republics of Daartlaw and Ezstlaw, well-defended on the titular island of Daartlaw, had a modern, fortified citadel. Their Gosselevist mercantile classes, especially the guild ascendancy, had more in common with the separatist dukes than the Imperials, whose tax policies and protectionism against the Sasinthēnes had long stanched profits. Within the Citadel of Daartlaw, federalists met in guildhalls, and in conjunction with the lesser assemblies of Daartlaw and Ezstlaw, created the State Assembly, colloquially called the House of Masters, because members of the assembly are called Masters, in imitation of guild tradition.
With the wane of the Orthodox Empire of Arpenea, fractured but still nominally extant, Daartlaw has little in the way of existential threats. Prior to the Great War, Daartlaw’s foreign policy interests were defined by holdings across the eastern sea, particularly in its colonization of ’the islands’ (Daartlawer. ‘Surneleer’), such as Reineslew. Daartlaw during its golden age (around 1000) philosophically justified its actions as ‘bringing the rest of the world up with it’, in its attempt to found an idealized capital city for the whole world on an isolated yet inhabited island at what the Hesods imagined to be the center of the world ocean. Reineslew remained part of Daartlaw’s holdings, but after the closing of the 11th century, most of the rest of the world had moved on. Hostilities with the Sasinthēne world began to build again when Goentea continued the Empire of Panarine’s political support of the Orthodox Empire. The Great War is commonly held to have begun when Daartlaw seized Paramanta, an island north of Hesod claimed by Sasinthy.