Volthaug

The Volthaug (“College of Guardians” or “Wise Assembly”) is the supreme legislature of the Alvish Imperium. Originally founded as the governing body of the Alvish League, the Volthaug assumed legislative power over the whole Alvish species during the Eldritch Cataclysm, as a result of Alvish unification under the terms of the Punctation of Muss. It is a body in which the first and second chambers are together the most powerful, and possess the most autonomous lawmaking authority. The Volthaug contains 16,253 seats, divided unevenly between the four chambers.

The Volthaug is charged with creating law within the constraints of the Ordinary Complex, approving the imperial budget, and appointing the members of various court councils. Each chamber possesses its own leadership: the Poxir is the general leader of the whole assembly, overseeing the administrative apparatus of the legislature and representing the body to other institutions and organizations. A new Poxir is elected only when the Volthaug passes a vote of no-confidence, or when the former one dies or retires.

Due to the size of the Imperium, elections are essentially constant, as various term limits are reached and the autonomous realms select new representatives. As such, sessions of the Volthaug are not numbered. However, the Popular Assembly does have a regular elections schedule due to its centralized ballot apparatus, and as such, sessions of the Assembly are numbered.

The first chamber, the Diet of Heroes, containing 7,998 seats, consists of the appointed representatives of Alvia’s autonomous realms, with one seat afforded to each realm regardless of population. The Diet constituted the entirety of the Volthaug in its earliest days, when it was unicameral, before the unification of the Alvish. The second chamber was created immediately after unification, called the Popular Assembly. Containing another 7,998 seats, the Assembly is an elected body with no membership restrictions. Election districting for the Assembly is overseen by its Minister-President and the Departments Bureau. The third chamber is the Council of Princes, created in 289 AC at the initiative of Zaesir Vosmir the Great. The Council contains only 232 seats, assigned to the oldest and most illustrious houses and families of the Imperium. The final chamber, the Imperial Conclave, is by far the youngest, created in 513 AC by Zaesir Gildomir I. It consists of only 25 seats, all of which are filled by members of the Imperial House Kaisthurm.

All members of the Volthaug are titled Volthir in the Ordinary Complex, the Alvish word for “Guardian.” However, they are also sometimes called Haugir, originally a derogatory term for a useless intellectual.

Structure
The Volthaug is tetracameral, and each of the four chambers can meet independently of the others. However, only the Diet and Assembly possess genuine lawmaking powers: the Council and Conclave on their own serve merely as advisory bodies for the government. Alterations to the Basic Law of Alvia or the Ordinary Complex can only be made by a plenum of the entire Volthaug. Otherwise, most laws must be separately approved by the Diet and the Assembly, however they are not required to meet together to do so.

Diet of Heroes
The Diet of Heroes contains 7,998 members and is the oldest legislative institution of the unified Alvish government. Each of the nearly 8,000 realms of the Alvish Imperium sends a single representative to the Diet, regardless of population size. This is intended to maintain the autonomy and independence of the Alvish realms. However, this winner-takes-all method of electing representatives has helped encourage the development of a sustained two-party system.

For the past hundred years the Diet has been marked by gridlock and stalemate, as the formation of an effective Therian-nationalist third-party, the Thiermeidel or "Therian Alliance," has made it much more difficult for the Blues or the Greens to achieve a simple majority. This issue is worsened by the widespread anti-Therian stigma, which prevents either party from forming a coalition with the Therians lest they be labeled traitors and subsequently lose their plurality. Most famously, the Greens announced a coalition with the Therians in 436 in order to relieve gridlock: they immediately began losing seats, and after only five years, had lost their plurality to the Blues, who had promised never to negotiate with Therians.

This political gridlock has contributed both to the general weakness of the Alvish state, and to the rising pre-eminence of the Popular Assembly over the Diet. It has also been credited with contributing to the decline in the popularity and dominance of the Blues and Greens, allowing radical parties to finally overtake them in the Assembly in the 510s.

Popular Assembly
The Popular Assembly was created immediately after unification, as a counterbalance to the aristocratic and decentralized Diet of Heroes. Friction between the two Chambers sprang up immediately, and the Assembly was initially unpopular. Political scientist Aldigard zom'Gelnock famously called it "the slave of the wild masses, and midwife to all its political abortions." However, support for the Assembly accumulated as it garnered a reputation for avoiding the princely intrigue which often determined the makeup of the Diet. Additionally, the centralized electoral bureaucracy of the Assembly created the earliest unified state infrastructure of the Alvish.

The current incarnation is the 154th Popular Assembly, formed following the special elections of 517. The election signified a major upset in Alvish politics, as the two most extreme parties, the Black Fang and the Nostalgists, were swept into comfortable majorities following a series of scandals and a general economic downturn lasting from 515 to 516. This represents the first time in Alvish history that both major parties of the Diet of Heroes failed to capture pluralities in the Assembly.

Since the elections there have been five rounds of negotiations between the major parties, all of which have failed to form a government, throwing the Assembly into gridlock. Early in 518 Zaesir Gildomir announced that new elections should take place, however the Popular Assembly voted against dissolving itself. This double-gridlock of both the Diet and the Assembly has effectively shut down the Alvish government.