Commonwealth of Warjan

The Commonwealth of Warjan (Warjanese: 和蓮國協, Waren Kokukyō) is an island nation located in the Eastern Hemisphere of Terra, off the coast of Castor Major. It lies to the north of Osten. Warjan is an archipelago of several thousand islands, with more than 98% of the land area comprised of the four largest islands.

Etymology
The name "Warjan" is an Ostenisch transliteration of Waren (和蓮, literally "peaceful lotus") in the Old Warjanese language. It is believed that the name was merely one of the numerous clans that inhabited the Warjan archipelago in antiquity, when the Ostenische people made contact with them. Because of the lack of a central government, the name was soon used to refer to the entire people, and the people themselves soon accepted the use of the term when the current Warjanese "government" was founded.

Apart from Warjan, other archaic names were also used to refer to the Warjan ethnicity as well, including the older Ostenisch name "Lotusfresser", or Lotus-eaters, based on the ancient myth that lotus (or a similar plant) was the main source of food for the inhabitants of the islands.

Government & Authority
Due to the lack of a central government, or any socio-political hierarchy beyond clans and chiefdoms in most time of the Warjanese history, the current government, which is more a response to potential foreign threat from other corners of Terra, is noticeably more decentralised than other government, and lacks many of their fundamental aspects, such as a unified code of law, national service, or taxation beyond the the simple ones. Instead, most powers are retained to local, clan-based level, and the central government generally do not have the authority to interfere, unless foreigners are involved, in which case the central government will become the mediator between them and the concerned locals.

Judicial System
The judicial system of the Warjanese people is a polycentric legal system, and it has been the legal system for settling dispute between individuals and clans since written record was found in modern Warjan - in fact, some of the earliest texts of Warjanese people and language are legal records, and not much difference was observed between them and their modern counterpart.

Under the Warjanese legal system, laws are discovered by specialised "judges" upon determining the best way to settle a dispute, of which will be recorded and compiled for future references. As these laws are, due to the nature of them, centred around clans, the multitude of clans, of which the number ranges to the hundreds, means there are numerous code of law, varying from village to village. Although many of them, especially those considered to be law of nature, are more or less the same over the entire archipelago, the majority of the law is different. Because of that, the observance of local laws and judges is said to be the most fundamental element of the Warjanese culture, more basic than its religion, language, or customs, for they can vary greatly from island to island, and from clan to clan.