Nam Thịnh is a small nation, just over 2,500 square kilometers, with a population of fifteen million. Its borders, though modest, are sharply defined, drawn not by treaties but by fire and retreat.

The country declared its independence during the global war, in a time when maps were redrawn by guns more than diplomacy. In those chaotic years, a coalition of mercenaries seized control of Ngạn Sơn, a remote but strategic mountain nestled near the southeastern ridge. They intended it as a temporary hideout. What they built, however, was little more than a ruin: a camp of lawlessness, raiding, and silent executions.

The so-called stronghold did not last.

It was overrun by the remnants of a defeated army, a division led by a marshal whose homeland had been erased in the same war. With no country left to return to, he led his surviving forces to Ngạn Sơn, overthrew the mercenaries who had once ravaged his borders, and planted the first flag of a new nation.

He named it Nam Thịnh, The Prosperous South.

Official history calls it a nation born of discipline and sacrifice. Unofficially, it began with rage, exile, and the gun. The line between the two is thin, and in Nam Thịnh, it is best not to ask where it lies.

But a nation cannot survive on soldiers and ideals alone. It needed capital, resources to rebuild, sustain, and grow. The marshal, now installed as President of Nam Thịnh, extended a hand beyond his borders. And from across the world, the wealthy came forward, men with fortunes but no flag, influence but no authority. They saw in Nam Thịnh a rare opportunity: a nation still unshaped, its foundations open for those bold enough to invest.

With capital, far more than the young state could ever raise alone, and with global connections forged through private influence, the wealthy patrons of Nam Thịnh opened trade routes that linked the mountain republic to the outside world. Through commerce came diplomacy, and through diplomacy came legitimacy. The World Union, under quiet pressure, formally recognized Nam Thịnh as a sovereign nation, small, fortified, and now, indisputably independent.

When Nam Thịnh was officially recognized by the world stage, the presidency quietly became a ceremonial role. Real power had shifted, unmistakably, into the hands of those who had bankrolled the nation's survival. The former marshal, once hailed as the founder, stepped aside without protest. Leadership passed not through election, but through agreement: one of the wealthy backers assumed control, and the republic took its first step into oligarchy.

Though the former president had stepped down willingly, entrusting the future to those with the means to shape it, his exit from public life was anything but smooth. Within months, he was found dead in what was officially deemed a traffic accident. No foul play was reported. No questions were asked. Everyone accepted the explanation, and yet, none dared speak aloud what they suspected. The wealthy council had no need to silence dissent. Fear did it for them.

The death of the former president shattered what little discipline remained in the military. Soldiers laid down their arms and walked away from their posts, leaving Nam Thịnh exposed. Without a standing army, the nation's vast reserves of wealth, hoarded by the council, became a beacon for bandits and warlords. Raids began. Fortunes vanished overnight. But the council was neither blind nor helpless. They responded swiftly, hiring foreign mercenaries to hunt down the thieves and reestablish control, through force, not law.

With mercenaries now standing guard at their gates, the wealthy elite began molding Nam Thịnh into a nation that reflected their will. Power was no longer shared, it was selected. The richest among them was elevated to the role of monarch, a figurehead shaped by consensus but crowned by coin.

To protect their grip on the state, the rest named themselves nobles and reintroduced a feudal order, modern in its weapons, ancient in its design.

Atop the mountain, they constructed the Monarch's Palace: a fortress of stone and steel. There, the monarch lived and ruled, protected by the Royal Guard. Beneath its vaulted ceilings, in a chamber built for control, the nobles gathered, not to serve the people, but to carve the law in their own image.

To consolidate the monarch's authority, the noble order reshaped the mountain itself. Beneath the shadow of the Monarch's Palace, they carved terraces into the rock, wide enough to house their sprawling private estates. From this elevated ground, the nobles stood quite literally beneath the crown, yet above the nation.

It was not just a feat of engineering. It was a declaration: the summit belonged to one, but the mountain belonged to them.

Though the nobles had already carved their dominion into the mountain, vast tracts of land remained unused. So they extended invitations to other wealthy elites around the world, those with capital but no crown.

In Nam Thịnh, there was no need for ministers or prime ministers. Authority was not earned through merit, election, or lineage, but bought. The wealthiest held absolute power, and the one who brought the greatest fortune was anointed monarch.

This is how Nam Thịnh functions: a state where each noble claims territory as private dominion, and governance is merely the management of wealth and influence.

Below the estates of the nobles stretched the military sector — not born of national service, but assembled from coin and necessity. The mercenaries, once little more than private thugs, were elevated into the official army of Nam Thịnh.

High-ranking officers, from majors to marshals, were rewarded with estates carved into the flanks of Ngạn Sơn. The rest of the soldiers lived in the mountain itself, their lives buried beneath stone and command.

There, deep within Ngạn Sơn, the army erected a fortress of steel and discipline, barracks, bunkers, and training grounds spreading like roots from the officer estates down to the mountain's foot. It was not just a base. It was a system, a military caste living in the shadow of wealth, answering only to coin and hierarchy.

A nation cannot live forever atop a mountain.
The land surrounding Ngạn Sơn, scorched by war and lawless from neglect, was a "wasteland of ruins and raiders".

The military, backed by gold and ambition, began its "expansion campaigns," pushing Nam Thịnh's reach beyond stone and smoke. Each expedition returned with land, and with land came opportunity.

In the cleared zones, the nobles drew their maps. They established merchant squares: planned zones built from concrete and order. Hospitals for the wounded, markets for the traders, shipyards for control, homes for labor, and hotels for those who could afford silence.

Nam Thịnh was not just growing, it was being shaped, street by street, by those who held the coin.

The expeditions did not end with farmland or borderland.
Nam Thịnh turned its gaze to the mountains beyond, where the earth itself whispered of wealth.

Beneath those crags lay veins of coal, iron, and other precious ores. The nobles raced to stake their claims. The swift secured the richest mines; the hesitant received only stone and silence.

But even stone had value. With marble, granite, and ore, the nobles laid the groundwork for a new economy.

Factories rose beside cliffs. The hum of machines replaced the sound of falling leaves. Nam Thịnh was no longer just a haven for the powerful, it was becoming a machine fueled by stone, fire, and iron will.

Beyond the shadow of Ngạn Sơn stretched a land untouched by war, vast plains, fed by winding rivers and shielded by ancient forests.

To the nobles, it was not just a prize, it was a promise.

Here, they envisioned the granaries of Nam Thịnh. A land that would keep their factories running, their armies fed, and their cities growing.

If iron built their power, then grain would sustain it.

Some of the land Nam Thịnh claimed bled into neighboring borders — a quiet invasion wrapped in military expeditions.

Protests followed. The neighboring governments took the matter to the World Court, invoking post-war treaties.

But the world, still reeling from devastation, had little appetite for more conflict.

And Nam Thịnh knew its strength. It sent not just gold, but warnings. Not arguments, but leverage.

The nobles called in favors, made phone calls, froze investments. They reminded the world's most fragile nations what silence was worth — and what defiance would cost.

By the time the judges ruled, the borders had already shifted — not drawn in ink or iron, but in debt and deals.

With the borders settled and the map of Nam Thịnh at last complete, one problem remained, there were no workers, no farmers, no hands to till the land or fuel the factories.

But the nobles were unconcerned. The war had broken nations, and in its wake lay millions without homes, jobs, or food, a flood of the forgotten.

So the nobles made promises. Simple ones: work, shelter, a warm meal.

And the people came.

From the ruins of fallen states and shattered cities, the jobless, the homeless, the starving crossed into Nam Thịnh. Not out of loyalty. Not for belief.

But because they had nowhere else to go.

And Nam Thịnh welcomed them, not as citizens, but as labor.

At that time, Nam Thịnh entered a period of prosperity.
Laughter rang through the streets, and on the surface, it appeared that the "cunning" nobles, with all their "tricks and calculations", were truly tending to their people.
Within a short span, Nam Thịnh rose to become a small but thriving nation, where laborers wore genuine smiles and received fair wages, as if justice and dignity were part of the system all along.