Belka, officially the Principality of Belka, is a country in the northern reaches of the Osean continent. The Waldreich and Gebere Mountains, which run along Belka's southern territories, form a natural border with several of its neighbors—the Osean Federation to the southwest, and the Republic of Ustio to the southeast. To the east, Belka is bordered by Recta, Gebet, and FATO.

Formerly the leader of the larger Belkan Federation, Belka was a scientific, industrial, and military powerhouse that rivaled the Osean Federation in the early 20th century, though this power dynamic gradually shifted over the decades. Despite its historical strength, Belka's economy faced an economic crisis in the 1980s, resulting in a rise in Belkan nationalism and extreme right-wing politics gaining favor amongst the people. The expansionist and chauvinist rhetoric of Waldemarr Rald's popularly-elected government culminated in the Belkan War in 1995, which ended in crushing defeat for the Principality—the Federation was dissolved, and Belka reduced to a fraction of its pre-war territory.

Belka is considered a developed country, though has faced economic hardship since the 1980s. Its controversial conduct during the Belkan War has made it a pariah state, despite its attempts to reintegrate with the international community. Regardless, Belka remains a a major force on the world stage in the sectors of industry, technology, and science, with its primary exports (aside from munitions) remaining cameras, watches, and electronics.

Settled in ancient times, Belka's climate—predominantly and unusually cold for its latitude, with soil poorly suited to agriculture—bred a tenacious and industrious spirit in those who settled it. During the Middle Ages, Belkan knights invaded their eastern neighbors. This act ultimately brought much of east Osea under the control of a newly-formed Holy Belkan Empire, which stretched from Aurick Bay to even the Usean continent, across the sea to the east. With its seat of power moved to what is now Recta, the Holy Belkan Empire prospered for almost a thousand years.

During the 17th century, facing expansionism from other imperial powers, the Holy Belkan Empire began to fracture. Erusea, the Nordlands, Wielvakia, Recta, Sapin, and other historic territories of the Empire seceded, leading to its collapse. This led to the establishment of the modern Principality of Belka, the core remnant of a once-great empire. When the Industrial Revolution began to sweep across the world, the Principality was forced to industrialize as a means of survival. The manual dexterity of the Belkan populace, cultivated over centuries of in-home manufacturing during the bitterly-cold winters of the nation's far northern reaches, were put to work on metalwork, textiles, and later optical products, precision instruments, and electronics.

However, the climate south of Waldreich proved suitable for agriculture, especially the area around the Great Lakes—historically a part of South Belka. This fertile land brought the Principality into conflict with the up-and-coming Osean Federation, whose imperialistic desire for military expansion saw the northwest territory as inhospitable, the majority of the northeast too dry to farm, and the south a pit of malaria and harsh jungle. The ensuing Osean War spanned from 1905 and 1910, and saw the Belkan Army alter the course of warfare forever by creating what is widely considered the world's first air force. The Belkan Air Force, the brainchild of Special Minister Franklin Göllnitz, proved invaluable in the war, quickly developing from an experimental division of the Army into a separate military branch that specialized in air-to-air combat, bombing missions, and aerial reconnaissance. Belka's resources and status as a nation with a highly-educated populace led to its air force developing at a much faster rate than the nascent Osean Air Defense Forces, leading to a Belkan victory in the Osean War.

However, the end of the Osean War marked a shift in the power dynamics between Belka and Osea. Osean research into nitrogen for use in chemical weapons had yielded not the deployment of toxic gas on the war front, but rather the invention of nitrogen fertilizer. With it, vast amounts of Osean territorial holdings that had been previously ill-suited for agriculture was able to be transformed into arable land, transforming the struggling federation into a world superpower within a decade.

Over the next several decades, Belka gradually began to accrue client states from the former Holy Belkan Empire, including Gebet and Ustio. By the 1970s, Belka began to look eastward to a crisis brewing in another historic territory of the Empire—the independent state of Recta, which had long been considered a Belkan puppet and vassal, despite its nominal independence. Recta's citizenry, protesting the current state of affairs, eventually began to riot. On election night, the newly-formed Rectan Liberation Front—a paramilitary organized by sympathetic elements of the military, along with civilian militias—rolled tanks into the capital before the results could be announced. In response, Belka invaded Recta through Gebet, sparking the Rectan Conflict. A military stalemate ensued for the next several months as winter set in, with geopolitical rivals such as Osea decrying the invasion of Recta as being in violation of international law. Scandals on both sides saw Osean meddling in the Rectan election results revealed, alongside Belkan politicians were revealed to have known of this interference; these revelations publicly embarrassed both nations. By the fall of 1973, with aid from elite Belkan Air Force units such as Silber and Gault Teams, Recta fell to Belkan occupation, and was annexed into Gebet.

The outcome of the Rectan Conflict saw the creation of the Belkan Federation, a way for the Principality to assert its control more directly over its client states. Its members included Gebet, Recta, Ustio, and South Belka, a region that had historically been subservient to the historic birthplace of the nation, Nord Belka. It was around this time that the Cold War between Osea and the Union of Yuktobanian Republics began, a time that saw the Belkan media stoke the people's fears that, as a relative pariah state after the Rectan debacle, the rest of the world was prepared to ally against Belka. This “anti-Belka coalition” propaganda was used as justification for Belka's ultimately-unsustainable military buildup throughout the 1980s, including the Advanced Dominance Fighter program, Project Pendragon, and research into the viability of airborne aircraft carriers.

With Belka's territories seeing less success agriculturally and being outcompeted by the Osean Federation and its many conglomerates, the Principality undertook the Federal Law Review in December of 1987. This process, which stretched into 1988, ultimately determined that the Federation could not remain as it was. After Belkan troops were withdrawn, Gebet became the first territory to leave the Federation on February 8, 1988. They were followed by Ustio on May 12.

[TBA]