Verse:Chlouvānem Inquisition

The Chlouvānem Inquisition (natively Murkadhānāvi; see below for other names) is a country on the planet of Calémere. With a population of 1.457 billion people it is also its most populated country (counting about 17,8% of the total Calemerian population). It is a federally organized theocracy, consisting of 117 dioceses (juṃšañāñai) with a large degree of autonomy; the dioceses are mostly a contiguous territory extending throughout the whole continent of Márusúturon (Mārṣūtram in the Chlouvānem language), covering about 40% of it; some dioceses are entirely insular in the neighboring seas, though the islands of Kāyīchah are much closer to Védren, effectively making the Inquisition a transcontinental country. The Inquisition covers approximately 14.4 million square kilometers (about 8% of the land areas on Calémere), which makes it also the largest country on the planet.
Counted as separate entities are also many territories - mostly islands with military bases or scientific stations - across the planet; the most notable of those is the Lalla Kehamyuita (“High North”), jointly governed with Askand, Skyrdagor, and Brono, which is a large but almost uninhabited territory consisting of the whole part of Eastern Márusúturon north of the 68th parallel north.

Capital of the Inquisition is the holy city of the Yunyalīlta, Līlasuṃghāṇa, in the southern part of the Great Chlouvānem Plains.

While the consolidation of the Inquisition as a single state is fairly recent, the Inquisition as a body was formed in the Great Plains at the beginning of the Second Era as a churchlike body run by the Inquisitors (murkadhānai, literally “black hands”, due to many early rituals requiring the use of lunīla berries and their pitch-black unedible juice), the preachers of the Yunyalīlti religion.
Chlouvānem peoples — a métis ethnicity formed by interracial breeding of various prehistoric peoples of the Great Plain, most prominently the Ur-Chlouvānem, a Lahob population who had migrated from Northern Evandor across the vast steppes of Márusúturon before reaching the Plains, as well as the Ancient Kūṣṛmāthi, founders of the first urban civilization on the continent — in the next two thousand years preached their religion and expanded throughout most of the continent, assimilating local peoples but creating numerous countries that were held together by their common religion and the use of Classical Chlouvānem as a lingua franca among the other vernaculars that developed from it. The beginning of the Fourth Era was marked by the formal unification of all Chlouvānem countries into a single country, where religious and civil government coincide.

The Chlouvānem Inquisition is today the main superpower of the Eastern Bloc on Calémere, ideologically contrasted to the secular and plurireligious West (despite it being the only major theocracy and despite many prominent Eastern countries not being even Yunyalīlti) and the leading technological innovator on the planet. It is a highly developed country following a religion-driven regionally planned economy with a strong focus on environmental-friendly policies; it consistently ranks in the highest places when it comes to human development and quality of life, and has the second-lowest income inequality on the planet, after the fellow Yunyalīlti country of Brono. On the social side, though, the Inquisition implements a strict monoreligious policy, with non-Yunyalīlti people (heretics) being most often either converted or legally persecuted and killed en masse.
Despite formal peace being strived for and kept by both sides, the relations between the Inquisition and the West remain tense, particularly due to the former’s repeated calls to holy war; the last such conflict (called the East-West Global War), ninety years ago during the reign of the extremely radical Great Inquisitor Kælahīmāvi Nāʔahilūma Martayinām, ended in a white peace when the conquest-bound Chlouvānem armies were forced to retreat and leave the then-economically collapsed West due to a near-implosion of the Inquisition due to a series of revolts, particularly in the annexed territories of Brono and Greater Skyrdagor.